#Robert Hume

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Parissa DJangi

August 18, 2023

Some say he was a surgeon. Others, a deranged madman — or perhaps a butcher, prince, artist, or specter.

The murderer known to history as Jack the Ripper terrorized London 135 years ago this fall.

In the subsequent century, he has been everything to everyone, a dark shadow on which we pin our fears and attitudes.

But to five women, Jack the Ripper was not a legendary phantom or a character from a detective novel — he was the person who horrifically ended their lives.

“Jack the Ripper was a real person who killed real people,” reiterates historian Hallie Rubenhold, whose book, The Five, chronicles the lives of his victims. “He wasn’t a legend.”

Who were these women? They had names: Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.

They also had hopes, loved ones, friends, and, in some cases, children.

Their lives, each one unique, tell the story of 19th-century London, a city that pushed them to its margins and paid more attention to them dead than alive.

Terror in Whitechapel

Their stories did not all begin in London, but they ended there, in and around the crowded corner of the metropolis known as Whitechapel, a district in London’s East End.

“Probably there is no such spectacle in the whole world as that of this immense, neglected, forgotten great city of East London,” Walter Bessant wrote in his novel All Sorts and Conditions of Men in 1882.

“It is even neglected by its own citizens, who had never yet perceived their abandoned condition.”

The “abandoned” citizens of Whitechapel included some of the city’s poorest residents.

Immigrants, transient laborers, families, single women, thieves — they all crushed together in overflowing tenements, slums, and workhouses.

According to historian Judith Walkowitz:

“By the 1880s, Whitechapel had come to epitomize the social ills of ‘Outcast London,’ a place where sin and poverty comingled in the Victorian imagination, shocking the middle classes."

Whitechapel transformed into a scene of horror when the lifeless, mutilated body of Polly Nichols was discovered on a dark street in the early morning hours of August 31, 1888.

She became the first of Jack the Ripper’s five canonical victims, the core group of women whose murders appeared to be related and occurred over a short span of time.

Over the next month, three more murdered women would be found on the streets of the East End.

They had been killed in a similar way: their throats slashed, and, in most cases, their abdomens disemboweled.

Some victims’ organs had been removed. The fifth murder occurred on November 9, when the Ripper butchered Mary Jane Kelly with such barbarity that she was nearly unrecognizable.

This so-called “Autumn of Terror” pushed Whitechapel and the entire city into a panic, and the serial killer’s mysterious identity only heightened the drama.

The press sensationalized the astonishingly grisly murders — and the lives of the murdered women.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane

Though forever linked by the manner of their death, the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper shared something else in common:

They were among London’s most vulnerable residents, living on the margins of Victorian society.

They eked out a life in the East End, drifting in and out of workhouses, piecing together casual jobs, and pawning their few possessions to afford a bed for a night in a lodging house.

If they could not scrape together the coins, they simply slept on the street.

“Nobody cared about who these women were at all,” Rubenhold says. “Their lives were incredibly precarious.”

Polly Nichols knew precarity well. Born in 1845, she fulfilled the Victorian ideal of proper womanhood when she became a wife at the age of 18.

But after bearing five children, she ultimately left her husband under suspicions of his infidelity.

Alcohol became both a crutch and curse for her in the final years of her life.

Alcohol also hastened Annie Chapman’s estrangement from what was considered a respectable life.

Annie Chapman was born in 1840 and spent most of her life in London and Berkshire.

With her marriage to John Chapman, a coachman, in 1869, Annie positioned herself in the top tier of the working class.

But her taste for alcohol and the loss of her children unraveled her family life, and Annie ended up in the East End.

Swedish-born Elizabeth Stride was an immigrant, like thousands of others who lived in the East End.

Born in 1843, she came to England when she was 22. In London, Stride reinvented herself time and time again, becoming a wife and coffeehouse owner.

Catherine Eddowes­­, who was born in Wolverhampton in 1842 and moved to London as a child, lost both of her parents by the time she was 15.

She spent most of her adulthood with one man, who fathered her children. Before her murder, she had just returned to London after picking hops in Kent, a popular summer ritual for working-class Londoners.

At 25, Mary Jane Kelly was the youngest, and most mysterious, of the Ripper’s victims.

Kelly reportedly claimed she came from Ireland and Wales before settling in London.

She had a small luxury that the others did not: She rented a room with a bed. It would become the scene of her murder.

Yet the longstanding belief that all of these women were sex workers is a myth, as Rubenhold demonstrates in The Five.

Only two of the women — Stride and Kelly — were known to have engaged in sex work during their lives.

The fact that all of them have been labeled sex workers highlights how Victorians saw poor, unhoused women.

“They have been systematically ‘othered’ from society,” Rubenhold says,"even though this is how the majority lived.”

These women were human beings with a strong sense of personhood. According to biographer Robert Hume, their friends and neighbors described them as “industrious,” “jolly,” and “very clean.”

They lived, they loved, they existed — until, very suddenly on a dark night in 1888, they did not.

A long shadow

The discovery of Annie Chapman’s body on September 8 heightened panic in London, since her wounds echoed the shocking brutality of Polly Nichols’ murder days earlier.

Investigators realized that the same killer had likely committed both crimes — and he was still on the loose. Who would he strike next?

In late September, London’s Central News Office received a red-inked letter that claimed to be from the murderer. It was signed “Jack the Ripper.”

Papers across the city took the name and ran with it. Press coverage of the Whitechapel Murders crescendoed to a fever pitch.

Newspapers danced the line between fact and fiction, breathlessly recounting every gruesome detail of the crimes and speculating with wild abandon about the killer’s identity.

Today, that impulse endures, and armchair detectives and professional investigators alike have proposed an endless parade of suspects, including artist Walter Sickert, writer Lewis Carroll, sailor Carl Feigenbaum, and Aaron Kosminski, an East End barber.

"The continued fascination with unmasking the murderer perpetuates this idea that Jack the Ripper is a game,” Rubenhold says.

She sees parallels between the gamification of the Whitechapel Murders and the modern-day obsession with true crime.

“When we approach true crime, most of the time we approach as if it was legend, as if it wasn’t real, as if it didn’t happen to real people.”

“These crimes still happen today, and we are still not interested in the victims,” Rubenhold laments.

The Whitechapel Murders remain unsolved after 135 years, and Rubenhold believes that will never change:

“We’re not going to find anything that categorically tells us who Jack the Ripper is.”

Instead, the murders tell us about the values of the 19th century — and the 21st.

[marleneoftheopera]

Wishing (a tad belated) happy trails to the departing members of the 2022-23 London company!

(In order) Holly-Anne Hull, Matt Blaker, Greg Castiglioni, Ellie Young, Connor Carson, Michelle Cornelius, Edward Court, Emma Harris, Olivia Holland-Rose, James Hume, Michael Robert-Lowe, Manon Taris, Anouk van Laake, and Skye Weiss.

[borealopelta]

ATTENTION!

I have to speak my mind. I care so much about the Don Hume x Bobby Moch fanfics, it's so cool and fun and hot. They are obviously not just FRIENDS!

If Jack or Luke saw this, that'd probably make them feel like whatever because they're not actually Bobby and Don, they just played them in a mediocre movie. It's okay if Luke is MARRIED! AND STRAIGHT! Both of them can be! So, to all the Don x Bobby fans out there, please know I mean no hate towards the straight community (I have good straight friends myself) I just want NORMAL fanfictions about Don Hume and Bobby Moch, together, not apart, as more than friends, please.

Thanks for reading.

[angelofmusicals87614]

Auctioneers of the West End Revival Production of The Phantom of the Opera

James Gant (Principle, 2021 - Present)

James Hume (Understudy, 2021 - 2022)

Donald Craig Manuel (Understudy, 2021 - 2022)

Edward Court (Understudy, 2022 - 2023)

Michael Robert Lowe (Understudy, 2021 - 2023)

Leonard Cook (Understudy, 2023 - Present)

NOT DEPICTED: Tim Southgate (Understudy, 2021 - Present)

[newtonian-tragedy]

In case you needed proof that the Royal Society is just a gay club

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

I don't write any more poems. I make poems that I recite to myself, which I taste, which I play with. I feel no need to communicate them to anyone, even to people I like a lot. I don't write them down. It's so good to daydream, to stammer around something which remains a secret for oneself. It's a sin of gluttony.

Blaise Cendrars • Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series

[80smovies]

[vivian-bell]

Everyone is assuming that the motive is hatred or revenge.  Or an attempt to influence the social agenda of the court.  What if the issue involved old-fashioned material greed?  A case that involves a great deal of money.

The Pelican Brief (1993) dir. Alan J. Pakula

[sophs-style]

sophs-style:

The 2022 Glamour Women of the Year Awards took place on Tuesday (8th November) in London. Many famous faces attended the event.

Cynthia Erivo (wearing Louis Vuitton), Charithra Chandran (wearing Rokh), Rita Ora (wearing Jacquemus), Dina Asher-Smith (wearing Nensi Dojaka), Rochelle Humes (wearing Mônot), Nicola Coughlan (wearing Emilia Wickstead), Ashley Roberts, Jasmine Sanders, Charli Howard and Georgia Toffolo.

[dimepicture]

[laserpinksteam]

Film after film: The Pelican Brief (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1993)

It's a star-studded Grisham's novel adaptation that, together with its more successful predecessor The Firm, kicked off the whole series of films. While The Client is my favorite, this one has its moments of levity and fun, the latter of which comes courtesy of Tucci's character, whose ridiculously filmed death I still cannot comprehend.

[olivierdemangeon]

THE PELICAN BRIEF (1993) ★★★★☆

[clemsfilmdiary]

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937, Richard Boleslawski, Dorothy Arzner, George Fitzmaurice)

12/30/22

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: Hoax (2.12, LWT, 1972)

"The hoax at school. Letters, threatening to plant bombs all over London - I can understand that, at least I think I can. Then to do it? To put at risk the lives of hundreds of innocent people, to actually do that! What happened?"

"It was you."

"Me?"

"That lecture. 'You don't have to go it alone, there are people who care'. Nobody cares! Same bloody hypocrisy I've heard ever since he died. I felt sick! Everything you said made me sick!"

[davidblaska]

The senile Biden cover up scandal

‘Growing limitations’ were ‘long apparent’! Pardon us all to hell if we seem obsessed by President Biden’s meltdown, televised in prime time four months before Election Day. Because we are amazed, astonished, agog, and gob-smacked! (!!!) This is a constitutional crisis akin to Watergate. Or January 6, if we may insist. America must now ask: What did all the President’s men know and when did…

[alevelrs]

"Critically discuss the view that Christians can discover truths about God using reason"

36/40, A*

Natural theology is the manner and extent by which God can be known through the natural order. It requires the use of reason, and so is general and inclusive (in that it is accessible to everyone). Many theologians, such as William Paley and Thomas Aquinas argue that God can be known through reason, with Roman Catholicism agreeing and suggesting that God can be known through the 'light of natural theology'. In this essay, I will argue that whilst Christians can discover truths about God using reason, this alone is not sufficient, so revelation is necessary for a full knowledge of God.

William Paley, in his analogy of the watch, proposes a strong argument for God's existence using nature. He argues that if we found a watch on a heath, we could infer that this is not a natural occurrence for it is so different from the naturally occurring components of the health and has intricacy and design, therefore it must have a creator - the watchmaker. In the same way, when we observe the universe, we can see that it's unique and has purpose and regularity, therefore there must be a designer: God. So, by using reason alone, we can deduce that God is the creator of the universe, discovering truths about him.

Paley's argument is an example of a design argument, which Aquinas also proposes in his fifth way. He observes that the universe has a purpose, telos, and agrees that it can only be achieved with a guiding presence: God. Richard Swinburne agrees with this suggestion. He argues that the world shows order, regularity and purpose, and so there must be an intelligent being behind it. Aquinas also has three cosmological arguments in which he argues that everything in the universe has a cause, or a mover, or a necessary being, which is God. He says that a study of natural theology leads to an 'introduction of God's sublime power, and consequently inspires reverence for God in human hearts'. Therefore, he is arguing that truths about God are discoverable through reason. Natural theology is also supported in the Bible where it says 'the Heavens declare the glory of God; the Heavens proclaim the work of God's hands. Here it is argued that by observing the universe, we can conclude that God exists, and He is the one that created the universe.

The problem with natural theology is that although it can argue the existence of God, this is the only truth about God that Christians can discover through it. The study of nature cannot teach us about God's qualities*. God could be evil, hence the flaws in the universe, or there could be more than one God. God could have created the universe years ago and abandoned it, or God could be unintelligent. Roman philosopher Cicero argued that humans have always had a sense of divinity despite what era they lived in, or their culture/traditions. However, this again doesn't reveal anything apart from the fact God exists: the Romans interpreted God much different to Christians.

*teacher comment: can't it?

Calvin agreed with Cicero in that everyone had a subjective 'sensus divinitas' (seed of divinity) which was an innate sense of God which had the potential to grow into informed truth. However there are consequences to this subjective approach, so whilst reason can be used to discover truths about God, revelation is also necessary to have a full knowledge. The first consequence is the universality of religion: religion can degenerate into idolatry without Christianity, which for example, occurred in Roman timed where sacrifices to statues took place. Next is a troubled conscience: whilst we know that God exists, we do not know what is right and wrong and so may make immoral decisions. Finally, we may develop a servile fear of God which is not taught in Christianity, making revelation necessary.

Because natural theology only gives us a limited knowledge of God, it is necessary to take a leap of faith, and gain a revealed knowledge of God. This is specific, doctrinal and exclusive to Christians as it relies on revelation and suggests God can only be known when He lets Himself be known. Many Christians agree that reason can be used to gain some knowledge, but it must be used in conjunction to faith, which is a virtue. Aquinas argued that faith both compliments and differs from other kinds of knowledge, because it doesn't have certainty and so is a choice. The view that faith is necessary alongside reason is supported in the Bible where it says 'we have come to know and come to believe that you are the Holy one of God.'

Within the Bible, God also reveals truths about Himself to His prophets such as when He tells Abraham to sacrifice his son and saves Moses from the burning bush. These are examples of immediate revelation, where God makes Himself directly known. Mediate revelation is when knowledge of God is gained through other people, such as those who trusted Moses to take them to the promised land. These truths cannot be known through reason, thus revelation is necessary.

The most common view is that reason and revelation complement each other: they are both necessary and both reveal truths about God. Faith is not held in a vacuum but builds upon the knowledge we gain through reason: the fact we live, breathe and eat are all evidence of God. Robert Boyle argues that God has two great books: the natural world and the Bible. They have the same author, and both reveal knowledge of God and so are complementary. These views are supported by Polkinghome and Bonaventure, who aregue that we have several eyes or ways of 'seeing' God that need to work together for us to discover truths about Him.

However Karl Barth, who builds upon St Augustine's argument, suggests that truths about God can never be discovered through reason. He argues that our reason is so distorted because of the Fall, we cannot know God through our own human efforts. Natural knowledge is unnecessary because God fully revealed Himself through Christ, which tells us everything we need to know about Him.

This argument is not one supported by the Bible - the Bible doesn't distinguish between natural and revealed theology, suggesting God communicates in many ways. For example, the Bible suggests using reason by traditional wisdom is a means to understanding God, such as where it says 'trust in the Lord with all of your heart [...] and He will make your pain straight'. Of course, the Bible also stresses that revealed theology is important, such as in Genesis when God revealed Jacob in a dream, but the point is, by complementary dismissing natural theology, you are dismissing the words of the Bible.

Also linking back to Aquinas's five ways, God gave us the ability to use our natural knowledge for a reason. Kant's argument is dangerous because it encourages people to be lazy and rely on faith alone, rather than seeking certainty through observation. Richard Dawkins argues that belief in God through faith alone is foolish, similar to belief in the tooth fairy: it cannot be conclusively disproved but there is no reason to support the argument and so there is no reason to commit. David Hume also argued that we shouldn't allow faith or superstition to cloud our judgement; we need to look at empirical evidence to decide what to believe.

In conclusion, whilst I agree that reason can allow us to discover truths about God, this is only to a certain extent. Therefore, the use of revealed theology is necessary, and should be used in conjunction to natural theology for a balanced approach towards leaning about God.

teacher comments: This essay gets better as it progresses! The start is very 'arguments' topic - reduce this part; the end is full of information! You have answered the set question, but I'd like some examples of different 'truths'.

14/16 + 22/24 = 36/40 A*