Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[JeffHamm]

Could there be an option whereby Mortimer hears Goldstein pass her door and after going to her door immediately afterwards she sees Goldstein walk hurriedly down the road before he looks up at the club and goes around the corner of the Board School?

And so Mortimer is actually saying that the man she saw walk down Berner Street earlier, was ALSO the man she heard walk past her door?

So the sequence would be that she hears Goldstein, opens her door and then observes him walk past the club and around the corner?

And so what she's telling us, is that the only person she had seen was ALSO the same person she had heard, just before she stands at her door and looks out.

Just a thought

If that were the case, why would she refer to the footsteps as being those of a police officer given in the above she sees it was not?

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

To me the word "scream" contains a connotation of fear, To "scream" at a low volume would seem incongruous.

The way I see the scene transpiring is, Schwartz sees what he thinks in the start of a domestic argument and crosses the road to avoid involvement. On reaching the opposite side he is only about 10 seconds from the Fairclough intersection. I find it unlikely that he would have watched while he walked. More likely that, as he was stepping off the Fairclough kerb, he responded to a series of "not very loud" sounds. I suggest that these were protestations or remonstrations rather than screams. I don't believe that Schwartz actually saw how Stride ended up on the ground. I think she overbalanced while trying to pull away from BSman's grip on her arm as he tried to pull her away from the yard. BSman look around to see if anyone has heard Stride's protests just as Pipeman emerges from the closed doorway entrance where he has been sheltering to light his pipe. He sees a woman on the ground and a man looking in his, and Schwartz's, direction who then shouts "Lipski". Unsure who has put the woman on the ground he approaches Schwartz, who runs away.

At this stage it is unknown if Pipeman followed Schwartz very far, or whether he quickly abandoned that chase and approached BSman for an explanation Given that the police arrested and questioned two men and stated that they were not pursuing this line of enquiry without further evidence, my conclusion would be that the evidence given by these two witnesses pointed to the possibility that the incident was, as Schwartz originally supposed, just a domestic dispute.

JMO.

Best regards, George

Hi George,

Could be, although I think Schwartz describes seeing Stride ending up on the ground. Your "fear" idea, though, sparks an interesting possibility. We know Schwartz was not feeling overly comfortable, and was fearful of the situation. It could be that "scream" reflects him projecting of his fear onto the situation, making what someone else might call a "yell" or "shout" become a "scream" to him.

And as you say, we don't know how far Pipeman actually followed Schwartz. He seemed to think Pipeman chased him, but again, if he's afraid and mistakes Pipeman's entering into the street as the start of a chase, Schwartz may have high tailed it out of there, not stopping to look if he's being followed until he gets to the railroad arch! All he actually says is that Pipeman chased him, but not as far as the Railway arch - but he doesn't say how far he was chased, only how far he wasn't! So if Pipeman didn't chase him at all, but Schwartz thought he was, then his interpretation of the events will be skewed by his misinterpretations of what was going on. Similar to "yell" -> "scream" type thing.

While the two men arrested might have included either or both of Pipeman and Broad Shoulders, it could also be that they were just arrested as "possible Pipeman and/or B.S." and were released when they could prove they were not. I wish we had more about those arrests, but unfortunately and like so many things, we have cryptic teases and snippets.

- Jeff

[The Rookie Detective]

Just as an aside...

It's interesting that this is the only thread that has been commented upon in the past 24 hours.

The boards are very quiet at the moment it seems.

[GBinOz]

Again, given Pipeman emerges from his location at a time that seems to correspond to roughly when Schwartz gets frightened (so just after the 3 not very loud screams by Stride, and B.S. call out of Lipski), it seems reasonable that his emergence is because he did hear them. You can't say nobody heard them given it appears likely that Pipeman did. I can't guarantee he did because he wasn't interviewed on this point (or if he was, we don't have that information), but his actions point towards it.


Anyway, we're clearly not going to agree as your interpretation of "3 screams, but not very loudly" is for "3 loud sounds", while mine is for "3 not loud sounds". I'm allowing for people to speak differently than the dictionary, while you hold them to the dictionary. If you chose a thesaurus though, you might find "screech, yell, howl, shout, bellow, bawl, call out, cry out, yelp, squeal, wail, squawk", as I just did. When people speak, they are conveying a concept, and to do so they must choose a word, which might not always be the best fit based upon the dictionary definitions when there are a number of options. Without us being able to interview Schwartz, I would not be confident in asserting that his use of scream means "loud", given he then paradoxically says "but not very loudly", which means "not loud". As a result, I tend to prefer my interpretation because it doesn't alter the overall intent of his statement, she made 3 sudden sounds, but not very loudly. He used the word scream for those 3 sudden sounds, but that doesn't mean they looked the word up in the dictionary first and went "Ah ha! That's the right one!"

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

To me the word "scream" contains a connotation of fear, To "scream" at a low volume would seem incongruous.

The way I see the scene transpiring is, Schwartz sees what he thinks in the start of a domestic argument and crosses the road to avoid involvement. On reaching the opposite side he is only about 10 seconds from the Fairclough intersection. I find it unlikely that he would have watched while he walked. More likely that, as he was stepping off the Fairclough kerb, he responded to a series of "not very loud" sounds. I suggest that these were protestations or remonstrations rather than screams. I don't believe that Schwartz actually saw how Stride ended up on the ground. I think she overbalanced while trying to pull away from BSman's grip on her arm as he tried to pull her away from the yard. BSman look around to see if anyone has heard Stride's protests just as Pipeman emerges from the closed doorway entrance where he has been sheltering to light his pipe. He sees a woman on the ground and a man looking in his, and Schwartz's, direction who then shouts "Lipski". Unsure who has put the woman on the ground he approaches Schwartz, who runs away.

At this stage it is unknown if Pipeman followed Schwartz very far, or whether he quickly abandoned that chase and approached BSman for an explanation Given that the police arrested and questioned two men and stated that they were not pursuing this line of enquiry without further evidence, my conclusion would be that the evidence given by these two witnesses pointed to the possibility that the incident was, as Schwartz originally supposed, just a domestic dispute.

JMO.

Best regards, George

[The Rookie Detective]

Could there be an option whereby Mortimer hears Goldstein pass her door and after going to her door immediately afterwards she sees Goldstein walk hurriedly down the road before he looks up at the club and goes around the corner of the Board School?

And so Mortimer is actually saying that the man she saw walk down Berner Street earlier, was ALSO the man she heard walk past her door?

So the sequence would be that she hears Goldstein, opens her door and then observes him walk past the club and around the corner?

And so what she's telling us, is that the only person she had seen was ALSO the same person she had heard, just before she stands at her door and looks out.

Just a thought

[JeffHamm]

Abberline: I questioned Israel Schwartz very closely at the time he made the statement as to whom the man addressed when he called Lipski, but he was unable to say.

If he were unable to say, he could not have supposed the man was calling a name. So, the only way this argument can work is to assume that Schwartz initially thought it was a name being called, and then Abberline introduced the slur idea, which Schwartz accepted, and consequently wasn't sure who the call was to.

If all that is true, we have a bit of a problem. It seems Abberline was not just asking probing questions and taking down the answers in a statement, he was also colouring the witnesses' memory by suggesting how he should interpret what he saw. Not sure if I would call that good police work.

I suspect that's what happened. Schwartz's initial thought that Lipski was shouted to Pipeman, either stating or at least implying it was/might be Pipeman's name, would mean that's an important point to clarify given Abberline's awareness of it being a slur, and his opinion that Schwartz looked recognizably Jewish somehow. If Schwartz said he shouted "Lipski at me", it wouldn't be so interesting to Abberline.

And I fully agree, that by his line of questioning, he probably did influence Schwartz's memory, unfortunately. At the very least, he appears to have made Schwartz second guess himself (but he clearly doesn't fully change his mind, and retreats only being unsure of whom Lipski was shouted at, so he's not fully abandoned the idea it was shouted at Pipeman).

However, to be fair to Abberline, we can't really say it was bad police work because the influence of such questions on a witness's memories wasn't known until about 90 years later when Elizabeth Loftus really investigated how interview questions alter a witness's memory. Her work has led to a lot of improvements in how such interviews are conducted. In 1888, though, best practice would have been to question and prod and explore from various angles. But yes, we have to now take into account that Schwartz being unable to say for sure whom Lipski was shouted at is quite probably due to how he was questioned, rather than reflective of his belief when he first gave his statement. It is a real shame we do not have those transcripts.

Having said that, I'm not sure I agree with RD either. If Schwartz was trying to get anyone off the hook, it was himself. The club may have known more about a ~12:45 incident than we are led to believe, but that doesn't mean there was collusion between Schwartz and club members.

No, I don't think there is any foundation to the idea of Schwartz colluding with the club either.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Pretty much exactly what I have been saying and have been pilloried for. Only one point of disagreement - a not very loud scream must still be loud, because 'loud' is in the definition.

Sadly, people do not use language in actual speech only after consulting a dictionary. You are adhering to a dictionary definition but the evidence is from spoken language, moreover from someone who does not speak English. For all we know, the Hungarian word that directly translates to "screamed" in English could actually refer to what in English we might phrase as "called out". Obviously I have no idea if that's the case, not speaking Hungarian, but it is clearly not possible to apply Oxford's definitions to vernacular speech, particularly the speech after translation.

What you saying here is that, while you accept the distinction between loud and very loud screams as valid, you reserve the right to keep the "not very loud" bit, but substitute another word for scream, based on how a hypothetical witness might hypothetically describe the same sounds. Furthermore, you want to deny that a scream is necessarily loud, even though a scream is loud by definition.

I reserve the right to take note of the recorded description's details in their entirety, so whether or not you agree that the definition of a scream allows for it to be "not very loud", what we have is a statement that this one was "not very loud."

The poor translation or poor choice of word argument insists that Schwartz is to be believed, except for the bits that need to be changed to make them believable.

Actually, the only one changing bits is you at the moment, as you want to change "not very loud" to mean "loud" or greater.

As for your claim that these screams could have easily been missed, I will once again refer to the comments of the steward's wife and club servant.

Mrs Diemschitz: I am positive I did not hear any screams or sound of any kind. Even the singing on the floor above would not have prevented me from hearing them, had there been any. In the yard itself all was as silent as the grave.

Mila, the servant at the club, strongly corroborates the statement made by her mistress, and is equally convinced there were no sounds coming from the yard between 20 minutes to one and one o'clock.

If they didn't hear them, or at least don't recollect hearing them (because they didn't come across as remarkable at the time), of course they will be confident there wasn't one and so in turn be confident they would have heard them! It's a common fallacy that people make when they don't notice something - I looked and if it were there I would have seen them! /looks again/ Who put them there?

Another point about these screams is that this is not just a question of why no one heard them. A neutral investigator might wonder if the witness got the time and/or place wrong.

Again, given Pipeman emerges from his location at a time that seems to correspond to roughly when Schwartz gets frightened (so just after the 3 not very loud screams by Stride, and B.S. call out of Lipski), it seems reasonable that his emergence is because he did hear them. You can't say nobody heard them given it appears likely that Pipeman did. I can't guarentee he did because he wasn't interviewed on this point (or if he was, we don't have that information), but his actions point towards it.

It is quite probable that Schwartz got some things wrong, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if his time estimation is off. That applies to all the witnesses though, which is why when people try to construct timelines what they produce generally will place events at times different from what a witness states. In the various proposed timelines I've seen, the difference between witness statements and the presented timelines have always been unremarkable. One of the projects I want to get back to, in fact, is the Berner Street timeline. But it is a big undertaking, and as I'm in the middle of exam marking, it's a job for when I have some leave time. What I'm interested in trying to do though, is see if what Schwartz describes could fit before Fanny comes out, or would it have to be after she went back in? I know it can fit after she went in, as I've already done that one (in the simulation version), and R.D.'s 2nd option makes it look like it could fit in before (provided one allow Fanny to mistake Stride's killer to be the source of the footsteps rather than PC Smith). It might even work even if she heard PC Smith, if one allows for her to go outside 5 or 6 minutes after hearing the footsteps (while she recalls going out as "immediately after hearing them", there must have been some time pass as she doesn't see Stride and Parcelman, and since memory for time isn't great, a 5-6 minute delay might be worth looking at. Much more than that might be pushing it though).

Anyway, we're clearly not going to agree as your interpretation of "3 screams, but not very loudly" is for "3 loud sounds", while mine is for "3 not loud sounds". I'm allowing for people to speak differently than the dictionary, while you hold them to the dictionary. If you chose a thesaurus though, you might find "screech, yell, howl, shout, bellow, bawl, call out, cry out, yelp, squeal, wail, squawk", as I just did. When people speak, they are conveying a concept, and to do so they must choose a word, which might not always be the best fit based upon the dictionary definitions when there are a number of options. Without us being able to interview Schwartz, I would not be confident in asserting that his use of scream means "loud", given he then paradoxically says "but not very loudly", which means "not loud". As a result, I tend to prefer my interpretation because it doesn't alter the overall intent of his statement, she made 3 sudden sounds, but not very loudly. He used the word scream for those 3 sudden sounds, but that doesn't mean they looked the word up in the dictionary first and went "Ah ha! That's the right one!"

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure why this strikes you as so remarkable as it seems to me to be entirely reflective of everyday speech - the words we use are not always exactly the right one definition wise, and so we often include any "modifications" to indicate that.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

And the Lipski as an anti-semetic slur was Abberline's idea, not Schwartz's. Schwartz thought Lipski was shouted to Pipeman as his name, which we know was his original statement because the police started looking up all the Lipski families in the area based upon it. We also have the Home Office asking about the search for Lipski's, which is where Abberline informs them that he thinks Schwartz was mistaken and Lipski was actually directed at Schwartz as a slur.

So it is invalid to suggest that Schwartz added an "anti-semetic slur to get the club off the hook" because Schwartz didn't include an anti-semetic slur but a name. It was Abberline who introduced the slur idea .... so if one follows the usual argument that because Schwartz introduced an anti-semetic slur to get the club off the hook, then once we realise it was Abberline who introduced the slur then logically we are left with the conclusion that Abberline was trying to get the club off the hook!

Alternatively, we might then decide that perhaps the conclusion that the person who introduces Lipski as a slur is trying to get the club off the hook doesn't really follow. And in that case we have to accept that even if Schwartz was the one to introduce it the conclusion is just as invalid as what actually seems to have happened (Abberline is the source of "Lipski = slur at Schwartz").

Basically, the whole idea of Lipski as evidence of Schwartz aiding the club falls apart when one keeps track of the source of the Lipski was a slur idea, which we know was Abberline, not Schwartz.

- Jeff

Abberline: I questioned Israel Schwartz very closely at the time he made the statement as to whom the man addressed when he called Lipski, but he was unable to say.

If he were unable to say, he could not have supposed the man was calling a name. So, the only way this argument can work is to assume that Schwartz initially thought it was a name being called, and then Abberline introduced the slur idea, which Schwartz accepted, and consequently wasn't sure who the call was to.

If all that is true, we have a bit of a problem. It seems Abberline was not just asking probing questions and taking down the answers in a statement, he was also colouring the witnesses' memory by suggesting how he should interpret what he saw. Not sure if I would call that good police work.

Having said that, I'm not sure I agree with RD either. If Schwartz was trying to get anyone off the hook, it was himself. The club may have known more about a ~12:45 incident than we are led to believe, but that doesn't mean there was collusion between Schwartz and club members.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I did that because a rose by any other name would smell as sweet type thing. A scream does not have to be ear piercing, but one may refer to a noise people make ("ahhh" or "eeek" or however one writes a scream in text) as a scream regardless of its volume. So some screams might be very loud, some are only loud, and some are not very loud. We have one of the latter in evidence.

Pretty much exactly what I have been saying and have been pilloried for. Only one point of disagreement - a not very loud scream must still be loud, because 'loud' is in the definition.

A different witness might choose a different word for that same sound, such as a yell, shout, call, etc, but the sound itself is the same sound, just by another name. While the word scream, when left unqualified, tends to suggest the volume of the sound to be on the "loud" end, when it is qualified (as in "not very loud") then we know this particular scream is not at the loud end. Because it is qualified with respect to the volume it doesn't enable one to say "it was loud because it was a scream" and to then go on to describe situations with "loud" or "very loud" screams because to do so is against the statements we have. Such descriptions do not describe the event as recorded.

What you saying here is that, while you accept the distinction between loud and very loud screams as valid, you reserve the right to keep the "not very loud" bit, but substitute another word for scream, based on how a hypothetical witness might hypothetically describe the same sounds. Furthermore, you want to deny that a scream is necessarily loud, even though a scream is loud by definition.

The suggestion that scream may be a poor word choice, or poor translation, is getting at the same underlying idea because some are insisting that a "scream" has to be of the sort you conjure up - a woman screaming at the gateway; but that leaves out the important bit of recorded information about the volume. If you ask because "a woman screaming not very loudly at the gateway going unnoticed by anyone inside or on the street, clashes with our intuitions", I would have said "no, since it's not very loud it could easily go unnoticed by someone inside, and given that Pipeman then emerges from his doorway, it looks like it wasn't unnoticed by him, who was as far as we know the only other person in the street at that time."

- Jeff

The poor translation or poor choice of word argument insists that Schwartz is to be believed, except for the bits that need to be changed to make them believable.

As for your claim that these screams could have easily been missed, I will once again refer to the comments of the steward's wife and club servant.

Mrs Diemschitz: I am positive I did not hear any screams or sound of any kind. Even the singing on the floor above would not have prevented me from hearing them, had there been any. In the yard itself all was as silent as the grave.

Mila, the servant at the club, strongly corroborates the statement made by her mistress, and is equally convinced there were no sounds coming from the yard between 20 minutes to one and one o'clock.

Another point about these screams is that this is not just a question of why no one heard them. A neutral investigator might wonder if the witness got the time and/or place wrong.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

we also have to explain Stride's CHOICES AFTER she was assaulted.

They make perfect sense if it was just a little street hassle. If women on the street fled at the first drop of rain so to speak they would starve to death.

Leaving aside the question of the police account describing an assault vs a little street hassle, another question arises. You say Stride couldn't afford to flee after this incident. Fair enough, yet Pipeman did flee, or so it seems. Why would a man out on the street alone at night, after witnessing an incident as common as man hassling a woman, decide that he needed to run off? Not only run off, but far enough that Schwartz felt he need to run all the way to a railway arch to get to safety. Seems incongruous.

Believing Schwartz is one thing, but accepting BS man attacked her and didn't finish her off is a step beyond reasoning.

Chief Inspector Swanson disagreed with you.

c.d.

Smith: Her clothes were not disarranged. Even the boots were scarcely to be seen. She looked as if she had been gently laid down.

Could this BS character have left her in this state? I don't think so either.

[Lewis C]

Fair enough.

The following does not seem to fit with other evidence.

It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there for ten minutes before she did so.

It seemingly does not fit because we assume that the woman in question was Fanny, and that had she gone to her door immediately on hearing the policeman's plod, she would have seen Stride with a man. Is that necessarily true, though? What if the couple had stood further up Berner St than Smith recalled? Then Fanny might have seen the couple talking together in the distance, just as she might have caught a glimpse of the board school couple at the corner. Do we have to assume she would have put two and two together, on seeing Stride's body by candlelight? Fanny spoke to the board school couple, so maybe she thought another couple further up that dark street, had nothing to do with the murder. Perhaps Fanny did indeed go to her doorstep seconds after Smith had passed by, and our timelines are incorrect.

What I get from Fanny's reported statements is that she isn't saying that she saw a couple on the corner while she was at her door, but that after the murder she talked to a couple that said they were on the corner, and Fanny is reporting what they told her. I won't say that it's certain that she didn't see a couple on the corner while she was at her door, but that's how it sounds to me.

Even so, there's still the fact that if Fanny hearing what sounds like a PC passing seems to fit well with the idea that PC Smith passed right before she went to her door, then that raises the question of why Fanny didn't see Stride or Parcelman. I think that the most likely answer to that is that is that those two moved from where they were between the time that Smith passed and Fanny went to her door. Either because Fanny wasn't quite as prompt at getting to her door as she makes it sound, or she was rather prompt, but it didn't take long for Stride and Parcelman to move to where she couldn't see them.

You mentioned the possibility that Stride and Parcelman weren't quite where PC Smith thought they were, so if that's the case, then maybe Stride and Parcelman didn't need to move to be where Fanny couldn't see them. That is, they also weren't where she could see them when PC Smith saw them.

Another possibility is that what Fanny thought was a PC passing actually wasn't one, or at least, it wasn't PC Smith.

[JeffHamm]

The loudness is relative to normal human communication - talking. If we can just define a not very loud scream as that which is just below the audibility of anyone in the vicinity, to answer the question as to why it went unheard, then you must be wondering why there is so much effort to made to claim that these screams weren't actually screams. That it was a bad translation, or a poor choice of word. You made the suggestion that these screams might have been "yells, shouts, calls, or whatnot". Why did you do that? Was it because the notion of a woman screaming at the gateway, going unnoticed by anyone inside or on the street, clashes with our intuitions?

I did that because a rose by any other name would smell as sweet type thing. A scream does not have to be ear piercing, but one may refer to a noise people make ("ahhh" or "eeek" or however one writes a scream in text) as a scream regardless of its volume. So some screams might be very loud, some are only loud, and some are not very loud. We have one of the latter in evidence.

A different witness might choose a different word for that same sound, such as a yell, shout, call, etc, but the sound itself is the same sound, just by another name. While the word scream, when left unqualified, tends to suggest the volume of the sound to be on the "loud" end, when it is qualified (as in "not very loud") then we know this particular scream is not at the loud end. Because it is qualified with respect to the volume it doesn't enable one to say "it was loud because it was a scream" and to then go on to describe situations with "loud" or "very loud" screams because to do so is against the statements we have. Such descriptions do not describe the event as recorded.

The suggestion that scream may be a poor word choice, or poor translation, is getting at the same underlying idea because some are insisting that a "scream" has to be of the sort you conjure up - a woman screaming at the gateway; but that leaves out the important bit of recorded information about the volume. If you ask because "a woman screaming not very loudly at the gateway going unnoticed by anyone inside or on the street, clashes with our intuitions", I would have said "no, since it's not very loud it could easily go unnoticed by someone inside, and given that Pipeman then emerges from his doorway, it looks like it wasn't unnoticed by him, who was as far as we know the only other person in the street at that time."

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Any suggestion that Schwartz lied and placed himself at the scene of a murder can and should be consigned to the dustbin. Worse still, any insane suggestion that he was the murderer and admitted to being there when he had no need to, needs to be consigned to the dustbin and then burned.

We have a report that suggests Schwartz was pursued for a very good reason, unlike the flimsy reasons normally suggested for Pipeman running. You ignore this evidence when asserting that Schwartz had no need to go to the police.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

But by that token, how loud is a scream? How loud is loud? Any of these questions are unanswerable by your view, so the information we have in terms of statements about screams or "not very loud" are meaningless and we can only go by the consequences, which are that it was not loud enough for anyone inside a building to take notice.

- Jeff

The loudness is relative to normal human communication - talking. If we can just define a not very loud scream as that which is just below the audibility of anyone in the vicinity, to answer the question as to why it went unheard, then you must be wondering why there is so much effort to made to claim that these screams weren't actually screams. That it was a bad translation, or a poor choice of word. You made the suggestion that these screams might have been "yells, shouts, calls, or whatnot". Why did you do that? Was it because the notion of a woman screaming at the gateway, going unnoticed by anyone inside or on the street, clashes with our intuitions?

[JeffHamm]

An answer to the question; How loud is not very loud scream? No, we don't have our answer.

But by that token, how loud is a scream? How loud is loud? Any of these questions are unanswerable by your view, so the information we have in terms of statements about screams or "not very loud" are meaningless and we can only go by the consequences, which are that it was not loud enough for anyone inside a building to take notice.

- Jeff