Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[Wickerman]

Hi Wick,

That's still after the police have interviewed all of the club members and the people living nearby then searched for ‘Lipski’ or anyone else potentially involved. At some point the police had no one else to interview, no more leads to follow......

But, that doesn't appear to be the case Mike.
While it is true we do not know the precise date Swanson penned his Stride report, we do have him making clear that, at the time of his writing, the investigation was by no means over:

".....enquiry has been made into the movements of a number of persons estimated at upwards of 300 respecting whom communications were received by police & such enquiries are being continued."

also:

"Up to date although the number of letters daily is considerably lessened, the other inquiries respecting alleged suspicious persons continues as numerous."

Which tells us that whatever date Swanson concluded his report on the Stride murder, the police were still investigating many alleged suspicious persons. We don't know if these suspicious persons included BS-man and Pipeman, keeping Schwartz and his story on the backburner until the police conclude their investigations.

[Wickerman]

..... Then we have Abberline at the beginning of November still voicing no doubt about Schwartz.

He does?

I see the report dated 1 Nov., Abberline writes that he questioned Schwartz closely about the "Lipski" claim, but he doesn't say he believed him.

Do you remember when Abberline interviewed Hutchinson, he wrote: "...I am of the opinion his statement is true", we don't get anything like that in his interview with Schwartz.

Have you considered why the police are still talking about Schwartz's story in early November, if their investigation had already been concluded by early October?

[FISHY1118]

Mike.

That is what I first thought, but if we look over the reports in detail we see each report is in tabular form, and separate points begin by time and date format - eg; 3.45 am, 31st Aug.
I realized, a person cannot consult four murder files then write a report for each one, on the same day. Swanson did have other duties to perform, not the least of which was monitoring the whole investigation.

The first report concern's the Tabram murder, it was written on paper with a September header. No date was provided, but as we know he was tasked with creating these reports by Warren, who gave Swanson absolute administrative control over the Whitechapel Murder cases on 15 Sept. 1888. Therefore, we know the Tabram report was written between the 15th-30th of September.

There are four separate reports; Tabram, Nichols, Chapman & Stride.
At the end of the Stride report Swanson writes - there are 994 Dockets besides police reports, (a docket can be anything from a Wanted poster to a suspect file).
He also managed to have a City Police report created, from his equal Insp. McWilliam, for the Eddowes murder.

Swanson then studied and created reports from the Nichols, Chapman & Stride files, following a similar format. Each one carries a 19th Oct. date, as do the index pages.
Each stamped with a Home Office 'Received by' date of 25 Oct.

The 19th October is when he finished the reports, to hand them to Warren, who sent them to H.O., not when he wrote them.

As the penultimate Inquest date was 5 Oct., it is possible Swanson waited to see if the inquest produced anything of substance (the last inquest was merely the Coroner's summary on 23 Oct.)
We do see Swanson making reference to a suspect in a "kind of Yankee hat", which was mentioned by ACB in a memo dated 4 Oct. 1888. So he likely wrote his Stride report after that date, but before the 19th.

Hi wick , I'm still waiting for any official Lemans st police report/document that says they didn't believe Schwartz eyewitness account of the assault on liz stride .

It a genuine question as I have seen no such evidence of this.

So if there is no such report, then are we comparing Swansons "official" report against a press report as might have been given to a Leman street police officer ?