Pc Long and the piece of rag.

[Wickerman]

Apart from having to fit the report into the available space, it was generally impossible to give a verbatim account of what was said - as you will be aware from personal experience, people can go all round the houses to say something simple, and in court a coherent story only emerges as a consequence of long and detailed questioning. The newspapers therefore paraphrased, gave the gist of what was said. As they still do. What was included was also dependent on what the sub-editor thought was important. That is why the newspaper reports are different. It has nothing to do with what the reporters wrote down at the inquest. And the same applies to almost all the material available to you, be it the surviving inquest documents or the statements given to the police immediately after the crime was committed. This is one reason why you should compare as many newspaper accounts of the same thing as possible.

Quite so Paul.
A number of theorists try to play the official inquest account against the press versions, or one press version against another, as if there are different versions of the same inquest doing the rounds.
This is absolutely wrong, it is always necessary to collate the various accounts to obtain a more complete picture of inquest testimony, not contest one against the other.

All the press accounts tell the same story, but they do not all provide the same pieces of the same story, for the very reasons you clearly outlined above - thankyou.

[Abby Normal]

Sometimes it is necessary to cut through the crap, thankyou.

The evidence that has come down to us taken at face value, because we have nothing with which to contradict it, tends to suggest the killer lived or had a hiding place close to Goulston St.

agree
and thanks for grasping the point of my post-I guess its a tad too subtle for some here.

whats the farthest distance the killer could have gone in approx. 35 minutes returning to Goulston street by 2:20?

I would suggest that that distance marks out the radius of a circle within which the killer had his home/bolthole.

[Abby Normal]

A typical post from one of the founder members of the numpty club.

additional numpty posts provided by Wickerman, Fisherman

Motto of said club "If we had brains we would be dangerous"

A deluded ripperologist is a pre-requisite to join. Long list of pending applications

Meetings held once a week at Spitafields public toilet to talk sh..t- toilet paper optional

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

not bad there Trevy

[David Orsam]

Apart from having to fit the report into the available space, it was generally impossible to give a verbatim account of what was said - as you will be aware from personal experience, people can go all round the houses to say something simple, and in court a coherent story only emerges as a consequence of long and detailed questioning. The newspapers therefore paraphrased, gave the gist of what was said. As they still do. What was included was also dependent on what the sub-editor thought was important. That is why the newspaper reports are different. It has nothing to do with what the reporters wrote down at the inquest. And the same applies to almost all the material available to you, be it the surviving inquest documents or the statements given to the police immediately after the crime was committed. This is one reason why you should compare as many newspaper accounts of the same thing as possible.

To add a couple of points to this.

Firstly, I would stress the difficulty of hearing in court rooms with poor acoustics involving witnesses who speak softly and, for anyone who has ever tried to make a note of any court proceedings, the dreaded cough which can easily obscure one or two words spoken by a witness, depending on where one is in the courtroom. Any room full of people always seems to have a good ratio of people coughing.

Secondly, people speak much faster than most people can write and, while the court reporters were no doubt experts at shorthand, I suspect (because I can't write shorthand) that this shorthand was in note form rather than a verbatim note of every single word spoken because of the virtual impossibility of the latter. Then those notes had to be deciphered by the reporter after the hearing. I know that my own notes can be somewhat illegible so that I have to fill in bits that I can't read or gaps from my memory.

And I just want to repeat what Paul has said about the way people speak which means that a verbatim account of a witnesses words can sometimes make no sense when written down - even though what they have said has been understood by those who heard it (due to, for example, people losing their thread halfway through a sentence or going back on themselves) so it can require a bit of juggling to put something down that is coherent. Don't forget also that if you are editing a cross-examination for publication within a limited space and the witness, in one answer, refers back to something that has been edited out, this requires further editing. Another thing to bear in mind is that if the reporter has misheard the question he very likely to misunderstand the answer, even though he has heard the answer perfectly well. That misunderstanding could potentially have consequences for the rest of the report.

Finally, I would say that if you did an experiment of having two officially appointed professional court transcribers preparing a verbatim transcript of a day's court proceedings, I'll bet you they would both be different in some respects.

[John G]

I believe Walter Dew made a number of errors in his memoirs. Consider this example, where he refers to Polly's murder:

" All this was afterwards told in evidence by the carman [Paul]. It never had the corroboration of the other man [Lechmere]. The police made repeated appeals for him to come forward but he never did so " (Dew, 1938.)

[PaulB]

Hi Harry
How about this argument.
I believe that aliens ****ed a dinosaur which gave birth to fourteen oompa lumpas, one of which was swaddled in an apron that was weaved by a fourteen foot tall praying mantis wearing a cowboy hat which then travelled back in time for the sole purpose of getting some authentic Victorian fish and chips and accidentally dropped said apron after using it for a napkin to wipe off its chattering mandibles underneath graffiti which was written by the ghost of Marvin hamlish's great grandfather who was pissed that he got ripped off by a heavily looking Jew who was not to be blamed for declaring that you just might be slightly more intelligent than a rock.

This argument has precisely the same amount of evidence to support it as yours.

I thought the same thing about the aliens and so forth, but I didn't like to mention it. It seemed a bit far fatched.

[PaulB]

When I wrote "approximately an hour", I was referring to the time difference from when the body was found at 01:45, to when the apron was found at 02:55, so 70 minutes to be exact.

I understand the view that Long must have missed the apron at 02:20, but where the apron was found is approx. 1500ft from Mitre Square, so it wouldn't take 10 minutes to cover that distance, yet Long appears to have missed it at 01:55 too. I admit that is cutting it fine, but it isn't 10 minutes walk from the murder spot.

So, if the killer took more than the required time to get there, where was he?
And, if he could go or be somewhere else, or wander around at his leisure to arrive at Goulston St. in 15-20 minutes, or 30-45 minutes, then why not 50 minutes?

I guess the point is, if he ran, or walked briskly to Goulston St. he should have been there by 01:55 am, but PC Long did not see the apron at 01:55.

So, did he miss it twice, or did the killer go elsewhere first?

That the killer went elsewhere was a possibility that the police apparently investigated at the time, checking to see if the murderer could have gone into one of the common lodging houses in the area, cleaned up, and left without drawing attention to himself, and they appear to have concluded that he could have done. The conclusion seems to be that the murderer could have gone to a lodging house, cleaned up, then left, dropping the apron in Goulston Street before going home or to work or wherever. I'm not saying he did, but it was something the police thought.

[PaulB]

Phil and Observer,
You have got it correct.

Long passed by the dwelling at 2.20.No suggestion he entered the premises,or gave it a detailed inspection.

We have a description of the apron being black.Whatever it's original colour and condition,it appeared black to someone who was in a position to know.

It's not supposition that Long states.The cloth was in the passage.The passage was inside the building.The writing was on the face of the wall.It was not on the doorway.Long would know the difference between the two,and the wall would have had to be the interior wall not the outside one backing on to Goulston street.

We will never know the truth.My belief is that the killer passed through Goulston Street before or about 2.20,threw the cloth into the building,and walked on.There is no connection,except except the location,between the cloth and the writing.

You want to argue my belief,fine,but come up with better argument that has so far been presented.

The argument that has been presented is better than yours. Sir Charles Warren said that the writing on the wall was on the jamb, where it could easily be seen from the street and from where any covering could have been removed. P.C. Long said the writing was above the apron. Ignore all this if it pleases you, but to dispute it you have to either show that Sir Charles Warren was lying or mistaken, or that the apron was not below the writing. You have done neither. As for the colour of the apron, the only source for it being black is Walter Dew writing decades later, whereas you have witnesses at the time describing it as white. The A to Z entry may have added to your misunderstanding in this instance, but I think I am right in saying that the apron was very dirty and appeared to be black, the A to Z for some reason citing Dew as support for that, but offhand I can't find the description of the apron as being filthy so I could well be talking through the back of my head about that.

[John G]

I think there's a certain irony about the approach of certain posters, who seem to be arguing that just because there is nothing in history that can be absolutely proved, then every argument is equally valid.

That is the same post modernist approach to history that Pierre largely subscribes to.

[PaulB]

I am aware of all of that but I was highlighting the fact that there were conflicting reports published, and if an agency reporter and the Times reporter were sitting side by side then they should have both taken down the same, and the newspapers published the same. Clearly this did not happen so we cannot totally rely on the accuracy of what the papers said. Do you not concur with me on that point?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Yes, and I was endevoring to explain that the differences aren't due to the reporters at the inquest writing things down differently, but to how their reports were handled by their sub-editors.

Apart from having to fit the report into the available space, it was generally impossible to give a verbatim account of what was said - as you will be aware from personal experience, people can go all round the houses to say something simple, and in court a coherent story only emerges as a consequence of long and detailed questioning. The newspapers therefore paraphrased, gave the gist of what was said. As they still do. What was included was also dependent on what the sub-editor thought was important. That is why the newspaper reports are different. It has nothing to do with what the reporters wrote down at the inquest. And the same applies to almost all the material available to you, be it the surviving inquest documents or the statements given to the police immediately after the crime was committed. This is one reason why you should compare as many newspaper accounts of the same thing as possible.

[Trevor Marriott]

Simon Wood: President

Phil Carter: Vice President and lackey

Trevor Marriott: Seargent at Arms and resident Dumb Ass.

Pierre: Spiritual Advisor

Accolytes: Hairy and (non) Observer

*To apply for membership, please poke finger in own eye.

A typical post from one of the founder members of the numpty club.

additional numpty posts provided by Wickerman, Fisherman

Motto of said club "If we had brains we would be dangerous"

A deluded ripperologist is a pre-requisite to join. Long list of pending applications

Meetings held once a week at Spitafields public toilet to talk sh..t- toilet paper optional

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[John G]

Simon Wood: President

Phil Carter: Vice President and lackey

Trevor Marriott: Seargent at Arms and resident Dumb Ass.

Pierre: Spiritual Advisor

Accolytes: Hairy and (non) Observer

*To apply for membership, please poke finger in own eye.

I think this is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this board for some time!

[Abby Normal]

Updated It Ain't Rocket Science Club

Simon Wood: President

Phil Carter: Vice President and lackey

Trevor Marriott: Seargent at Arms and resident Dumb Ass.

Pierre: Spiritual Advisor

Accolytes: Hairy and (non) Observer

*To apply for membership, please poke finger in own eye.

[Abby Normal]

Sometimes it is necessary to cut through the crap, thankyou.

The evidence that has come down to us taken at face value, because we have nothing with which to contradict it, tends to suggest the killer lived or had a hiding place close to Goulston St.

Thank god Wicky
That someone here has the modicum of intelligence to understand the question of the time gap.

Thank you!

[Abby Normal]

Phil and Observer,
You have got it correct.

Long passed by the dwelling at 2.20.No suggestion he entered the premises,or gave it a detailed inspection.

We have a description of the apron being black.Whatever it's original colour and condition,it appeared black to someone who was in a position to know.

It's not supposition that Long states.The cloth was in the passage.The passage was inside the building.The writing was on the face of the wall.It was not on the doorway.Long would know the difference between the two,and the wall would have had to be the interior wall not the outside one backing on to Goulston street.

We will never know the truth.My belief is that the killer passed through Goulston Street before or about 2.20,threw the cloth into the building,and walked on.There is no connection,except except the location,between the cloth and the writing.

You want to argue my belief,fine,but come up with better argument that has so far been presented.

Hi Harry
How about this argument.
I believe that aliens ****ed a dinosaur which gave birth to fourteen oompa lumpas, one of which was swaddled in an apron that was weaved by a fourteen foot tall praying mantis wearing a cowboy hat which then travelled back in time for the sole purpose of getting some authentic Victorian fish and chips and accidentally dropped said apron after using it for a napkin to wipe off its chattering mandibles underneath graffiti which was written by the ghost of Marvin hamlish's great grandfather who was pissed that he got ripped off by a heavily looking Jew who was not to be blamed for declaring that you just might be slightly more intelligent than a rock.

This argument has precisely the same amount of evidence to support it as yours.