torso maps

[lynn cates]

feel

Hello Maria. Well, let's say one needs to develop a "feel' for the period under study in the same way that a fine British actor must "get a feel' for the character to be portrayed.

Cheers.
LC

[The Good Michael]

This now doesn't refer to profiling, which to me for the most part is basic, self explanatory stuff.

Well, I think it does refer to the "science" of profiling. The basic idea of understanding that people have tendencies is something we can all either do or learn to do pretty easily, but the science that has been made of profiling most definitely fails because it can't take into consideration all the various contexts in which things happened in the past. So there's my connection.

Mike

[mariab]

Well, I tend to believe that profiling doesn't even work properly in the present, not just in the distant past, Michael! Except from the most basic stuff (organized/disorganized/mixed, sociopathic/mentally diseased, childhood trauma, etc.).

We did get quite a distance away from the torso maps, lol.

[The Good Michael]

It's Tom's fault, really. I can't be blamed. I mean, I'm the man who won't be blamed, yada yada, yada.

Mike

[mariab]

Did you notice though that YOU highjacked and I brought you back? :-p Unconceivable in the past.

[The Good Michael]

Uh no, I piggybacked upon Dr. Hopper's and Tom's little profile discussion and enlarged it, nay engorged it. But that's me... the engaged engorger.

Mike

[mariab]

"Engaged engorger piggybacks again". Like a header from The Sun or The Illustrated Police News.

And by the way, I agree with Lynn and with his method acting –er, "method Ripperology".

[Beowulf]

What, for like maps of torso findings and stuff! Dave

The above quote is such a nice way to head up a column entitled 'torso killings'

Thought I'd put this on here, it is rather interesting account of a torso killer, recent era, Richard Francis Cottingham, who didn't have the luck to be a complete mystery like Jack did. In other words he got caught.

So it lets out the information of what he was all about. I don't say all torso killers are the same, but it's interesting to note what some of his behaviors were, and they are not surprising. Setting fires, robberies, raping, torturing, he was what they call an anger excitement or sadistic-lust offender.

Which made me wonder, in 1888, were there a lot of fires being set in Whitechapel? Or a slew of robberies unsolved? It would be interesting to try and see if any of those tied to a repeat offender. A whole study in itself. I just wondered if anyone has ever looked at that.

I thought that the few words said about this modern torso killer,Richard Francis Cottingham, interesting for anyone who might want to read it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=vB2G-9lgvCEC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12&dq=Richard+Francis+Cottingham&source=bl&ots=pTEAqbE4uT&sig=stAbkAjq4oR2QQE3-rVSGg_jByU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Rmu1T_S2DKTM2AW61PAe&ved=0CIYBEOgBMAo#v=onepage&q=Richard%20Francis%20Cottingham&f=false

[DrHopper]

Well this is very interesting!
I suppose I should assume some responsibility for this! I go away for 3 hours and what happens...
In all seriousness, I'm not sure how much 'profiling' I trust, per se. Usually it's such general statements that it could be applied to anyone, even any one of us supposedly 'normal' people.
My original comment re: thinking it's about the destruction of the self, comes straight from social anthropology - and very specifically Bronze Age European archaeological post-processual phenomenological, interpretive concepts of death and burial rites. This, very specifically, is my background. I study dead people, and the people who put them there, and what happens to them, in the Bronze Age of Mediterranean Europe. When I encounter bodies with no heads (not often, but it happens!) within the burial 'ritual landcape' (urban or rural) I am drawn to the fact that, in many societies the head is the most important part of the body, and it's removal is tied directly with the removal of the person. But that is not to say that the head is discarded. Quite the opposite, actually, in these sorts of circumstances, the head is protected and placed somewhere of import, somewhere sacred. Body parts are very important, even bones (which are, for example, sometimes traded between groups of people in prehistory) and dessicated remains.
Now, the LVP is not Bronze Age Mediterranean Europe, but people's urges remain the same, and I thought that maybe I could approach these murders and ritual dismemberment (and by ritual I mean very specifically that the dismemberment MATTERED to the murderer - not some rubbish associated with Masons and the like) from an archaeological perspective.
Just a thought.
But please don't think that I think that the murderer was simply touched as a child, and that's why he removes the head!

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Barbara

Which made me wonder, in 1888, were there a lot of fires being set in Whitechapel?

Hmmm....well on the night Polly Nichols was killed, there were two rather spectacular docklands fires, one at the dry docks at Shadwell (Dibles Warehouse - which also damaged a ship which was moored there at the time) and the other at a spirits warehouse in the Pool of London (South Quay).

Not sure how this ties in though...wouldn't a pattern of firestarting, cruelty, robbery with violence etc precede the development into murder, rather than coincide? (ie more likely 1886-87, rather than 1888?)

All the best

Dave

[Tom_Wescott]

Which made me wonder, in 1888, were there a lot of fires being set in Whitechapel? Or a slew of robberies unsolved? It would be interesting to try and see if any of those tied to a repeat offender. A whole study in itself. I just wondered if anyone has ever looked at that.

There was a dock fire on the night of the Nichols murder that had many of the policemen tied up. In fact, it was this fire that provided John Pizer with his alibi, because he spoke to a policeman as they watched the fire. A certain suspect wrote letters in red ink to the Chief Commissioner threatening to burn buildings down if the police didn't get off his case, for whatever that's worth.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Lechmere]

Mike
When I read, say ‘The Illiad’ or the Icelandic Sagas, I am struck at how similar the people were then to us now. The same jealousies, the same emotions, the same pettiness, the same sense of honour.
The human brain has not evolved much over the past 3,000 years – we are the same animal.
There are differences of course. People could not move about so much and so forth. Also man had not been living in unnatural city environments, cheek by jowl with other unfamiliar humans, for very long – in such numbers anyway.
That is why serial killing is a modern phenomenon.

[Rubyretro]

As to fires..that the Ripper started out with arson (like many serial killers) used to be a pet theory of mine.

Dave -'protohistorian'- looked into it and found that the supposed spate of arson against jewish businesses (quoted in some books), in the East End at this time, simply didn't exist.

It could be that the fire on the Docks made the streets emptier than usual perhaps ?

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

Mike
When I read, say ‘The Illiad’ or the Icelandic Sagas, I am struck at how similar the people were then to us now. The same jealousies, the same emotions, the same pettiness, the same sense of honour.
The human brain has not evolved much over the past 3,000 years – we are the same animal.
There are differences of course. People could not move about so much and so forth. Also man had not been living in unnatural city environments, cheek by jowl with other unfamiliar humans, for very long – in such numbers anyway.
That is why serial killing is a modern phenomenon.[/QUOTE

]

I'm always struck by the exact same thing as you Lechmere when I read things written a very long time ago about people, by people, and for people.

When you look at how long the human race has existed on a chart compared to the Earth and all sorts of extinct or evolved species, then it becomes clear that 'we' have been here for such a miniscule amount of time that we have hardly evolved at all on an emotional and behavioural level, despite all the technological advances.

I think that hunter gatherers moved about a lot though, and then all those migratory workers such as those masons who built Roman temples or medieval cathedrals etc..or soldiers...colonists. Actually the human race has probably always moved about a lot...

Overcrowding obviously leads to more agression, as in all animals...but although people must have lived in smaller groups (towns and cities), they must have been far more overcrowded (due to lack of contraception and responsibility for aged relatatives and 'odd' cousins) in tiny dwelling spaces
( they probably just beat up the wife and kids more).

I don't think that serial killing can possibly be a modern phenomenon (given the similarities that we have noted in behaviour and emotion). Simply it wasn't identified and tagged in the same way.

I would bet that there were cavemen serial killers...

[DrHopper]

Just posted my theory on the "lazy" model of body disposal over on another thread http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=6580&page=2

I didn't want to clog up that thread with more comments about the Torso killings, so I thought I'd drop them here

In brief, people don't walk farther than they have to when dumping rubbish, and the same applies to human remains. Furthermore, I suggest that the killer is unlikely to walk past perfectly good bridges in order to get to another to dump off the remains - in the case of Elizabeth Jackson, the Albert Bridge is the dumping location. So then, if we accept the "lazy model" as broadly reflecting reality, we can postulate that the killer lived, and killed, somewhere near Albert Bridge - in this case, somewhere in the slums of Chelsea (and oxymoron these days!)
HOWEVER!
Doing some more research on why Albert Bridge, as opposed to nearby Battersea Bridge, I note that Old Battersea Bridge was pulled down in 1885, and Bazalgette's New Battersea Bridge was not opened until July 1890. At the time of Elizabeth Jackson's disposal in June 1889, there was no Battersea Bridge, it was being built - Albert Bridge was the only choice for our killer.