Whitechapel Jack states that the Thames torso murders, like the Ripper killings, were perpetrated by someone with a knowledge of the human anatomy. The killer, however, did not remove internal organs or disembowel victims, as the Ripper had done. Instead, the murderer cut the bodies into tidier ‘portions’ — some of which were found wrapped up — and spread them around a given area. The victim discovered in Battersea, for instance, was reportedly pieced together by police surgeon Dr. Kempster in an attempt to make them identifiable.
R. Michael Gordon, in “The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London,” writes that the Torso and Ripper killers knew the workings of the human body, but pinpoints differences in “the way the victims were killed, and in the Torso series, how the bodies were sectioned for disposal.”
The slain bodies of the Thames torso murders were discovered as body parts floating in the Thames, which is possibly why only one victim was ever identified: a pregnant 24-year-old Irish woman called Elizabeth Jackson, per Whitechapel Jack. This is a huge contrast to the Ripper’s canon victims, whose names and tragic fates will never be forgotten. The Thames torso murders were perhaps even more brutal than the Ripper’s killings, but the latter caused a huge media frenzy that cast the former into obscurity.
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