Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[Wickerman]

Another one that I’ll throw in there….we assume that the woman that Smith saw was Stride because he was a Constable and someone who is paid to be observant but how certain should we be? He was walking along a poorly lit street after all. He’d have seen quite a few people over the course of an evenings beat including couples either heading home or otherwise engaged. Would he have been able to have ID’d them all if he’d been tested? Women of the poorer classes at the time would have dressed fairly similarly I’d have thought. How unlikely would it have been for him to have seen a woman dressed similarly to Stride, with the same general build and hair colouring?

I’d suggest that there has to exist a chance, however small (possibly minute) that the woman with Parcelman wasn’t Stride.

On the issue of 'small chances', and dimly lit streets. We are told Schwartz couldn't understand English - so how did he know he was in Berner St.?

The next street over - Batty St. also has a yard that opens to the street, none of the other streets do. It is also beside a pub, as opposed to a club, but at night who's to tell the difference?
Had Schwartz seen a woman being roughed up in Batty St., in the entrance of the yard beside the pub, but heard the next day that a woman had been murdered in the yard in Berner St.
Schwartz just put two and two together, he thought the murder was the scuffle he witnessed, he just had not realized he was in Batty St., not Berner St.

The fact Schwartz account does not fit with anything said by all the other witnesses is troubling, yet many have tried to explain that fact away but to no great satisfaction.

[Sunny Delight]

On the issue of 'small chances', and dimly lit streets. We are told Schwartz couldn't understand English - so how did he know he was in Berner St.?

The next street over - Batty St. also has a yard that opens to the street, none of the other streets do. It is also beside a pub, as opposed to a club, but at night who's to tell the difference?
Had Schwartz seen a woman being roughed up in Batty St., in the entrance of the yard beside the pub, but heard the next day that a woman had been murdered in the yard in Berner St.
Schwartz just put two and two together, he thought the murder was the scuffle he witnessed, he just had not realized he was in Batty St., not Berner St.

The fact Schwartz account does not fit with anything said by all the other witnesses is troubling, yet many have tried to explain that fact away but to no great satisfaction.

I think the Police would have been very keen to ensure it was definitely Berner Street. Didn't Schwartz go to the Police with an acquantance from the Socialist club? He must have known it. I don't think he heard there was a murder in Berner Street. He probably heard of a murder near or beside the club.

I don't think it is very difficult to fit Schwartz testimony into the timeline.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We can't really approach the case like that as otherwise we would have absolutely nothing to go on. Not one witness who claimed they saw a victim can be proven to be correct, unless they knew the deceased.

I’m not saying that we should cast aside witnesses Sunny. All that I’m saying is that we can’t always be 100% certain that witnesses are correct because of the human error element. I agree that PC Smith very likely saw Stride with Parcelman.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the issue of 'small chances', and dimly lit streets. We are told Schwartz couldn't understand English - so how did he know he was in Berner St.?

The next street over - Batty St. also has a yard that opens to the street, none of the other streets do. It is also beside a pub, as opposed to a club, but at night who's to tell the difference?
Had Schwartz seen a woman being roughed up in Batty St., in the entrance of the yard beside the pub, but heard the next day that a woman had been murdered in the yard in Berner St.
Schwartz just put two and two together, he thought the murder was the scuffle he witnessed, he just had not realized he was in Batty St., not Berner St.

The fact Schwartz account does not fit with anything said by all the other witnesses is troubling, yet many have tried to explain that fact away but to no great satisfaction.

I recall that you suggested this a while ago Wick. People have made less likely errors in life so I don’t think that your suggestion can be discounted. And as I mentioned in an earlier post we don’t know what state Schwartz was in at the time. It was after midnight so it can’t be impossibly or even unlikely that he might have had a few drinks. Who’s to say that he might not have had quite a few? He could have seen an incident in a different street. He could have seen an incident a few minutes earlier in the evening.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Lewis,

I agree that the lesser time period has to be the likeliest but I that “A man touched her face…” is only ringing distant bells for me. Where is it from?

Spooner says he touched her face, and it was slightly warm. Fanny apparently sees this, and as she also says that Deimshitz was there when she arrived, that suggests that Fanny arrived after Deimshitz had done his run along Fairclough and returned with Spooner in tow. There's a news statement where she says as she came out someone says a woman has had 10" of steel stuck in her (words to that effect), which could be Eagle heading north, just after Deimshitz's return from his Fairclough search. Given estimations of how long between Deimshitz return to the club with his pony, and getting to the point where Eagle heads north are in the vicinity of 4 or 5 minutes, then her 4 minute statement could correspond to the time between hearing the pony and her arriving at the scene rather than the time between her going inside and hearing the pony and cart, with that information getting a bit garbled either in the telling or by the reporter recording what she was saying misunderstanding what interval she was referring to. If something like that happened, then we are left not knowing how long of an interval passes between her going inside and hearing the pony and cart. If we take her statement about going out shortly after hearing PC Smith go by, and accept that she did hear him, then she went out shortly after his patrol where he sees Stride and Parcelman. Since she doesn't recall seeing Stride and Parcel man, though, they must have moved on and either Stride doesn't return to the club until Fanny goes inside roughly 10 minutes later (which would be somewhere around 12:45ish) or she was killed in the interval between PC Smith's patrol and Fanny coming outside in the first place - making Brown's sighting not of Stride.

- Jeff

[Lewis C]

Hi Lewis,

I agree that the lesser time period has to be the likeliest but I that “A man touched her face…” is only ringing distant bells for me. Where is it from?

I copied that from your post, which says that that came from the October 1st London Evening News. Here's the full paragraph from your post with the sentence that I quoted in bold:

Mrs. Mortimer, living at 36, Berner-street, four doors from the scene of the tragedy, says: “I was standing at the door of my house nearly the whole time between half-past twelve and one o'clock this (Sunday) morning, and did not notice anything unusual. I had just gone indoors, and was preparing to go to bed, when I heard a commotion outside, and immediately ran out, thinking that there was another row at the Socialists' Club close by. I went to see what was the matter, and was informed that another dreadful murder had been committed in the yard adjoining the club-house, and on going inside I saw the body of a woman lying huddled up just inside the yard with her throat cut from ear to ear. A man touched her face, and said it was quite warm, so that the deed must have been done while I was standing at the door of my house. There was certainly no noise made, and I did not observe any one enter the gates. It was soon after one o'clock when I went out, and the only man whom I had seen pass through the street previously was a young man carrying a black shiny bag, who walked very fast down the street from the Commercial-road. He looked up at the club, and then went round the corner by the Board School.