Where does Joseph Fleming fit into the equation?

[DVV]

Wonderful.
Of course, the fact that he had been a plasterer and later a costermonger helped the Coroner to establish the cause of death. So much.

By the way, Venturney did ALSO refer to Joe in her police statement. And if the police wanted to trace that guy, they would have been interested in knowing the giant he was. It would have helped.

And Mrs McCarthy, Phoenix, etc, didn't talk to establish the cause of MJK's death. They refer to that guy from Bethnal Green, and oh surprise ! no giant.

I guess some will now argue again that Barnett's Fleming, Venturney's Joe and Mrs McCarthy's man in the building trade were 3 different persons.

And I don't care much.

[Fisherman]

That's hilarious, Mike and Lechmere.
I guess you find yourself clever posting this just after Chris Scott has taken the pain to share some fascinating biographical détails.

This thread isn't specifically about Fleming's height, but if you want to cling to this 6'7 and prevent others to discuss all aspects of Fleming's cadidacy, here is a well balanced post from Fisherman in 2009 that you could medidate :

David!

I agree with you that if Fleming was Marys ex-lover AND frequent visitor, it´s baffling that we have no mentioning of his height. Moreover, there is a lot of material pointing to the fact that the Victorians were the shortest Brits, historically. I´ve found it on the net, where there is this passage:

"There's an interesting table printed in "The Tudor Tailor" by Ninya Mikhalia and Jane Malcolm-Davies on height of people from London. For simplicity's sake, I'll list only the males:

Prehistory: 5' 7"
Roman: 5' 6.75"
Saxon: 5' 8"
Medieval: 5' 7.5"
Tudor: 5' 7.5"
Georgian: 5' 7.25"
Victorian: 5' 5.5"
1998: 5' 9""

So, if this is something to go by, "Joe the Giraffe" would in fact have been a more deviating person in Victorian England than in any other era of the kingdom! And so, the case you argue is a sound one, David. But as long as we have that 6.7 record staring us in our faces, maybe we should not call it a given.

Just noticed this post of yours, David. I thought I´d complete the picture with this post of mine from 2/2 2009, since you seem to have missed it:

"Tempting thoughts, David, no question about it. But no matter what, as long as the records have Evans/Fleming down as 6.7, unsubstantiated hunches and gut feelings must remain exactly that: unsubstantiated.
That´s not to say that you are wrong"

At the time, I had recently written my piece on Fleming as a possible bid for the Ripper´s role, and so I had the choice of getting on the train with you, claiming that Fleming could never have been 6 ft 7, or accept that the records would have to prevail until other evidence surfaced to change the picture.

So far, it has not.

I mentioned a stiff week ago that I was expecting an answer about the correlation between height, weight and health in Evans/Flemings case. I had sent a question about it to a Swedish site concerning itself with eating disorders. The site is one where experts like medicos and nutritionists, all involved with eating disorder problems, answer people´s questions. Many of those who ask questions are people who will not accept that they have an eating disorder, and so the people who answer the questions will normally take care to tell thin people that they need to gain weight. It is thus a site that should suit the purposes of those who want to see mild thinness as extreme and disease-ridden...

I provided the BMI of Evans (17,3), mentioned that it was a historical number from the late nineteenth century, wrote that the man with this BMI had been said to be of good bodily health - and then I asked if he could have been so, given his BMI. The answer? In translation: "Of course, all people are different, and a BMI alone cannot determine whether a person is of good health or not."
I understand that this may well be rewritten and "interpreted" by those who do not like this truth, but it nevertheless remains exactly this: the truth. Evans could have been of good bodily health and he could have been of bad bodily health. The one thing we have to go on are the repeated assertions from the asylum that he WAS of good bodily health, taken together with the experts judgement that a BMI alone can not be used to establish what level of health somebody represents.

I think that without putting very much effort into it, Debra nails things very nicely in one of her recent posts:

"I personally think the height is a bit suspect. That's all!"

Not incredibly suspect, but suspect. Of course. One SHOULD pause when reading it and ask oneself if it is reasonable. Then, when finding that there was reasonably a number of people of this height and beyond in the East End, and when coupling it with the knowledge that a low BMI is not indicative of bad health in itself, least of all when it belongs to a category described as mildly thin by the WHO - and let´s not forget that Evans/Fleming was at a BMI of 18,1 when originally incarcerated, not 17,3 (and equally, let´s not forget that BMI is not a health indicator on it´s own) - then we arrive at Debra´s standpoint; a bit suspect, that´s all.

Nothing more than that. And we all know this. He WAS tall and he WAS skinny. But you know, people sometimes are. That´s all.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL9912/francis_galton.htm

"The values on the horizontal axis represent the range of heights of Englishmen in the Victorian age. The vertical axis is a relative scale indicating the proportion of Englishmen from the total population who have a particular height within the range. We see that the average height of an Englishmen is 5'6” and the range of heights is between 5'3” and 5'9”.

"An Englishman less than 5'3” would be considered unusually short, and one taller than 5'9” would be unusually tall. You would expect to see only about one in a thousand Englishmen above or below the normal range."

Regards,

Simon

[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

[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.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Sally,

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

Regards,

Simon

[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

[DVV]

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

Cold Case, season 1 ?

[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...

[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

[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

[DVV]

Toppy anthem

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

[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.

[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

[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