Dr. Bond...being Dr. Bond

[jason_c]

Bond also gave interesting opinions for the Mary Pearcey case. Fido, RJM and SBH discussed this in the most recent podcast. It's important in my opinion to look into how these men, both police and medical, responded in other cases in their careers and I thank Debs for posting the above.

JM

Ive no idea who is right and wrong in this Pearcey case, I havent had time to listen to the podcast. But if it shows Bond disagreeing with his peers once again then we can draw either one of two conclusions.

1 Bond had no trouble in honestly disagreeing with the opinion of other doctors
2 He is becoming more and more villianous. Lying under oath at the behest of authorities to convict an innocent person.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Debs and Hunter,
I have read the transcripts and the reports of all three doctors. I find it difficult to form a view one way or another.Both the girl and the man had had drink,so its possible the screams could have been prior to the mortal wound in the throat during a struggle.
Difficult case.As Hunter said hopefully an innocent man wasnt hung-but that has always been the problem with the death penalty-if the innocent die by a mistaken verdict .Clearly this was a difficult case and Bond was brought in to help clarify what had happened.But again,did Bond actually see these wounds or is he only going on reports which appears to be the case? I would have thought it crucial in this case when a a man"s life depended on it, that Dr Bond saw for himself these wounds.After all two separate doctors who HAD seen the wounds believed the type of throat cut it was looked to be " self inflicted " yet Dr Bond,who hadnt seen the wounds in question decided otherwise.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Ive no idea who is right and wrong in this Pearcey case, I havent had time to listen to the podcast. But if it shows Bond disagreeing with his peers once again then we can draw either one of two conclusions.

1 Bond had no trouble in honestly disagreeing with the opinion of other doctors
2 He is becoming more and more villianous. Lying under oath at the behest of authorities to convict an innocent person.

Well I dont see that you have to phrase it in such stark terms.I would not say Dr Bond might have been "lying under oath" only that he was not willing to be "uncertain" as was the case with the other two doctors,who had seen the injuries with their own eyes.
Now its one thing to be certain over a minor matter but its quite another thing to send a man to his death if you are "uncertain".How COULD Dr Bond have had such "certainty" in this case, particularly not having seen the wounds that were in dispute? Lets not though start getting into a black and white type judgement of Dr Bond.Nobody has said anything about him lying under oath to convict an innocent man.
The question is, was he attentive enough to each and every "detail"of the case when the man"s life depended on his judgement?

[Debra A]

Ive no idea who is right and wrong in this Pearcey case, I havent had time to listen to the podcast. But if it shows Bond disagreeing with his peers once again then we can draw either one of two conclusions.

1 Bond had no trouble in honestly disagreeing with the opinion of other doctors
2 He is becoming more and more villianous. Lying under oath at the behest of authorities to convict an innocent person.

I also have no idea about how Dr Bond's conclusions affected the Pearcey case or whether he contradicted his peers again.
I think I will need to wait until Sarah book comes out to read the full details as I am a little puzzled by what Sarah said about 'sloppy' research or conclusions on Bond's part. Sarah mentioned hairs on the poker that Bond said were non human and also that hairs in the pram were not identified as Phoebe Hogg's.
I have only really read newspaper reports on the case and not a lot of those either I admit, these said that Bond thought the poker had been washed and that fibres on the poker were from a flannel and not hairs, maybe this goes against the evidence of one of the other doctors involved?

I also read in some inquest testimony that Bond had identified the hairs in the pram as belonging to Phoebe Hogg. I realise these are just newspaper summaries of inquest details though and are not always accurate.

Hopefully there will be more information in the book, which I am looking forward to reading.

[Ben]

Interesting report, Debs. Many thanks for sharing.

Hi Norma,

where,for example, he believed there was evidence that they had all been killed by the same man though failed to provide "incontrovertible" proof of this apparent" fact".

He never claimed to be in possession of incontrovertible proof. He expressed his opinion, based on the medical evidence at his disposal, that "All five murders were no doubt committed by the same hand"

Dr Bond also seemed to be rather "way out" over the time of deaths, suggesting the victims Eddowes and Nichols could have been dead three or four hours

If you describe someone as "way out" you're implying that they're wrong, which Bond wasn't. Bond observed: "In Buck's Row, Hanbury Street, and Mitre Square three or four hours only could have elapsed" - from a medical perspective, of course. Obviously, there would have been supplementary non-medical evidence that indicated a shorter time period between death and discovery, but that was not Bond's area of expertise. As others have pointed out, though, it was largely beyond the expertise of a Victorian doctor to give an exact time of death, so we shouldn't criticise either Bond or Phillips for lack of precision or error.

I believe very strongly that because of the differing interpretations by the previous doctors,who at least had the benefit of having seen the injuries,Dr Bond,who did NOT see the injuries for himself,was NOT in a position to be so "definite " about those previous four victims,or to overule the other doctors views.

It really doesn't follow that the doctor who did the initial examining has the monopoly on medical prowess. The argument would only become valid if, for example, Dr. Brown withheld some of his findings from his autopsy report. Otherwise, Bond need only read the contents of the complete report, discover precisely what injuries were inflicted upon Eddowes' corpse, and accordingly arrive at a conclusion that was just as valid as Brown's.

In each of these cases, I believe Dr Bond was under certain pressure from Robert Anderson,and I therefore suspect his "impartiality" and independent judgement

But there's no evidence that Bond was under pressure from Anderson, and certainly no reason to suppose that Bond had any reason to succumb to pressure were Anderson to exert some.

No "decontextualization" there, I trust.

All the best,
Ben

[Stewart P Evans]

Spectacular

A spectacular way to go -

[Phil Carter]

Hello Stewart,

Lovely illustration, thank you for posting this. Do you happen to know who the illustrator is?

Many thanks

best wishes

Phil

[Natalie Severn]

A spectacular way to go -

[ATTACH]8390[/ATTACH]

thanks Stewart........talk about him being "hoist by his own petard" !

[Hunter]

Hello Ben,

I'm not speaking for Norma here, but I don't understand why you interjected some quotes of her's from another thread onto this one as it doesn't follow the line of discussion going on here and may confuse some readers that are not familiar with the debate on that other thread.

[Debra A]

A spectacular way to go -

[ATTACH]8390[/ATTACH]

Does this illustration of an ill man taking his own life really serve a purpose on this thread?

[Stewart P Evans]

Ill-Judged

Does this illustration of an ill man taking his own life really serve a purpose on this thread?

His suicide was discussed on this thread. This is a contemporary illustration from the Penny Illustrated Paper which I thought may be of interest.

It would appear that my thought was ill-judged, therefore I shall exit. Sorry if it offended anyone's sensibilities, but the press obviously had no such qualms at the time it happened.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Stewart, Debs, all,

As I am the one that originally posted the "interest" in the manner of this gentleman's demise, I wish to apologise for any offence caused in any way. It was unintentional.
In my defence, I honestly didn't think along those lines.

best wishes

Phil

[Ben]

Hi Hunter,

but I don't understand why you interjected some quotes of her's from another thread onto this one

I was quoting her contributions to this thread.

See post #5.

Ben

[Hunter]

Hi Ben,

You are correct. I missed that post. Please accept my apologies. I incorrectly thought threads were getting crossed.

[Debra A]

Stewart and Phil,
I have nothing against discussing Bond's suicide or his suffering from depression, I just felt posting that picture, which has been posted before, and the tone that accompanied the posting of the illustration was a bit insensitive and adding nothing really.
Perhaps the report accompanying the illustration may have beeen a better thing to post describing Bond as holding a 'high reputation in his profession' and being 'extremely popular' would tell us more about the man himself.
Or even including the original title of the illustration 'the sad death of Dr Thomas Bond.'
I just felt that posting something to gawp and titter over was unecessary.