Is something happening tomorrow????

Have you made up your mind who you want to vote for?
Well, in case you are still undecided, here are a few celebrity endorsements to help you make up your mind.

Labour
Eddie Izzard, a Labour party member since the 1990s and three-time election campaigner, he said recently: "I take great offence that the Tories are slagging off Britain, saying it's broken. I ran around the country and found that Britain is brilliant."
Comedienne Jo Brand has shown her support for the Labour camp by fronting a beer mat-based campaign. One variant of the pub friendly canvassing says: "Why is Dave Cameron like my husband after a night on the beer? 'Cause he ain?t going to get in either."

Business tsar Alan Sugar recently put his hand in his pocket and donated a whopping £400,000 to the Labour party, saying he wanted to assist Gordon Brown's bid to stay at Number 10. He's hoping his "You're fired!" catchphrase won't be used on the current PM on Thursday.

Last month the Harry Potter author JK Rowling wrote against the Tories? treatment of single mothers and pledged her support for Labour in The Times newspaper. She also gave a £1 million gift to the Labour Party the day before its 2008 autumn conference.

Conservatives
Michael Caine is a genuine A-list coup for the Tories. Having backed Labour since 1997, the Italian Job actor recently switched allegiances, and he's now backing one of the Conservative's big new campaign pledges, a kind of summer camp national service programme for teenagers.

Maths whiz and former Countdown host Carol Vorderman will not only put her cross next to David Cameron's name, but will also head up a Conservative Party task force to help analyse the way maths is taught across the country.

Best known as Ken Barlow from Coronation Street, William Roache, a long-term Conservative advocate, has recently condemned Labour's plans for a so-called "Death Tax".
In case you thought the only election result Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber cared for was the Dorothys...the musical theatre bastion and judge of the BBC's talent show Over the Rainbow is a staunch Tory supporter. He allowed his song Take That Look Off Your Face to be used on a party promotional film in 2005.

Liberal Democrats

Comedienne and presenter Sandi Toksvig is a longstanding LibDem supporter.

Professor Richard Dawkins, scientist and author of The God Delusion is supporting the LibDems. He says: "I shall vote Lib Dem mostly because scrapping the ludicrous 'first past the post' system will turn us into a proper democracy whose benefits will long outlast the next parliament, and also because my local candidate in Oxford is Evan Harris, one of the few MPs in any party who doesn't pander to 'faith'.

UKIP
Astronomer and monocle-wearer Sir Patrick Moore pledged his support to the UK Independence Party in a recent YouTube clip.

Green Party
Comedian Marcus Brigstocke is supporting the Green Party.

Philip Pullman, author, is supporting Caroline Lucas' election campaign in Brighton.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/a-whorsquos-who-of-celebrity-political-endorsements-1962049.html?action=Popup&ino=1

To wrap things up...

It's now been just about a week since the presentation, and I must say I think It went quite well. We all played out our parts with professionalism and confidence and the presentation as a whole proceeded smoothly from beginning to end.

Thinking back on all the reaserch on the Ripper legend, it's interesting to see just how much the story is engrained into modern popular culture. With all the refferences (both direct and subtle), to the myriad of books, films, songs, shows and comics that were either based on or simply refferenced Jack the Ripper. This in addition to what I have learned regarding the morbid fascination in the media with more modern serial kilers such as Ted Bundy and Derek Brown. What is it about these types of people that we find so fascinating?

Throughout my reaserch and the presentation, I commented heavilly on the 'modern beauty culture' that affected the interpretations of the victims in most fictional representations of the case. My conclusion was that it is a state of mind, a constant desire to see beauty over ugliness in our fiction. People rely on fiction to escape from the constraints of reality, creating a glimmer of our ideal world. If the representations of these murders have any focus on the victims, then they have to be shown as something that we percieve as beautiful. Jack's role as a villian is then to take away that beauty and turn it into something more horrible. In the end this is all just my speculation, but it woul be interesting to hear what other people think about this.

With all that said and done i'd like to thank Sue, Carol and Cam for being such a talented and professional group to work with, and for bearing with me when I needed that little extra time. We put our all into it and came out with out with something to truly be proud of.

Edward Bromage (0806096)

Ripper Reflection

As I reflect on this module I can truly say that I feel a whole new world has been opened up to me. The World of Ripperology. Thanks to Cameron, Sue and Ed. It was great working with a group with different working styles and skills who were able to pull together toward the efficiency of the team. Cameron, the creative one, did such a brilliant job on the presentation slides, Ed, the laid back one rose to the challenge on the day with his Fact Or Fiction-fantastic, and of course Sue, the efficent one, did such a meticulous job presenting the profile of a serial killer, 'It could be you'.

One of the highlights of the module was discovering that Jack the Ripper is found in every genre of music. I found this so interesting that after that particular lecture I went home and did some more research, ending up listening to a bit of jazz with old blue eyes Frank Sinatra singing 'Mack the Knife'. I found it worrying that despite having heard the tune, before  I had not paid any attention to the lyrics. This is the reason why I want answer the question that was challenged to us at the presentation in regards to where mysogyny can be found in today's culture. At the time my mind went blank. But hindsight is better than foresight. If our foresight were as good as our hindsight, we would never make mistakes. So before I do as Sue has done and put Jack back in the box I want to take this opportunity to rectify what was not said.  In my opinion Mysogyny is prevelant in MUSIC- namely in GANGSTA RAP. Gangster rap can be defined as that wildly successful music in which all women are (to put it delicately) 'female dogs' and ‘whores' It is notorious for its misogynistic attitude towards women, especially black women. The word “ho” cuts deep into Black history, reflecting a time when female bodies were turned into commodities for their “owners. In songs and videos, black women become objects, props that are barely clothed and continually gyrating. The sad thing is that many people women as well as men, accept these negative images of black women as 'female dogs'or sex objects. To such audiences, this degredation of black women is a fair trade, as long as they can see black images on television or hear misogynistic rap songs on the radio. Typically, gangsta rappers use sexist and misogynistic lyrics for three reasons. First, they are selfish and seek to empower only themselves. Second, they put business before art: Songs with misogynistic lyrics sell millions of CDs and DVDs. Sales mean money. Money means power. They peddle half-truths and fantasies that formulate a stereotypical mythology in which all black women are 'female dogs' and/or all gangsta rappers live the life of driving sports cars, collecting thong-wearing, gyrating women, and smoking drugs. Children and teenagers are listening to this music, and I am concerned that the range of acceptable behavior is being broadened by the constant propagation of anti-women imagery.

When asked about the misogynistic nature of his lyrics, rapper Snoop Dogg said, "it is just for the women who are like that and if you're a real woman, you're classy and elegant. Those lyrics wouldn’t necessarily affect you. You’d just groove to the music."  Excuses - it is just not acceptable.  Please bear in mind gangsta Rap is not limited to black music, Eminem is a white rapper and the validity of his music is unquestioned in the US media. Despite civil rights groups charging him with glorifying violence against women, his album is full of trademark slurs; his wife and mother, both  have their characters assassinated.  In the end the arguments boils down to the fact that mysogyny is ingrained into our culture and we buy it. People go to their concerts and buy their CDs.  The content of gangsta rap in its current form is not acceptable and therefore should not be tolorated.
There will always be interest centered around Jack the Ripper, whether that interest is 'murder porn' or misogyny, we may never know. But right now I'll do as Sue has done and put jack back in the box.



Craddock-Willis, Andre. "Rap Music and The Black Musical Tradition: A Critical Assessment." Radical America 23.4 (1989): 31. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/jun/18/features

A reflection on our group presentation by Susan

The presentation is over, and ‘Jack’ is firmly back in his box.

Thank you to Carol, Ed and Cameron who were a pleasure to work with. Cameron did a brilliant job of the PowerPoint presentation, and his reading of the Ripper letter was to die for. Carol presented some fascinating information on the feminist perspective, and found the chilling quotation ‘Jack the Ripper is the founding father of the movement for the mutilation of a woman’s body, leaving her sex organs for display’. Carol kept us all calm and positive. Ed did a memorable comparison of the real victims and the media generated male fantasy versions. The group who presented after us did an excellent presentation and covered completely different aspects to us. It just goes to illustrate ‘Jack’s’ malleability. Coville and Luciano in Jack the Ripper: His Life and Crimes in Popular Entertainment note that the heinous crimes, coupled with the Ripper’s phantom-like anonymity, have transformed an ‘ordinary yet resourceful criminal into a mythic representation’. The ripper industry took off after the Whitechapel murders and continued diversifying with developments in media technology, because the Ripper is ‘a pervasive representation of ancient evil’.
The module has been enormous fun. We learnt a lot, and enjoyed ourselves at the same time.

Dr. Pawlett’s question threw us all at the end, and typically, we all managed to think of sensible things to say once the presentation was over.
Yes I think misogyny is still around in our society, despite the fact that women have more rights and independence than ‘Jack’s’ Victorian counterparts. Women are still presented as sex objects in the media. Serial killers continue to shock us in the news. Christmas is coming and many women will face a miserable time at the hands of their violent partners. The Taliban continue to deprive their women of basic human rights.

I saw a worrying article in the Guardian by Jessica Mann (an author who reviews crime fiction). She notes that the novels she is being sent to review feature male perpetrators and female victims in situations of increasingly graphic sadistic misogyny. When she complained, a publisher told her ‘Dead brutalised women sell books, dead men don’t. Nor do dead children or geriatrics’. Mann noted that the most disturbing plots were by female authors. Mann believes that because women writers feel that they are less important than men, they are resorting to graphic violence to prove they are not girly. She feels that there has been a general desensitisation towards violence amongst readers.
Mann’s comments worry me because it indicates a trend for women writers to collude with misogynistic fantasies and condone the representation of women as helpless victims.

Do a lot of women feel the same? If so, then surely these women writers are sending an even stronger message to the future Rippers in society, and men in general, that women secretly want to be brutalised. Never mind Jack being ‘Down on Whores’ – it looks like women are down on themselves as well.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/25/jessica-mann-crime-novels-anti-women

Gary Coville and Patrick Lucianio, Jack the Ripper: His Life and crimes in Popular Entertainment, (London: McFarland & Company Inc, 1999), p. 9

The Ripper's End

Well, we did our presentation earlier today and I have to say that I don't know if I could be much happier with it.
We put a lot of work in and, as usual, the adrenaline rush I get from standing up on people got me to act a lot more hyperactive than I usually do (I was pleased that my melodramatic Jack impression went down a treat, though). Our practice paid off, I even remembered so much that when it got to a point where I needed my cue cards, I'd lost my place!

One thing I think we could have improved on was our answering questions at the end. We were all pretty nerve-racked so a challenging question pretty much finished us off.
With time to reflect, when asked for evidence of misogyny in our culture. I would have referenced the introduction to the presentation, where I said that it was 'deep-seated' and thus hard to see on the surface. The most evidence is in the television that we watch, for example a slasher film such as Freddy Vs. Jason. In one scene, a couple have sex. The woman leaves to have a shower (putting herself on display as she does) and the man stays in bed. Of course, we don't see much of the man when the bed is folded in half and his back is broken. But the woman is cut up in plain, naked view. If that isn't evidence towards the existence of misogyny in our society then I'm not sure what could be. We would much rather watch the sexualisation and mutilation of a woman than a man, these days and, for the most part, we have the Ripper to thank for that.

It's been a joy working with this group, thank you.
-Cameron Rose

The night before the presentation

Having just finished my preperation for my piece of our presentation, I decided to quickly put up some of issues on my mind in regards to my reaserch.

I've written a lot about the percieved 'Beauty Culture' prevailant in modern media. I can only describe it as a sort of established concensus that establishes what is considered beautiful from a modern fashion perpective. It doesn't sound like much but can easily influence entire facets of the modern fashion culture.

However, while I make it sound like some sort of shadowy organization whispering in everyone's ear, I think it is not an existing construct of sorts but rather a state of mind. People put what they want to see close to their hearts and try to keep back whatever it is that detests them, from the perspective of modern fashion I guess some people are just fussy (Knows nothing about fashion)

I believe it's this idea that we emphasise what we want to see that has the power to change even our perception of history. That is why even the most devoted and faithful adaptations of the Jack the Ripper case take some form of creative manipulation of the actual look and feel in order to create something that we as a viewer are not repeled by as the actual recorded history implies.

Edward Bromage (0806096)

This is a woman's story.

Just thinking about Sue's posting regarding the victims. If women were indeed the only people who actually saw the real Ripper and the only people who feared his attacks, couldn't the story be told from a woman's point of view? Isn't this a woman's story? Sometimes the male domination of this story gets to the point of suffocating it. It would appear that Jack is at work again, draining the vitality from the women who could be agents in the tale. The Male Vs. Male construct reappears with such regularity that it seems to be reinforcing the old idea that women had to be guided, governed and covered. Smothered. Put down. (I've probably been reading too many feminist books)If you poison people long enough with a negative idea about themselves, they will eventually believe it. The constant reemergence of this male-male drama feels like a dangerous, carefully administered, sinister corrective, a toxin. The prevalence of this narrative strategy is a toxic repetition.

Motorhead - Steve Wright and Jack the Ripper by Susan

Towards the end of 2006, a spate of gruesome murders took place in Ipswich. All of the victims were prostitutes. Their bodies were discovered over a ten day period in December 2006. Two of the bodies were laid out in the shape of a crucifix. Forty-nine year old Steve Wright, a fork-lift truck driver, undertook his killing spree whilst his wife was working nights at a call centre.

Does this all sound a bit familiar?

Jack the Ripper has permeated the whole fabric of our society. He has become a legend because he was never caught. Misogynists have projected their fantasies onto him. The image of ‘Jack’ enables them to continue their hatred of women, in a society that condones it. ‘Jack’ is an everyman, according to Coville and Luciano. He is a human shell without a character or identity. He is a passive representation of ancient evil.
Society has become more tolerant and serial killing has become more commonplace. Steve Wright is a modern day ‘Jack’, who murdered prostitutes. He was caught. He festers in prison, and he has become another perpetrator of misogynistic violence. Misogynistic violence continues unabated.

Why do some men hate women so much? Is it because women are defenceless targets? Is it because the perpetrators are inadequate, or hate their mothers? Is it because society covertly condones misogyny.

Misogyny is certainly an attitude that is being promoted by popular entertainment. Some forms of popular entertainment condone the notion that it is OK for men to hate women and terrorise them - pathetic -How will we ever change this attitude in society when certain men are valued for subjugating and destroying women?

Here is a bit of music from Motorhead glorifying rippers - perhaps this illustrates the point.

I have included the lyrics - unfortunately they have come out as continuous prose because of space.

Here are the lyrics

See into the futureSee into the pastI gotta tell you what I'm seeing in the glassTall dark stranger, knocking your doorLooking thru the window, It's you he's looking forDon't be acting crazy don't you cause a riotStand very still, Keep very quietYou'll never see the faceOf the man in the windowHeart begins to raceHe's the one to spring you a surpriseAaah, the ripper master of disguiseSee into the mindSee into the brainTry to find the reasons that Jacky's out againSlipping and sliding don't even try to hideJust like your shadow, breathing at your sideDon't give into panic, Don't you run an' screamAaah, the ripper, haunting all your dreamsYou'll never see the faceOf the man in the windowHeart begins to raceHe's the one to spring you a surpriseAaah, The ripper master of disguiseCold steel, whisper in the nightHe'll be at your side, with a smile and a knifeIt's seems like dreaming, moving in the danceThe last embrace you'll ever know, The violence of romanceDon't try to run, you'll trip and fallYou'd be a foolHe's right beside you and he can be so cruelStand O very still your heart is beating like a drumHe turns his face towards youAnd the two move as oneAnd so the mystery continues to beguileThe ones who know can never tell you of his smileSee the faces shiver, see the figures moveHow can you see they move so fastYou're bound to lose

How can women counteract this sort of attitude when it seems so ingrained in our culture?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579404/Steve-Wright-guilty-of-Ipswich-prostitutes-murders.html

The victims of popular culture

The beauty culture of modern society is what stretches the truth of the victims of Jack the Ripper.
Far from the young and beautiful examples seen in films such as 'A Study in Terror' and 'From Hell', they were the main example of what many women were forced to become simply to survive in London during the late 1800's.

Though no film director or producer with a mind for their future career would dare endeavour to make the victims seem exactly as they were during the times. The story of Jack the Ripper is one that has been constantly glossed over to make it sell. When observing the many examples of the modern serial killer, the story of Jack the Ripper isn't all that shocking.

A possible point of view is that the legend has been romanticised throughout the generations. The Ripper is characterised as a hunter of the modern perspective of sexuality, the illusion that makes the story all the more attractive. Even the most honest interpretations of the original case have not abandoned this fact. It's not so much the story itself, but the potential image that is used to sell the story through countless interpretations from the re-tellings, to the inclusion of the Ripper as a mere plot device.

Edward Bromage (0806096)

Jack the Ripper Rhyme

Cameron

Cute rhyme. Came across a jump rope rhyme written by children in 1905 after word in police circles that Jack the Ripper had committed suicide and his body had been fished out of the Thames in December 1888.

Jack the Ripper's dead/And lying on his bed
He cut his throat with Sunlight soup/Jack the Ripper's dead.

Lore and Language of Schoolchildren(Oxford, Press, 1959) p.11

Jack the Ripper, Copycat Killer

(That title rhymes!)

I've decided as part of my 'Jack the Ripper as misogynistic symbol' research to look into contemporary men who seek to imitate or even become akin to the Ripper himself.
The first one I have come across is a man called Derek Brown, who killed two women in Whitechapel in 2007.

During the man's trial, it came to light that he was specifically aiming to imitate the murders of Jack the Ripper in order to gain notoriety.

'Brown wanted to become a notorious serial killer.'
'In court it was heard that the convicted rapist planned to reproduce the killing spree of Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper, who murdered at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London.'

Jack the Ripper is still influencing misogynistic violence and murder to this day. The symbol is potentially more powerful with every victim it claims.

http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/crime/life-imprisonment-jack-ripper-copycat-$1243676.htm

One thing I forgot to mention; he was a convicted rapist, too. I can almost smell the misogyny.

- Cameron Rose

Powerpoint

Just a quick note to let you guys know, I'm working on the design for our Powerpoint presentation now. I can show you all on Thursday and integrate everything we have in before we perform.

Good news! It fits in very nicely with our scheme.

What about the victims? – By Susan

Peter Vronsky, a journalist, wrote Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters. In his book he discusses victims. He thinks that there are not more serial killers roaming the streets now than in previous times, but that there are more potential victims. Some believe that society tacitly condones the killing of a certain type of person who is seen as devalued - prostitutes, cruising homosexuals, homeless vagrants, senior citizens, runaway youths, and the inner city poor. Some serial killers seem proud of themselves for doing ‘society a favour’.
Some see the serial killer as a figure who allows them to fantasize about rebelling against the ills of society, and the serial killer becomes a symbol of ‘effective justice’, clearing the streets of ‘undesirables’. Vronsky believes that society is at fault for colluding with this.
He devotes a chapter to explaining how to ‘escape the monster’s clutches’. He notes that serial killers are everywhere, and you may have passed one in the street. There are some identified risk factors that make someone potentially more likely to become a victim. These are (in the USA):
Being white
Female
Aged 15 – 28
Living in a poor neighbourhood
Prostitutes and sex-workers
Working at night
Hitchhiking
Many victims however are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He warns - Don’t get into cars with strangers!


Vronsky notes ‘trust your instinct’. One woman who escaped Ted Bundy had a bad feeling about him, and made an excuse not to get into his car.

This is a fascinating book, because it considers the victims, and highlights the role that society’s attitude to marginalized groups plays in making them easy targets for serial killers.
The victims of the Ripper were poor women living in a squalid, poverty stricken area, having to survive by prostitution. The movement to shut brothels drove these women onto the streets. Victorian condemnation of their lifestyle may have created the attitude that the first few deaths did not warrant serious investigation because they were ‘only prostitutes’. Society was ‘down on whores’ as well as the Ripper, and it shouldn’t be allowed!

Peter Vronsky, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2004)

Sue, I totally agree with you. It does seem sick that a murderer should be exalted to such a mythic status. If the identity of Jack The Ripper was ever solved, a multi million pound business would go bankrupt.
So Ripperology is going to continue!
To think that the century which produced rampant exploitation of the poor, oppression of foreign colonies has as its arch-villain a mythic figure who killed five possibly six prostitutes is incredible. Could it be that this exalted mythic status was or is a substitute for the problems of a failing political structure that 19th century Britain found hard to deal with? Hence the internal problems of British society are displaced onto an outsider, a criminal, someone removed from society. The mythic nature of the Ripper and the fact that his crimes are unsolved add to this sense of externality, of distance.
Its interesting to note that Whitechapel features in Charles Dickens 's Pickwick Paper where it is characterised by Sam Weller "as not a very nice neighbourhood".
Thus, the continuing fascination with the Ripper could be thought of as a political pathology that prevents us from seeing the true problems of Victorian and modern Britain.

Why Jack?

One of the things that I have been thinking about when considering Jack the Ripper as a misogynist symbol is 'why him?' How has the myth survived for so long? And what is it about this 'man' that makes his status so untouchable?

I have a feeling that the answer lies in the question; Jack the Ripper was untouchable.

The fact that the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders was never caught is a very large factor. Almost every other serial killer since Jack the Ripper has been caught and shown as someone whom, in spite of their power to kill, ultimately gets defeated by justice. Jack the Ripper killed at least five people and then vanished into the ether. Never to be caught and never to be made accountable for their crimes.
The amount of suspects coupled with the immense amount of information gathered on the case in over 100 years has, you could argue, buried the truth in a sea of suspects and theories.

If anyone was going to have a serial killer as an idol, Jack the Ripper is the obvious choice. As not only did he commit his crimes with such precision and subtlety; he was able to slip away into anonymity forever while his legacy remained like an open book to the public for the same amount of time.

Even if not you were not looking for someone to try to work towards the level of as a serial killer. Jack the Ripper is, in a way, the world's ultimate villain. The man who succeeded his evil mission and defeated justice. What better name to use to instill fear and vunerability into a law-abiding person, especially a woman? Someone who is unaffected by the laws created to protect us.

-Cameron Rose

More Misogyny by Susan

Until I did this module I had no idea that there were so many JtR fans in the world, and that there was a multi million pound industry based on Ripperology. To me it seems sick, that a murderer should achieve this mythic status. Wanting to find out who the ripper was has fascinated certain types people over the decades, resulting in thousands of books, films, plays, songs, toys and games devoted to this icon of misogyny and brutality. It says a lot about people's warped values if they idolize serial killers.

In St-i-i-i-ll Going – The Quest for Jack the Ripper, Deborah Cameron discusses The Diary of Jack the Ripper, by Shirley Harrison. This purports to be the diary of James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton merchant who was one of the ripper suspects. He was supposed to have been addicted to arsenic and strychnine, had mental health problems and been incensed by his wife’s adultery.
Cameron argues that labelling the ripper murders as serial killing is anachronistic and an attempt to make the acts intelligible. Feminists see serial killing as the extreme end of a continuum of sexual violence, whose less extreme manifestations are normalized by a culture structured around systematic gender inequality. Serial killers conflate lust and loathing.
Elevating ‘Jack’ to hero status is a pathological symptom of a certain type of masculinity that is part of a patriarchal culture.
Profiling serial killers is supposed to show their radical ‘otherness’ but instead, because profiling is empirical, it just stresses the killers ‘normality’.

Serial killers who blame their mothers/ society/ unhappy childhoods etc. are just avoiding responsibility for their actions.

The JtR nostalgia reduces female victims to objects, so that the killer can be the subject. The Ripperologists are helping to perpetuate female subjugation.

St-i-i-i-ll Going…The Quest for Jack the Ripper.
Deborah Cameron
Social Text, No. 40 (Autumn 1994), pp. 147-154.
www.jstor.org/stable/466799

I've been wondering if we could interview the Ripper or Rippers what questions would we ask him/them. Came across an interview that the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy granted to psychologist James Dobson just before he was executed 20 years ago. In that interview, he described the agony of his addiction to pornography. Bundy goes back to his roots, explaining the development of his compulsive behavior. He reveals his addiction to hard-core pornography and how it fueled the terrible crimes he committed

Here's a small part of that interview

JCD: For the record, you are guilty of killing many women and girls.

Ted: Yes, that's true.

JCD: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedents of the behavior that we've seen? You were raised in what you consider to be a healthy home. You were not physically, sexually or emotionally abused.

Ted: No. And that's part of the tragedy of this whole situation. I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of five brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parents' lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I'm not saying it was "Leave it to Beaver," but it was a fine, solid Christian home. I hope no one will try to take the easy way out of this and accuse my family of contributing to this. I know, and I'm trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what happened.

JCD: Do you remember what pushed you over that edge? Do you remember the decision to "go for it"? Do you remember where you decided to throw caution to the wind?

Ted: It's a very difficult thing to describe — the sensation of reaching that point where I knew I couldn't control it anymore. The barriers I had learned as a child were not enough to hold me back from seeking out and harming somebody.

JCD: Would it be accurate to call that a sexual frenzy?

Ted: That's one way to describe it — a compulsion, a building up of this destructive energy. Another fact I haven't mentioned is the use of alcohol. In conjunction with my exposure to pornography, alcohol reduced my inhibitions and pornography eroded them further.

JCD: After you committed your first murder, what was the emotional effect

Ted: Even all these years later, it is difficult to talk about. Reliving it through talking about it is difficult to say the least, but I want you to understand what happened. It was like coming out of some horrible trance or dream. I can only liken it to (and I don't want to overdramatize it) being possessed by something so awful and alien, and the next morning waking up and remembering what happened and realizing that in the eyes of the law, and certainly in the eyes of God, you're responsible. To wake up in the morning and realize what I had done with a clear mind, with all my essential moral and ethical feelings intact, absolutely horrified me.

JCD: You hadn't known you were capable of that before?

Ted: There is no way to describe the brutal urge to do that, and once it has been satisfied, or spent, and that energy level recedes, I became myself again. Basically, I was a normal person.

I wasn't some guy hanging out in bars, or a bum. I wasn't a pervert in the sense that people look at somebody and say, "I know there's something wrong with him." I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself.

Those of us who have been so influenced by violence in the media, particularly pornographic violence, are not some kind of inherent monsters. We are your sons and husbands. We grew up in regular families. Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20 or 30 years ago. As diligent as my parents were, and they were diligent in protecting their children, and as good a Christian home as we had, there is no protection against the kinds of influences that are loose in a society that tolerates....

JCD: Outside these walls, there are several hundred reporters that wanted to talk to you, and you asked me to come because you had something you wanted to say. You feel that hardcore pornography, and the door to it, softcore pornography, is doing untold damage to other people and causing other women to be abused and killed the way you did.

Ted: I'm no social scientist, and I don't pretend to believe what John Q. Citizen thinks about this, but I've lived in prison for a long time now, and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography — deeply consumed by the addiction. The FBI's own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornography. It's true.

JCD: What would your life have been like without that influence?

Ted: I know it would have been far better, not just for me, but for a lot of other people — victims and families. There's no question that it would have been a better life. I'm absolutely certain it would not have involved this kind of violence.

Ted Bundy was executed at 7:15 am the day after this conversation was recorded.

Excerpted from Life on the Edge, by Dr. James Dobson, Copyright 1995 Word Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. This article was published on Boundless.org on January 21, 2009.

Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence by Susan

Judith Walkowitz argues that JtR has contributed to women’s sense of vulnerability in modern urban culture. The perpetrator of the murders in Whitechapel achieved mythic status, but the ‘moral’ message to women everywhere was that the city is a dangerous place for women, and they are safer at home (under male ‘protection’ presumably).
Walkowitz believes the myth of ‘Jack’ emerged from class and gender tensions in Victorian London. Whitechapel was an area of abject poverty. The middle classes feared socialist uprisings and there was also an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. Prior to the murders in 1888, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 increased the age of consent from 13 to 16, and gave the police powers to prosecute prostitutes and brothel keepers. Vigilance groups and social purity groups had also been set up to crack down on ‘male lust’. This may have increased the vulnerability of prostitutes prior to the ripper murders.
The media fuelled the JtR myth by presenting the murders and the man hunt in a sensationalized and melodramatic way. The ripper’s exploits reinforced notions of male domination and female passivity.
The ‘Dear Boss’ letter sent to the press said:
‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them up until I am buckled’.
With the subsequent postcards from ‘yours truly’, the press heightened the hysteria and social anxieties about the elusive perpetrator.
It was reported that men started intimidating women by threatening to ‘Whitechapel’ them. The ripper myth reinforced ideas of male domination, and women were made to collude through fear of death.

The ripper remains a powerful icon today, arguably because he continues to symbolize the cultural belief of women’s vulnerability in the face of male domination through brute physical force and violence. By achieving hero status JtR may have given ‘permission’ to the multitude of serial killers that have emerged over the decades, all of whom have continued to perpetrate the collective myth that it is OK to butcher women.

Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence

Judith Walkowitz

Feminist Studies, Vol 8, No 3 (Autumn 1982) pp.543-574.

www.jstor.org/stable/3177712

A novelist’s view of misogynistic violence by Susan

In contrast to the FBI consensus on serial killers, this is an opinion on the aetiology of sex crime and serial killers from the point of view of a writer, someone that the FBI would regard as a self appointed ‘expert’.
In his book The Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence. Wilson notes that sex crime and motiveless murder has been on the increase since the 1960s. He disagrees that sex crime goes back to ancient history, and says it is a fairly recent phenomenon, beginning with the JtR murders in 1888, and Joseph Vacher in the 1890s, when he considers that the age of sex crime began.
He then contradicts himself and says the age of sex crime began with the pornography of the Marquis de Sade in 1791. Sade advocated total selfishness, even if this involved inflicting pain and sexual assault on others. Sade ended up in an asylum, where he died in 1816. Wilson notes that as prostitutes were cheap and plentiful in Victorian times, ‘rape of adult women was superfluous’, and most sexual assaults were carried out on children who were ‘forbidden’. Wilson then discusses ‘Walter’ a sadist who used violence for sexual gratification, in his wish to have power over women. Wilson sees the advent of the typewriter as a cause of the Whitechapel murders. Women with steady jobs had become ‘unavailable’ and rape became more common. He also blames Victorian prudery.
Wilson maintains that the killings were all sexually motivated and calculated. The ripper may have been a moral avenger, who had a problem with prostitutes. Wilson quotes figures saying that a very high percentage of sex murderers had been sexually abused in childhood. Most admitted having ‘sexual problems’ and 70% said they felt sexually inadequate, and relied heavily on pornography. They favoured bondage type pornography. ‘That’s what appeals most to the sexual sadist’. They like to see a woman who is bound and gagged, looking terrified as she is threatened with a knife. The sexual sadist is looking for dominance and control over women. Ted Bundy blamed pornography for his killing sprees.

Wilson seems to adopt a misogynist tone in his book. He calls the Ripper’s victims ‘whores’ and seems to have a white male supremacist attitude to misogynistic violence. He discusses things from a male point of view, and does not show any empathy for the victims in his writing.
Serial killers in reality are callous psychopaths. They lie and they blame anything or anybody rather than taking responsibility for their actions. Wilson seems to tacitly admire them.

Colin Wilson, The Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence, ( London: Virgin Books Ltd, 2007)

What sort of people are serial killers - by Susan.

There is an interesting article on the FBI website which discusses serial killers. It is a summary of a multidisciplinary conference (Serial Murder Symposium) which took place in 2005, to work towards a consensus on the complex issues surrounding serial murder. Serial murder was defined as the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.
The study notes that serial murder is not a new phenomenon, and there are records of serial killings since ancient times. In 1886 Dr. Krafft-Ebbing described numerous case studies of sex killings in Psychopathia Sexualis.
Serial murder is a relatively rare event, comprising less than 1% of all murders committed in any given year. The article notes that the unsolved Whitechapel murders fueled public fascination with serial killers and spawned many legends about ‘JtR’. It noted that much of the public’s knowledge about serial killers is comes from Hollywood, and self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who perpetuate misconceptions and not from reality.
The conference highlighted a number of these myths:

Myth: serial killers are all dysfunctional loners.
The majority appear to be ‘normal’ members of the community. They may have jobs, wives and families.
Myth: serial killers are all white males.
They span all racial groups.
Myth: serial killers are only motivated by sex.
Some murders are for other reasons such as anger, thrills, financial gain and attention seeking.
Myth: they travel interstate.
Most killers have a defined area of operation, although they may operate further afield as their confidence grows.
Myth: they cannot stop killing.
Many may stop at times if they find a substitute activity.
Myth: they are insane or evil geniuses.
Most are not psychotic. There is however a high proportion with personality disorder.
Myth: they want to be caught.
As they commit murder without being captured they become empowered. They are usually caught because they become complacent and slip up.

Causality is a complex mixture of biological, social and environmental factors.

Those who are sexually motivated eroticize violence during childhood.
All psychopaths do not become serial killers, but a lot of serial killers have psychopathic traits, they are callous and have no remorse for their victims.

They also tell lies, so how can we trust what they tell us after they have been caught?

http://www.fbi.gov/publications/serial_murder.htm

Thinking back

Looking back on the last two lectures (Mark putting on countless songs and videos referencing Jack the Ripper and making the poor girl at the back turn the light switch on and off each time.) Again we see little reference to the victims. The songs (Death metal, Rap, etc) they all included Jack the Ripper in the lyrics or title, but very rarely mentioned the actual victims (you sometimes here a name or two in some songs but not many.) The majority of the songs characterised Jack as a definative example of extreme violence or misogyny.

A lot of examples i've seen indicate the victims names as that little extra bit of knowledge that indicates they've done their homework on the background of Jack the Ripper. Which brings up the question, just how important are the victims to the story that sells costumes and tacky figurines? It's the killer who is idolised, the victims are portrayed as his canvas, but it's the nature of the victims deaths that make this story stand out. The brutallity and final state of the victims (paticularly Mary Kelly) that made the story of Jack the Ripper. But as mentioned before, you can buy a childrens costume of the Ripper, but it'd be a little difficult to explain what happened with the victims.

(That's be an awesome lesson for a group of primary school juniors; "Now pay attention children, Mary Kelley's throat had been slit and and her insides scattered all over the small room. The first policeman to enter slipped and fell over the victims discarded intestines..." Yeah, as you can tell i'm not all that fond of kids.)

Edward Bromage
(0806096)

No 2nd Time To Make 1st Impression

Yes, it is interesting to note that these women were not young and beautiful depicted by the media, but middle aged women and probably not that clean either. This was a London that was full of starvation and poverty. It certainly wasn't that clean and people were not having daily showers. Read an article in the paper of a prostitute working here in Wolverhampton who for three months straight whilst working did not have a bath or shower for three months!! What does that say about her clients. Its not that I'm caught up in looks and smells but first impressions do count. Its a shame that these victims did not get a second chance to make a first impression.
Just a thought!
Carol

Hmm...

I just had an amusing conversation with someone that may pose one possible reason as to why Jack the Ripper is so popular, even now.
The conversation was basically me trying to convince someone that Jack the Ripper didn't exist and that he is a fictional construct that was created to incite a media revolution in the face of a serial killer (a type of killer that had never really been addressed before in Victorian England's media).
They just wouldn't have it. Even with no evidence they remained adamant that Jack The Ripper was a real person that existed at the time. Could it be the belief that he is a real historical figure make his constant use in media more acceptable and less cliché?

-Cameron Rose

Group Meeting: the ripper and misogynistic violence

The group met today and divided the topics up as follows:

Cameron – symbolism and misogynistic violence
Carol – feminist perspective
Ed – representation of victims in popular culture
Sue – profile of serial killers

Why change that, but not everything else?

It’s intriguing how the depiction of the victims has been changed from the fact to what we usually see in films and comics and everything else. Instead of 'filthy, and diseased' we have glamorous and well-kept. But in spite of how incongruous this is to the facts, we accept this. Is that not slightly misogynistic in of itself? 'These women are ugly so let’s have a nice looking girl instead.' Or, on the more gruesome side; would the public rather see a beautiful girl being cut up than an ugly one? I think it's the destruction and mutilation of something beautiful that allows this falsehood to remain accepted in popular culture, in spite of nearly all the other facts having to be meticulously reproduced. As horrid as that may sound.

-Cameron Rose

Victims of the Ripper in Popular Culture

Searching for references to Jack the Ripper in popular culture is an incredibly interesting reaserch topic, but when looking for refferences to the victims, it becomes a bit more difficult. references to Jack in most fictional media will often only regard his victims as subjects, examples of the work of a legendary killer and little more.

Most representations depict the victims a little too unrealistically as overly young and beautiful women (such as in the film 'From Hell' 2001) as dictated by the shallow nature of the apperance culture. It was Barbara Windsor in her mid twenties who was cast as Annie Chapman in 'A Study of Terror' (1965), not someone in her late fourties with missing teeth and a dirtied gown.

It's also interesting how you can buy a Jack the Ripper costume for a ten year old complete with a tacky plastic knife with fake blood over it, but when asked, I doubt they would know much about the victims and the gory details of how they were killed. It's like having a child's size Leatherface costume with equal size plastic chainsaw (which probably does exist...).

Here's a link to a site listing most of the refferences to Jack the Ripper in popular culture;
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackTheRipper

Edward Bromage (0806096)

Jack the Ripper – the victims by Susan

In 1888 five prostitutes were murdered in Whitechapel over an eleven week period. In JtR films the victims are usually played by beautiful young actresses in glamorous Victorian gowns.
On the tour Lesley pointed out that four of the prostitutes were in their forties and only the last victim was in her twenties. Most prostitutes at that time would have been in their 40s to 60s. They would have been filthy, riddled with sexually transmitted diseases, edentulous, pock marked, and most of them were homeless alcoholics – so far from the image portrayed in the media. They were poor and desperate. They would have charged 4d. for the full works, but would have settled for less. A single bed for the night in a doss house cost 4d. Most homeless people however, would pay 1d. to lean over a canvass hammock with several others in a doss house room.
Prostitutes often congregated around the area of St. Botolph’s church where they met their customers. They were easy targets for JtR.
(1) Mary Ann Nichols: died aged 43 on 31.8.1888. She had been married at 13 to a Fleet Street printer. She left her husband in 1888. On the night she died she had been in the area of the docks looking for doss money. She had a new bonnet which she had been showing off. Her mutilated body was found in Buck’s Row. Her throat had been slit
(2) Annie Chapman: aged 47 with three children. She was last seen alive 8th September 1888. Her body was found in a garden. Her throat had been slit and she had been disembowelled. Her ovaries, spleen and uterus had been taken away. People reported seeing her with a man who had dark hair and a moustache, 5’6” tall, aged 30 – 40, with a black frock coat. Someone thought he wore a deerstalker hat.
The police sent officers dressed as women to pose as prostitutes I the area, but they refused to shave off their moustaches and beards, so not surprisingly none of them got picked up by the ripper.
(3) Elizabeth Stride: she was tall – 5’6” and Swedish. ‘Long Lizzie’ was last seen alive on 30.9.1888. Her throat had been slit but she escaped the mutilation suffered by the other victims. It is thought the ripper was disturbed because he murdered again the same night.
(4) Catherine Eddowes: she was 46, and from Wolverhampton. She had been arrested that night for impersonating a fire engine. After being turned out of the police station she met her death in Mitre Square. A bloodstained apron was found on a stairway leading to 108-119 Wentworth Model dwellings, Goulston Street. A message was written in chalk on the wall above the apron ‘The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing’. Catherine’s throat had been slashed, she had been disembowelled and mutilated, and one of her kidneys had been taken away. V shaped marks had been cut into her face; parts of her nose and ear had been sliced off.
(5) Mary Jane Kelly: aged 25. This murder took place in the victim’s house. The ripper completely mutilated her over a period of hours. Her throat had been cut, and pieces of her body had been removed and placed ritualistically around her. A witness reported seeing a dark haired aristocratic sounding man in the vicinity.

http://www.walksoflondon.co.uk/28/jack-the-ripper-photos.shtml

The Suspects by Susan

‘Jack the Ripper’ continues to fascinate people because he was never captured. His acts were shocking and horrific, generating an atmosphere of terror on the streets of London.
Today there is a multi million pound industry in ‘Jack the Ripper’ because of the mystery that surrounds his barbaric deeds, and all we can do is continue to speculate about who he/ she /it was.

Many people have been put forward as possible suspects. The ones Lesley talked about on the walk were:

Aaron Kosminski – he was a Polish Jew. At the time people were suspicious of Jews and ‘foreigners’ anyway, and may have preferred to blame someone fitting this profile. Kosminski was a local butcher and a back street abortionist. He had a major problem – he hated women, and was known to be violent to them. He ended up in an asylum for the insane, but escaped during August 1888 and was captured in November 1888, shortly after Mary Kelly was murdered.
Is this a coincidence?
Kosminski had paranoid schizophrenia, but he did not fit the physical description of the ‘ripper’ suspect.

Montague Druitt – He fits the physical description of the ‘ripper’.
Blood stained clothes were found in his rooms, and he had written a note saying he was ‘going the same way as his mother’. She committed suicide. So, there was a history of mental instability in his family. His cousin was a Dr. Druitt, and Montague lodged with him for a time, giving him access to surgical knives, and anatomical text books etc.

Francis Tumblety – he was a visiting ‘quack’ from the states, and was in London at the time of the murders. He was a liar and a fantasist who also hated prostitutes. He kept female sex organs preserved in jars. He moved to France and then back to the states where he died nineteen years later.

The Duke of Clarence was also a suspect.


We cannot use modern forensic testing on the victims as most of them were buried in mass graves.

My preferred suspect is Kosminski, but we will never know who did it - will we?

http://www.essortment.com/all/jacktherippe_rdrb.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_suspects

Jack the Ripper Walk – London 8.11.2009 by Susan

Here is a summary of the walk for people who were not able to come.

Our tour guide was Lesley, and she joined us outside Tower Hill tube station. We followed her to the ruins of the medieval wall that divided the paupers of the east end from the rich of the financial district. At the time of the ripper the east end was heaving with homeless people. There was high unemployment, and people were starving. The life expectancy of a man was 30 years and 55% of children died before the age of five. Women turned to prostitution to survive. Today there are 14 million people in London, and 5,000 – 6,000 prostitutes. In 1888 the population of London was 1 million, and there were 40,000 – 60,000 prostitutes, and one in seven houses were brothels. There were high rates of alcoholism, and many people drank ‘gin’ a grain based, 120% proof drink that killed 2/3 of its consumers. The east end was a site for ‘sex tourism’. It is possible the ripper was an outsider, but in 1888 the area where the murders occurred was a warren of alley ways dating from medieval times, and the ripper may have had local knowledge enabling him to slip away unnoticed…’like the London fog, he evaporated into the night’.
So you have an area of abject poverty, with lots of prostitutes and alcoholics.
The police force was unprepared for the ripper. The city police and the Metropolitan police were divided, and did not cooperate fully. Serial killers were not really known then.
Prostitutes charged up to a maximum of 4d. for a ‘knee trembler’. Many were 40+ years old and homeless alcoholics – filthy, and diseased.
The murders took place between 31st August and 8th November 1888.
The tour took us to the actual sites of two of the murders, and we stood on the spot in Mitre Square where Catherine Eddowes was murdered. We were taken to the area near St Botolph’s church where the prostitutes and customers congregated.
We walked along claustrophobic alleyways and finished the tour at ‘The Ten Bells' pub.


http://www.jack-the-ripper-walks.com/?gclid=CNbF6s6k_Z0CFUQA4wodRA22pA

Edward

Such a flattering title... anyway, I look forward to contributing.