Time-gap between Eddowes murder and Goulston Graffito

[The Good Michael]

I found this list of stuff that Long saw that night. It doesn't mention a piece of apron:

Cigarette butts, 372
Loiterers, 17
Pieces of garbage, 6,427
Rats, 2 (a slow night for them)
Drunks, 14
Cracks in pavement, 21,987
Pieces of torn clothing, 35
Scraps of food, 49
Other police, 4
Men carrying black bags, 31 (many house calls?)
Broken pieces of metal, 11
Instances of grafitti, 92
Broken gas lamps, 2 1/2 (one sputtered a bit)
Prostitutes 18 and 3 possibles
Insects, 327,865

Yeah, no apron in that list. Too bad they didn't ask him about insects. He could have given them an earful.

[Fisherman]

I presume that was directed at Mike, Fish, but I'll answer it by reiterating what I said earlier. There is nothing - zilch, nada, nix, rien - in Long's statement that indicates that he actually looked inside the building as he passed the doorway the first time round.

This is what applies, Gareth:

If the rag was clearly visible from the street, Long need not have entered the doorway to know that it was not in place at 2.20.

If the rag was NOT clearly visible from the street, then Long will have entered the doorway. Otherwise, he could not be sure.

Itīs that simple.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: All Long said in his statement was "It wasn't there then" (or words to that effect). Can we realistically expect him to have said "I didn't see it then", or "I didn't notice it", or "I don't think so"?

Yes, of course we can! If he did not know, why would it be unrealistic for him to say so?

A lot of work goes into pointing out that Long did not word his answer very generously. I think we must look upon both Longs answer and the question that was put to him to see what he was really saying.

If somebody ask "Was the car green?" and we answer "Yes, it was", it is not un til we see both question and answer that we get the full picture. "Yes it was" has no meaning until we can identify the "it" and what "it" was.

Long answered "It was not". And as long as we donīt know what he answered, his words could be in response to a quiry whether his breakfast was good that day. Or anything else.

But we have it on record that the coroner asked Long whether he was able or not to say if the apron piece had been in place at his earlier round. So itīs only when we read this out and couple it with Longs answer, that we get the whole message delivered by Long:

Yes, I am able to say whether the apron piece was in place at 2.20 or not, and the answer to the question is that it was not there at that time.

Besides, if this discarded piece of rag inside the doorway simply didn't register consciously with him, then he could quite legitimately say that "It wasn't there", even if it was.

Aha. So you mean that if he took a look in the doorway, he could have missed the apron that he found at 2.55, and then it would be an honest mistake on his behalf to say that it was not there? I lay there on the ground as he looked, a rather voluminous piece of cloth, with blood and feces on it - but he missed it at 2.20?

Anything can happen. Nobody is saying that Long could not have missed the rag. He could have missed checking that particular doorway whilst checking all the others. He may have been having tea instead of doing his job, lying about it afterwards. I can go on, producing dozens of scenarios where Long said that the rag was not there at 2.20, without having real life coverage for what he said.

But that will not for a second mean that the best bid is that Long was wrong. As long as the only thing used to counter his assertion is conjecture, any suggestion that the apron was in place at 2.20 remains the second best suggestion.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

It is not just the observance and truthfulness of Long that has to be considered,there is no way of determing the truth of that,a bigger and more,to my mind,important question is why he had to linger anywhere,or return to Wentworth building if having reached safety.Both the writing and disposal of the apron piece could have been acheieved,in any number of ways,in any number of places,and with or without both being a pointer to,or explanation of,Eddowes murder.

Itīs actually quite simple:

As long as we have no indications that tell us that the killer did not go directly from Mitre Square to Goulston Street, the best bet is that he did exactly this, and that he dropped the apron there as he went by.

But the moment we DO have an indication that he did NOT go directly from Mitre Square to Goulston Street, then itīs a whole different ball game. And when a PC witnesses in a very certain fashion and tells us that there was no apron in the Goulston Street doorway at 2.20, itīs time to rethink the whole thing. We are now faced with odds that are against the simpler scenario, and there is little we can do but to accept this.

If Stride was a Ripper victim, then we know very well that knifing and killing a woman did not necessarily make the killer head for home. Instead, he stayed on the streets. The distance between Berner Street and Mitre Square could be covered in ten, fifteen minutes, but the killer spent between fortyfive minutes and a full hour before he killed Eddowes. That leaves half an hour unaccounted for, half an hour presumably spent on the streets when he could have dashed for home and safety.
So it would seem that safety was perhaps not priority number one to him! And if he was audacious enough to go looking for a second victim, spending oceans of time doing so, whatīs to say that he would not feel comfortable enough to look for a third victim after Eddowes - for example?

My own suggestion is that the killer took advantage of his relative proximity to what I suggest was the place where he stored his trophies: Pickfordīs. This would combine safety for him with the absense of the rag in Goulston Street at 2.20, and should keep everybody happy, one would think.

But maybe itīs too simple or logical a suggestion...?

All the best,
Fisherman

[RivkahChaya]

I found this list of stuff that Long saw that night. It doesn't mention a piece of apron:

Cigarette butts, 372
Loiterers, 17
Pieces of garbage, 6,427
Rats, 2 (a slow night for them)
Drunks, 14
Cracks in pavement, 21,987
Pieces of torn clothing, 35
Scraps of food, 49
Other police, 4
Men carrying black bags, 31 (many house calls?)
Broken pieces of metal, 11
Instances of grafitti, 92
Broken gas lamps, 2 1/2 (one sputtered a bit)
Prostitutes 18 and 3 possibles
Insects, 327,865

Yeah, no apron in that list. Too bad they didn't ask him about insects. He could have given them an earful.

"Apron" might be one of the 35 pieces of torn clothing. He may not have felt the need to specify apron, since women wore them most of the time them, that they were pretty much standard clothing. Kinda like how now, you wouldn't think to mention that a women was wearing make-up, because it would be more unusual if she wasn't.




[/sarcasm]

[Abby Normal]

Itīs actually quite simple:

As long as we have no indications that tell us that the killer did not go directly from Mitre Square to Goulston Street, the best bet is that he did exactly this, and that he dropped the apron there as he went by.

But the moment we DO have an indication that he did NOT go directly from Mitre Square to Goulston Street, then itīs a whole different ball game. And when a PC witnesses in a very certain fashion and tells us that there was no apron in the Goulston Street doorway at 2.20, itīs time to rethink the whole thing. We are now faced with odds that are against the simpler scenario, and there is little we can do but to accept this.

If Stride was a Ripper victim, then we know very well that knifing and killing a woman did not necessarily make the killer head for home. Instead, he stayed on the streets. The distance between Berner Street and Mitre Square could be covered in ten, fifteen minutes, but the killer spent between fortyfive minutes and a full hour before he killed Eddowes. That leaves half an hour unaccounted for, half an hour presumably spent on the streets when he could have dashed for home and safety.
So it would seem that safety was perhaps not priority number one to him! And if he was audacious enough to go looking for a second victim, spending oceans of time doing so, whatīs to say that he would not feel comfortable enough to look for a third victim after Eddowes - for example?

My own suggestion is that the killer took advantage of his relative proximity to what I suggest was the place where he stored his trophies: Pickfordīs. This would combine safety for him with the absense of the rag in Goulston Street at 2.20, and should keep everybody happy, one would think.

But maybe itīs too simple or logical a suggestion...?

All the best,
Fisherman

Hi Fish
interesting.
How long would it take him to go from Mitre square to Pickfords, drop off some stuff get cleaned up a bit and then get to Goulston street?

[caz]

Not wrong, Caz, only human. If he wasn't on the lookout for a discarded scrap of cloth, he could be forgiven for not registering it in the middle of the road in reasonable light. The fact that the apron was, in fact, nestling on the floor of a recessed doorway, as Long walked past at 90š in the middle of the night, makes it rather remarkable that he spotted it at all. If he hadn't, it's conceivable that it could have remained undetected until the next day... and then where would we be?

Hi Sam,

Yes, wrong.

Long was wrong - if the apron was there at 2.20 and he stated that it was not.

Of course it's human to be wrong, but he'd have been wrong just the same.

How do we get to conclude it was there, except from mere gut feelings about an unidentified killer's mindset and what he would or wouldn't have done? How are those gut feelings more likely to be right and Long more likely to have been wrong?

Love,

Caz
X

[Lechmere]

It seems obvious to me that there are two options.

1) The apron wasn't there when Long's went down Goulston Street at 2,20 am. or
2) Long was skiving and pretended he went down Goulston Street at 2.20am and made up the detail that it wasn't there to cover up for his skiving.

I am ambivalent about which is more likely.

Long's categorical statement that the apron wasn't there at 2.20 am effectively removes the possibility that he went past but didn't notice it at that time.

[caz]

How often do we miss seeing something the first time round in real life, only to find it was there all the time? Answer: Rather often.

Perception requires a number of factors to be present - attention, motivation etc - before a stimulus registers. Our brains can process only a tiny fraction of the stimuli that impinge on our senses, and much that the eyes and ears detect doesn't become a conscious percept at all.

Hi Sam,

All perfectly true, but it doesn't make it any more likely that the something was there and missed, than the something was not there to be missed.

If we were talking about St. Paul's, we could safely say it was there at 2.20 because it was seen at 2.55.

Not so a piece of rag, a dog, a parked car, a feather or a flea, because not seeing any of these things at 2.20, but seeing one at 2.55, in no way indicates it was likely to have been there earlier but missed. It merely could have been, if nobody was looking in the right place.

Halse admits he probably hadn't looked in the same spot where Long found the apron, so he can't help us with whether it was there at 2.20 or not. But Long feels able to say it wasn't there then, which implies he was at least looking in the same spot, even if he could have looked but not seen.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

2) Long was skiving and pretended he went down Goulston Street at 2.20am and made up the detail that it wasn't there to cover up for his skiving.

Hi Lech,

That still wouldn't mean it was there, though. He wouldn't have known either way in that case.

I know you appreciate this, but for some people it seems to follow that if the two coppers could have missed it, it was there at 2.20.

No logic there at all.

Love,

Caz
X

[Scott Nelson]

How long would it take him to go from Mitre square to Pickfords, drop off some stuff get cleaned up a bit and then get to Goulston street?

Pickfords?

What about the Artizans Dwellings on Stoney Lane, or the bathouse on Goulston Street, or a back window/side door entrance to the London Hospital?

[caz]

Hi Lech,

That still wouldn't mean it was there, though. He wouldn't have known either way in that case.

I know you appreciate this, but for some people it seems to follow that if the two coppers could have missed it, it was there at 2.20.

No logic there at all.

Love,

Caz
X

Of course, both coppers would also have missed a family of chimps having a tea party on the staircase between 2 and 2.30 if Long was skiving and having a cuppa elsewhere and Halse didn't look in that particular doorway during the second or two it took to walk past.

Love,

Caz
X

[DRoy]

As for the apple analogy, Long wasnīt exactly blind, was he?

Fish,

I don't know was he? My point was that a color blind person would be certain of a color whether we knew for certain it was a different color.

Itīs the exact same thing with an apple: when somebody says "that apple is red", we should not ask ourselves "is this guy blind?" When and if we get confirmation that the apple is NOT red, THEN those questions come into play. Not before it. Thatīs not how it works.

I agree, up to a point. In my opinion, Long is calling the apple blue! If the person states the apple is blue, I'll have to consider whether the person is color blind as a blue apple goes against a rational and logical conclusion (the apple is probably green or red).

And actually, the only information we have on the colour of the Eddowes apple comes from Long. Until we can prove him wrong, he makes the colour calls.

So the apple is plaid?

Cheers
DRoy

[Fisherman]

Hi Fish
interesting.
How long would it take him to go from Mitre square to Pickfords, drop off some stuff get cleaned up a bit and then get to Goulston street?

Iīd say that it would be a ten, twelve minute walk, justaboutish, in both directions. So add 20-24 minutes to the killing time for walking these stretches. After that, we donīt know whether he dropped the apron at 2.21 or 2.54 - or somewhere inbetween. If he did so at 2.21, then that would give him twelve minutes to clean up at Pickfords, working from the assumption that he left Mitre Square at 1.45 sharp.
If he dropped the apron in Goulston Street at 2.54, we need to add another 33 minutes, making a grand total of 45 minutes.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Fish,

I don't know was he? My point was that a color blind person would be certain of a color whether we knew for certain it was a different color.



I agree, up to a point. In my opinion, Long is calling the apple blue! If the person states the apple is blue, I'll have to consider whether the person is color blind as a blue apple goes against a rational and logical conclusion (the apple is probably green or red).



So the apple is plaid?


Cheers
DRoy

I managed to trot along up til the moment the apple turned blue.

Since then, Iīm lost, however.

All the best, DRoy!
Fisherman