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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » General Discussion » Maps showing movements « Previous Next »

  Thread Last Poster Posts Pages Last Post
Archive through December 30, 2003Richard Brian Nunwee25 12-30-03  2:35 am
Archive through January 09, 2004Christian Jaud25 1-09-04  11:50 am
Archive through January 16, 2004Chris Scott25 1-16-04  4:13 pm
Archive through January 22, 2004Jeff Hamm25 1-22-04  3:16 pm
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Jeff Hamm
Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 199
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2004 - 3:22 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Alex,
Thanks for those reports. It looks to me that the unidentified witnesses are probably Lawende and Levy. Still, it's good to know even if having a 2nd sighting would have been "useful".

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 206
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2004 - 11:02 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Being the idiot that I am, I just realised that my sims have PC Watkins going the wrong way round his beat!!!!! I'll fix that up.

- Jeff EggOnFace
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Jeff Hamm
Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 207
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2004 - 11:59 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Ok, having fixed this up, things change a bit.

Basically, it now looks like PC Watkins patrols and exits St. James Place by about 1:36. This means, the escape route out St. James Place is free of Watkins the entire time. The only thing Jack has to do is avoid PC Harvey as he comes down Bevis Mark. So, if Jack sees Harvey coming up Church Passage right away, he can bolt out through St. James Place and not have hide from Watkins at all.

Going out the main entrance to Mitre Square and turning towards Algate is out, as he then bumps into Watkins. But, out the main entrance, up towards King Street, then out along Bury works (or out through St. James). And of course, as always, out through Church Passage after PC Harvey exits it still works.

Basically, with the patrols going in the right direction now, it starts to look like heading through St. James Place may have happened, either via the alley or from Mitre Street.

The exit through Bury street is just an alternative, which would avoid the more populated St. James Place though.

Sorry for all the misleading posts earlier. It was looking pretty "thread the needle" like at first. Too bad Watkins didn't patrol in the opposite direction as there was a much better chance of catching Jack that way!

- Jeff
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Monty
Chief Inspector
Username: Monty

Post Number: 686
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 11:17 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Alex, Jeff,

So the keeping of newspaper clippings in police files because it covers the Kelly inquest ?

I find that very odd. It seem as if they are relying on the press to take inquest notes.

But thanks anyway.

Jeff,

I agree about the lamps. They would only be of use up close. At a distance they would be an indicator that someone was there really.

Monty
:-)
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Alex Chisholm
Detective Sergeant
Username: Alex

Post Number: 66
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 2:08 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Monty

While I can’t be sure why the report was in the Met files, I would not think it strange if this was because of the Kelly inquest coverage. Newspaper coverage of Inquests offered a reasonably reliable, readily accessible source, which could be used for general reference by the police. Don’t forget, full inquest coverage from the Times, for Tabram through to Eddowes, is contained within official Home Office files.

On the other hand, newspaper reports detailing various incidents are scattered throughout both Home Office and Police files, presumably held because the report and/or the incident was of particular interest to the authorities concerned.

So perhaps this extract was held in the files because of the report about witness descriptions, and not Kelly’s inquest. Or it may have been the “correspondent” who disclosed the “confidentially communicated” information to the press that was of interest to the police. Your guess will be as good as any, although I still think the Kelly inquest coverage offers the most likely explanation.

Best wishes
alex

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Jeff Hamm
Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 208
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 2:41 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Might the police simply have kept the newspaper reports to compare "confessions" with what was known to the public? Meaning, if a confession revealed only publicly known information and nothing the police "held back", they might suspect they have a false confession (especially if the public details are not quite right and the police know it?)

- Jeff
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Alex Chisholm
Detective Sergeant
Username: Alex

Post Number: 67
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 7:47 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sounds feasible to me, Jeff, although this might lead to the accumulation of quite a collection of newspaper cuttings in police files.

Perhaps posters with hands-on experience of police investigations might be able to enlighten us.

Best wishes
alex

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Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris

Post Number: 850
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Saturday, January 24, 2004 - 5:09 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

jeff
A couple of illustrations that may help with your reconstructions on Miller's Court:

md1
md2
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Richard Brian Nunweek
Chief Inspector
Username: Richardn

Post Number: 614
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Sunday, January 25, 2004 - 4:24 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Chris,
I am a bit puzzled by the layout inside kellys room. what is the to the righthand side of the bed , it appears to be a washstand, surely that was not present when the picture was taken?.and where is the table,that was to the left of the bed. the table and chairs, look about right.
Intresting there appears to be a bottle of beer, on the mantlepeice, and the candle was also there.
Did kelly not tell Maxwell, she had had some beer, and brought it up?.
I also believed the candle was on the bedside table, so who moved that?.
fascinating stuff.
Richard.
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Jeff Hamm
Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 209
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Sunday, January 25, 2004 - 4:20 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi,
I would think the police, if they were keeping things as records of what were released, wouldn't keep all of the reports. They probably just kept the ones which best summarised the basic information. And, even if the motive I've suggested is incorrect (which it probably is), these reports were probably kept for the fact they were typed summaries, and therefore easier to read?

However, I would think that any information they had that expressly contradicted the newspaper reports would be given priority.

- Jeff
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Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris

Post Number: 875
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 2:39 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jeff
here is one more thing that may be of use in your reconstruction work - you may have seen it before. It is a contemporary plan of Miller's Court
Chris

milplan
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RipperHistorian
Unregistered guest
Posted on Sunday, March 14, 2004 - 8:31 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hey Chris,

Could you please tell me where you got the large scale map of Whitechapel in 1894? I am interested in getting one.

Also, how did you put the colored line on it that represent people?

Thanks,

Tim
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sarah portsmouth
Unregistered guest
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 8:10 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

hi
i'm looking for some good maps can you help


sarah
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 656
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 6:50 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi,
I've been playing around with some "spatial" analysis of the JtR series. Basically, I wanted to locate points that have some sort of statistical quality to them. Whether or not these indicate anything of interest to the crimes themselves is, of course, unknown.

However, to give you an idea of what I was thinking, the idea was to try and locate points of "centrality", meaning the centre of the crimes. Now, there are different ways to describe just what one means by the "centre".

The most common way to estimate the centre of a distribution is to just average the values. The nice thing about the average is that it minimises the "sum of the squared differences" (meaning, if you subtract the average value from all the individual values, then square those numbers, and finally add them all up, this value will be a minimum compared to selecting any other value to initially subtract). The "mean centre" (mean is just another word for the average value), then represents the location that has the smallest squared distance between all the crimes. So, if JtR was trying to minimise travelling distance between his "home" and his crimes, then the mean centre would be a good place to start from. Because the mean minimises the square difference,locations that tend to be far away have "more impact" on the average, and pull it towards those locations.

Now, a 2nd idea is the "median centre". The median score of a set of numbers is the value below which 50% of the scores fall, and above which 50% of the scores fall. Where the mean centre minimises the squared difference, the median value minimises the "total travelling time". Where the "mean centre" can be calculated by simply averaging the x and y coordinates of the individual crimes, the median centre has to be found by brute force (try each location, get the total distance from that location to each crime, and find the location that has the smallest total).

Now, if JtR were to live somewhere in the "centre" of his crimes, then both the mean and median centre's seem like good places to consider. But, the one assuption both of these calculations make is that JtR wonders out from this location in all directions with equal probability. What if, for example, he always headed "one way", and had a tendency to put a set amount of distance between himself and his home base (keep the crimes away from home to help avoid detection)? If this is the case, both the mean and the median centre will not be near his home base, but rather will move towards the "crime scenes".

For example, draw a circle on a piece of graph paper, then pick a bunch of points all on one side of the circle. If you just average the coordinates of the selected points, you end up with a location that does not represent the centre of the circle from which these points were drawn, but a location that has the "crimes" on one side and the "centre" on the other.

To find the "centre of the circle", on needs to calculate the "standard deviation centre". The standard deviation is a measure of variability, so the idea is to reduce the variability between the distances travelled. As with the median centre, this has to be located by trying all the locations on the map and finding the one with the smallest variability between the distances. With the "circle" example, since all the points we marked are "on the circle" that means they are all the same distance from the centre of the circle, so there would be 0 variability between these distances at the centre of the circle, and all other points would have some variability (the scores would not all be the same).

Anyway, that being said, I've calculated the mean, median, and s.d. centres for the JtR crimes. And, given the fact I'm about as unsure about Stride as one can get, I decided to calculate these locations both including and excluding Stride's crime location. This has led to some interesting observations.

First, I'll post the maps. The "colours" (blue, green, red, and yellow) are just ways of coding the values at "other points". Basically, yellow points are locations that have values closer to the calculated centre than red points, which are closer than green points, which are closer than blue points. However, the way I decide "what is yellow, red, green, and blue" is a bit simplistic, so I wouldn't make too much of the borders.

First, I'll post the maps excluding Stride, then the maps including Stride.

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 657
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 6:55 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here is the "mean centre" excluding Stride:

MeanCentreXStride

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 658
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 6:57 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here is the "median Centre" excluding Stride

MedCentreXStride

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 659
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 7:01 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here is the "standard deviation" centre, excluding Stride:

SDCentreXStride


Sorry about how dark this one is, again, it's my "colour coding scheme". Basically, what's interesting in this one is the centre is just to the left of Stride's murder (and remember, she's not included in this calculation). What this means is that all the other crimes fall almost exactly on the circumference of a circle that is almost centred on Stride's murder.

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 660
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 7:06 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here's the "mean centre" with Stride included:

MeanCentreWStride

Here's the "median centre" with Stride included:

MedCentreWStride

Note how this one is quite similar to the median centre with Stride excluded.

And finally, here's the "standard deviation" centre, when Stride is included:

sdCentreWStride

And notice how this one changes quite a bit.

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 661
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 7:32 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Now, is there anything interesting about these? Sort of. The median centre maps, and to a lesser extent the mean centre maps, have some interesting aspects to them.

First, the distance to both Annie and Mary's murder scene is very small, while the other crimes are more distant. Personally, this makes a lot of sense to me, especially in the case of Annie Chapman. Annie was killed as the sun was comming up. It seems to me, if JtR is going to risk getting his hands covered in blood, and carrying around some bits of human flesh, etc, then given that the sun is on it's way up, he probably doesn't have to go that far to "get out of sight". It makes sense if he lives very close by. And, there is some suggestion that either Mary was killed in the morning (again day time if you go with the "she was seen at 9 am" testimony), or that someone (her killer?) may have walked out of the court around 6 am (I think? footsteps?), which is again with the sun probably starting to rise. Again, one might think such a risk would be more likely to be taken if the person doesn't have far to travel before being able to get "out of sight".

Also, with the "median centre" (either one), the line that connects Mitre Square with the centre passes very close to where the apron was found. And, to the extent that one believes the apron was dropped as the killer left the scene but before they got home, then this correspondance is perfectly reasonable to expect (he's going to travel straight home).

The "mean centre" is probably not too bad in this respect either.

The Standard deviation centre, excluding Stride, provides an interesting, but entirely theoretical, notion. And no, personally, I don't put much in this but it's such a "fun" notion that I can't really help myself.

Ok, here goes. One issue that has been of great debate is how Mr. BS attacks Stride with so very little apparent "warm up period" of conversation (which witnesses of Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes would lead us to believe was typical of JtR's pre-attack behaviour). Now, let's say JtR normally crosses the main street, and likes to be at least a certain distance from home when looking for victims. But, this time, he's almost home and he sees what he takes to be a prostitute almost on his own doorstep! So, he loses it, attacks her and kills her. Then, realising what he's just done (brought attention to his home location), he needs to draw attention away from this area. So, he flees to his usual hunting grounds. Finds Eddowes, and makes an even bigger mess of her than his previous victims. And, tries to "lay a path" away from his home location (drops the apron, and heads towards Annie's crime scene). The notion is to draw away the investigation from Stride's location, and to try and direct the investigation away from where he lives.

As cute as this idea is, it means that when JtR kills Annie Chapman, as the sun comes up, he's about as far as he can get from his home base. And, it just feels kind of wrong that someone would be willing to take that kind of risk when that far from home. I'm assuming, of course, that after a murder JtR's instinct is to go home and wash up/hide his trophies, etc. When it's night time, he has the cover of darkness, which makes travelling a longer distance more acceptable. But during day time (early morning around sun rise), longer distances become very risky. The "sd Centre without Stride" suggests a location where JtR would have to travel a fair way, across busy streets, when the sun is up and the streets are full of people. However, the median centre (or the mean centre), mean he has less distance to travel during the riskiest of the crimes, and this location appears to be along the route that the apron trail suggests, and finally, it's in an area that was notorious for crimes, and where all the victims (I think) were known to locate at one time or another.

- Jeff

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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 662
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 7:33 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Oh yah,

On the maps, there are some circles and other lines drawn. These can be ignored as they don't mean anything. I fogot to remove them.

- Jeff
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 663
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 - 11:18 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

One final note, it's important not to get too excited about things like how close to a perfect circle the crimes are in the "SD centre excluding Stride". Any 3 points, as long as they are not in a perfect line, can be described as being on the circumference of a circle; and they will be exactly on the circumference. Since in this case, we only have 4 locations (4 crimes dropping Stride), the fact that they fall quite neatly on a circle is not really that surprising. The location of the centre of that circle being so close to Stride's murder is interresting, and I can make up a story to go along with it that would make a great "plot", but to be honest, it's probably more likely a case of coincedence than anything else. I'm personally more impressed by the apparent "stability" of the median centre, which generally stays "up near Hanbury Street" area, even if you drop Stride and Kelly (in which case it's almost ontop of the Hanbury Street crime scene), or if you "include Stride and Kelly but drop Eddowes" on the basis that Eddowes's murder location has the added complication of being after one botched attempt that night (so his "starting point" is no longer "home base"), etc.

Anyway, research into criminal behaviour and space (known as "geographical profiling") considers information like the "mean centre", and to a lesser extent the "median centre", and I've never seen reference to the "standard deviation centre", so there you go. Often, Geo Profiling simplifies things by just locating the two crime scenes farthest apart (Nichols and Eddowes in this case), and draws a circle with those locations marking a diameter. This distance has often been used as a predictor of the maximum distance he person has travelled from their "home base" when committing their crimes. There's a reasonably strong correlation actually. Anyway, what this research tends to show is that "home base" is rarely at the centre of this circle. Mind you, the centre of that circle would be located to the right of the lower edge of the square marking George Yard Buildings and below the "ui" in Buildings of the label marking the same thing. And the median centre isn't at this location. Unfortunately, I've yet to find any research that has compared the "utility" of these measures of centrality of locations. And, without a fairly large sample of crime location maps, with the home location of the criminal, I can't even offer a suggestion as to whether these indicate anything of real interest, or if they only indicate "curiosities".

- Jeff
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Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg

Post Number: 2323
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 5:51 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jeff,

wow, you have been busy.

it's all very interesting,

Jenni
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Harry Mann
Detective Sergeant
Username: Harry

Post Number: 74
Registered: 1-2005
Posted on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 6:14 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jeff,
Just one point of clarification.Dawn on the day of Kelly's murder,in England,would not be before 7.30AM at the earliest.
The distances,when valued in time needed,seem sound.Fifteen minutes would have been more than ample,even if a murder was discovered within a minute or two of commission.
There was no fear of a cordon being thrown around the area within that fifteen minutes.By the time the murder scene was secured,police given instructions,and a search commenced,the killer could well be in cover.
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 664
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 4:15 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Harry,
Thanks for the clarification about the time of Dawn on MJK's murder. Annie Chapman's murder is really the one that I think JtR probably lives closest to, and it was interesting to see that the Median Centre is close to her location with or without Stride's murder included. Being close the MJK may indicate that he was familear with Miller's Court, and knew the prostitutes there had their own rooms? And, since this was the most extensive mutilations, it may be that he wanted to be close to home to "clean up" and "get out to the LM's Parade", to avoid detection, and as an "alibi" along the lines of, "Come now good sir, how could one brutalise a women one minute, then spend the rest of the day in civilised company?" Sure not a good alibi by modern standards, but at the time it may have worked.


- Jeff
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 597
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 8:55 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

There was a water source in Miller's Court, so cleanup would have been simple. Are your distances "as the crow flies" or are you measuring distances following thoroughfares?
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 665
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 - 11:05 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Diana,
Sorry, forgot to mention, these distances are "as the crow flies". Trying to calculate the shortest route along the streets themselves is beyond me! I would not expect a huge change in the locations, but yes, there could be some differences if one calculated the distances by "shortest street distance" rather than by straight line distances. I should have mentioned this, thanks for bringing it up.

Having a water source in Miller's Court would make cleaning up simple for JtR during Mary's murder. One has to assume that he's willing to stick around the court to wash blood off himself once leaving her room. I suppose washing wouldn't take all that long, so he might do this if the court was empty at the time. He then only risks someone coming along unexpectedly, but that was always a risk he had to take. And, presumably he would have tried to determine if the court was empty before leaving in the first place (peek out the window; listen for anyone; etc). If he was wrong, he might then just walk away. Since nobody spotted him (apparently), he must have been right (assuming he did check in the first place of course; otherwise he was just lucky).

- Jeff
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 598
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, May 05, 2005 - 7:15 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I think your maps are great and I think I can see a tie in with the Calendrical Progression Thread.

I stated on that thread that I thought his comfort zone was in the Nichols/Chapman area which isn't far from the center of your map.

I also hypothesized that he was forced to venture south of the Whitechapel Road because of the institution of the WVC and other groups on or about September 10. Mitre Square was west of his favorite killing ground for the same reason.

He was able to move closer to home with Kelly because she was indoors.
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Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty

Post Number: 1619
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, May 06, 2005 - 11:23 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jeff,

Just backing up Dianas views.

Good work.

Monty
:-)
Doc-tor? The Doc-tor??? - Dalek
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 605
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, May 06, 2005 - 4:40 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Of course then the question arises, if he solved the problem created by the WVC and other groups by killing Kelly indoors, why didn't he go on killing indoors. Why weren't there more?
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Roseyo'ryan
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, May 06, 2005 - 3:37 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Diana,
Whatever do you mean by the statement,"He was able to move closer to home with Kelly because she was indoors."?
Are you suggesting the outline of a theory in which Mary Kelly is held as a prisoner at Thirteen Miller's Court...until that fateful hour?
Rosey :-)
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 666
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2005 - 4:18 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi,
I think there are ways to factor in the "temporal order" when turning things like "spatial centres" to a "geographical profile". With a geographical profile, one tries to determine where Jack lives (for example). If criminals simply lived in the "centre" then it wouldn't be that hard to find them (mind you, which centre to check?)

But, starting with the basic idea of finding the centre, one can factor in order of the crimes, "risk factors" (such as the amount of daylight; with Annie Chapman we might, for example, want to count every metre as 1.25, 1.5, or 2 metres travelled to account for the fact that it's much riskier), and so on. There are all sorts of things that one might want to include, and each of these inclusions changes the "hot spot" to some degree. Notice, for example, changing which crimes one includes makes quite a difference in some cases (i.e. the SD centre).

Anyway, most of the "centres" are up in the vicinity of "Flower and Dean", and not far from Martha Tambram's murder. I wish I had a map that marked all the "victims" (i.e. Alice McKenzie, and so on). It would be interesting to see what happens as more and more crimes are included.

Hmmmm, it would also be fun if we had the suspects "homes" marked. I think A-Z has such a map, but it's not a very detailed version. The output looks "cooler" on a map with some reasonable street detail.

- Jeff
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 609
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - 3:09 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

John Douglas said that the first murder is significant in that it is usually precipitated by a stressor, usually loss of one's job or spouse or female companionship. If Tabram was the first then your maps become very significant. He must have been very close to home when he killed her. Is there any information on who was living in George Yard Buildings at that time, if not specific individuals then what enclaves were there (specific types of tradesmen, specific nationalities, etc. etc.)

Ok I'm going to edit this post. I went to the Casebook and read about Tabram. She had lived with her boyfriend Turner for 12 years. He was unkempt and dirty. He lost his job in July of 88 and he and Martha broke up.

(Message edited by diana on May 10, 2005)

(Message edited by diana on May 10, 2005)
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Jeff Hamm
Chief Inspector
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 667
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - 4:04 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Dianna,
The "first" of the series is often important, but the thing with the JtR crimes is we don't know if Tabram is the first, even if we decided she was a victim of JtR! JtR may have killed before 1888, maybe he didn't mutilate at that time, etc, so we don't know for sure which, if any, of our crimes is the "first".

Anyway, being in the middle of the "crime zone", could be argued as a reason to include Tabram as a victim of JtR if one presumes the centre is "meaningful". On the other hand, it could be argued simply that the "centre seems right because it's in an area known to have violent criminals: note the proximity of the Tabram murder as an example". If you use the latter, you cannot then use the centre to include Martha (is circular, and sort of self defeating: if one uses Martha as an unrelated crime to validate the centre, then use the centre as evidence she's a victim of JtR, then once you include her in the series, you invalidate the "unrelated" aspect of her murder that verified the centre that lead to her inclusion!)

Still, I think that these maps might help foster some ideas. Just not sure I would recommend using them as "proof" of anything. All they indicate are points on the maps with some interesting properties about them with respect to the distance travelled to the crime scenes. Whether those properties tell us much about JtR is another question, which I cannot answer.

- Jeff

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