Where does Joseph Fleming fit into the equation?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Fisherman,

Kenneth Branagh as Wallander is bollocks. Far too much style over substance.

I quite liked Krister Henriksson until he started sleep-walking his way through the role.

But you still haven't answered my question -

Why do Swedish doors open outwards?

Regards,

Simon

[Fisherman]

Time to stop smoking for some.

Agreed!

Fisherman

[DVV]

Time to stop smoking for some.

[Fisherman]

I"m with Sally on this one : the Ripper had the anatomical knowledge of a tall plumber.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it ...?

Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Simon Wood:

Enjoying Wallander [the original], which leads me to the question, why do Swedish doors open outwards?

Well, that hinges on ...

BTW it was Sally who mentioned a plumber.

I merely put two and two together.

Ah! Well, it ended up with three this time. Which may just be the solution, of course!

Wallander - the original - that would be the series with Rolf Lassgård in the leading role, I take it? If so, I´m totally with you - no need to waste time and money on Henriksson and/or Branagh!

If you enjoy Lassgård, you need to see "Jägarna" (The hunters), a really, really good movie that I suspect one out of a thousand Brits have seen. Which brings us back to Evans/Fleming ...

All the best, Simon. Good to chat with you, as always!
Fisherman

[DVV]

BTW it was Sally who mentioned a plumber.
Simon

I"m with Sally on this one : the Ripper had the anatomical knowledge of a tall plumber.

[DVV]

Toppy anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPgYiwlGrog

[Simon Wood]

Hi Fisherman,

Enjoying Wallander [the original], which leads me to the question, why do Swedish doors open outwards?

BTW it was Sally who mentioned a plumber.

I merely put two and two together.

Regards,

Simon

[Fisherman]

Hi Sally,

Do you happen to know of any East End lodging houses which could accommodate a 6' 7" plumber?

Regards,

Simon

A 6 ft 7 ... plumber???

All the best,
Fisherman

[Sally]

Hi Sally,

Do you happen to know of any East End lodging houses which could accommodate a 6' 7" plumber?

Regards,

Simon

I've always suspected that the Victoria Home had extra-wide doors, Simon. Flemchinson would've simply gone in sideways...

[DVV]

Lechmere,
Your assertion that the police checked the Stone Asylum registers is completely and utterly without foundation.
Ben

Cold Case, season 1 ?

[Fisherman]

Now that's very interesting info indeed, Simon! Many thanks for sharing. So if anything over 5'9" was considered unusually tall, one can only imagine how exceptional a 6'7"er would have been in Victorian times.

Mmm - that IS interesting, Ben, no doubt about it. I don´t know if you noticed that Simon provided a link to a site regarding Francis Galton´s work. The diagram he provided was Galtons. Galton died in 1911, so he is truly reopresentative of the era we are interested in.

Did you by chance get the time to look on Galtons fourth diagram on that link? The one stating that onehundred men out of a million were 6 ft 5 or taller, I mean? And that onehundred men out of a million were shorter than 4 ft 5?

At the end of the 19:th century there were around five million people living in greater London, I believe. And that would have made fivehundred people at 6 ft 5 or taller. Of course, that does not suit your thinking and favourite theory as well as as Simon´s diagram did, where it seemed impossible that anybody would grow to 6 ft 7 at all, does it? But there you are, Ben - we can´t cherrypick from a man´s work, but instead we must look at it as a whole.

At the end of the day, it is all only stastistics, though. During the first world war, there would statistically have been four Chinese people in London who reached 6 ft 5 or over it ...

There has never been any question whether Evans was unusualy tall or not. The figure 6 ft 7 ensures that. The issue has always been could he have been that tall?

Yes, he could.

Next question: Could he have varied in BMI between 17,3 and 18,1?

Yes, he could. Quite easily.

Last question: Could he have been bodily healthy - or described as such by the government who had him in his care?

Yes, he could. Absolutely.

Nobody is saying that there would have been any need for him to adjust to the more normal figures, though some are making it their business to claim that we should choose a suggestion of more statistically normal figures over recorded entries in the asylum books. And this fraction have taken it upon them to categorically state that you cannot be bodily healthy - or described as such by a government who has you in your care - if you weigh in at a BMI of 17,3 (effectively denied by those who know about eating disorders and the relation bewteen height, weight and health) to categorically state that 6 ft 7 was extremely tall in 1888, although we all know that there were people around who represented the TRUE extremes of over 7 and 8 foot, and that people with a 17,3 BMI are extremely skinny, although we all know by now that there are high-performance athletes and well-known models that are as thin or thinner. The truth is that the extremes are found at BMI:s around 14 and not around BMI 17 and 18.

Reading the whole story and avoiding the exaggerations would be the recipe for success here.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Simon Wood]

Hi Sally,

Do you happen to know of any East End lodging houses which could accommodate a 6' 7" plumber?

Regards,

Simon

[Sally]

A journeyman craftsman earned about 30 shillings a week. That includes plumbers. A bed in a lodging house cost 4d a night - 2 shillings a week.

[Ben]

Now that's very interesting info indeed, Simon! Many thanks for sharing. So if anything over 5'9" was considered unusually tall, one can only imagine how exceptional a 6'7"er would have been in Victorian times.

Lechmere,

Your assertion that the police checked the Stone Asylum registers is completely and utterly without foundation. There is absolutely no evidence that they did any such thing, and extremely compelling reasons to think they did not, especially not as late as 1893. If you're motivated by a need to shoot down perceived "rival" suspects in order to uphold your own highly controversial, not-going-down-very-well Cross theory, you will need to seek an alternative approach to your preferred one of pretending all other suspects got "checked out" and cleared. It's complete nonsense. It didn't work with Hutchinson, and it's not going to work with Fleming either. I'd give it a swerve if I were you.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the police ever, at any point, discovered that the true identity of the "James Evans" found wandering at large in 1892 was Joseph Fleming. That is an irrefutable fact. I don't care that you "expect" to see a rumour in the press - it's a completely irrational and baseless "expectation". I would fully expect the police to investigate the first person to discover Nichols' body if they were prepared to investigate the second person to chance upon it, and I bet you all my worldly possessions that my "expectation" enjoys more popular support than yours with regard to Fleming.

If Fleming had been discovered in the register I would expect it to be common knowledge in Bethnal Green’s J Division.

"If..."

But that's a colossally improbable "if" that we're dealing with here.

"If" my auntie had bollocks, she'd be my uncle.

It is very unlikely that the police were still conducting asylum record searches in 1893 - very very very unlikely. This was after the identification occurred which prompted the head of the CID to conclude that Jack the Ripper was identified and caged in an asylum. Now you can dismiss the identification as an invention and call Robert Anderson a liar all you want - on another thread, please - but all controversial revisionist ideas aside, the likelihood is that Anderson's resoluteness with regard to the ripper's alleged incarceration had an effect on the course of the investigation. There was not, after all, a great deal of point looking for the ripper in one asylum when it was already accepted that he was confined at another.

I don't know why you keep going on about the "officers on the ground" and "local officers" as though they were a bunch of Mavericks who were free as birds to do their own thing and investigate as they please. The police was a structured, cohesive unit that operated on the basis of a hierarchical chain. If they received information from their superiors that any further asylum record-checking was supererogatory, the officers on the ground couldn't simply respond with "Nah, sod ya, I need more convincing than that if I'm to do my job and obey instructions. I'm off to check records".

But let's amuse ourselves for a moment by pretending - just for a laugh, because it's so improbable - that the officers did find Fleming in the records and did connect him with the elusive ex-boyfriend of Kelly mentioned at her inquest five years ago. How on earth were they supposed to progress with their investigation, assuming they left their magic wands at home? Remember, your truly staggering contention is that Fleming was investigated and cleared. How were they supposed to verify five-year-old alibis from lodging house inmates? In fact, let's go even crazier, let's assume that a bunch of indefatigable Maverick "local officers" found an 1893 record of a "J. T. Ripper" in one of the asylum registers, with the accompanying note that "the patient is violent and cunning and declares he was responsible for the Whitechapel murders". How would investigators have crystallized his guilt beyond reasonable doubt? They couldn't possibly have done.

"Bad news for his suspect status" too, I suppose?

Yes, incidentally, I have an extremely good idea of Fleming's earnings as a plasterer. As I've pointed out, this has been researched in some depth. Plasterers earned decent wages, as did plumbers - at least in comparison to dockers and costermongers. Toppy was living in a small lodging house in the West End in 1891, which is perfectly compatible with respectable wage earning. Fleming might well have exhibited unusual behaviour as a result of his deteriorating mental health, and it may have been noticed by his employers and/or customers, and considered unsuitable for continued employment as a plasterer. It is more than possible that the lower-earning jobs - labourers, grooms, dockers, costermongers - were less fussy about employing erratic oddballs.

Regards,
Ben