Blurred

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Elamarna;378522]Pierre

Confused:

post 130

However when asked about this statement in post 133

"let me confirm, the statement is that court reports are unreliable?
Is there an academic source, preferably more than one to back this assertion?"


The reply came in post 134 with the following 2 statements

"No. The statement is that there are tendencies in the newspaper articles giving descriptions for the GSG and the tendencies go back to the interpretations of the Dear Boss letter: "

and

"The other problem you mention is just the old problem with witnesses lying or misremembering. A well researched problem. I have been discussing that before here in the forum.

If you want to read about it you can find the sources."


The first statement from post 134 would suggest that post 130 did not mean :

The articles are not reliable.

even if it did state that.

The 2nd statement at the bottom of the post 134 Starts with:

"The other problem you mention "

However only one question was asked in post 133.

Hi Steve,

No, you also asked:

let me confirm, the statement is that court reports are unreliable?
Is there an academic source, preferably more than one to back this assertion?

(that "courts reports are unreliable" = your hypothesis, not mine, if you generalize my pilot to "all" sources or if you try to construct "court reports" as some specific class of sources. )

That was your second question. And you got the answer.

This suggests that the first statement from post 134 did not rule out that the statement from post 130 re the reliability of the Court Reports.

Your syntax is unclear here ("that the statement..." - what?), could you please pose the question in a clearer way? Thanks Steve.

There is also a suggestion that if I wish to investigate this, then I should go and look for the sources myself!

Naturally you will have to look for scientific articles about the reliability of witness statements, if that is what you are after. If you are looking for general research on reliability of newspaper articles in the 1880s you will have to look for that too.

What I have done here is a pilot, i.e. empirical source criticism. This pilot is what I draw the conclusions from. So I do not deduce from later research or, if there is any from the 1880s, I do not draw from it but from the pilot I have presented here.

Of course post 133 had asked for such sources to be provided to back up the statement in post 130.

Such sources could not back the statement that the newspaper articles about the GSG are biased. There is no such research. I have done this empirical pilot and it is the first ever made that I know of.

This response is what is now expected.

so again:

Is there an academic source, preferably more than one to back up the assertion that court reports from 1888 are intrinsically unreliable?

That is not my conclusion. My conclusion is that the newspaper articles about the GSG are not reliable. They have a tendency.

The same goes for the Morris Lewis sources and others.

So these sources are the ones that I discuss. And from these sources we can absolutely induce that there are problems with reliability and validity in newspaper articles about the murders in 1888. We also know that they have tendencies. But we have no random selection and no statistical tests, so we can not infer to ALL sources!

But all sources can be subjected to source criticism. There is nothing strange with that. These sources are no exception. Did you believe they were?

Kind regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

David,

Instead of flying off in tangents. Condider this ONE question..

Would a senior police officer, before inquest in to a high profile murder inquest, not be in the slightest bit concerned, that no fewer than six sworn police statements pertaining to one sentence, duly written down and noted by each man, that each version was different from the other?

Try answering one question without asking more. Its a yes or no answer.

I'm sorry, Phil, but before I can attempt to answer this, can you tell me if it's a hypothetical question?

I mean, where do these "six sworn police statements" come from? Where do I find them? Have you seen them?

Incidentally, I wasn't flying off in a tangent, I was directly addressing the statement you made that "I cant get around the fact that x amount of policemen didn't have a blooming pow wow and present a consensus of definitive factual evidence." None of your questions seem to relate to this statement. The above question, for example, refers to a "concern" not a "pow wow".

Then..when you have answered that, ask the same question but replace the writing on the wall/jamb/etc with the 5 different descriptions of the precise location of said writing.

That is yes or no answer too.

Talking of a tangent, what does this have to do with anything here?

Which officers gave different descriptions of the location of the writing?

Is it another hypothetical question?

Then ask yourself the question. . Swanson writes a 7th version of the description of the writing. From where did it come from? (Certainly NOT police witness testimony).


No riddles. Just work it out.

Swanson's report states that the writing on the wall said:

"The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing."

Sir Charles Warren recorded it as being:

"The Juwes are The men that Will not be Blamed for nothing."

Is this a capitalisation point? Or are you saying that Swanson's use of "who" rather than "that" is in any way significant? Or is this a point about Sir Charles not giving witness testimony?

Either way, my answer to the question of where Swanson got his version of the writing from is that he got it from Sir Charles Warren, whose note of the writing accompanied Swanson's report.

[Phil Carter]

I always get suspicious when people speak in riddles and I don’t know what you're talking about Phil but I'm surprised that you seem to think you have made a point worth pressing on with.

Just think about what you are saying.

Is it really credible that on the night of the discovery of the writing on the wall, PC Long would have approached Sir Charles or vice versa asking "Did you read the writing the same way as I did?" The same for the Metropolitan police and City of London police officers. Surely the writing spoke for itself and everyone would have assumed that everyone else had read it the same way as they had. Sir Charles wouldn’t even care what a constable (or a City of London detective) had written in his notebook because he saw the writing for himself!

After the night of the discovery, and before the inquest, I would suggest it would have been most improper for any witnesses to the inquest to have compared their notes to provide a consistent story to the inquest. Are you saying that you don't care whether they all put forward the correct wording and spelling as long as they all said the same thing? That would be bordering on a conspiracy to provide perjured evidence at the inquest.

As for whether the police could have considered the position after the inquest, well perhaps they did for Swanson's report of 6 Nov (which may be what you are referring to) is based on Sir Charles' note being correct.

David,

Instead of flying off in tangents. Condider this ONE question..

Would a senior police officer, before inquest in to a high profile murder inquest, not be in the slightest bit concerned, that no fewer than six sworn police statements pertaining to one sentence, duly written down and noted by each man, that each version was different from the other?

Try answering one question without asking more. Its a yes or no answer.

Then..when you have answered that, ask the same question but replace the writing on the wall/jamb/etc with the 5 different descriptions of the precise location of said writing.

That is yes or no answer too.

Then ask yourself the question. . Swanson writes a 7th version of the description of the writing. From where did it come from? (Certainly NOT police witness testimony).

No riddles. Just work it out.



Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Not germane to this particular thread, but nevertheless of interest.

Daily News, 11th September 1888—

"Among the earliest uses to which the phonograph may advantageously be put is the recording of evidence in courts of justice. Nobody can be present in court for a quarter of an hour without being struck by the sad waste of everybody's time involved in the tedious process of taking down the evidence of witnesses word by word. To the lazy mind it is not very clear why shorthand, which is sufficient for almost all other purposes under the sun, is not to be trusted for this. At the latest Whitechapel inquest, for example, a great number of witnesses, policemen, jurymen, and others, are detained three times as long for the recording of the evidence by the deliberate longhand system of Mr. Baxter as is necessary for the mere hearing of testimony. Business is interrupted, justice is impeded, expense is incurred, and everybody grows tired of the slow procedure, simply because it is deemed necessary to dribble out what has to be said sentence by sentence, with long pauses between. When each witness box has, as a part of its furniture, an infallible recorder of words and tones, hesitations, and emphases, for reference wherever and whenever required, the summons to serve on a jury will be a far less serious matter, the steps of Justice will be quickened, and the cost of legal proceedings will be considerable reduced."

Regards,

Simon

[David Orsam]

Could they have used Pittman's and transcribed it later?

No, because the deposition had to be signed by the witness there and then.

[David Orsam]

No David.. but turn it around.

Chief Commissioners do have pow wows with lower ranks . It happens often.

And in case you want to have a look... try ..who wrote what on Nov 6th as an example.

I always get suspicious when people speak in riddles and I don’t know what you're talking about Phil but I'm surprised that you seem to think you have made a point worth pressing on with.

Just think about what you are saying.

Is it really credible that on the night of the discovery of the writing on the wall, PC Long would have approached Sir Charles or vice versa asking "Did you read the writing the same way as I did?" The same for the Metropolitan police and City of London police officers. Surely the writing spoke for itself and everyone would have assumed that everyone else had read it the same way as they had. Sir Charles wouldn’t even care what a constable (or a City of London detective) had written in his notebook because he saw the writing for himself!

After the night of the discovery, and before the inquest, I would suggest it would have been most improper for any witnesses to the inquest to have compared their notes to provide a consistent story to the inquest. Are you saying that you don't care whether they all put forward the correct wording and spelling as long as they all said the same thing? That would be bordering on a conspiracy to provide perjured evidence at the inquest.

As for whether the police could have considered the position after the inquest, well perhaps they did for Swanson's report of 6 Nov (which may be what you are referring to) is based on Sir Charles' note being correct.

[Phil Carter]

Constables didn't tend to have "pow wows" with Chief Commissioners and City Police detectives didn't tend to have "pow wows" with Metropolitan Police constables or Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioners.

No David.. but turn it around.

Chief Commissioners do have pow wows with lower ranks . It happens often.

And in case you want to have a look... try ..who wrote what on Nov 6th as an example.



Phil

[Elamarna]

To attack me is not acceptable.

My dear Pierre

Do you not see the difference between attacks on each other, and attacking the family member of a fellow forum member.?

Worse is the attempt to justify those comments, rather than do the decent thing, and the transgression is compounded in post 128 with:

"since obviously, this person, who I do not know anything about, can not be a historian. "


Dr GUT (GUT's wife) is a published Academic Historian, her works are listed on the net.

If you ask GUT nicely he may tell you where to look, if not I fully understand his view, given your reluctance to do the same.


regards

Steve

[drstrange169]

The depositions were written out in longhand by the coroner or his deputy or clerk during the proceedings in real time.

Could they have used Pittman's and transcribed it later?

[DJA]

Hi,

In a police report dated 6 November 1888, chief inspector Donald Swanson wrote about

"Facts known to Met:Police. respecting the Murder in Mitresquare & writing on wall." (Evans & Skinner, p. 207-208).

About the writing on the wall, he wrote:

"Upon the discovery of the blurred chalk writing on the wall,...".

What could Donald Swanson have known about this?

Regards, Pierre

Given that it had been a wet and therefore humid night,one would expect chalk writing on a stairwell's dado to be blurred.

Constable Long only saw it after finding the apron piece with blood on one corner and was seeking more evidence.

Common sense prevails.

Edit. Perhaps not. Crikey! 17 pages.

[GUT]

I don't think that would have been possible GUT (even if they managed to work out what the murderer's handwriting looked like) but Simon's point, as I understood him, was about the spelling and phrasing; and, while it would obviously be nice to know precisely what the writing said, I can't see how any of the possible variations being confirmed as correct would make the slightest difference to our understanding of who committed the murders or why.

Sorry.

In that case probably not.

[David Orsam]

Hi David,

Probably not.

Agreed.

[David Orsam]

Maybe, maybe not.

Matching the writing may have helped, but not sure if, even today they could match writing with chalk on a wall with pen and paper.

I don't think that would have been possible GUT (even if they managed to work out what the murderer's handwriting looked like) but Simon's point, as I understood him, was about the spelling and phrasing; and, while it would obviously be nice to know precisely what the writing said, I can't see how any of the possible variations being confirmed as correct would make the slightest difference to our understanding of who committed the murders or why.

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

Probably not.

Regards,

Simon

[GUT]

Would any of the murders have been solved by knowing the exact spelling and order of the words?

Maybe, maybe not.

Matching the writing may have helped, but not sure if, even today they could match writing with chalk on a wall with pen and paper.