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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » Creative Writing and Expression » JtR Poetry » Archive through October 07, 2003 « Previous Next »

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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 390
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 1:28 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert

Not only excellent, but it made me chortle, something I only do once in twenty years.

My own effort was sponsored by SSB
I suppose you chose tea?
If it's the last thing I do
I must try your strange brew.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 391
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 1:31 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jack and the Colony

It is edifying to study the terminology - as used to describe the female caste - in use during the Late Victorian Period (LVP), and this in itself would appear to be a predictive element in the behaviour and crimes of Jack.
Terms such as ‘unfortunates’ and ‘surplus population’ used to describe the prostitutes of Whitechapel were commonly used by all - in fact the upper male caste of the LVP proudly called the period the ‘age of assertive masculinity’ - and this must lead to the conclusion that the male castes of the LVP had a ‘down’ on the female caste generally and prostitutes in particular. Violent criminal acts against women at this time certainly do reflect this attitude - I have already highlighted the appalling case of Jane Shore but further research would amply reward the interested observer for there are many other similar cases - and there is no doubt in my mind that this violent behaviour directed against the female caste was promulgated by the upper male castes, in a subtle fashion I will admit, but nonetheless there was a deliberate attempt by the male castes to ‘put’ the female caste in its rightful place.
The higher echelons of the Colony may well have preached tolerance, understanding, fairness and acceptance of women in their newly emerging role in society, but underneath that there was a nasty sub strata of genuine hatred and intolerance being broadcast unofficially by the same official organs of the Colony. Much like today where we have seen a government preaching tolerance and acceptance of refugee immigrants on the official level but again in the sub strata one is able to find tacit approval of radical - and sometimes violent action - against this group.
On a simpler level then, whilst the government agencies of today urge young drivers to drive safely; advertising agencies and commercial organizations urge them to abandon all caution, telling the young drivers: ‘Don’t drive like your Gran!’
This might seem ‘pat’ but this is just the type of widely generated signal -off wavelength from the mainstream - that I believe has a massive influence on susceptible individuals such as Jack.
So the messages Jack would have heard as a young man in the LVP were hatred, venom, suspicion, confusion and retaliation directed against the female caste, especially Whitechapel prostitutes.
And this in an age of ‘assertive masculinity’ where the lower caste of female pushed back against the tightly coiled masculine spring to be met with overwhelming force when the male caste pushed back, and somewhere in that mighty push and shove something was bound to give, and when the coil snapped from the unequal pressure, Jack was launched into the Colony like a space shuttle and he had a burning mission.

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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 854
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 2:24 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi AP

"Daughters of joy" I think was another phrase, implying that the prostitutes did it for pleasure. Interesting your mentioning "surplus population" for a few posts ago I was on the point of mentioning Malthus. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think that despite the optimistic views about "progress", there was still a belief in the limited nature of resources etc (evident in Marx) and a certain anxiety about the future. Add to this, Social Darwinism. I believe that the poor at this time were sometimes seen as almost racially different from the rest of society (something more understandable once one studies the work of Dore), and there seems to have been deep worry over the fitness of the race.

I think the remark the little girl is supposed to have made about the top-hatted stockbroker - "Mummy, what is that person FOR?" - was being asked about the poor too. I can understand your scenario here, AP.

The assertive masculinity perhaps was the worst kind of assertive masculinity - compared with the previous period the Victorians were middle-class Goody Two Shoes - and I think there were men with something to prove.

Just my personal opinion - probably all tosh.

By the way, thanks for the comments on the last effort. I liked your SSB one, but be careful where you leave that pipe - look at the trouble Joe's got into.

I have the germs of a hip-hop poem about the Kelly murder, and will post it when finished.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 394
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 4:06 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert

thoughtful, provocative and as ever second guessing where I am going next, for the 'daughters of joy' formed the next section.
Yes, I think you are dead right, the more unfortunate castes were considered as racially unfit in the LVP and as a direct threat to the well being and future of the upper castes.
It was a period of great flux and fear.
I suppose the Great War levelled that playing field by reducing the unfortunates to a manageable population... as did syphilis.
Perhaps Jack were but herald of that?
All something to dwell on.
Hip-hop away my dear chap. I can't wait.
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Jeff Hamm
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jeffhamm

Post Number: 78
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 4:11 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thanks for compliments! I've enjoyed all the poetry and apologise for not explicitly stating so more often. Just wanted to let you all know I appreciate the efforts as well.

- Jeff
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 857
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 5:11 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thanks, Jeff. And we're looking forward to some more from you.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 396
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - 1:35 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

False barnett…

Although this subject might prove elusive
I believe the following to be conclusive:
Joe was a man… with legs and arms
And subject to the ladies charm.
He probably had shoes with which to walk
And certainly stuttered during a talk.
As a fish porter he must have carried a knife
And surely gutted a fish at least once in his life.
Whether or not he had a key to the door
I am certain that he had truck with a whore.
He was certainly a cockney and not a scouse
But rather than killer he strikes me as mouse
Who doesn’t stand out from the crowd
Even when he squeaks very loud.
You all tell me he be the killer
But for me more of a stocking filler.
And as much as you all might like to pretend
Joe be now’t but that Billy from that East-End.
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 866
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - 2:27 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Very funny, AP. I agree with you - Poor Old Joe isn't our man.

COMPLAINT

I wish I'd never seen it,
As sure as my name's Lawende.
I'm fed up, and I mean it :
It's driving me round the bend.
It's taking a toll on my fitness,
Having to be the star witness.
Pulled out of bed in the middle of night
To view parades by flickering light,
Crackpots and loonies, oh what a sight!
Gentiles, Jews, toffs and nuns,
Women, babies, French and Huns.
And once that Abberline dim
Asked me to look at him!
When they're short of suspects, those silly police chaps
Show me a line of empty peaked caps.
My memory's gone all hazy,
But still they're driving me crazy,
And soon it will come to pass
I'll be viewing myself in the glass.
I must be top of the league
For repetitive witness fatigue.
Well the next one I see I'll say "Yes"
And get myself shot of this mess!

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 397
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, October 01, 2003 - 10:47 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jack and the Colony II

It is fair to say that a certain section of the female caste would have been regarded with affection by the male caste, but this would have been very much an iconic portrayal of womanhood rather than the brutal and more realistic portrayal more in keeping with the true regard of the male for the female casts - which was, when all is said and done, little better than vermin who should be exterminated without let or hindrance.
Make no mistake, the emerging ‘new age’ female caste of the LVP was a direct threat to the male caste’s orderly and triumphant ‘Age of Assertive Masculinity‘, and the signals being sent by these worried ‘Front Room’ warriors were entirely based on the vicious extermination of such a threat.
Jack knocks on the door and is let in by the gentlemen.
One can easily imagine the dramatic effect of these signals on a confused young man and, as such, Jack would have been exposed to these true signals that were crawling all over the media of the age and were certainly compounded by the overbearing social attitudes of the day.
The prostitute sub caste would have been viewed with the utmost hatred and venom - no matter that many of these ‘Front Room’ warriors were not immune to sexually slumming it with the like - and received the full weight of the Colony’s venom, from both male and female castes, for the whores represented a diabolical threat to both.
Whores were genuinely regarded as vermin that threatened the very fabric of society; and there is no doubt that the insistent and repetitious signals being generated by the Colony as a whole were designed to influence a certain sub strata of society into doing something about these daughters of the devil.

A gross error that is often made when reviewing the case of JtR and his prostitute victims is that of imagining Jack in the role of a client.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Colony model gives us a more radical - and realistic - view of Jack as an entity with a genuine abhorrence for his victims who saw himself engaged on a holy and justifiable mission for the Colony elders to rid the world of any female who fell outside the strict ‘motherly/ sisterly/ Madonna’ iconic portrait and role as formulated by the male elders of the Colony.
No woman could fall further outside this iconic role model than a Whitechapel whore.
Again another serious flaw to many arguments is to view Jack as being in some kind of relationship with one or more of the victims.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The very nature of the crimes disallow a relationship between victim and perpetrator, and this is more than happily compounded by the Colony role model.
The attempts by many authors and researchers to cast some of the prostitute victims - in particular MJK - in the iconic female role of the LVP is a worrying trend, for Whitechapel whores were not driven by emotion, pleasure or enthusiasm for their work.
They were in fact driven by economic necessity and were neither nymphomaniacs or ‘fallen women’ out to bait society with their obvious sexuality.
They copulated with strangers because their bellies were empty.
It does then seem rather immature to bless these poor starving malnourished and diseased individuals with the fleshy emotion that would have only been available to the true iconic females operating at the very apex of the Colony.
The so called ‘Daughters of Joy’ were in the same economic situation in the LVP as the prostitutes of Thailand today, forced to sell their bodies in an unfair trade-off for better economic rights.
To charge this economic situation with emotional fuel is a lie at best, and at worst it is a basic lack of moral understanding and fibre.
The ‘New Romantics’ amongst you must finally learn that the crimes of Jack were ‘stranger’ crimes and that he could have had no emotional or other relationship with his victims.
As the Colony model shows Jack were now’t but a contrived collision in Colony.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 398
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, October 01, 2003 - 1:59 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Damned SSB

Oh this damned SSB
Will be the end of me.
For I found myself conference attending
And with the SSB some scotch ablending.
When thrown out of the bar
The next didn’t seem far
So I planned to walk
But ended up in talk
In the conference hotel foyer
With a certain Tiddley Boyar.
Having never met a drunken Czar before
I bowed so low that I fell on the floor.
‘Ah! She cried. ‘You must be the great AP
And much the worse from drinking SSB.’
She then enthralled me with chapter and verse
So much so that I developed a sudden thirst
For something a bit stronger than theory
And a swift double gin made me see clearly.
‘Now then my dear Czar, your theory is quite sound
And with it no doubt you will make a few pound,
But spare a dime for an impoverished chap
And I’ll reveal the true identity of Jack.’
She delved in her pocket
And pulled out a locket.
‘Now then dear AP
Put down that SSB.
For this is the very charm that Joe wore around his throat
When he did that Maybrick chappie choke,
And on the back
Absolute proof of Jack.
For there all to see
The capital letter ‘D’,
And underneath that, if you carefully look
You will see 300 pages of cricketing book…’
‘Pon my word, my dear Czar!
This is both strange and bizarre.’
She then produced notes of a copious degree
So copious that I fell asleep after page three.
But awoke later in the bar with double gin
Which is of course where story did begin.
And there amongst alarming theorists I made my nest
But I still believe my own theory to be the best.
Jack were a secret agent for the Communist cause
Attracted to the red bonnets of Whitechapel whores.
No my dear reader think this not a joke or farce
For all will be revealed if I can put down this glass.
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 877
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Wednesday, October 01, 2003 - 2:42 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hilarious, AP. Maybe I should put down my tea cup and grab some SSB (I'll hang onto the cigarettes though).

I agree with you about the whores being the bottom of the heap. Part of that I think was sheer misogyny, part of it fear of disorder, part social snobbery (high class whores were held in better regard), and there were other reasons too. But it all added up to a contempt for prostitutes.

Any idea how the term "unfortunates" started, AP? This particular term actually seems to paint them as victims, which wasn't the majority view at the time by any means.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 399
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, October 01, 2003 - 5:19 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thanks Robert

I enjoyed your confused witness statement as a poem as well. I think I might be tempted to do a harmless old grape seller who becomes embroiled in similar fiasco.
I'm not sure about the origins of 'unfortunates' but something tells me it was a 'church' term used in sermons so the iconic ladies would not be offended.
Thank you for reminding me of the term 'daughters of joy' as I had been using 'daughters of the devil' in the original draft but threw your more correct version in at the end.
Somehow - as perverse as it sounds - I believe the mainstream of society to have more contempt and hatred for an 'unfortunate' who is forced by economic need to sell her body, than for an 'unfortunate' who does so to fuel a habit or desire.
As a materialistic Colony we identify with need and greed but shy away from poverty and hunger.
Don't give up the tea.
SSB is a devilish brew.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 400
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, October 03, 2003 - 1:45 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Biology of the Beast within the Colony.

The attempt by many theorists and writers to establish some kind of relationship between Jack and his so-called victims is much like picking dried insects off a spider’s web and then ascribing motive to the hapless insects thus ensnared.
Of course they are not victims at all, but just unfortunate prey caught in the spider’s web by happenstance.
Put simply: they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A true ‘victim’ role both desires and demands that the individual concerned has undergone some sort of selective procedure and has therefore been picked out by a ’killer’.
‘Prey’ on the other hand is subject to the attention of a predator in a totally alienated fashion, and that alienation is a need rather than a desire… you see a killer will always be prompted by some form of desire for its victim, no matter how bizarre - and it is important to note here that the word ’desire’ is not used in a sexual context - whilst a predator has a genuine need for its prey. The predator’s need is fuelled 90% by hunger but another important 5% is fuelled by territorial requirement, and the remaining 5% is subject to competitive elements within its own social hierarchy. It is interesting to note that when such predators are confined to an artificial environment these percentages undergo radical change, and although pure hunger may still represent 50%, the territorial and hierarchal situations become critical, explosive and very often nonsensical to the immediate well being of the predator concerned.
True predators have two options to secure their prey successfully, ensnarement or blitz attack, and many predators employ both methods depending on happenstance and circumstance.
Victim or prey?
Is there a real and substantive difference between the two?
Victims are victims simply because they identify a ‘type’ within a species whereas prey are typified by a species type.
Victims might be selected by gender, size, hair colour, strange behaviour or any one of a thousand other variables; prey on the other hand are selected purely on their species, although many predators may well avoid the male of a prey species because it either carries weapons or is more powerfully built than the more vulnerable female of the species.
Of course there are many who will no doubt claim that the fact that all of the predator’s prey in this case were prostitutes inherently makes them ‘victims’ and not prey.
I disagree.
We must imagine our predator set down in the darkness of a late Whitechapel night, prowling the streets to fulfil his territorial, hierarchal and dietary obligations, and then we must see what ’types’ would be available to satisfy his pressing requirements.
There would be policemen - multitudes of them - thugs, thieves and blaggards, slaughter-men, market porters and dock workers. All of them physically powerful and many of them well-armed.
How hungry is the predator? How great his need.
But there is another group that roam these streets late at night and although they are inherently prey they are in fact employed on the same business as the predator. They want space, food and warmth.
They are of course the prostitutes, weak and vulnerable women who actively seek out the dark and lonely corners of their territory in an effort to survive.
But by going willingly down to the watering hole they place themselves in grave danger, for there the predator sits and waits for his prey.
The prey goes to the predator.
The killer goes to the victim.
These women were hapless prey and Jack was a confined predator whose territorial and hierarchal requirements were out of control.
He was hungry but didn’t know how to feed and he selected the prostitutes simply because they were the easiest meat on his plate.
That is their only distinction as a ’type’.
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 896
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, October 03, 2003 - 2:36 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Must say I'm rather surprised by this, AP. I thought you'd always argued that Jack was driven by anti-sex, anti-life motivations, shambling around Whitechapel until a chance encounter provoked him into killing a whore, with the womb as prime target.

Now you seem to be saying that he killed whatever came easiest. But surely on his nightly excursions he'd have come across old men and women, sick men and women, and (I'm afraid to say) children, all of whom would have been as easy, if not easier, to tackle than the prostitutes. Yet he killed only whores.

I agree that he probably wasn't killing the women because they looked like his mother, or because he blamed them for dragging his girlfriend down, etc. He may not even have killed them because they were whores - simply being women may have been enough. But he does seem to have needed to kill women, and no one else.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 401
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, October 03, 2003 - 4:11 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sorry Robert

I thought I was saying that he needed to kill women, and no one else.
My point being that they were the easily available targets at that particular time of night, especially the prostitute class. As a predator he would have instinctively recognised that to attack any other grouping would have been to expose himself to mortal danger.
My point also being that the whores came to him. Hence my spider web scenario.
As I said, this is all experimentation, and sometimes it might fall down, but I am trying to expose an underbelly to this shark called Jack, and I do think that behavioural science, biology and evolution expose that underbelly wonderfully.
I have attempted to view Jack's crimes on two levels, one is our normal field of behaviour and play, that of the logical, intelligent and intellectual being we obviously are; and then as the biological entity that is also us, no different than the white ant in the colony in that we are both subject to the same laws of natural evolution and biological dominance.
Sometimes the two views do conflict, but please rest assured that my original view of Jack driven by anti-sex and anti-life motivation like a chrome ball in a pin ball wizard has not changed a jot.
I haven't got to the womb yet.
I await my birth.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 402
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Sunday, October 05, 2003 - 4:12 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

About Jack

If the prostitutes were neither prey nor victim then what could they have been?
If Jack was neither killer nor predator then what could he have been?
Could we have the victims as tethered goats of the Colony and Jack as the tyger tyger burning bright of the Colony?
But then, just who was hiding in the undergrowth waiting for Jack to pounce so that they could unleash the full might of their blunderbusses?
All was in flux and friction in the LVP.
The Catholics of the Colony pushed against the Protestants of the Colony, so hard that the Protestants had to give ground and accept Catholic Ministers at the very apex of what had been a purely Protestant Colony for hundred of years.
The newly formed police - charged with the control of society - found themselves caught in the middle of a massive conflict between their Protestant and Catholic masters.
The female castes pushed even harder, oblivious to the machinations of the male caste’s struggle for political and religious power, they instead added to the North Sea Bubble by blowing alien winds through the starched underpants of a suppressed and repressed society that could barely contain the effluence it produced… and disposable nappies were a long way away.
The Colony was in the throes of massive expansion, the age of the machine had driven through the piles of manure in the streets, great clanging wheels were set in motion, bright sparks flew from steel born giants, huge mills swallowed raw nature and spat out produce, steam raised an empire and boiled the pot of humanity, new laws replaced the old and the winds of change blew like demons through the damp and musty corridors of enduring power… it were as if a genie had set a torch to the world.
The great steel locomotive that was the overpowering engine of progress - and at the same time the collective will of a Colony expanding beyond the borders of its wildest dreams and ambitions - smashed straight through the fragile will of the individual and left society in the tatters and rags of beggars who built castles from sand, for we were to become the servants of machines, there to oil the great wheels but not to progress with them, for the machines would fly and leave the individual will far behind.
I postulate that it was at this exact moment in the history of the Colony that the age of the individual vanished forever, to be replaced by the cold automaton that was the collective soul of the Colony.
From that moment on an individual would only surface from the surf of the collective as a minor blimp - a piece of flotsam as it were - when he achieved some notoriety or fame, and this because Small Village England - where every single soul was a unique individual with an assured place in the scheme of things, even in Whitechapel - was sacrificed to the machine and replaced with the brutality and anonymity of the slamming factory gate.
The last remaining true individuals in the Colony eventually answered the rage of the machine by donning uniforms and guns and dying in their millions on the battlefields of the First World War.
When the dust cleared only the machine remained.

It is so difficult to imagine now, to imagine ourselves as a simple individual set down in this great universal cog that was creaking and turning like the very timepiece of God, and subject to the terrifying fear of the individual when events are turning without them and they are powerless to do anything about them. How can a man stop the wheel of time? How can a simple entity ram a wedge in that great cog and stop that incessant ticking, that incessant picking, that incessant licking at his soul and heart? How can an individual will resist the mighty almighty will of the Colony?
With blood and mud does he forge the bogeyman, by dredging up the last resort of the individual will pitched against the common will does he stab society to the quick, and his target is the production zone, the holy grail of all things biological, he stabs his mother and his sister too, he stabs and stabs, out that bud and out that worm, and rips and cuts as if his bloody pickings are the entrails of some auspicious chicken, augers of his individuality in the fast incoming tide of the Colony, so he would be Canute and force back that tide and kill the machine, rip out the root and the plant does wither and die.
A one man abortion clinic par excellence that took out the second guessing and just simply ripped out the productive zone. No donor needed no donor required.
By magical process thus does a man like Jack attempt to control creation, by complicated biological tinkering does he spear the very heart of the universe. For the black hole he creates causes time to stand still and a veritable time-machine has he galvanised from the blood of whores, for that machine works just as well as the Colony model for we still feed its hungry progress through our universe with our thoughts…
About Jack.

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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 907
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Sunday, October 05, 2003 - 5:26 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi AP

Fascinating!

So what you're saying is that Jack was a man who was being attacked on every side - by the Catholics with their denial of the individual, by the increasingly demanding female population, by the economic system that would have him a number instead of a person, and by the political system and by governments which were increasingly taking to themselves powers that used to belong to the individual.

I think by 1888 the very worst effects of unbridled economic liberalism were over (though what remained was ghastly enough). Trouble was, the state as protector of the poor was no ruddy-faced squire (though squires could be nasty enough), but a bureaucratic machine.

We have seen how individuals who feel threatened sometimes appeal to magic. Adolf Hitler didn't like Communism, because there was no place for the individual. He appealed to the salvation of sheer will-power, the will-power of the individual. This is like a child who thinks "wish hard enough, it'll go away." More recently I believe some hippies tried to will a building to rise into the air.

These people always look to shortcut their way through the laws of nature.I think you're possibly right about the magical element in the crimes.

Jack sometimes reminds me of a man with a neurosis (obviously true!), but what I mean is that it's as if a man built up a collection of , say, postage stamps. His whole life is centred round it. But he begins to worry. Are his stamps safe? Are they genuine? Has he lost one? In the end the worry becomes unbearable and he throws away his collection. For a few hours or days he feels exhilaratingly free. But then he starts collecting stamps again, or maybe coins...

The destruction doesn't work. There's no fresh start.

I like your idea that he was killing so many birds with one stone - asserting his individuality, asserting his masculinity, getting revenge for the past, destroying the past, thumbing his nose at the Cathoilcs...

Looking forward to next instalment.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 403
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 3:31 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert

and I like your idea of the stamp collector, very much indeed. I believe you have cast your rod into the great deep and something has nibbled your bait, perhaps not bitten but nontheless summoned from the deep.
Could Jack have been throwing something away every time he carved up a whore, promised himself that was it but then chance threw another one his way... and he started his collection again?
Must dwell on that.
I do think that at certain turning points in history the individual will does feel threatened by the common will, let's call it the 'I don't like Mondays' scenario. Individuals do sometimes suffer great anxiety when swept up by events beyond their control and their reaction can often be dramatic.
Now I must find that damned bottle of SSB and write the next bit.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 404
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 7:24 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

More About Jack…
(with thanks to Robert)

I must admit to being much drawn to the idea of Jack as a philatelist, laboriously licking down the backs of new stamps and whacking them in his album completely unaware of the existence of hinges. One day the boy would want to take them out and find that he had destroyed them.
If stamps had been around in any great quantity in the LVP I would mark Jack as a collector of such things and when his album was complete he would probably chuck it out of the nearest window.
Also the idea of Jack as a tinker is very attractive, and I do mean a tinker in the sense that he liked to tinker with the inner workings of a universe he didn’t understand and felt actively threatened by.
What is interesting is that both qualities in a male are patently immature, almost boy like interests and perhaps this is the most solid marker for Jack that I have yet come across.
Of course his crimes do show that he was terribly immature, undeveloped and possibly slightly retarded, simply because he had no sexual contact with his victims. Whatever else we may think about the heinous crimes of sexual serial killers the fact that they do actually have sexual contact with their victims shows an unpleasant maturity and obvious knowledge about the inner workings of the universe, whereas a man who kills a woman to attack her sexual and reproductive zones is showing a basic lack of maturity and knowledge about the object or objects he is attacking.
Jack is not alone here.
Many so-called ‘sex crimes’ are just not that, and even when a serial killer confesses to lurid sexual contact with their victims we must exercise extreme caution, for many of them in fact claim such sexual contact in an effort to disguise their obviously immature crimes with a ‘respectable’ cloak of maturity.
Hence very often we find that after the killer has killed his victim he will often masturbate and then pass the fluid into the victim using a foreign object, and then go on later to smugly and proudly claim to the police that he actually raped the victim.
This nonsensical and suicidal behaviour - for the killer is catching himself by depositing his DNA inside the victim - is very much linked to the overblown ego of such killers but perhaps more importantly to their own confusion concerning their sexual identity.
Colin Pitchfork is a classic example, proud to be classified as a ‘sex killer’ who violently raped his victims but under relentless questioning from the police he eventually admitted that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and had in fact masturbated after killing the girls and then passing on his fluid on a broken twig.
I suspect Peter Sutcliffe to have been from the same group of killers. It is only on his own say so that he has been classified as a ‘sex killer’ claiming to have raped at least one of his victims, but a very careful reading of all the evidence and literature available does make one think that he probably transferred his fluid to his victims in a similar fashion to Pitchfork. He wasn’t called ‘no dick’ for nothing.
But you see these types of killer are so terribly immature that they are desperate to be seen by the outside world as grown-ups and disguise their crimes accordingly. They do know what they are supposed to do in the real world, but they can’t do it, so they make up a world where they can, and what is so funny is that all us grown ups go along with them.
They take their dolls and play ‘sex’ with them, and ‘bang!’ you all fall into the same trap.

Jack found a use but he lost the design.

Now, just what are we looking at here?
When a killer behaves in this manner is he giving his victim the kiss of life or the kiss of death?
We are most definitely looking at a weird and immature magical thought process that probably has as its key biology, in that the moment of death caused by the killer is then accompanied by the killer with a creative desire. Does he wish to fire the corpse up?
Whatever, we could imagine an ape acting so under the same circumstances, they are able to perform all the acts of the so called ’sex killer’ including the use of twigs as tools; and just perhaps we could also imagine a very young child with their basic lack of biology and reproduction attempting the same type of crude magic.
However when it is adult who commits this type of immature crime I believe we are looking at a basic coward who feels overawed and threatened by society and is too frightened to kill himself, so takes his self-destructive urges elsewhere by proxy and bit by bit kills himself slowly and less painfully, and then attempts to rebuild the destroyed parts of his fragile ‘self’ by magical transfer.
The trouble with Jack of course is that his magical transfer was the other way around.
What a sod he was.
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 912
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 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 AP

The crimes do seem to betray a certain adolescent curiosity about the victims' bodies, don't they? It may be that one reason he took the organs was because time was short, and he hadn't yet had a chance of studying them properly, and in good light.

Another childish trait he seems to have had, is that he seems to have got bored easily. First it was a womb. Then a womb and a kidney. By the time he gets to Kelly's room, he seems to have lost interest in wombs and kidneys, and takes a heart for a change (I'm no anatomist, but I believe this would have been the first time he'd have seen this organ - the mutilations of Chapman and Eddowes wouldn't have exposed it, would they?)

I can picture him in Kelly's room, turning the organs over in his hands in the dim light. I'm increasingly struck by how tidy the crimes seem to have been. By that I mean that the organs themselves weren't shredded to pieces or contemptuously tossed over his shoulder. When I picture the end of the proceedings in Kelly's room, I can almost hear Bruce Forsyth shouting out "Didn't he do well!"

You have anticipated me with the tinkering business, as I have something about it in my Mary Kelly hip-hop poem, which I'll post as soon as it's done a bit more hopping.

Interesting idea that he was somehow mimicking grown-ups. Certainly the language in which sex is discussed - with talk of "weapons" and "ploughing" etc - could have been one influence operating on an immature mind.

Looking forward to next bottle of SSB, AP.

Robert
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 408
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Tuesday, October 07, 2003 - 6:25 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

As perceptive as ever Robert.
I believe Jack’s adolescent behaviour would not have been confined just to his crimes, his speech and mannerisms would have also reflected this lack of essential maturity, but whether his crimes were a result of being ill-informed or misinformed I’m not quite sure… yet.
As regards the time factor, again I’m not sure. I go back to Richard Chase’s behaviour with his victims (or prey) - who so far I think is the closest modern match we have to Jack, though I know many disagree - in that he was fond of collecting bits and pieces from the bodies usually associated with the circulation of blood, and when he could would actually take home containers of blood. Chase certainly demonstrates the magical transfer theory for he believed that by drinking blood and eating certain parts of the body he could cure his imagined ills.
I always get the feeling that this is damn close to Jack.
Chase was so immature that I believe he was retarded. His habit of wandering about the house as a 20 year old man and asking himself ’are you a good boy?’ and then replying ’yes, I’m a good boy’ shows that he had never really grown up, and also that his understanding and knowledge of sex had never much progressed beyond that of believing the playground rumours that women’s vaginas had teeth.
Again I see Jack.
Did Jack get bored easily? Or maybe he never found what he was looking for? Difficult.
I must read through Chase’s crimes again to see if he followed a similar pattern, now that would be interesting if he did.
You made me chortle again! With your ‘Didn’t he do well!’.
Very macabre but also very true as I believe Jack honestly did expect someone to congratulate him on his awesome discoveries.
Another adolescent trait.
I think I already mentioned on these boards that I discovered an illustrated pornographic book hidden away in a private library from the LVP concerning how gentlemen were expected to punish ladies for minor indiscretions, and the language contained therein was exactly as you describe when not a great deal worse. The male parts were equated with weapons, war, surgery and farm work, whilst the female parts were equated with hell, damnation and fire.
Of the style of ‘naughty ladies must be punished severely for tempting us men with their forbidden parts.’
A clear enough signal and influence I would have thought operating on an immature mind in the LVP.
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AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 409
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Tuesday, October 07, 2003 - 8:35 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Jack in the Chocolate Factory

Now it strikes me that there is a distinct pattern here stitched into the silent universe of the serial killer, the same impotent and nonsensical behaviour surfaces in so many cases that it cannot be chance or coincidence but instead seems to be a genuine rage against the machine.
Sutcliffe, Pitchfork, Jack the Ripper, Richard Chase and the still unknown Boston Strangler are perhaps the most famous of these peculiar individuals who slaughter women in a totally asexual manner but then complete that act when the victim is dead with a weird and ritualised process that does somehow seem to be ‘creative’ in its raw nature when not sexual.
This type of killer appears incapable of responding to his victims - or perhaps anyone else for that matter - in a truly sexual manner whilst they are still alive, but then once dead he employs a devious device to make it appear as if he is capable of a normal sexual response. So his attack is still not of a sexual nature, as he is pretending to have sex with his victims in exactly the same manner as a child would play with a doll.
Hence every single one of these asexual childish killers leaves their victims sprawled in an obviously sexual pose although no sex has taken place. The true mark of an adult sexual serial killer is that he will attempt to disguise the fact that he has had sex with a victim and will go to great lengths to hide or disfigure the body.
Simply said:
A true sexual serial killer is ashamed by his crime and attempts to hide it.
An asexual immature serial killer is proud of his crime and proudly displays it.
But the display is a lie, a clever piece of deception, and I for one still cannot believe that so many intelligent and well educated researchers, forensic scientists and policemen fall right into the trap. They see a naked victim with legs spread and immediately cry ‘sex crime!’
It is obvious now that Jack was an asexual immature serial killer, his own behaviour and subsequent treatment of his victims dictate this, and the way he carefully arranged the bodies to appear as if the victims had been sexually ravished - when they hadn’t - is probably the greatest clue we have yet discovered concerning both the age and type of killer Jack the Ripper exactly was.

Yes, these asexual immature killers are playing with dolls but they want everybody else to believe that they have been terribly mature and used and abused their victims sexually.
In fact these killers are so distinguished by their infantile behaviour that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that they have severe development problems when it comes to the mature question of correct sexual behaviour, and or a total lack of understanding of the mechanics of sex.
In particular the manner in which Jack dealt with his victims strikes me as being very similar to a situation where a bushman from the Kalahari stumbles across a lap top computer laying in the desert sands, and then what his understanding of his own world would lead him to do with the lap top. He certainly wouldn’t be sending emails. No he would whack it, pry it apart, rip it to pieces and discard it in the desert sands. He simply could not understand how valuable and precious such a tool could be in the right hands.
I can almost see Jack similarly vexed by having a real female within his control and then wrecking that complicated piece of machinery just because he didn’t know what buttons to push.
This figures in the equation. A deep misunderstanding combined with a lack of real knowledge can always explain the irrational, so it is useful to that degree.
However we humans carry a lot of ghosts, devils and beasts in our baggage and most of these creatures of the night are formed from fear.
Fear of identity, fear of the unknown, fear of failure… isn’t it strange that all the killers I mention above - apart from Jack and the Boston Strangler for we still don‘t know who they are- were known in their younger days as ‘no dick’ so and so?
Food for thought indeed.
Anyways, we must delve further, for Jack himself did not practise his art in the manner ascribed, leaving no masturbatory seminal trace of his passing as far as we know, and this is strange behaviour indeed, for it would seem to indicate we talk of matters of possession rather than passion.

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Steven Atkins
Unregistered guest
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 9:17 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here's a limmerick I have just penned.


A young witness was quizzed by the force,
but he found himself getting quite hoarse,
when they asked to repeat he
said "Goulston graffiti"?
"Why Montague drew it of course!!!!!!



Steven
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Steven Atkins
Unregistered guest
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 10:11 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Here's another,equally as bad!

Was Liz Stride a poor victim of Jack?
Does the theory contain a large crack?
is the evidence phoney
or was Diemscutz's pony
the reason why Jack didn't hack?


Steven
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 917
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Tuesday, October 07, 2003 - 10:59 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Very good, Steven.

Some say that proud Jack was a porter,
Or a Yank from across the water.
A man with a fistula,
A Pole from the Vistula...
Wish the list was a little bit shorter!

There once was a vigilante
Whose knowledge of crime was quite scanty :
Right by his door
A tar killed a whore
And sauntered off singing a shanty.

AP, will reply soon.

Robert

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