Pc Long and the piece of rag.

[PaulB]

Hi Paul

I`m glad you made the point and I`m happy to be corrected.
Having read you making this point earlier in the thread (but after I posted my opinion of the matter) I have been furiously checking the inquest reports to see what I have missed.
I am still at a loss as to where it states he did not know about the murder when he found the apron ?

Hi Jon,
It's ambiguous and is implied rather that stated and is made very difficult by the newspapers, which reported the testimony differently, from what appears to be verbatim exchanges to summaries of varied length and detail. The sequence isn't always clear, so one needs to make a very close comparison of all the available sources. However, in a nutshell, it is clear that he searched the stairs and landing in the expectation of finding a victim there: “No, sir. I did not expect the man had committed the murder in the passage, but I though the body might have been hidden there.' (Daily News, 12 October 1888). Obviously, he would not have expected to find a body on the stairs and landings if he knew it had been found some distance away in Mitre Square. However, when asked if he had heard of the murder before going to the police stated that he had. It is assumed he heard it from PC Bettles, the policeman he left in charge of the scene. Bruce Robinson suggested that he heard it from Halse, but there is no record of Long and Halse meeting.

Various aspects of Long's testimony have been looked at over the years.
Smyth, Jon. ‘A Piece of Apron, Some Chalk Graffiti and a Lost Hour’. Casebook: Jack the Ripper, 1994. https://www.casebook.org/dissertatio...-graffito.html

Begg, Paul.’The Question of Catherine Eddowes Apron’. Ripperologist, January 2005

Souden, Don. ‘The (PC) Long and Short of It’. The New Independent Review, 2, January 2012.

Don, who I miss greatly on the forums, is interesting, although I don't think the evidence supports all his conclusions. What is interesting is that all the questions Trevor raises, apparently in the belief that it is new and original thinking, has already been recognised and examined before he was much more than a twinkle on the scene.

[Fisherman]

Hi,
The only problem I have with this part of events is that I doubt very much if blood or dampness of a dark colour would be seen in a dark place.
Even under a lamp ....Red doesn't stand out in the dark.

Regards

... but fluid reflects light. It cannot be established just how light or dark it was, since we do not know either the lighting conditions or the exact position of the rag. But at any rate, what light there was would be reflected in wet blood.

Of course, Long may not have recognized the blood before turning his lamp on it. Maybe his interest was first aroused by the rag as such only.

[Trevor Marriott]

It´s like listening to the same broken record over and over again...

But you cannot ignore them as you seem to want

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Jon Guy]

Hi Jon,
It's ambiguous and is implied rather that stated and is made very difficult by the newspapers, which reported the testimony differently, from what appears to be verbatim exchanges to summaries of varied length and detail. The sequence isn't always clear, so one needs to make a very close comparison of all the available sources. However, in a nutshell, it is clear that he searched the stairs and landing in the expectation of finding a victim there: “No, sir. I did not expect the man had committed the murder in the passage, but I though the body might have been hidden there.' (Daily News, 12 October 1888). Obviously, he would not have expected to find a body on the stairs and landings if he knew it had been found some distance away in Mitre Square. However, when asked if he had heard of the murder before going to the police stated that he had. It is assumed he heard it from PC Bettles, the policeman he left in charge of the scene. Bruce Robinson suggested that he heard it from Halse, but there is no record of Long and Halse meeting.

Various aspects of Long's testimony have been looked at over the years.
Smyth, Jon. ‘A Piece of Apron, Some Chalk Graffiti and a Lost Hour’. Casebook: Jack the Ripper, 1994. https://www.casebook.org/dissertatio...-graffito.html

Begg, Paul.’The Question of Catherine Eddowes Apron’. Ripperologist, January 2005

Souden, Don. ‘The (PC) Long and Short of It’. The New Independent Review, 2, January 2012.

Don, who I miss greatly on the forums, is interesting, although I don't think the evidence supports all his conclusions. What is interesting is that all the questions Trevor raises, apparently in the belief that it is new and original thinking, has already been recognised and examined before he was much more than a twinkle on the scene.

Thanks Paul, appreciated. I will have a look at the articles you mention.

But, my impression was that PC Long was concerned there had been a third murder, which is why he started checking the stairwell after the finding what was after all, just a bloodied rag.

Thank again for links

[spyglass]

... but fluid reflects light. It cannot be established just how light or dark it was, since we do not know either the lighting conditions or the exact position of the rag. But at any rate, what light there was would be reflected in wet blood.

Of course, Long may not have recognized the blood before turning his lamp on it. Maybe his interest was first aroused by the rag as such only.

Hi,
A pool of liquid would reflect light, but not a soaked rag.
Soak a piece of coloured rag in red liquid until just damp and put it outside in the garden when dark....Trust me it will be un- noticeable.


Regards.

[Harry D]

Then why is it that I repeatedly say that the police was prejudiced, to a significant degree incompetent and lax? How does that show that I am trying to avoid that exact view?

That would only show that you are both selective and contradictory in your appraisal of the contemporary police force in order to prop-up your suspect. You claim that the police were too incompetent or prejudiced not to zero-in on an "obvious" suspect such as Lechmere, but you also claim that Mizen & Long must be taken at face value, even though there are valid grounds to doubt both of them.

[Kattrup]

I disagree totally, as has been said at the time he found the apron piece he was not apparently aware of any murder. So why out of all the other rubbish lying about the streets and alleyways etc did he suddenly decide to pick up what was clearly a discarded piece of rag and examine it more closely.

Even if it wasnt there at 2.20 what was so special about it at 2.55am?. He would have to have either bent down to examine it or picked it up. So I would suggest until he did either he could not have seen any blood on that dirty apron piece, and when he did see some, what a feeble explanation regarding his belief and his actions after, which brought criticisms against him at the inquest.

Hi,
The only problem I have with this part of events is that I doubt very much if blood or dampness of a dark colour would be seen in a dark place.
Even under a lamp ....Red doesn't stand out in the dark.

Hi,
A pool of liquid would reflect light, but not a soaked rag.
Soak a piece of coloured rag in red liquid until just damp and put it outside in the garden when dark....Trust me it will be un- noticeable.

Considering how extremely difficult it was to notice the apron, even bordering on "physically impossible", I am astounded that Long actually managed to find it

That is, I think some might go to extremes in accentuating how unlikely it was that Long would notice the apron.

Speculating about how difficult it was is useless. He found it at 2:55. So it was clearly not impossible.

If someone wants to argue that he could obviously not have seen it at 2:20, and his testimony is therefore no good (an at best misguided view), they should also be able to account for the fact that he actually did find it at 2:55.

[Kattrup]

Thanks Paul, appreciated. I will have a look at the articles you mention.

But, my impression was that PC Long was concerned there had been a third murder, which is why he started checking the stairwell after the finding what was after all, just a bloodied rag.

Long was not aware on any murder when he found the apron.

[Coroner] Having examined the staircases, what did you next do? - I proceeded to the station.
[Coroner] Before going [to the station - Kattrup] did you hear that a murder had been committed? - Yes. It is common knowledge that two murders have been perpetrated.
[Coroner] Which did you hear of? - I heard of the murder in the City. There were rumours of another, but not certain.

Some papers give the line "It is common knowledge that two murders have been perpetrated." to the coroner, which makes a lot more sense, i.e. "It is common knowledge that two murders have been perpetrated, which did you hear of?"
For instance:

It would be about three o'clock when I searched the staircases. I then proceeded to the station.

Before proceeding to the station, had you heard of any murder having been committed? - Yes.

It is common knowledge that two murders were committed that morning, which had you heard of? - Of the one in Mitre square.

Another version:

About what time was that? - Three o'clock.

Having examined the staircases, what did you next do? - I proceeded to the station.

Before going did you hear that a murder had been committed? - Yes.

It is common knowledge that two murders have been perpetrated. Which did you hear of? - I heard of the murder in the City. There were rumours of another, but not certain.

A different version:

Having searched the staircases he at once proceeded to the police-station. Before proceeding to the station he had heard that a murder had been committed in Mitre-square.

[Fisherman]

But you cannot ignore them as you seem to want

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

When I have given my view on them a hundred times, you bet I can...

[David Orsam]

A juryman at the inquest.'It seems surprising that a policeman should have found the piece of apron in the passage of the building'. Why should he be surprised?

This is absolutely incorrect Harry. You have both misunderstood and misquoted what the juryman said.

Here is what the juryman actually said as reported by the Daily Telegraph, with the bit you have omitted highlighted in bold:

"It seems surprising that a policeman should have found the piece of apron in the passage of the buildings, and yet made no inquiries in the buildings themselves. There was a clue up to that point, and then it was altogether lost."

So he wasn't expressing any surprise about the finding of the apron. The surprise was that, having found the apron, PC Long did not make conduct an immediate search of the building.

This is confirmed by the point being repeated later. Thus, from the Morning Advertiser:

"A juror repeated what he had already said as to his surprise that the clue furnished by the finding of the apron in the passage of the building in Goulston street was not followed up by a search of the building himself."

Long responded to the point by saying:" I thought that the best thing I could do after searching the stairs, and instructing other constables to watch the building, was to proceed as soon as possible to the police station to make my report. The inspector was better able to deal with the matter than I was."

That seemed to satisfy the jury.

[Fisherman]

Hi,
A pool of liquid would reflect light, but not a soaked rag.
Soak a piece of coloured rag in red liquid until just damp and put it outside in the garden when dark....Trust me it will be un- noticeable.


Regards.

The apron was "covered in blood" (Alfred Long in his report) and "wet with blood" (Alfred Long, from the inquest.
We do not know to what extent the blood was very liquid, but it seems to me that there was a significant amount of it and that it was wet. Consequentially, it may well have reflected light.
As I said, not that it had to - Long may simply have noted the rag first, and then shone his lamp on it.
It seems a very simple matter to me.

[David Orsam]

There is no contradiction, though brackets would have made it a bit clearer.

You are right MysterySinger. It's no more than an issue of punctuation. There is a single missing hyphen. Adding it into McWilliam's report, the sentence reads:

"The officer Halse went in the direction of Whitechapel and passed through Goulstone Street – where part of deceased's apron was subsequently found – at 2.20am".

Just another Simon Wood non-point.

[David Orsam]

Absolutely.

Although Pierre is correct in stating that the wording from Long's report should not in itself take precedence over the inquest reportings in the papers, being from November 6th, there were in fact several papers who reported Long as stating that very spelling (Juews) during the inquest October 11th.

This is an extract from the Morning Advertiser's report of the inquest that you might be thinking of Kattrup:

"Police constable Long, recalled, produced the book in which he made his entry of the writing on the wall, from which it appeared the words of the entry were, "The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing." In answer to Mr. Crawford, he said the inspector who took down the words had made the remark that the word Jews was spelt Juews - not Juwes. That was the only mistake the inspector pointed out."

If that report is correct then there is no contradiction between Long's evidence and his report of 6th November, as transcribed by the Ultimate Sourcebook.

[Fisherman]

Harry D: That would only show that you are both selective and contradictory in your appraisal of the contemporary police force in order to prop-up your suspect.

Explain to me why a working force of thousands of men must be regarded as a homogenous group, please. I think that the force was generally speaking prejudiced, I know that they made mistakes and were sometimes lax, and I am quite aware that there were PC:s who nevertheless did a top notch job.

What you are doing is trying to present me with a case of "if I win you loose, but if you loose, I win". If we were to listen to you, I must be either unfairly presenting policemen as infallible - or it is a case of me being selective and contradictory.

That would mean that either way, you win. And we all know that is not correct - you regularly end up on the loosing side, so we can see that your reasoning is flawed.

You claim that the police were too incompetent or prejudiced not to zero-in on an "obvious" suspect such as Lechmere, but you also claim that Mizen & Long must be taken at face value, even though there are valid grounds to doubt both of them.

Is there a contradiction? Could the police not be incompetent and prejudiced if Mizen and Long were correct? I don´t get the idea here, Harry. Maybe you can explain?

It is all very simple:

1. The police can be shown to have been prejudiced, incompetent and lax in various degree on various matters. They were therefore not infallible.

2. What we know about Mizen is that he was highly ranked as a policeman when he retired, he was a former gardener who took over his fathers farm and made it a success story, he was deeply religious. Of course, these matters are no guarantee that he was not Al Capones mentor, but overall, if we are to think up a description of a good man, it will be hard to beat these parameters.
Any suggestion that he was a rotten egg, a liar and a bad cop needs substantiation that is not there.

3. There is no reason to believe that Alfred Long was not correct. Not a shred of evidence speaks against what he says.

So there we are - that is how I can say that I think the better choice is to believe Mizen and Long, whilst admitting that the police DID make mistakes.

That´s how it goes, Harry. Your juvenile accusations about me corrupting myself to push my theory remains just that - childish nonsense. It´s ripperology turned into a television soap. I guess that´s the world you are living in.

[Kattrup]

This is an extract from the Morning Advertiser's report of the inquest that you might be thinking of Kattrup:

Well, it wasn't any particular one, it was just a general observation that the Juews-spelling is mentioned in the papers in the time immediately after the inquest. The spelling therefore precedes his report.

Besides the Morning Advertiser, a quick search reveals at least the Irish Times, St. James Gazette, People and the Manchester Guardian as using the Juews-spelling.