C-5: Killed While Soliciting or Not?

[Gary Barnett]

You say that as though you believe the house was searched .... any evidence that they were on the day ?
Yards etc were searched I believe .
As for blood , have a look how close the shutters were to the spot .
No guarantee that blood should drip carrying a body a couple of feet .
It was dark Gary .... and wet.
A drop of blood could easily be missed had there been one or two but there didn't need to be any

So you think someone took the body out through the window?

[Sam Flynn]

She's drunk and tired. Her judgement was impaired.

I've been drunk and tired many times (along with my peers, I was a very heavy drinker in my twenties and thirties) and I've felt inclined to have a nap in various places, including park benches and bus shelters, but never has my judgment been so impaired that I've rested and fallen asleep on a public pavement.

[Matt Hood]

I've been drunk and tired many times (along with my peers, I was a very heavy drinker in my twenties and thirties) and I've felt inclined to have a nap in various places, including park benches and bus shelters, but never has my judgment been so impaired that I've rested and fallen asleep on a public pavement.

Unless one has been a practically homeless, alcoholic inhabitant of one of the poorest and crime ridden districts of the age, where the only options are to get 2p for a hang on a line, 4p for a bed for the night, throw oneself on the mercy of the casual wards or workhouses or walk the streets until someone wants to pay for an upright down an alleyway, I don't think a comparison can be made.

[Sam Flynn]

Unless one has been a practically homeless, alcoholic inhabitant of one of the poorest and crime ridden districts of the age, where the only options are to get 2p for a hang on a line, 4p for a bed for the night, throw oneself on the mercy of the casual wards or workhouses or walk the streets until someone wants to pay for an upright down an alleyway, I don't think a comparison can be made.

Your point was about her being drunk and tired, not the experience of being homeless at a particular point in history. I don't think anyone needs to have experienced homelessness, drunkenness, or lived in Late Victorian Whitechapel, to know that an open pavement in a public thoroughfare is not a place conducive to sleep. One also doesn't need to have experienced homelessness to know that Polly would have found plenty more suitable places for a rest and/or a sleep all around her.

[Matt Hood]

Your point was about her being drunk and tired, not the experience of being homeless at a particular point in history. I don't think anyone needs to have experienced homelessness, drunkenness, or lived in Late Victorian Whitechapel, to know that an open pavement in a public thoroughfare is not a place conducive to sleep. One also doesn't need to have experienced homelessness to know that Polly would have found plenty more suitable places for a rest and/or a sleep all around her.

No, my point was about Mary Ann Nichols being tired and drunk, who happened to have that lived experience.


Also, I haven't said that Nichols would choose to sleep on the footpath gin Buck's Row. The most I've said that she may have chosen was to sit down for a rest when she needed one, where she may have passed out due to being more tired than she realised. I also said that I think it more likely that she simply collapsed from exhaustion than sit down.


Anna Morris has mentioned a couple of times about thinking it worth exploring scenarios other than the accepted one and I happen to agree. It still is more likely that Nichols met her killer while she was ambulatory, if not of totally sound mind, but that doesn't mean there can be no value to speculating about other possibilities. Indeed, I was under the impression that was rather the point of discussing a "question without an answer" to misquote the name of the sub-board.

[Sam Flynn]

I also said that I think it more likely that she simply collapsed from exhaustion than sit down.

I don't find either is likely. Neither is it likely that Jack the Ripper happened to walk through the quiet and obscure side-street that was Bucks Row at precisely the right time to find a worn-out woman handily dozing on a public pavement, and completely at his mercy.

[Robert Linford]

Hi Matt


I don't think the women were sleeping (except Kelly) but I do agree that there's nothing wrong with speculation - put up a suggestion and see where it leads.


I can't write much now because I am on a bloody laptop and I swear I can hear Mrs Slocombe's voice issuing from it, saying "I do not respond to any man's finger."

[Packers Stem]

So you think someone took the body out through the window?

Technically , a wooden shutter .
Big one at that , door sized

[Gary Barnett]

Technically , a wooden shutter .
Big one at that , door sized

But with a glazed sash window behind it, presumably?

[Gary Barnett]

But with a glazed sash window behind it, presumably?

As seen here:

[Packers Stem]

As seen here:

[ATTACH]19490[/ATTACH]

The shutters appear to be closed .
They're open on the shop one .
Truth is , none of us know what was behind the shutters

[Gary Barnett]

The shutters appear to be closed .
They're open on the shop one .
Truth is , none of us know what was behind the shutters

No, but we can hazard a reasonable guess: a sash window.

[Anna Morris]

IMO there was enough blood reported underneath Kateś body, that as the police at the time said, she must have been killed exactly where she was found.

IMO the killer had a protocol to achieve his aims. However it was done--IMO some form of choking in most cases--he got the women down on the ground, on their backs before he did any throat cutting. This way arterial spray was directed away from him and into the gutter, onto the ground or onto a fence or wall. I also think he turned their heads while on the ground, to facilitate blood spurting or draining away from himself.

(Concerning MJK, I wonder if he took the opportunity to cut her throat without otherwise subduing her and if this is why she was able to--if she did--cry out, ¨Murder!¨ I think the killer had many special activities with Mary in the privacy of her room.)

If I am right in general about how he accomplished his deeds then the victims he chose + location would have been calculated to fulfill his fantasies or coldblooded activities, however we look at it. He must have calculated that those women could be subdued, laid down quietly and killed. Predatory animals calculate risks before attacking and I think the killer fits that description.

[Adam Went]

None of those thoughts were in my mind when I started this thread. Like I said I am not terribly interested at this time in who was JtR but a different pattern from ´killed while soliciting´might lead us to new information.

Beyond how and why did these women connect to the killer, was there some other angle we could learn about? Pizer was accused of roughing up unfortunates. Why? Did he sometimes lend them money and was that how he collected? Pizer was not JtR and does not seem to be involved in these cases but were there other men who had contacts with women on the street, who filled certain needs like providing a place to sleep or loaning a few pennies?

While I do not think Polly, Annie or Kate would have been considered as targets for robbery, remember that Emma Smith was robbed or simply attacked by a gang as she told it. What else was going on besides unfortunates and clients? There might be a lot more we can learn.

Hi Anna,

Definitely. Unfortunately one of the side effects even today for the poor and unfortunate is that there will always be enablers - people who will lend you money or do other favours for you, which inevitably means taking advantage of the less fortunate. And it all just becomes one big, nasty wheel. I've got no doubt that there was a multitude of pimps, loan sharks, swindlers, etc who would do this, not just the stories about Pizer who we know about through this case. As with now, some people have no morals and it wouldn't been about establishing a position of superiority over others, from which to use as leverage to gain for themselves. Mayhew's social studies from the Victorian era give a fascinating insight into these issues.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Gary Barnett]

Polly Nichols had moved from 18, Thrawl Street to the White House and/or 35, Dorset Street where, according to Ellen Holland, she felt uncomfortable. The most likely reason she did so was because she was unable to take men back to Thrawl Street.

The women in Thrawl Street knew Polly as an ‘unfortunate’ while she was with them, but either Polly preferred entertaining her clients indoors, or there was more money to be made that way.

Given this recent history, and that she needed money on the night of her murder, the obvious conclusion is that she was at least considering soliciting. And the fact that she ended up in a dark back street behind the Whitechapel Road further supports that.

The only way her lying down to sleep in a stable doorway would make sense is if she had collapsed there from drunkenness or exhaustion. And if Harriett Lilley’s evidence is ignored.