Beats

[Monty]

Beat Alterations which you may recognise.

Post 1888 (89 to 91, I cant recall the exact date as Rob, John and myself were rushing to leave and I forgot to note it).

Taken from Police Orders for Bishopsgate Police station.

Monty

[Andrew Firth]

Fantastic stuff! Someone should prepare a map of all these beats, just to get a visual representation of the distances involved.

Very nice indeed.

All the best
Andrew

[Monty]

Someone will Andrew.

Monty

[The Good Michael]

Monty,

Thanks for that. I remember something about a beat being 10-15 minutes walking time. Is that what you recollect? I suppose there is no way of really knowing how long a beat took because of police interaction with people would have varied each night, and regular and suspicious activities would have been inconsistent in many cases. That brings me back to JTR not really being able to know with certainty how long a beat would actually take unless he knew that the hours of the morning at each location he (or the woman) chose would be mostly free of activity.

Looking back at that statement, it seems JTR may have chosen the sites based upon the beats at those times. Gosh that sounds like it would be impossible, doesn't it?

Mike

[The Grave Maurice]

Michael seems, to me, to have it right. On my way home from work, I often stop at a cafe for a coffee when it's cold, and something cold when it's hot. There is a police officer who invariably walks by the window of the cafe while I'm there, but his passing can vary by as much as ten or fifteen minutes depending, I suppose, on the weather and what problems he has encountered along the way.

I don't know a lot about police procedure, but I assume he has a beat to which he must, more or less, adhere, but the timing seems to fluctuate quite a bit. I assume that the same thing happened in London in 1888.

Consequently, I have never put much faith in any theory based on the timing of beats. The information is certainly interesting, but I'm not sure that it gets us any further in evaluating the behaviour of the participants.

[The Good Michael]

Maurice,

I suppose if a kill took just a few seconds, the chances of an officer walking upon it would have been incredibly bad luck. If the other damage done by the perpetrator took 2 or 3 minutes, it still wood be unlucky to be caught if the beats were 10-15 minutes. It would have been about a 33% chance of getting caught at the greatest, and about a 13% chance at the least. We always talk about how lucky he must have been. It's possible he just liked his odds.

Cheers,

Mike

[Monty]

Guys,

Beats were supposed to be patrolled at 3 mph in the evening and 2 1/2 during the day. on average they were around 30 mins but were longer the further towards the suburbs you went. The inner city patrols were the shortest.

The example I placed above was to show how these beats were revised, altered and numbered. This revision I provide was done some years after the Eddowes murder (91 or 92 - I was rushed and forgot to note the date, I will do next time, suffice to say it is highly possible this alteration was made when Watkins was still working that beat) and it was for the day beat, not night.


Cheers
Monty