On Jack the Ripper. by Christopher Skolik
On jack the ripper by christopher skolikBecause the Whitechapel
murders occupy such a grey area, I have to acknowledge any writing on the
subject is to some degree fictional. The events as Rorschach test. But maybe in
spite of that something useful may be revealed…
Locale
The Whitechapel crimes of 1888 present a turning point-as they sum up the
period in which they where committed, they also point to the future we now
inhabit.
Those five unfortunate women who where slaughtered amidst those dark soiled
streets where sacrifices on all kinds of levels; even the over the top manner
of dispatch reflects this. The removal of organs brings to mind the sacrificial
actions of Mayan priests.
Whitechapel in 1888 was one of the poorest areas in
despair and poverty with any of the darker corners of the
Empire
By 1888 literacy had grown and to meet its requirements a huge number of
newspapers and magazines sprang up. It was also the point where more systematic
approaches to the hidden psychological landscape began to emerge (Wilhelm Wundt
opened the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig in 1879). The interest in
spiritualism and magic was the more primitive side of such psychological
explorations.
A large East European Jewish community jostled with the lower rungs of the
working class, the homeless, criminals and prostitutes.
Here, where human lives were box pressed together, lubricated with alcohol, 5
women sold themselves for the basics, shelter, alcohol and food.
Between August and November, across a damp Autumn 5 women where killed, in a
manner unprecedented. The crimes shook a world only recently knitted together
through media. The crimes tapped into cultural and social elements to such a
degree that they seems almost orchestrated to take advantage of the newspapers,
concern around poverty and the dispossessed, fear of anarchy etc. Right from
the start they tied in with the Victorian interest in the paranormal, and
supernatural. And just as suddenly as they began, they stopped-a factor which
only added to the mythic quality of the events.
The Crimes;
Mary Nichols aprox 37 y.o.a. 3.45 am Friday August 31st; throat cut and abdomen
opened.
The first victim was killed in a side street with occupied houses along one
side. Abdomen slashed.
Clearly he wanted his activities made public as possible. But this location
proved somewhat too public-in future he would be more careful, balancing his
requirements of creating a shocking spectacle with evading detection.
Annie Chapman 47 y.o.a. 4.30-5.30 am Saturday September 8th; throat cut,
abdomen opened, internal organs removed and dumped above her head, organs
taken.
The backyard of an overcrowded house was the murder site (
17 people, one of which also served as a shop for the cooking and selling of
cat meat). Here the assailant felt free to pursue his ‘work’. The body
displayed to create maximum impact. Organs removed for some purpose that would
seem to require time, so he had to take them from the site. Organs removed
where uterus and appendages, the upper portion of the vagina and posterior two
thirds of the bladder.
Elisabeth Stride 44 y.o.a. 1.00 am/Catherine Eddowes 46 y.o.a. 1.45 am Sunday
September 30th; Stride-throat cut. Clearly the assailant was interrupted. The
yard of a busy Jewish socialist club which was its self located on a busy East
end street... Had not a man driven his horse and cart into the shadowy yard the
untouched body of Stride may not have remained so untouched.
Though this murder gives little detail regarding what exactly the murderer was
trying to achieve in the killings, it adds much with regard his sheer
determination to express himself, almost as if he where running to a timetable,
and had to perform the requisite mutilations of the given day. When one also
considers the fact that the killings always took place on the first and last
weekend of the month, this lends a little more weight to the notion of a
timetable.
Eddowes- throat cut, face mutilated, extensive evisceration, organs taken.
Frustrated at the interruption when he had killed Stride he kills Catherine
Eddowes in a square, dimly lit but public enough for discovery within 15 minutes
of her death. Here he adds facial mutilations to his oeuvre, takes organs
leaving a grisly spectacle.
Organs taken where left kidney and uterus.
Obviously he was driven at this point, and must have been aware of the
attention the murder of Stride would draw to the area.
Mary Jane Kelly aprox 25 y.o.a. 2.00-3.30 am Friday November 9th; throat cut,
total evisceration, face and body extensively mutilated. Organs removed.. This
time he had a room and the time to work in. Hours spent exploring the darkest
corners of his psyche. He took the heart with him. The result is a Francis
Bacon nightmare-he turned the victim into imagery that is shocking, modern.
Only the photographs do true justice to the room he left-words leech the impact
away. An impact he was fully conscious of creating.
Evidence suggests he covered her face before cutting her throat. Sadism was not
really his interest. There are elements of dissection in what he did in
some twisted scientific vision being applied. A single minded pursuit more
fitting with anatomy classes than a Victorian east end slum. .
The Killer wanted to know, to understand, and maybe he thought by hacking this
woman to bits he would uncover what he sought. As the murders ceased after
Kelly it could be argued that he did indeed discover what he was looking for,
or realised that it couldn’t be located, no matter how much he cut and hacked,
it would remain beyond his grasp.
It seems he was acquainted with these women, if not personally, at least as a
type. This familiarity may have been the explanation why the later victims
placed themselves in his hands when it was common knowledge that a killer was
on the prowl.
If the acts committed against these women are viewed as a graph the development
can clearly be seen. Elizabeth Stride has to be omitted, as the killer was
interrupted- her murder reveals much about his determination, but little in
terms of his actual ‘project’.
The Lusk Letter
The crimes occurred at a point where the population had begun to become
literate on an almost industrial scale, and the numerous newspapers,
periodicals and magazines that catered to this audience where fully aware of
what would satisfy, a development of the fraudulent lyric ballads of the
highway man, and the penny dreadful.
Already the population had become involved with the crimes to such an extent
that numerous letters where sent to the police and the press claiming to be
from the killer. Among many letters was the one signed JACK THE RIPPER which
bestowed upon us the colourful nickname.
These fake letters where a form of public contribution; people adding their own
details to the crimes and the killer, maybe an attempt to fill in the blank
space which the assailant and his motive should occupy. An attempt to impose
meanings upon the crimes and to explain, and so ease the psycho-social anxiety
the crimes had caused.
To my mind the Lusk letter, in which a half human kidney was sent to the head
of the Whitechapel vigilance committee is genuine. It is in keeping with the
idea of shocking the culture which seems such an integral part of these crimes.
All the other letters which allegedly came from the killer can be disregarded.
Even the hand writing of the Lusk letter has a Dali-esque quality that fits
into my notion of a warped artist/crazed scientist which the murderer may have
seen himself as on some level.
Also the writer sent the letter to the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance
Committee-not the press or the police. This detail suggests local knowledge,
(maybe even personal?).
The letter itself is clearly written by someone attempting to create the
impression of poor literacy, yet words like ‘pieces’ are spelt correctly, while
‘nise’ is not. Also he misspells ‘knif’ by dropping off the e, but manages to
keep the k. The luridly florid hand fades by the third line, and picks up again
at the end.
The kidney itself seemed to conform to the facts of Eddowes missing organ-same
condition (‘Ginny’), also had the right attachments to correspond to those that
where left in the corpse. It just seems in keeping with the crimes.
Transcription of the Lusk letter.
From hell.Mr Lusk,SorI send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and
prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send
you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
signedCatch me when you can Mishter Lusk
Jack the Ripper walked this media landscape, a character who straddled fact and
fiction, dream and reality, so much so that he frequently holds his own against
that other fictional notable of the period, Sherlock Holmes.
Now we are familiar with the serial killer, a stock character, their mystery
contained within some colourful nickname. Headlines and front pages a montage
of the faces of the victims, as if in the eyes of the murdered some reflection
of the murderer may be gleaned.
All this is the legacy of the Whitechapel killer. He fused with the fresh
tabloid media and set a precedent that is followed still. Having escaped
capture he has also evaded the constraints of time and reality. He can never be
known; no flat domestic details can distract from the blood stained clarity of
his actions.
The five murders which he committed (Some may argue, but his style is clearly
evident in the five), show a development, a narrative, from the hacking of
Nicholls, to the more considered evisceration of Chapman, and finally the full
scale atrocity that befell the final victim, Kelly. And his exhibiting of the
remains shows an awareness of the wider impact of his actions. He must have
taken the time to consider what would be most shocking, adjusting limbs to
achieve the right effect. To me it seems the motive was not primarily sexual,
but social and cultural; his intention was to impose the contents of his psyche
upon Victorian England.
In the case of Kelly he used her corpse like the contents of a B and Q store,
turning the shabby room where she catered to her clients into a slaughterhouse.
He took the contents of her body and redecorated the walls, the bed-turning her
from a person into décor.
He even took parts of some of the bodies away, viewing victims as objects; a
very modern touch, human consumption, which in the 21st century has become the
basis for most human relations
The organs removed are interesting in that the sites of interest where sexual
and reproductive areas, and the heart, the organ with greatest symbolic
association. Almost as if he where applying his dissection to learn about the
nature of femaleness.
.
The cessation
The escalation ceased with Kelly-but after all this, where could he go?
I suggest he didn’t stop because of madness, suicide, incarceration or death- I
believe he had simply exhausted this line of enquiry. The general consensus has
been that after Kelly the murderer committed suicide, became insane or died.
The notion he was mad is simplistic, and arises from the idea that such acts
must be the product of a deranged mind. This suggestion seems foolish to me.
The way he weighed his requirements of public spectacle and anonymity suggests
clarity of thought. As do the mutilations which show a degree of skill (I am
not suggesting medical skill, I doubt he had training, more of an enthusiastic
amateur). When one also considers the time constraints and locations, the lack
of lighting, cutting throats to minimise blood staining during evisceration and
his ability to lure victims whose guard must have been up, all this suggests
sanity, but sanity in service to a disturbed imagination.
The attacks suggest a control and purpose which imply calculation, not the
chaotic disorganisation of the sexual maniac. To me it has more the flavour of
an artist, pursuing a personal vision. I can imagine him desperate to express
something he did not fully understand, in thrall to psycho-social and cultural
forces that only become clear with the passage of time.
Overview and thoughts
The crimes to me are amongst the first really modern acts in that they reflect
that surrender to unconscious forces that has become the hallmark of the 20th
century. They prefigure the corpse-strewn barbed wire of the trenches, the
death camps of Nazi Germany, to the torrent of smaller, more domestic, but no
less disturbing atrocities that flood us every day.
In the evisceration we see the foreshadowing of a world that has, due to a
collision of technology and ignorance given way to the unconscious. Had we
taken the route to release these hidden forces of the psyche with a degree of
disciplined awareness we may have been able to direct these forces, as opposed
to having them direct us.
The crimes themselves puzzled a police force used to dealing with
straightforward motivations (basically the same motivations that define the
actions of most people, food and comfort and sex; but achieved thru criminal
means). The Whitechapel murders did not relate to any motives the police could
connect with. In most murder cases there is an attempt to conceal the crime,
whereas the Whitechapel murderer flaunted his killings. And this has been a
perennial flaw in those who would cast their nets in search of suspects.
Sexual motivation has been suggested as the spur to these crimes, and while I
admit there is a sexual element, to me it is sexual in the most abstract sense.
It seems more about the exploration of the assailant’s sexuality than an actual
orgasmic sex act.
This could provide a motive for the removal of the female sex organs that he
took-wanting to explore them at leisure, an almost scientific enquiry to make
sense of his sexuality.
These elements; the development, the faux scientific aspects, the artistic
subtext, the undercurrents of media awareness, the fact he escaped detection;
all these facets give the crimes there modern feel, an almost timeless quality.
To try and apply external motives to such acts is to misread the acts
themselves-it is like watching Rambo like Hamlet. This results in the desperate
and convoluted theories that have emerged as writers try and shoe horn
Victorian drama onto crimes that belong to the 20th (if not 21st) century. We
must approach the material without prejudice, and let the acts speak for
themselves, teach us their own vocabulary. Anything else and the crimes become
a Rorschach test, (which to some extent is unavoidable, of course), shelves
filled with row upon row of books on the Ripper crimes that reveal more about
the make up of their authors than the murderer.
The killer wanted to explore, understand and express things within his psyche,
and by the time he left the room of Mary Jane Kelly he had, one way or another,
done so. At the time of the crimes the vocabulary of the imagination was basic,
the police and others failed to read the crimes, they where left like the
audience at the premier of Un Chien Andalou, confronted with surreal difficult
imagery- baffled and disturbed. Thrown into a state bordering on shock. Now we
become better acquainted with the imagery of our darkest repressed interior
landscapes, through the imagery of Dali, Bacon, and others, and with this
better grasp of the contents of our unconscious we are at a point where we may
at last make an attempt to decipher these acts.
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