Blameless

[The Good Michael]

Hey Mike,
Don't forget this superhero in your movie.

David,

I'm already on that. I have casting calls next week for people who look like Randolph Churchill, but are short enough for Steve Buscemi (as Hutchinson) to stoop down and loop at. Then they display their superpowers and it's another fight scene.

Cheers,

Mike

[Limehouse]

'Blameless'

Studying the Yorkshire Ripper murders in further detail, and how the modern police force of the UK approached those crimes, I was profoundly struck by the police description of the victims when they were not working prostitutes, but rather students or the like.
The senior police officers described such victims as 'blameless', implicitly implying as such by proxy that the working prostitutes who formed the majority of the victims were not 'blameless' but in fact to be blamed for their own savage murder and mutilation.
The vast majority of women have sex one assumes, so should a woman who charges for sex be treated any differently than any other woman, especially when it comes to a serious murder investigation?
I don't think so, apart that is from 'Wilson' world, where many here do live.
In fact I believe this shows a clear intention on the part of senior police officers in the UK to sweeten up such despicable crimes against women, simply because they are working prostitutes... and this is massively clear from the efforts made by the police in all of the major investigations into the murder of prostitutes from the long distant Whitechapel Murders, through the Yorkshire Ripper and then right up to the recent Ipswich murders.
In the 'Myth', back in 1993, I noted that Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, had been flagged five times in the card index cross reference system used by the police at the time, and I stated then that it was impossible to believe that the police did not respond to the information under their control, as five flags in such a system must indicate a serious suspect, when not the killer himself.
I now discover that Sutcliffe was in fact flagged a total of ten times in that system which can only mean one thing: he was the killer.
But the senior police officers in the case, refusing to acknowledge their own information systems, pursued a completely different suspect, much to the horror of the junior officers on the street who had interviewed Sutcliffe and firmly believed him to be the killer.
There is a clear alienation process at work here in the minds of the senior police officers involved in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper; and I believe that process to be available in the hunt for the Whitechapel Murderer as well.
In other words it couldn't be one of us, but must be one of 'them', a Jew, Johnny Foreigner or even a Geordie... just as long as he wasn't from our patch, because if he was we should have caught him by now, so to explain the obvious we create a myth, a serial killer who is invisible to all.
I firmly believe that this is what exactly happened in the hunt for the Whitechapel Murderer, that the real killer was right under their noses the whole time while the Yard chased Jews down Roadside.

Great post. I agree that the attitude towards the prostitutes was less than satisfactory. I guess it was an attitude of the times, left over from the days when women were expected to be pure, innocent, domestic and submissive. A lot has been written about the behaviour of women who resort to earning a living in such a way, but little is said of the clients.

I think though, that one of the reasons the investigating officer was so convinced that the person responsible was a Geordie was because of so-called 'experts' such as hand-writing specialists and voice psychologists advising the police. They insisted that certain psychotic tendencies and muderous aggressive traits could be detected in the letter and tape.

However, I do think that AP has a point when he suggests that there was an element of 'it couldn't be a Yorkshireman' in a similar way that the Victorian killer 'couldn't be an Englishman'.

The fact that Sutcliffe was questioned up to ten times because his car had been seen in red-light districts is characteristic of the way police viewed the use of prostitutes by men at the time. It was obviously seen as acceptable for a married man to be such a frequent user of prostitutes and i am sure that Sutcliffe was not the only man whose car was clocked in the red-light districts more than several times. However, Sutcliffe had also been questioned after a five pound note found in the handbag of a victim was traced to Sutcliffe's employers. This should have set alarm bells ringing - but Sutcliffe's wife gave him an alibi.

I agree that the Whitechapel killer was probably local, that the local prostitutes were comfortable with him and that he had the ability to convince people that he was an ordinary, repectable man who was harmless. |Much the same could be said of Sutcliffe.

[DVV]

It could only have been Astrakhan man.
Mike

Hey Mike,
Don't forget this superhero in your movie.

Amitiés,
David

I don't think he was real. He could have been an exaggeration, I guess. Hutch has this horrible appeal because his statement doesn't add up. Damn you Hutch! If only you'd been straight with the Fuzz, none of us poor unfortunates would be stuck on the interminable 1911 thread now...

[The Good Michael]

Right. It could only have been Astrakhan man. So, was he real, but an exaggeration, or was he a story? If the latter, blackmail was not happening.

Mike

[Nothing to see]

Hi Malcolm X,
Reckon you are right.Hutch has had days to concoct a description that deflects attention away from JTR.One so "bad",it has also deflected suspicion away from himself.
Suspect Hutch was in on a blackmail attempt.

OK. So who was Hutchinson going to blackmail?

[Mr.Hyde]

Hi Malcolm X,
Reckon you are right.Hutch has had days to concoct a description that deflects attention away from JTR.One so "bad",it has also deflected suspicion away from himself.
Suspect Hutch was in on a blackmail attempt.

[The Good Michael]

Mike
afore I reply to your good and reasonable points, would you broadly agree with me that it is both unusual and rare for a serial killer to kill outside of his own social, racial and ethnic grouping?

Generally, I would agree that it isn't the norm, but I wouldn't use the word 'rare'. Good enough?

Mike

[Cap'n Jack]

Mike
afore I reply to your good and reasonable points, would you broadly agree with me that it is both unusual and rare for a serial killer to kill outside of his own social, racial and ethnic grouping?

[Malcolm X]

You're right about Sutcliffe, Malcolm. I think the thing is there, as with many other serial killers, that, social stereotyping notwithstanding, most of them don't look like anyone - they're just the bloke (or girl) next door. The more ordinary you are, the harder you are to spot.

That's one of the things that I just love about Mr Astrakhan - of course he's not real! That's just silly!

He's such a social stereotype that it is inprobable that he was real. That Hutch in all likelihood made him up - and that nobody apparently thought anything of it (at the time) - may serve to demonstrate just how pervasive these images were in contemporary society. If Hutch - assuming he was just your average, working class George - dodgy geezer, serial killer or not - could invent this fiction on the spot, I guess anyone could.

hi Crystal

yes the Ripper was almost definitely a Joe Average.....the closest is maybe the Lawende sighting.

but that could be anybody, because i expect he changed his appearence often to fool the police, well i would anyway............

dont forget that HUTCH had two days to get his suspect description right, so he described a JEW that was bound to deflect attention away from the actual killer.

the problem i have with Hutch is............( regardless of him being Toppy or not, and i refuse to get involved in that lot ) is why did he stop killing?......... he didn't just quit for 2 years like other serial killers then start up again.......the Ripper never killed again as the Ripper; here in the U.K, but these 2 HUTCH's were still around, this is the only weakness with HUTCH as JTR and it really is a huge problem........this is compounded by the strong possiblity that HUTCH is indeed, the HUTCH we all know.

G.Chapman, yes i understand easily the need to switch his M.O.........but Hutch no, this is a real problem.

You're right about Sutcliffe, Malcolm. I think the thing is there, as with many other serial killers, that, social stereotyping notwithstanding, most of them don't look like anyone - they're just the bloke (or girl) next door. The more ordinary you are, the harder you are to spot.

That's one of the things that I just love about Mr Astrakhan - of course he's not real! That's just silly!

He's such a social stereotype that it is inprobable that he was real. That Hutch in all likelihood made him up - and that nobody apparently thought anything of it (at the time) - may serve to demonstrate just how pervasive these images were in contemporary society. If Hutch - assuming he was just your average, working class George - dodgy geezer, serial killer or not - could invent this fiction on the spot, I guess anyone could.

[Malcolm X]

they had great trouble catching Sutcliffe because their filing stystem/documentation was far too large and ineffective, plus there were way to many ``hoax`` bum leads..... this isn't anything to do with prejudice at all, or social stereotyping.

the JEWS are extremely unpopular, maybe more so today than ever before.. but this is due to many reasons ..... Hutchinson realised this too!

but he wasn't that smart..........more like very suspicious instead, because he totally screwed up his statement...........it's not so much riddled with faults as way too ``targeted``

Bananas...

It's called Blame Absolutely Nobody Anywhere Near Anyone Syndrome, Mike.

Or you could just call it the Social Other - The Barbarian of Antiquity - as I'm sure you'll know, from the Greek origin - Bar Bars - so called because they considered the 'Other' couldn't speak properly. I think you'll agree that that particular prejudice is alive and well today, even if the BarBar has changed its spots.

But back to the bananas - Most societies seem to have a version of this one - you can blame your neighbour for petty offences - this is quite normal, the one up manship of human nature - you can see it here on a regular basis! I'm quite good at it myself, as it happens!

But when something outside normal social parameters occurs, people tend to blame the social 'Other' for the offence.

This is an interesting thread, and lots of stuff to think about - my take is that yes, many Polish Jews were poor, and the killer could well have come from this social class, but on the other hand, the popular perception of the Jew was also that of Hutchinson's suspect - the wealthy Jew - who is not legitimately wealthy, but gets his money by preying on those in financial difficulty.

This one was old, even then. Obviously it stems ultimately from the belief that the Jews were responsible for the Death of Christ (Uh Oh, what was that I was saying yesterday about religion and politics? )

Now I should think people generally cared a good deal less about all that a hundred years earliler, or even fifty, but thanks to the great social reforming, doing up of innumerable churches, building of countless more, educating of the masses (in the Christian Way) etc, Society was once more well acquainted with the Evil Jew cariacature.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, the Jew was an obvious target, and since there are plenty of contemporary social reasons for blaming Mr Jew, it's extremely difficult to drag out the real possibility that he might not have been blameless.

Coffee Time!

[The Good Michael]

AP,

You say:

"in other words it couldn't be one of us, but must be one of 'them', a Jew, Johnny Foreigner or even a Geordie... just as long as he wasn't from our patch, because if he was we should have caught him by now, so to explain the obvious we create a myth, a serial killer who is invisible to all."

This is a tremendous leap of logic where Sutcliffe is concerned. Because senior officials had a different suspect, does not mean that they couldn't believe one of their own was a killer. It means they put their money on a horse and the horse came up lame. To then impose this flawed logic onto the LVP is a mistake. The idea of a Jew being the Whitechapel murderer, in your mind, is about creating a bugbear to scare the children. In fact, there is a lot of logic in suggesting it was someone of the poorer class who lived in the very heart of the Kill zone, as that kind of person would know the ins and outs. It just so happens that a lot of these people were Jewish immigrants. If you combine the socialist movements which were predominately made up of non-religious Jews, and the problems that stemmed from that quarter, it is no wonder that a Jewish suspect (or two) was looked at.
Remember that it was a handful of officials who thought this way, and some after the fact. That hardly constitutes some conspiracy to create a villain, does it?

Cheers,

Mike

[Ally]

A woman smokes 2 packs a day and develops lung cancer and dies.
A woman is a health conscious non-smoker, develops lung cancer and dies.

A man is driving his car obeying the speed limit using all possible precautions, sneezes violently, loses control at a bad moment, crashes his car and dies.
A man gets drunk, takes his car out in an ice storm and plows into a tree and dies.

A heroin addict overdoses and dies.
A person gets the wrong prescription at the pharmacy and dies.

In each of those scenarios there is one death where the person died due to no contributing action of their own. They are therefore "blameless". They did not engage in risky behavior. It is not a mindset that is limited only to hookers and the sex trade. In each of those scenarios, there is one person whose actions were risky and they made choices that put them in a situation where the likelihood of them dying was increased. They engaged in risky, pointless, stupid behavior with a full understanding of the possible outcomes. They are not blameless in their deaths.

Which is not saying that they "got what was coming to them". But yes, the blameless person who did not in any way engage in behavior that contributed to their death is always seen as more of a loss than the person who died of predictable or likely outcomes.