How Brown
09-28-2007, 06:28 AM
1. Will we be seeing more of your work in upcoming articles?
Yes, there’s something this month as a follow-up to Mrs. Kuer’s Lodger and there’s something else I’m working on as well.
2. Which specific murder is the most intriguing of them all, if in fact there is one to your thinking?
The double event is the night that interests me the most (in case you hadn’t already guessed). Even if you take Stride out of the equation, the circumstances surrounding the murder of Eddowes and the flight via Goulston Street makes this the most interesting of all the murders to me. I believe Stride was a victim of the same man - for various reasons - but I accept there are reasons why that is not necessarily the case.
I think with Eddowes’ murder we can obtain more of an idea of various little things, for example, the extent to which the murders were planned. It was either extremely daring with policemen patrolling or looking into the square every few minutes or he was lucky. Though I’m not sure there was too much luck involved as such - he just simply continued for as long as he was undisturbed and when he heard one of the policemen coming, he scarpered the other way. There’s also the whole thing about the apron and what it can tell us. The graffiti as well, though I’m not inclined to believe the killer wrote it.
3. Where do you stand on the inclusion of Martha Tabram as perhaps the first JTR murder victim?
I have a cushion beneath me so the fence is very comfortable.
I haven’t studied this crime in great detail, so I haven’t formed any firm opinion one way or the other. Not that I think that would put me in any better position. With the timing of the attack (i.e. less than a month before the start of the accepted Ripper murders) it is easy to see how it could be linked to the others. I’d like to see some definitive figures, but dead bodies bearing knife wounds weren’t that common in the Whitechapel area. I think Bruce Paley gave an outline of numbers of murder victims in the area in his book and this didn’t suggest that such deaths were that common in the area at that time.
But obviously the injuries are different to those on the subsequent victims where there is a definite pattern, so from that perspective it may appear to be a different culprit. But I don’t think it can be rejected as a possibility. A different set of circumstances leading up to the attack may have caused the killer to exhibit a different form of his violence. For example, could it be that the killer intended to mutilate the body as with later victims, but Tabram put up more of a struggle than he anticipated and in his frustration subjected her to a frenzied stabbing attack. If things aren’t happening as intended for a man with a knife and a violent intent...
I think sometimes we reject possibilities without thinking that circumstances may have been different.
4. What area of the Case would you like to see this site and other
sites' focus on for the future?
I don’t think there’s any specific area I’d like to see focused on. All aspects are interesting (to varying degrees) and worthwhile looking into, providing there is new information or well-reasoned interpretations of existing facts to give us a better insight. This is always interesting to see. And a major breakthrough could come from an unexpected area.
What I would like to see on the sites is a better repository for the various snippets of information that are really useful but are dotted all over the place in various threads, sometimes in threads with headings not really relevant to the information. Also these little nuggets can be on, for example, about the 62nd page of a 100+page thread(!) hidden amongst general chatty posts or a nice game of insult tennis.
5. Ever consider a compilation of your work ( such as the ones found in Ripperologist Magazine ) for sale?
I haven’t given it any thought as I never intended to write as much as I have. Each article I’ve written so far was going to be my last as far as I was concerned. Smith’s Beat was written as I thought I’d spotted a couple of details I’d not seen anyone comment on before. So I thought I’d write that and that would be it.
Then I thought it would be interesting to do a similar analysis on Watkins and Harvey for which there were some definite figures to play with. I wasn’t sure how that would turn out but I ended up getting a two-parter out of it. But again I thought that would be it.
I was definitely going to stop after Mrs. Kuer’s Lodger but once more found myself looking at something else...It’s a curse.
Yes, there’s something this month as a follow-up to Mrs. Kuer’s Lodger and there’s something else I’m working on as well.
2. Which specific murder is the most intriguing of them all, if in fact there is one to your thinking?
The double event is the night that interests me the most (in case you hadn’t already guessed). Even if you take Stride out of the equation, the circumstances surrounding the murder of Eddowes and the flight via Goulston Street makes this the most interesting of all the murders to me. I believe Stride was a victim of the same man - for various reasons - but I accept there are reasons why that is not necessarily the case.
I think with Eddowes’ murder we can obtain more of an idea of various little things, for example, the extent to which the murders were planned. It was either extremely daring with policemen patrolling or looking into the square every few minutes or he was lucky. Though I’m not sure there was too much luck involved as such - he just simply continued for as long as he was undisturbed and when he heard one of the policemen coming, he scarpered the other way. There’s also the whole thing about the apron and what it can tell us. The graffiti as well, though I’m not inclined to believe the killer wrote it.
3. Where do you stand on the inclusion of Martha Tabram as perhaps the first JTR murder victim?
I have a cushion beneath me so the fence is very comfortable.
I haven’t studied this crime in great detail, so I haven’t formed any firm opinion one way or the other. Not that I think that would put me in any better position. With the timing of the attack (i.e. less than a month before the start of the accepted Ripper murders) it is easy to see how it could be linked to the others. I’d like to see some definitive figures, but dead bodies bearing knife wounds weren’t that common in the Whitechapel area. I think Bruce Paley gave an outline of numbers of murder victims in the area in his book and this didn’t suggest that such deaths were that common in the area at that time.
But obviously the injuries are different to those on the subsequent victims where there is a definite pattern, so from that perspective it may appear to be a different culprit. But I don’t think it can be rejected as a possibility. A different set of circumstances leading up to the attack may have caused the killer to exhibit a different form of his violence. For example, could it be that the killer intended to mutilate the body as with later victims, but Tabram put up more of a struggle than he anticipated and in his frustration subjected her to a frenzied stabbing attack. If things aren’t happening as intended for a man with a knife and a violent intent...
I think sometimes we reject possibilities without thinking that circumstances may have been different.
4. What area of the Case would you like to see this site and other
sites' focus on for the future?
I don’t think there’s any specific area I’d like to see focused on. All aspects are interesting (to varying degrees) and worthwhile looking into, providing there is new information or well-reasoned interpretations of existing facts to give us a better insight. This is always interesting to see. And a major breakthrough could come from an unexpected area.
What I would like to see on the sites is a better repository for the various snippets of information that are really useful but are dotted all over the place in various threads, sometimes in threads with headings not really relevant to the information. Also these little nuggets can be on, for example, about the 62nd page of a 100+page thread(!) hidden amongst general chatty posts or a nice game of insult tennis.
5. Ever consider a compilation of your work ( such as the ones found in Ripperologist Magazine ) for sale?
I haven’t given it any thought as I never intended to write as much as I have. Each article I’ve written so far was going to be my last as far as I was concerned. Smith’s Beat was written as I thought I’d spotted a couple of details I’d not seen anyone comment on before. So I thought I’d write that and that would be it.
Then I thought it would be interesting to do a similar analysis on Watkins and Harvey for which there were some definite figures to play with. I wasn’t sure how that would turn out but I ended up getting a two-parter out of it. But again I thought that would be it.
I was definitely going to stop after Mrs. Kuer’s Lodger but once more found myself looking at something else...It’s a curse.