Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[The Rookie Detective]

Yes, of course it does, that's the whole point.

It is precisely because it does change the whole meaning that we can't say for sure which meaning was intended.
Because, Schwartz was not summonsed to the inquest, and we don't know why.

If you (in place of Swanson) have confirmation of his story, you don't begin your sentence by questioning the validity of that same story.
That, is what makes no sense at all.

You are saying Swanson has a document (the report) that confirms Schwartz's story, but he begins by saying, "If Schwartz is to be believed".
That logic is backwards, he already knows it is confirmed by the report.


What I am saying is, set aside that conventional interpretation for a moment, and look at it a different way.

Take the view for a moment that Swanson does not believe Schwartz story.
He raises the question - "if Schwartz is to be believed, and if the conclusion of our investigation, in a report confirms it.......etc"

It doesn't matter whether he uses two "ifs" or one "if", the meaning stays the same.

Swanson is withholding his belief until the investigation is concluded, and he has the report in his hand.

This would also be consistent with the press report suggesting "the Leman-street police have reason to doubt his story".

Sunny, all the pieces of evidence have to point in the same direction - you can't have Swanson accepting his story, while the Leman-street police doubt the story - that's conflict, and it tells you something is wrong.

(Leman-street was CID headquarters in H division)

Exceptional post from beginning to end.

I agree completely with your views on this

[FISHY1118]

Exceptional post from beginning to end.

I agree completely with your views on this

Is there an official Lemans st police document that doubts Schwartz version of the Liz Stride attack?

What source are you comparing Swanson acceptance to ?

[FISHY1118]

Sorry that was meant for Wickerman.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, of course it does, that's the whole point.

It is precisely because it does change the whole meaning that we can't say for sure which meaning was intended.
Because, Schwartz was not summonsed to the inquest, and we don't know why.

If you (in place of Swanson) have confirmation of his story, you don't begin your sentence by questioning the validity of that same story.
That, is what makes no sense at all.

You are saying Swanson has a document (the report) that confirms Schwartz's story, but he begins by saying, "If Schwartz is to be believed".
That logic is backwards, he already knows it is confirmed by the report.


What I am saying is, set aside that conventional interpretation for a moment, and look at it a different way.

Take the view for a moment that Swanson does not believe Schwartz story.
He raises the question - "if Schwartz is to be believed, and if the conclusion of our investigation, in a report confirms it.......etc"

It doesn't matter whether he uses two "ifs" or one "if", the meaning stays the same.

Swanson is withholding his belief until the investigation is concluded, and he has the report in his hand.

This would also be consistent with the press report suggesting "the Leman-street police have reason to doubt his story".

Sunny, all the pieces of evidence have to point in the same direction - you can't have Swanson accepting his story, while the Leman-street police doubt the story - that's conflict, and it tells you something is wrong.

(Leman-street was CID headquarters in H division)

Hi Wick,

Actual version:

“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.”

A suggested re-phrasing:

“If Schwartz is correct, and after three weeks of investigation we have found nothing to contradict him, then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot.”


A question might be - when considering your suggestion (which I’m certainly not dismissing btw), what might the police have realistically expected to have surfaced, after three weeks of investigation, to tip them toward a suggestion that Schwartz’s man and Smith’s man were one and the same?

[Herlock Sholmes]

The phrase "If Schwartz is to be believed", means that whatever follows is conditional on something. If the police don't doubt Schwartz and that is all there is to it, the phrase would be redundant. So, your explanation does not explain why this phrase appears in the report.

The purpose of the second 'if' is to allow us to believe that any uncertainty does not pertain to the truth of Schwartz's account, but rather to the (supposedly) still incomplete police report. As a bonus, it also allows us to explain Schwartz's non-appearance at the inquest - the coroner was still waiting for this report on Oct 23, and thus felt compelled not to adjourn the inquest again, while waiting for an appropriate time to call Schwartz.

Either of these false interpretations allows us to ignore the doubts of the Leman St police, reported in the Star, Oct 2.

It’s possible to begin a sentence with something like “if we take x as true..” it doesn’t mean that the speaker suspects x of being untrue. People say things like “are we correct on this? Of course we are.”

As Swanson says “If Schwartz is to be believed..” how can he be expressing doubt if the very next phrase is “..and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it.” It’s hardly a prevarication is it?. Wick’s suggestion requires the addition of a word (if) and I can’t help thinking that if I’d done that you’d have been accusing me of tampering with the evidence.

Let’s not forget that the second ‘if’ wasn’t present. It doesn’t exist. The statement makes perfect sense without it.

[Sunny Delight]

Yes, of course it does, that's the whole point.

It is precisely because it does change the whole meaning that we can't say for sure which meaning was intended.
Because, Schwartz was not summonsed to the inquest, and we don't know why.

If you (in place of Swanson) have confirmation of his story, you don't begin your sentence by questioning the validity of that same story.
That, is what makes no sense at all.

You are saying Swanson has a document (the report) that confirms Schwartz's story, but he begins by saying, "If Schwartz is to be believed".
That logic is backwards, he already knows it is confirmed by the report.


What I am saying is, set aside that conventional interpretation for a moment, and look at it a different way.

Take the view for a moment that Swanson does not believe Schwartz story.
He raises the question - "if Schwartz is to be believed, and if the conclusion of our investigation, in a report confirms it.......etc"

It doesn't matter whether he uses two "ifs" or one "if", the meaning stays the same.

Swanson is withholding his belief until the investigation is concluded, and he has the report in his hand.

This would also be consistent with the press report suggesting "the Leman-street police have reason to doubt his story".

Sunny, all the pieces of evidence have to point in the same direction - you can't have Swanson accepting his story, while the Leman-street police doubt the story - that's conflict, and it tells you something is wrong.

(Leman-street was CID headquarters in H division)

Wickerman you are completely changing the context of what Swanson actually wrote. So we have a phantom man in the shadows that you suggest in Dutfields Yard, a phantom couple who were Eddowes and the Ripper unseen by anyone, Sarah Lewis witnessing Mary Kelly and AS man along with George Hutchinson and now another phantom 'if' added to completely change the context of a statement which makes perfect sense without it.

You are not following the evidence. You are leaping into fantasy land.

[Wickerman]

Exceptional post from beginning to end.

I agree completely with your views on this

Thankyou Chris, I don't know about 'exceptional', but I'm trying to make it as clear as I can.

[Wickerman]

Hi Wick,

Actual version:

“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.”

A suggested re-phrasing:

“If Schwartz is correct, and after three weeks of investigation we have found nothing to contradict him, then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot.”


A question might be - when considering your suggestion (which I’m certainly not dismissing btw), what might the police have realistically expected to have surfaced, after three weeks of investigation, to tip them toward a suggestion that Schwartz’s man and Smith’s man were one and the same?

Mike, if I was going to rephrase Swanson's observation, I would change the beginning of your suggestion (in bold), to be something like:

"If we are to believe Schwartz, and providing the police report from the conclusion of our investigation confirms his story,...then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot."

To answer the question in your final sentence...
The police have not been able to find another witness to the altercation, and they cannot find anyone who can plausibly be BS-man.

[Wickerman]

It’s possible to begin a sentence with something like “if we take x as true..” it doesn’t mean that the speaker suspects x of being untrue. People say things like “are we correct on this? Of course we are.”

As Swanson says “If Schwartz is to be believed..” how can he be expressing doubt if the very next phrase is “..and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it.” It’s hardly a prevarication is it?. Wick’s suggestion requires the addition of a word (if) and I can’t help thinking that if I’d done that you’d have been accusing me of tampering with the evidence.

Let’s not forget that the second ‘if’ wasn’t present. It doesn’t exist. The statement makes perfect sense without it.

True, if you are having a casual conversation, maybe in a pub.
But, this was a report to his superiors, so not the place for casual remarks.

Swanson (in my view) is telling his superiors he does not believe Schwartz, but he is reserving official judgement until the report is complete.

I'm saying the second "if" is implied, it doesn't need to be present.

[Wickerman]

The phrase "If Schwartz is to be believed", means that whatever follows is conditional on something. If the police don't doubt Schwartz and that is all there is to it, the phrase would be redundant. So, your explanation does not explain why this phrase appears in the report.

The purpose of the second 'if' is to allow us to believe that any uncertainty does not pertain to the truth of Schwartz's account, but rather to the (supposedly) still incomplete police report. As a bonus, it also allows us to explain Schwartz's non-appearance at the inquest - the coroner was still waiting for this report on Oct 23, and thus felt compelled not to adjourn the inquest again, while waiting for an appropriate time to call Schwartz.

Either of these false interpretations allows us to ignore the doubts of the Leman St police, reported in the Star, Oct 2.

Yes Andrew, we are on the same page, thankyou.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mike, if I was going to rephrase Swanson's observation, I would change the beginning of your suggestion (in bold), to be something like:

"If we are to believe Schwartz, and providing the police report from the conclusion of our investigation confirms his story,...then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot."

To answer the question in your final sentence...
The police have not been able to find another witness to the altercation, and they cannot find anyone who can plausibly be BS-man.

Wick,

I’m sensing a scenario where you and I are discussing this point in 10 years time.

Your version is certainly valid and could be the case but so is the alternative imo. But.. I still don’t think that, should your version be the correct one, we can assume doubt on Swanson’s part; only caution. So in effect he could still have meant:

”As it stands we would have to say that Schwartz’s man and Smith’s man are two different men, with Schwartz’s man being the likelier killer. However this conclusion might change if new evidence appears.”

[Herlock Sholmes]

The main point being though is that the police had absolutely no reason to doubt Schwartz story.

a) if he’d placed himself at the scene of a murder with no one to exonerate him just to get a bit of fame then he’d have been crazy.
b) if he’d have been up to no good then he had no need to come forward.

How long do we have to go on with this? Unless someone can provide Schwartz with an alibi proving him elsewhere we should just let it go.

[Sunny Delight]

Mike, if I was going to rephrase Swanson's observation, I would change the beginning of your suggestion (in bold), to be something like:

"If we are to believe Schwartz, and providing the police report from the conclusion of our investigation confirms his story,...then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot."

To answer the question in your final sentence...
The police have not been able to find another witness to the altercation, and they cannot find anyone who can plausibly be BS-man.

It is abundantly clear that Swanson wrote and I rephrase:

"If we are to believe Schwartz(we being the senior officers) and the Police report I have received states they do not doubt him, then it follows that he and PC Smith are describing two different men".

"If we are to place our faith in Schwartz(we being the senior officers) and my subordinates who have interviewed him do not doubt him, then it follows that he and PC Smith are describing two different men".

Don't forget Swanson was writing this to the Home Office. He is summarising what is sent to him. What he writes is so clear that it dumbfounds me that anyone can read or interpret it any differently.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Another interpretation is that the intended recipient of the report - the Home Office - had expressed scepticism of Schwartz, possibly due to the inability of the police to identify the second man (Pipeman) and so some convincing was deemed necessary.

Whatever the case, if there were no doubts, why mention this hypothetical alternative?

By the way, word of Schwartz's story seems to have reached more than one newspaper.

https://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/none-of-his-business/

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I will apologize now for the length of this.

This is an interesting topic to me, although I admit, trying to get at the underlying aspects of language and then conveying them through language, is incredibly difficult. There is a whole branch of psychological research into language (Psycholinguistics), that is incredibly dense due to the jargon that is involved. It’s not my area of specialty, but I’ve studied it on occasion, which is where the appeal comes from I suppose.
Anyway, I want to start with the full text, as I think there are some aspects to it that are important with regards to the current debate.
“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they (meaning PC Smith and Schwartz) are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.”
The vast majority of the discussions have been on the relationship between the red and the blue text. Specifically, whether or not the exact same meaning of blue text is conveyed by :

1. and if the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

or

1. and since the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

while versions a and b are unambiguous, the text we have is presented in a way that the grammatical structure allows for either (an “assumed if” version as in a, or an “assumed since” version, as in b).
Most of us will read the original text and automatically read it as either a or b, and once we’ve done so, it becomes very hard to recognize the alternative is possible. Debates focused on “but it means a” vs “but it means b” will get us nowhere. It’s also why, hard as it may be, we have to set aside how we read it ourselves and focus on trying to determine whether or not Swanson intended a or b.
I’m going to refer to a) as the “double conditional”, where the red “if” also applies to the blue text, which is option a (where the “IF” gets inserted into the blue text without changing the meaning). I’ll refer to b) as the “Question/Answer” construction, because the “since” version means the blue text is guiding the reader/lister as to how to evaluate the initial “if”, presented in red.
We do both, and both are common. In a previous post I used this example:

If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk.

That would be an example of where the “double conditional” applies, because the above sentence means exactly the same thing as me saying:

If the weather is fine, and if I have the time, I will go for a walk.

This is because the red “if” is intended as encapsulating both the weather conditions and my time availability into common "orange" text, like this:

If (the weather is fine, and I have the time), I will go for a walk.

But if I change the content of the blue section to read:

If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk.

Then that would be a case of the “question/answer” construction, where the red “if” only applies to the initial question portion in red, and the blue text is telling the reader which side of “if” to consider more likely.
It is, of course, possible to still read both of my sentences “the other way”, meaning in my first sentence my walk is not “conditional” on me having the time but rather I’m stating I know I have the time already. Or in my 2^nd example, my walk is conditional both on the weather being fine and on the weather report indicating that too.
Generally, a double conditional is intended when the red and blue text refer to independent conditions, both of which must be “true” before the following in the green text will occur.

In the sentence If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk, since the weather conditions and my free time are independent of each other, (the weather can be good or bad despite my having free time or not; and my having free time is independent of the weather conditions) it would be unusual to phrase that sentence if, in fact, the blue text was intended as in the “question/answer” use (because my knowing I have the time doesn’t preclude bad weather - it doesn't "answer" the red "if" statement). And knowing I have the time means the only thing I need to convey is that my walk is conditional only upon the weather. (Perhaps one could argue the blue text is just bolstering my conviction behind a healthy outing, so perhaps even with independent red/blue sections, a double conditional is not universal).

In the other sentence, If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk, however, it would be just as unusual to intend a double conditional. The blue text and the red text are referring to the same underlying concept, that my walk is weather dependent. The point of the red text is to convey the idea that my walk is conditional on the weather, and the blue text indicates that I have reason to believe that red “if” will resolve in favour of me taking a walk. It’s a “question/answer” version this time.

Now Swanson’s statement is even more complex than my above simplified versions. My green text (the “consequence”) is a simple statement. Swanson’s green text is yet another “if statement”. In fact, the main question Swanson is addressing is whether or not the men described by Schwartz and PC Smith are the same or different men, but if they are then Schwartz’s man is to be preferred (the purple text explaining why).
So the main focus of the whole text is on that point, about which description is more likely to be of Stride’s murderer, Schwartz’s or PC Smith’s? Swanson favours Schwartz’s, as indicated by the purple, but of course only in the case they are describing different men. In the case they are describing the same man, then both descriptions need to be considered, perhaps creating some sort of composite I suppose.
Given that focus of the text, we can return to the initial section.

Does it make sense for Swanson to intend a “double conditional” when he says: If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, as a lead into the main focus about which description should be preferred? Or does it make more sense for him to be using a “question/answer” version in this case?

I don’t think a “double conditional” really makes sense here. Due to the linkage between the red and blue text, a double conditional makes the red bit superfluous. Clearly, it is the police report that determines if the police are going to believe Schwartz, so if the report he’s referring to were not yet available, all he would need to say is “If the police report of his (Schwartz) statement casts no doubt upon it, …” which signals to the reader to take with caution that which follows (i.e. we would prefer Schwatz’s description, but only in the case of the report coming back positive).

In other words, I don’t think the “double conditional” version works because the red and blue sections are “linked” just like in the case of my “fine weather” and “weather report” example. They are not independent of each other, given that whether or not the police believe Schwartz is not going to be independent of their report. We also know that Swanson has access to Abberline’s report already, and while Abberline thinks Schwartz made some interpretation errors about the events he witnessed, there is nothing to indicate that Abberline had any doubts that the events themselves took place.

Finally, given the main point of his sentence has to do with which man is the more likely murderer (the green text), and Swanson argues that would be Schwartz’s man, then it makes far more sense that he would be using a “question/answer” version. That’s because he is guiding the reader towards the conclusion he is going to present, he’s foreshadowing why Schwartz’s man is to be preferred, and the purple section at the end is there to strengthen his argument.

Anyway, in my opinion, I think it is very unlikely the Swanson intends a double conditional. While in one sense the sentence structure could allow it, I believe the semantic link between the sections, combined with the fact he's embedded the red and blue sections as a lead up to the main point (the green section), which concludes favouring Schwartz's description (bolstered by further reasoning for that - the purple section), make a double conditional almost untennable. Otherwise he's undermining the whole green/purple point he's making. A question/answer intention, however, further strengthens what he ends up concluding, making for a far more coherent communication.

I know that goes on forever, as in my wont, but language is bad enough, and it just gets worse when using language to describe language!

- Jeff