How much does accuracy matter to you?

[Errata]

Hi Wick. I just find something ironic, or maybe 'irrational', about the fact that we were all brought into our interest in this case through SOME theory at SOME time, and yet sit around bitching about the existence of suspect books. Without interest in the identity of Jack the Ripper, there is no Jack the Ripper.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Not necessarily. I came into it reading one of Donald Rumbelow's books. No suspect was particularly put forth. It was the photo of Mary Kelly that got me. I just had no idea how that could even happen to a human being, much less why. Being entirely too young at the time to process, I became very determined to find out how a person does that to another person. I think I was hoping to find some way to identify them at a safe distance. It's why I find serial killers terribly fascinating.

The irony is, I can understand why various killers do what they do. I understand Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy... and I still don't understand why Mary Kelly's killer did what he did. There's just something so completely unnecessary about what was done to her. So she sparked an interest that lets me understand just about every depravity ever committed on a human being, except for what was done to her.

[Cogidubnus]

Sound comment

Dave

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Wick. I just find something ironic, or maybe 'irrational', about the fact that we were all brought into our interest in this case through SOME theory at SOME time, and yet sit around bitching about the existence of suspect books. Without interest in the identity of Jack the Ripper, there is no Jack the Ripper.

Now, if what you mean to say is that some of the theories you've read are irrational, or that all the Ripper theories are biased to one degree or another, I don't think anybody could disagree with you.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Robert]

Hi Jon

"A man's been murdered - and somebody's responsible."

(Plan 9 From Outer Space)

[Wickerman]

Hi Wickerman,

The JtR mystery was a concoction.

There were no real suspects.

Regards,

Simon

A Rose, by any other name, Simon.

The Whitechapel murders certainly existed, and someone was to blame.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Yikes. You just called a lot of people irrational. Too much name-calling on this thread.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Very few 'suspect' books have any real value Tom, and the numbers keep growing.

Regards, Jon S.

[Robert]

Maybe I've led a sheltered life but of the (not many) JTR books I've read, nearly all were written by people trying to tell the truth. This includes books that I bought before I knew that the author was a name/would be a name in Ripperworld, e.g. I bought Fido's book when I saw it by chance in a shop. I hadn't a clue who he was. Ditto Skinner and Howells, and one or two others.

But for the extreme sceptics among us, I suggest the ideal Ripper gift : a book called Jack? The? Ripper?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Wickerman,

The JtR mystery was a concoction.

There were no real suspects.

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

I would say the rational thinker understands this, but then, I don't expect "the rational thinker" to write a suspect book, or offer a suspect.

Yikes. You just called a lot of people irrational. Too much name-calling on this thread.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

You calling Le Grand hardnosed, are you?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

The hard-nosed men who concocted the JtR mystery and took care to assure its prolongation well beyond their own lifetimes could never have conceived of the current levels of epistemological debate.

Regards,

Simon

[Wickerman]

Hi Helena.

I thought all JtR suspects were only a maybe. If one was a certainty, this entire guessing game could end.

I would say the rational thinker understands this, but then, I don't expect "the rational thinker" to write a suspect book, or offer a suspect.
I am glad to say though, that in the few rare cases where this has occured the resulting book is in an altogether different league to the run-of-the-mill 'suspect' rubbish.
Don't get me wrong, we do need books which provide backgound on many of the central characters throughout this case. Foremost in my mind in this regard is Kozminski and Tumblety, but these books are not representative of how most 'suspects' are selected and promoted. I think we all know the type I am talking about.

I firmly believe that in the majority of cases when someone promotes a suspect they tend to lose objectivity. Any circumstances surrounding their choice of suspect appear to be viewed in the context of "how this can be used to promote my argument", rather than just objectively weighing the evidence impartially.

Again using Chapman as my example, people are forever citing the fact that he lived in the East End during the Ripper murders, a short walk to all the murder sites. On the face of it, that looks very suspicious -- until you add the information that 250,000 other men lived there too.

Agreed, but tell me, how do you feel about a 23 year old being promoted as Jack the Ripper?

This reminds me of the backwards assumptions made by R. Michael Gordon. He conjectures that Chapman (in order to become a poison-killer) must have had a violent childhood. He then cites the purported violent childhood as a fact when he uses it to support his argument that Chapman was the Ripper.

I've never seen the "butcher-turned-poisoner" as an insurmountable problem.
The circumstances are different between killing a stranger on the street and killing your wife. Clearly butchering your wife is going to place the finger of suspicion firmly at your own doorstep.

Regards, Jon S.

[Robert]

Hi Errata

I understand what you mean if you're contrasting facts with opinion, e.g. a court of law may demand facts rather than opinion. I follow that.

Re negative facts, I would say that "There's no such thing as spontaneous generation" is either true or false. If the "is" is understood timelessly, as referring to all the past and all the future (instead of just this brief moment in time) then we might never be able to prove for all time that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation, because at any moment, it might happen. It might be thought that if it did happen, then we could regard the statement as being finally falsified - the statement "there is no such thing...." has been falsified because there was an actual occurrence of spontaneous generation. But it's always open to us to argue that it only seemed to be an occurrence, and that there was a better explanation, or perhaps we even experienced an hallucination, especially if it conflicts with the rest of our beliefs. So everything is revisable.I think though that all this is to do with knowledge rather than reality, which are two clean different things.

I know that quantum mechanics tends to dissolve material objects in probabilities, but from the little I understand of it, these probabilities are calculable and such probabilities are facts about the world. Or take a slightly similar example from relativity theory : an experimentor's measurements are determined by his state of relative motion etc, but Einstein's equations form an overarching framework which allows us to predict what person A will measure, what person B will measure, and explain why person A's measurements differ from person B's, and by how much, so we need not fear the subjective nightmare where one opinion is as good as another.

[Beowulf]

Salve all,
While we're all breaking out in rhyme, how about this?

There once was a killer called Jack,
Who had the the whole world on his track,
If he got away,
Some people might say,
His pursuers were kept off his back.

Regards,
C4

Not bad, Curious, lol. I feel this breaking out in rhyme is an old tradition, like some oddball character in Alice in Wonderland or Wind in the Willows. The subject being a myriad of offbeat characters and byways running to who knows where seems to call for it. Maybe a column devoted to it would be really fun

Last night it occurred to me, er, 'you're way off topic' duh, against the rules, must have respect, and now I'm heading up a direction of insurrection (..)

So, let me go back on topic and hopefully stay on the good side of the forum gods.

It IS frustrating a point to realize an author can lie to the public and so pass along misinformation, in order to get sales for ones book. Not that all small inaccuracies are lies, they are not, I know but it is why the arresting part is left to the police.

If an author deliberately chooses to mislead the public for the sake of a sensational book eventually they are not respected by their own peers. I guess some authors don't care whether they are or not.

There certainly have been a lot of good authors out there who have very much tried to search diligently for the mystery of who Jack the Ripper is, and bring him to light. Justice long passed him by.

Every book I read I look for references the author has made to prove the facts in the book, weigh them, and think long about the conclusions reached by the author. To know an author has considered the public, the trust they put in him/her as a writer takes them along, revealing what was worked hard for; it's an idyllic rest in the writers arms, they are my heroes.

Of course if you ask Cornwall, she is probably enjoying a beach in Massachusetts, and her conscience troubles her not. I don't know, maybe she really believed it all. It was not her only income anyway. After seeing her claim all the letters were written by the Ripper I dropped her book, never finishing it. That is either a fool or a fool.

http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2010/10/crime-writer-patricia-cornwell.html

But to bloody the name of Vincent Van Gogh is unforgiveable.

[Errata]

My goodness! Well, Errata, I think you are using words in a different way to how I use them. To me, if Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet' then it's a fact that Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet.' It doesn't matter if nobody can prove that he did. Mind you, it gets a bit more complicated if instead of saying "A fact is something that can be proved" you say "A fact is something that could be proved."

Calling Lynn : discussion of epistemology, verificationism and phenomenalism and I don't want to be here this time next year.

It's the result of having a psychotic english teacher in seventh grade. The dictionary was her only god, and she was it's divine mouthpiece. I still can't swear properly. Calling someone an SOB conjures up images of puppies.

Of course, it gets even more disturbing when you realize that you can prove "facts" that are no such thing. Quantum mechanics is based on it. And since you can't prove a negative, no negative fact exists. We say there is no such thing as spontaneous generation. And experiments have ruled it out. But only in terms of those experiments. It could easily exist in circumstances we cannot test.

It's exhausting.