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[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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

[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.

[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

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Mayerling;378524][QUOTE=Pierre;378502]

So, what you mean is individually these journalists arrived at similar conclusions ("the link is in their heads") and wrote of said link in their articles. This bias makes their articles untrustworthy discussing the Graffiti incident. So the reporters never met and compared notes on it or the earlier "Dear Boss" letter, but just went along similar paths. It was not a dark conspiracy to prod the police into considering evidence in some light.

Okay. Now that is explained.

Thanks.

Hi,

Sure. And what was in their heads must have been internalized through reading. Otherwise they would not have had any knowledge about the style of the Dear Boss letter. So the journalists must have read the newspapers. seen the Dear Boss letter and the descriptions of the "good round hand" and remembered this when they interpreted the witness statements and when they wrote their articles.

Journalists read, interpret and write.

OR: Was it Halse that had read about the Dear Boss letter and then applied this view on what he saw?

If you would like to, you could test that hypothesis. But it is difficult, since Halse says nothing of it in the original inquest sources. And also, he saw the GSG and why should he have made the same type of interpretations as the journalists did for the Dear Boss letter? Since he saw it.

Therefore, it was with high probability not written in a good round hand but as Swanson said, in a normal hand. And Halse did not try and apply the general knowledge about the Dear Boss letter, which had been in the newspapers for days prior to the inquest, on the GSG - since he saw it.

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

Hi Pierre,

You don't seem to be acknowledging or absorbing any of the points that are being made against you in this thread.

But if, as you keep saying, there is a connection between the descriptions of the GSG and 'Dear Boss' letter, isn't there a glaringly obvious alternative solution to the one you are offering?

When Halse saw the 'Dear Boss' letter could he not have thought the handwriting looked similar to the GSG? Thus, when asked to describe the GSG in court he used similar words to those he had recently read in the newspapers about the 'Dear Boss' letter. In which case, there is no "tendency" involved on anyone's part here but Halse has simply been influenced by the choice of words of journalists.

I'm not saying that IS what happened - coincidence seems to be an even better explanation - but surely it makes 100 times more sense than a mass hallucination by at least four separate court reporters.

[Pierre]

You see.. 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.

Phil

Hi Phil,

there is nothing strange with that. The policemen had not been trained in text deciphering. They were no experts on text analysis.

So what did they do? They tried to "read"!

And it was dark.

At about 5.30 the GSG was rubbed out.

Sunrise started 05.59.

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

Hi Phil,

there is nothing strange with that. The policemen had not been trained in text deciphering. They were no experts on text analysis.

So what did they do? They tried to "read"!

And it was dark.

At about 5.30 the GSG was rubbed out.

Sunrise started 05.59.

They had lamps.

And they didn't need to decipher or analyse the writing on the wall. Just read it.

[Elamarna]

Hi Steve,

No, you also asked:

(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.

Pierre

Where do I start, with this latest post which is nothing more than a smoke screen yet again. Full of assumptions and opinions presented as facts.

Post 130 you said

"The newspaper articles have tendencies. It doesn´t matter in the papers if "Halse was there". The articles are not reliable."


The articles being discussed were the reports in the newspapers about the evidence given at the inquest about the GSG, those are referred to in press terms as Court Reports.

No attempt to generalize about all sources was made; yet another attempt to divert attention.
Yes Court Reports are different from other newspaper reports in that they reflect what was said, and do not give an opinion.

I just asked you to clarify the point:

"The articles are not reliable."

It is clear the hypothesis, that the articles (Court Report) on Halse's inquest testimony were unreliable was put forward in post 130, and not one which I suggested.

To say it is my hypothesis is intentionally misleading.


Then l look at the suggestion of second question,

In post 134 it was referred to it as:


"The other problem you mention "


However it was not a problem I mentioned in post 133, it was a supplementary question to the first statement made in post 133.
Obviously no such data exist.

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

I thought it was perfectly clear from the context, it meant the first statement I had referred to from post 134, a few lines before.
Of course I forget English is not your first language after all; so sorry if I confused you
.

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. [/B]



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.


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

I have placed these four statements together, given that they are linked.

It is clear that there is no reliable academic research on the reliability of newspaper Court Reports in the 19th century, or at least none which are known.

If one is asked for data to support an hypothesis one puts forward, and such data is not available, it is normal and polite to say there is none; not to tell someone to go look for it themselves!

However the post claims this hypothesis is based on a pilot study, therefore it would be normal to supply this in place of the data requested above.
If this is in the form of a post already on the boards, and it is highly debatable that any post on this thread contains enough to be termed a pilot study, then it would be polite to point one towards it, even if it is inadequate.


Let us be clear, the post states the opinion that these reports are unreliable, they have a tendency, a bias.

However Pierre, this opinion is based on your own pilot study.

Anyone can say, I have done a study and that study shows that......

That is JUST the opinion of one individual, it is not an established fact, nor has it, far more importantly, been academically tested by peer review.

An opinion. nothing more, nothing less!

regards

Steve

[David Orsam]

An opinion. nothing more, nothing less!

And it's not even a well argued opinion, or one for which there are any reasonable grounds to believe that it might be correct.

[Elamarna]

Pierre

We have still not had an explanation for the suggestion the the GSG was written by a left hand.

What data did you use to reach the hypothesis ?

If none was used, is not the use of the left hand just a guess?


Did you suggest the GSG was written by a person using their LEFT hand? yes or no?

Do you still hold that opinion? yes or no?

How did you come to this hypothesis?

Is it really that hard to answer and explain?

regards

[GUT]

And it's not even a well argued opinion, or one for which there are any reasonable grounds to believe that it might be correct.

Nothing he says is well argued, all he does is tries to come over all intellectually superior when every post makes it more apparent that he knows very little.

And the questions he ignores?? Well enough said.