The broken window

[Rosella]

^ As I said before on a previous post, to reach that door from the broken pane furthest away from the door, a human would need arms the length of a gorilla, reaching down past the knees, and even then it would have been a stretch.

Just look at the photo of Mary's room taken from Millers Court, look at the distance between window and door and tell me how it could have been done!

It was said in answer to that post that some sort of iron bar arrangement was supposedly used by Mary and friends when they wanted to unlock the door from the outside at that angle.

Is that so, and even if they did would the police or McCarthy even have known about that? With McCarthy saying the key was lost maybe the police felt they had no option but to use the axe!

[Pcdunn]

Determing an abortion?

The thing is Simon, all you do is shoot yourself in the foot. If their qualifications were so all encompassing then what was Dr Dukes doing there?

Dukes, incidentally, was a Fellow of the London Obstetrical Society which may or may not be relevant.

Could all these doctors with experience in ailing and pregnant women have been there to determine if the corpse had been the victim of a mad abortionist? (Not that she was, of course, but it might well be the first thing to occur to them.)

[Abby Normal]

could it simply be that the police didn't know about the hand through the window to unlock the door trick?

[Pierre]

^ As I said before on a previous post, to reach that door from the broken pane furthest away from the door, a human would need arms the length of a gorilla, reaching down past the knees, and even then it would have been a stretch.

Just look at the photo of Mary's room taken from Millers Court, look at the distance between window and door and tell me how it could have been done!

It was said in answer to that post that some sort of iron bar arrangement was supposedly used by Mary and friends when they wanted to unlock the door from the outside at that angle.

Is that so, and even if they did would the police or McCarthy even have known about that? With McCarthy saying the key was lost maybe the police felt they had no option but to use the axe!

More and more evidence is pointing towards the monkey theory...

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_147711/Daniel-Urrabieta-Vierge/Illustration-for-The-Murders-in-the-Rue-Morgue-by-Edgar-Allan-Poe-1809-49-engraved-by-Eugene-Michel-Abot-1836-94

Regards Pierre

[packers stem]

More and more evidence is pointing towards the monkey theory...

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_147711/Daniel-Urrabieta-Vierge/Illustration-for-The-Murders-in-the-Rue-Morgue-by-Edgar-Allan-Poe-1809-49-engraved-by-Eugene-Michel-Abot-1836-94

Regards Pierre

At least we now know why you didn't want to say much about your data before Pierre
I do think you'll find it probably wasn't a monkey... No matter what the data says

[packers stem]

could it simply be that the police didn't know about the hand through the window to unlock the door trick?

Hi Abby
They had a couple of hours along with the landlord to work this out though...

[David Orsam]

Hi Abby
They had a couple of hours along with the landlord to work this out though...

They didn't need to work anything out. They had an axe!

[David Orsam]

Rosella and Abby, I agree entirely. The flaws in Phil's 'logical positivism' are (a) the inappropriate use of hindsight (b) a misguided belief that the police were completely stupid and (c) a misunderstanding of the situation faced by them at the time.

When the police turned up at Miller's Court they found a locked door. They hadn't yet spoken to Barnett so they didn't know there was some sort of technique (whether difficult or simple) by which the door could be opened through the window nor, frankly, did they care. They had a perfectly quick and easy way of effecting entry with an axe. There was no need for them to spend any time theorising and speculating about other ways of getting into the room. If they had spent even a few minutes faffing around trying to open the door through the broken window – or working out how to do so - we might today be asking; why didn't they just use an axe on the door??!!!