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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4884
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 6:13 am: | 
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American psychiatrist Shobal Vail Clevenger made a few passing references to the Ripper in his “Medical jurisprudence of insanity, or, Forensic psychiatry : with an exhaustive presentation of the judicial decisions upon the subject by F.H. Bowlby” (Rochester, N.Y., 1898, 2 Vols).
In Vol 1 pages 96-7 he says : “Epilepsy is, at times, particularly homicidal. Revolting and motiveless crimes have been committed in the insane and unconscious states of this disease, and epileptics are capable pf both planned and premeditated crimes of which no recollection may be preserved. Undoubtedly many mysterious murders have been perpetrated by epileptics that were not known even to the perpetrators. Dr. Forbes Winslow predicted years before the capture of “Jack the Ripper” that the murders would be traceable to some form of periodical homicidal insanity, and the London physician who was finally found to be the guilty person appears to have experienced the “double consciousness” states that characterize epilepsy in some of its forms.”
On page 100 : "Sexual crimes" are occasionally closely associated with insane and other murders, as in the notorious Whitechapel murders of “Jack the Ripper;” and a California instance of the murder of two young girls in a church by a young medical student who was said to have had epileptic attacks ; but as this was not brought out in his defense it was improbable that he was an epileptic.”
In Vol 2 page 854 he says that Jack the Ripper “proved to be a physician.”
Page 1056 : “The notorious murderer, “Jack, the Ripper,” it has been claimed, was finally discovered in the person of a London physician, who, in the interim of his epileptic-like mental attacks, led an irreproachable life. Such systematic brutalities are quite consistent with some phases of epileptic insanity ; and Forbes Winslow, the well-known English alienist, is given as authority for the statement that this murderer is now in an asylum and is violently insane.”
I was just wondering who might be meant.
Robert
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Dan Norder
Chief Inspector
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 862
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 4:28 pm: |
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Hi Robert,
It all goes back to Dr. Henry Jekyll, whether they realized it or not.
But he's quoting Forbes Winslow, who claimed that G. Wentworth Bell Smith was a medical student who was caught and locked up, so that's the obvious likely derivation. Of course it was nonsense from beginning to end as far as anyone can tell.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
 Profile  Email  Dissertations  Website
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4886
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 5:09 pm: |
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Thanks Dan. You're right that there's probably nothing in it. I asked the question because I thought that Forbes Winslow's suspect was supposed to have escaped to South Africa.
Robert |
Dan Norder
Chief Inspector
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 864
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 5:24 pm: |
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Hi Robert,
Winslow had a habit of changing his story about his suspect. His later version did have Bell Smith escaping the country, but a version published in the Sept. 1, 1895, New York Times has him claiming that the Ripper was a "medical student" whose "religious fervor resulted in homicidal mania" leading to him being "removed to a lunatic asylum, where he is today." Clevenger was undoubtedly working off of that or similar reports at the time.
That New York Times article is, by the way, in the July 2005 issue of Ripper Notes in Wolf Vanderlinden's "From the Newspaper Morgue" column. Wolf explored a number of other claims in the press that the Ripper had been locked up in an asylum, but none of the details from the various versions of the story really match up with each other.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
Profile Email Dissertations Website
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4887
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 5:42 pm: |
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OK, Dan, thanks very much for that.
Robert |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2372
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 6:08 pm: |
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Robert,
When I first read your posting above I thought
that it may have been an early reference to Druitt-I had forgotten the other medical suspects!
Interesting to note that none of these Victorian writers looked at the psychological backdrop to the crimes attributed to Jack the Ripper ,namely that he was most of all an outrageous misogynist whose hatred and fear of women manifested itself in a particularly spectacular series of gruesome murders.
"Our Jackie" was most likely just a case of Victorian misogyny gone beserk!
Natalie
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4889
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 6:41 pm: |
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Well Natalie, I guess most of the writers were male, so there you go.
Hatred and fear, and we can probably add envy too.
Robert |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Chief Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 824
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 9:32 pm: |
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Hi all,
Under "Sexual Crimes" Clevinger makes mention of the Ripper and a second killer. It is apparently (from date, locale, and two female victims in a church) Ted Durrant (hanged in 1898). He was the subject of a book suggesting that his minister was the Ripper a few years ago.
Best wishes,
Jeff |
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