My book 'Various Matters Forensic: The Thames Torso Murders'

[louisa]

$1000 for food for one month?

[Debra A]

Quiet, Debs. The men are talking.

Regards,

Mark

Sorry, Mark. I thought I was on the 'Did Mary Kelly like fluffy kittens' thread and forgot myself. No wonder I didn't understand all the important things being discussed on here.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Stephen,

A common reason for prostitutes to shave their pubes was lice and similar vermin. When you felt the itch you grabbed your razor.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[scriptor]

Pubic hair obviously is not a purely female attribute. The point is that the 'bush' of hair, if you like, often grows in a different shape (oh yes, it does - see Hebbert's own comments), and that there was nothing about the remains which conclusively pointed to the victim's gender, including pubic hair. The matter is academic, in any case, for the external genitalia had been removed, whether the pubic hair had been or not.
One might well ask: Were the external genitals not just cut off but taken away by the Ripper, hence neither pudenda nor pubic hair for the doctors to go by? I should add that the point that Dr. Hebbert was actually making in the textbook was that, had not some female organs been found in the room, it would have been virtually impossible for such remains to have been 'sexed'. Not that NONE had been found. Certainly, Kelly's breasts were still in the room.

[Observer]

Looking at the Mary Kelly crime scene photograph it appears as if the whole area surrounding the genitalia has been removed, including flesh from the thighs, and abdomen.

[Observer]

I might add that making a collection of pubic hair is a known sexual/deviant fetish...

Reginald Christie being just such a collector.

Observer

[scriptor]

P.S. re my Creative Project on the Pozible crowd-funding platform website, namely my book 'Various Matters Forensic: The Thames Torso Murders', posters may be glad to hear that my good friend the descendant of Dr. Hebbert has kindly just 'come to the aid of the party' by pledging a large sum of money towards the achieving of my goal of having my book reach publication stage...

STEPHEN GOURIET RYAN

[MrBarnett]

Hi Scriptor,

Why is it being suggested that pubic hair is solely a 'female attribute' ?

MrB.

[scriptor]

Hello there, Scott. I stand by what I wrote. The details in the Hebbert Material are certainly, to my mind, suggestive of the pubic hair having been RECENTLY removed from Kelly's pubic region, that is to say 'shortly' before her death, either by her own hand (it is not unknown for certain classes of prostitute even today to depilate their pudenda), or else, in my opinion more likely, by the Ripper himself. Why? Mary Kelly was amongst the lowest class of prostitute and it seems unlikely that she would have bothered to shave or depilate to 'please' the sort of clients which she might regularly get. And that THEY would not care one way or the other. Secondly, there is clear forensic evidence that the Ripper had deliberately and thoroughly defeminised her, by removing, i.e. cutting off or destroying, all female attributes from her body, including, according to Hebbert's own words, her pubic hair, so that the end result was that it was difficult even for forensic experts to be able to positively, or at least readily, assert that the remains were those of a woman. I'd need to check my copies of the Hebbert Material after so long, but I seem to recall that the external genitalia had been cut off, too. If so, then Hebbert was saying that it was for THIS reason that there was no pubic hair in place. However this may be (and I shall refresh my memory),
Hebbert was explicit on this point: there was no pubic hair to be found on her body. So, if Kelly had not de-haired herself very recently indeed, one would like to know if any pubic hair was found in her room, on the floor or the bed for example. If not, did the Ripper not only cut it off but take it away as one of his souvenirs?... I might add that making a collection of pubic hair is a known sexual/deviant fetish...

[Tom_Wescott]

Quiet, Debs. The men are talking.

Regards,

Mark

No kidding...Ugh...fangirls.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[m_w_r]

Quiet, Debs. The men are talking.

Regards,

Mark

[Debra A]

[Scott Nelson]

Hi Stephen,

Some years ago I took a beating on these boards for raising the possibility that MJK's killer deliberately removed her pubic hair as you suggested in the Criminologist, 1998, v. 21, no. 1. This was based on Dr. Charles Albert Hebbert's material published in "A System of Legal Medicine" by Dr. Francis Harris in 1894. Dr. Hebbert was Bond's assistant and was present at the Kelly crime scene and her autopsy. Hebbert's handwriting (confirmed by his great-grandson) appears in the Bond report, so he recorded the details, including the fact that Kelly's heart had been removed and taken away. Do you still consider the deliberate removal of her body hair possible? To quote you from Ripperana, no. 56, April 2006, ".. Kelly's pudenda were devoid of pubic hair - whether by her hand or that of her murderer is not made clear, but in my opinion quite likely by the latter, for apparently, by inference, there wasn't even so much as some pubic stubble to help identify the remains on the bed as as clearly feminine (which seems to imply very recent removal...)"

[scriptor]

I'm not at all offended, Tom. My response was intended to be light-hearted, unfortunately in an e-mail message the intonations and nuances are lost. I don't do 'lol'. I assure you it is different in Australia, for the very reasons I gave, and I am very well aware of the processes in getting a publisher. It just doesn't apply to my situation. I am doing what I have to do, in the way that I have to do it. If this way doesn't work out, I have other options for getting to London. Indeed, I have Right Of Abode, because my mother was born in London, and I would very much like to live there, but there's just one sticking-point: one has to have $5000 or more in one's bank account before applying, so that the British government is satisfied that one will not be a burden on the economy. What I need in order to make the crowd-funding method work, is that people should be kind enough to oblige me by simply spreading the word of the existence of my Creative Project on Pozible. THAT'S been the difficulty.

Regards,

STEPHEN GOURIET RYAN

[John Wheat]

To Stephen

Your book sounds excellent. I find the Torso Killer as interesting as Jack the Ripper, I hope you get a True Crime publishers deal soon.

Cheers John