Jack the Ripper

[Lucky Star]

Sorry John, I should have clarified, woo-woo is a derogatory term for someone who is interested in things like psychics, ghosts, unexplained mysteries, complementary medicines, all the kinds of things that people laugh at or think are barmy.

Ah of course. I should have guessed that one. Thanks Carlotta.

[Moonraker]

Sorry John, I should have clarified, woo-woo is a derogatory term for someone who is interested in things like psychics, ghosts, unexplained mysteries, complementary medicines, all the kinds of things that people laugh at or think are barmy.

I've not heard of that, either. I have always considered such people as simply 'odd'.

[hides behind sofa...]

[sixret]

Mystery in any forms and unanswered phenomena will always intrigue people. They were in the past, they are now and they have always been...

Back to the subject, the culprit was(or were if they worked in duo or more!):

1) Man who preyed on whores during his past times.
2) Man from high social strata who had felt disgusted after his doings with the whores.
3) Man with the tendency to murder due to his psychological problems.

These have always been my belief. But of course, I could be wrong. It could be a woman, after all!

[Soenke Rahn]

A lot of possibilites, e.g. Flensburg: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may ... ks.ukcrime

[Carlotta King]

Sorry John, I should have clarified, woo-woo is a derogatory term for someone who is interested in things like psychics, ghosts, unexplained mysteries, complementary medicines, all the kinds of things that people laugh at or think are barmy.

I've not heard of that, either. I have always considered such people as simply 'odd'.

[hides behind sofa...]

You're lucky I like you so much or I would get upset at that!

[Moonraker]

If I didn't like you so much, I wouldn't have posted it!

[KEVP]

There is nothing wrong with studying an interesting mystery, it is the way we choose to study these things that makes us woo-woo or not woo-woo.

The more popular mysteries, like Jack the Ripper, attract all of the woo-woo crowd together with the serious scholars.

I used to be very woo-woo. So I studied all these mysteries. I studied them so intensely that I had to conclude that the woo-woo explanations were not correct. So now I am still interested in these mysteries, but no longer woo-woo.

The last time I was in London I did go on a Jack the Ripper tour. I was careful to find the one guided by Donald Rumbelow, who is a legitimate researcher (not a woo-woo), formerly with Scotland Yard, and probably the world's leading expert on Jack the Ripper. But I noticed there were a large number of other tours that were probably not quite so well-informed. Some of the people on those tours gradually drifted away and joined the one with Donald Rumbelow.

Jack the Ripper was more-or-less the first serial sex killer. He was a new kind of criminal, and so the police in London at the time had no idea how to go about catching him. So I really don't think that Scotland Yard ever knew who he was. The idea that Scotland Yard knew who he was but kept it secret would be a conspiracy theory, which gets us into woo-woo territory. (But of course is the kind of thing that you will find in the woo-woo style books on Jack the Ripper).

I don't think Jack the Ripper could have been extremely poor, he seems to have been someone who had some access to privacy, which the very poor of the time would not have had. But that doesn't automatically mean he was someone very rich, he could have been middle class or not-too-badly off working class.

[Billy Farmer]

I have seen many Documentaries, about Jack the Ripper, and did a lot of research to try and find out, how many Documentaries, there have been about Jack the Ripper, current total - 43,

For anyone interested, pasted in below, an updated list of Jack the Ripper Documentaries.

1 Farson's Guide to the British - Jack The Ripper (1959) 2 part programme
2 Jack the Ripper (1973) 6 part TV mini-series
3 In Search of - Jack the Ripper (1978)
4 Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1980)
5 Timewatch: Shadow of the Ripper (1988)
6 The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper (1988)
7 Secrets of the Unknown: Jack the Ripper (1989)
8 Crime Monthly: Who Was Jack the Ripper (1990)
9 The Diary of Jack the Ripper: Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1993)
10 Jack the Ripper: Phantom of Death (1995)
11 Secret History: The Whitechapel Murders (1996)
12 The Why Files - Series shown on Sky, which featured an episode about Jack the Ripper
13 History's Mysteries: The Hunt for Jack the Ripper (2000)
14 Jack the Ripper: An On-Going Mystery (2000)
15 To Kill and Kill Again: Jack the Ripper (2002)
16 Omnibus" Patricia Cornwell: Stalking the Ripper (2002)
17 The Trial of Jack the Ripper
18 Jack the Ripper Conspiracies (2003)
19 London's Scariest Mysteries - Who Was Jack the Ripper (2003)
20 Unsolved History - Jack the Ripper (2004)
21 Bloody Britain - Jack the Ripper (2004)
22 Jack the Ripper's London (2005)
23 Jack the Ripper Revealed: The Truth at Last (2006)
24 Revealed" Jack the Ripper: The First Serial Killer (2006)
25 Is It Real? Jack the Ripper (2006)
26 Unmasking The Ripper
27 Vic Reeves Investigates: Jack the Ripper (2007)
28 In the World of Jack the Ripper (2008)
29 Secrets of the Crime Museum: Jack the Ripper (2008)
30 Jack the Ripper: Tabloid Killer Revealed (2009)
31 Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed (2009)
32 MysteryQuest: Jack the Ripper (2009)
33 The Real Jack the Ripper (2010)
34 Jack the Ripper in America (2010)
35 Mystery Files - Jack the Ripper (2010)
36 Jack the Ripper: The German Suspect (2011)
37 Jack the Ripper: The Definitive Story (2011) 2 part Documentary
38 Find My Past: Jack the Ripper (2011)
39 Jack the Ripper - This Time You'll Walk With Him (2011)
40 Prime Suspect: Jack the Ripper (2012)
41 Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook - Jack the Ripper (2013)
42 The Missing Evidence: Jack the Ripper (2014)

There was a Documentary (called Jack the Ripper), shown on Sky, earlier this year, which featured two well known Ripperologists - Paul Begg and Martin Fido, that made the total of Jack the Ripper Documentaries - 43.

[sixret]

Thanks Bill.

I agree with you, Kevp. He could not be poor. The fact that he threw his money on prostitute(or rather the prostitutes would think someone like Jack could afford to pay and would bring him to their places) is the very sign that he was from high social strata. No poor person would disguise himself to be somebody from high social strata just to get the prostitutes! We never know the reason, but we could make an intelligent speculation about his motive that one of the reason for the murders was to hide the identity of the true Jack. For somebody to hide the identity desperately points to one conclusion that he came from the respectable family and background. His well-kept secret of seeking the prostitute would tarnish his reputation if that secret was common knowledge among the people.

[Machupicchu14]

I agree with you.

[KEVP]

All I am saying is that he was not VERY poor. He may have been slightly poor.

His victims were not the glamorous ladies of the evening you see in Hollywood movies (even the movies about Jack the Ripper!), in reality his victims were, to put it simply, cheap whores. All of them were addicted to alcohol, and all were available for the price of a glass of gin.

And now it occurs to me as well that he never actually paid his victims. No money was found on any of the bodies.

In those days, nobody knew anything about serial sexual killers. But since that time, there have been a huge number of serial sexual killers, and lots of experts have studied the phenomenon (such as the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the USA's FBI). In these cases there really isn't a "motive". Serial sexual killers are people that cannot enjoy sexuality in the normal way, and only can have a sexual experience by killing someone. Jack the Ripper was that sort of person, and he found a method by which he could have his sexual experience--find a cheap whore plying her trade in the East End of London, take her to a secluded place off the street, then kill her (giving him a sexual experience) and evade law enforcement. The idea that he was killing these women in order to protect some sort of "secret" leads us to conspiracy theories and from there on to woo-woo.

[Billy Farmer]

There have been many theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper, over the years, just some of the names that have been put forward over the years - Aaron Kosminski, James Maybrick, Francis Tumblety, Sir William Gull, Walter Sickert, Frederick Bailey Deeming and James Kelly, one of the recent theories, is that the Ripper was Francis Spurzheim Craig, who was once married to a lady called Elizabeth Weston Davies, Author Wynne Weston-Davies, suggested that Elizabeth Weston Davies and Mary Jane Kelly (the Ripper's final victim), were one and the same person, Wynne Weston-Davies, is the great nephew of Elizabeth Weston Davies, over the years, there has also been the suggestion that the Ripper Murders, involved more than one person, I can remember reading in one Book, that a witness, saw one of the victims (on the night of her death), talking to two men.

Link to article, about Francis Spurzheim Craig - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... orter.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Many people have asked, the question, what kind of person was Jack the Ripper, some people think he was a Jekyll and Hyde, type person, a person, who at times, would appear quite normal, and who wouldn't arouse any suspicion.

[Moonraker]

His victims were not the glamorous ladies of the evening you see in Hollywood movies (even the movies about Jack the Ripper!), in reality his victims were, to put it simply, cheap whores....Ripper was that sort of person, and he found a method by which he could have his sexual experience--find a cheap whore plying her trade in the East End of London, take her to a secluded place off the street, then kill her (giving him a sexual experience)

Isn't it incredible what subject matter the innocent child might come across on the Enid Blyton Society Forums? I might think twice about letting my grandchildren access them.

[Daisy]

I must admit I was having similar thoughts Nigel.

[Carlotta King]

I did wonder yesterday if this thread was getting a bit too much for younger audiences; I know we like to discuss other authors but this has got quite 'grown up'!

You can't really discuss Jack without going into detail about his crimes and what he was like, so maybe he's a subject not suitable here, I'm not sure?

I love a good old mystery like that, especially the stereotypical iimage of Jack - a mysterious figure in a cloak dodging round the gaslit alleys (I know that's just the image portrayed by films etc but its still thrilling!) but when you actually start discussing his crimes in detail, that maybe gets too much for a children's site.