How do Suspects compare?

[Jonathan H]

To Wickerman

You always move the goal-posts and just reiterate your position without debating it.

You've missed the point again, but then you know I'm a 'liberal' who coddles crims.

Lawende is the witness which the meagre extant record suggests the police took the most seriously.

Major Smith is a primary source and, for all his memory lapses, he backs up this notion.

What a strange world you live in, where people cannot even change their attire -- if it means Druitt might be 'Jack'.

Yes, that has to be resisted at all costs, doesn't it?

To Simon

Ahh, the return of the humourless pedant. I thought you weren't reading my posts, Mac and me.

Why don't you make yourself useful and publish that anti-Tumblety source?


To Bridewell

Some sound reasoning there, even if we don't always agree.

[Cogidubnus]

Dynamite

Hello Dave. Was that the McGrath from the SB ledgers?

Hi Lynn

No (at least I don't think so)...I think I read it a couple of years back...it was definitely on-line...an artist going to paint on the Isle of Wight was bundled off the jetty by the police and detained three days without charges being laid....I seem to recall they were suspicious of his white paint and took it away (initially burying it (!) then retrieving it and, after testing proved it innocent, releasing him without apology or explanation)...

It's so dammed frustrating not being able to recall where I saw it...I've been searching this afternoon but no joy so far....probably gone by now...just like my little grey cells mon ami!

Dave

[lynn cates]

scenario

Hello Jon. Thanks. To be fair, Lave is the most likely one--given the time.

"And, given that Mrs Long also saw a man wearing the deerstalker, we have one common, albeit slender, point across two murders."

Good heavens! It was Sherlock Holmes wot dunnit! (heh-heh)

"When you think about, what on earth is there to rely on?"

Well, for me I need plausibility. Some scenario i can envision without strain.

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

Lave? Well, may or may not have been Lave.

That was a stab in the dark, I wasn't sure it was you who had offered that, but I remembered someone binging it up.

Glad we at least agree on PC Smith.

Yes we do. And, given that Mrs Long also saw a man wearing the deerstalker, we have one common, albiet slender, point across two murders.

The fact PC Smith's suspect appeared to be only 28 years old, and Mrs Long's "over 40", must be tempered by a similar confusion spoken by both Diemschitz & Heshburg who estimated Stride's age as around 28, yet she was 45 years old.
Which only demonstrates how unreliable age estimates are, along with estimates of height, and "time" of day.

When you think about, what on earth is there to rely on?

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

Lave

Hello Jon. First of all, I apologise for the "siting" rather than "sighting." Atrocious. (In citing siting I lost track of sighting.)

Lave? Well, may or may not have been Lave.

Glad we at least agree on PC Smith.

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

Hello (again) Bridewell. Regarding the PC Smith siting (which, by the way, I consider the most reliable Liz siting that night),

Yesssss!

....he was almost certainly a club lad.

Noooo!



A Jew (American-Jew, Lave?) wearing a deerstalker?


These were very class-conscious times Lynn, I think we disagree on that point.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

To Wickerman
You asked why I called Inspector Byrnes corrupt? Because that is what primary and secondary sources tell us.

The sources present a picture of Byrnes being sometimes ruthless with the criminal classes, which included, and in some instances were predominantly Irish, or of Irish descent.
Yet you conveniently omit that aspect of his reputation. In fact, you also choose to blur the debate by suggesting Byrnes must have had sympathy's towards Irish criminals.

So you shift the goal-posts of the argument and claim that he was not currupt by the standards of his time, or some such dodge away from your mistake.

Remind us all Jonathan, when we were debating wired communications, newspaper claims & quotations given by the principal parties. Who was it who suddenly "shifted the goal posts" to bring up the Inspectors reputation?
I'll give you a minute to think about that.

I'm frankly astonished, rather than a little surprised, at thinking that Broad-Shouldered man, who is dressed differently and assaulting a woman in plain view, could be considered 'Jack the Ripper' at all?

Well, so am I, but thats the nature of the beast.
Even if he was Stride's killer, that does not mean he was also 'Jack', though that is the implication of the suggestion.

Your description of Druitt's effects on his corpse is not relevant, as his body was not found near the East End after a murder.

I mentioned it in passing, but I don't think we are expected to see the killer carrying a separate murder 'kit' which includes "murder gloves & a murder watch", never to be worn with regular attire.
Those possessions were obviously what he carried with him at regular intervals.

You're missing the overall: the man described by Hutchinson was a Hebrew, arguably the rich sinister Jew straight out of Victorian music hall, whereas Lawende described a fair man -- and Druitt appears to be fair in high school.

Mr Astrachan was deemed Jewish by the cut of his clothes, not by his facial features.
However, an Astrachan coat is indicative of east european fashion, but your Lawende "sailor" appearance is also not known to be your typical middle-class attire.
Which raises the question, if the killer can dress "down" to look like a sailor, why can he not also dress "up" to look like a toff?

Interesting that Macnaghten went to such lengths to obliterate Lawende and his sighting from the public record, starting in 1898.

If Mac. secretly harbored suspicions about Druitt, he played down Lawende's importance because he did not agree that sailor-boy represented his 'picture' of the murderer.

From 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper', Chapter IV of Mac's memoirs, 1914:

'The madman started off in search of another victim, whom he found in Catherine Eddowes. This woman's body, very badly mutilated, was found in a dark corner of Mitre Square. On this occasion it is probable that the police officer on duty in the vicinity saw the murderer with his victim a few minutes before, but no satisfactory description was forthcoming.

That last point is perfectly understandable given what we know today about what Lawende saw and how uncertain he claimed to be. I agree with Mac.

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

club lad

Hello (again) Bridewell. Regarding the PC Smith siting (which, by the way, I consider the most reliable Liz siting that night), he was almost certainly a club lad. You might chat up Tom Wescott on that one. He measured his AF and the dimensions are about the same as the lad's bundle.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

held back

Hello Bridewell.

"Lawende's description doesn't say 5' 9". The words "shabby", "navy" & "serge" don't appear either, as far as I can see - not in the primary sources anyway."

Perhaps that was in the material that was reserved? As you recall, a good bit of Lawende's description was held back.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

SB

Hello Dave. Was that the McGrath from the SB ledgers?

Cheers.
LC

[Simon Wood]

Hi Bridewell,

Yes, that sounds about right.

Regards,

Simon

[Bridewell]

No Moon

Hi Bridewell,

There was no moon that night.

Regards,

Simon

Hi, Simon,

Thanks. So the only available light source would be the notoriously feeble street lights?
Different lighting conditions on different streets - minor variation in descriptive detail?

Regards, Bridewell.

[Bridewell]

I'm frankly astonished, rather than a little surprised, at thinking that Broad-Shouldered man, who is dressed differently and assaulting a woman in plain view, could be considered 'Jack the Ripper' at all?

Schwartz's description: Dark jacket & trousers. Black cap with peak.

Lawende's description: Pepper & salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same colour. Reddish handkerchief tied in a knot round neck. Appearance of a sailor.

Allowing for the fact that Schwartz was interviewed through an interpreter, I think these could be descriptions of the same man. The main differences are actually height; Schwartz 5' 5" & Lawende: 5' 7-8". However, both Pc Smith & William Marshall also described a man seen on Berner St that night, who may have been the same individual. Smith says 5' 7", Marshall says 5' 6" - round cap with a small peak to it; something like what a sailor would wear.

Two men with the appearance of a sailor, both seen near a murder scene, with a victim, on the same night. I don't really understand why so many people are so reluctant to believe that these two women may have been victims of the same killer, especially as that is what the police believed at the time.

Witnesses, by the way, seldom, if ever, give identical descriptions of the same person, even when seen on the same occasion.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Bridewell,

There was no moon that night.

Regards,

Simon

[Bridewell]

As usual Tom Cullen, who argued for Druitt as the fiend based on Macnaghten's 'Aberconway' version, puts this very well in his polemical but masterly 'Autumn of Terror', 1965, p. 212:

'Probably the only reliable description of the Ripper was that furnished by Joseph Lawende, the commercial traveller, who saw Catherine Eddowes standing close to a man in Mitre Square just ten minutes before she was founf murdered. "It was bright moonlight, almost as light as day, and he saw them distinctly", remarks Major Henry Smith, the deputy City police commissioner, adding, "This was, without doubt, the murderer and his victim". Here is Lawende's description of the man: About 30 years of age, 5 ft. 9 in. in height, shabby appearance, fair complexion and having a small fair moustache, dressed in something like navy serge and wearing a cloth cap with with a peak. Note the 'shabby appearance'--we are a long way here from the music-hall villain wearing astrakan-trimmed coat and the spats, the horseshoe-shaped tiepin, the massive gold watch-chain with the red stone set in its seal. and the 'fair complexion, fair moustache' out us in another wolrd from those other villians--the dark, swarthy, barber-surgeons of Russian or Polish origin'

With due respect to Tom Cullen, Lawende's description doesn't say 5' 9". The words "shabby", "navy" & "serge" don't appear either, as far as I can see - not in the primary sources anyway.

Regards, Bridewell.