The Absence Of Evidence

[rjpalmer]

So Mr Schwartz had apparently gone out all day, all evening, and well into the night, and then detoured into Berner street, just to check if Mrs Schwartz had completed the move she had expected to make. Fascinating!
What does 'expected to move' suggest? Did Mrs Schwartz not only change address on her own, but go house hunting on the day also?
Are we simply to assume that, having run as far as one of the railway arches, Mr Schwartz then cautiously makes his way to the new lodgings, finds his wife there, thus avoiding any need to return to Berner street?
If yes, then we are saying; Israel Schwartz had to check out an address on Berner street at a quarter to one in the morning, but having been chased away from the area, found that he didn't need to go back, oh and, this was occurring right when JtR was putting away another victim, who Schwartz had gone within yards of, right before fleeing the scene.
Is it that seriously what people believe?

As I see it, there is nothing strange about Schwartz's proposed move.

It's Saturday. It's the end of the week, and it's also the end of the month. That's when people normally move if they are paying rent on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis. They don't want to get stuck paying extra.

The obviously implication is that the Schwartz's were moving at the end of the week/month, but there were complications. Maybe the house they were moving into hadn't been vacated yet, or there was some other hold-up.

Either way, Schwartz still had work or had other important business to attend to, away from the area, and couldn't be in contact with his wife on Saturday. So, away all day, he didn't know whether she had been able to make the move or not. Nothing at all unusual in that. People worked long hours.

Now it's 1 a.m. and Schwartz is walking down Commercial Road, wanting to go home...but he doesn't know where home is. Did his wife make the move or not? He doesn't know.

Despite the common wisdom, I strongly suspect that Schwartz's "new" lodgings were a good distance away. Aldgate? Or was it the other direction Limehouse? Or Mile-End?

Again, we don't know, but not wanting to walk all that way unnecessarily, Schwartz decides to first stop by his "old" lodgings in case his wife hadn't been able to make the move.

These were at 22 Ellen Street. Yes, he turned onto Berner Street, but that was only to get from Commerical Road to Ellen Street, which was just south of Berner.

But, of course, he ran into Jack the Ripper and the rest is history.

In any event, the proposed move was evidently delayed. That's why Swanson still lists Schwartz's address as 22 Helen Street [Ellen Street] at the time of his interview on Sunday night. He was still at his old lodgings.

It's even possible that Schwartz then moved away, and was lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. "**** happens," as they say, and the best witness the Met had was AWOL.

P.S. You mentioned "Sarah Schwartz" of 22 Back Church Lane. Unfortunately, she was almost certainly not related to Israel Schwartz. She came to the UK alone, was headed to America, and had no friends or relatives in London. I am fairly certain she sailed to America a few months after her horrific ordeal, though I still need to confirm it. The 22 Back Church Lane address was long gone by 1888, so it could not be associated with Schwartz.

[Wickerman]

What ya want gov? I've got lots of opinions, so if'n you don't like the first one I can give you another for another!

- Jeff

We do know there was a mandate which dictated the police were not allowed to talk to the press about on-going cases, but as with any such rule it was likely observed more by the upper ranks than those at the bottom.
The persuasive reporter may have cajoled a constable to share some privy information, but how mush would a beat constable really know about the plans at Scotland Yard. I doubt very little.
Also, the mandate only applied to the Met., and we know the City Police had a more amiable relationship with the press.

[Wickerman]

Interesting that in the case of Schwartz, it seems no other paper thought the price of a whiskey to be worth paying

We can say that about any story.
It is rare to find a variety of published interviews in the press concerning any witness. It happens, but it's rare.
The intent is to out perform your competitor, not follow in his footsteps.

[Joshua Rogan]

P.S. You mentioned "Sarah Schwartz" of 22 Back Church Lane. Unfortunately, she was almost certainly not related to Israel Schwartz. She came to the UK alone, was headed to America, and had no friends or relatives in London. I am fairly certain she sailed to America a few months after her horrific ordeal, though I still need to confirm it. The 22 Back Church Lane address was long gone by 1888, so it could not be associated with Schwartz.

Coincidentally (or not), this and nearby addresses were I think demolished in 1886 to make way for the railway viaduct, beneath which the Pinchin Street torso would later be found in the very arch built over their back yards.

[erobitha]

As I see it, there is nothing strange about Schwartz's proposed move.

It's Saturday. It's the end of the week, and it's also the end of the month. That's when people normally move if they are paying rent on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis. They don't want to get stuck paying extra.

The obviously implication is that the Schwartz's were moving at the end of the week/month, but there were complications. Maybe the house they were moving into hadn't been vacated yet, or there was some other hold-up.

Either way, Schwartz still had work or had other important business to attend to, away from the area, and couldn't be in contact with his wife on Saturday. So, away all day, he didn't know whether she had been able to make the move or not. Nothing at all unusual in that. People worked long hours.

Now it's 1 a.m. and Schwartz is walking down Commercial Road, wanting to go home...but he doesn't know where home is. Did his wife make the move or not? He doesn't know.

Despite the common wisdom, I strongly suspect that Schwartz's "new" lodgings were a good distance away. Aldgate? Or was it the other direction Limehouse? Or Mile-End?

Again, we don't know, but not wanting to walk all that way unnecessarily, Schwartz decides to first stop by his "old" lodgings in case his wife hadn't been able to make the move.

These were at 22 Ellen Street. Yes, he turned onto Berner Street, but that was only to get from Commerical Road to Ellen Street, which was just south of Berner.

But, of course, he ran into Jack the Ripper and the rest is history.

In any event, the proposed move was evidently delayed. That's why Swanson still lists Schwartz's address as 22 Helen Street [Ellen Street] at the time of his interview on Sunday night. He was still at his old lodgings.

It's even possible that Schwartz then moved away, and was lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. "**** happens," as they say, and the best witness the Met had was AWOL.

P.S. You mentioned "Sarah Schwartz" of 22 Back Church Lane. Unfortunately, she was almost certainly not related to Israel Schwartz. She came to the UK alone, was headed to America, and had no friends or relatives in London. I am fairly certain she sailed to America a few months after her horrific ordeal, though I still need to confirm it. The 22 Back Church Lane address was long gone by 1888, so it could not be associated with Schwartz.

All fairly normal and above board stuff.

Nothing to question here at all? Saturday is the sabbath - I thought Jews do not traditionally work on the Sabbath? What was he doing exactly?

Nothing more than pure coincidence of 22 Back Church Lane and the attack on Sarah Schwartz three years prior, who actually was Hungarian? I think there is a collage of different stories going on here designed to deliberately confuse.

Then I’m a Maybrickian and in your eyes am no more than a wild fringe theorist.

Schwartz is and was never a reliable witness in my wild fringe theory view. No proof he even existed.

[Wickerman]

All fairly normal and above board stuff.

Nothing to question here at all? Saturday is the sabbath - I thought Jews do not traditionally work on the Sabbath? What was he doing exactly?

Isn't there something about the Jewish day, it begins & ends at noon. Not midnight like the west?
But this may vary with different types of Jews.

Schwartz is and was never a reliable witness in my wild fringe theory view. No proof he even existed.

An odd journalist may have invented a story, but you think they invented people?
I don't think there is any examples of that.

[c.d.]

Ok I am confused here. If Schwartz never existed who was it that Abberline interviewed and who was Swanson referring to in his report?

c.d.

[Abby Normal]

All fairly normal and above board stuff.

Nothing to question here at all? Saturday is the sabbath - I thought Jews do not traditionally work on the Sabbath? What was he doing exactly?

Nothing more than pure coincidence of 22 Back Church Lane and the attack on Sarah Schwartz three years prior, who actually was Hungarian? I think there is a collage of different stories going on here designed to deliberately confuse.

Then I’m a Maybrickian and in your eyes am no more than a wild fringe theorist.

Schwartz is and was never a reliable witness in my wild fringe theory view. No proof he even existed.

do you think hutch was a reliable witness?

[Abby Normal]

Isn't there something about the Jewish day, it begins & ends at noon. Not midnight like the west?
But this may vary with different types of Jews.



An odd journalist may have invented a story, but you think they invented people?
I don't think there is any examples of that.

or would moving even be considered work?

[Abby Normal]

Ok I am confused here. If Schwartz never existed who was it that Abberline interviewed and who was Swanson referring to in his report?

c.d.

cmon cd the police were in on it with the club members.

[erobitha]

cmon cd the police were in on it with the club members.

Sorry, what club members corroborated Schwartz again? I missed that

[rjpalmer]

All fairly normal and above board stuff.

Nothing to question here at all? Saturday is the sabbath - I thought Jews do not traditionally work on the Sabbath? What was he doing exactly?

Nothing more than pure coincidence of 22 Back Church Lane and the attack on Sarah Schwartz three years prior, who actually was Hungarian? I think there is a collage of different stories going on here designed to deliberately confuse.

Then I’m a Maybrickian and in your eyes am no more than a wild fringe theorist.

Schwartz is and was never a reliable witness in my wild fringe theory view. No proof he even existed.

This is Colney Hatch material, Erobitha---but that's fine, most of us have been there.

For the sake of those passing through and who still don't know the reference, Sarah Schwartz was a teen-aged Hungarian immigrant who had been robbed while on board ship, and was briefly working in London in 1885 to earn money for passage to America. This was fully three years before the Whitechapel Murders, of course. Her employers were horrific swine, and when she attempted to quit, they encouraged men to rape her. This did not happen at 22 Back Church Lane. That address is simply somewhere she briefly stayed during the trial in an age when the press stupidly gave the names and addresses of rape victims. In fact, one account gave the house number as 26 Back Church Lane, so it may not even have been 22. Either way, her employers were sent to prison, and she appears to have gone on to America. Who knows? Maybe an emigrant society took pity and helped her. End of story, 1885.

Three years later, a man named Schwartz, supposedly a Hungarian, and who happens to live at 22 Ellen Street, comes forward after the murder of Liz Stride. This is not the same address as Sarah Schwartz. That house no longer even existed--the railway tore it down to put up coal sheds.

So you've lost me in a labyrinth worthy of Bruce Robinson and Stephen Knight. How could the two cases have become linked, and how would it have confused the issue? What issue? What mysterious group of masterminds manipulates the evidence in such a cryptic manner and to what end?

It appears to be nothing more than a name coincidence noticed 120 years later by Gavin Bromley, while doing genealogical research on East End families named Schwartz. It turned out to be a dead-end. The Covid confinement has been brutal, but we can't afford to lose our minds now.

We of course don't know anything at all about Israel Schwartz and why he was out & about on Saturday. We don't know how Orthodox he was, and why he had business to attend to.

Totally off-topic, but the Sabbath runs from sundown to sundown, and it is not unknown among Jewish men to mark the end of their fast with a glass or two of wine on Saturday night. There is no law against it. I rather fancy our three Jewish friends in Duke Street had been in their cups until 1.40 a.m. when they went their separate ways home. 'Delayed by the rain,' is an excuse a man tells his wife when he's been knocking back the spirits until the wee hours. All speculation, of course, but Jewish men like a tipple as much as the next guy, and I've noticed that some nice, if illegal, Wódka was distilled in Aldgate. Maybe Schwart wasn't particularly religious and he worked all day, then knocked back a few glasses himself.

By the way, there appears to have been a fair amount of Romanians named Schwartz in London in the 1890s and 1900s, but I don't know if that means anything.

If it makes you feel better, I, too, am an outcast, because I strongly suspect that Schwartz was not lost in the shuffle, and the true answer is this: the police deliberately kept him from the inquest. Illegal, or pushing the envelope? Yes, but here in the U.S. you would get wealthy if paid a dollar every time the police & prosecution kept a witness from the defense, and this is not even a trial, but a coroner's inquest. At least the late, great Phil Sugden was willing to accept this as one possibility. "Perhaps they [the police] considered his testimony so important that they wished to keep the details secret." (p 202)

Seems entirely reasonable to me. The police were being embarrassed by all these murders, but here was a man who saw one of the victims physically assaulted. No witness mentioned in the MEPO/Home Office files is discussed more than Israel Schwartz. They are still arguing about him and analyzing the meaning of his account in early November.

The idea that he was discredited seems like a poor and convenient excuse to eliminate a witness that is harmful to so many pet theories, including my own.

Have an enjoyable week.

R P

[c.d.]

The idea that he was discredited seems like a poor and convenient excuse to eliminate a witness that is harmful to so many pet theories, including my own brilliant solution.

I often get the feeling on here by the way that Schwartz is viewed by some that he must have stolen their family fortune or impregnated a number of their distant female relatives.

c.d.

[rjpalmer]

I used kick around the following idea: that there was no broad-shouldered man. The broad-shouldered man was Schwartz himself.

He's hurrying home, he's tired, he doesn't know if his wife made the move. He's not in a good mood, and a streetwalker solicits him. He shoves her to the ground and keeps going, but someone sees him, yells a racial insult, and gives brief chase.

Schwartz flees home, only to learn the next morning that the woman he assaulted had been murdered. Terrified, he comes forward to clear himself, but lies about his own involvement for obvious reasons. Another man assaulted Stride--not him.

It could work, but I no longer think this is the correct answer.

[JeffHamm]

Hi all,

We know the police liked to keep their cards close to their chest. The idea that they may have kept information they deemed important from the inquest is not that far fetched. While I've been skeptical of that, I've been re-reading some of the communications of Charles Warren, and the following paragraph found in a reply to the Board of Works for the Whitechapel District and dated Oct 3rd, is worthy of keeping in mind. (Found on page 160 of my copy of Evans & Skinner):
"...
You will agree with me that it is not desirable that I should enter into particulars as to what the police are doing in the matter. It is most important for good results that our proceedings should not be published, and the very fact that you may be unaware of what the Detective Department is doing is only the stronger proof that it is doing its work with secrecy and efficiency.
..."

Now, that's not quite the same as indicating they would extend such "secrecy and efficiency" to an inquest, nor is it surprising that he's not going to release details to an outside group, but it is interesting that he indicates that information should not be published. This may just be a Victorian phrase indicating that the information should not be made public, but regardless, if the police at the time felt Schwartz might have put them on to a good lead, then not wanting it public knowledge would be understandable. They can't help it if Schwartz spoke to the press, but they do not have to draw greater attention to him, or get his story in every paper.

Anyway, just thought that was an interesting communication from Warren that pertains to the police view with regards to important information and making it public.

- Jeff