|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** 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 17, 1999
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Mary Jane Kelly:
The Kelly Crime Scene Photographs:
Archive through December 17, 1999
Author: Sara
Sunday, 23 May 1999 - 08:34 pm |        | Jane, and Ashling:
Egad! The clearest picture yet (that I've seen) of the Ripper's gruesome work appears in.... "The Diary of Jack the Ripper" - the book you said you won't read, and the one I am reading with skepticism. Despite it's slightly larger than postage stamp size, the "items" are MUCH more distinct. Crushes one's heart, it does.
Ashling - Trow's is very slickly produced and the writing style is clear and factfilled. Almost an "illustrated" book with lots of snaps and illustrations.
I'll be starting Sugdon's as soon as Leonard returns it to the lending library. ;-) Seems it's virtually on permanent loan.
All the best, gals.
Sara |
Author: Christopher George
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 11:20 am | | Hi and welcome, Jane and Sarah:
The famous photograph of Mary Jane Kelly has to be printed on good quality glossy paper to appreciate the breathtaking nature of the crime. This is the case with the version of the picture in both the hardback versions of the Pamela Ball book and the Shirley Harrison book. While we may question the content of both books, they at least have nice photographs! The large version of the photo in Ball's book, as I have posted previously, enables us to see that the so-called "M" of the alleged "FM" is actually made up of different marks and the "F" is even more questionable, appearing only to be part of general mottling on the partition. One of the lousier versions of the scene I have is in Stephen Knight, "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution" (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1986) printed on chalky non-gloss paper with a large dot pattern. In this poor version of the photograph, the M is all too evident, as if it were in Day-Glo, and it appears to be made up of consistent strokes, which we know not to be so from the better published versions of the photo. In this paperback edition of Knight, the F is barely visible.
Chris George |
Author: JACKIE WILSON
Monday, 05 July 1999 - 05:54 am | | Hi Joanne!
I'd like to say, first, how positive the responses were for your letter. I for one, beleive you. Why not? It has to be someone those souls reincarnate into! and you have discovered what most people don't...their old selves.
I'd love to talk. Want to chat? I think you sound like a very interesting person, and had a lot of courage to write that. |
Author: Genevieve
Friday, 09 July 1999 - 04:12 am | | All this reincarnation stuff is a bit fantastical isn't it? I realise I am probably treading on egg shells doing this, because you guys get sooooo heated up over stuff on these boards. I know there's been a few reincarnation stories in circulation for some time but there's no need to believe it! JtR sets off all kinds of emotions - and one of them seems to be people who think they are back from the dead. I won't be convinced but you can give it a try.
Genevieve |
Author: Caz
Friday, 09 July 1999 - 08:27 am | | Hi All,
Maybe all this reincarnation stuff IS a load of old nonsense, but what if our Jack was a believer? Perhaps we could look at the possibilities and see if it helps provide some sort of motive? I dunno, just a thought.
Have a great weekend all.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Genevive
Monday, 12 July 1999 - 05:51 am | | Eh, JtR believed in reincarnation? That's even more fantastical than someone today believing they are Nichols, or Kelly or whatever and is probably not even worth considering in view of all the if's and maybe's that would accompany such a line of questioning.
How can you suggest such a question? How on earth would someone go about researching whether JtR believed in reincarnation? We don't even know what his name was, let alone what his religious or spiritual beliefs were. And how would you link reincarnation and murder? Surely the point of murder is to do away with someone, but if reincarnation is a real phenomenon then that person would still come back thus defeating the object of the crime.
Why do some lines of questioning go off at such a tangent?
yours confused,
Genevieve
ps. Out of interest, how many claims of Ripper related reincarnation have their been? |
Author: Caz & Jules
Tuesday, 13 July 1999 - 12:43 am | | Hi All,
I did say it was just a thought, no need to get all worked up mate!
There were some really famous people in Victorian times who were also spiritualists, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Just keeping an open mind as usual.
See ya.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Genevieve
Tuesday, 13 July 1999 - 08:25 am | | No I wasn't really having a go - but I do notice that we don't always keep our feet firmly planted on the ground here. Jack the Ripper for all his crimes was a human being, so think in terms of human beings.
Everything has got so mixed up with conspiracy theories and freemasons et al, that we forget he just another man on the street.
Genevieve |
Author: Sci_Fi_Man
Monday, 02 August 1999 - 08:39 pm | | You know, I just noticed something that I never saw before. Just now, I was looking at the Kelly crime scene photo (taken from the door) and noticed something on the wall high above her body that looks like a hand-written cross. I don't recall anyone, then or now, who's ever put that up for discussion.
Robert Crawford
http://members.tripod.com/~Sci_Fi_Man/index.html |
Author: Christopher George
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 06:02 pm | | Hi, Bob:
The mark that you are talking about does not show up in all versions of the photograph, most of which are cropped off below the supposed "cross" high up on the wall above Mary Jane Kelly's right knee that you are talking about. However, although you might be right that we are looking at a hand drawn crucifix, more likely, in my opinion, it is a split in the paneling, much like a similar evident split a couple of feet to the right and somewhat above the mark you are talking about. Remember, in regards to the room at 13 Miller's Court, we are talking about a very crumby room, baseline poverty, and the paneling seems stained and broken and in a general mess. The deterioration of the paneling is another reason to doubt if it is really an "FM" we are looking at low down, almost hidden in the corner of the room, hardly a clue "for all to see" as the diary hoaxer would have us believe.
Chris George |
Author: Wolf
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 11:24 pm | | Hello Robert and Christopher george.
I really can't see any cross on the wall. I do see a very faint X mark. Is this what you mean? If it is, this is on the photograph and not on the wall. C-G, Stewart Evans posted a new picture of the Kelly photograph using the original glass negative, he then blew up the wall where the FM is supposed to be and guess what? there is no FM on the wall, not even something that vaguely looks like FM.
Wolf. |
Author: Jim DiPalma
Thursday, 05 August 1999 - 05:57 am | | Hi All,
OK, I started with the sepia version of the photo that Stewart posted, increased the resolution to 1280x1024, and cropped the area that shows both the cross in question and the split in the paneling to which Chris referred. To my eye, the object on the left does appear to be a crucifix hanging on the wall. It is larger and wider than the split, and too uniformly shaped to be either a split or hand-drawn.
Even if we accept that it's a crucifix, the significance is not clear to me. It's very common for an Irish Catholic woman to have a crucifix hanging on her bedroom wall.
Sure and me mother's name was Murphy,
Jim |
Author: D. Radka
Thursday, 05 August 1999 - 09:22 am | | Jim,
The cross looks two-dimensional, as if it were a phenomenon of the flat plate negative, not the room.
I know this might be controversial, but would you consider posting a maximum-resolution image of the entire photograph? It would be sensational to some, but also in the interests of serious Ripperology, I believe. Thank you.
David |
Author: Wolf
Thursday, 05 August 1999 - 01:15 pm | | Jim, what appears to be a cross is mearly a crack between the old doors used to seperate number 13 Miller's Court from the rest of number 26 Dorset street. Follow the verticle shaft of the "cross" down to just above Kelly's right knee and you will see a continuation of this crack. Also notice the width of door frame between the crack and the door panel is the same on the other side of the panel and corner of the wall. It is therefor a space between the partition. Remember what Elizabeth Prater said about being able to see light coming from Kelly's room whenever she walked up the stairs, (the stairs were on the other side of the partition,) it was probably from this crack.
Wolf. |
Author: Jim DiPalma
Monday, 09 August 1999 - 07:15 am | | Hi All,
Dave Radka: I tried boosting the resolution as you suggested, the image that resulted was actually of poorer quality than the original. I don't know for sure what the problem is - it could be a limitation of the software tool with which I am working, a consequence of working with grainy 19th century photographs, the original image may have been scanned at a low resolution, or some combination of the above. The result is not worth posting - a lot of fine detail apparent in the original is lost. This is, I think, a lesson to be learned. Applying modern image processing techniques to these grainy old photos is not 100% effective. Some refinements seem to work well, such as adjusting the B&W contrast. Others, like trying to increase the resolution of digital images that were scanned at a low resolution initially, do not work well at all. Enlargement is right out - even if enlarging an image taken with modern equipment, fine detail tends to be obscured.
In any event, Dave Yost was kind enough to send me a copy of the photograph that had apparently been scanned at a much higher resolution (judging by the file size).
To my eye, this copy clearly shows a sharp irregularity along the lower vertical axis of what appeared to be a crucifix - unless the crucifix was broken (unlikely), this must be a crack in the partition. The photo also shows a seperation in the partition along both the extended horizontal and vertical axis of the "crucifix" (I think this is the bit Wolf was referring to). Neither of these details appear in the "enhanced" version. Faced with this new information, I must retract my previous post - I'm now convinced the object in question is a seperation in the partition.
Just wondering, did we ever establish why the presence of a crucifix would have been significant? :-)
Cheers,
Jim |
Author: Jim DiPalma
Monday, 09 August 1999 - 07:31 am | | Hi All,
Oops, sorry gang, I was unaware there is a 90K filesize limit. The file is well over 600K, so I had to crop out the area in question to comply with the filesize limit. One more go:
I also notice the left arm of what seems to be a cross is not the same size or shape as the right arm, one more point that indicates this is a crack in the partition, and not a crucifix.
Cheers,
Jim |
Author: Jill
Monday, 09 August 1999 - 11:21 pm | | Hello All, Diana, Wolf,
Wolf-Sorry for being on the wrong bord previously.
All-On another board I commented that the "two" crucifixes viewable don't throw an extra shadow ont the wall as any object should. Further along the vertical lines with both crucifixes there are aligned cracks. It is a shadow of a crack.
Diana-Good thought, but not true. If it were a discolorisation of a crucifix hanging on the wall previously, it would be lighter than its surroundings instead of darker, certainly with such a lighter colored wall. The surroundings are discolored by dirt. A piece of wall hidden behind an object holds its true color more and therefor stands out contrastically lighter than its surroundings. This effect shows even more on black/white or sepia photographs, because you view contrast on them, not colors.
Jill |
Author: PJW1
Thursday, 16 December 1999 - 09:05 pm | | Reading all of these entries to date, I am somewhat overwhelmed by a sense of sadness that most of the messages have forgotten the following important fact.
The Whitechapel murderer was exactly that, a murderer, an as*hole. Who, or whatever was responsible for the sheer horrific, and utterly tragic extermination of several innocent women, does not warrant the obbsesive romantisised ideals that so many of us are all to willing to give the case.
Why the so obvious obssesion with the Kelly murder? Why is her death so blatantly percieved as the most romantic? These women are not film stars, but it seems to me that their notoriety has unfortunatley turned them into martyrs for the obsessive. By all means express an interest in the case, but remember one murder is the same as the next, pointless, and devestating for those most closley affected. There is no difference between Mary Jane Kelly, Liz Stride, James Bulger, Martin Luther King, Caroline Hogg, Julie Ward, Zoe Evans, Susie Lamplu, Kate Bushell, Jill Dando, Keith Blakelock, Stephen Lawrence, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Let these people rest in peace, without worrying if you can see a crucifix or a set of letters on the wall at at 13 Millers Court. For christs sake, that wall was saturated with the blood of a young women. Nothing will change that. Perhaps Im wrong, but I wonder what the Rippers victims would make of all this attention today, regarding their almost certainly agonisingly painfull, and immeadiatley sobering.................deaths? NUFF SAID. |
Author: Jon
Thursday, 16 December 1999 - 10:40 pm | | Richard
79,000 words is one long work, I will give it a shot, but cant guarantee when I will find the time to finish reading it.
I cant understand why anyone would put together such an extensive work then post it on the net for free.
Research is key to a successfull 'serious' work which makes me wonder why you refer to Marie Belloc Lowndes as Marie Lowndes Belloc....not once, which could be an oversight, but several times.....which could be betray the old adage, 'haste makes waste'.
However....back to the 'Paradigm'
(from the Greek, Paradeigma 'to show, side by side')
Jon |
Author: Jill
Friday, 17 December 1999 - 04:04 am | | | It's the next post |
|
|
|
|
