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Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman (30 page)
The Female of the Species
Rudyard Kipling
1911
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale –
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations – worm and savage otherwise, –
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger – Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue – to the scandal of The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity – must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions – not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions – in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! –
He will meet no suave 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.
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.
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NEWSPAPERS
Daily Telegraph
Illustrated Police News
Pall Mall Gazette
South Wales Evening Post
The Daily News
The Independent
The New York Times
The South Wales Chronicle
The Star
The Times
WEBSITES
Jones, Richard, Casebook: Jack the Ripper (www.casebook.org)
MAP
Kelly, Barry (www.carewkelly.ie)
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