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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through December 22, 1999
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Mary Jane Kelly:
The Kelly Crime Scene Photographs:
Archive through December 22, 1999
Author: Jill
Friday, 17 December 1999 - 04:05 am |        | Hello PJW1,
It was evident in an another discussion that most people writing here on the board, think nothing else of JtR than that he is a vile murderer. There is the upmost respect for anyone who died at his hands. Since JtR's killings are known as those of the first of the modern serial killers, the will to resolve this case shows respect for those who were murdered by the other SK's, mass murderers and psycho's.
Why is Kelly so important? She was so ghastly and shockingly destroyed and differs a lot from the normal profile, that most perceive her as the victim that was closest in the heart of JtR (no matter if he knew her directly or not) and thus the key to his identity.
The romanticising is not here on the boards, but can be watched on TV, theater and books. They have created the legend of a faceles killer known by the name of Jack with a sharp long knife... who murdered some (how many?) prostitutes (names?)somewhere on the streets of London, as the illiterate (in the case of JtR) crowd mumbles, to whom I once belonged (not that I'm literate now).
Out of respect to all people who died a violent death,
Jill |
Author: Bob_C
Friday, 17 December 1999 - 09:36 am | | Hi all,
Jill is quite right when she says most of us see JtR as nothing but a vile murderer. He was, and with his victims being the most deperate and helpless kind, he was a damn great coward as well.
It may be well true that some people forget the tragic aspects of the case when discussing it, but unfortunantly all our sympathy and feelings can't undo the deeds of this man from so many years since. The killer, just like his victims, have died a long time ago. What we can do is to try to establish the facts, to try to 'breath the air of the time' and to hope that one day, Jack will be identified. That is the good right of those poor devils, to have in their names their killer unmasked and his name thrown in the dirt.
It is the right of the dead to have a name. It is the only thing we have left of them. We do not have to honour it, though.
Mary Jane Kelly may, in the eyes of some people, be the 'Queen' of the victims. In my eyes she was the same as the others, a drunken slut. Knowing full well the great deprivation and sore difficulties such women had in those days, I have a certain appreciation that they had sometimes little choice, but as we see, all victims were alchoholic or heavy drinkers, this being the cause of their downfalls.
Simply put, any pity for these women is misplaced when we do not consider the many other women of the time, also sorely tried, who didn't drink to excess and weren't thus forced to go on the street.
Best regards
Bob |
Author: Diana Comer
Saturday, 18 December 1999 - 07:43 am | | | The Scriptures, speaking of all mankind, state, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) Christ, when confronted with the woman taken in adultery "in the very act" told her accusers that the one who had never sinned could throw the first stone. We are not all drunken prostitutes, but I can say on the authority of Scripture that not one of us has a perfectly clean slate, myself included. That was why Christ had to die. He was atoning for our misdeeds so that all who come to Him for forgiveness can be saved. Those were not delicate refined ladies, and I would not have picked a one of them to babysit my children, but they did not deserve what happened to them. |
Author: Bob_C
Saturday, 18 December 1999 - 08:26 am | | Hi Diana,
Although I don't have your faith, and am not even a good christian, I do believe in mankind. Now, if I have sinned in the sense of the scriptures you mention or not, I have the ability, as the most of us, to judge general right and wrong, in others and in myself.
To suggest that we should never remark on the failings of others because we must have done something wrong ourselves is to misunderstand the very sense of the scriptures you quote. We do not accuse these women of adultery to have them punished. We do not attempt to have them punished at all. Indeed, IMHO most of us feel a decided sympathy for these poor wretches. It does not alter the fact that these victims of Jack were alcoholic or had alcoholic problems, and that was the reason for them being on the street. There were certainly other unfortunants on the street who had no alcohol problem, who were just desperate in the extreme. Poor devils.
To put it in a slightly different light, we could almost say that Jack only killed alcoholics who happened to be prostitutes, and not the other way round. Indeed, in the case of Eddowes, this could well have been more true for the alcohol as for the whoring.
I admire your belief in religeous matters and respect your right to have them, but it is unfortunantly so that if you criticise someone because they have transgressed against your scriptures, you make yourself just as guilty because you are ' throwing stones' just as much as they were. Please don't take that as a suggestion that you should not criticise, only that you should not try to prohibit others from doing so.
Best regards
Bob
Best regards
Bob |
Author: Caz
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 01:40 pm | | Hi Bob, Diana, all,
If we could ask each of Jack’s victims why they were living their lives a certain way, we would no doubt come up with as many different answers as victims, assuming they all told us the truth.
One may have had no morals from the start and seen prostitution as the quickest and laziest way to earn a living. Another might have spent a childhood coping with sexual abuse, which stripped her of all self respect. Yet another may have, as Bob says, found alcohol and needed a means of paying for her addiction. Another might not have been selling herself at all.
My own purely subjective feelings as a woman in the 1990s naturally lead me to imagine that the women would have needed to be blind drunk to allow themselves to ‘connect’ with any of the loathsome creatures who prowled the streets looking for momentary sexual relief. But it’s mighty difficult to assess the personal morals of 1880s unfortunate women from a luxurious 1990s standpoint. All we can safely say is that those victims who were on the game found morals a luxury they could not afford, and more associated with the upper classes, who were hoping that their unbearably hypocritical stances on morals and religion would filter down through the classes. You can just picture the typical self-righteous middle or upper class family man going to church on Sunday, visiting a prostitute on Monday, abusing his wife or child on Tuesday, then letting all hell break loose if his wife so much as looks at another man on Wednesday. Divorcing the bastard on Thursday was not a viable option. No wonder Victorians could imagine why their women might use drastic measures like murder by the end of the week!
Going back to Jack and his gin-soaked victims……
His reasons for killing may point to his class. If he had a pathological hatred of either drunken or fallen women or both, I can see him coming from a middle or upper class family who had foisted their moral or religious beliefs on him somehow. A working class or unemployed man living in poverty and the same environment as the women tended, at least according to the folk Mayhew interviewed, to adhere to the religion (usually Catholic) whose church offered the most in charity. Their moral standards would be different, rather than worse, than those of the higher classes. Many poor families were forced to accept that their womenfolk had to sell their bodies where there were no other means of support. And a large majority of couples belonging to the underclass were accepted by their community without the benefit of a church service to wed them.
So if Jack was from the lower echelons of society it seems more likely that he chose his victims purely because they were there on the streets where he roamed, and particularly vulnerable due to size, age, illness or drunkenness.
In this day and age in the west, where moral and religious education has filtered down to the masses for good or otherwise, serial killers who kill because of their own twisted religious or moral views can come from any class. But I don’t think that would apply in the same way in Victorian times.
Love and cheers,
Caz |
Author: Diana Comer
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 01:52 pm | | | Most of Jack's victims had an immediate need for money. Polly and I believe Annie needed money for a bed for the night. We don't know about Liz, but Kathryn had to get something back from the pawnbroker and Mary's rent was due. I agree with Caz. The thought of servicing any of the denizens of the East End circa 1888 is repugnant. The women must have been desperate. |
Author: D. Radka
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 04:07 pm | | Men: "Loathsome creatures who prowl the streets looking for momentary sexual relief."
Women: Excused from the responsibility of being alcoholics because of the perfectly blameness necessity of needing to anesthetize themselves when having to "connect with loathsome creatures who ....", etc. |
Author: anon
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 04:32 pm | | | Who were his victims? Who was Kathryn? |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 04:59 pm | | Anon -
His victims were most likely Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Diana ment "Catherine."
David - I don't generally argue with you, but that's not what Caz meant, and I think you know it.
Still, I have been wrong before.
CMD |
Author: anon
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 06:59 pm | | | 'Jack the Ripper' did not exist, so how could he have 'most likely' victims? |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Monday, 20 December 1999 - 09:34 pm | | | That, anon, is another subject entirely. |
Author: dlee
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 12:28 am | | I'm new to these boards so please forgive me if I bring up an old matter, but I recall reading (in Rumbelow's book I believe) that MJK's eyes were photographed by some party in accordance with the (then popular) theory that "dying" images were burned onto the retina. Is this true (the story of the photos-- not the theory!) and has it been mentioned or dealt with in print anywhere else?
Thanks! |
Author: Bob_C
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 05:31 am | | Hi Dlee,
First of all, welcome to the board. As I wrote once before, we can always use fresh blood.
Yup, the eyeball photography matter was also bought up in Phil Sugden's book. Phil Sugden wrote an excellent piece of work there. He gave reasons and explainations for a lot of JtR nonsense and fairytales. Of course, nobody is perfect and Sugden has made his fair share of mistakes, but the book is generally regarded as a bit of a JtR reference. There are, however, a number of other excellent works by various authors, even when I don't necessarily agree with the suspect, and a lot of tripe.
This eyeball photography was suggested at the time, as it was widely believed, but medical opinion was that it would not bring any results and would probably not be possible anyway. This whole eyeball story seems to have evolved in the early days of photography, allegedly being reported by newspapers in America (I believe Chicago) and in France.
We know today that this is nonsense. In any case there is no evidence that this was done, or even attempted, with Kelly.
I wish you lots of fun on the board
Best regards
Bob |
Author: Leanne
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 06:34 am | | G'day All,
WRONG: I believe it was CathArine Eddowes!
Leanne! |
Author: Edana
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 08:58 am | | Well said, Caz. How can we judge these men and women from our view? It's very likely that none of us have lived as a homeless person or been so poor that we had to hock our only pair of shoes for a meal. Both men and women and children prostituted themselves just to survive..and it wasn't like they could clean themselves up and apply at the nearest McDonalds for a job. They couldn't even afford a bar of soap. And a woman, in particular, couldn't go and get a day job down at the docks. And when they did get a job, it was (for example) washing bottles for a few pennies a day. Then there's the downslide of alcoholism, a disease thats tough to cure. So, life was not easy for both men and women of the poverty class in Victorian England.
Edana |
Author: Diana Comer
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 09:23 am | | | There but for the grace of God go I. I hope that if confronted with such dire straits I would not resort to wrongdoing. But the Bible says, "the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?" It is really impossible to say what any of us would do if confronted with such temptation. |
Author: Bob_C
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 09:55 am | | Hi all,
Leanne, I think you are correct about Eddowes being called Catharine, just like her mother. As a child, she was known as 'chick' at home, but in later life she seems to have been generally styled simply 'Kate'
If I had no choice but to starve to death or go on the street, I know what I'd do. I think nearly all of us would go to extremes to try to save our lives. Desperation in a certain situation is relative, however. I would not go on the street to earn a new telly, even when the old one was bust and football started that eveing. Is alcoholic addiction ground enough? I can't say. I am no addict, although my consumption of beer in the evening at week-ends sometimes causes raised eyebrows (and that in Germany, land of the prize-winning Beer-gut). I do not have to go on the streets, however, but to the local cheap supermarket where you can get a 1/2 liter can of drinkable beer for about 60 pfennig, that's about the price of 3 boxes of cheap matches.
Poor Kelly and Co. were born 100 years too early.
Best regards
Bob |
Author: D. Radka
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 03:55 pm | | C-M D,
No. And I'd be interested in knowing exactly what you think she meant.
David |
Author: Jon
Tuesday, 21 December 1999 - 06:56 pm | | Dlee & Bob.C
I know this is out of sync. but you both may be interested in an extract from Walter Dew's memoirs, 'I Caught Crippen' the section 'The hunt for Jack the Ripper' has a reference to the eye photography, quote:
"There was at the time a wide-spread superstition that the retina of a murdered person's eyes would, if photographed, give a picture of the last person upon whom the victim looked.
I do not for a moment think that the police ever seriously expected the photograph of the murderer to materialize, but it was decided to try the experiment.
Several photographs of the eyes were taken by expert photographers with the latest type cameras.
The result was negative.
But the very fact that this forlorn hope was tried shows that the police, in their eagerness to catch the murderer, were ready to follow any clue and to adopt any suggestion, even at the risk of being made to look absurd"
So, if we can trust Walter Dew (who was at Millers Court that morning) it would appear that the experiment was indeed tried,......wouldn't that be a find, if we could uncover those plates?
Regards, Jon |
Author: Caz
Wednesday, 22 December 1999 - 09:20 am | | Hi David,
I really wasn't trying to make excuses for the victims' behaviour and lifestyles in 1888, just trying (very poorly from my comfy 1999 computerland) to 'walk a mile in their shoes' and understand where choice and necessity merged.
It was always the customer's personal choice to pay for an Annie or a Polly, sporting a jolly bonnet (and looking and feeling about 70 by today's standards no doubt), but was it down to personal choice for any of the unfortunates to become alcoholics and sell themselves to anyone willing to pay for their dubious favours? I don't know the answer to that one.
I'm not into excusing or condemning, just understanding. That's all.
Does that help, David?
Love,
Caz |
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