Coincidences

[smezenen]

you are right kensei I think i picked up the John Kelly link from the chat room earlier this morning and may have confused it with this post. Still i cant find any reference on this site fro MAK, MJK, or MAN living at 35 dorset. the only 2 times i have found that address is for William Nichols and Annie Chapman. Mr. Hyde I'm not disputing your information, i am just unable to find it here. can you please direct me to the paticular pages that you derive this from?

[Robert]

What if there were a case with no coincidences whatever? Would that be a coincidence?

[perrymason]

I think the first time I ever heard of these kinds of coincidences was with Kennedy and Lincoln....Kennedys secretary was named Lincoln, Lincolns was named Kennedy...that kind of stuff.

For me the odd coincidences in these cases might be that it was coincidental that Schwartz wasnt seen by Fanny Mortimer, or that when Harvey says he was looking into Mitre Square it coincided with a murder taking place in there and an officers approach from an alternate access route in...or that Hutchinson's story coincidentally places him in the position of Wideawake Hate man seen by Sarah Lewis,...what a coincidence it was when Liz was killed by Jack just after an altercation with someone else near that same spot...what a strange coincidence it was that the last 2 Canonical victims died calling themselves Mary Kelly....coincidentally a man comes to his lodging house early one morning after a Ripper event and gives a shirt with blood soaked cuffs to his landlady to wash...coincidence that Alice Mckenzie is killed in almost identical fashion to the victims that had postmorten abdominal mutilation as their focus?....Fenian assassination plots with links to the East End were in their final stages that Fall, coinciding with the Ripper murders...

I think if someone wanted to there is a book to be written on just that aspect of the Ripper crimes....all the common surnames, addresses...primarily Dorset I would think, didnt all the victims have some link with that street?...oddities, irregularities...

Best regards all.

[Sam Flynn]

We need to be careful that our perception of "coincidence" isn't trammelled by our confined view of the case. I dare say that many people in the East End would have had some sort of connection with the name "Kelly" at one time or another - it was a rather common name. Many more people would have had some sort of connection to Dorset Street. Consider this:

Spitalfields itself had a population of a little over 20,000 in 1888; Dorset Street housed nearly 1,000 people; therefore there was a 1:20 chance of any resident of Spitalfields having a Dorset Street connection. Hardly staggering odds - and that assumes that they all stayed put! As we know, many of the poorest classes moved from one address to the other, and as Dorset Street contained some of the largest lodging-houses, the odds against finding a random connection would be much, much lower than twenty-to-one.

Indeed, it would be more remarkable to find that a given destitute individual had NOT stayed in Dorset Street at one time or another. The same would, I'd guess, be true of Flower & Dean, Thrawl Street, White's Row (etc.), all of which were "popular" with the locals. The same is true of the Victoria Home, where a number of names associated with the case (e.g. Sadler, Hutchinson, Fleming) stayed; and Greenfield Street (e.g. Kosminski, Klosowski... possibly Cohen) in a similar vein.

It's worth remembering that these streets were rather densely-populated with transient lodgers, so it's hardly surprising that their names keep cropping up.

[Roy Corduroy]

Mary Kelly was murdered on Lord Mayors Day.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Roy,

That wasn't coincidence. It was design.

Regards,

Kerim Bey

[Roy Corduroy]

Hi Simon,

I have read your Enigma of Milers Court article with great interest, where you suggest there are bigger fish to fry. I say, where's the beef?

Roy

[Simon Wood]

Hi Roy,

So much has happened in the three years since I wrote that article. In that time I have had the photographs examined by an FBI consultant, and what she told me stood my thinking on its head.

At the moment my beef is pink and rare, exactly how I like it. But I feel in this instance my beef should be well done, and so I continue to research.

But I'll tell you one thing. Millers Court had nothing to do with someone known as JtR.

Regards,

Rosa Klebb

[Mr.Hyde]

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/echo/18881110.html

Hi smezenen,
That's the link you're after.

[Mr.Hyde]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Given the Latin roots of coincidence-were these victims "coincidenced" by JTR?

[perrymason]

Perhaps the oddest coincidence is that many of the Senior officers agreed on a Ripper victim list..... ...using the evidence that we have all seen. Either by coincidence, by planning or due to mass hysteria.

I think Simons article is one of the best on the subject....even knowing he has ideas that are formulating from that observation perspective is exciting...looking forward to a Domino Theory at some point Mr Wood...cause we know they do all fit together somehow.

Your point on Dorset is a good one Sam....its not an anomaly that these 5 women had a connection to the same tough street in the East End full of lodging houses.

Did McCarthy own any properties that also figured into other Ripper crimes...that might be an interesting coincidence if so.

Best regards all.

[Roy Corduroy]

The Dock fire occured the night of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. Coincidentally, this figured into John Piser's alibi for that night. (see Chapman inquest)

Roy

[Sam Flynn]

Did McCarthy own any properties that also figured into other Ripper crimes...

Michael Kidney gave his address as 38, Dorset Street at the time of the Stride inquest - and McCarthy was leasing that out in 1888. He also rented properties in Great Pearl Street, where - coincidentally - Sarah Lewis lived, although she lived at 34 GPS, which wasn't one of "McCarthy's [other] Rents" at the time, as far as I've been able to tell. McCarthy was only just starting out on his property empire at this time anyway: apart from the Great Pearl Street lets, he also rented out a handful of other properties on Dorset Street itself - even if he didn't actually own them at the time.

[perrymason]

Michael Kidney gave his address as 38, Dorset Street at the time of the Stride inquest - and McCarthy was leasing that out in 1888. He also rented properties in Great Pearl Street, where - coincidentally - Sarah Lewis lived, although she lived at 34 GPS, which wasn't one of "McCarthy's [other] Rents" at the time, as far as I've been able to tell. McCarthy was only just starting out on his property empire at this time anyway: apart from the Great Pearl Street lets, he also rented out a handful of other properties on Dorset Street itself - even if he didn't actually own them at the time.

Thanks Sam....I remember the thread where you and some other members discovered that McCarthy grew a small slumlord empire, I just wasnt sure on the timing of that.

Cheers Gareth.

[Mr.Hyde]

Mr.Hyde

What if there were a case with no coincidences whatever? Would that be a coincidence?

True.