Who was the best witness to have seen Jack the Ripper?

[Wickerman]

Both Liz and Kate had clenched hands, a sign of strangulation, or so I am told.

Interesting you should say that, Blackwell described Stride's hands as:

The right hand was open and on the chest, and was smeared with blood. The left hand, lying on the ground, was partially closed, and contained a small packet of cachous wrapped in tissue paper.

I'm open to being persuaded that she was strangled, but as yet I have not been able to convince myself

[curious4]

Clenched hands

Hello Jon,

The cachous were lodged tightly between thumb and forefinger. Whichever doctor (both Blackwell and Phillips lay claim to it) removed the packet had to prise the hand open to get it. Says clenched hands to me, anyway. Also, Diemschutz is recorded as telling a journalist that Stride's "tightly clenched hands held sweets in one hand and grapes in the other". Perhaps we can accept that clotted blood could be mistaken for grapes in the dark and panic, but "tightly clenched hands" nonetheless.

We do have the tightly knotted scarf as well. "Strangling with a ligature" perhaps? Supposed to render the victim unconscious very rapidly, I have read.

Best wishes,
C4

[Wickerman]

Hi Gwyneth.

Why on earth anyone would think blood smears & blood clots looked like grapes it completely beyond me. She wasn't the only victim to have blood on her person, yet nowhere else do we read that witnesses claim to see grapes on a victim.
Staggering.

Now the scarf is another matter, possibilities do exist that he used that to strangle her. It's just that none of the doctors provide anything by way of supporting evidence (bruised neck, swollen face, protruding tongue, etc.) that she may have been choked.

[Sam Flynn]

Hello C4

Of course we are just presuming that the voice was Annie's

Well, all "she" said was "No!", so my money's on Annie.

[Damaso Marte]

As no-one ever saw Jack kill we cannot know whether he strangled them while they were standing or whether he threw/knocked them down first, and then choked them into unconsciousness before using his knife. I should think that the latter would have been easier. Schwarz never says he saw a woman being beaten - just that he saw her thrown down in the street or in the passage, depending on which report you read.

If Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes were thrown to the ground, where are the bruises and the ear-witness account of screams? I don't think this is consistent with the forensics or the quietness of the killings.

[Scott Nelson]

I think it was P.C. James Harvey

[lynn cates]

right

Hello Jon.

"I'm open to being persuaded that she was strangled, but as yet I have not been able to convince myself."

Same here.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

seizing

Hello Gwyneth. But would not a seizing of the scarf produce the SAME clenching of the hands?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

yep

Hello Damaso.

"If Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes were thrown to the ground, where are the bruises and the ear-witness account of screams? I don't think this is consistent with the forensics or the quietness of the killings."

Quite. (Glad to see an interest in forensics.)

Cheers.
LC

[Hunter]

Kate Eddowes had abrasions on the left side of her face.

[curious4]

Hello Jon,

Whether blood clots on the back of a hand could be mistaken for grapes is, of course, a matter of opinion. I think they could, in the general shock, horror and general confusion. Reddish black, round?

Clenching of the hands is a sign of strangulation - he didn't have to kill his victims, just render them unconscious for the time it took to cut their throats.

I have wondered (speculation warning) whether, as Liz bled comparitively slowly, she started to come round and put her hand up to her throat. The doctors couldn't explain how the blood got there.

Best wishes,
C4

[curious4]

Hello Lynn,

Exactly! Any kind of choking would produce clenched hands - and, as I mentioned in my reply to Jon - he didn't need to kill the victims, merely render them unconscious, reason being they were likely to protest loudly when they saw him come at them with the knife if they were conscious.

Best wishes,
Gwyneth

[curious4]

Pushed or shoved?

Hello Damaso,

The bruises on Liz' shoulders point more to her being pushed to the ground - perhaps the translation should have been pushed or forced, rather than thrown to the ground.

As I said, we don't know how the killer subdued his victims. A punch to the midriff would probably take their breath away and make it hard to cry out and any bruising would be masked by the "ripping". Perhaps Jack refined his techniques as he went on. If Tabram is to be counted as a victim, she was strangled for longer, her face being so swollen, it was said to be almost unrecognisable, so perhaps Jack realised later that it wasn't necessary to fully strangle his victims, or at least not for so long. The abrasion on Kate's face has always suggested to me that she was punched (speculation warning).

Best wishes,
C4

[curious4]

Favourite autopsy site

http://forensicpathologyonline.com/e-book/asphyxia/ligature-strangulation

Thought I would give the address of my favourite autopsy site. Please forgive the extremely gruesome illustrations - somehow worse in colour!

As with all such sources of information nothing is written in stone and it would take someone with many years of experience and who has come across exceptions to many of the rules to judge exactly what happened at a crime scene.

Best wishes and good hunting for the Whitechapel murderer,
C4

[Wickerman]

Kate Eddowes had abrasions on the left side of her face.

Wasn't the left side of her head resting on on those rough rocks against the house wall?