Robert Paul

[Newbie]

Standard Lechmerian Schrodinger's suspect - simultaneously inhumanly clever and appallingly dim.

Counting on your rapier wit fiver in slamming shut the previous question with a plausible explanation:

Why did Lechmere not first hear Paul footsteps when entering Buck's row, but did finally hear him when adjacent to the body?

What suddenly changed that instant, as opposed to the previous minute?

If you read my post to Herlock, sudden abatement of tinnitus is an insufficient type response.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Regrettable, but we don't need that specific of a question directed to either - Lechmere already furnished us with enough information.
You trust the guy Herlock, yes?


For the time being, let’s ignore Paul’s failure to identify footsteps in the Lloyd’s article and the inquest.

Let us just focus on Lechmere’s own testimony involving what he heard and when.


Here are your current assertions on the matter Herlock:

1. His hearing just wasn’t up to that of the rabbit eared Neil, so he just didn’t hear the footsteps from much closer range
2. Unlike Mizen’s, the sound of the carmen’s boots were too soft to be heard.
3. Sound masking - a pseudo scientific theory in this case - was involved.

All objects of pure speculation: and all objects subsequently proven to be false, when Lechmere says that he did indeed hear Paul’s footsteps from a distance, while adjacent to Polly Nichol's body.


He should have heard Robert Paul well earlier; he demonstrates that he was capable of hearing Paul;
he just didn’t, and the reasons you use, which are vaguely plausible for that first minute, suddenly are demonstrated to be false. Again, he testified to being able to hear the footsteps of anyone leaving Buck’s row.


Sound masking suddenly wears off Herlock? What is your scientific explanation now?

Bad hearing (or Neil’s hearing a marvel)? Soft treaded boots? Evidently not.


And at the precise moment of ‘suddenly’ hearing footsteps, his brain was focused on the visual, using the visual cortex, straining to make sense of what he was seeing … the worst possible time, according to modern day auditory psychology, to suddenly hear anything that was consistently present the preceding minute.


My explanation is that he just came from the body and was lying. In that case, the only possible innocent explanation when being discovered standing in the middle of the street facing Paul, is that he ‘suddenly’ heard footsteps at that position and turned around to face them (now curiously ignoring the supine woman for some 25 seconds while waiting).


There are no other half way decent explanations …. that being the aim, correct?

The old tinnitus suddenly abating at one moment is also remotely possible. Should we consider it satisfactory ….. of course not.


Your explanation? Well, you don’t have one now …. but still, I'm expecting you to come up with one, because that is what debate here should be all about. Just sinking back into these comforting old positions of yours are no longer tenable.


Why did Lechmere not first hear Paul when Paul first entered Bath or Brady street?

And I'm going to continue asking you to respond to it. Try again!

Because he didn’t. Someone knocked out front door yesterday but I didn’t hear it. I don’t know why. But I didn’t. The guy knocking wasn’t lying about knocking…and I’m not lying about not hearing it.

Where you in Whitechapel at the time and are you aware of the varying account is, the sound of the boots and the level of hearing of Cross and Paul?

I suspect…no.

[Newbie]

"Its always beneath people to come up with their reasoning .... or, they refer me to some vague place in Casebook, that I need to search out."

Hard to describe virtually every single thread about Cross on Casebook as "some vague place". Ditto, my article in Ripperologist or Steve Blomer's "Inside Bucks Row", to date the definitive book on subject. Ditto the various facebook groups and the other jtr site musings in this very subject.

By all means disagree with someone opinions, but don't pretend they don't exist, or worse, be too lazy to check before pronouncing definitive statements.

"Lechmere himself definitely says that didn't notice Paul walking behind him, until noticing Paul's footsteps while he was moving towards Polly Nichol's body ..."

Both those claims are not the available evidence, so need no rebuttal.

" ... and yet PC Neil, while examining the body, heard PC Mizen from about triple the distance supposedly separating Lechmere and Paul."

Either you are unaware of the information or you are trying to deliberately misled with the above.

Policemen wore wooden shod shoes giving walking policemen a loud and recognisable sound. Neil knew Mrs Nichols throat was slit. He knew Thain was expected to be at the end of the street shortly. He was actively expecting help.

Cross had not approached the body, didn't even know it was a body. He was not actively looking for help. To compare the two circumstances is the kind of twisted logic that causes so much reaction to Cross's candidacy. But, I guess that's the point isn't it? Make a silly claim and poke the tiger.

" ... The eastern half of Buck's row had great acoustics, being aligned with two story stone buildings with no gaps."

Ah yes, the old echo chamber canard.

Mrs Nichols wore steel shod shoes, yet all the awake and light-sleeping residents and the various nightwatchmen failed to hear her footsteps, "like hammers on the cobblestones". The same residents and nightwatchmen missed Cross and Paul's footsteps. Cross and Paul failed to hear Neil's wooden soles and he their unknown soled shoes. All on this "unusually quite night", where according to Christer Paul could hear Big Ben chime on the other side of the town as he entered Buck's Row!

" ... No prosecutor would accept Lechmere's story at face value."

Given a prosecutor's specific job is not to accept any story at face value, that's a rather pointless sentence.

A Coroner and a jury, who actually saw and heard all the evidence that you and I didn't, did accept Cross's story and as much as you might want to dismiss that, it is still more relevant then unresearched claims made by hobbyists nearly a 150 years later. The police who interviewed and probably investigated him to some degree and who had far more knowledge than you and I did accept his story.


" ... there was a time gap, and Lechmere claims that it was only some 25 seconds ..."

I'd love to see the quote where Cross talks about 25 seconds. The exact time gap is unknown and Cross indisputablely did not give one.

Clearly, instead of making claims about "vague places" that you are too lazy to check, you need to do some serious research into what has been written about this.

Well, at least there is something here.

You claim that Lechmere could have heard those footsteps coming up Buck's row for quite some time; but it doesn't parse with the construction of the sentences according to any newspaper account of lechmere's testimony that you wish to go over:

'He walked into the middle of the road, and saw that it was the figure of a woman. He then heard the footsteps of a man going up Buck's-row, about forty yards away, in the direction that he himself had come from.'

What happened first, he started out walking into the middle of the street, or he heard the footsteps?

If the latter, the coordinating conjunction 'then' was particularly ill chosen and misleading, nor would it be the manner in which the event would be described. It clearly pronounces a temporal sequence between to two different actions, which is its function.

Are you going to now argue about the meaning of the article 'the' in the 2nd sentence?

[Newbie]

Because he didn’t. Someone knocked out front door yesterday but I didn’t hear it. I don’t know why. But I didn’t. The guy knocking wasn’t lying about knocking…and I’m not lying about not hearing it.

Where you in Whitechapel at the time and are you aware of the varying account is, the sound of the boots and the level of hearing of Cross and Paul?

I suspect…no.

Some analogies don't really work. You were not walking up a dangerous, darkly lit street alone, you were wrapped up in something else - reading, listening to music, watching telly, talking to someone else.

Your other senses were occupying your brain .... which supports my point and the research on how the mind works, and how viewing (which Lechmere was focused on doing with Polly Nichol's body) or sociallizing distracts us from hearing unexpected sounds.

[Newbie]

Many are lulled into the false belief that the sound from Lechmere's own footsteps would have interfered with hearing other's,
and they have the additional misunderstanding of how a narrow street of stone and stone buildings, with no gaps in between, acts as a fantastic wave guide.

If Mizen was walking on the sidewalk, separated from Neil by a grassy field, there is no way PC Neil would have heard him from 120 yards away ... the eastern end of Buck's row was an echo chamber, and the only place for sound wave energy to escape it was above.

When walking, one's motor cortex sends signals to the auditory cortex, activating inhibitory neurons there to suppress the repetitive sounds involved in walking. If you are not focusing your mind on your own footsteps, you won't notice them. Its a redundant, useless bit of information that only endangered our ancestors from detecting a predatory animal approaching them, and getting eaten, thereby not passing on their genes.

[Lewis C]

I don't know why one sound drowning out another would be a debated point. Hasn't everyone experienced this in their own lives?

Another factor affecting whether or not something is heard is how one's attention is focused. My refrigerator door doesn't always close all the way if I don't make a special effort to close it right. If it doesn't quite close all the way, it sounds a little different than if it does. Sometimes I notice this difference and go back and push the door closed. Other times I don't notice the difference in sound, not because it wasn't loud enough, but because I'm not paying attention, and the door ends up not getting all the way closed until I notice later that it looks different.

[drstrange169]

" You claim that Lechmere could have heard those footsteps coming up Buck's row for quite some time"

Did I ?

No, I didn't.

I can't argue for points I've never made. I do, however, stand by what I did write. All of which is valid.

[Geddy2112]

Try to help out Herlock with the question I emboldened at the bottom of the previous post.

Why did Lechmere not first hear Paul when Paul first entered Bath or Brady street?

Maybe he did but did not feel the need to record it in his memory, maybe there was some other sound masking out the footfall. Maybe Cross was not that focused on hearing things that were not consequential. Maybe Paul was a light walker. It's an impossible question to answer without further evidence which unfortunately we do not have. Remember at the relevant point in time Paul was in a hurry and Cross was not 'behind time' so the gap between the two men will have been gradually reduced over time. They were not a constant distance apart. Unfortunately we do not know what that distance was at any point until Cross heard Paul coming up Bucks Row.

[Geddy2112]

If Mizen was walking on the sidewalk, separated from Neil by a grassy field, there is no way PC Neil would have heard him from 120 yards away ... the eastern end of Buck's row was an echo chamber, and the only place for sound wave energy to escape it was above.

Just a note on the Neil hearing someone else from 120 yards away and Cross not hearing Paul from the same distance. May I suggest Neil would probably have known when and where to expect his colleagues to be. In a former life I was a bus driver. On my 'turn' (being the two different shift patterns) I basically knew after about six months where all the buses in the fleet where supposed to be and who would have been driving them. So when I got to a particular part of my route and saw the number 16 coming I knew who was driving it and knew if to give the polite wave or the middle finger haha.

Same with Neil he knew or would probably have known where his colleagues were supposed to be so he was actively 'seeking' them out thus making his auditory powers more prevalent than Cross' who was not necessarily expecting Paul to creep up on him.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Nice avatar btw

[Fiver]

Why did Lechmere not first hear Paul footsteps when entering Buck's row, but did finally hear him when adjacent to the body?

What suddenly changed that instant, as opposed to the previous minute?

I already answered this in Post 86.

"On Friday morning he left home about half past three to go to work, and passing through Buck's row he saw on the opposite side something lying against a gateway. In the dark he could not tell at first what it was. It looked like a tarpaulin sheet, but walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time he heard a man about forty yards away coming up Buck's row in the direction witness had himself come."

40 yards is a rough estimate of distance based on hearing, not sight. Also, that is the distance at which Cross first noticed Paul - obviously Paul was making noise before that.

The human brain tends to filter out noises it considers unimportant. A man walking behind you is less important than a man approaching after you have stopped. Auditory masking means louder sounds tend to mask softer sounds. Unless Robert Paul was particularly heavy footed, the sound of his footsteps would have been less audible to Cross than the sound of Cross' own footsteps. Auditory sensing is reduced when walking, so Paul would have been much easier to hear once Cross stopped walking in the middle of the road. Once Lechmere spotted something ahead of him, his brain would have focused on identifying it - from just a shape, to maybe a tarpaulin, to it's a woman. Once he perceived it was a woman, his visual perception load dropped significantly, which science tells us is exactly when Lechmere would be most likely to become much better at noticing auditory stimuli.

When Charles Cross stopped in the middle of the road, his ability to notice auditory stimuli would have increased in multiple ways and auditory masking would have stopped. This is exactly the point we would expect Cross to first notice Paul's footsteps.

[Fiver]

Some analogies don't really work. You were not walking up a dangerous, darkly lit street alone, you were wrapped up in something else - reading, listening to music, watching telly, talking to someone else.

Your other senses were occupying your brain .... which supports my point and the research on how the mind works, and how viewing (which Lechmere was focused on doing with Polly Nichol's body) or sociallizing distracts us from hearing unexpected sounds.

This supports Cross' account. Somebody walking up a dangerous, darkly lit street alone is wrapped up in seeing through the darkness, trying to identify whether shapes in front of them are dangerous or harmless.

[Fiver]

Many are lulled into the false belief that the sound from Lechmere's own footsteps would have interfered with hearing other's,
and they have the additional misunderstanding of how a narrow street of stone and stone buildings, with no gaps in between, acts as a fantastic wave guide.

I doubt you can even define what you mean by a wave guide. Bucks Row clearly wasn't one, otherwise Cross and Paul would not have been able to pass through Bucks Row undetected by anyone who lived there.

Photos of Bucks Row, show that the buildings were generally brick, which diffuses sound, along with recessed doorways and brick projections extending out around doorways and windows, which would further diffuse sound waves.

[Fiver]

If Mizen was walking on the sidewalk, separated from Neil by a grassy field, there is no way PC Neil would have heard him from 120 yards away ... the eastern end of Buck's row was an echo chamber, and the only place for sound wave energy to escape it was above.

Bucks row was not an echo chamber - Cross and Paul passed through it unheard by anyone else nearby. It's not a matter of sound "escaping" it's a matter of the air vibrations attenuating over distance, diffusing in different directions when striking uneven surfaces, and being absorbed by rougher solid materials that they strike. Wind also affects sound detection, not just by providing additional background noise, but sound propagates further in the direction the wind is blowing, and less far into the wind. On that day, the winds varied from the west to northwest, so sound would have travelled slightly further going west to east than going east to west.

[Newbie]

" You claim that Lechmere could have heard those footsteps coming up Buck's row for quite some time"

Did I ?

No, I didn't.

I can't argue for points I've never made. I do, however, stand by what I did write. All of which is valid.

Well, here's your rebuttal to what I wrote (that you emboldened) along with your response:

"Lechmere himself definitely says that didn't notice Paul walking behind him, until noticing Paul's footsteps while he was moving towards Polly Nichol's body ..."

Both those claims are not the available evidence, so need no rebuttal.

Was this just a throw away line on your part, or is there an explanation that comes with it concerning the ambiguity of meaning in Lechmere's grammar?

Here's the the relevant two sentences in question from Lechmere's testimony, that hardly varies between newspaper versions:

'He walked into the middle of the road, and saw that it was the figure of a woman. He then heard the footsteps of a man going up Buck's-row about forty yards away, in the direction that he himself had come from.'

Honestly, i'm just struggling to figure out the ambiguity in sequence between these two sentences, and if you refuse to give your explanation, why bother to respond at all?

There is no one, unless deeply wrapped in denial, who could possibly come to any other conclusion then Lechmere first hearing foot steps after seeing the body; so, I ask you again, what did I miss or overstate?

And there is a larger issue here; if you declare that there exists an ambiguity, you are declaring that basic grammatical rules can be ignored when analyzing inquest testimony …. that each speaker might suffer from a questionable grasp of the English language, an inability to properly express themselves, and so a surface adherence to basic grammatical rules might not properly express their experience or intent.

Again, that is your only possible critique, unless I missed something of which I will forever be kept in the dark because you refuse to speak it.

Is it possible to connect the dependant clause 'heard foodsteps' to the independant clause 'i moved into the middle of the road', using the conjunctive adverb 'then', so that the action in the dependant clause comes first?

Show me!

Otherwise, if we can't trust grammatical rules to determine anything, why have this thread and why bother with any inquest testimony?