While you where out...

[Melissa McMahan]

Hey I came up with something while the your board was down. Something you can bring up to Cornwell's Sickert JTR camp.

It is true that some of Sickert's paintings look like some of the JTR victims . However what they see to miss and what I just figured out after reading her book again on night when I could not sleep. Is that the panitings look like the photos from the post crime scene or the morgue photos. None of his paintings look like the victims would have looked when JTR was cutting them up or the way he left them. This is key because many of the victims had they skirts up and they were pulled down by the people who found them before the police came. This was the 1800's people and it was an act of shame for a woman to even show her ankle in public back then.

[sorcia_us]

I know I said this before the big crash, but of course all of my posts have been lost, me being a new member!

Just because someone draws something or paints a picture of something does not mean they performed the action depicted in the artwork.

Cornwell has absolutely no understanding of art or what goes into creating it. Art often reflects environment and society - it would be more unusual if not one artist of the time depicted violence in his or her artwork.

Also - this artistic reflection of society, with artist's depiction of the women with their skirts down, not up, would show the artist's compliance with the conventions of his/her society and go against the artist being the type of sociopath who committed the murders.

[WTM]

True enough - I wonder what Patsy would have thought about the work of Charles Addams in The New Yorker magazine? Probably that there would be enough evidence to take him to court.

And look at what Goya painted - Patsy would have had him in the dock as well.

She says odd things for someone who writes an awful lot about autopsies and decomposing corpses. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

[Melissa McMahan]

Well I think maybe 'ol Sickert may have paid some cop or someone at the morgue to see the photos we all have seen. Still does NOT make him Jack the Ripper but just the peculiar person he was. Cornwell read too much into it of course but he did have a odd since of humor. I would not doubt he went to morgues often or saw morgue photos to paint what he did. So what? Some people like watching horror movies or looking into crimes. Hello? Is that not what we are doing here after all? Looking into the JTR crimes. All Cornball proved was that Sickert was a bit strange. Oh murder! There's a crime! She may have also proven Sickert wrote some of the HOAX Ripper letters. How many people wrote fake Ripper letters? Scotland Yard still gets Rippers letter and you know 'ol Jack the Ripper has to be dead by now. Right?

[sorcia_us]

Well, she has definitely killed any chance of being taken seriously...
I would say she should have stuck to fiction, but her fiction wasn't even that good.

What is most annoying about Old Corny is that she has now done so much damage to the whole JTR case through her widespread publication of lies and misconceptions.

[How Brown]

Melissa brings up an interesting point. A while back,while contemplating my own fistula,I posted a quote from Baroness Orczy,whom I dated back in the 19th Century. She talked about these "early-walks",where bored culture-types would go around to check out the kill sites. Sickert may very well have gone an extra mile and did exactly what Melissa said: paid to see the pictures or paid someone to see the corpses. A few bucks will give anyone access to almost anything.

Sorcia....Cornwell will be forgotten in 5 years regarding her Case Closed......you heard that here first.....

[sorcia_us]

As far as Corny, We can only hope...

I agree with you, Howard and Melissa. Modern day murder sites are frequently visited by the morbidly curious.

As far as Sickert being the Ripper, Sickert was equally likely to be like some of us rather than like the Ripper, his interest piqued by the ferocity of the crimes and apparent lack of motivation for the murders, so he imagined in his way what could cause someone to do this thing. Then he painted it as a way of working it out. That is, if the painting does actually depict one or a combination of murder scenes.

Put Sickert down with Montague Druitt as another unfortunate victim of someone's imagination run wild.

I wonder if these authours would treat the repuation of someone like Sickert so lightly if he were still living. If I were his descendent I would file a suit against her for defamation of character.

[D1g1TaL Gh0sT]

Based on what I've heard, his remaining relatives are already looking into the possibility of filing suit against her. Needless to say, were he alive, I highly doubt she'd be so quick, to make the claims she has.

[How Brown]

Ghost: Lets hope that they do. It would draw the PROPER attention to the case,and maybe weed out some of the people accused of the crime that have been mentioned. I remarked that I felt it was a good thing that people ARE named as suspects for one reason. That being,we can examine the reasons that they are mentioned and then IF there are unknown links to other areas of the case that are uselful,we can increase our data on the Whitechapel of 1888.....thats all.
What did we "learn" from Sickert being named the Ripper by Cornwell? Well,if anything at all,that there were proto-Ripperologists alive and well at that time. Thats what I get out of it all.

[D1g1TaL Gh0sT]

It's interesting to note, that not too long after his relatives threatened to file suit, Cornwell said how she hoped it was indeed Sickert. Because if it turned out somehow emphatically that it wasn't him, she had surely ruined a man's reputation.

[sorcia_us]

Yes, she has tried to ruin an innocent person's good reputation, but will likely succeed in ruining her own - as we can see on this board, there are many people who are knowledgeable about the case who think she is a flake.