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Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 221
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 11:32 pm: |       |
I think we can be quite certain that photo 2 was taken in Mary's room. The position of the body seems identical to photo 1. The items on the table seem to coincide roughly with photo 1. The "blanket roll" from photo 1 is visible (out of focus) in photo 2.
I wonder if there is any hope of finding out the photographer's name and seeing if possibly he left some record as to the nature and purpose of his photos. Probably not, yet someone should look into it.
Andy S.
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Sarah Long
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, November 07, 2003 - 9:05 am: | |
If the body had been des for quite some hours as suggested then surely a dead body hardens. I don't see any proof in this picture that it was taken in MJK's room. It probably was but I just thought it might be interesting. The table in the background does look slightly longer and in a different position to the first picture. |
Robert J. McLaughlin
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, November 07, 2003 - 4:48 am: | |
Hi Andy,
The photographer's name was Joseph Martin. He shot most of the Whitechapel victims, with the exception of Eddowes, who was photographed by a City photographer. There are a couple of articles here on the Casebook about him. Ripper Notes (October 2002) also published an article on this: 'Who Was the Mortuary Photographer?' by Adrian Phypers.
I agree that this is an under-explored area of Ripper research, and I hope my forthcoming book will be of some value in answering some of these questions.
All the best,
Robert
The First Jack the Ripper Victim Photographs
Robert J. McLaughlin
Zwerghaus Books
ISBN: 0-9733794-0-5 |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 224
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, November 10, 2003 - 3:47 pm: | |
Let's think logically some more about Photo 2.
1. Why was it taken? To record certain wounds? This could be better done at the morgue, without disturbing things in the room. Could it be that they didn't want to bother with bringing the camera to the morgue? Possibly. On the other hand, might there be another reason for taking this picture? If so, it must have something to do with preserving the crime scene, in which case nothing would have been moved or it would defeat the purpose.
2. Positioning of camera. Where was the camera placed? If this is indeed Mary's lower body, the camera must have been placed about where the blanket roll is in Photo 1, perhaps on top of the roll (which appears out of focus in Photo 2's foreground). Therefore, either the bed was moved away from the wall or the camera was aimed without a photgrapher behind it -- since the bed was against the wall, or was it? Look at the top right post of the bed and look to the left of it. There appears to be a bit of that wall visible before you get to the corner of the paneled wall, implying that there was maybe 6 inches or so between the bed and the wall. Either moving the bed or shooting from atop the blanket roll is difficult to do and presents drawbacks. Why was Mary not just photographed from the foot of the bed, then?
It seems to me on closer inspection that (as someone said earlier) the bit of "chemise" on Mary's left arm is not clothing after all but a bedsheet partly wrapped around her. This same bedsheet can be seen covering her left hip in photo 1. In photo 2 it appears to be removed from her hip. (Originally I thought the "arch" was this cloth, but I have changed my mind). Could the photo have been taken to record what was under that sheet? Which is...?
Andy S.
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Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 139
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 2:27 pm: | |
which is?????
jennifer |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 140
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 2:30 pm: | |
which is?????
jennifer |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 225
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 4:20 pm: | |
Oh, Jennifer, I wish I knew! The more I look at the evidence, the less I know about poor Mary's death.
#1: Why would the photographer shoot Mary's pelvic region from a difficult angle instead of from the foot of the bed? Presumably because he wanted to photograph something not visible from the foot of the bed.
#2: What is not visible from the foot of the bed that is visible in photo 2? The inside of Mary's left leg and hip. Anything else?
#3: What does the photo of Mary's left leg and hip show? A longitudinally split femour? But I can't believe this was not mentioned in the post-mortem! What else is there?
#4: What is different between photo 1 and photo 2? The sheet covering Mary's left hip in photo 1 seems to have been removed. Is this significant?
#5: If photo 2's purpose is to record injuries, why wasn't it taken at the morgue? I'm becoming reconciled to the idea that it was felt there was no need to bring the bulky photographic equipment to the cramped, dark examining room of the morgue.
Andy S.
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Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 12:07 am: | |
Hi everyone; Here is my interpretation of the Kelly crime scene photographs;
The full body view shows a double mattress with only a single headboard,leaving some space showing between the wall and the side of the headboard because the mattress is a bit wider. The headboard is on an angle that could occur by pulling the bed footward, away from the dark corner. There is space between the headboard and the wall where it would normally have been pushed up against evident by the table being not wholly in the frame. I believe that they moved the bed downward to get better light on the scene for the first shot.
The tufts of sheet by Mary's upper arm and hip could be made by the murderer using the sheet to pull her body toward the closer side of the bed, a method often used in hospitals to move a heavy patient without manually picking them up. You would drag them on the sheeting. This would cause the pillow to fall off onto the floor.
The first shot only captured a bit of the flesh on the table, the belly flaps covered by intestines.
For the second shot, the bed was rotated out from the wall at the foot by about 45 degrees to allow a photographer into the space. In the first photo, the table leg is close to Mary's elbow. In the second photo, the table has been pulled along parallel to the bed and downward far enough to get all of the flesh into the shot, along with the pelvic and thigh mutilations from that angle. This is shown by the light from the hinged side of the door being in view, when partially open, and light from the windows is coming from the right of the shot instead of straight ahead,as it would if the bed was still against the wall.
The piece of sheeting was now in the way of the flesh, so it was flattened down under the thigh, and the knee pressed against the table so close that it raised the knee up into the air farther, then they could fit everything into the one photo.
The murderer sat on the left leg and broke it, thus popping the hip and femur connection, but I believe we are not seeing the femur split, only the strong tendons that hold the thigh muscles to the pelvis. (Okay, spread your legs as far as you can and you will feel the tendons there that I am talking about) That is not a bone there, you can see in Mary's other thigh that the femur is higher and away from the inner thigh.
The shin looks skinny because the murderer stripped the flesh off from the calf, along the inner knee and all of the thigh skin and muscles. He cut off the whole area from the right thigh, continued along the pubic area and the other thigh and calf, until he had a flap of flesh like a pair of pants. This whole piece of flesh is then turned upside down and posed obscenely on the table. Sorry folks, that is no pillow or alligator on the table, it is Mary's thighs, one calf and genitalia staring you in the face.
The right thigh near the genitals has been slashed several times, and there is a stab in the left thigh flesh that matches a stab seen in the raw flesh still on the body above the "split femur" or tendons. When the Doctor describes the calf being slashed deeply into the muscles etc., he is referring to the part on the table, where you can see several long slashes on the lower hanging piece of leg. There is also a cut on the table flesh that corresponds roughly with the "circumferencial slice" on the right calf of the body. He was going to do both legs the same way perhaps, or maybe he cut off her garters for souveniers.
Well that should keep you kids busy for a while, and for all you guys who can't tell a crotch from a crocodile, you are spending way too much time playing with Jack.
Joan |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 226
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 5:27 pm: | |
Joan,
I'm not sure how much of this you're serious about. Maybe all of it. Anyway, it's a very intriguing idea. But I think most of it is disproven. One paragraph of oyour post at a time:
Paragraph 1: I think you may be right about the bed being pulled footward, by the relation of the headboard to the table. Whether this was done by police, the killer, or Mary herself is impossible to say. I think you are wrong about the double mattress/single headboard. One presumes the headboard is attached to the frame and one can clearly see that there is no overhang of mattress over the frame on the near side of the bed. I believe you are probably correct in that the killer slid Mary's body with the sheet.
Paragraph 2: I'm not sure I follow your argument about the angle of the light. I see no evidence of the bed being rotated, but that is not to say that it couldn't have been. I have noticed that the table seems to have been pulled toward the foot of the bed. Or was the bed slid back up to the wall with the table remaining in place? I think your drift about getting everything into one shot is to show the relation of Mary's legs to the "flaps" on the table which you contend are part of her legs and genitals.
Paragraph 3-4: Intersting. At first glance it looks possible. But look very closely at the "pillow." It is clealy striped with a regular pattern. This can only be fabric -- either a pillow or blanket roll, probably the former (Mary's body was not clothed). It does seem to be slashed. This probably happened during the attack.
Finally, there appears to me to be something faintly visible in D2 of photo 2. It could be a piece of furniture. It could be a door panel. But if it is a door panel, this means the door is to the right of the shaft of light. Maybe my perception of Mary's room is all wrong, but wouldn't the door have to be to the left of the shaft of light?
Andy S.
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Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 699
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 1:23 pm: | |
Does anyone known the relative sizes of the two Kelly photos? Many of the oddities of the second photo would be explained if it was a trimmed down version of a larger, more extensive photo
Chris |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 143
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 2:14 pm: | |
hi,
i really am not sure where i am going with this, however, i do see what you mean abouit what you refer to as photo two (andy s), how any one can make ut quite any of it is good as it all looks rather gross and rather similar in the one sense.
however, i ahve something to ask about the positioning of the camera, would there have been any physical problem putting the camera at the foot of the bed, lack of space physical obstical, evidence, gore etc that would have made it only possible/easier/more [leasant for the photographer to have taken the picture from this location rather than that one?
just a thought, i haven't looked at the detail. how come the other crime scenes weren't recorded, is ther a morgue picture for kelly?
jennifer |
Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 7:04 pm: | |
Hi Andy; The thin shaft of light seems to me to be coming from the hinged side of the door, not the handle side of the door. The panel of the door can be seen to the right of the thin shaft of light, so the door is partly open. If the bed was still in its original position, the windows would be in the background, not the door. The lighting and getting everything into the shot were obviously more important to the investigators and photographer than preserving the furniture in it's exact position, methods that would horrify today's crime scene investigators for sure! They could always draw a diagram of the original layout of the room for their later reference.
The stripes on the calf flesh on the table are shadows from the curtains, and the "eye" of the crocodile is the back of Mary's knee. If you reverse the whole slab of flesh you will see it fits onto the body, the shorter rounded side fits with the right thigh circular cut, the flesh of the right calf was not removed, but has sagged down the leg a bit. The longer flap hanging over the table is the long muscle of the calf almost to the ankle, continuing upwards is the knees back and then a cut horizontally across like the circumferential cut seen on the right calf. In the centre of the thigh flaps are the genitals and part of the buttock, all folded over into a roll of flesh.
This part had to be posed for shock value or it would have been thrown on the floor. Was he planning to take it with him? It is not a pillow!
Great talking to you.
Joan |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 230
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 3:47 pm: | |
Jennifer,
The photographer would have to cross the path of any obstacle at the foot of the bed in order to position his camera between the bed and the wall. If he can cross the obstacle, he should be able to position his camera there. Must be some other reason.
Joan,
I see what you mean now about the door. I had forgotten about your assumption that the bed was rotated. But the stripes are shadows from the curtains? As I recall, there were no curtains, only a coat active as makeshift curtains. Even if there were curtains, what is there to suggest that they would cast a striped shadow? No, this is the striped fabric of a pillow or blanket.
Andy S.
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Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 6:04 pm: | |
Hi Andy; I will try to find out more about the curtains, but I assumed that an Irish woman would have lace curtains up. These would be semi-transparent, and would have a design of some type. I am thinking that they would cast this type of shadow from the angle of the window's light across the object on the table.
More homework to do!
(Perhaps your brain cannot accept what your eyes are seeing there,because it is just too horrific)
Crime photographers don't take pictures of pillows.
Great talking to you.
Joan |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 232
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 9:32 am: | |
Hello again, Joan.
Crime photographers generally take pictures of things as they are found. If a pillow is found on the table, chances are it would be photographed. I have no problem accepting teh horrific, I just don't think that's what we are seeing here.
Andy S.
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Jennifer D. Pegg
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 146
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 2:08 pm: | |
andy,
not at all
one could step over a bit of something for exampl, but would you want to put your camera in blood say?
it would be hard to rest it on an uneven surface too!
jennifer |
Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 8:21 pm: | |
Neil and Christian; I agree with Neil about the piles of flesh looking different in the two photos, and I think that there may have been three piles of flesh on that table. The first picture shows what looks like the large bowel and some skin at the front of the table. In the second photo, there is the rounder pile, possibly flaps of flesh from the belly, and lastly the large flap of flesh from the thighs, genitals and calf (what some posters think of as a pillow or cloth object). The doctor noted that he had arranged the flesh on the table to shock and horrify the observer.
Christian; I also agree with you about the lighting, if they had not rotated the bed, the light from the windows would ruin the shot. There seems to be three sources of light in that photo; the sharp beam from the crack of the door, the diffuse light coming from the right of the picture that is from the windows, and a flash from the camera that lights up the "femur" area from the wall side of the bed.
Can you see the striped shadow on what I believe to be the calf flesh hanging off the table? Could this be from a blind or curtain that was on one of the windows?
I also think that the thighs were done last so that the killer did not have to lean over the raw flesh while doing the other mutilations. In fact, you can almost tell in what order he did each mutilation by what is on top of each other,throat first, then the face, then intestines;the small intestines on the bed at her right side, the larger bowel on the table, internal organs and breasts thrown about the bed, and the thighs last. He seemed to be very neat and organized about his work, while getting the least amount of gore on himself. He must have put her hand neatly on her stomach to move the table a little closer to finish up. Maybe that is why the police asked the upstairs tenant if she had heard any furniture being dragged?
Just some ideas to throw at you!
Joan
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Sarah Long
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 9:40 am: | |
Actually Joan it's the sheeting on the table that looks like the crodile either way, but mostly when reversed. |
Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 3:51 pm: | |
Hi Andy; All I could find so far was the reference to the rent collector pushing aside the blinds. Now if they were venetian blinds, I could see there being a striped shadow. The other homes in the court were described as being white washed with green shutters, but I don't see any shutters on the picture of Mary Kelly's window taken from the outside,as they could also cast a striped shadow. The shadows are too closely spaced to be boards that may have been nailed over the windows, unless they were very skinny slats.
Any one else have any ideas?
Joan |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 238
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Friday, November 14, 2003 - 12:13 pm: | |
Joan:
"The doctor noted that he had arranged the flesh on the table to shock and horrify the observer."
Where do you get that statement from?
Andy S.
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Billy Markland
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, November 14, 2003 - 11:25 am: | |
Well whatever it is, it looks like a liquid, such as blood, had drained from it. At the top of B3 where the flesh joins the table, under the major gash, if you play around with filters you can see something darker than the table top had come from the central gash and the one to the immediate right forming one pool.
I had it perfectly filtered but without thinking, closed the revised photo and now I can't reproduce it. I will play with it some more and see if I can't reinvent the wheel.
Best of wishes,
Billy |
Joan O'Liari
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, November 14, 2003 - 8:27 pm: | |
Andy;
The Daily Telegraph of 10 November has an article which includes the statement as follows;
"That the miscreant must have been some time at his work was shown by the deliberate manner in which he had excised parts, and placed them upon the table purposely to add to the horror of the scene."
Sorry, it was not an actual quote from any Doctor, just the way it was reported in the article.
I have found one more reference to the blinds on the window besides the one of Bowyer, and that is the testimony of Mary Ann Cox, who lived at #5 Miller's Court;
By the jury- "The [sic] was light in the room when she was singing..I saw nothing as the blinds were down, I should know the man again".
So we have two references to blinds on the window.
Joan |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 1252
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2003 - 1:43 pm: | |
Hi Joan
I've often wondered about the blinds. Bowyer at the inquest refers to a curtain, though. Maybe "blinds" and "curtains" were interchangeable terms in those days.
Is everyone sure that the first picture was taken in situ? I mean, why would a door be part of a partition? Is everyone sure that the door behind the bed isn't the cupboard door next to the fireplace?
Robert |
Andrew Spallek
Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 252
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2003 - 4:57 pm: | |
Well, venetian blinds are expensive enough even today. I think it's totally out of the question that Mary's room would have been so furnshed. Also, those stripes on the "pillow" would have to have been caused by vertical blinds if they are shadows.
There is record somewhere of a coat being used as a covering for the broken window. I guess that doesn't rule out the presence of additional flimsy curtains of some sort. I think the word "blinds" or "curtains" in the press reports merely refers to any kind of window covering -- even the makeshift coat-curtain.
I suppose we don't know for sure that photo 1 was taken before anything was moved. There is a statement somewhere, however, that the police photographed the scene before moving anything.
Andy S.
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Brenda
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2003 - 12:53 pm: | |
You know, Joan, the more I look at that thing on the table the more I kind of see what you're talking about. I see the patterns that were pointed out, yet something about the whole thing doesn't look right. It really doesn't look much like a bedroll, you guys. If its what you're saying it is, Joan, then.....oh...my....God...
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