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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 February 26, 1999
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Mary Jane Kelly:
The Kelly Crime Scene Photographs:
Archive through February 26, 1999
Author: Stephen P. Ryder
Tuesday, 01 December 1998 - 08:34 pm |        | A new article by Stewart P. Evans has been posted on the CASEBOOK: DISSERTATIONS section, entitled "The Kelly Crime Scene Photographs."
It discusses the history of the photographs, the differences between them, and the various books which have reprinted copies of each one.
The article can be reached directly at:
http://ripper.wildnet.co.uk/dst-kelly.htm
Feel free to use this new section to discuss your thoughts on the article. (And apologies, Stewart, for not getting it on-line earlier... its been a madhouse lately!)
Stephen P. Ryder
Administrator |
Author: GTE/elmer
Thursday, 28 January 1999 - 11:15 pm | | | I just finished reading about one of the victims in the Jack The Ripper case, she is known as "Polly" Nichols, and I was just wondering if anyone realizes that at one point, in August of 1888, Mary Ann Nichols had Elizabeth Strides bonnet. How did she aquire it? Because Elizabeth Stride was found dead in August, and Mary Ann Nichols was the last victim? Does anyone else smell a rat here, or is it just me? Thanks. Because I tend to suspect Mary Ann Nichols as the woman who was the murderer. |
Author: Bob_c
Friday, 29 January 1999 - 04:19 am | | Hi GTE,
Huh?
Your calendar runs backwards.
Bob |
Author: Christopher T. George
Friday, 29 January 1999 - 10:17 am | | Thank you to Stewart Evans and to Stephen Ryder for Stewart's dissertation on the famous Mary Jane Kelly photograph in Miller's Court. We all appreciate this discussion with full references of the rediscovery of the photograph and its subsequent publication in a number of Ripper books. The discussion though I believe only encompasses the main MJK photograph in two versions of the same photograph which shows the full length corpse of MJK with the horrendous mutilations wrought by the killer. Less well known is a smaller photograph of the crime scene also in the same album at the Public Record Office, Kew. This picture first appeared in Shirley Harrison's "The Diary of Jack the Ripper" in 1993, and the caption in Harrison's book runs as follows: "The second picture, reproduced here for the first time, was taken from the opposite direction, looking towards her table, piled with the flesh from her abdomen and thighs." Interestingly, there is also a record in sketch form of the actual photographing of the scene, or at least an artist's representation thereof. It is one of the sketches of the crime (top, 2nd from left) which appeared on the cover of "The Illustrated Police News" of November 17, 1888, and it is captioned "Photographing the body." This sketch shows the photographer on the left side of the bed, i.e., presumably from the angle of the second and smaller photograph. The photographer is busy photographing the corpse with his head under the fabric hood of his old fashioned tripod camera while a uniformed police constable stands at his side. The cover of this issue of "The Illustrated Police News" may be seen among the illustrations in Begg et al.'s "The Jack the Ripper A to Z."
Chris George |
Author: Christopher T. George
Friday, 29 January 1999 - 10:37 am | | Further to my previous post about the second, smaller photograph of the Mary Jane Kelly crime scene, I note on rereading Stewart's dissertation that this smaller photograph is indeed mentioned under the description of Photograph No. 2 - NSY/MJK2 as "the second Kelly photograph taken from the opposite side of the bed - ref. NSY/MJK3". Again, though, as I said in regard to Stewart's description the two photographs, Photograph No. 1 - CLP/MJK1, and Photograph No. 2 - NSY/MJK2, are different versions of the famous, larger photograph, not the larger and smaller photographs, respectively. The small photograph appears on the same page as Photograph No. 2 - NSY/MJK2 - in the album returned to New Scotland Yard in 1988. Both the larger and smaller photographs may be seen side by side on the album page reproduced as an illustration in Shirley Harrison's "The Diary of Jack the Ripper."
Chris George |
Author: kelly pippin
Tuesday, 23 February 1999 - 06:20 am | | I think these photos are the most gruesome of any seriel killers work ever: even more so then the 1969 killing of sharon tate, 8 months pregnant (which i have seen) As an american ripperfile, i would like to say that i would like to see more pictures of the victims if possible. Does anyone think there ever were any taken of the edowes crime scene or annie chapman?
Kelly Pippin |
Author: Caroline
Tuesday, 23 February 1999 - 08:48 am | | Hi adrienne,
Or have I missed the 'point' again?
Love,
Caroline |
Author: D. Radka
Tuesday, 23 February 1999 - 01:33 pm | | Caroline,
No you haven't, and I see you're shrewd enough to catch Jack the Ripper to boot.
David |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Tuesday, 23 February 1999 - 08:06 pm | | Kelly - welcome to the Casebook.
Yes, the photographs of Mary Jane Kelly are quite disturbing, and certainly almost border on the pornographic. They are an excellent antidote to the occasional temptation to romanticise the Ripper for his coolness, or lose track of the case in the Victorian story-land atmosphere around it.
There is most certainly a mortuary photograph of Annie Chapman, though if it is gore you're after, you'll be quite disappointed, as the photo is of her face with a blanket drawn up to hide the wounds to her throat. As an aside, the most explicit photographs are those of Kelly in situ and two photographs of Catharine Eddowes; one a closeup of her slashed face, stitched together in order to assist in identification, and one of her in full frontal nudity, propped up against a wall. There is also a third of her lying in some sort of coffin, without any covering, though this is more of a head and neck photograph.
Most any Ripper book on the market reproduces the photos of the victims; as you live in America, your local Barnes & Noble or Borders ought to have a copy of either Paul Begg's "JTR: The Uncensored Facts" or Philip Sugden's "The Complete History of JTR," both of which have views of the canonical five victims.
When you ask for an "Eddowes crime scene photograph," I assume you mean one taken during the time the body was there or soon thereafter. No such photograph exists, though Paul Begg's book reproduces a plan of Mitre Square that was prepared for Eddowes' inquest. There are a number of photos of Mitre Square, some of which show the murder spot and some that do not. You'll find a picture of it in the Sugden book.
Hope this helps.
Christopher-Michael |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 23 February 1999 - 08:49 pm | | Hey!
This is a long way of adding my "Welcome" to CM's, Kelly. He knows that of which he speaks...and then some!
You should ignore what follows as it does not apply to you.
I try to assume every post is legit until proven otherwise. I once worried about a certain 11 year old being on these boards -- needlessly, it turned out.
I am concerned about a 19 year old who uses Kelly's death scene photograph as a jumping-off point for her acid meditation, makes statements about being aroused by the victims' wounds and mutilations, and flips from the role of victim to victimizer rather rapidly.
Adrienne may not be real. Only the Casebook sys admin stands a chance of making a first guess at that. If Adrienne is not a figment of someone's imagination, I hope she'll take my comments to heart and at least cease making Jack the Ripper the Loading Platform for her next eight-mile high.
I have often felt uneasy about exactly who I was talking to at any given time. The Casebook has demonstrated that identifying-information (your "address") is not easy to fake or forge. But whether Adrienne is real or a put-on, the sentiments or ideas contained in that post were disturbing and glaring...at least to me. So real or fake, someone has got a problem. This isn't a Hot-Line or Crisis Center; which is where that post should have been sent.
But dozens of people have asked about these photographs -- I remember a small army of high-school kids on the old boards (American version -- don't know Euro equivalents). All normal curiousity.
I don't see the same things in Kelly as I did in Adrienne.
In our current environment -- and unless or until the uglier elements of Message Board Life can be minimized -- we'll all go nuts disbelieving everyone else's identity. Read what you can in the message, not the messenger.
Also, to everyone else: Sorry I blew my top about the Adrienne post. It was the content of her thoughts and feelings -- not so much the mention of drugs; though I think the drugs would only aggravate the problem(s) -- that set me off. Still...no excuse. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Yaz |
Author: Christopher T. George
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 12:40 am | | Hey, Yaz:
I don't think you are wrong to be concerned about the psychological health of a few people who visit these boards, and I can see why you were upset enough to respond as you did to the Adrienne post. I also thought that the advice that you dispensed about the waste that drug abuse causes was very well said. I worry about people who are excited about the Ripper crime photographs for the wrong reasons and am also concerned if as is indicated drug use is involved in their consideration of the photographs. It is a sad world, but perhaps with our words and our advice we can say the right thing and improve a sad situation.
Chris George |
Author: Rotter
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 02:48 am | | MILWAUKEE -- A woman committed to a mental hospital for an ax attack on a man in May 1989 -- described as her attempt to bring Jack the Ripper back from the dead -- is due for a court review this week on her request for transfer to a minimum-security facility.
The article quoted above shows that it is quite justified to worry about some of the people who might turn up on the boards. We might not have gotten to that point yet-I think our teenager was just trying to get a rise out of us-but as the Casebook gets more visitors the loon quotient will rise. |
Author: Caroline
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 03:36 am | | Sorry Yaz, if I have contributed to the worsening of this situation. I really would like to help however many people are posting here, airing personal problems. Could I ask you to take a sneaky peaky (Hi Eurotrash fans!) over at my Diary: knitting fog board, because I can't handle this all by my lonesome any more. I told Hubby and he says just to ignore, but it's mighty difficult when Little Caz is involved.
Thanks a bunch.
Love,
Caroline |
Author: Caroline
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 05:13 am | | Buck up, Kelly Pippin,
I'm truly sorry for my remarks. I've just caught the tail end of my favourite song on Capital Radio.
I think it was written for you, girl. Listen to those words, lose yourself in the music, and I really hope it makes a difference to your life.
Oh, sorry, you want the name of the singer and the song?
R. Kelly, of course, belting out 'I believe I can fly', real soul therapy.
Lots of love,
Caroline |
Author: Julilla
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 03:36 pm | | :::::::::Julilla delurks with a flourish:::::::::
I don't know that anyone need really worry about Adrienne, as bizarre as her post may have been. She sounds to me rather like a Goth girl. Teens full of angst and darkness and the hormone induced feeling that no one in the world can possibly understand them. With a plethora of Anne Rice books on the shelf, perhaps having dabbled in magick of the sort that one can buy at B. Dalton's in the cheesy "Occult" section, her room is most likely filled with candles and various personal reminders of her feelings as an outcast with a painful life. Thoughts like aestheticism and death are topics which are probably dear to her heart (and those of her friends).
Give her a couple years out from under her parent's thumbs and she will blossom into her own person, perhaps still a little dark, but mystified as to why she was such a morbid teen.
I know plenty of old Goths who have turned out to be remarkably normal citizens. If you had asked their parents at the time what would have become of them, I'm sure they would have told you that their child would end up a serial murderer or a suicide. Now they are computer programmers, pr people, journalists and administrative assitants. :)
Julilla |
Author: Julilla
Wednesday, 24 February 1999 - 03:39 pm | | :::::::::Julilla delurks with a flourish:::::::::
I don't know that anyone need really worry about Adrienne, as bizarre as her post may have been. She sounds to me rather like a Goth girl. Teens full of angst and darkness and the hormone induced feeling that no one in the world can possibly understand them. With a plethora of Anne Rice books on the shelf, perhaps having dabbled in magick of the sort that one can buy at B. Dalton's in the cheesy "Occult" section, her room is most likely filled with candles and various personal reminders of her feelings as an outcast with a painful life. Thoughts like aestheticism and death are topics which are probably dear to her heart (and those of her friends).
Give her a couple years out from under her parent's thumbs and she will blossom into her own person, perhaps still a little dark, but mystified as to why she was such a morbid teen.
I know plenty of old Goths who have turned out to be remarkably normal citizens. If you had asked their parents at the time what would have become of them, I'm sure they would have told you that their child would end up a serial murderer or a suicide. Now they are computer programmers, pr people, journalists and administrative assitants. :)
Julilla |
Author: Karoline Leach
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 01:26 pm | | Let's face it - anyone who WANTS to look at these photos (as opposed to having to do so for some academic purpose), must be at high risk of weirdness. This entire area is dangerously ambiguous, and the slightest hint of the wrong kind of approach really ought to be taken seriously. It isn't enough to shrug and say 'hey, it's just a phase'.
Maybe Kelly has a therapist who really needs to know what she's doing in her spare time. And maybe the last thing she needs is encouragement.
I just don't think this is the kind of material anyone can afford to be complacent over
Karoline |
Author: Julilla
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 03:44 pm | | Weird? Yes. Of extremely bad taste? Absolutely. Showing an incredible lack of sympathy? Unfortunately yes.
I think some people are able to somehow 'detach' when they look at the photos. I'm certainly not one of those, I can hardly look at them at all. However, I do have a friend who immediately wanted to look at the Kelly photo when I told her about it. She had an entirely different reaction than I had, she was fascinated and repelled at the same time. Personally, I had to keep from crying when I first saw it.
All I'm saying is that someone wanting to see the photos are probably like the idiots who cause traffic jams because of rubbernecking car accidents on the freeway. Most people say they hate people like that and find it disgusting...but end up doing it anyway.
Adrienne's bizarro letter could be meaningless or it could mean she needs help. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. I would like to ask her however if she fully realizes that Mary Kelly was a human being who didn't deserve to be murdered (as if anyone does). It's one thing to have some romantic notion in your head (although what precisely hers is, I've no idea) and quite another to fully understand how horrible these crimes were.
These were *real* people, who were *truly* murdered. It's not a book, and it's not a movie. I wonder sometimes if people can fully grasp that.
Julilla |
Author: Yazoo
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 03:57 pm | | By the way...welcome, Julilla! Glad you decided to "de-lurk" (or "un-lurk?" We'll have to ask Avala, the uncrowned king of lurking about thresholds, for the official jargon! grins)
Yaz |
Author: Julilla
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 04:34 pm | | Thanks Yaz! I feel like I know a lot of you, having perused the boards for about three weeks. In any case, I am new at all of this JtR stuff, so I don't have any wonderful theories or anything like that. Though I have wondered to myself half-jokingly if he was even human. *sigh*
But oddly enough, I understand why y'all do this. I am struck suddenly with the feeling that if I only knew just a little more, or if I could figure it out the right way...I'd nail this bastard! Every day my boyfriend asks me what new info I've learned about Jack. He gives me fun little details like "Oh sure, if you know the right way to do it, you can asphyxiate and kill someone in less than a minute." Greeeeeat. At least I have a sounding board to try to puzzle it all out.
So who's with me? Let's nail the nutcase!
Julilla |
Author: Julian
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 07:38 pm | | G'day Julilla, We're all with you!
Everyone I talk to reckons it was a royal conspiracy and can't be convinced to look any further.
One thing that has got me confused about the second (smaller) photo is that it's supposed to be taken looking across Mary's body toward the table. How can this be when the bed was flush against the wall? To have taken that photo the photographer would have had to have been lying on the bed next to Mary. ( I think I'm gunna be sick). And as someone else has suggested the cameras used in those days were the old tripod type. How'd the photographer fit that in?
And yes, the photo's are disturbing in that they portray the brutality that people are capable of. I don't think we have to necessarily worry about people with strange thoughts being attracted to this site for a glimpse of some old black and white photos of mutilated women, There are far worse sites than this one all in living (sic) colour.
Anyway if someone could help explain that second photo I'd appreciate it.
Hey. I've managed to get through this post without swearing. Sh*t. Wonders can happen.
Jules |
Author: D. Radka
Thursday, 25 February 1999 - 08:15 pm | | Jules,
For the second photograph, the photographer must have pulled the foot of Mary Jane's bed out from the wall, and then set up between the wall and the bed. At least that is how it looks to me.
There were many more victim photographs taken than are available today. The City CID took a number of crime scene photographs of Catherine Eddowes, there were I believe crime scene shots of Annie Chapman also. Probably in somebody's attic now.
David |
Author: Anonymous
Friday, 26 February 1999 - 05:06 am | | How did that happen, or am I entering The Twilight Zone like Edana?
Same e-mail address, same name, three posts, two with one persona, one so changed and so quckly, in fact, within the space of one hour!
Anyone else notice?
Anne Onnymous |
Author: Ashling
Friday, 26 February 1999 - 06:52 am | | Hi Anonymous. You lost me, as to who you meant, probably because I'm tired. Do I notice any weird or suspicious posts? Sure, all the time. When I have a headache and/or need a nap -- I'm sure 2 out of 3 "people" posting are = =
1) A child (ish) sneaking onto Mom & Dad's computer.
2) A teenager or college student pretending to be an author, in hopes of "manipulating" the regulars here into doing ALL their research for a school paper.
3) A very bored or very lonely person setting up several identities & conducting imaginary conversations with themselves.
4) ??? Who the heck knows?
I've seen similiar posts on other sites, so I doubt it's a matter of the darkness of these topics attracting disturbed people. I try not to practice medicine without a license ... I could do way more harm than good trying to lecture or help. And I could be wrong in my suspicions. I've been wrong on more than one occasion in my life. : ) Okay, lots of times.
On sunshiny days I focus on = =
1) Some people who post here are verifibly real, like authors with their pictures on book jackets, etc., etc.
2) I am learning tons about a deeply interesting subject. Finding things to feel passionate about in the Fall of my life is something I'm grateful for.
3) I'm getting practice at not taking myself so serious. Had to "bite my tongue" a lot when I first began posting, but I'm getting better ... don't take half these posts as a personal challenge anymore. I can agree to disagree Silently.
Works for me, most days.
Sorry to bend everyone's ear so long. This wasn't off topic, just stretched it quite a bit. About Mary's photos ... They make my stomach hurt, but keep me from getting too detached. Strangely, they have humanized Mary Jane for me in a way that no posed portrait could have done.
Take care,
Ashling |
Author: Caroline
Friday, 26 February 1999 - 08:30 am | | Hi Ashling,
I can see you care deeply about everyone posting here, and you sound very much like one of the posters I have come to know and trust.
I can't go along with your cynicism though, regarding most of the posters here. And I think there are moves afoot to trace where the 'disturbed' ones are coming from. (How is this going Yaz?) I don't know enough about computers to give any assurances myself. Like DNA testing, I am cynical about anything supposedly watertight.
I'm worried slightly, from a personal point of view, that you mention the child 'sneaking' onto these boards, because if you mean who I think you do, then you may be wrong about other genuine posters too.
Do these people, all posing as other 'people' never leave their homes I wonder? How do they find the time in between the VAT returns, the school runs, their social lives, feeding their families, whatever? Beats the shi* out of me.
I've heard of nerdy types who use their computers as some kind of escape from boredom. I happen to think that anyone that bored with life needs a gentle talking to, when I think of the 50 or so books I have waiting to be read, and the friends I am very lucky to have around me providing endless entertainment, all at very little cost financially I hasten to add, before someone tells me I've got it so easy.
Anyway, Ashling, sorry to hear about the tiredness and/or headaches. I take the point you make about trying to help too. I think I'll steer clear of this angle myself, it only seems to make matters worse.
Take care, everyone, and have a good weekend.
Love,
Caroline |
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