R.L.S., H.J., & E.H.: a questions of sources and results

[Pierre]

Hi Pierre,

Yes, but not in the Jewish Bible - the Book of Judges in the Old Testament has Deborah as an exception to the rule. So Judges (especially Jewish ones) are not exclusively male.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

but judges were men in England 1888.

Regards, Pierre

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

but judges were men in England 1888.

Regards, Pierre

Hi Pierre,

True enough

From you academician

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Mayer
a while back we were discussing the closing of the anatomical "Venus" display at a museum in London just prior to the start of the torso cases.
and wondering if this might have had any impact or inspiration on the killer.

Hi Abby,

It could have. It may not have turned the person into a violent one, but he may have had it under control by seeing the anatomical display.

Jeff

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Mayerling;405394]

Okay Pierre, this is my personal set-up here.

1) I was a history and political science major in a college in New Jersey, and went on for a law degree in a law school in New York City. I never practiced law, but was a civil servant.

2) I love reading, and I might have had a minor in English in college, but I never got all the required courses.

Hi Jeff,

So you did study literature, great.

3) My interest in the Whitechapel Murders is of a historical nature. By 2017 I do not really feel the identity of the brute will ever be absolutely proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. But that does not mean the case is without any interest to me at all - the cast of characters, and the events (grisly or not) that tie in with it, plus the setting in Victorian England, all fascinate me.

How interesting, and what a good description. I myself have a very different relation to the case. I always see the "cast of characters" you describe here as real life suffering people. I see them as terribly oppressed people in a terrible society. Many of them were forced into criminality and as I see it, their own characters were destroyed by the society they had to live in.

But there are other aspects of these times and other stories that I have come across during my own research which actually makes the small piece of history - i.e. the usual history of "Jack the Ripper" a much more interesting and advanced history. At least that is what happened when I started researching the case. I had to go beyond the small space of Whitechapel.

Anyway, I find that the case is often romanticized and that is a very serious problem since it creates all sorts of ripperologic ideas. It also tends to blurr the view and make people miss and misinterpret important sources.

Hence when I traipse these threads my comments (when not being somewhat attempts at humor) are to correct or explain a historical aspect or trend.

4) As a side issue, since I really feel certain we won't ever prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the killer's real identity (anymore than historians of the politics of Georgian England in the 1770s are totally sure Sir Philip Francis wrote the notorious classic "Junius" letters about the politics of his day), I have never felt it necessary to push one of the "candidates" or one that I found (unless I am spoofing, as I have once or twice). In one of my first published essays, about Frederick Deeming, I entitled it "The Original Suspect", but while I dismissed some evidence against Deeming being the Ripper (that business from L.C. Douthwaite's comments in his book "Mass Murder") I actually pointed out that even if one accepted point by point what evidence one could muster, it was a shabby case against Deeming being the Ripper at best.

This does not mean I dismiss really first rate research attempts on subjects like Montie Druitt or Doc Tumblety or Roslyn D'Onston Stevenson. Each subject is quite interesting in his own right (as are figures like Kosminski, Deeming, Prince Eddy, Sickert, Maybrick*, Cream, Chapman, or Bury). Some ideas strike me as ridiculous (Vincent Van Gogh?), but I can appreciate the better suspects. Think of it this way (if you can) - by all the digging being done on this case and it's victims and suspects how much better are we understanding life in the Victorian world of 1888 Whitechapel, London, Great Britain, Europe, the World. It's expanded thus.

Well, I agree with you that the case generates knowledge about Victorian society and the British Empire but that is also done without writing about Jack the Ripper.

The only thing I ever found distasteful actually is the emphasis on the s.o.b. who did most of these atrocities (especially that on Mary Kelly). He (or she, if it was a woman) does not deserve center stage having caused such agony and horror. Therefore I have slowly slid into referring to the case as "The Whitechapel Murders", not "the Jack the Ripper Case" (restricting my use of the term to just a referral in passing to the killer). Personally I would really like to call the entire field "Whitechapel Studies", in order to partly honor the victims.

Yes, I agree with you. There are a lot of ethical problems and one has to deal with oneīs own relation to the murders when one researches them. A main reason I go on with this is the victims.

I don't know if any of this has helped you in understanding me, but it should make my point of view clearer to anyone reading this.

I think you have made it very clear how you approach the case and I appreciate that you have considered the ethical problems inherit in it.

Was there any book or play that fully guided the creep in what he did? No there wasn't. But an idea snatched from reading or a night at the theatre is another matter - it is an idea he or she could use in what already a festering plan. No more or less.

As I understand the case, the killer had very strong personal reasons for doing what he did, as he saw it. He thought that he could justify what he did, but he also knew that he did wrong and later in his life that did affect him. I would say that what he did constituted a very big ethical conflict for him. But the conflict was just about himself and not about the victims.

By the way, you mentioned "in what types of [Victorian] societies and situations did they cut off noses?" I can't think of any in Europe except for this. You are aware that the "nose" is a literary symbol for the male penis. Cutting off a nose in literature is like emasculating a man. And it actually does appear in 19th Century literature - Dostoievksi's short story satire, "The Nose", where a man finds his nose missing, everyone jeering at him, and later finds the nose has taken on a life of it's own.

Well, that sounds like a freudian analysis for the phenomenon. But nose cutting has a history and it is connected to honour. I prefer not to discuss it here but to refer to my earlier posts about it. But let me say that the killer was about to lose face, i.e. his honour.

[*Regarding James Maybrick, I am not one who believes that diary is genuine, anymore than if a letter addressed to his brother or to Mr. Valentine by Montie Druitt turned up "all of a sudden" in somebody's long lost desk, confessing his guilt - it's too convenient (in my opinion). But the Maybrick Case is interesting in it's own way (try reading Trevor Christie's old study, "Etched in Arsenic" if you are interested), about attitudes in Britain to Americans who become residents by marriage (Florence Chandler was from Alabama before she married James Maybrick), about servants real feelings concerning employers in households, about patent medicine dangers, about the legal world (with the faltering Justice Sir James Fitzjames Stephen trying the case after a nervous breakdown, and making a hash of it, and with Florence's barrister, Sir Charles Russell, being as unsuccessful saving her from a guilty verdict as he was in prosecuting and convicting Adelaide Bartlett in 1886 (when Russell was Attorney General) in the murder of her husband Edwin Bartlett by poison (and the evidence against Adelaide was stronger!). If the diary reopens interest in this fascinating case I'm for it.]

Well, I donīt know anything about this "diary". I have been trying to find it online to read it but found just a few pages.

Anyway, I do see that literature can be used to create a specific understanding of the case and the history around it.

Best wishes, Pierre

[Mayerling]

Hi Pierre,

I never bothered with getting the "Diary", but I suspect if you were willing to buy it you can find it on Amazon, or even a reasonably good second-hand book shop.

Jeff