Why didn't Lawende ID Bury?

[Harry D]

The police were using Lawende to ID William Grainger & James Sadler, and this was several years after his original sighting of the man with Eddowes. What did they possibly have to lose by having their chief witness ID Bury?

[Jeff Leahy]

The police were using Lawende to ID William Grainger & James Sadler, and this was several years after his original sighting of the man with Eddowes. What did they possibly have to lose by having their chief witness ID Bury?

Or Chapman for that matter? Clearly they decided not to...poor old Lawende must have been getting fairly fed up

[curious]

The police were using Lawende to ID William Grainger & James Sadler, and this was several years after his original sighting of the man with Eddowes. What did they possibly have to lose by having their chief witness ID Bury?

There wasn't time?

By the time Bury came to the attention of the London police, he was sentenced to hang.

For Lawende to see him, the police would had to have gotten Lawende to Dundee.

They could perhaps have gotten a photograph, but that would not have given Lawende his size and shape.

[Scott Nelson]

The police were using Lawende to ID William Grainger & James Sadler, and this was several years after his original sighting of the man with Eddowes. What did they possibly have to lose by having their chief witness ID Bury?

This is only supposition. We have no idea who the witness was.

[c.d.]

Here is a question that just came to me. Did they have line-ups back then like they do now in which the witness is shown several different men in the hopes that he can pick one out as the perpetrator of the crime?

c.d.

[Pcdunn]

Here is a question that just came to me. Did they have line-ups back then like they do now in which the witness is shown several different men in the hopes that he can pick one out as the perpetrator of the crime?

c.d.

I tried to find out when police lineups (identity parades in the U.K.) were started, but failed to get a date. I did, however, discover that they are now controversial, with some people pushing for a change in how they are conducted. It is believed that too many innocent people are sent to jail on the basis of incorrect identifications by witnesses. (Google "police lineups" or "Innocence Project" to find out more.)

I think that presenting witnesses with more than one suspect at the same time is likely more a 20th-century invention, but can't confirm it.

[PaulWilliams]

The 1976 Devlin Report dated the first formal use of identification parades by the Police to 1860, although in 1821 a regiment of soldiers were paraded in front of witnesses in an ultimately fruitless attempt to identify the individuals who shot demonstrators in Oxford Street.

A parade of sorts was used in 1887 to identify Israel Lipski as the man who brought poison from Charles Moore. The police took Moore to the hospital ward containing Lipski. Moore was told in advance that he would find the man there and Lipski's bed was the only one to have another man sitting beside it.

[Pcdunn]

The 1976 Devlin Report dated the first formal use of identification parades by the Police to 1860, although in 1821 a regiment of soldiers were paraded in front of witnesses in an ultimately fruitless attempt to identify the individuals who shot demonstrators in Oxford Street.

A parade of sorts was used in 1887 to identify Israel Lipski as the man who brought poison from Charles Moore. The police took Moore to the hospital ward containing Lipski. Moore was told in advance that he would find the man there and Lipski's bed was the only one to have another man sitting beside it.

Thanks for this information, Paul. The story about Lipski seems to confirm that some witness identifications could be biased, if not "rigged" by the police in the past-- probably more so than now.

[MysterySinger]

In the book by Paul Begg, Lawende is supposed to have positively identified William Grainger. Not sure this ever received much attention.

[Harry D]

In the book by Paul Begg, Lawende is supposed to have positively identified William Grainger. Not sure this ever received much attention.

Was Grainger's identifier ever confirmed? I thought it was just assumed to be Lawende because they'd rolled him out before. Even though, according to Anderson & co., the best witness had already identified the Ripper.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Wasn't Pearly Poll presented with an itentity parade of soldiers? My memory may be faulty here though.

Regards
Herlock

[GUT]

Wasn't Pearly Poll presented with an itentity parade of soldiers? My memory may be faulty here though.

Regards
Herlock

Yes she was.

[John Wheat]

The police were using Lawende to ID William Grainger & James Sadler, and this was several years after his original sighting of the man with Eddowes. What did they possibly have to lose by having their chief witness ID Bury?

The loss of identifying Jack?

[kjab3112]

I tried to find out when police lineups (identity parades in the U.K.) were started, but failed to get a date. I did, however, discover that they are now controversial, with some people pushing for a change in how they are conducted. It is believed that too many innocent people are sent to jail on the basis of incorrect identifications by witnesses. (Google "police lineups" or "Innocence Project" to find out more.)

I think that presenting witnesses with more than one suspect at the same time is likely more a 20th-century invention, but can't confirm it.

Now (in London at least) you're shown a series of pictures, often on a computer, head shot only. Small problem if the biggest issue is relative height

Paul

[John G]

The public perception is that human memory works like a video recorder, and is therefore highly reliable. However, in reality memory is not particularly accurate, and this fact has been known for many years: one experiment, "The forgotten curve", revealed that people can only retrieve about 50% of information one hour after encoding (Ebbinghaus, 1885). See also, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...5/#!po=1.89873