Archive through September 07, 2000

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Archive through September 07, 2000

Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: Specific Suspects: Later Suspects [ 1910 - Present ]: Barnett, Joseph: Archive through September 07, 2000

Author: Jill De Schrijver Monday, 04 September 2000 - 05:17 am
Hi all, Dear Roger - It was Leanne who referred to the term 'Humanity' as used as a psychological term. Also, if Warwick is accepting that Barnett was a bit off by his childhood experiences and that MJK was the offset of the killing spree, then the example you give is not valuable. Because the real psychological frustration stems from the childhood, not MJK, and thus killing MJK would not have deleted this mania. About Tabram: it could well have been that she was unconscious. Someone with the professional knowledge of it has pointed me out that 'clenched hands' are an indication of strangulation. You can also notice that both Tabram and Chapman appear the same on the mortuary phorograph. Not because they are that alike (they both have heavy built faces, but nose and jaw line and hair are different), but both have a protruding tongue. With Chapman this is regarded as partly strangled. Warwick, Leanne - I totally agree about the movie. Yes, you can call it somesorts of 'humanity', when a killer has a lot of problems to be reminded that his victim is a person instead of an object and thus kills 'it' first. But then on the other hand I wouldn't conclude that he hated what he did, because the reason for somesort of 'humane' act, isn't because the killer had a humane character (he wouldn't be killing in series and mutilating like that then). That's a very big jump, extending a psychological term, only used for specific behaviour, to the dictionary term of total character. Greetings, Jill
Author: Leanne Perry Monday, 04 September 2000 - 07:57 am
G'day All, Barnett's father died when he was very young, then his mother deserted her kids. There are no records of her life or death under the Barnett name, so she may have turned to a life of prostitution, under an alias. I believe this was quite common. If so, Barnett had already lost one woman to prostitution. He took Mary from the streets and forbade her to live that kind of life. She ignored this 'preaching'. I am not saying that I like the word 'humanity', I was just pointing out that I remember reading it somewhere. There are different degrees of 'humanity' and if Jack displayed any, I'd say it was very tiny! LEANNE!
Author: Warwick Parminter Monday, 04 September 2000 - 08:49 am
Mornin Jill, I can't possibly argue with you, judging from your words and the way you use them you know what you are talking about. But even in the face of qualifications or profession I'd just like to state a few things I believe. There are always exceptions to the rule, the human race is always surprising and shocking itself by the things it's capable of. Every last one of us are scrambled eggs to a point, no one knows what the person standing next to us is capable of. I pride myself on being a complete live and let live person, I won't step on a worm if I can avoid it. I was'nt always of this belief, I've been in the army and been taught to kill and we've laughed about it and enjoyed it. It still really puzzles me how a man can kill because he's told to. But it's for your country! But if you can kill for your country, you can kill for yourself, without fear of addiction! That I believe, is what Barnet was doing. The mutilations would'nt mean that much to a hard practical man, what about butchers, postmortem people, ambulance men--and women-- the sights they see and handle. What really shocks me is what the Nazis did, and justice did'nt get them all! some who bashed in women and childrens heads day after day,--and loved doing it-- are contentedly living out their old age in S/America and other places. Then a couple of years ago we had Kosovo. I would'nt want to offend you Jill, but I'll stick with my guns, I think Barnet was capable of starting and stopping.
Author: Jill De Schrijver Monday, 04 September 2000 - 10:28 am
Hi Leanne, Warwick, Leanne - I'm always interested what you have on Barnett, since there are a lot of circumstances that make him at least a valuable suspect. And as for 'humanity', I reckoned we were on the same line of thought, only cautioning to the use of the word :-) Warwick - War... Now we are speaking about group-pressure, and a hostile stressful environment where you see everybody as your enemy (last also goes with a SK). You have a good point that soldiers are capable of doing raw atrocities. A soldier with a 'normal' psychology engaged in a vengeance action on an innocent village can kill with an anger and violence like a ONE-INSTANCE mass-murderer, but shall not begin creeping around and kill in series(mind the series) with mutilation, daring and more daring everytime. The dessecration of a corpse (it is all that really matters for JtR), whoever it was, is a big TABOO. When doing this in a series, we really aren't talking about the same thing. You also use the comment that if you can kill for your country, then you as easily can do it for yourself. Actually it isn't. A lot of atrocities during war are done because you are in a GROUP, and the pressure is on. Remember the children that do the nastiest things to each other just to fit in. Often enough the buster could as easily play gently with the mollested child a few hours later when they are alone. JtR wasn't in a group during the canonicals (maybe with two, but that still doesn't make enough peer-pressure). Another difference between killing for your country and just for yourself is that you have the full OK from SOCIETY. If you kill for yourself you don't, you are then going against societies wishes. To keep this up more than a one-time anger-flash and to be concentrated only at mutilating, you then have to be a person in anger with the whole society. Almost no soldier comes out of a war clean. The shell-shock soldiers of WWI, the Vietnam-veterans with a lot of suicides afterwards or many whom have an addiction (drugs or alcohol),... Even a Nazi sleeping in his big house in s/America has his GHOST visiting him night after night. They (all soldiers) have returned to normal society, and are trying very hard to FIT IN again. They have killed because their society told them (nazi's and serbs included, although that says a lot about their society), and they are being citisens again because society wants them. Postmortem and ambulance people, butchers, are faced with the dead too every day. But again they are accepted by society. You are comparing a soldier, ambulance people, butchers and post-mortem professionals, who has no murdering grudges against his society stemming from his childhood, who does his job sanctioned by society, and returns home confirming again to society to try and be a good citisen again, WITH a person who does have a big grudge against society because of childhood trauma's (that is what you referred to with Barnett as valid), who kills on his own accord against the wishes of society, who mutilates dead human beings, although this is a very big social taboo, and does this several times, grosser and grosser everytime. You are implying that such a killer, if Barnett, can live a normal social accepted life afterwards, even better than a soldier can, although he has never known it or learned how to in his entire short life. About offending me - you can't offend me with just having an opinion, unless you have a severe discriminating opinion of me. I can debate heatedly, but chat about the birds and the bee's afterwards. You'll need a bazooka to blast me offendingly away, so there's no harm in the guns. :-) Greetings, Jill
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood Monday, 04 September 2000 - 11:51 am
In all the discussion about whether Barnett was JtR, I still have to say that the motives put forward for him are frankly unbeleivable. He could have been Jack: he was certainly in the right area but because he is presumed to have had a certain expertise regarding fish, can we say that he could have extrapolated his skills to ladies? I suspect that if the police had even the slightest ground for thinking of him as Jack, he would have had much more interrogation than he actually did have. Peter.
Author: Warwick Parminter Monday, 04 September 2000 - 05:46 pm
Jill, OK AHMEN \ch{} my regards. Peter, Jack the Ripper had to have a job doing something, why not fish porter? Peter Sutcliffe was interviewed or questioned about four times before the police realized he was who they were looking for. Rick
Author: Leanne Perry Monday, 04 September 2000 - 07:05 pm
G'day, GO RICK!!!! Peter's comments remind me of another well known case that's going on today! People have alot of trouble understanding the motive, so it may never be solved! LEANNE!
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 05:28 am
Hi All, There was a very big difference between Peter Sutcliffe's interviews and Joe Barnett's four-hour grilling. Sutcliffe was just a face in a crowd, interviewed along with hundreds of others, as a known visitor to red light districts and an employee who could have received in his paypacket the £5 note found on victim Jean Jordan. Sutcliffe came across as a quiet, reasonably respectable family man (despite his penchant for cruising), and didn't have a geordie accent (like the hoaxer on the tape sent to police), and short of Sutcliffe confessing or otherwise incriminating himself, I can understand the difficulties the police were faced with. His case may have taught us not to associate quiet respectablility with innocence when it comes to serial killers, but we certainly shouldn't see it as a pointer to guilt in Joe Barnett's or any other case. The police treated Joe Barnett, quite rightly considering his recent split from Mary Kelly, as a good suspect. If there was anything at all to associate him with her death or the deaths of the previous victims, I have to agree with Peter, I'm sure he would not have been allowed to slip through their fingers. Love, Caz
Author: Jill De Schrijver Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 06:30 am
Hi Warwick, Why not a fish porter? - Fish kidneys are something totally different than mammal-ones (where anatomy of a straight walking mammal like humans even differs a lot within the mammal group) comes to mind for example. Jill
Author: Leanne Perry Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 06:54 am
G'day Caz, Your confidence in the police of 1888, sounds as though they identified the Ripper, which they didn't! At sometime during their investigations they probably did interview the Ripper, but let him 'slip through their fingers'. Mary Jane kelly's 'missing key' issue, has not been answered. Barnett showed a very strong disliking of prostitutes. Would the police have found that out? Barnett fits some of the eyewitness descriptions. Barnett contradicted himself at Mary's inquest, as to why he left Mary, telling a different story to the one that he had told the police three days earlier. Barnett fits the profile of the modern day serial killer precisely: 'Most are white males in their twenties and thirties; Most come from disfunctional families; Many are intelligent men, employed in menial jobs; The initial murderous impulse is often triggered by some sort of pre-crime stress such as a loss of a job.' The police then would not have known about this profile, because the 'modern-day serial killer' hadn't been invented yet! LEANNE!
Author: Caroline Anne Morris Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 07:54 am
Hi Leanne, Only last night there was a tongue-in-cheek remark made by a pathologist in a British TV thriller, suggesting all they had to do to solve their case was to find a psycho with a stammer who hated prostitutes - it made me smile and think of our Joe. Okay, when you have found the proof to convict your SK, you will no doubt also find that he fits one or more of the recognised conditions, such as being the right age, living close to his crimes, being the same race as his victims, suffering a traumatic upbringing, being an under-achiever, etc etc. But there are always literally thousands of men who meet all these conditions and more, and one just happens to have been Barnett. In 1888, I'm sure the police knew enough about the murder statistics to realise that most women suffering violent deaths, then as now, did so at the hands of their partners. Despite a possible 'mind-set' by the police, looking for a stranger with a maniacal glint in his eye, Stride's ex, Michael Kidney, and Kelly's ex, Joe Barnett, both rightly fell under routine suspicion, were considered and eliminated. I agree that the ripper may have been among the many many people brought to the police's attention, who appeared merely to have been asked to confirm their name and address before being free to go. But stronger suspects, such as those with known connections to a victim would not have been dismissed so lightly IMHO. Love, Caz
Author: Jill De Schrijver Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 07:58 am
Hi Leanne, The police most certainly has regarded him as suspect, other wise they would not have grilled them for 4 hours. Also this would have given them time enough to find back-ups for his story with immediate neighbours ("What did you hear last night... ta, ta, ta....Oh, and how was it between Mary an dJoseph? A bit rough sometimes, wasn't it?"), friends, colleagues. They would not only have asked after his alibi for MJK, but also for the other victims. If we can find out that Barnett was no favourite of prostitution (like more than half of Victorian-society) with the minimal we know about Barnett, then the police would have known too. Police had gathered the descriptions themselves, and would have seen that Barnett would have fitted these. Maybe one of the reason why they interrogated him that long. Besides the few notations we have on Barnett there were most certainly off-the record talks. At an inquest policemen were not only witnesses, but also representatives for the case at hand, and involved in the inquiry after the crime. Any real inconsistency they would have regarded as highly suspicious, and they would have followed up on it. Yes, they did not know the serial-killer profile. If you regard Barnett as fitting just that profile, then how come he stopped? Lovely greetings, Jill
Author: Warwick Parminter Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 07:58 am
Hello All, These Casebook Boards put me in mind of a cat walking through a room full of mouse traps! I know of all the suspects ( I think) long standing and recent. None of them except one is very, if at all convincing to me. If it's not him then all I can say is it must be a complete unknown, sick in body and mind who died from natural causes almost immediatly after killing Mary Kelly. But like Leanne I would say, that does not explain away the locked door. maybe the key to the door is the key to the mystery. I think some people give the police of 1888 more credence than they deserve, they had'nt been operational that long (had they ?), and in my view they were managed by pompous upper class people who used this new organisation as a jobs for the boys club! Jill, I did'nt mean that JtR was using his job as training for bigger prey, he just had work of some kind,if you like, why not a cabbie! But he had to be working at something.
Author: Jill De Schrijver Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 09:27 am
Hi Warwick, A tip for the workings of police in relation with the case: "the man who hunted Jack the Ripper" by Stewart Evans and Nicholas Connel. It is especially an account on Ir. Reid, who wasn't an upperclass person. Maybe the managers were pompous in your eyes, that doesn't mean the inspectors and researchers were. And if a head of a Police Department wanted to be reelected in Whitechapel or an Inspector promoted, they would have been the hero of the day if they could solve the mistery of Jack. It wasn't police in the stone-age, but the age where Sherlock Holmes roamed. Policemen knew how to use their head already for a long time, but procedures were basic: fingerprinting was a recent development, and blood hound search was a novelty too. Because modern identification procedures wasn't available yet, they would have relied much harder on interrogation and witness accounts. It was not an age of total illiterates where they had no eyes for what can go wrong in society. Statistics about inhabitants were kept, death rates and their cause, ... So from this they certainly would have known, besides experience, that a former lover is a very good candidate. I agree that none of the known suspects is really convincing, that's why I don't have a preferred suspect at all. About the job: yes Barnett had to live on something. He already did this from a very young age, while his younger relatives went trough some schooling he provided for. I only wanted to point out that him being a fish-porter and a labourer almost his entire life, didn't have much knowledge about mammal or human anatomy, which can be a problem when you know which organs were cut away. And that is one of the caveats of Barnett being a convincing suspect. Greetings, Jill
Author: Warwick Parminter Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 11:56 am
Jill, We all have to have our own pet suspects don't we? Otherwise we don't have anything. I don't think much else is going to be dug up after 112yrs and a surefire culprit is not going to be revealed. The mask is never going to fall with certainty! My regards Rick
Author: Jill De Schrijver Tuesday, 05 September 2000 - 02:10 pm
Warwick, Euhm...You can have your pet-victim or pet-subject, pet-profile (oooh...many hate the last word), pet-diary (up with the bazooka's all) and you can say that my pet-suspect is the anonymous guy who walked the streets at night with a knife and who's neigbours would have said: "Him?! He wouldn't hurt a fly!(that does sound like Barnett, isn't it?)...But now you mention it, he was always..." :-) Greetings, Jill
Author: Leanne Perry Wednesday, 06 September 2000 - 08:58 am
G'day Jill, It was Joseph Barnett's elder brother, Daniel, who became head of the family and worked at Billingsgate to support his brothers through school. Sister Catherine became the house-slave. With an education, Joseph was probably capable of finding a better job when he left, but instead he had to support what was left of his family. He had to follow in his father's and brother's footsteps to Billingsgate Fish Market. The job of fish porter required considerable strength and years of cleaning fish made him handy and familiar with a knife. He would have had a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy too. Dr. Halsted pointed out the surgical skill of JtR could easily have been acquired by someone boning and filleting fish. Jill, how could you say that just four hours was 'time enough to find back-ups for his story'(s). All the victims were killed on weekends. He probably said that he plays whist with his mates, each weekend and one of them verified this for him. As he picked Mary up from the streets, when they first met, I'd say that he was a 'favorite of prostitution'. But wait!!!..he was so anti-prostitution. This was probably because it caused females to neglect their responsibilities (thinking of his mother). After Mary's inquest, his life became untraceable, until 1906. He never 'settled down' with any one woman until he was 61. There are no records of a marriage. LEANNE!
Author: Jill De Schrijver Wednesday, 06 September 2000 - 10:51 am
Hi Leanne, You are right, Barnett was the fourth child and he went to school until he was 13. Regarding him to be able to get a better job. Actually I would not dare to say so: he only had a bare education, where he probably learned nothing more than writing, reading, calculating and some history. Would that be enough to become a clerk and get out of the muck? No, he only could become and became a labourer who could read, write and calculate. Probably one of the minor reasons besides money he started working at the age of 13. Also in your post of Tuesday, September 05, 2000 - 10:54 am you refer to the modern-sk profile and mention:"...Many are intelligent men, employed in menial jobs..." Which of course is a correct statement. But you also say "Barnett fits the profile of the modern day serial killer precisely", although you don't know if Barnett was intelligent. You can say he had some basic education. But we also know that having an education doesn't make you bright. Do we know his grades at school? Has anyone who knew him remarked on his intelligency in the positive way? Do we even have one clue to even state that he was interested in learning at all. Many young people who went to school until they were 18 remember less than half of it afterwards. I know I was a good student, who liked to learn new things as much as I could, but even I admit that half of it is already forgotten. About the anatomy knowledge: Maybe we have to find out what were the normal subjects given at school. If any rudimentary anatomy was given, like nowadays, I will agree that some basic knowledge of mammal anatomy was present with Barnett. We cannot compare what we have as anatomical knowledge nowadays with the knowledge of the class of people in Whitechapel back then, Because of the content-differences. But I can't agree with you that cleaning fish gives any other anatomy knowledge then knowing how a fish looks like inside, and maybe what's what (he wouldn't even need the last, to do his job well). Fish anatomy and mammal anatomy (I'm not even speaking about humans) are so completely different that there is no analogy besides, function and names (Can you please give me the reference again of Dr.Halsted who says that such is possible?) So if Barnett didn't learn it at school, and didn't learn it by filetting fish, how else could he have a theoretical knowledge? If as a SK, Barnett was interested in it, he must have learned it from books? Could he afford such luxury books with medical knwoledge in it? Did he have time to go to the library? If so can a library card still be traced? About feedback knowledge during 4hrs. interrogation: From the moment MJK was found and police notified, some of the corpse would be interrogating the neighbours. As soon they knew something about Barnett, the inquierers on the field would include questions about Barnett too. How things were between the two, what he did in the weekends. They would have continued this field search, while others interrogated Barnett. Within 3hrs, a lot of local knowledge about him could have been digged up and reported (I'm not saying they knew everything about him, but enough to check up on his forst statements). Still an hour left to confront him with the first things that didn' tift. And they would have still have enquired after him even when his interrogation was over. But maybe we can ask this both to one of the policemen on the boards here? :-) Favorite of prostitution: A little enquiry with one of the female-visitors of MJK, or Hutchinson, or upper-neighbours, or ... about Barnett and the tales about the love-affair between Barnett and Mary would have come rolling in. People like to gossip so much. And if he didn't like her being on the streets, it would have been one of the tales, didn't even have to be true for it to be told. Again we maybe better lay this before a policeman. Greetings, Jill
Author: Warwick Parminter Wednesday, 06 September 2000 - 03:22 pm
Leanne and Jill, When people talk of serial killers being capable of doing a better job than the one they have, surely they are talking about the middle to late 20th century? For working class people in the eastend in 1888 it was a case of , "think yourself lucky to have this job, whether you can read and write or not". I'm sure there must have been a lot of wasted talent in those days due to coming from the wrong background. Barnet didn't need to have been a bit of a dunce at all,even though he had a stammer and maybe inclined to autism as his echolalia showed. He could have fought that, his dress sense showed that he wanted something better,but it was his speech and background that kept him in his place. I would have thought that a fish market porter was a very good job for an eastend working class person to aquire, and maybe he only got that because he could read, write and reckon. One thing puzzles me, he got his porters license back in 1906 yet when he died he was listed as a docker. Regarding your statement Leanne that he didn't settle down with a woman until he reached the age of 61, says to me that maybe it took him that long to face another relationship after Mary Kelly and that Nov morning in 1888. Regards to you both. Rick.
Author: Warwick Parminter Thursday, 07 September 2000 - 09:50 am
Jill, A few other points you may be interested in concerning Barnets earlier years. Compulsory schooling was quite a new rule in 1888, and parents of children attending were charged a penny or tuppence a week to do so. My mother, Father and Grandmother all left school aged 13yrs, my Grandfather may not have gone to school at all, I don't know. But in 1876 he had joined the army aged 16yrs because there was nothing else for him! I left school at 14yrs, worked at any thing going till I was 16yrs then became an apprentice carpenter,(which was the job I wanted) but while I was apprenticed I didn't get any where near the money boys my age were getting labouring. Barnet was lucky, for a youth in his day and age, thanks I suppose to his brothers who already worked there. If the reports and calculations are correct concerning his wages he was getting more than a police constable, office clerks, and a lot of trades men, so I would think he was doing pretty good. The schooling he got in those days would have been quite basic for working class children, but I think he did well there too taking into account his stammer and echolalia.Personaly I remember at school, left handed children forced to write right handed, left hand being tied to their side, during my time at school nobody took any notice of your grade except your immediate teacher. I don't think Barnet was a dullard at all,except that he took on and put too much faith and trust in Kelly,and if Bruce Paley and Paul Harrison could be proved right in their theorys, well, he got away with it, didn't he! my regards Rick.