Talk:Jack the Ripper

Missionality?
Why did you create this article? ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 16:45, 30 March 2015 (UTC) Lurid stories, a destroyed painting (by the crime writer), Jack the Ripper tours round East London etc - so a mention somewhere on RW.


 * My suggestion is no less implausible than some of the other claims (and 'GPI' would be the presumed diagnosis). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That rather doesn't answer my question at all. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 18:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

My entry was a 'placeholder with an explanation' (letting the then local authorities 'section' (as the term would now be) the women as nobody would believe them rather than perform a particularly gruesome set of killings.

There is also the point raised somewhere - there was no test #at the time# to distinguish human from animal blood.

Whatever is decided Jack the Ripper should have a mention somewhere on RW. Perhaps a section of urban legends dealing with 'historical mysteries' which refuse to stay dead but which individually do not warrant pages of their own (and things like and . 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

There could be some mention of my original point - that even if there had been 'an involvement right at the top' they had no need to do anything whatsoever - the women would have been treated as 'insane paupers' (to use the jargon of the times). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:50, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Foot six is similar. PacWalker 15:54, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * What is 'Foot six'? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:21, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Excuse me. The sixth footnote. I was in a hurry or something, I guess. PacWalker 21:19, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Usual long story' - have come across addresses of the form 'Xth Bus Stop, Desert Road.'

It is not impossible that 'male members of the establishment' would explore the slum areas for 'a bit of rough'; or that 'providers of various illicit services' would boast of their contacts within their own circles - but who in 'respectable or muckraking-newspaper circles' would believe the latter? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:08, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Not entirely sure about the point the latest comment is getting at.
 * Sure, the things mentioned are "not impossible", but how does this relate to the conspiracy theories?
 * Btw, the conspiracy theories surrounding the Ripper murders look remarkably similar to John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and neither group have produced anything resembling hard evidence for their speculations (sorry, Oliver Stone). It's not that I think that Kennedy conspiracists were inspired by Ripper conspiracy theories, but simply that both cases appeal to humanity's general propensity to fall into conspiracy thinking; something that seems to be inherent in the way humans view the world (we look for patterns, hence such phenomena as apophenia and clustering illusions). ScepticWombat (talk) 14:42, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If there had been an interaction of the kind proposed by the Jack theorists - would anyone have believed 'a poor streetwalker's tale'?
 * If 'the Boss' letter had merely been signed 'Jack' would 'the murders' have developed into the myth that we now have? (According to the Michael Portillo Secrets program recently the Boss letter disappeared for a number of years - which is a far more interesting tale). 31.51.113.119 (talk) 21:51, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

A link is here. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:01, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Possible racism missionality
You could have him as a page about racism in the media when it comes to unsolved crimes. Jack the Ripper was used in 1886 by English racists, who decided that the inhumanity of the killer must be proof of him being Irish. Irish nationalists reacted to this by saying that one murder in Ireland means another Coercion Act, but a series of murders in England means you read another page of your newspaper.-- Forerunner (talk) 17:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I hadn't read much on that angle, but it sounds like it would probably be good to have. PacWalker 20:48, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Prove you aren't Jack the Ripper
Not sure how useful it is, but whenever someone starts JAQing off with some stupid conspiracy theory or other thing involving poor logic and refuses to offer actual proof, I ask them to prove they aren't Jack the Ripper. I mean, I only have their word that they aren't actually 200 years old, that they are actually human, and they weren't in the UK when the murders occurred. CorruptUser (talk) 16:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * JtR would have been born 1870s at the latest - so 140s+. This exceeds known human lifespans (especially allowing for lower levels of health care in past decades).
 * Time hopping (Tardis, and temporal shortcuts etc) is not currently known to exist.
 * Therefore JtR is not alive today.

Reversing the polarities - how many other violent deaths were there in London/other cities at the time? Was JtR a statistical fluke with good publicity (by actual perons)? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:18, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

The victims
Some reference should be made to the recent book about them - /. Anna Livia (talk) 13:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Prince Albert Victor
It has been claimed that there was a marriage involving Albert Victor: as this would have fallen foul of both the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 and Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 there is no case (as well as AV being elsewhere at the time. And 'a poor unmarried woman' going to the local Lying-In Hospital for Unmarried Mothers claiming that the father was the Prince of Wales would have been treated as a fantasist at best (and probably taken to the nearest 'Refuge for the Pauper Insane (funded entirely by public donations)' if she persisted in her claims). Anna Livia (talk) 12:19, 9 October 2020 (UTC)