Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
     
    Unprovoked and awful charges – even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons – even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish – like the Jesuit with the squaw!
     
    So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice – which no woman understands.
     
    And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern – shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
     

APPENDIX II
     
     
    In the decades following the Whitechapel murders, there have been 26 recorded Ripper-type attacks worldwide – incredibly, all of them committed by women.
    In 1974, Winifred Ransom from the U.S. became the first woman known to have performed what was in effect an illegal caesarean operation. She shot her victim and hacked her twenty times with a hatchet, killing her. Then, drenched in blood, she sliced the abdomen open with a butcher’s knife, and cut out the foetus.
    Twenty-two women acted alone. In 2000, Lazerene Mannoe, a former policewoman from South Africa, attacked a pregnant schoolgirl. She bound, gagged and stripped her victim before using a breadknife and scissors to tear open her abdomen, exposing her stomach and intestines. The girl remained conscious the whole time and, covered in blood, managed to escape.
    In 2009, Korena Roberts from the U.S., nicknamed the Baby Ripper, first beat her victim about the head. She then inflicted further injuries, slitting her breast and body, and viciously biting her arm. After cutting open her abdomen, she lifted the internal organs to one side and tore the foetus from its womb. Her victim died of shock and loss of blood.
    Also in 2009, Leung Sin-ting invited her victim back to her Hong Kong apartment where she strangled her until the pregnant woman passed out. She then slashed open the abdomen with a 4-inch kitchen knife. Moving the intestines and internal organs out of her way, she cut the foetus from its womb, killing it in the process. The victim survived.
    The youngest attacker, at 19, was American Darcy Pierce, who tied her victim to a tree before strangling her to unconsciousness. She then ripped open the abdomen with her car key, pushed the internal organs away from her, tore the foetus from its womb, and finally bit through the umbilical cord. Though the child survived, the victim subsequently bled to death.
    Four of the women attackers enlisted male help, including Veronica Deramous who, at 40, was the oldest attacker, also American. After she abducted her victim, she brought her back to her own apartment. There, she tied her up with the help of her 17-year-old son. Using razor blades and a box-cutter, she slashed open the abdomen, exposing the placenta, stomach and intestines. Fainting and weak from loss of blood, the victim was rescued when a suspicious neighbour called the police.
    The murders attributed to Jack the Ripper, far from being crimes that could have been committed only by a man, mirror almost exactly the vicious attacks which, since that time, are all known to have been perpetrated by women. No man has ever been convicted, or even suspected, as the principal aggressor in any of these attacks, and all the evidence suggests that these horrendous acts of violence are ‘women-only’ crimes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
     
     
    Alban, J.R., Swansea , 1184-1984 (Swansea City Council and the South Wales Evening Post, 1984)
    Anderson, Sir Robert, Criminals and Crime (London: J. Nisbet, 1907)
    Begg, Paul, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner, Jack the Ripper A-Z (London: Headline, 1996)
    Cook, Dr Andrew, Jack the Ripper: Case Closed (London: Amberley Publishing, 2009)
    Cornwell, Patricia, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed (New York: Berkley Books, 2002)
    Cullen, Tom, Autumn of Terror: Jack the Ripper, His Crimes and Times (London: Bodley Head, 1965)
    Dally, Ann, Women Under the Knife: A History of Surgery (London: Radius, 1991)
    Dew, Walter, I Caught Crippen: Memoirs of Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew CID (London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son,