Jack's Escape Route?

[Elamarna]

Of course it is unlikely that Chapman died at 5.30 a.m., just like the long list of improbabilities I cited.

If you think it is not unlikely that Chapman was almost completely cold with rigor mortis setting in within an hour of being murdered, how do you explain the altogether different condition of the victim in Mitre Square in similar conditions?

Almost completely Cold?

We have subjective terms like this used over and over, with no understanding of how pointless such comments are.

What temperature is "cold"?
Exernal skin temperature are no real indication to TOD. You need internal core temperatures.


None of these claims are based on such, the science of determining TOD by temperature was not known in the late 19th century .
Rather they are arrived at by the use of the highly subjective and very personal to the individual doctor on any given day , of touch by the Doctors involved.

Medical research clearly shows that Rigor Mortis can set in, within the time scale avaliable.

One cannot compare the views given for Eddowes with those given from Chapman because the observations are ALL based on subjective methods such as touch for temperature and the false assumption that the onset of Rigor Mortis will be the same for different individual victims.

The issue, which you seem not to acknowledge is that the "evidence" provided by the Doctors with regards to TOD is based on flawed methodology.

That Phillips was actually aware of these issues himself , demonstrated by his admission that his estimation could be wrong, says more about the limitations of the methods and processes than you appear to be prepared to accept.

We won't agree.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff.

Please see my replies below.

Originally posted by JeffHamm View Post
In addition, to state that the potatoes Annie was seen eating was her last meal is not a certainty.

We are not dealing with certainties.

We are dealing with evidence.

There is no evidence that she ate anything after she left the lodging house.



While we know she ate potatoes at that time, we do not know if that was indeed her last meal because after she leaves until she was found in the backyard, we have no idea what she did.

We know what she did.

She met the murderer and went with him into the yard at the back of 29 Hanbury Street.



Here's a purely illustrative example of what I mean, at the point she was required to go out to seek her doss money, we cannot be sure she didn't pack up some of her meal and take it with her, only to finish it off at some later time;

But the witnesses did not mention that.



That leaves open the very real possibility that, when recalling the events, she remembers hearing the chimes but mis-remembers them as being the 5:30 when they might very well have been the 5:15 chimes. If so, and I'm not saying this is a fact, it would mean her sighting was at 5:15 and not 5:30, placing her sightings around 5 minutes before Cadache's events.

Why not speculate that she mis-remembered the day on which she saw the couple?



And again, we can't say that noone saw her, only that if anyone saw her they have not come forward to report it (perhaps they didn't realise the woman they saw was the same woman found dead; perhaps they didn't want to get involved; and so forth).

The fact that she was last seen at 1.50 a.m., walking in the general direction of Hanbury Street, but no-one reported seeing her for hours thereafter is consistent with her having been murdered not long afterwards.



And Rigor Mortis can set in very quickly, in fact, full rigor can occur within half an hour (though that is not common, it's also not what we're dealing with anyway). Again, I had found some articles on the time course of rigor, and in the end, there's nothing about observing some stiffness in the limbs that precludes a ToD of 5:25-5:30 (nor does it preclude earlier times of course, but that's not the main issue here).

Why would rigor mortis set in unusually quickly in this case?

Why would the victim's body become almost completely cold so quickly?

What was so different about the conditions in Hanbury Street from those in Mitre Square?



In short, the margins of error associated with estimates of the ToD based upon things like body temperature and rigor mortis, even today, are in terms of hours, not minutes. Given Dr. Phillips' time is within 40 or 50 minutes of the time suggested by the eye-witnesses, that is well within even today's margins of error, and so we cannot even say his estimate conflicts with the witness testimony.

But you have not given a reason for thinking that rigor mortis would have set in so quickly in this particular case.

As I demonstrated on another thread, the general view is that it usually sets in after at least two hours.

What is different about this case, other than the need to accommodate the testimony of other witnesses?

Hi PI,

It's easier to respond if you use the "quote off" and "quote on" commands when replying. Basically, rather than insert bolded text, if you put [ then /quote then ] (remove the spaces and the word then in both cases, and it becomes the "quote off" command), you can put your response after that and it won't be embedded in the bit you're quoting.

If you want to continue to the next part of the quote, then turn the quote back on by [ then quote then ] (same thing, just leave out the / ). If you don't, then just delete the remaining bits.

Up to you if you can be bothered, but it does make it easier to respond as quoting a post doesn't carry over quoted sections, so your responses wouldn't have carried over without me copying and pasting.

And yes, we're dealing with evidence, and we have no evidence about Annie's activities when she left the doss house in terms of eating. No evidence one way or the other, so we do not know if the potatoes were or were not her last meal. We also do not know if the "little food" that was found, was or was not even potatoes.

And no, the witness didn't mention that she took some potatoes with her, but neither does the witness say she had finished them. To say we know she did is to speculate, and I was just offering an example of how that speculation could lead us astray. Show me evidence that she did finish all of her potatoes and I'll gladly say that she therefore couldn't have taken them with her.

I'm not going to go over the entire discussion about Long's testimony again. As with many topics, it was a lengthy discussion, and I was just summarising some of the important issues that arose. If you want to suggest she saw Annie on a different day, that's fine, but it wasn't one of the ideas that came up before (or if it did, I missed it).

And yes, the lack of reported sightings is consistent with her being murdered shortly after she left the doss house. It's also consistent with there being few people out and about at that hour, and with all sorts of other things, such as the two off the top of my head ideas that I mentioned, like being seen but the person didn't make the connection with the murder or didn't come forward. All we know is that we have no information about what Annie did during those hours.

And her body was not completely cold. Dr. Phillips reports there was some heat under the intestines. Her body would cool quite quickly given how her clothes were pulled up leaving her exposed, combined with the blood loss (blood is a fluid and so stores heat, remove the blood and the body will cool more quickly), and as Dr. Phillips notes, it was a cool morning. Also, we don't actually know what temperature her body was, we only have Dr. Phillips subjective description. Even with multiple and accurate temperature readings taken with a thermometer, estimates of ToD end up with an accuracy of something like +-3 hours.

There doesn't need to be a specific reason for rigor to set in early. The article I presented (can't find that thread right now, but if you're interested, it is somewhere on the boards; Might be in the John Richardson thread?) examined bodies kept in very similar conditions, and the range of times for full rigor spanned something like from 1/2 hour to up to 10 or 12 I think it was? But, rigor sets in more quickly if one is physically depleted, which Annie would probably have been if she had been walking around all night, where she would be cold, exhausted, and so forth. Note, the above times are for full rigor, and the important thing to note that if full rigor can be as short as 30 minutes, onset must clearly be even less. The other thing to note is that there is no objective measure with regards to the onset of rigor (well, technically, as it's a chemical process, it actually onsets pretty much from the moment of death itself - we're actually talking about the subjective call that stiffness was detected). Again, in the discussions of rigor, there are various posts going over factors that speed it up and slow it down and the complicated issue is that in Annie's case there are factors in both directions, making it nigh on impossible to know whether rigor would be more likely to be sooner or later? As such, we can't draw any conclusion one way or the other. One thing to note, is that we also do not know at what time Dr. Phillip's made his observation about rigor. We know he arrives at the crime scene around 6:00, but we don't know how long afterwards he tested for rigor. He notes items around the body, he takes details of the body position, wounds, and temperature, and so forth. The more he did before he tested for rigor, then the more time has passed. If, for example, he tested for rigor 20 minutes after his arrival, then that's 1 hour post mortem (for a 5:20ish murder of course). If full rigor is generally between 2-4 hours post-mortem, then onsetting at 1 hour isn't all that unlikely. Also, he does say stiffness was not marked, but commencing. For rigor to be used to estimate the PMI (post-mortem interval), you have to track it over time, nothing when it maximizes, how long it lasts, and how long it takes to dissipate. Otherwise, it's more "rule of thumb" guidance than actual estimation of a ToD.

Below is a chart of actual data, which shows when rigor has reached full rigor. If Annie was killed at 4:30, Dr. Phillip's time, then by 6:30ish, we're entering the time when full rigor can occur, so for it to only be just noticeable is more likely if she was killed at 5:30 (but both times can easily account for his observation, and I don't mean to imply otherwise). Again, rigor is not a precise tool by which to determine a ToD, and it is too variable to differentiate between a ToD of 4:30 or 5:25ish.




- Jeff

[Elamarna]

Hi PI,

It's easier to respond if you use the "quote off" and "quote on" commands when replying. Basically, rather than insert bolded text, if you put [ then /quote then ] (remove the spaces and the word then in both cases, and it becomes the "quote off" command), you can put your response after that and it won't be embedded in the bit you're quoting.

If you want to continue to the next part of the quote, then turn the quote back on by [ then quote then ] (same thing, just leave out the / ). If you don't, then just delete the remaining bits.

Up to you if you can be bothered, but it does make it easier to respond as quoting a post doesn't carry over quoted sections, so your responses wouldn't have carried over without me copying and pasting.

And yes, we're dealing with evidence, and we have no evidence about Annie's activities when she left the doss house in terms of eating. No evidence one way or the other, so we do not know if the potatoes were or were not her last meal. We also do not know if the "little food" that was found, was or was not even potatoes.

And no, the witness didn't mention that she took some potatoes with her, but neither does the witness say she had finished them. To say we know she did is to speculate, and I was just offering an example of how that speculation could lead us astray. Show me evidence that she did finish all of her potatoes and I'll gladly say that she therefore couldn't have taken them with her.

I'm not going to go over the entire discussion about Long's testimony again. As with many topics, it was a lengthy discussion, and I was just summarising some of the important issues that arose. If you want to suggest she saw Annie on a different day, that's fine, but it wasn't one of the ideas that came up before (or if it did, I missed it).

And yes, the lack of reported sightings is consistent with her being murdered shortly after she left the doss house. It's also consistent with there being few people out and about at that hour, and with all sorts of other things, such as the two off the top of my head ideas that I mentioned, like being seen but the person didn't make the connection with the murder or didn't come forward. All we know is that we have no information about what Annie did during those hours.

And her body was not completely cold. Dr. Phillips reports there was some heat under the intestines. Her body would cool quite quickly given how her clothes were pulled up leaving her exposed, combined with the blood loss (blood is a fluid and so stores heat, remove the blood and the body will cool more quickly), and as Dr. Phillips notes, it was a cool morning. Also, we don't actually know what temperature her body was, we only have Dr. Phillips subjective description. Even with multiple and accurate temperature readings taken with a thermometer, estimates of ToD end up with an accuracy of something like +-3 hours.

There doesn't need to be a specific reason for rigor to set in early. The article I presented (can't find that thread right now, but if you're interested, it is somewhere on the boards; Might be in the John Richardson thread?) examined bodies kept in very similar conditions, and the range of times for full rigor spanned something like from 1/2 hour to up to 10 or 12 I think it was? But, rigor sets in more quickly if one is physically depleted, which Annie would probably have been if she had been walking around all night, where she would be cold, exhausted, and so forth. Note, the above times are for full rigor, and the important thing to note that if full rigor can be as short as 30 minutes, onset must clearly be even less. The other thing to note is that there is no objective measure with regards to the onset of rigor (well, technically, as it's a chemical process, it actually onsets pretty much from the moment of death itself - we're actually talking about the subjective call that stiffness was detected). Again, in the discussions of rigor, there are various posts going over factors that speed it up and slow it down and the complicated issue is that in Annie's case there are factors in both directions, making it nigh on impossible to know whether rigor would be more likely to be sooner or later? As such, we can't draw any conclusion one way or the other. One thing to note, is that we also do not know at what time Dr. Phillip's made his observation about rigor. We know he arrives at the crime scene around 6:00, but we don't know how long afterwards he tested for rigor. He notes items around the body, he takes details of the body position, wounds, and temperature, and so forth. The more he did before he tested for rigor, then the more time has passed. If, for example, he tested for rigor 20 minutes after his arrival, then that's 1 hour post mortem (for a 5:20ish murder of course). If full rigor is generally between 2-4 hours post-mortem, then onsetting at 1 hour isn't all that unlikely. Also, he does say stiffness was not marked, but commencing. For rigor to be used to estimate the PMI (post-mortem interval), you have to track it over time, nothing when it maximizes, how long it lasts, and how long it takes to dissipate. Otherwise, it's more "rule of thumb" guidance than actual estimation of a ToD.

Below is a chart of actual data, which shows when rigor has reached full rigor. If Annie was killed at 4:30, Dr. Phillip's time, then by 6:30ish, we're entering the time when full rigor can occur, so for it to only be just noticeable is more likely if she was killed at 5:30 (but both times can easily account for his observation, and I don't mean to imply otherwise). Again, rigor is not a precise tool by which to determine a ToD, and it is too variable to differentiate between 4.30 and 5.25ish

- Jeff

A Good Clear post Jeff, we have been over these issues so many times, provide so many references to support the points you make , yet it seems we have to keep repeating these points over and over.

I no longer have the motivation to continually repeat these old arguments over and over, it's good that some like you still do.

One point I need to point out is that Phillips said he was called by the police at 6.20 and arrived at 6.30.
Therefore you point about what time he observed RM onset is even more important, in that if death occurred around 5.25, Phillips may be commenting almost 90 minutes after death.

Another issue that is involved here is the definition of what is, and what is not "EVIDENCE".
Again you make your points on this clear.

Steve

[Enigma]

Meanwhile over at Mitre Square, JtR chooses which of three possible exits he will take to leave the scene of poor Catherine Eddowes murder.

Perhaps the discussion of ToD etcetera should be continued on another thread more suited to the purpose.

[Elamarna]

Meanwhile over at Mitre Square, JtR chooses which of three possible exits he will take to leave the scene of poor Catherine Eddowes murder.

Perhaps the discussion of ToD etcetera should be continued on another thread more suited to the purpose.

Agreed.

My own preferred exit is via Mitre Street, but any of the 3 is I suggest possible.

[Enigma]

My own preferred exit is via Mitre Street, but any of the 3 is I suggest possible.

I agree with you. Leaving by Mitre Street has the advantage of being the nearest exit to the site of the murder and in the opposite direction if he saw someone approaching from Church Passage or St James Passage.

[JeffHamm]

A Good Clear post Jeff, we have been over these issues so many times, provide so many references to support the points you make , yet it seems we have to keep repeating these points over and over.

I no longer have the motivation to continually repeat these old arguments over and over, it's good that some like you still do.

One point I need to point out is that Phillips said he was called by the police at 6.20 and arrived at 6.30.
Therefore you point about what time he observed RM onset is even more important, in that if death occurred around 5.25, Phillips may be commenting almost 90 minutes after death.

Another issue that is involved here is the definition of what is, and what is not "EVIDENCE".
Again you make your points on this clear.

Steve

Thanks Steve! Yes, in my haste I forgot that 6 is around the time she was first found, not when Dr. Phillips arrived! Indeed, I fully agree that his actual arrival at 6:30 just makes detecting rigor commencing completely compatible with a ToD at 5:25 because that would mean even his arrival is already around 65 minutes post ToD. If he isn't checking for signs of rigor until 20 minutes later, and given all the other things he appears to have done (checked the items around the body, checked the yard, examine the scene, etc), I think 20 minutes is not unreasonable (well, one might argue I'm being unreasonably short, but I would rather err in that direction), then that would place the checking for rigor at 85 minutes post mortem, at which point it is reasonable to expect rigor to be commencing. If she's been dead since 4:30, then it's more than 2 hours post-mortem, and one might expect rigor to be a bit further on, but of course it could also be commencing - it is very variable, hence it's lack of precision!

I wasn't sure I wanted to go back over this all again either, but I thought maybe a quick summarisation of lengthy past discussions might be in order. For those who want the finer details, they are on the boards (I think the thread on John Richardson contains quite a bit, at least with regards to use of temperature as an estimator, the rigor details might be in there too, but I can't recall which thread that was in).

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Meanwhile over at Mitre Square, JtR chooses which of three possible exits he will take to leave the scene of poor Catherine Eddowes murder.

Perhaps the discussion of ToD etcetera should be continued on another thread more suited to the purpose.

Very true, easy to get side tracked.

I think of the 3 I tend to favour out to Mitre Street as well. It seems the most logical, given the location of the crime, and even more so if JtR was scared off by the arrival of PC Harvey coming up Church Passage, or when the warehouse door was opened during cleaning up (both of which are reported to have occurred a few minutes before PC Watkins finds the body, so we can't know which came first). In either case, Mitre Street is the closest exit for JtR, and it avoids heading towards the source that disturbed him, which I think would be a natural instinct - to head away from the threat, not towards it.

- Jeff

[FISHY1118]

No, I missed nothing.
3400 posts many of which were full of false assumptions, and a lack of medical/scientific knowledge .

Sadly one cannot convince those who do not wish to be convinced.

Me and others didn't see it like that im afraid, many of them 3400 post were full of contradictions from witness testimony that many ignored while at the same time claiming 5.30 am t.o.d .

Bazaar really when you think of it

[Elamarna]

Me and others didn't see it like that im afraid, many of them 3400 post were full of contradictions from witness testimony that many ignored while at the same time claiming 5.30 am t.o.d .

Bazaar really when you think of it

Not bizarre at all when one realises that the timings are not set in stone, and so contradictions of 5 or even 10 minutes are not as significant as they appear at face value.
While i did not cover Hanbury Street in my conference talk on timings last year, it will certainly be covered in the planned volume on such.
The points raised in that talk with regards to Bucks Row and Mitre Square, apply equally to the timings given in Hanbury Street .

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Almost completely Cold?

(Elamarna # 466)


Dr Phillips was capable of judging whether a body was almost completely cold, just as he was capable of judging whether rigor mortis had commenced.

You are, presumably, not going to suggest that another doctor would have reported that Chapman was actually warm and no rigor mortis had commenced.



That Phillips was actually aware of these issues himself , demonstrated by his admission that his estimation could be wrong, says more about the limitations of the methods and processes than you appear to be prepared to accept.

(Elamarna # 466)


Are you not making a mistake about what Phillips was implying?

He was referring to the speed with which the body had cooled, which would have slowed down the onset of rigor mortis and implied an even earlier time of death, something which he did suggest as a possibility.

He evidently did not mean that he thought he might have overestimated how long Chapman had been dead.



It is not at all unlikely that Chapman died at around 5.30, despite you saying it is.
(Elamarna # 461)


Of course it is.

I have cited 13 websites according to which rigor mortis starts to set in after two hours or more - and those are opinions from 2023, not 1888.

It is much more difficult to find ones that give a time of an hour or less.

I repeat my question: why should Chapman's rigor mortis have set in so much faster?



One cannot compare the views given for Eddowes with those given from Chapman because the observations are ALL based on subjective methods such as touch for temperature and the false assumption that the onset of Rigor Mortis will be the same for different individual victims.

(Elamarna # 466)


You are, I believe, evading the issue.

Eddowes was warm; Chapman was cold.

The conditions were not such that Eddowes' body could have been expected to cool more slowly.

Warm or cold is not a matter of subjectivity.

Either doctor was obviously capable of distinguishing between the two.



I have carried out intensive research on the issue of the reliability of timings in 1888, and the conclusions are that differences of 10 minutes are not unexpected .

(Elamarna # 461)


It is clear from Cadoche's testimony that whatever watch or clock he was using at home was approximately synchronised with the church clock.

You are suggesting that Cadoche's watch, Long's timings, and the church clock are all out by a wide margin, that no-one saw Chapman for about four hours, that rigor mortis set in unusually quickly, that the murderer committed murder at an unusually late hour, in a situation in which he was at risk of becoming trapped if seen by someone who was by then up and about, and that he failed to see water with which he could have washed his hands even though it would no longer have been dark.

What you are suggesting is farfetched.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Agreed.

My own preferred exit is via Mitre Street, but any of the 3 is I suggest possible.

Thank you for belatedly agreeing with me!

[Elamarna]

It is clear from Cadoche's testimony that whatever watch or clock he was using at home was approximately synchronised with the church clock.

You are suggesting that Cadoche's watch, Long's timings, and the church clock are all out by a wide margin, that no-one saw Chapman for about four hours, that rigor mortis set in unusually quickly, that the murderer committed murder at an unusually late hour, in a situation in which he was at risk of becoming trapped if seen by someone who was by then up and about, and that he failed to see water with which he could have washed his hands even though it would no longer have been dark.

What you are suggesting is farfetched.

As for you first section, you ascribe an ability to Phillips and other Doctors of the time they simply did not have. The medical knowledge for determing a reliable TOD did not exist in 1888.
That the Doctors believed they could fix death to often within 30 minutes is clear, science shows they were mistaken in their belief, which cannot even be achieved today.

As for citing 13 websites to claim RM sets in at 2 hours, well those are simply generalisations, such timings are not set in stone.
I prefer to rely on actual scientific research and peer reviewed papers. many of which are linked in threads on this subject on this site
Such clearly show that the onset of RM, varies between individuals, their underlying physical condition, the environment and the means of death, and early and late onset of RM occurs .

Medical science doesn't work to such exacting definitions you suggest.
That you appear to reject this says all one needs to know about the comments you make.


That you state that the terms "warm" and "cold" are not subjective is totally unrealistic.

Such terms may mean very different things to different doctors, may even vary with the same doctor depending on the occassion.

More Importantly neither term provide any meaningful measurement of body temperature which can be used in determing a reliable TOD.


Now for you points on time.

There is nothing in Cadoschs testimony that indicates the times he gave at the inquest are in anyway syncronizied to the spitialfieds church clock he mentions that he passed after he left home that morning.

To suggest it does, is at best wishful thinking and at worst simply disingenuous, let's assume it's the former.
.
There is certainly nothing to indicate that the church clock which he mentioned is in anyway, syncronizied to the clock which Long claimed she used for her timings in Brick Lane.

Therefore the times quoted by both cannot be assumed to be syncronizied and any apparent discrepancies are in reality not solid.


It is common even today for public clocks to be incorrect, I suggest you check the evidence on this issue included in the talk at last year's East End Conference.

That you don't grasp, or are not prepared to accept the issues that exist with the times quoted, simply means your conclusions on timings are flawed and irrelevant


It is not my views based on years of actual research that are far fetched, but your interpretations of both the issue of time keeping, and of determining TOD that are over simplified and demonstrate a lack of real knowledge on these issues.

Sadly nothing changes .

[Elamarna]

Thank you for belatedly agreeing with me!

I have been saying this for a number of years, but it's only an opinion, I have a 33% chance of being correct and 66% of being wrong.

[Elamarna]

That Phillips was actually aware of these issues himself , demonstrated by his admission that his estimation could be wrong, says more about the limitations of the methods and processes than you appear to be prepared to accept.

(Elamarna # 466)


Are you not making a mistake about what Phillips was implying?

He was referring to the speed with which the body had cooled, which would have slowed down the onset of rigor mortis and implied an even earlier time of death, something which he did suggest as a possibility.

He evidently did not mean that he thought he might have overestimated how long Chapman had been dead.

[/B]

We will disagree over what Phillips meant when he spoke of cooling.

I do not believe I am making any mistake in my interpretation, to me he is clearly saying the body could have cooled quicker, and hence death may possibly be at a later time than he estimates.

You it appear believe he is refering to the onset of RM, I simply do not see that is what he is saying at all.