Could Jack have killed some of the torso victims?

[Abby Normal]

Well, as tempting as it might be think that the Whitehall case was an 'in your face' to the police, unless there was a sign out in front of the construction site reading "Future Home of the C.I.D." I think it is entirely plausible that those dumping the torso viewed the site as merely a convenient, uninhabited area at night rather than as a symbol of future authority.

That said, I'm afraid that I can't get behind Fisherman and the rest of the 'Torso' crowd. There was no torso killer. I think the world has simply forgotten what life was like before abortion was legal. One can find dozens of these botched cases, spread across every major city in the UK, America, and Europe in the years 1840-1940. There is no rational reason to think they are related to a series of street killings. Bodies were dismembered in order to smuggle them out of boarding houses or basements; abdomens were cut open to remove the fetus after bungling the 'illegal operation.' I know a case in New York where the two quacks used a length of rope to try to remove the unborn child. It was a hideous crimes scene, but was probably manslaughter and not murder. It wasn't particularly uncommon to further mutilate the body in order to dump it elsewhere. Solving one homicide is difficult enough (Eddowes, Nichols, take your pick). No point in making it more muddled by throwing in other unrelated cases. I suspect the Chief Inspector would throw you off the case and you'd be back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm if you tried to bring Liz Jackson into the frame.

Hi RJ
Only one of the torso victims was pregnant, and even then there was no evidence of an abortion attempted.

[Abby Normal]

Not that I know of - but Jackson did.

so rainham, pinchin and jackson all had vertical (sternum to pubes)gashes to there midsection.
as did the ripper victims.

[Abby Normal]

She had a hole cut out in the form of the famous two flaps. That's not a vertical gash.

cmon Sam, you have to make a gash down the center to cut out flaps.

[Abby Normal]

A hole comprising two flaps does not constitute a vertical gash, irrespective of whether one or more (more, actually) ran vertically. It's a hole in the abdomen, period. Likewise, Nichols, Chapman and Kelly did not have a vertical gash in their abdomens either, even though they sustained several vertical cuts, too. The key thing is that these women suffered horizontal cuts as well, which opened their abdominal walls. No mere gashes these.

I'd go so far as to exclude Eddowes too because, whilst she sustained a single, largely vertical incision (albeit one that swept horizontally towards the bottom), it could scarcely be called a mere "vertical gash" either, as it penetrated right through the abdominal wall and laid it open. Which was emphatically not the case with the single vertical gash sustained by the Pinchin Street torso.

sam to make the flaps you have to start with a vertical gash. so they all had a vertical gash AT SOME POINT during there post mortem mutilation.
Another similarity between the ripper victims and torso victims.

Its like one of the first thing ripper thought of after subduing the victims and probably torso man too. either way to me attacking the abdoman is first and foremest to both, or the torsoripper.

and im liking torsoripper more and more to describe this cretin, because not only does it contain both their original names, it seems to be a focus for both.

[rjpalmer]

Hardly a convienient place where the body was found, RJ.

Depends on what you mean by 'convenient,' Jerry. Granted, it's never convenient to lug a dead weight over a fence; on the other hand, it may have been entirely convenient depending on who it was who dumped the body. A Westminster local who noticed the site was insufficiently guarded at night? Where else are you going to hide a body in Westminster other than a vacant lot? Or was it someone west of the site who originally planning on the Thames but ran out of wind and never quite made it?

But an inconvenient location for an East Ender? Absolutely.

As for the victim's breasts, I assume we can both agree there would be no reason to think that the victim of a botched abortion would show signs of having suckled an infant. Not that it was necessarily a botched abortion case; it could have been a domestic killing. Cheers.

PS. In the Pinchin Street case, Swanson specifically noted the victim's genitals had not been attacked, which is mighty odd if the Ripper had her at his disposal for any length of time.

[Abby Normal]

Hardly a convienient place where the body was found, RJ.

exactly Jerry. I cant think of a harder or more riskier place to dump a body--maybe a currently occupied police building. ; )

[Debra A]

Jerry is spot on about the four cases 87 to 89, in that only one of them was definitely known to be pregnant. The Whitehall trunk had been divided at the pelvis and the pelvis, complete with tell-tale pelvic organs was missing. It is possible that both Elizabeth and the Whitehall victim died as a result of something that went wrong as a consequence of procuring an abortion.

RJ mentions something of importance here though-most of the victims of death caused by abortion was because the procedures involved were invasive and often wounded the uterus and set up fatal infection after the unwanted foetus had been expelled from the womb via the vagina in a premature labour. There are a large number of cases of this sort documented and prosecuted. Dr Bond himself was involved in providing evidence of similar cases of death from peritonitis whilst procuring an abortion- one famous one in 1889 involving Dr Gloster.

In the case of Elizabeth Jackson the first portion of her body to be discovered in the Thames at Horsleydown was a parcel that contained her enlarged empty uterus, placenta and two portions of flesh and subcutaneous tissue from the abdomen. That's all the parcel contained. This is when Bond reportedly told the press that the death may have been abortion related. If he made that comment at all to the press it is completely understandable why given the parcel's contents.

Bond stated at the actual inquest that no abortion had been performed, there was no rupturing of the fourchette that signaled a vaginal birth, no damage to the cervix or vagina or any sign of a delivery. He also does not mention any sign of infection in the uterus, as we know, the commonest cause of death from abortion. This was something he was able to fully document in the Dr Gloster case a year later. He gave his opinion at the inquest that no abortion had been performed on Elizabeth. He also stated that the foetus had been removed from the uterus after the death of Elizabeth through an incision in to the left wall of the uterus itself. This is not abortion.

If Elizabeth died an abortion related death it likely would have been an instant death, perhaps because of ingesting poisonous substances to induce labour, or maybe a natural cause like heart failure or hemorrhage. An instant death would result in a panic to get rid of the evidence. In cases where peritonitis was the cause of death the abortionists were usually long gone by the time the women died.

It would be quite a coincidence though that one or more abortionists chose to dismember and dump the bodies of the women they had killed through abortion in a similar area of the Thames and only eight months apart when there is no history of this type of thing happening. Dumping dismembered bodies in the Thames was a very rare occurrence. So, perhaps there is a link that involves abortion with the Whitehall woman and Elizabeth Jackson.

[rjpalmer]

What's risky about a construction site at night? Not much, evidently, considering the person was never caught.

Hi Fish. One lasts stone to throw in your direction. I have to challenge your notion that 'copy cats' are the stuff of 'fiction.'

Murder 'clusters' are a well-known phenomenon. The world is full of crazies waiting to be inspired by other crazies. Whenever there is another school/mall/church shooting in the U.S. (which is so frequent now that it often doesn't even make the front page) the country braces itself, knowing there is very likely going to be another shooting in two or three weeks time. Very few of these reprobates are original thinkers, and it is not unheard of to find one of your 'serialists' who is obsessed with the competition. It's tough, I know, but every homicide needs to be solved on its own merits. No use 'cleaning the books' by attributing dozens of different crimes all to the same hand, particularly when the 'essence' of these crimes are so obviously different. Stick to Whitechapel, or risk being sent back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm.

[Sam Flynn]

cmon Sam, you have to make a gash down the center to cut out flaps.

No more than decapitation equates to a cut throat just because you have to cut the throat to remove the head. Cutting out two flaps of abdominal flesh to make a hole in the abdomen is emphatically not "a gash"; a gash to the abdomen is what happened to the Pinchin Street victim.

[Sam Flynn]

PS. In the Pinchin Street case, Swanson specifically noted the victim's genitals had not been attacked, which is mighty odd if the Ripper had her at his disposal for any length of time.

Especially considering that the legs were removed; you'd think the One True Ripper couldn't resist doing a bit of "business" while he was down there.

And surely the One True Torsokiller would also have removed the arms?

[Kattrup]

Well, as tempting as it might be think that the Whitehall case was an 'in your face' to the police, unless there was a sign out in front of the construction site reading "Future Home of the C.I.D." I think it is entirely plausible that those dumping the torso viewed the site as merely a convenient, uninhabited area at night rather than as a symbol of future authority.

That said, I'm afraid that I can't get behind Fisherman and the rest of the 'Torso' crowd. There was no torso killer. I think the world has simply forgotten what life was like before abortion was legal. One can find dozens of these botched cases, spread across every major city in the UK, America, and Europe in the years 1840-1940. There is no rational reason to think they are related to a series of street killings. Bodies were dismembered in order to smuggle them out of boarding houses or basements; abdomens were cut open to remove the fetus after bungling the 'illegal operation.' I know a case in New York where the two quacks used a length of rope to try to remove the unborn child. It was a hideous crimes scene, but was probably manslaughter and not murder. It wasn't particularly uncommon to further mutilate the body in order to dump it elsewhere. Solving one homicide is difficult enough (Eddowes, Nichols, take your pick). No point in making it more muddled by throwing in other unrelated cases. I suspect the Chief Inspector would throw you off the case and you'd be back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm if you tried to bring Liz Jackson into the frame.

I agree that it’s entirely possible, and without further evidence we’ll never be able to establish for certain that a torso killer existed.

That said, the close spacing of the four cases is very suggestive and to my mind is the most compelling evidence of a common origin.

It’s also relevant that Hebbert and the police considered them linked.

[Fisherman]

so rainham, pinchin and jackson all had vertical (sternum to pubes)gashes to there midsection.
as did the ripper victims.

Correct, Abby. In the Rainham, Jackson, Pinchin, Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly cases, the abdomens were opened up all the way, from top to bottom. Actually, the longest gash as such was that of Liz Jackson, where the wound did not stop at the sternum but went through it.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Debra. Great points, but I am sometimes leery of the medical evidence and worry that "not all is what it seems." For example, I discovered a case where an abortionist was performing operations on women who were not pregnant. It sounds crazy, but we should remember that these quacks could extract huge heaps of money, so he convinced the poor woman that she was pregnant and then performed a 'phantom' operation. (Luckily, she lived, but had she died, how would we have viewed the case?) Certain details from the Brighton Trunk Mysteries of the 1920/30s also concern me when I examine these older cases. One of the Brighton victims was pregnant and dismembered, but Bernard Spilsbury found no evidence that she had been 'interfered' with. Nevertheless, the Chief Inspector suspected a local abortionist. The man was never charged, however, and the case went down as unsolved. Who was right, Spilsbury or the Chief Inspector, or did the answer lie somewhere in between? I don't have the answer.

That said, the close spacing of the four cases is very suggestive and to my mind is the most compelling evidence of a common origin.

Fair enough, and I shouldn't be so dogmatic, but is this 'close spacing' real or is it just our own contribution, due to the fact they occurred close to the events of 1888-1891? Fish is bringing up case from the 1870s and 1902, after all, so these grisly events appear to be happening on a continuum. In which case the 'close spacing' could be an illusion.

[APerno]

In regards to the original post question, you have to wonder why Paul Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive Story would omit any mention of the torso murders.

Prima facie one has to conclude that Begg sees no connection between the murders.

But even so one has to wonder why Begg didn't include the Whitehall torso dump, if only for its negative impact on the police or its fueling of the frenzy called "October."

But unless I missed it Begg sees no connection between the murders, or at least has a different definition of "definitive" than I do.

In his final chapter "Other Ripper Suspects" he is even willing to discuss Sickert, Annie Crook, and William Gull (all of Knight's conspiracy characters) as well as other conspiracy theories, but still no torso murders.

Again, maybe I just missed it.

[Fisherman]

What's risky about a construction site at night? Not much, evidently, considering the person was never caught.

Hi Fish. One lasts stone to throw in your direction. I have to challenge your notion that 'copy cats' are the stuff of 'fiction.'

Murder 'clusters' are a well-known phenomenon. The world is full of crazies waiting to be inspired by other crazies. Whenever there is another school/mall/church shooting in the U.S. (which is so frequent now that it often doesn't even make the front page) the country braces itself, knowing there is very likely going to be another shooting in two or three weeks time. Very few of these reprobates are original thinkers, and it is not unheard of to find one of your 'serialists' who is obsessed with the competition. It's tough, I know, but every homicide needs to be solved on its own merits. No use 'cleaning the books' by attributing dozens of different crimes all to the same hand, particularly when the 'essence' of these crimes are so obviously different. Stick to Whitechapel, or risk being sent back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm.

I am not saying that copycats are the stuff of fiction, R J. As a matter of fact, I feel safe to say that many of the serial murders we see are led on by unsound admiration of and following "the lead" of other killers. Not normally, though, while the "leader" is still at work!
However, I would not recommend using the suggestion of a copycat as a logical starting point in any two cases of murder, because it is not a likely overall thing to happen - and certainly not while a series is still being played out. That is where the fiction factor becomes more useful - movies and crime fiction is abundant with the thing, and it has no counterpart in ther real world that I know of.
Finally, in the Ripper and torso cases, we must accept that both killers took turns leading the tango if there was any copycatting, and such a thing is beyond mere unlikelihood. It just won´t happen, and it didn´t happen here either.