Best and Gardner

[dixon9]

been interested about their sighting of Liz with well respectable gentleman in doorway of The Bricklayers Arms.Ok,i see it was approx two hours before Liz's body was found and about an hour and three quarters before Schwartz's sighting,but they got a decent view of the man liz was with,why were they not called to the inquest,were they even questioned by police,(i have looked but can not find anything)or was it the police believed she would have picked someone else up in that time and their sighting was not relevant?

Thanks for any help

Dixon9
still learning

[lynn cates]

big date?

Hello Dixon. Great questions. Thanks for starting this thread.

I have often wondered whether this "clerkly" chap was her "big date" for the night? Also, it would be helpful to know when, precisely, he exits Liz's company, if at all. It could answer so many questions.

I wonder why they were headed to Berner st? Did he have connections to the club?

The best.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

Hello all,

All we have are press mentions of Best and Gardner, and not even much of that. If the woman they saw was known to others at the pub and established not to be Liz, this could explain their disappearance from the papers and their lack of appearance in the files.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[dixon9]

many thanks Lynn and Tom

[tnb]

Tom - that is certainly plausible.

I had always assumed that the reason Best and Gardner did not appear at the inquest, however, was that the police were satisfied by Marshall's account, and so a sighting with either the same man 45 minutes earlier, or a different man (making B&G's man irrelevant) was seen as being of little importance. We can see that the police believed in Marshall's account as he was called to the inquest.

Personally I think it unlikely a normal punter, never mind a murderer in the guise of one, would hang around with a prostitute for the best part of an hour, either staying with them after the act or waiting that long to get what they had paid for. If it is the same man, they certainly didn't travel very far in 45 minutes; where had they gone inbetween? If this was merely a 'transaction' I find it very unlikely, so to me either they are two different men or I am with Lynn in that this may have been a pre-arranged meeting with someone known to her.

The proximity of Marshall's sighting, in time and place, suggests his man was more than likely her eventual murderer. So to my mind, if Best and Gardner are to be believed, and the man was the same, then we have a strong suggestion that Stride was murdered by someone she knew, had arranged to meet, and had already spent a decent portion of the night with. Inevitably that points towards a more domestic angle, and away from 'Jack'. Personal opinion, of course, but I think it is at least logical.

There was an interesting thread going a while ago on a description given by Thomas Bowyer of a man with 'strange eyes' allegedly seen with Mary Kelly on Nov 8, which immediately put me in mind of Best and Gardner, but then again it is not impossible that if he felt the need to detract attention that he could not have picked up on Best and Gardner's descriptions from the newspapers, in much the same way as Hutchison is alleged to have done with other descriptions. It is interesting though, and I believe any detail which crops up in two seemingly independent accounts must be taken seriously (I have suspicions about the man thought to be Isenchmidt in the Prince Albert and 'Blotchy Faced Man' for example, but I shall not expand on that here, as I need to do more digging first).

I think the 'no eyelashes' comment may have not helped (it may have put them in the 'cranky witness' pile), plus the fact that one of them (I think it was Best) openly admitted he wasn't sure the woman was Stride, and the other seems to have been aware of (and therefore potentially influenced by) their companion's affirmation. In light of such 'shaky' testimony, the police may simply have decided to stick with the seemingly more reliable Marshall, rather than risk throwing doubt on the whole episode.

It's that damn flower again, isn't it?

Flowers, cachous, scraps of paper...one of the fascinating things about this case is how the most seemingly banal things can trip you up so often!

[Jon Guy]

why were they not called to the inquest,were they even questioned by police,(i have looked but can not find anything)

Hi Dixon

The Evening News of Oct 1st did report that J.Best did attend the mortuary on the Sunday in an attempt to identify the body. This must have been done in some official capacity.

[tnb]

Hi Dixon

The Evening News of Oct 1st did report that J.Best did attend the mortuary on the Sunday in an attempt to identify the body. This must have been done in some official capacity.

Exactly Jon. And I (personally) believe it was the uncertain way in which they performed on that occasion that would have made the police reluctant to use them at the inquest, and thus when Marshall came forward they were more than happy to take the seemingly more reliable alternative.

[lynn cates]

mystery pf Liz Stride

Hello TNB. Most of your observations about Liz's last hours seem dead on.

Even should some young buck solve the mystery of "Jack the Ripper," the mystery of Liz Stride will still require clarification with regard to particulars.

The best.
LC

[dixon9]

thanks for your help everyone,more i look at this one the more i believe the man seen with liz at the bricklayers arms would not have been the killer(or jack),as he was to 'out in the open' for to long etc.

Dixon9
still learning

[Tom_Wescott]

Mortuary visit

Anybody who claimed they might be able to identify the body would be allowed an attempt to do so. Letting Best look at the corpse should not be taken as a show of faith on the part of the police. Again, they may not have appeared at the inquest due to the fact they were either proved to be mistaken or dishonest. They are also not present in the files of the case, Swanson's summary, or in the press following the first blurbs.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Archaic]

Hi Tom; I have a question regarding your last post about the police choosing to drop potential witnesses from testifying at the inquest.

-When the police did this, would they have made any official notations for their reasons in deciding that certain "witnesses" weren't going to be useful in an inquest?

-How high up the chain of the command would that decision have been made?

-Or did the police follow a set decision-making procedure, make official notations, etc, but we simply no longer have the documents explaining how and why they made their decisions re: specific witnesses?

This question would apply to Hutchinson being dropped too.

To me, 'conflicting witness testimony' is NOT a good reason to drop a witness from testifying at a murder inquest, but 'lack of credibility' is.
However, I still would expect an official record, unless it has simply been lost.

Thanks and best regards, Archaic

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Archaic,

I'm probably not the best person to ask about the protocol for inquests. That would be David O and his comrades. But Hutchinson didn't give his evidence until the Kelly inquest had closed, so he doesn't count. Fanny Mortimer wasn't called to the Stride inquest, and we know she was telling the truth. Fact is, if a witness' evidence doesn't help determine time or method of death, they really aren't necessary at an inquest.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[John Bennett]

Didn't know where else to put this so here goes...

Just made a discovery that may answer the question of who 'J.Best' really was.

'J. Best' in the press reports is named as a 'labourer' of 82 Lower Chapman Street.

According to electoral registers for 1888 (and several years before) it is the home of John Bass. Very likely a mistranscription by the interviewing journalist.

Further inquiries have shown that John Bass was a 'wine labourer', born St. George-in-the-east in 1851 and married to Jane (b.1851). They had 4 children, John (1875), Ann (1876), George (1878) and Edward (1880).

John Bass appears to have died in 1889.

[Supe]

John,

Nice catch and yes, Best seems a very likely mistranscription for Bass.

Don.

[lynn cates]

good work

Hello John. Nice work. Thanks for posting it.

Each identification gets a solution closer.

Cheers.
LC