How "safe" were the respective murder sites?

[lynn cates]

truth

Hello Christer Thanks.

Let me put it this way. I am a logician. I seek truth. You're a journalist. You seek a story.

I have the truth; you have a story. We should BOTH be happy.

I CERTAINLY am.

Cheers.
LC

[Michael W Richards]

Hi Michael,

Shifts? Sounds like large-scale industry. Not much of that in Spitalfields.

Drunks? Lots after the pubs had turned out. But not all night.

Slaughtermen? Perhaps, there were a few small-scale slaughterhouses in the East End. But nothing compared to Islington, say, where it was on an industrial scale.

Drinking dens? No doubt there were some, but very few in comparison with the pubs.

Homeless? There are plenty of homeless people in London today, but they tend not to wander the streets all night long. They need sleep as much as anyone else and in the wee small hours are tucked up in doorways, parks etc as they would have been in 1888.

The hours between 1 and 4 were the quietest of any 24 hrs. The streets weren't empty, but they were at their most quiet .

MrB

Hi Mr B,

I think you need to consider a completely different kind of London than the one you speak of. I don't contest that on any given night in London today 1am to 4am is generally the quietest in terms of street traffic, nor that it was any different on that basis in 1888, but when considering these cases and the actual geographical range that they took place within you see that they all were within the most overcrowded area in England at the time, let alone London. The homeless numbers were staggering due to the huge immigrant population and not enough work to go round. Sweat shops and all kinds of assembly and small manufacturing took place round the clock, people often working strange shifts.

This was an unusually impoverished area, and in those kinds of areas people mill about at all hours...good ones and bad ones.

Cheers

[c.d.]

Don't want to hijack the thread, but if I understand you correctly, there is a possibility that Stride suspected her assaillant of being JtR, so he killed her, not as one of his "fantaisie murder" but to silence her, because she's seen him? So Jack wasn't interrupted?

This is a very interesting angle, I must say.
Chapeau!

Now back to our regular programming.

Hello Sir John,

I am afraid you did not understand me correctly. The point that I was trying to make was that I think it is possible that Jack set out on some of the murder nights with the clear intention to kill some woman whomever it may be. But in the case of Stride, I think it possible that something she did or said made him want to kill her right there and then and if that was the case it might explain why it seems to us a bad venue for mutilation. The explanation being that his desire to kill HER overcame good judgment.

c.d.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Mr B,

I think you need to consider a completely different kind of London than the one you speak of. I don't contest that on any given night in London today 1am to 4am is generally the quietest in terms of street traffic, nor that it was any different on that basis in 1888, but when considering these cases and the actual geographical range that they took place within you see that they all were within the most overcrowded area in England at the time, let alone London. The homeless numbers were staggering due to the huge immigrant population and not enough work to go round. Sweat shops and all kinds of assembly and small manufacturing took place round the clock, people often working strange shifts.

This was an unusually impoverished area, and in those kinds of areas people mill about at all hours...good ones and bad ones.

Cheers

Michael,

Are you really suggesting that the early hours of the morning were not the quietest?

MrB

[c.d.]

Hello John G,

I think that even if technically the B.S. man assaulted or attacked Stride as you say even if a PC had intervened I think that if the B.S. man had a reasonably believable story, i.e., "I told her to move on and she started to mouth off to me so I gave her a little shove and I guess I might have pushed a little too hard", I think the PC would have simply said move on and don't let it happen again.

The moral of the story to me is to view the whole B.S. man in exactly the terms that Schwartz uses to describe it as opposed to giving it much more importance in light of what happened shortly after. That is why words like "attacked" and "assaulted" are so heavily loaded in this instance.

c.d.

[The Good Michael]

Sweat shops and all kinds of assembly and small manufacturing took place round the clock, people often working strange shifts.

Thank goodness for that. They were working and didn't congest the streets between 1 and 4 AM.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Hello Christer Thanks.

Let me put it this way. I am a logician. I seek truth. You're a journalist. You seek a story.

I have the truth; you have a story. We should BOTH be happy.

I CERTAINLY am.

Cheers.
LC

No, let´s not put it that way. I very much dislike having it hinted at that I would abandon truth for a story.

Let´s instead put it this way:

When looking for what Phillips said and meant, I turn to Phillips to find out. He is the original source and the only way we can be sure that we get it right.

When looking for a way to avoid having it known what Phillips said and meant, you turn to Baxters misinterpretation of it. Baxter is a secondary source, and offers a possibility to get it wrong.

Let´s put it like that instead, shall we? And leave it there.

Fisherman

[Rosella]

After Diemschultz and cart approached do you think Jack made a quick retreat to the darkness near the privy block in the yard?

It would have had to have been somewhere where he could have seen what was going on. He could then have sneaked out while there was a crowd looking at the body. Certainly before the gates were ordered closed.

He could have made a quick run for it when Louis dashed inside to look for his wife, I suppose, though Mrs Mortimer saw no man running/walking away from the club.

[John G]

After Diemschultz and cart approached do you think Jack made a quick retreat to the darkness near the privy block in the yard?

It would have had to have been somewhere where he could have seen what was going on. He could then have sneaked out while there was a crowd looking at the body. Certainly before the gates were ordered closed.

He could have made a quick run for it when Louis dashed inside to look for his wife, I suppose, though Mrs Mortimer saw no man running/walking away from the club.

I would certainly agree that the killer probably escaped from the yard when Louis entered the club to look for his wife. I don't see Mrs Mortimer being a problem with this scenario because, by her own evidence, she had already returned indoors, bolted the door and was preparing for bed some four minutes before she heard the approach of a pony a cart, presumably Diemshutz.

Best wishes,

John

[John G]

Timeline

Hello John G,

I think that even if technically the B.S. man assaulted or attacked Stride as you say even if a PC had intervened I think that if the B.S. man had a reasonably believable story, i.e., "I told her to move on and she started to mouth off to me so I gave her a little shove and I guess I might have pushed a little too hard", I think the PC would have simply said move on and don't let it happen again.

The moral of the story to me is to view the whole B.S. man in exactly the terms that Schwartz uses to describe it as opposed to giving it much more importance in light of what happened shortly after. That is why words like "attacked" and "assaulted" are so heavily loaded in this instance.

c.d.

Hello c.d.,

I think it might be useful to consider the timeline leading up to the discovery of Stride's body. Thus, Louis D stated that the time on the clock outside the tobacco shop on Commercial Road was 1:00am or a minute or two after. Therefore we can postulate that he arrived at the club around 1:02 to 1:04am where he discovered Stride's body. I would also argue that Stride must have been killed around this time because blood was still trickling from her neck and her body was still warm when checked by Edward Spooner shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, Mrs Mortimer stated that she heard a pony and cart- presumably Louis D- about 4 minutes after she went indoors. She also said that she had been outside for approximately 10 minutes, suggesting that she had been at her door either between 12:48 and 12:58 or 12:50 and 1:00 depending on Louis D's arrival time.

Of course, this might explain why she didn't see the altercation witnessed by Schwartz and Pipeman, but there are still problems with accepting Schwartz's time of 12:45.

Firstly, it is clearly a significant coincidence that Stride would be involved in an altercation by 2 differently men, or the same man twice, on more or less exactly the same spot, within the space of just 15 minutes. Secondly, where did Stride go to during the intervening period? If she was loitering near the club during this period she should have been seen by Fanny Mortimer and possibly Leon Goldstein. Thirdly, having been involved in an earlier altercation why did she return to the same spot about 15 minutes later? Fourthly, James Brown claimed to have seen a man with someone he believed was Stride at 12:45, which clearly contradicts Schwartz's account because she couldn't have been in two places at the same time.

I would take an Occam's Razor approach. The simpler conclusion is that Schwartz made the same mistake as Edward Spooner and Fanny Mortimer by getting the time mixed up. That means that he witnessed Stride being murdered, at around 1:00am, by B.S man, i.e. just after Mrs Mortimer went indoors and just before the arrival of Louis D with his pony and cart.

Nonetheless, I accept that this far from being the only possibility!

Best wishes,

John

[Rosella]

Or the woman wasn't Stride at all, and in fact it could have been a domestic dispute. Schwartz was too frightened, naturally, to go back and look, but the man and the woman involved may have both departed afterwards in the opposite direction to Mrs Mortimer's house.

In almost all Victorian murders in workingclass districts it must have been a nightmare for police to fix any precise timeline. Hardly anyone possessed watches, (including police constables), and clocks in shops like jewellers, tobacconists etc could have been inaccurate. The same goes more or less for church clocks.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

Hello c.d.,


I would take an Occam's Razor approach. The simpler conclusion is that Schwartz made the same mistake as Edward Spooner and Fanny Mortimer by getting the time mixed up. That means that he witnessed Stride being murdered, at around 1:00am, by B.S man, i.e. just after Mrs Mortimer went indoors and just before the arrival of Louis D with his pony and cart.

Nonetheless, I accept that this far from being the only possibility!

Best wishes,

John

For me, if I use Occam's Razor, it's to say that the idea of time was more relative than it is now.
I give every witness a margin of error of at least 15 minutes. Because I'm sure there wasn't a single clock in Whitechapel that had the same time.

[GUT]

For me, if I use Occam's Razor, it's to say that the idea of time was more relative than it is now.
I give every witness a margin of error of at least 15 minutes. Because I'm sure there wasn't a single clock in Whitechapel that had the same time.

I think that 15 minutes is a bit wide.

Public clocks, churches etc, were [at least in some areas] set multiple times a day, and were set to other local clocks.

[Cogidubnus]

I think that 15 minutes is a bit wide.

Edward Spooner is clearly even further out than that...I am reminded of:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk

All the best

Dave

[Michael W Richards]

Michael,

Are you really suggesting that the early hours of the morning were not the quietest?

MrB

No Im not...what Im suggesting is that the term "quiet" needs to be expanded on, because the amount of people still on the streets during those times was in modern terms, still substantial.

Not that I recommend the entire movie or premise, but I think the slow pan up the ally at the beginning of From Hell.... behind the homeless man... captures what I believe was the milling that would be familiar to LVP poverty regions of London.

Cheers