|
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 647
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 3:56 am: | 
|
Suppose I am the owner of a newspaper that is not doing very well. There just is not enough exciting going on to sell a lot of papers. The Tabram killing is a welcome relief to me but not enough to salvage my business. But it gives me an idea.
I decide to manufacture news. I find some lowlife in the tenements of Whitechapel and pay him to go out killing prostitutes. I tell him to make it as ghastly and sensational as possible.
I write some lurid letters to the Central News Agency and the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee just to keep things stirred up.
It would explain a number of contradictions because you would have a sane man trying to look like a maniac. You would have one person doing the killings and another writing the letters.
Jack was disorganized enough to carry out the carnage on Mary Kelly, but organized enough to always get away.
At first Jack's signature appeared to be an interest in the uterus, but later it switched to the heart.
Douglas analyzes Jack as one who did not want attention, yet he left his victims posed.
Schwartz says he thinks Jack had a lookout.
All this is just hypothesis/speculation. It is founded on:
1) the contradictions that have never been explained
2) the well accepted concept of money as a motive for murder (who profits?)
3) the less than sterling reputation of Victorian business
4)as AP points out one of the first people to connect the killings was someone intimately associated with the press,
5) police officials at the time suspected members of the press of producing some of the letters
6) the GSG -- I retrieve a piece of Eddowes apron from my killer and as soon as the beat cop is gone I plant it and write a lurid and incomprehensible message, vaguely antisemitic above it -- if Warren took such pains to hide the GSG why do we know about it today? How did the press find out it existed? This scenario explains the long delay between Eddowes death and the finding of the apron piece; the fact that it wasn't there the first time the policeman passed.
6) it explains why the killings stopped suddenly. The killer did not have an insane compulsion, his motive was cash. When the newspaper stopped paying him he stopped killing. This would have happened one of two ways: a) the paper went under, or b) the public became inured enough that they stopped buying more and more papers with each crime.
(Message edited by diana on June 15, 2005) |
David O'Flaherty
Chief Inspector
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 933
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 9:49 am: |
|
Hi Diana,
Despite some sensationalistic articles, I'm not so sure the newspapers played the murders up to sell copies. Alex Chisholm has demonstrated, at least in the case of The Star, that this wasn't the case. |
Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 648
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - 6:19 pm: |
|
I read big chunks of it, David and you're right, if my scenario is true it wasn't the Star that did it! |
Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 651
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2005 - 8:32 pm: |
|
"Watchman, old man, I believe somebody is murdered down the street." Patrick Mulshaw reports being approached by a stranger shortly after the Nichols killing and told this. If my goal was to create some kind of gruesome sensation, I might find it irresistible to get the ball rolling by drawing someone's, anyone's attention to the killing.
Then, just as my hired killer complains that he can't do it as easily anymore because of patrols, committees and mobs, I decide I have to do something to keep up the momentum. Hence the Lusk Letter.
Perhaps one of the best arguments for the JTR phenomenon being contrived to stir up public interest is us. Here we are, 117 years later, still fascinated, still pursuing. Maybe we too are still being manipulated by that unknown journalist. |
Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 681
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 6:32 am: |
|
Diana - I am inclined to agree.
While I do not agree with the notion that there was no one Jack (but a series of separate killings linked by the press) I can understand that argument.
If the very JtR name or "brand" was the creation of an enterprising journalist, then that is where the myth starts.
Much of what interests me on these boards is actually getting back to the "facts" as against the age-ridden conventional wisdoms. hence i am open to questioning whether Stride and MJK were Jack's victims, or to extend the canonical number to include tabram and early "attempts".
What I would not be convinced by without much more direct evidence, is a theory that a journalist actually orchestrated the killings and was/or knew the murderer.
the press took a nasty series of killings and blew them up into a sensation. Individuals may have ridden piggy back on the murders - writing letters etc and playing pranks to catch attention.
But the lasting notoreity of these crimes and the "magic" that seems to attach to them, is I think the result of journalistic manipulation.
Phil |
Glenn G. Lauritz Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 3601
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 8:43 am: |
|
Although I do not agree with all of it (like the murders being done from economic motives as being perpetrated on behalf of the newspaper industry that may have hired a killer -- that is surely to take things too far), I think Diana has catched an important and interesting point that evokes questions and consideration.
Of course one should be careful about drawing too hard conclusions from the Stride and Kelly murders, since it is not perfectly clear that they were done by the Ripper (especially Stride), and it is NOT at all clear from Schwartz' statement to the police that he thought Mr BS may have had a lookout; this is mostly implied in the statement to the Star, which is a more unreliable source anyway.
No doubt there was a serial killer responsible for at least three murders, but the link between all so called canonical five and the early murders -- and thus the idea of a repeat killer -- were established as a concept by the papers long before the police did. It is notable, that Mary kelly is called 'The Sixth' or 'The Seventh Victim', so in some cases the papers still even this late in the process counted Emma Smith to the canon here.
The authorities didn't seem to really have considered a true link between the killings until the Chapman murder (unless I am mistaken Dr Baxter was the one who confirmed this link), but the papers have blown up this link to large proportions earlier than that.
Even though the Star doesn't seem to have wasted too many columns on these murders (although they actually on October 1 apparently devoted half their column space for it), the papers that were merely responsible for the press hysteria were the new tabloids and the illustrated papers (that all took off and flourished thanks to the East End killings) and they were quite quick to link the murders to each others and crate a sensation out of them. Already at the time of the Tabram murders, we have a link to Emma Smith and a repeat killer although there really can't be confirmed that there was a link in reality at that time.
I do not think the murders were 'ordered' by the papers or the news agencies in order to boost a story, but they did absolutely create Jack the Ripper as a concept.
All the best
G. Andersson, author/crime historian
Sweden
The Swedes are the men That Will not be Blamed for Nothing
|
|
Use of these
message boards implies agreement and consent to our Terms of Use.
The views expressed here in no way reflect the views of the owners and
operators of Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Our old message board content (45,000+ messages) is no longer available online, but a complete archive
is available on the Casebook At Home Edition, for 19.99 (US) plus shipping.
The "At Home" Edition works just like the real web site, but with absolutely no advertisements.
You can browse it anywhere - in the car, on the plane, on your front porch - without ever needing to hook up to
an internet connection. Click here to buy the Casebook At Home Edition.
|
|
|
|
