Pawn tickets in Mitre Square

[Jon Guy]

Since the hopping season traditionally started in the first week of September, it makes perfect sense that someone about to go hopping would pop into the pawn shop on 31st August to obtain a bit of ready cash for the journey.

Absolutely, Joshua

Also, as common lodging house dwellers they may not have had a secure place to store their items safely, so it makes sense that they would pawn stuff before they set off, and have an option to collect their items on return.

[Jon Guy]

Jon

I doubt Pierre is willing to divulge that name yet.


However we know from his posts the following:

1. There are two given names and a surname.(post 234).

2. The Letter "J" is not used at all. (confirmed post 198).

3. The minimum number of letters used is 14 or 15, ( 17 different letters Pierre as made clear 2 or 3 are not used at all).

4. The maximum number of letters is 36 (but may be far less) this is deduced from post 198.

5. The name is "unusual", but it is not clear which of the 3 components (2 given, 1 surname) this applies to, or what is meant by that term.

Aha, thanks Steve. I thought he was describing one of the names on the pawn tickets as unusual.

[David Orsam]

David Orsam: 1. You start off with the assumption that Kelly and Eddowes were "maybe criminal" and that pawn tickets have a "specific market" but that's got nothing to do with anything because your hypothesis is that neither of them ever saw or knew anything about the pawn tickets isn't it? So why have you mentioned it?

Pierre: Because it throws light on everything John Kelly said.

Of course it doesn't. On hearing about the pawn tickets, if he had never seen or heard of them before, Kelly would simply have said "I've never heard of or seen those pawn tickets before". The fact that he and Eddowes were "maybe criminal" doesn't change that for one second nor does the fact that pawn tickets had a "specific market".

[David Orsam]

David Orsam: 1. I assume you mean you have "found" a name on the pawn tickets, but you haven't even done that. All you have done is ignore the majority of words that would have been on the pawn tickets, which you have never even seen, and deliberately selected 42 characters in which some of those characters (discarding others) can apparently be rearranged to form the name of a person you suspect of being Jack the Ripper, just as they can be rearranged to form the names James Kelly, Joe Barnett and, as has been pointed out to me, Dr John Williams (another suspect), as well as other names such as Thomas Bond, John Trywhitt Drake, Walter Dew, Henry Moore, Rees Llewellyn, Myra Hindley, Rose West etc. etc.

Pierre: That is the variance within the group of letters and that variance is not relevant. The relevant variance is between groups.

That is an utterly meaningless response.

There are lots of names one can extract from the 42 characters. What's so special about yours?

[David Orsam]

David Orsam: 9. There was absolutely no reason for the Emily Birrell ticket to be mentioned in "the original inquest sources" because it had no relevance to the death of Eddowes. Kelly had, in any case, already explained why Eddowes had it in her possession. There is nothing "historically questionable" about it. On the contrary, it has been historically explained.

Pierre: You do not know anything about the "reasons" or "relevance". And again, "Kelly had already explained" - those sources might not be reliable.

"Historically explained" is a concept you should not use since you have no understanding of it.

I want to respond to this, Pierre, because it's a very good example of you superficially obsessing about language as a way of covering up the fact that you have no response to the substantive point.

It was a simple point I made which was that there was no reason for the Emily Birrell pawn ticket to be mentioned at the inquest because it was not relevant to the death of Eddowes.

Do you actually have anything sensible to say in response to that? If you think that the ticket should have been discussed at the inquest perhaps you can explain to the forum why you think that.

[David Orsam]

The room belonged originally to a larger unit in Dorset Street. Even the journalists understood that.

But surely even you understand that Dorset Street, like Fashion Street, was a large heavily populated street whereas Miller's Court was a small lightly populated court. So the fact that Eddowes gave her address on one day as 6 Dorset Street and then, a few days later, as 6 Fashion Street, is not in any way remarkable whereas it would have been slightly curious had she gave her address as Jane Kelly of 6 Miller's Court.

[David Orsam]

David Orsam: 7. Further, when she was arrested, Eddowes gave the name of Mary Anne Kelly so there is absolutely nothing strange that she pawned boots in a similar name.

Pierre: It is rather pointless for you to say that, isnīt it, since you have just been talking about "common names".

No, it's not pointless at all. It's absolutely on the point if you understood it.

I'm saying that, if there is a coincidence, it is that the fourth victim used a very similar (and common) name to the fifth victim on the night of her murder. That being so, the fact that the fourth victim had used a similar name to that one a day or so earlier on the pawn ticket simply follows on from that and is not unexpected. It's not a second coincidence. It's the same one!

[David Orsam]

And such a pattern would not have escaped the police. If you want to make the police look like fools and you want to feel superior to the police, you would not make it easy for them. Giving two of the murder dates would have made it easy.

But surely the whole point is to attract the attention of the police! Surely the killer wants them to see a pattern and let them know there is something important in the tickets. If the police can't see it and can't reasonably be expected to see it what has he got to feel superior about?

[David Orsam]

David Orsam 5. It's been explained to you by others that people would often give a false name and address when pawning goods. It's notable that you were perfectly happy to accept that Polly Nichols pawned a flannel shirt in a false name and address but for some reason you don’t seem think that Eddowes would have done so even though the surname of Kelly was the surname of her partner.

Pierre: Everything you write in this quote is wrong. I have told you that before but you do not understand this.

Everything in my quote is not wrong. Because here are your exact words from your #161 in response to Jerryd's post #157:

"This means that the pawn ticket should have been produced on 31 August and that Polly Nichols should have been the person going to the pawn shop with a shirt and obtaining the ticket. She would have been the one to have given the name Emily Birrell. That implies a lie / non true statement from Nichols. "

There is no challenge from you in there to Jerry's suggestion that Nichols pledged the shirt under the name of Emily Birrell and you said as clear as day: "She would have been the one to have given the name Emily Birrell."

So you were perfectly happy to write a post on the assumption that Nichols called herself Birrell. Exactly as I said.

If there is anything else you think is wrong in the passage of mine you have quoted I would expect you to specify what that is and tell me why you say it is wrong.

[David Orsam]

Dr John Williams, one of numerous suspects, performed an abortion on one Mary Anne Nichols in 1885, the same name as a JtR victim. Wow! Surely that can't just be a coincidence. I mean, considering how few women of the period would have shared the same forename and Surname -and an almost identical middle name-the odds against must be immense.

But there's more. There's a letter written by him, dated the 8 September 1888, stating that he won't be able to attend a prearranged meeting because he will be attending a clinic in Whitechapel. Of course, 8 September was the date of the Annie Chapman murder! Just what are the odds that he would be coincidentally visiting Whitechapel on that date?

Surely must be a case of case closed! Or then again, maybe resorting to selective statistics is not the ideal way to solve this mystery.

And the name "Dr John Williams" can be extracted from the 42 characters selected by Pierre from the pawn tickets.

So in Pierre World, the name Dr John Williams was in the mustard tin in Mitre Square despite the fact that it should not have been there!

[David Orsam]

The other problem you are going to face, Pierre, is how to eliminate any bias in selecting 100 Old Bailey names. What if you find an Anne Kelly and an Emily Burrell when going through the names and decide to reject them because they are too similar to Jane Kelly and Emily Birrell? What if you come across two very long names which contain all 26 letters of the alphabet?

Unless you can automatically and randomly select these names and addresses I can't see any possible way of there not being any human bias, even unconsciously, in affecting the decisions as to which names and addresses to include in your test.

And I might add that the entire thing is a complete waste of time anyway. It's perfectly obvious that whatever name you have extracted from the 42 characters is a result of pure chance.

[David Orsam]

The problem is we do not have data to construct any control variables.

If it's a problem, it's a problem for you, not me.

[David Orsam]

But in this case, what I was trying to tell David, was that I will not do a test which resembles the first type, i.e. I will not compare names generated from the mustard tin source (consisting of two names and two streets) to each other, but I will discuss the probability for the particular name to be found in the mustard tin source in relation to the probability for the same name to be found in a larger sample of, say, 100 units (consisting of cases from Old Baileys where there is two names and two streets per case).

It's not a question of a name being found in the mustard tin. It's a question of a name being found on a pawn ticket.

Your test will never work because of the bias you have shown by ignoring anything other than the names and addresses on the pawn tickets to play your game of word rearranging. By which I mean: what if the solution to the puzzle is to be found in the item descriptions?

Also, a sample of 100 groups of names at the Old Bailey will not necessarily reflect a sample of 100 groups of names on pawn tickets. The reason? Well take note of this press article from the London Daily News of 1 September 1908:

'The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has called the attention of pawnbrokers to the improper use on pawn tickets of the names of Jane, John and Ann for brevity. Pawnbrokers should write on the ticket the correct first name and surname of the person pledging, even if it is Melchizedek Featherstonehaughton.'

The consequence of what appears to be a practice of writing shortened, Anglicised names on pawn tickets, is that a sample of 100 names at the Old Bailey will not necessarily reflect the types of names on 100 pawn tickets. Certain letters such as "z" may be overrepresented at the Old Bailey against what is written on pawn tickets.

You also haven't said what result will satisfy you that the results you have found on the mustard tin tickets can be produced by chance.

[Pierre]

Although Pierre's calculation divides four days, being the days of the murders (one of which was a Sunday), by the number of days in the year (and ignores the number of tickets) he clearly assumes that the pawn tickets could have been dated any day of the year.

But the pawn shops were closed on Sundays so that clearly affects the probability.

Then you need to factor in which days were the busiest days for pawnbrokers. I suggest these were Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays, so there needs to be a weighting to reflect that a pawn ticket is more likely to be dated one of these days than any other.

Then you need to factor in seasonal variations. According to Melanie Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working Class Credit (1983):

"The heaviest pledging usually occurred in summer and autumn - between June and November" (p. 31).

So a weighting needs to be given to these months.

Then you have to consider what number of pledges were redeemed within a month. Tebbutt suggests the majority were, so the further back you go from the date of the murder the less likely the pawn ticket will be from that date.

This is why I suggest that a pawn ticket found in someone's possession on 30 September 1888 has a much higher probability of being dated Friday 31 August 1888 than, say, Wednesday 8 February 1888 and certainly than Sunday 2 September 1888!

The problem is we do not have data to construct any control variables. We would prefer regression analysis but canīt do it (but your suggestions are not correct, we should have to construct other models). The reason is the way data collection did (not) work in the 19th Century. Durkheim was one of those researchers who had a really big problem with that.

[Pierre]

Pierre,

When you say the "group" of letters it is obvious what you are talking about, that is the total letters used.

However you then go onto to discuss " between groups"

For those not as blessed as others in certain disciplines could you please tell us which groups these are?
How are they defined?

This would help people understand what you are talking about.

Regards

Steve

Hi Steve,

OK. It was a comparison. In statistics you can compare mean values between individuals in one group or you can compare mean values between groups. You test those mean values with hypothesis testing to see if differences in the samples are significant.

But in this case, what I was trying to tell David, was that I will not do a test which resembles the first type, i.e. I will not compare names generated from the mustard tin source (consisting of two names and two streets) to each other, but I will discuss the probability for the particular name to be found in the mustard tin source in relation to the probability for the same name to be found in a larger sample of, say, 100 units (consisting of cases from Old Baileys where there is two names and two streets per case).

So this is the simplest form of test.

Thanks for asking, Steve. I appreciate it.

Regards, Pierre