The "Invisible Man" effect.

[RavenDarkendale]

Abby, Don, I concede that point. I guess I was just caught up in the fact that this is the first pope who has chosen the name Francis. chuckle

I doubt that Pope Francis would do anything so petty, but some rulers of countries have declared themselves (Name) the first as an indication that they expected their linage to continue. As I say, probably doesn't apply to the Pope.

[Phil H]

Icome late to this thread, but the topic is hardly new.

Surely Odell's attempts to identify a shochet as the murderer (though unidentified) - was seeking to distinguish a "type" who would not be highly visible on the streets/taken for granted; have necessary or useful skills; and who had a reason to be about and perhaps bloodstained.

Equally the now scoffed at idea of a female "Jill the Ripper" as a mid-wife had similar aims.

We don't tend now to give much thought to these "generalisations"or lay figures because we get so caught up in named suspects (however unlikely), but it has always been part of "Ripperology" going back 70 years or more.

One of the reasons I am attracted to the idea of Lechmere/Cross as "Jack" - at least for Polly and Annie - is the irony that he has ALWAYS been in plain sight. In most (older books at least) works on JtR the first name mentioned is Cross's. He was found standing over a body (or very close to one). we now know he gave and maintained a false name (well, at least not the one he USUALLY went by).

Alas, I don't think all the efforts that our stalwart colleagues have put in on this idea takes us very far, or gives more than circumstantial/speculative reasons to suspect Lechmere/Cross, but it is RIGHT to look into it. The man who finds a body is often INVISIBLE especially if there is no obvious connection to the victim. It hardly bears thinking about - what if Neil or one of the other PCs had insisted on searching Cross and found a knife - would that have been the end of the whole thing - a long forgotten sordid but casual homicide in a back street?

But I see someone like kosminski as equally "invisible" - with a knowledge of the area that allows him to nip down a back alley, cut along a backstreet and be somewhere else in moments; a man (as a Jew) probably in black, and perhaps nutty enough to make people think "Nah!".

I find this thread very stimulating and would be interested to know more about the police thought it was a cop for a while, angle.

Phil

[Fisherman]

I find this thread very stimulating and would be interested to know more about the police thought it was a cop for a while, angle.
Phil

To quote Robert de Niro: "Yah talkin to me?"

The "the police thought it was a cop for a while" story, Phil - here it is:

It is related - of course! - to the Nichols/Lechmere affair. If you look at the Daily News, for example, from the 3:rd of September, you will find this passage, concerning Neil´s doings on the murder night:

" Police constable Neil, 79 J, who found the body, reports the time as 3.45. Buck's row is a comparatively secluded place, having tenements on one side only. There is little doubt that the constable was watched out of the street on his previous round. He has been severely questioned as to his "working" of his "beat" on that night, and states that he was last on the spot where he found the body not more than half an hour previously - that is to say, at 3.15. The "beat" is a very short one, and, quickly walked over, would not occupy more than twelve minutes. He neither heard a cry not saw a soul. Moreover, there are three watchmen on duty at night close to the spot and neither one heard a cry to cause alarm. It is not true, says Constable Neil, who is a man of nearly 20 years' service, that he was called to the body by two men."

These news were released on the Monday, meaning that the material presented in the article was collected on Sunday. There was what seems like a press conference that day, where the press was informed - among other things - that PC Neil denied having been informed about the deed by two men.
These men are, of course, Lechmere and Paul. On the same Sunday that this article was formed, the Lloyds Weekly article, interviewing Robert Paul, was published, speaking of the two carmen who had found a body and reported it to the police.
The logical deduction was of course that the carmen had spoken to Neil, and directed him to the body. But this he fervently denied.
It says in the Daily News article, directly following the text I quoted earlier, that "He (Neil, my remark) came upon it as he walked, and, flashing his lanthorn to examine it he was answered by the lights from two other constables at either end of the street. These officers had seen no man leaving the spot to attract attention, and the mystery is most complete."

The police, however, must have conducted further inquiries, and they subsequently found out that somebody really HAD passed down Buck´s Row. Mizen must have informed them that this had taken place, whereupon he was called to testify on the Monday inquest.
This would mean that the police at one stage would have ben in posession of the information that:
A/ Mizen had spoken to a man who said that a PC awaited him in Buck´s Row
B/ Neil was not that PC, since he had not met the carmen (his denial would have been what lay behind the "severe questioning")

The conclusion could only have been one: Some person clad in the clothes of a PC had been in place in Buck´s Row, a PC that was there when the carmen arrived but NOT when Neil did. At that stage he had disappeared. This PC had seemingly been on the spot first, and he had then abanoned the scene, not reporting to his superiors.

There is of course the possibility that Lechmere reported in and set things straight before Mizen gave away that he had seen somebody in Buck´s Row - but the harsh questioning Neil was subjected to seems to tell us that Lechmere surfaced a bit later in the process, meaning that there would at one stage have been knowledge on behalf of the police that a PC had been in place with Nichols, only to vanish into thin air before Neil reached the spot.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Phil H]

Interesting, Fisherman. Thank you. But IMHO, it's easy to infer to much.

Phil

[Fisherman]

It is, Phil - but in this case it´s either the police DID think a PC had disappeared conveniently OR Lechmere surfaced before they drew the conclusion. The conclusion as such would have been an inevitable one.

The best,
Fisherman

[Phil H]

As far as I can see it shows that the police may have had questions, which were resolved. I don't think it can be inferred that they SUSPECTED one of their own. Discrepancies always have to be followed up - even in 1888 - but to go further is, to me, more than the evidence you cite can bear.

Phil

[Fisherman]

As far as I can see it shows that the police may have had questions, which were resolved. I don't think it can be inferred that they SUSPECTED one of their own. Discrepancies always have to be followed up - even in 1888 - but to go further is, to me, more than the evidence you cite can bear.

Phil

Of course they had questions that were resolved, Phil - we know this. Lechmere solved this particular conundrum for them when he approached them.

But BEFORE he approached them, they were left with another carman who said that he had approached the police on the night in question after having examined Nichols in the street, a police who would not concede that he had been approached by two men and - at some stage - another PC who said that he had been assured by two men, looking like carmen, that another PC awaited him in Buck´s Row.

Suggesting that the possibility of a scenario with a man clad as a PC had been in place in Buck´s Row, only to disappear before anybody got to the spot, actually surfaced is really not much of a stretch.

However, if you find it a very exotic thing to suggest, then I won´t take that away from you. We are all different, after all. Or so I´m told. And just like I said before, I am not saying this MUST have been so - I am only pointing to the very obvious possibility that it was.

The best,
Fisherman

[Phil H]

I think the cautious approach is more professionally secure.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

Isn't Christ Church Church of England? I only aske because 'last rites' is a Roman Catholic practise.

Episcopalians have last rites. They call it "extreme unction." I think it's optional, or maybe just something some people don't take as seriously as others. They don't do things like refuse to bury someone in an Episcopal cemetery because they didn't have it. Anyway, not completely limited to Catholics. I have no idea about Eastern Orthodox.

Abby, Don, I concede that point. I guess I was just caught up in the fact that this is the first pope who has chosen the name Francis. chuckle

Maybe that was the point-- he didn't want to be the 9th, or 11th, or 15th something. Or maybe he's affirming miraculous manifestations, which the Catholic Church has been doing since the last half of JP2's reign, ad absurdum, to the point that people are seeing Jesus in grilled cheese sandwiches, and Mother Teresa in cinnamon rolls (although, I, personally, think all cinnamon rolls bear a resemblance to Mother Teresa).

Surely Odell's attempts to identify a shochet as the murderer (though unidentified) - was seeking to distinguish a "type" who would not be highly visible on the streets/taken for granted; have necessary or useful skills; and who had a reason to be about and perhaps bloodstained.

I question whether a shecter would leave his shop with blood on his clothes. Transferring even minute amounts of blood or meat particles to food, plates, or a surface that was dairy or parve would make the dairy thing now
treyf, and the parve thing now meat. Also, letting anything with blood attract bugs to your clothes, your home, your eating area, could make a lot of food treyf.

I have no idea what measures Victorian shecters used to minimize contamination, but they probably wore over-clothes and aprons, and possibly even changed clothes before going home. They may have put their work clothes in some container where they were washed separately from the family's clothing. And, the shecter probably too care not to get blood on his clothes in the first place-- more care than a gentile slaughterman or butcher would have used, since he wouldn't render a block of cheese (for example) inedible, by brushing up against it in a blood-stained shirt.

[Phil H]

Irrelevant to the thread really, but for the record:

On royal papal "numbers" monarchs themselves NEVER (and never have0 used a numeral.

Elizabeth II signs herself "Elizabeth R" as did Elizabeth I. Until the present Queen's accession in 1952, Elizabeth I was simply referred to as "Queen Elizabeth" since there was no confusion.

Similarly, Louis XIV (of France) and Charles II (of England and Scotland) did not use numbers when referring to themselves, and that fact actually gave away a conman (James de la Cloche IIRC) who was using a letter supposedly between them which DID use the numbers.

I think FRANCIS as a name is so closely associated with Francis of Assissi and poverty, that the choice of the name by a man who talks of a poor church for the poor should be evident. As to Francis Xavier and the movement he founded - the Jesuits - I suspect that they will, as always, want to stay in the background.

Turning to the subject of the thread:

Rivkah - commenting on an earlier post of mine, you wrote:

I question whether a shecter would leave his shop with blood on his clothes. Transferring even minute amounts of blood or meat particles to food, plates, or a surface that was dairy or parve would make the dairy thing now
treyf, and the parve thing now meat. Also, letting anything with blood attract bugs to your clothes, your home, your eating area, could make a lot of food treyf.

I take your point, of course. I was not, however, urging that a shochet/shecter "dunnit" - I was simply referring back to Odell's search for a type who might have gone unnoticed. I don't have a copy of his (rather old now) book, and the bit about bloodstains might easily have been my poor recollection of something I read a long time agao/misinterpreting my notes.

On the other hand, if the police had encountered a shochet with blood on him, would they have known enough to question that fact? YOU know about these things, most Londoners in 1888 would not have done so. Surely, it might have allowed a guilty man to pass.... [But that is my supposition not necessarily Odell's.]

Thanks for the correction,

Phil

[lynn cates]

Francis

Hello Don. Thanks.

Or perhaps he thinks of himself as a talking . . . oh, never mind. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

May I take your order?

Hello Mike. Thanks.

"Maybe he wanted to associate himself with a Healer rather than a Soldier Lynn."

OK. But why not join the Franciscans?

Cheers.
LC

[RavenDarkendale]

When one watches the shows on Investigate Discovery, one realizes that people who seem beyond suspicion, such as authority figures, friends, the postman, delivery man, meter reader, etc. cause a lot of crimes to either go unsolved or have a high body count or incident account before they are solved.

Last night was the chilling tale of Colonel Russell Williams, CO of Canada's largest Air Force Base, a career soldier with a spotless record who was also a sexual deviant who had a great number of B&E charges for lingerie theft, two assaults on women, and finally two rape/murder charges. He was beyond suspicion, a man highly visible to the public but invisible when it came to suspicion of crime.

[Phil H]

But why not join the Franciscans?

One thing is clear already about this pope - he is a master of gesture and non-verbal communication.

Franciscans would have educated him a different way of Jesuits, and (as I understand it) Jesuits are masters of subtle manipulation.

Using a new papal name (1st in a thousand years, I am told); one associated strongly with poverty, personal humility and simplicity; and a Saint much loved - Pope Francis sends out a very clear message about the sort of papcy he envisages without doing or saying anything.

Watch his enthronement next week for further signals - I expect some shocks in the way the new Pope relates to his Cardinals and others; also maybe a very stripped down and simple ceremony. All this signalled by his name.

Phil

[Wickerman]

Using a new papal name (1st in a thousand years, I am told); one associated strongly with poverty, personal humility and simplicity; and a Saint much loved - Pope Francis sends out a very clear message about the sort of papcy he envisages without doing or saying anything.

"Without doing or saying anything", to change the status quo?

All the while he remains surrounded by opulence and baubles, the hipocrisy is astonishing.

But anyway, yes the numerical addition to the name is purely a tool of the modern historian.
The need for distinction is not new, but the ancient peoples included a second name for the ruler when the first name had already been used.

..what was this thread about anyway?