Pub or Street?

[Fisherman]

Lsd confuses me

Me too. You are forgiven.

[Joshua Rogan]

Dr Blackwell (recalled), in the Daily Telegraph 6th Oct;

"I may add that I removed the cachous from the left hand of the deceased, which was nearly open. The packet was lodged between the thumb and the first finger, and was partially hidden from view. It was I who spilt them in removing them from the hand. My impression is that the hand gradually relaxed while the woman was dying"

Incidentally, both doctors denied seeing any grapes in Stride's hand or near her body;

Blackwell: "Did you perceive any grapes near the body in the yard? - No.
Did you hear any person say that they had seen grapes there? - I did not."

Phillips: "Neither on the hands nor about the body of the deceased did I find grapes, or connection with them."

[Fisherman]

Dr Blackwell (recalled), in the Daily Telegraph 6th Oct;

"I may add that I removed the cachous from the left hand of the deceased, which was nearly open. The packet was lodged between the thumb and the first finger, and was partially hidden from view. It was I who spilt them in removing them from the hand. My impression is that the hand gradually relaxed while the woman was dying"

Incidentally, both doctors denied seeing any grapes in Stride's hand or near her body;

Blackwell: "Did you perceive any grapes near the body in the yard? - No.
Did you hear any person say that they had seen grapes there? - I did not."

Phillips: "Neither on the hands nor about the body of the deceased did I find grapes, or connection with them."

If only logic and sense had been allowed to rule the day, that would be the final nail in the coffin of the thinking Notblamedfornothing represents.

Sadly, I donīt think logic and sense has all that much of an impact on everybody.

[Wickerman]

I donīt know whether the theory of mistaking blood clots for grapes is "popular", but I do know that it offers a very likely explanation for the matter, whereas suggesting that a medico missed out on the grapes, that noone found them on the ground and that witnesses from a distance are better judges than a trained doctor examining a body makes for a lot less likely suggestion........

You keep saying this "the medico's missed the grapes", yet the sequence of events demonstrates the hand was lifted (the pulse being felt), before both Blackwell & Phillips arrived on scene.
The two peoples who were in the best position to see the grapes (PC Lamb & Dr Johnson) were never asked. Them both attending the inquest before the subject was raised.

On the hand being touched (hand raised) anything under the fingers will fall to the ground. Why you think black grapes should be noticeable in the dark, in the mud, and possibly in the blood, and likely crushed by many boots when they removed the body, is surprising. The cachous were noticeable as they were in a white? packet. The packet being noticed first.

Rather than accept a couple of black grapes could have been easily missed among the muddy cobbles, in the dark, and crushed beyond recognition, you would sooner; the grape stalk, the fruit-stained handky, the two witnesses who saw grapes, and the man (Packer) who admitted to selling Stride (ie; the couple) grapes, are errors or lies or unrelated items of evidence.
Talk about denial! :-)

A comment you made earlier made me smile.
You wrote:
"......And the reason the witnesses opted for grapes could be on account of how they were common merchandise...."
That was an odd defense to make.

To my mind, any witness discovering a body laying in a pool of blood, and seeing dark marks on a hand will naturally think of blood stains, as opposed to black grapes!
I can't think of any murder in history where a witness swore to seeing grapes that turned out to be blood clots. That must be among thee most bizarre miss-identificatiosn in the annals of crime.
And you're only defense is to keep saying that two doctors should have seen the grapes in the dark after they had most probably fallen from the hand.
That might make sense to you Christer, but.......

Blackwell & Phillips obviously didn't, just like PC Lamb didn't see the cachous that we ALL know where there. These things happen my friend!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Lsd confuses me

You'll be right at home on the Wallace thread then.

[Wickerman]

I think the LEFT hand offered up a good chance of palpating for the pulse, Jon. But I donīt think Johnston took it, he just felt for warmth, since he knew Stride was dead.

But Christer, the left hand was nearest the wall. There was no room to stand between the wall and her body to crouch down and take a pulse.

So are you now saying that Lamb was the one who lifted her hand? he was not, we have it on record that he never examined her hands. He felt for a pulse, but it seems he felt the left hand, not the right one......

No, no Christer, as I mentioned before. Someone caused the blood stains on her right hand.
As the only two people to touch her hands were Lamb & Johnson, and Johnson claimed it wasn't him, yet Lamb claimed he found the fluid blood to be clotted (he meant congealed), then Lamb had to have touched the congealed blood and transferred it to her hand.
PC Lamb is the only candidate, so he must have been the one.

Also, bear in mind, Lamb used the word "clot" when he meant "congeal", this is a common mistake.
So how do you know the same mistake was not made regarding the right hand?
Maybe it wasn't smeared with "clotted" blood (lumps), but only smeared with "congealed" blood (dried flat smears). The mistake has already been made once, if it was made a second time it severely scuttles the "grapes must have been clotted blood" argument.
Dried flat smeared blood do not in any way resemble round or oval grapes.

You feel for a pulse with the fingers, to do that he had to raise her hand (the right hand), his fingers being underneath the wrist - so her hand was raised slightly while he did this. This is not "examining" the hand, only feeling for the pulse.

Maybe Diemschitz also said it, but the fact of the matter is that Johnston did say that he never looked at the hands:

"The CORONER. - Did you look at the hands? Witness. - No. I saw the left hand was lying away from the body, and the arm was bent. The right arm was also bent. The left hand might have been on the ground."

If Johnson can describe the positions of the hands, then clearly he "looked" at the hands. In this case when the coroner said "look" he must have meant "examine". Johnson did look at the hands, but he did not examine them. He also touched both hands as he knew they were both cold.
How do you do that in the dark without "looking" at the hands?

I am not confusing or forgetting anything, Jon. Witnesses whoi in bad lighting see blood clots on tha back of a hand and mistke them for grapes will of course think they are looking at the palm, not the back of the hand. Itīs simple logic, right?

You're joking, right?

How many grapes it takes to make a bunch is something I must leave unanswered. I can imagine a small bunch and a large bunch, so there will be some playing room, right?

I was just trying to avoid some confusion between the man buying a half-pound of grapes, and Stride holding a couple in her hand. She wasn't holding the entire half-pound :-)

[NotBlamedForNothing]

No. You tell me why you hang on to a suggestion that has nothing going for it instead. It should be much more interesting.

With pleasure.

Abraham Ashbrigh observed the body prior to Spooner.

Evening Standard, Oct 1:

I was one of those who first saw the murdered woman. It was about a quarter to one o'clock, I should think, when I heard a policeman's whistle blown, and came down to see what was the matter. In the gateway, two or three people had collected, and when I got there I saw a short, dark young woman lying on the ground, with a gash between four and five inches long in her throat. I should think she was from twenty-five to twenty-eight years of age. Her head was towards the north wall. She had a black dress on, with a bunch of flowers pinned on the breast. In her hand there a little piece of paper, containing five or six cachous. The body was not found by Koster, but by a man whose name who a do not know - a man who goes out with a pony and barrow, and lives up the archway, where he was going, I believe, to put up his barrow on coming home from market. He thought it was his wife at first, but when he found her safe at home he got a candle and found this woman. He never touched it till the doctors had been sent for. The little gate is always open, or, at all events, always unfastened.

So which hand is he referring to?
Is it the hand nearest the flower on the breast, that he has just mentioned, or the other?
Remember, this is under the light of a match or a candle.
A clue is that he was able to estimate the number of cachous in the paper.
How could he have done so if the cachous were partially hidden under Stride's left thumb?
He couldn't, of course, and that's because the cachous were in the right hand.

By the way, nice of Louis not to touch the body till the doctors had been sent for!

Now if PC Lamb were responsible for relocating the cachous from right to left hand, we might be able to detect a change in position of the left arm.
We should also try to get a sense of the pressure Lamb was under.
Oct 3:

[Daily News] There were about 30 people in the yard, some of whom had followed me in. The people were standing about a yard from the body. When I turned my light on the body some of the people pressed round, but I begged them to stand back as they might get the blood on themselves and perhaps get into trouble in consequence. When I put my hand on the face it was slightly warm. The pulse was not beating. Deceased was lying on her left side. The left arm was under her. The right arm was across the breast. The body was only five or six inches from the wall. The clothing was not disturbed. I scarcely think the boots could be seen except perhaps the sole. She looked as if she had been laid quietly down, and there was no sign of a struggle. The blood was running some distance and was close to the door of the club. The blood nearer to her was partly congealed.

[Daily Telegraph] Did you observe how the deceased was lying? - She was lying on her left side, with her left hand on the ground.
Was there anything in that hand? - I did not notice anything. The right arm was across the breast. Her face was not more than five or six inches away from the club wall.
Were her clothes disturbed? - No.

[Morning Advertiser] As I was examining to see whether there were any other injuries beyond that on the throat, the crowd pressed close in. I begged of them to keep back as they might get blood on their clothes and get themselves into trouble. I put my hand on the face and on the arm. The face was slightly warm. I felt the wrist, but could not feel the pulse. I put my hand on the wrist, but the pulse had ceased to beat. The body was lying on the left side, and her arm was lying under. I did not examine to see if there was anything in the hand. The right arm was lying across the breast. Her face was not more than five or six inches from the wall. Her clothes were not disturbed. No part of her legs was visible, and the boots could scarcely be seen excepting the soles. She looked as if she had lain quietly down. There was no appearance of her having struggled in any way. Her dress was not crumpled.

[The Times] Deceased was lying on her side, and her left arm was lying under her.

So at this stage, the left arm appears to be tucked up against the body, if not right under it.
That means the left hand was probably invisible to both Ashbrigh and Spooner.
Lamb claims not to notice anything in the left hand, and yet he is holding a lantern in his left hand.
He may have had better visibility than anyone.
In contrast, Ashbrigh and Spooner were reliant on match or candle light, and yet both were able to see the cachous, and even count them!

Now note the hand smeared with blood, and the position of the left arm, when Johnston examines the victim.
Oct 4:

[Daily News] I did not notice at the time one of the hands being smeared with blood. The left arm was arched and lying away from the body, and the right arm was bent across the breast.

[Daily Telegraph] I left the body precisely as I found it. There was a stream of blood down to the gutter; it was all clotted. There was very little blood near the neck; it had all run away. I did not notice at the time that one of the hands was smeared with blood. The left arm was bent, away from the body. The right arm was also bent, and across the body.

[Morning Advertiser] I noticed blood on one of the hands when Dr. Phillips examined the body, but not at the time. The left hand was lying away from the body and the arm was bent. The right arm was also bent, and lying on the body. There was no mark of anyone having stopped on the stream of blood.

The left arm position seems to have changed!
Johnston does not see the blood on the right hand, as it is now open against the chest.
Lamb must have bent the left arm at the elbow when placing the cachous packet partially in her left hand.

Now tell me how Liz managed to hang onto the cachous...

[DJA]

You'll be right at home on the Wallace thread then.

A friend from the late 1970s onwards wrote this.
In his 90s now and living 200 Km from Perth.

Madness Of The Sixties | Timothy Leary and me

[Michael W Richards]

You keep saying this "the medico's missed the grapes", yet the sequence of events demonstrates the hand was lifted (the pulse being felt), before both Blackwell & Phillips arrived on scene.
The two peoples who were in the best position to see the grapes (PC Lamb & Dr Johnson) were never asked. Them both attending the inquest before the subject was raised.

On the hand being touched (hand raised) anything under the fingers will fall to the ground. Why you think black grapes should be noticeable in the dark, in the mud, and possibly in the blood, and likely crushed by many boots when they removed the body, is surprising. The cachous were noticeable as they were in a white? packet. The packet being noticed first.

Rather than accept a couple of black grapes could have been easily missed among the muddy cobbles, in the dark, and crushed beyond recognition, you would sooner; the grape stalk, the fruit-stained handky, the two witnesses who saw grapes, and the man (Packer) who admitted to selling Stride (ie; the couple) grapes, are errors or lies or unrelated items of evidence.
Talk about denial! :-)

A comment you made earlier made me smile.
You wrote:
"......And the reason the witnesses opted for grapes could be on account of how they were common merchandise...."
That was an odd defense to make.

To my mind, any witness discovering a body laying in a pool of blood, and seeing dark marks on a hand will naturally think of blood stains, as opposed to black grapes!
I can't think of any murder in history where a witness swore to seeing grapes that turned out to be blood clots. That must be among thee most bizarre miss-identificatiosn in the annals of crime.
And you're only defense is to keep saying that two doctors should have seen the grapes in the dark after they had most probably fallen from the hand.
That might make sense to you Christer, but.......

Blackwell & Phillips obviously didn't, just like PC Lamb didn't see the cachous that we ALL know where there. These things happen my friend!

Lets say for arguments sake there were grapes and stalk in her hands Jon, that wouldn't mean they were for certain hers..for one, she might have clenched something into her hand as she lay on her side drawing her legs into her body....and it wouldn't mean that she didn't buy them herself with the missing 6d she earned that afternoon, for a second.

Point being, the grapes, whether they existed or not, most probably cannot help solve this murder anyway.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

A friend from the late 1970s onwards wrote this.
In his 90s now and living 200 Km from Perth.

Madness Of The Sixties | Timothy Leary and me

Cheers, I'll have a read when I'm free to. Didn't have you down as an old bohemian!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

I suppose the whole grapes thing is about Packer. Prove the grapes, Packers correct and his description of the man stands. No grapes, no Packer, no man. Depends on who you fancy for Jack really?

Do the grapes lean towards a pub or street pick up? Could be either, but I'm with Michael on this one. They're not going to solve anything.

[Fisherman]

With pleasure.

Abraham Ashbrigh observed the body prior to Spooner.

Evening Standard, Oct 1:



So which hand is he referring to?
Is it the hand nearest the flower on the breast, that he has just mentioned, or the other?
Remember, this is under the light of a match or a candle.
A clue is that he was able to estimate the number of cachous in the paper.
How could he have done so if the cachous were partially hidden under Stride's left thumb?
He couldn't, of course, and that's because the cachous were in the right hand.

By the way, nice of Louis not to touch the body till the doctors had been sent for!

Now if PC Lamb were responsible for relocating the cachous from right to left hand, we might be able to detect a change in position of the left arm.
We should also try to get a sense of the pressure Lamb was under.
Oct 3:



So at this stage, the left arm appears to be tucked up against the body, if not right under it.
That means the left hand was probably invisible to both Ashbrigh and Spooner.
Lamb claims not to notice anything in the left hand, and yet he is holding a lantern in his left hand.
He may have had better visibility than anyone.
In contrast, Ashbrigh and Spooner were reliant on match or candle light, and yet both were able to see the cachous, and even count them!

Now note the hand smeared with blood, and the position of the left arm, when Johnston examines the victim.
Oct 4:



The left arm position seems to have changed!
Johnston does not see the blood on the right hand, as it is now open against the chest.
Lamb must have bent the left arm at the elbow when placing the cachous packet partially in her left hand.

Now tell me how Liz managed to hang onto the cachous...

So what are you trying to say? That Lamb took the cachous from her right hand, spilled some of them, and then put them in her left hand instead?

Any idea why?

And any idea why Blackwell siad that HE was the guy who spilled them?

Why is it that you think the position of the left arm has changed? It is not as if the reports say that all of it was under her - the upper arm was, nothing more.

What are you getting at with all of this?

[Fisherman]

But Christer, the left hand was nearest the wall. There was no room to stand between the wall and her body to crouch down and take a pulse.

Why would anybody feeling for a pulse need to get between the body and the wall, though? Crouch down, bend over the body and put your hand on the wrist. She was a woman, not an elephant, Jon!

No, no Christer, as I mentioned before. Someone caused the blood stains on her right hand.

Yes, obviously. I was flummoxed by how you wrote that a hand with no wound cannot have blood on it, but I see now what you are after. Yes, the blood was transferred at some stage.

As the only two people to touch her hands were Lamb & Johnson, and Johnson claimed it wasn't him, yet Lamb claimed he found the fluid blood to be clotted (he meant congealed), then Lamb had to have touched the congealed blood and transferred it to her hand.
PC Lamb is the only candidate, so he must have been the one.

Simple logic! But what happened to the killer? WHy could he not have transferred the blood? And what happened to the period of time when Stride was lying alone in the yard? Lamb is not the only candidate at all, Jon!

Also, bear in mind, Lamb used the word "clot" when he meant "congeal", this is a common mistake.
So how do you know the same mistake was not made regarding the right hand?
Maybe it wasn't smeared with "clotted" blood (lumps), but only smeared with "congealed" blood (dried flat smears). The mistake has already been made once, if it was made a second time it severely scuttles the "grapes must have been clotted blood" argument.
Dried flat smeared blood do not in any way resemble round or oval grapes.

Jon, any roundish, darkish shape can be mistaken for a grape, not least in darkness and from a distance. It is that simple. We do not know the exact apparition of the hand, but we DO know that Phillips spoke of oblong shapes of blood on it. That is more than enough to build a very useful argument on.

You feel for a pulse with the fingers, to do that he had to raise her hand (the right hand), his fingers being underneath the wrist - so her hand was raised slightly while he did this. This is not "examining" the hand, only feeling for the pulse.

If Johnston had done that, he would have turned the back of the hand up, towards himself. And since he didnīt work blindfolded, Iīd say that he would ahve noted the blood on it at that stage. But he didnīt. To me, that very much implicates that he used the left hand, not the right one. We canīt be certain either way, but that is the inference.

[/I]

If Johnson can describe the positions of the hands, then clearly he "looked" at the hands.

Whwn he says "looked" he means "examined". Itīs not as if heīsays that he could not see the hands, itīs a case of him saying that he did not pay any attention to them.

In this case when the coroner said "look" he must have meant "examine". Johnson did look at the hands, but he did not examine them. He also touched both hands as he knew they were both cold.

Jon, if one hand is cold, then so is the other. People do not retain warmth in one hand and loose it in the other when dying.

How do you do that in the dark without "looking" at the hands?

He didnīt. He did it without EXAMINING the hands.

You're joking, right?

No, I am not joking. Magicians are very aware of how we are prone to accept that we are looking at a palm when we perceive that there is something in it, Jon. And they make good use of it. You must realize that if Diemnschitz and Kozebrodsky mistook the blood clots for grapes, then realistically, they wil have accepted that they were looking at the palm of her hand. Given how the arm was positioned, depending on how Blackwee lifted it, he could have produced either side to those on the opposite side of the yard. There is no joke about it whatsoever.


I was just trying to avoid some confusion between the man buying a half-pound of grapes, and Stride holding a couple in her hand. She wasn't holding the entire half-pound :-)

Nobody is suggesting that she did - if the blood clots were grape-shaped, they could not have been very many. But they could have been a handful nevertheless. But it would be a silly thing to argue about.

[Fisherman]

You keep saying this "the medico's missed the grapes", yet the sequence of events demonstrates the hand was lifted (the pulse being felt), before both Blackwell & Phillips arrived on scene.

No, it does not. Lamb did n ot lift the right hand, as far as we know, and Johnston didnīt say anything about doing so either. It must be remembered that Diemschitz and Kozebrodsky both describe a medico who examined the hand; they even say he opened it up, so reasonably we are talking about Blackwell.

The two peoples who were in the best position to see the grapes (PC Lamb & Dr Johnson) were never asked. Them both attending the inquest before the subject was raised.

But Johnston very clearly tells us that he did not look at her left hand, where he knew there was a piece of tissue. Why would he leave out speaking about the grapes in her right hand, Jon? And why would the coroner only ask Lamb about the left hand, and whether he looked at it? Why not ask about the right hand too? In effect, as Joshua Rogan has shown us, the coroner DID ask about that right hand - but he asked Blackwell, who confirmed that there was not a trace of any grape anywhere close to the body. And of course, as Stride was lifted onto the ambulance and wheeled away, the police will have checked the ground under her carefully, becasue sometimes important clues are hidden by the bodies of murder victims. It is therefore abundantly clear that there were no grapes in Strides hand, nor were there any on the ground beside her or under her. What there were, were oblong blood clots on the back of her hand, that may have been mistaken for grapes, offering at least one sensible explanation to the matter.

On the hand being touched (hand raised) anything under the fingers will fall to the ground. Why you think black grapes should be noticeable in the dark, in the mud, and possibly in the blood, and likely crushed by many boots when they removed the body, is surprising. The cachous were noticeable as they were in a white? packet. The packet being noticed first.

The ground will have been thoroughly searched, and nothing was found there. Crushed or not, the skins and the fruit meat will be very easy to see.

Rather than accept a couple of black grapes could have been easily missed among the muddy cobbles, in the dark, and crushed beyond recognition, you would sooner; the grape stalk, the fruit-stained handky, the two witnesses who saw grapes, and the man (Packer) who admitted to selling Stride (ie; the couple) grapes, are errors or lies or unrelated items of evidence.
Talk about denial! :-)

I am denying not a iot of that list, Jon. I am denying that Stride had grapes in her hand that fell onto the ground, and I am doing so becasue if she DID, they vanished into thin air afterwards. And that does not happen.

The grape stalk could have ended up there at any time, and there were no skins of grapes found in the yard or in Strides belly. No denial there - from my side, at least.

The handkerchief had fruit stains on it - and there are many fruits in the world. Phillips said that the stains were not blood, and I think that perhaps tells us that the stains were red and looked like blood. Do grapes produce red stains, similar to blood? No. Do strawberries? Yes. Do blackberries? Yes. Do blueberries? Yes.

And Packer? Well, we can always quote from this site:

"In the immediate aftermath of the murder, Packer was interviewed and claimed to have seen nothing, claiming that he closed his shop at 12.30 a.m. (Stride's body was found at or just after 1 a.m.) However, four days later a press report appeared in which it was stated that Packer, interviewed by private detectives, had related a story in which a man and a woman wearing a flower had come to his shop at 11.45 p.m. and had sold black grapes to the man.
Packer identified the body of Stride as the woman he had seen with the man he served but told Inspector Moore that he had sold the grapes at midnight. On the afternoon of 4th October Packer was taken to Scotland Yard and was interviewed personally by Charles Warren. In this meeting Packer told Warren that he had served the man at 11 p.m. Warren's account of this interview still survives. Near the end of October, Packer was again in the press, this time claiming he had seen Stride's companion in the Commercial Road. Finally, in November he claimed to have served a man who said was the Ripper's cousin!
It is impossible to say how much of Packer's various accounts are due to faulty recollection and how much to deliberate fabrication. However, it is surely easy to see why he was described by the police as a man who was "unreliable and contradicted himself." It is surely significant that in his first statement, taken within a short time of the murder, Packer claimed to have seen nothing. He was most likely a man who liked the attention, which his later statements gave him, and courted the press for nearly two months after the Stride murder."

A comment you made earlier made me smile.
You wrote:
"......And the reason the witnesses opted for grapes could be on account of how they were common merchandise...."
That was an odd defense to make.

Perhaps so - it hinges on how common strawberries, blackberries and blueberries were in that part of town. Those were the alternatives you named. Personally, I donīt know, but my gut feeling is that grapes were more readily available. I am prepared to be corrected, though.

To my mind, any witness discovering a body laying in a pool of blood, and seeing dark marks on a hand will naturally think of blood stains, as opposed to black grapes!

If the marks had been streams and smears of blood, then yes. But if they were oblong, dark red clots, looking black in the gloom, we get a different picture. If there were no streams of blood at all to accompany them, the illusion may have been a very persuasive one.

I can't think of any murder in history where a witness swore to seeing grapes that turned out to be blood clots.

Can you think of any case where an object looking like another object have been mistaken for that other object? Because that is the question we should ask, not whether people normally mistake blood for grapes.

That must be among thee most bizarre miss-identificatiosn in the annals of crime.

No, I donīt think so. It only becomes bizarre if there is no likeness, Jon.

And you're only defense is to keep saying that two doctors should have seen the grapes in the dark after they had most probably fallen from the hand.
That might make sense to you Christer, but.......

Blackwell & Phillips obviously didn't, just like PC Lamb didn't see the cachous that we ALL know where there. These things happen my friend!

Lamb did not NOTE the cachous, Jon. Others, who looked, noted them. It is not as if Lamb would not have seen them if he looked for them. Every witness that was there will have had varying impressions of the body, what some noted was missed by others. That is how it goes.
The police and medicos however looked carefully for any evidence lying around. Unless you disagree, and think they didnīt care?

They found cachous, but not a single grape. That is why the cachous are a fact, just as it is a fact that no grapes could be seen in the yard.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

How in the first instance did Le Grand know to look for evidence of Stride having eaten grapes?

Regards,

Simon