Folklore: Jack the Ripper

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jack the Ripper
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 07:56 AM

Should this thread really be in "Lyrics"? Well, stretching a point; I read somewhere, years ago, that Queen Victoria in a private meeting with a Police Chief opined that the murders must surely have been committed by a foreigner - a sailor, perhaps - because "no Englishman could have done 'em in, sirrah". A few days later, the Police received a poem, beginning,

"I ain't a Turk, I ain't a Jew,
I ain't a foreign skipper..."

Coincidence? Or was Prince Albert Victor/Duke of Clarence earwigging at the door? Or is this another red herring?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jack the Ripper
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 01:37 PM

All very well about the pea soupers, but as I recall one, at least, of the murders was done in broad daylight.

We used to have a rock and roll singer called Screaming Lord Sutch who had a record which was a mainstay of his live act, called Jack the Ripper. But it didn't chart. Sutchy was a very popular live act, and several legendary musicians played in his band The Savages.

Sutch was often described as the originator of rock theatre in England.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jack the Ripper
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 02:08 PM

I thought he was the guy who won the first Crepitation Contest but I could be wrong.........

Spaw

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jack the Ripper
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 10:59 PM

Can we really swallow "Carl Feigenbaum the Ripper?"

Was this the face of Jack the Ripper?

By Alan Boyle

A reconstruction of a murderer's face has reawakened interest in one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries: Who was the serial killer behind Britain's "Jack the Ripper" murders in 1888?

More than 100 suspects have been suggested over the years, including Lewis Carroll (author of "Alice in Wonderland") and Victorian painter Walter Sickert (who was fingered in a book by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell after a $4 million investigation). This week, the BBC is throwing a spotlight on a dark-horse candidate: German merchant seaman Carl Feigenbaum, who was executed in New York in 1896 for a totally different killing.

Feigenbaum was convicted for the murder of his landlady in Manhattan, and his attorney, Willam Sanford Lawton, said afterward that his client admitted to having an "all-absorbing passion ... to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way." It was Lawton who first suggested that Feigenbaum was behind the murders of women in London eight years earlier.

More than a century later, retired British police detective Trevor Marriott has put together Lawton's claims and other evidence to build a case against Feigenbaum, and the case received a big boost from the BBC One program "National Treasures Live."

Marriott matched up shipping records with the timing of some of the murders, and suggested that Feigenbaum's ship could have been docked in London at the time. He also argues that not all the killings attributed to Jack the Ripper were done by the same person, based on his analysis of the locations and the different ways in which the the victims were slashed to death.

The traditional lore surrounding Jack the Ripper is that he must have been familiar with anatomical dissection, because he removed the internal organs of his victims so quickly and skillfully. Marriott contends that the organs couldn't have been cut out at the scene of the crime, but were removed at the London mortuary by doctors in training.

To add a little spice to the story, Marriott provided the BBC (and Cosmic Log) with a reconstruction of Feigenbaum's face, based on a description of the suspect from his New York admittance form.

Does Marriott make his case? Xanthe Mallett, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Dundee who reported on the story for BBC One, says she's still on the fence. "Initially, I thought Carl Feigenbaum was that serial killer. His profile fit," she writes on the BBC website. "But further evidence ... may show these murders were not all committed by the same person. Feigenbaum could have been responsible for one, some or perhaps all."

Others put less stock in Marriott's hypothesis. In a detailed analysis published on "Casebook: Jack the Ripper," one of the best-known websites for Ripperology, Wolf Vanderlinden says Marriott's theory is "plausible but not proven":

"Could the Ripper have been a German sailor? Or an American sailor? Or a Portuguese sailor? Or a Malay sailor? Of course. Could he have been a butcher, baker, tinker, tailor, beggar man or thief? Of course. Could he have been Carl Feigenbaum? Not with the almost complete lack of evidence that has been presented to support his candidacy. Wishful thinking cannot solve this puzzle."

In an email, Marriott acknowledged that his theory has been a hard sell among "hard-line Ripperologists," particularly because of the dissection issue:

"The thought that the killer, after killing the victims, removed these organs has been an integral part of the Ripper mystery for 123 years. In fact it is one of the reasons that has kept the Ripper mystery alive all of these years. So of course there are those that for whatever reason want to keep it as it is and choose not to accept new findings."

[The article has links to some additional speculations.]

John