Presentation Review

Overall i feel that the presentation went quite well, i feel that we used the slide show well as evaluated our sources effectively. However i feel we maybe should have involved that audeince a little more and chopped and changed it up a little as it may have been a little ordinary. However despite this i think that we could have done alot worse - i hope anyway. The practise run throughs and meeting stood us in good stead, and if nothing else we were well organised and committed on the day, spoke clearly and there were no evident weak points to the presentation.
All in all i feel a job well done guys and good luck with the results for semester 1 :)

Presentation Remarks

In general I was pleased in the end with our presentation. I feel our earlier preperations and practice-runs stood us in good stead as it was delivered in a very organised and professional manner and our timing was good as well as our use of the slide show and constant reference towards it. We managed to include much of our research on the slides which made it easier to explain this information in-depth when talking to our audience. Our presentation featured very equal roles for all of us and this mirrored the equality in terms of effort and contribution in preparing for the presentation. We made a conscious decision to do the presentation with as little use of our notes as we possibly could which helped to avoid the common mistake of standing with a piece of paper in front of the face and directly reading out.

To truly evaluate our performance and help us improve for future attempts, we also need to look at areas where we can work on. Although I feel our attempts to perform the presentation were largely successful, I also noticed we lost track of what we were saying a couple of times, myself struggled with this, requiring the use of notes to bring us back on track. This could be down to nerves or a lack of focus but hopefully will be eradicated with experience. Overall, I enjoyed working with this group and thank my team-mates for their hard work and contributions.

After the Presentation

In all, I feel that the presentation went well....at least I hope it did anyway. I feel that as a group, we all worked well together and were fluent in throughout and I really hope that our research and hard work showed through in our presentation. I hope that Mark's comment on the death toll in London doesn't have too much of an effect on the validity of our work as it was definatly on the website that Lyndsey has cited in her blog. I have enjoyed partaking in this module on a whole; I found the Jack the Ripper topic the most interesting to research in reference to the work that we did on the previous half of the semester. Thanks everyone for your hard work, it was fun working with you and good luck!

"Uncle Jack"

Sir John Williams, a friend of Queen Victoria and obstetrician to her daughter Princess Beatrice, was accused of the Ripper crimes in a 2005 book, Uncle Jack, written by one of the surgeon's descendants, Tony Williams, and co-authored by Humphrey Price.
The authors claim that the victims knew the doctor personally and that they were killed and mutilated in an attempt to research the causes of infertility. The book also claims that a badly blunted surgical knife, which belonged to Sir John Williams, was the murder weapon.
It is clear that Sir John was suspected due to the fact that he like many other suspects was a Doctor, and therefore had access to many of the instruments used by the Ripper. The fact he was a Doctor also led people to believe that he would have been more interested in the dissecting of the bodies, with the state in which they were left.

Presentation

Lyndsey, thanks for your last post on motives. I know that we are writing a lot of the same things but it really helped me to get my head round the whole topic. It was really useful in putting the whole thing into perspective; so many people are convinced that they knew what went in the mind of the killer, but in reality, we will never really find out the true facts. It's the mystery of Jack the Ripper that makes him so famous; he was the man that they could never catch. I'm also sending thanks to Sam for his reply to my post, which was also a great deal of help to me. Its taken a while, but I'm finally starting to feel confident in what has to be said in the presentation, i just hope it all goes well! Good luck everyone!!!

Details on my role in the presentation

My part of the presentation will mainly focus on three slides. First I will speak about why society blames certain suspects, for example why so many suspects are foreign or have a mental illness and how this was influenced by the state of the society during that period. I will add examples alongside these of suspects who fit the different criteria. The second slide will focus on suspects who were blamed back then and state why they were suspected. For the third slide I will speak about some of the suspects that have came up in recent years and how the advanced technology and findings have helped come to these conclusions while also pointing out the increased difficiulty in finding who the Ripper was as time goes further away from the killings. It will be worth mentioning at this stage that many suspects nowadays are invented or blamed purely to sell books or increase popularity of the accuser rather than provide an honest attempt at solving the mystery. I intend to use the slides as a base from which I can elaborate and describe the points I am making.

presentation

Hi Guys
I have decided to give a short general introduction to the fact that the Ripper has been in many films and books. After that i think i will choose one of the films and books to focus on and show why they are relevant and talk about the suspects that they introduce and the reasons for them being suspects. For this is have chosen to talk about "Uncle Jack" and the suspect being Sir John Williams.
This is due to the fact that he had links to the Royal family, which was seemed to be a common link to the Ripper accusations and also because he was a Doctor. I think the film i will talk about will more than likely be "From Hell". I wont put alot on the slides, just a brief sentence or two and will elaborate myself to the points mentionned on the slides.

presentation

More Motives...

The key thing we know about Jack the Ripper is that he existed and that he defiantly killed at least three women. the rest is a myth and a mystery. so, this begs the question: why is there such an obsession surrounding his motives? We can only guess as to reasons for the killings, we will never actually know the real purpose; was is a conspiracy against prostitutes and whores? Or was it merely a merciless killing spree? I think this is a very important part of our research in discovering why there is such an obsession surrounding the Whitchapel murders. Everybody wants to find out why the women were killed so horrifically. we can't seem to accept the fact that there was no motive at all.

Obsession

I have been researching for the presentation, and in regards to the hype surrounding the mystery of Jack the Ripper; its amazing to see how many books and newspaper articles there are. Every year there is a new book emerging, all of which try to solve the mystery. Also, I found news articles dating from 1998-2004 which proclaim to have new evidence. One woman, Patricia Cornwell, has spent over $6million researching Jack the Ripper and has even placed the blame with Walter Sickert. Furthermore, Trevor Marriott, a retired detective has spent over 10 years researching the case. I find it amazing that people would go to such lengths to find out about things that happened so long ago.

TV and Film involving Jack the Ripper

http://www.horror-wood.com/ripper.htm

It is quite difficult to find information on films and books on Jack the Ripper in regards to them finding real-life suspects. Many are fictional and therefore use created suspects, while some continue to use Jack the Ripper as a character and ignore the need for giving the killer an identity. Robert Blochs 1943 short story, 'Yours truly, Jack the Ripper' uses the Ripper as a character who uses the killings of humans to strengthen his powers of immortality and therefore does not recognise him as an actual real-life suspect. The film 'Jack the Ripper' was released in 1959 but is an example of a film which uses none of the actual people involved, be it characters, victims or detectives.

The website at the top of this post includes information about many of the films and programmes made regarding Jack the Ripper. The 1926 silent film, The Lodger was based on a magazine from 1911 and involved a few of the suspects such as Francis Tumblety and G. Wentworth Bell Smith. In 'Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,' a 1971 film from Hammer Films, we saw the famous Dr. Jekyll accused of the ripper murders. Another fictional character who appears in many of the Ripper fictional stories is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and one of these, the 1979 'Murder By Decree' involves their search for a murderer who bares a resemblance to the circumstances involved in searching for the Royal Family close friend, Walter Sickert, a real-life suspect. Many television shows and documentaries tend to be more factual and attempt to target real-life suspects, a television show hosted by Peter Usminov, blamed the polish jew Aaron Kosminski, while the 2000 documentary Jack The Ripper: An On-Going Mystery states the opinion that even if we did find the killer, we probably wouldn't want to end a mystery which has fascinated us for over a century.

Why did society point the finger at certain suspects?

http://www.casebook.org/suspects/
With many, if not all, of the Jack the Ripper suspects, there is very little strong evidence which can be classified as reliable for them. Instead, a lot of the evidence is merely down to presumption and interpretation. This makes it a near impossible task for us to ever be able to find the identity of the killer and there have been hundreds of suspects in the 120 years since the murders. So what is it that we look for when we're finding the murderer?

Some became suspects because of their occupation, Mortuary Assistant Robert Mann, may have got a thrill from working on the people he had himself killed just days earlier, or did mentally insane butcher Jacob Levy, continue the day job on his victims? Needless to say barber Aaron Kosminski would have been useful with sharp objects and who would suspect a Midwife Assistant if they were covered in blood, Constance Kent could have been the female ripper.

A large number of the suspects are known to have some sort of mental health issues, Levy being one example, or Montague John Druitt who committed suicide not long after the murders had taken place after suffering from depression like his mother and grandmother had done in previous years. James Kelly, escaped from a mental institution not long before the Whitechapel murders took place and was also known to have visited New York.

Or was it a foreigner? Seweryn Klosowski was born in Poland and poisoned three of his wives, Aaron Kosminski who was earlier mentioned was a Jew from Poland, Michael Ostrog came from Russia although was never convicted of a crime more serious than theft. Walter Sickert had Danish blood and was born in Germany, while there was even one suspect, Russian-born Alexander Pedachenko who may never have even existed.

Did we target foreigners because they have different cultures to ourselves and therefore we don't understand them? Was it easier to blame mental people as we could blame their illness as the reason for their behaviour? And was it easy to just blame someone who's occupation made them at ease with the use of blood and sharp objects? Because I think that despite all of these possibilities, it is just as likely that the murderer was someone who was English, appearing mentally sane and had a job that had absolutly nothing to do with blood, bodies or even knives!

In response to Jade's post on Motives

I think it's a major indication of how innocent our subconscious minds actually are. Many of us wouldn't dream of killing someone and mutilating them, even if we really hated them so the thought that anyone could commit these murders unnecessarily is difficult to understand. This makes us wonder if there is a motive even though there is absolutly minimal evidence to suggest there would be one. These preconceptions have led to many people being named as possible suspects, purely because of minor factors such as their occupation or their race.

I think this mystery which surrounds the killers motive, is one of the reasons why their legend is renowned and I think a major factor in this is also that the murderer was never found. There will always be a lot of interest in Jack the Ripper as this is a puzzle, and a challenge, that will almost certainly never be solved! As humans we tend to be fascinated by mysteries and the unexplainable.

Motives

As Lyndsey so kindly posted the breakdown of what our presentation is going to consist of, my chosen subject area for the topic is Motives. I actually thought this was going to be pretty easy; just talk about possible reasons that the murders were committed, until I realised I was going to be looking at it on a more social sense. So the main things I am going to be considering are, NOT the reasons why Jack the Ripper (whoever he was) but why the mystery of the murders is so hyped up. Why can't people just accept the fact that the murders were committed without a motive? Is this the reason his legend is so renowned? Any thoughts on other reasons would be greatly appreciated?

The Ripper Presentation

Does anyone have any preference yet with regards to the question we do for the presentation?

I've looked through them and like the idea of the second one: Suspects over the ages: who and why?

The history of Ripper suspects is a history of panic, paranoia, and prejudice. Your presentation should concentrate on conceptualising the varieties of suspects, and the reasons why people have proposed them, rather than attempting to put forward a case for any particular view. In examining your materials, look for cultural assumptions, ideological positions, stereotypical views. Think about when and why a theory about a suspect was proposed – what were the social conditions at the time? Why are some theories taken up by popular audiences, and used in fictional representations, while others are the preserve only of specialists and obsessives? And what motivates writers to propose famous people as Ripper suspects?

This sounds like quite an interesting question, we don't need to necessarily discover who was the ripper (that would be a trick!) but we can talk about why many of these people are suspects despite there being a complete lack of trustworthy evidence with many of them. We have spoke earlier in the semester about how society blamed many foreign people, polish jews it appears were particularly unpopular, and there were many people blamed with mental problems. We could try to find out why these particular people were targetted and the possible motives they could of had. Also, we could look into the many suspects that have been blamed through film and literature over time. Hopefully we would be able to arrange this question into sub-topics that we could all approach and make the presentation clear and equal. Anyone else have any thoughts?

I am ace

Just a tester post, but also a valid suggestion! Does anyone agree with the idea that i should be knighted? :-) x