Tuesday, 27 July 1999 - 01:00 am
You are not raving. We are just sharing a cool site that's a cut above the rest....
Thanks for the verses Jon. A real tonic (to go with the mother's ruin, ie gin)
Love,
Caz
Tuesday, 27 July 1999 - 06:31 am
Joseph: Well said, sir.
Jon: you missed your calling. :-)
Caz: How ironic to think that while all the measures taken to bring Jack down (the extra patrols drafted into Whitechapel, the vigilance committees) failed, he may ultimately have been stopped by one of his victims. There is a certain poetic justice in that thought.
Cheers,
Jim
Tuesday, 27 July 1999 - 10:16 am
Hopefully Jack will ultimately be unmasked because of his own frailties. That would be my idea of poetic justice. And we'd all be making up a verse or three in cheering the bugger off to hell!
Cheers.
Love,
Caz
Tuesday, 27 July 1999 - 10:29 am
Let me say that I have spent many years in Law Enforcement and that is the perspective from which I wrote. In Law Enforcement we have to look at all possibilities, then try to find evidence to support or dispute them. I suggested that while many people felt Jack may have taken the apron piece to wipe off his knife, it was equally possible that he used it to stop his own blood flow. For that matter, it is also possible he used it to wrap an organ in or simply as a souvenir.
Let me reiterate why I added just that one possibility to my article. I have seen the results of many knife attaks in my time. I have been attacked with knives and I have even had to use one on a few minor occasions. If you do not have years of experience, hours of daily practice and a really weird talent for using a blade you are highly likely to end up cutting yourself in the type of action that Jack took against his victim. Even a surgeon, who spends all day making incisions does not have the necessary skill levels to conduct a violent knife attack without fear of self-injury. Stephen said it all in his analogy to O.J. and the broken glass cut.
To Villon, Jon (loved the poem) and all the others who have run with this ball, thank you for continuing my thoughts. To those who think it is preposterous or unreasonable remember that truth is stranger than fiction. We won't know unless all the possibilities are explored. If this proves to be yet another dead end, we will all bow to your wisdom, but in the meantime allow us our theories as we allow the theories of those who trespass against us.
Saturday, 31 July 1999 - 03:45 pm
Saturday, 31 July 1999 - 04:48 pm
Saturday, 31 July 1999 - 09:38 pm
Sunday, 01 August 1999 - 01:39 am
anon
Sunday, 01 August 1999 - 06:28 am
The theory that JTR died of blood poisoning is totally ridiculous - because I didn't think of it first!
It is probably one of the most original ideas which also has the advantage of being very possible, to be posted on these boards for many a month.
However we need to be careful we don't go off at a tangent. I cannot agree with the cauterisation theory simply for the reason that the fire was not hot enough to heat the blade to a sufficient temperature, given the available amount of time.
We know this is so because the ashes were still warm when examined the folowing afternoon. The only fire that can do this is one that smoulders, the sort of fire you get when you try to burn clothing. Since inspection of these ashes confirmed that the fuel was clothing, I think we can take that as read.
A fire that burns fiercely consumes fuel quickly and would thus extinguish itself sooner. It would also need a different type of fuel such as wood or more likely coal. The damaged kettle is a blind, there is absolutely nothing to say when the kettle was damaged.
I think this blood poisoning idea could very well use some concentrated research.
all for now
Bob Hinton
Sunday, 01 August 1999 - 08:32 am
Dear All,
The theory that JTR died of blood poisoning is totally ridiculous - because I didn't think of it first!
-------------------------------------------
Thanks for injecting that bit of humour, Bob :-)
Jon
Monday, 02 August 1999 - 06:22 am
The way in which these scars are created may have a bearing on this discussion.
The flesh is cut, either with a razor-like blade or with a sharp "poking" device, usually as an initiation/puberty ceremony. But as anyone knows, a simple cut will not always leave a scar. To ensure that predictable scar tissue will form on every wound, some African cultures rub animal dung into the wounds, allowing it to fester. It is obviously a very painful practice, but one which does not seem at all life-threatening.
Just a thought.... but if aboriginal cultures knowingly rub feces in their wounds, it doesn't seem as though blood poisoning would be a significant worry for them.
Monday, 02 August 1999 - 09:02 am
Would it depend on the quality, age and content of the dung?
I mean, animal dung that is fresh and totally composed of vegetable matter might be completely safe (and wonderful for the roses too!), whereas human faeces (full of dodgy hamburgers these days and God knows what in Victorian times?!) might not fit the bill so well.
But you make a good point, and certainly the human sewer-dwellers and scavengers contemporary to Jack's times appeared to enjoy rather rude health once they got used to the smell!
Love,
Caz
Monday, 02 August 1999 - 05:24 pm
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 01:47 am
Sorry, I presume you mean 'herbivorous' animals as opposed to carnivores?
Love,
Caz
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 01:54 am
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 01:04 pm
Diana, yes your doctor is right to say most pathogens are species specific. It is also true that by and large the faeces of vegetarian animals is far less rich in dangerous organisms than the faeces of carnivores, so rubbing, say, cow dung into an open wound would be a much less dangerous enterprise than doing the same with dog excrement.
We humans have an intestinal tract that is particularly well-stocked with nasty bugs. Of course a man MIGHT contaminate an open wound with human excrement and suffer no harm, but the likelihood is he would occasion some infection, very probably of a serious nature.
Hope this helps with the apparent discrepancy.
I doubt sewer workers of the time did generally enjoy rude good health. The Victorians, even physicians, had pretty crude methods of assessing health. A fleshy body and ruddy cheeks were taken to signify good health back then, but probably wouldn't be seen to do so now. A fleshy man with a florid complexion can still be harbouring all manner of disease, from atheroma down to parasitic hepatitis.
It would be interesting to have a breakdown of their life expectancy and the most common cause of death. They must have been laden with parasitic and bacterial infestation. My bet is they had to succumb to something like hepatitis or even cancer, sooner rather than later, given the general standard of nutrition and medicine available.
best regards
Mike
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 01:14 pm
Diana, yes your doctor is right to say most pathogens are species specific. It is also true that by and large the faeces of vegetarian animals is far less rich in dangerous organisms than the faeces of carnivores, so rubbing, say, cow dung into an open wound would be a much less dangerous enterprise than doing the same with dog excrement.
We humans have an intestinal tract that is particularly well-stocked with nasty bugs. Of course a man MIGHT contaminate an open wound with human excrement and suffer no harm, but the likelihood is he would occasion some infection, very probably of a serious nature.
Hope this helps with the apparent discrepancy.
I doubt sewer workers of the time did generally enjoy rude good health. The Victorians, even physicians, had pretty crude methods of assessing health. A fleshy body and ruddy cheeks were taken to signify good health back then, but probably wouldn't be seen to do so now. A fleshy man with a florid complexion can still be harbouring all manner of disease, from atheroma down to parasitic hepatitis.
It would be interesting to have a breakdown of their life expectancy and the most common cause of death. They must have been laden with parasitic and bacterial infestation. My bet is they had to succumb to something like hepatitis or even cancer, sooner rather than later, given the general standard of nutrition and medicine available.
best regards
Mike
Tuesday, 03 August 1999 - 06:40 pm
I feel some people on these boards haven't recognized the philosophical importance of this, for the most part.
2. I am still thinking about Dr. Villon's position that it would likely have been impossible for a non-medical person to remove uteri from the victims under the conditions. My thinking on this point originates from a powerhouse, hardball post made by Yazoo near the end of 1998, still in the archives I believe. Yazoo stated that contemporaneous qualified medical opinion, and he several times reiterated QUALIFIED, held that no medical skill whatever was indicated in the wounds to the victims. I am now thinking that Dr. Bond may have been apprising the wounds in an insufficiently dynamical way, and so may have answered the wrong question. The question he answered was whether or not the wounds on the bodies were made in such a manner as to indicate a medical doctor doing the incising; he answered no essentially because too many of the cuts went in the wrong direction, didn't accomplish any particular goal, or cut right through tissues that didn't need to be cut through. A doctor would "know what he was doing," and there wouldn't be any trial and error of this nature. But perhaps the question should have rather been "Would the accomplishment of the goal of the mutilations require the skills of a doctor?" If the goal is the removal of the uterus, the answer, at least according to Dr. Villon, would have to be yes, because the uterus is so angled and embedded into the pelvis that it would be impossible to remove by anyone other than an experienced medical doctor under those conditions. I believe Bond may have answered only the former question, and may have not known the appropriateness of posing the latter, in view of the absence of reference to the relative difficulties of accomplishing this teleological purpose of the mutilations in his thinking. I'd like to ask the experts here to think about this and comment, please--Which question did Bond answer? Did he answer the right question?
I don't believe people here have recognized the implications of this second point of discussion either. If removal of the uteri from Chapman and Eddowes required the skills of a medical doctor, we have drastically cut down the number of suspects. Among short-list serious suspects, only Chapman and Tumblety would reasonably appear to even POSSIBLY have had the likely skills, and perhaps not even Tumblety, since he was a quack herb doctor without much if any formal medical training. There is a remote possibility that Kosminski might have had these skills since he was a hairdresser, and a few barbers in those days also did meatball medical jobs. McNaghten wrongly wrote that Ostrog and Druitt were doctors. Shattering implication: If we can't make Chapman, Tumblety or Kosminski work, we maybe can't ever catch the Ripper. If he is not one of these three, we RUN OUT of suspects right there--the real Ripper was some medical man for whom there is no evidence in the case whatever. How could we find him now?
It is strange that few among us have recognized the import of (1) and (2), two views which have been around the boards for three weeks now. BOTH seem to indicate the murderer might have had a medical person's basic instincts. NEITHER are represented in the serious literature of the case, to my knowledge. I'd like to ask for reflection and comment.
One thing is getting me ticked off on these boards. "anon" is posting that my posts are "useless" in his opinion. The above post represents serious thinking on my part, and is not unlike a number of other serious posts I've made. The assertion that my posts are "useless" is maybe incorrect--perhaps the response I am getting is what is useless. If "anon" thinks this post is useless too, let him say in detail why.
David
Wednesday, 04 August 1999 - 01:42 am
All posts can be useful to someone, some are obviously more useful than others. But you surely can't take any of anon's plaintive whinings seriously! I thought better of you than that.
You make some excellent points here.
I'd like to ask you and Mike if there is any way you feel that a quick-learning, VERY enthusiastic, not to say obsessed bystander (but not a medical student as such) could have observed or assisted Victorian surgeons, doctors or pathologists at work (by invitation as a close friend or relative perhaps?), and so eventually acquire enough practical knowledge to retrieve his wombs, kidney, whatever, when he launched himself into his Whitechapel butchering 'career'.
Love,
Caz
Wednesday, 04 August 1999 - 02:37 am
I'm not qualified to answer your question but can give extra information about bystanders, from the book "Er is leven voor de dood: Tweehonderd jaar gezondheidszorg in Vlaanderen" (Translation: There is life before death: Two hundred years of healthcare in Flanders) Publisher Pelckmans.
They said because of the big chance patients not surviving surgery, they kept the performance of operations very low. So low that almost every time medical people were invited to watch and learn, from the operation done in a medical arena.
Cheers,
Jill