The Ripper Reexamined : Interview with M.J.Trow

[Howard Brown]

http://americollector.com/ripper_reexamined/

[Cris Malone]

OK... softball questions. It was like Obama appearing on the View. It would be different if a Rush Limbaugh of Ripperology could ask him a few questions. I'd like to see Coilin interview him. That would be interesting.

Studies of this case have been bogged down between conspiracy theorists and suspect theorists ever since the murders... Its like the revolving door that Adam mentioned being invented about the time of the Tabram murder... this case has been going through it ever since.

Whenever true historians get involved and take interest in this case their findings are considered boring and lackluster...because their solution is the obvious, instead of the outlandish.

Doesn't sell! Even if its the most logical answer. So... we will continue to be exposed to this Crap.

[Scott Nelson]

Yeah, Boring!

[Cris Malone]

LOL...No, crap is not boring if you step in it. It is something to deal with when that happens and I think How skillfully posted this to get a rise out of a few people... and I suspect he will.
Colin?

[Howard Brown]

What little is left of my mind,Cris...you read correctly.
I couldn't come right out and put up a thread like....." HEY, COLIN ROBERTS........LOOK WHAT I DONE FOUND !!

So I went with the subtle approach.

[Colin Roberts]

... crap is not boring if you step in it. It is something to deal with when that happens and I think How skillfully posted this to get a rise out of a few people... and I suspect he will.
Colin?

What little is left of my mind, Cris...you read correctly.
I couldn't come right out and put up a thread like....." HEY, COLIN ROBERTS........LOOK WHAT I DONE FOUND !!

So I went with the subtle approach.

Here I am, trying to 'cut back', so to speak; and the two of you wave the stuff right in front of my nose. :lalala: :laugh:

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AC: Is this still considered an open case by the police? Are there officers assigned to the case to assist researchers, or do some do it purely out of personal interest?

Mei: There is a general belief that no unsolved case is ever closed, but that is simply not true. The Ripper case was officially closed in 1892, ...

Perhaps Stewart Evans would care to comment. I believe that he has stated, on a multitude of occasions, that the investigations of the so-called 'Whitechapel Murders' were never closed.

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AC: The online edition of the Daily Mail (Oct. 2009) indicates you have been actively focusing on Robert Mann as a suspect for the past two years. When and how did you have an “Ah ha!” moment when Mann appeared to you as a viable perpetrator of the crime? Did anyone at all suspect him at the time?

Mei: The “Ah ha!” moment probably came when I realized that Mann had been abandoned in the workhouse as a child by his mother, who would have been in her forties at the time.

As far as I know (admittedly, that may not be very far, in this particular instance), Mr. Trow has never determined the whereabouts of Elizabeth Mann, at the time of her husband's death, in the Whitechapel Union Workhouse, Charles Street, Hamlet of Mile End New Town, in 1847.

Was she still living, at that point in time?

I don't believe anyone knows the answer to that question.

"... when I realized that Mann had been abandoned in the workhouse as a child by his mother, ..." :nono:

Mr. Trow is quite adept at pulling things out of his aft end!

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AC: In “Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed” on the Discovery Channel, it was pointed out that Mann was called to testify in the Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman inquests. Yet, was he not merely a workhouse inmate assisting in a mortuary and, one would assume, assisting a doctor performing autopsies? Why would he have been called as a witness? Would his responsibilities in a mortuary gone beyond moving corpses around and cleaning up? Could he have gotten actual training in opening up bodies?

Mei: I think it unlikely that Mann would have received any formal training but he would have been on hand to observe autopsies at close hand. We know from other sources that he was trusted to go out of the workhouse to collect corpses, so he is not merely “moving bodies around” in the confines of his own mortuary.

"I think it unlikely that Mann would have received any formal training ..."

Of course, he wouldn't have received any "formal training"!

Robert Mann was not a fully fledged 'mortuary attendant', i.e. a 'mortician's assistant'. He was a semi-imbecilic vagabond, that was given responsibility for the keys to a shed that functioned as a 'dead house', for the Whitechapel Union Infirmary.

It would appear that he was also given responsibility for the receipt, and on occasion, the actual retrieval of decedents, for removal to the 'dead house'; as well as the preparation of those decedents for autopsy and/or interment. But, as the proceedings of the Nichols and Chapman inquests would suggest; this was infinitely more responsibility than he was able to handle.

Robert Mann did not - as Mr. Trow asserts, in the Discovery Channel documentary - spend countless hours in the presence of "rows and rows of jars, full of spirits of wine, for just such a job", i.e. the storage of Catherine Eddowes's kidney. He was, in all likelihood, dispatched to the 'dead house', from the Union Infirmary (i.e. his home and place of confinement), on a purely 'as needed' basis.

Robert Mann probably spent most of his time, changing bed-pans and cleaning toilets in the Whitechapel Union Infirmary. And, the notion that the shed, which functioned as the Infirmary's 'dead house', somehow resembled a sort of half-ass pathology laboratory, with "rows and rows of jars, full of spirits of wine", is absurd.

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etc ...

etc ...

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Mr. Trow has released his book; lobbied his bullshit, in front of a world-wide television audience; spoken at the most recent Conference; lobbied his bullshit further, in an embarrassingly fallacious manner, in Ripperologist 113; and spoken at the most recent Whitechapel Society meeting. Yet, I doubt that a single member of our 'community' has actually embraced his theory.

The problem we face, as far as I am concerned, is that certain respected members of our 'community', e.g. John Bennett (simply by virtue of his appearance in Trow's television documentary), Chris George, Paul Begg, et al ..., have given his theory a certain level of 'acceptance'. They haven't embraced Trow's bullshit, to any degree; but, they have certainly 'accepted' it as being worthwhile and contributory. I perceive this as being an unfortunate setback, in the progression of our 'study'.

At this point; I really should attempt to go 'cold turkey', and move on to things that really matter.

The only reason that this affects me, in the way that it does, is the simple fact that Mr. Trow has attempted to enter the realms of my fascinations: Political Geography, Demography, and Geographic Spatial Analysis. As far as I know, none of the other jackass clowns that have attempted to shove bullshit into our faces, e.g. Trevor Marriott, have crossed those particular lines, to the extent that has Mr. Trow.

Again; I really should attempt to go 'cold turkey', and move on to things that really matter.

With regard to 'Ripperology'; M. J. Trow does not matter.