What are the chances of….?

[Herlock Sholmes]

That is not true.

Anyone reading paragraph 7 of my # 17 can see that I did nothing of the kind.

I put the word 'sailor' in inverted commas.

I am sure that when others do the same, you do not accuse them of 'most definitely presenting your opinion as a fact'.

This accusation has been going on for eight months and it is completely without foundation.

I have never stated that it is a fact that the man was a sailor.

I have always presented it as my opinion, based on evidence.

Similarly, the accusation that I insist that only my opinion can be right is just a gratuitous put-down.

It is, I suggest, the kind of remark that is made by someone who lacks confidence in his own ability to argue on the basis of reason alone.

You are far too easily offended PI.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

In response to # 18:

Thanks for your detailed analysis, Jeff.

I recall an exchange with Christer Holmgren in which he suggested that the 'sailor' left Eddowes, that she then entered Mitre Square alone, and that she there met the murderer.

I agree with you that the couple seen by Lawende most likely were Eddowes and her murderer.

I have never been in any doubt about that.

I do not find plausible any scenario in which Eddowes enters the Square alone and there meets the murderer, any more than I would entertain the possibility that Chapman found the murderer in the yard at the back of 29 Hanbury Street or Stride encountered her murderer in Dutfield's Yard.

It is obvious that Eddowes took the murderer to the darkest part of the Square, as Chapman took him into a dark yard, and Stride took him into another dark yard.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

When you call the man ‘a sailor’ then you’re most definitely presenting your opinion as a fact.

That is not true.

Anyone reading paragraph 7 of my # 17 can see that I did nothing of the kind.

I put the word 'sailor' in inverted commas.

I am sure that when others do the same, you do not accuse them of 'most definitely presenting your opinion as a fact'.

This accusation has been going on for eight months and it is completely without foundation.

I have never stated that it is a fact that the man was a sailor.

I have always presented it as my opinion, based on evidence.

Similarly, the accusation that I insist that only my opinion can be right is just a gratuitous put-down.

It is, I suggest, the kind of remark that is made by someone who lacks confidence in his own ability to argue on the basis of reason alone.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When you call the man ‘a sailor’ then you’re most definitely presenting your opinion as a fact.

The next point is that when I began this thread I was only expressing the opinion that we might all be guilty of making assumptions at times and that those assumptions might lead us to dismiss alternatives. I see no need for anyone to feel the need to try and disprove something that’s a fairly obvious suggestion. Things happen that some might consider ‘unlikely.’ This is just a fact of life.

The final point is that I haven’t suggested that the two people weren’t Eddowes or her killer. The possibility I suggested is that it could have been Eddowes with another man. And I’m just talking possibilities here, I’m not stating what I think occurred, only what could possibly have occurred. If Eddowes was looking for cash she might have stopped a man and tried to talk him into doing business. The three witness see this and pass by without looking back. The man tells Eddowes that he’s not interested or that he hadn’t any money. The man walks away and Eddowes heads down Church Passage. The ripper is either crossing Mitre Square from Mitre Street or she sees him enter from Mitre Street. In this scenario Eddowes could have met her death at the same time that she would have if she’d entered the square with the first man.

I’ll repeat that I’m not saying that I particularly favour this scenario but I see nothing particularly unlikely about it. Woman stops and talks to man - they go their separate ways - woman bumps into another man. It’s hardly the stuff of fantasy is it?

I just suggested a possibility. It can’t be proven or disproven and obviously it’s down to individual judgement on the likelihood or otherwise. I see absolutely nothing far-fetched about it though. It doesn’t mean that Lawende’s man wasn’t the ripper though but I’d suggest that the chance at least exists that it wasn’t. Let’s face it, the description of the man is quite general and would have described thousands of men.

[JeffHamm]

It has been suggested to me - not always politely - that the couple seen by Lawende were unconnected with the murder and that Eddowes and the murderer approached Mitre Square from elsewhere or even met in Mitre Square (maybe they had a rendezvous).

Such suggestions are designed to get round my argument that there was obviously insufficient time for another man to approach Eddowes in the event that the man she was seen with walked away - the first line of argument used by sceptics - and then to do what the murderer did.

My rejoinder is: if the couple seen by Lawende were not Eddowes and her murderer, then what became of them?

Someone suggested they were a boyfriend and girlfriend out on a date.

It is remarkable how some people writing 135 years after the event can see more clearly than an eyewitness who obviously knew how to recognise a prostitute with a prospective client and said so at the time.

The fleeting glimpse which such critics dismiss as inadequate to make a proper judgment is somehow inferior to their judgement, even though they did not see anything at all.

If, as seems obvious, the woman with her hand on a 'sailor''s chest at 1.35 a.m. in a London street, was a prostitute, what became of her and her prospective client?

The fact that she had her hand on his chest and that he showed not the slightest unwillingness to have her hand on his chest does not suggest that he was in any hurry to get away.

Pc Harvey was at the other end of Church Passage at about 1.40 a.m.

I suggest that he might have seen the couple as he approached at about 1.38 a.m. had they still been where they had been seen standing.

But he did not.

Nor did anyone else, it seems.

Had they walked in his direction, for example, he would have seen them while on his way.

Where would the couple - if they were not Eddowes and her client - have gone, if not Mitre Square?

Why would they have gone looking for some other secluded place?

Did the woman not know of the Square as a suitable place?

What was she doing looking for a customer in proximity to Mitre Square?

Suffice it to say that two couples were not in Mitre Square at the same time.

Or is someone going to claim that I am presenting my opinion as fact?

Hi PI,

The basis for believing the Church Passage Couple (CPC) were Eddowes and JtR is the tentative identification of the clothes by Lawende as being similar to the ones he recalls the woman wearing. This is not normally considered a definitive identification, and in comparison is less solid than Long's identification of Chapman which is based upon seeing her face; an identification of which she was confident in. Given many are inclined to hold Long's identification of Chapman in doubt, the same standard must be applied to Lawende's.

Lawende and company indicate that it was raining, and they waited at the club for it to ease up before leaving, which is when they spot the CPC. The CPC could very well be a "boyfriend and girlfriend", who took shelter next to a building to also wait out the rain. Lawende and company move on, indicating that the rain has let up, and the CPC could also have moved on at that time, which was between 1:33 and 1:35 based upon the times given by Levy and Lawende. Lawende and company also state they did not look back at the couple after that, so it is entirely possible that the CPC also headed south, keeping behind the 3 men, or headed north (while PC Havey is patrolling elsewhere, hence not seeing them). Either way, if this happened, then Eddowes and JtR must enter Mitre Square from some other direction because in order for there to be sufficient time for the murder and mutilations (between 3 and 5 or so minutes), Eddowes and JtR have to be at the murder location no later than 1:36ish (PC Harvey's patrol of Church Passage appears to be around 1:41ish), which is just after Lawende's time of the sighting of 1:35 (obviously, if Levey is closer to the truth, then that adds 2 additional minutes to consider). It would take only in the vincinity of 20-30 seconds for the CPC to walk to the murder location, so their location "works", but many things work and only one of them happened.

So, if the CPC are not Eddowes and JTR, then they both still have to get to that location. Since we have no other information about male and female couples in the vicinity recorded, we have to consider the possibility that JtR and Eddowes entered independently and through random fate JtR attacks her then and there (as per Stride's sudden assault). Or they were together when they entered via one of the other routes (the other passage was covered, so maybe they were sheltering from the rain in that location).

Of course, if the CPC was actually Eddowes and JtR, which is also entirely possible, then clearly they headed into Mitre Square just after Lawende and company moved on.

When one looks at things, the evidence seems to point to the CPC being Eddowes and JtR, but it's an illusion, and here's why. It only may look that way because the CPC is the only location for which we have detailed evidence! We've got Lawende's statement, and all sorts of information about the activity around Church Passage. We have next to nothing about the activity going on in Mitre Street, and that's a far cry from having evidence that specifically tells us it was empty. We have a bit of information about the activity in St. James Square from the Blenkinsop press report, but that information is vague and we just know there were people about, but nothing more. Basically, for all the other possible entry points to Mitre Square we have an absence of evidence, which is not the same thing as evidence of absence (i.e. if someone testified there were no people in Mitre Street at that time then we would have evidence of absence; with no information we have an absence of evidence so Mitre Street could have been full of people for all we know).

Because the only location we have detailed information on is Church Passage, that means the evidence can only fit the CPC, so unless Lawende and company had testified that the woman was definitely not Eddowes, then the evidence is biased to create that sense of "it must be them".

We do not know enough about the alternative locations to make a definite call.

That being said, I do tend to lean in the direction of the CPC being Eddowes and JtR because their location works timing wise, Lawende and company do not remove them from consideration, it fits with PC Harvey not seeing them, and finally, at the moment we have nothing more to work with. However, I also accept that it is not case closed, and there are other possibilities that need to be ruled out, but which would require new information to do so.

In the end, with JtR, almost every time one thinks "this must be the case" you can be sure they have promoted an assumption to the level of fact. We do not have enough information to be sure of anything in my view. I think we can order alternatives based upon how much information supports them, and in this case that favours the CPC as the preferred working hypothesis, but that is very different from saying the CPC has to be Eddowes and JtR. The former indicates the information is not definitive, the latter indicates one thinks it is somehow impossible for two people to enter Mitre Square from a different direction (because remember, we don't know much about those other directions so we cannot say there was nobody there).

- Jeff

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

There are no other statements specifically mentioning a couple comprising a male and a female ...

In the end, we have to take the evidence we have, and see where it leads us. My own view is that it suggests that the Church Passage Couple has the most evidence to support the suggestion that was indeed Eddowes and JtR, but at the same time it is not conclusive.

It has been suggested to me - not always politely - that the couple seen by Lawende were unconnected with the murder and that Eddowes and the murderer approached Mitre Square from elsewhere or even met in Mitre Square (maybe they had a rendezvous).

Such suggestions are designed to get round my argument that there was obviously insufficient time for another man to approach Eddowes in the event that the man she was seen with walked away - the first line of argument used by sceptics - and then to do what the murderer did.

My rejoinder is: if the couple seen by Lawende were not Eddowes and her murderer, then what became of them?

Someone suggested they were a boyfriend and girlfriend out on a date.

It is remarkable how some people writing 135 years after the event can see more clearly than an eyewitness who obviously knew how to recognise a prostitute with a prospective client and said so at the time.

The fleeting glimpse which such critics dismiss as inadequate to make a proper judgment is somehow inferior to their judgement, even though they did not see anything at all.

If, as seems obvious, the woman with her hand on a 'sailor''s chest at 1.35 a.m. in a London street, was a prostitute, what became of her and her prospective client?

The fact that she had her hand on his chest and that he showed not the slightest unwillingness to have her hand on his chest does not suggest that he was in any hurry to get away.

Pc Harvey was at the other end of Church Passage at about 1.40 a.m.

I suggest that he might have seen the couple as he approached at about 1.38 a.m. had they still been where they had been seen standing.

But he did not.

Nor did anyone else, it seems.

Had they walked in his direction, for example, he would have seen them while on his way.

Where would the couple - if they were not Eddowes and her client - have gone, if not Mitre Square?

Why would they have gone looking for some other secluded place?

Did the woman not know of the Square as a suitable place?

What was she doing looking for a customer in proximity to Mitre Square?

Suffice it to say that two couples were not in Mitre Square at the same time.

Or is someone going to claim that I am presenting my opinion as fact?

[Aethelwulf]

Hi Wulf,

I find myself using “what are the chances of..” regularly too and it got me thinking about how it could possibly lead any of us to eliminated something that’s possible. I’d say that it’s about keeping the options open.

i suppose there is the chance that eddowes and killer were already in the square at the time of the lawende sighting - do the timings allow for that?

Against that I would say medium-short fair mustache man crops up three separate occasions in the suspiciuos circumstances: 1-close to Eddowes ToD; 2-man that attacked wilson; 3-man that attacked farmer. Are there any others?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock, i'm certainly invested in the what are the chances argument as I use it a lot. My latest thinking is what are the chances that Bury had a basically similar signature as the ripper (cutting stabbing and proping at the abdomen and privates) and the exact same method as the cord strangler (cord mark all the way around the neck apart from a small gap on the left side of the neck in both cases) and not being involved? as well as being out those nights when the police knew where he was staying and police thinking it was him. As jeff says rare things happen - people win the lottery every week and the odds are tiny.

Hi Wulf,

I find myself using “what are the chances of..” regularly too and it got me thinking about how it could possibly lead any of us to eliminated something that’s possible. I’d say that it’s about keeping the options open.

[Aethelwulf]

Question: Do we sometimes place too much emphasis on the ‘what are the chances of….’ argument leading us to sideline or dismiss other reasonable possibilities? I think that we might all be guilty of this at times.

Hi Herlock, i'm certainly invested in the what are the chances argument as I use it a lot. My latest thinking is what are the chances that Bury had a basically similar signature as the ripper (cutting stabbing and proping at the abdomen and privates) and the exact same method as the cord strangler (cord mark all the way around the neck apart from a small gap on the left side of the neck in both cases) and not being involved? as well as being out those nights when the police knew where he was staying and police thinking it was him. As jeff says rare things happen - people win the lottery every week and the odds are tiny.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well balanced as ever Jeff.

[JeffHamm]

Working out things like "what are the chances Lawende and co. misidentified Eddowes?" is not as simple as it may seem. Identification accuracy by eye-witnesses is influenced by how the identification viewing is conducted, and factors with regards to viewing conditions, time since the incident, and so forth. Generally, though, identification rates are ok, but not infallible, and given the sighting was at night, no particular reason to take note, and so on, there is a good case to be made in terms of the man and woman not being Eddowes and JtR.

But, there are points in favour the other way around too. For one, we know the couple are there when Lawende and co walk by, and PC Watkin's patrol at that time tells us that Eddowes has not been murdered yet. The location of the couple is close enough to the crime scene that they could walk to it in sufficient time for the murder and mutilations to take place before PC Harvey patrols Church Passage and at which time the couple seen by Lawende and company have left and no doubt Eddowes is dead where she's found a couple minutes later when PC Watkins does his next patrol.

There are no other statements specifically mentioning a couple comprising a male and a female, other than Blenkinsop's newspaper report of someone asking him if he saw a couple. He doesn't confirm that he did, but he does allude to there being people around. Unfortunately, that is so vague that we don't know if "people" includes a male and female couple. He also doesn't indicate anyone was seen coming or going from the passage to Mitre Square.

Finally, we have no reports as to the activity in Mitre Street at the appropriate time. PC Watkins doesn't report seeing people about, so the streets appear to be quiet at the time, but that doesn't mean Eddowes and JtR couldn't have entered Mitre Square from that side, but we have nothing we can point to beyond the fact that people could enter Mitre Square from Mitre Street. That's not a lot to hang your hat on.

In the end, we have to take the evidence we have, and see where it leads us. My own view is that it suggests that the Church Passage Couple has the most evidence to support the suggestion that was indeed Eddowes and JtR, but at the same time it is not conclusive. The next best supported idea is that Eddowes and JtR were among the "people" seen by Blenkinsop, and he may simply have not observed them entering the passage to Mitre Square (or they went round to Mitre Street and entered that way). The least supported idea is that Eddowes and JtR were not seen by anyone but came up Mitre Street and entered the square that way.

I don't think we can put actual numbers on those in a meaningful, and we must not forget that just because the most evidence we have surrounds the Church Passage Couple that in part reflects the fact that witnesses of that couple were located and their testimony survives. Blenkinsop's press statement is short on details, and we have no record of any other statement he might have made. That's a shame, as it would be nice to be able to assess his information further. However, he wasn't called at the inquest, and maybe that's an indication he had nothing further to add that what we see in the papers.

Anyway, a lot of the time the "What are the chances ..." type of argument end up in subjective ideas of what those chances are. We make assumptions around things like "What are the chances JtR would do this under these circumstances? ...", which of course is impossible to assess. There's no way we can estimate how likely JtR was to do something we think is stupid - he's going around and disembowelling random women in the streets? What are the chances of just doing that? JtR's decision making is unlike ours, and he's likely to do things that we think are way too risky - his whole series of murders are stupidly risky so clearly his risk assessment is different to ours. If the evidence points to JtR having done something, that regardless of our perceived risk, JtR appears to have ignored our advice and gone ahead and done whatever anyway. It might be useful to consider the things he did, under the conditions in which he did them, in order to get an idea of his risk assessment ability. If it starts to look like he's making all sorts of weird and outrageously stupid choices, then perhaps that points towards the irrational thinking of schizophrenia, strengthening the indicates towards a Kosminski type of suspect. Or, if it looks more like he's willing to take some risks, but ones that may be more calculated as necessary; meaning the risks might be large but they are necessary to take given his desire fulfil his goal of mutilation requires him to take large risks).

JtR is potentially spotted at 4 of his crimes; Chapman (possibly by Long), Stride (multiple potential sightings), Eddowes (possibly by Lawende and company), and Kelly (possibly by Hutchinson). I recognize all those are debatable, and that's not the point here. What I want to focus on is that if any of those sightings are actually of JtR, then he went on to murder despite having been seen in company with his victim. That is a big risk. It also doesn't seem necessary, as he could have easily moved on to find a different victim. It appears he was able to find Nichols, for example, without them being seen together, but after that he seems to be spotted all the time with his victims. (Is that part of the thrill for him? Or is he just so overconfident that it doesn't seem like a risk to him? Or is he mentally unstable and unaware of just how risky it would be to kill someone after having been seen to be with them? I don't know, any of those work, and I'm sure there are other explanations too; yes, including the idea that he wasn't actually seen with the victims, and he kills them only after they leave the company of the man they were spotted with - the sort of thing that gets brought up when Pipeman becomes JtR).

Anyway, even if we could work out that something has only a 1% chance, well, if everything else in the evidence points to that 1% thing having occurred, then it looks like this may be that 1 in a hundred. Rare events do sometimes happen after all.

- Jeff

[Losmandris]

I do agree that this could be a bit of a case of tunnel vision here. As do I believe is the case with many aspects of these crimes. Yet it does seem the most likely scenario. Considering just how unreliable eye witness statements are, I question how much value this sighting adds to narrowing down who the murderer was or any other great import to the case as whole. Apart from another potential witness. You may say it helps with the timelines but I suppose only in the sense that if we believe that Lawende 'did' see JtR then the timeline for the murder would play out accordingly. If he didn't it would have been slightly different.

To cut to the chase I probably think he did see JtR. Though I would not put much reliance on his description. The other possibility which I could learn toward if pushed, would be that JtR is lurking in the shadows and watching. He only makes an appearance to quickly proposition his victim, murdering them forthwith.

[Abby Normal]

I’m not 100 convinced Abby but the odds certainly favour him. Surely many man would have owned a peaked cap?

yes but not at two linked crime sites. bruh trust me on this one, theres alot of mysteries abound re the ripper, but this aint one of them.

[Enigma]

Hello Herlock, good to see you back again and in sparkling form too.

Your near namesake said, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. We can't eliminate the chance that Eddowes met a second man in Mitre Square. Therefore though it seems improbable in the time frame and might not be the truth, it remains a possibility.

Regards, Gazza

[Lewis C]

Hi Herlock!

Yes 'we' are, he's the Low-hanging fruit, the only man seen, while there could have been others, it is normal that he will be the one who gets the most attention.
Even McWilliam of the City force was not convinced the woman was even Eddowes.

For my part I give some credit to Blenkingsop on duty in St. James Place, who saw 'some people' pass him at 1:30 am., presumably heading towards Mitre Square.
If these 'people' were not headed for Mitre Square, his statement would have had no value. Likewise if we have 'people' passing through the square right at the time of the murder, then it is more than we have with Lawende's 'couple', who were not moving in any direction whatsoever.

Hi Wickerman,

This might be the most likely scenario by which the man Lawende saw wasn't JtR: the woman may not have been Eddowes. I also think that it's possible that it was Eddowes, that she and the man parted right after Lawende passed them, she went into Mitre Square where JtR ambushed her. But I still think the most likely scenario is that the man Lawende saw was JtR.