Favorite suspect/s?

[Fisherman]

I have overall lost interest in "debating" with some of the people of this thread, and for very obvious reasons.

I now read from Herlock, who dabbles in the fine art of misrepresenting me on a daily basis, that I would have said that all Eastenders hated the police.

I have - of course, and as is so often the case when Herlock is involved - not said this at all. But in order to be able to attack me, Herlock needs to invent this falsehood.

What I said that there is absolutely no guarantee that the person who arrived after Lechmere did up at Browns would press the point to contact the police. And I said this because Herlock assured us all that this person WOULD press that point.

What I tried to do was to offer some necessary nuance, therefore. A contact with reality, if you will.

The Eastenders had a degree of distrust towards the police. It is an ascertained fact. And when this important point of mine is made to dissolve Herlocks misunderstanding or misleading, he says "Fisherman says that there is not a chance in hell that an Eastender would speak to the police!"

Are you never ashamed of yourself, Herlock, for doing this time and time again?

Or are you so entrenched in your efforts to tarnish me that you don´t even notice it?

It is an absolute shame for any sort of debate, and I am feeling embarrased to be on the same site. Please try and sober up and stop this malice, Herlock. It would do the debate a world of good if you could manage that.

If you are pondering some sort of retaliation post, kindly keep to the subject and explain to me where I have supposedly said what you claim I have said. It is simply not true, is it? Anyone who can read knows who is the misrepresenter.

I will keep an eye open for your answer, Herlock, just in case that you do not come clean - or avoid the point.

[Fisherman]

Just another post before I leave again.

I notice Steve says that Lechmere´s mothers lodgings were not very close at all to Berner Street.

Gary wisely asks me to confirm that the lodgings were in Cable Street, and points out that this is not in line with a visit to his mother.

This is one of the matters where it seems nobody is listening to what I am saying. It was said in the docu that she lived in Cable Street, but I have corrected this since - a number of times, actually. But the Cable Street address, it seems, dies hard - if at all.

When Stride died, Lechmere´s mother did not live in Cable Street. Edward Stow found this out after the docu was made. She instead lived in 1 Mary Ann Street.

I hope it is close enough for you, Steve. But as you say, there were so many OTHERS living in these streets. Not that they all "found" Nichols alone, but anyway - surely they must dissolve Lechmere´s candidacy on the geographical point? As Herlock so neatly points out, it is simply "irrelevant" where she lived. It does not belong to the case, and plays no role when we look at it. We can - and should - forget about it.
Problem solved, à la Herlock and Steve!

You go on doing ripperology your way, gentlemen, and I will do it my way.

But not out here for some time.

[MrBarnett]

Just another post before I leave again.

I notice Steve says that Lechmere´s mothers lodgings were not very close at all to Berner Street.

Gary wisely asks me to confirm that the lodgings were in Cable Street, and points out that this is not in line with a visit to his mother.

This is one of the matters where it seems nobody is listening to what I am saying. It was said in the docu that she lived in Cable Street, but I have corrected this since - a number of times, actually. But the Cable Street address, it seems, dies hard - if at all.

When Stride died, Lechmere´s mother did not live in Cable Street. Edward Stow found this out after the docu was made. She instead lived in 1 Mary Ann Street.

I hope it is close enough for you, Steve. But as you say, there were so many OTHERS living in these streets. Not that they all "found" Nichols alone, but anyway - surely they must dissolve Lechmere´s candidacy on the geographical point? As Herlock so neatly points out, it is simply "irrelevant" where she lived. It does not belong to the case, and plays no role when we look at it. We can - and should - forget about it.
Problem solved, à la Herlock and Steve!

You go on doing ripperology your way, gentlemen, and I will do it my way.

But not out here for some time.

Thanks for the clarification, Fish. The family, including CAL himself, had of course lived in Mary Ann Street before - in 1861 - so he was probably very familiar with the streets in the surrounding area, including Berner Street which would have been on the route from there to the Commercial Road.

[Fisherman]

Thanks for the clarification, Fish. The family, including CAL himself, had of course lived in Mary Ann Street before - in 1861 - so he was probably very familiar with the streets in the surrounding area, including Berner Street which would have been on the route from there to the Commercial Road.

My pleasure, Gary!

I think that we must look as realistically as possible on all of this, and to me, his mothers address is of vital importance in building a case against Charles Lechmere.

Saying that there were so many others living in the neighborhood is not doing the fine art of logical thinking any favours, since none of them were found standing near the body all alone close in time to her death. Of course his mother address is a piece of the puzzle that may well be of the utmost importance.

I won´t even go into what I think about calling the proximity between Berner Street and Mary Ann Street "irrelevant".

But what I would once again press, and what is often forgotten, is that we need not have Lechmere visiting his mother on the Stride murder night - it is quite enough to be aware of how the general area was one where he - just as you say - would have been very, very familiar. If he was in the extremely common habit of using his night off to go to a pub and meet up with friends for a drink, then it is likely in the extreme that he would have his regular water holes in this very district.

I fail to see how this glaringly obvious fact can evoke different kinds of protests and criticism - when searching for a suspect, it is of great interest if the person we come up with can be shown to have ties to the area/s where the crime/s is/are committed.

Lechmere had very obvious ties to the exact area where Stride died. Period.

I won´t be hanging around here much for some time, so let me take the opportunity to thank you for offering a sound and logical attitude to these matters. There are times out here when I despair totally about any logic at all being up for grabs, so your voice is very welcome - and much needed.

[Elamarna]

Just another post before I leave again.

I notice Steve says that Lechmere´s mothers lodgings were not very close at all to Berner Street.

Gary wisely asks me to confirm that the lodgings were in Cable Street, and points out that this is not in line with a visit to his mother.

This is one of the matters where it seems nobody is listening to what I am saying. It was said in the docu that she lived in Cable Street, but I have corrected this since - a number of times, actually. But the Cable Street address, it seems, dies hard - if at all.

When Stride died, Lechmere´s mother did not live in Cable Street. Edward Stow found this out after the docu was made. She instead lived in 1 Mary Ann Street.

I hope it is close enough for you, Steve. But as you say, there were so many OTHERS living in these streets. Not that they all "found" Nichols alone, but anyway - surely they must dissolve Lechmere´s candidacy on the geographical point? As Herlock so neatly points out, it is simply "irrelevant" where she lived. It does not belong to the case, and plays no role when we look at it. We can - and should - forget about it.
Problem solved, à la Herlock and Steve!

You go on doing ripperology your way, gentlemen, and I will do it my way.

But not out here for some time.

Fish, actually i didn't pick up on Cable Street and used Mary Ann Street. The figures i suggest were from memory, but a quick check on the 93-96 OS gives 241-241-256 yards.
Yes its close but not adjacent by an means. Its slight longer than the distance that Paul lived from Brown Yard.


Btw, Lechmere was not found alone with Nichols, he was 30-40 yards ahead of Robert Paul, until you find evidence that Lechmere was significantly further in front of Paul that remain the established historical fact based on the sources.

By all means Fish, carry on using you methods, where imagination is substituted for fact,
I on the other hand will carry on using the sources and following tried and tested methods of historical(or any subject for that matter) research.


Steve

[Elamarna]

Thanks for the clarification, Fish. The family, including CAL himself, had of course lived in Mary Ann Street before - in 1861 - so he was probably very familiar with the streets in the surrounding area, including Berner Street which would have been on the route from there to the Commercial Road.

Quite right Gary, but so would Backchurch Lane, Batty and Christian Street, Berner beung the middle option.
Not the most obvious route to either Doveton Street or Broad Street, but certainly possible.

Steve

[Fisherman]

Fish, actually i didn't pick up on Cable Street and used Mary Ann Street. The figures i suggest were from memory, but a quick check on the 93-96 OS gives 241-241-256 yards.
Yes its close but not adjacent by an means. Its slight longer than the distance that Paul lived from Brown Yard.


Btw, Lechmere was not found alone with Nichols, he was 30-40 yards ahead of Robert Paul, until you find evidence that Lechmere was significantly further in front of Paul that remain the established historical fact based on the sources.

By all means Fish, carry on using you methods, where imagination is substituted for fact,
I on the other hand will carry on using the sources and following tried and tested methods of historical(or any subject for that matter) research.


Steve

1. Lechmere would have been very much aquainted with the Berner Street area. Whether he visited his mother and daughter or not on the murder night is impossible to say, but it would certainly be a possibility with logical paths. Equally, he could have met friends and/or visited pubs.
All that matters is the proven matter that Lechmere was tied to the area. The rest is quibble country - your favoured territory.

2. Lechmere was found alone with Nichols. Robert Paul is recorded as stating that he walked down Bucks Row and as he came close to Browns, he saw a man stading in the street - Lechmere. That effectively means that Robert Paul found Lechmere alone in the street, close to the victim. It is just as much on record as Lechmeres version is. And Lechmeres version does NOT preclude that he was alone with the victim as Robert Paul arrived, on the contrary - Lechmere first HEARS Paul and then sees him emerging out of the gloom. So Lechmere too admits to having been found by Paul, standing alone and near the body. What he in a roundabout way denies is NOT having been fund alone with the body - it is having had time enough to be the killer.

3. As for substituting imagination for facts, I was not the one who imagined that Lechmere was not found alone with the body - you were. As I say, quibble country is your favoured theory, and if one is too fond of quibbling, one may lose one´s way at times.

But since I don´t want this to turn into MORE of quibble country, I send off by once again laying down as a fact that the ONLY thing that matters in this part of the debate is that we have unequivocal proof that Lechmere is tied to the Berner Street area.

That´s all. It is the important part, the base question answered and that was what I set out to do with these posts.

What YOU set out to do, I will leave for others to find out. A hint is that it is all about obfuscating, quibbling, trying to hide away the facts and claiming that you are a paragon of virtue when it comes to research.

A paragon of virtue who claims that Lechmere was absolutely not found alone close to the body of Polly Nichols by Robert Paul on the morning of the 31:st of August 1888.

There is an old fear of touching this wording, since it is apparently regarded as involving a possible hint at guilt, but when somebody IS found alone in a street where somebody lied murdered, then it simply must be au fait to point it out.

[caz]

"Could Mizen have thought....?"

Yes, he could have thought anything - just look at all the fancy suggestions that are offered on his account out here!

And I don´t think that the carmen would have been regarded as persons of interest at all, Caz - somebody had to find the body, don´t ya´know.

The point I was making here, Fish, is that if Paul hadn't blabbed to the papers, and if Cross hadn't come forward voluntarily, and if Mizen had promptly reported his encounter with these two strangers, who had left Buck's Row to draw his attention to the fact that Nichols was lying there, they would instantly have been sought, as obvious persons of interest, since nobody else had claimed to see them, including PC Neil, so they would be important witnesses if not potential suspects.

Mizen's boss: "So what questions did you ask these men and what identification and contact details did you get from them?"

Mizen: "Er, pass."

Mizen's boss [sighing]: "Okay, so you got a good look at both of them and you would recognise them again, in the event that they haven't scarpered to God knows where by now?"

Mizen: "Er, I'll get me coat."

Mizen's boss: "And return your truncheon before you leave, you stupid Constable."

So you could say that Paul and Cross saved Mizen's bacon by identifying themselves for him.

Love,

Caz
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[Elamarna]

Lets have a look.

1. Lechmere would have been very much aquainted with the Berner Street area. Whether he visited his mother and daughter or not on the murder night is impossible to say, but it would certainly be a possibility with logical paths. Equally, he could have met friends and/or visited pubs.
All that matters is the proven matter that Lechmere was tied to the area. The rest is quibble country - your favoured territory.


A fair point, the same applies to Kosminski also.

2. Lechmere was found alone with Nichols. Robert Paul is recorded as stating that he walked down Bucks Row and as he came close to Browns, he saw a man stading in the street - Lechmere. That effectively means that Robert Paul found Lechmere alone in the street, close to the victim. It is just as much on record as Lechmeres version is. And Lechmeres version does NOT preclude that he was alone with the victim as Robert Paul arrived, on the contrary - Lechmere first HEARS Paul and then sees him emerging out of the gloom. So Lechmere too admits to having been found by Paul, standing alone and near the body. What he in a roundabout way denies is NOT having been fund alone with the body - it is having had time enough to be the killer.

Your Opinion.
To suggest that Lechmere had been "found" by Paul and that he "admits" such is twisting language beyond was is reasonable.
No matter how much you wish to protest, there is nothing in the sources whixh says Lechmere is "found" or is "alone" with a body

3. As for substituting imagination for facts, I was not the one who imagined that Lechmere was not found alone with the body - you were. As I say, quibble country is your favoured theory, and if one is too fond of quibbling, one may lose one´s way at times.

Given that the sources do not say he is "found alone" with the body, that response is extremly poor and somewhat sad, but actually not unexpected.

But since I don´t want this to turn into MORE of quibble country, I send off by once again laying down as a fact that the ONLY thing that matters in this part of the debate is that we have unequivocal proof that Lechmere is tied to the Berner Street area.

Yes he has links, so does Kosminski

That´s all. It is the important part, the base question answered and that was what I set out to do with these posts.

What YOU set out to do, I will leave for others to find out. A hint is that it is all about obfuscating, quibbling, trying to hide away the facts and claiming that you are a paragon of virtue when it comes to research.

A paragon of virtue who claims that Lechmere was absolutely not found alone close to the body of Polly Nichols by Robert Paul on the morning of the 31:st of August 1888.

Misrepsensing again I see, Lechmere was seen by Paul at an unknown distance ahead, Lechmere was not alone in Bucks Row, he is walking ahead of Paul. Evidence to suggest he is alone does not seem to exist.

Noone has denied he was reasonably close to the Body, however it seems he was in the road, which is 24 foot wide, that's 8 yards, the body was by the gate to Brown's Yard some yards away.


Steve

[Elamarna]

A few clarifications needed here to some points

My pleasure, Gary!

I think that we must look as realistically as possible on all of this, and to me, his mothers address is of vital importance in building a case against Charles Lechmere.

Saying that there were so many others living in the neighborhood is not doing the fine art of logical thinking any favours, since none of them were found standing near the body all alone close in time to her death. Of course his mother address is a piece of the puzzle that may well be of the utmost importance.

"Many others" ? Who is talking of many others, I was talking specifically about the known addresses of the Kosminski's. While we do not know that Aaron would have been at any of the family homes on a given day; neither do we have any knowledge to support the idea Lechmere visited his mother on the night of the double event. The comment about "many others" misrepresents what was posted.

I won´t even go into what I think about calling the proximity between Berner Street and Mary Ann Street "irrelevant".

Again misrepresnting what was said, it was never said the proximity was "irrelevant".
Rather, the fact that it is not as close as implied is very Relevant indeed, particularly when one other suspect has connections to Berner Street, which are much closer.

But what I would once again press, and what is often forgotten, is that we need not have Lechmere visiting his mother on the Stride murder night - it is quite enough to be aware of how the general area was one where he - just as you say - would have been very, very familiar. If he was in the extremely common habit of using his night off to go to a pub and meet up with friends for a drink, then it is likely in the extreme that he would have his regular water holes in this very district.
I fail to see how this glaringly obvious fact can evoke different kinds of protests and criticism - when searching for a suspect, it is of great interest if the person we come up with can be shown to have ties to the area/s where the crime/s is/are committed.

A very fair point, the same however applies to Kosminski.

Lechmere had very obvious ties to the exact area where Stride died. Period.

Again a fair point, the same however applies to Kosminski.


Steve

[caz]

Not so, I´m afraid. The story the carman told was confirmed to Mizen as he saw Neil up in Bucks Row - there WAS a PC in place, just as had been stated.

Following on, when Neil said that he was the finder of the body and that it was not true that two men had found it before him, Mizen had a reaffirmation of the carmans story.

Everything added up AS LONG AS NEIL STUCK TO HIS STORY.

Mizen must have been flummoxed, to say the least, by the developments that ensued. I think there is every chance that he will have asked himself where things did not add up, and that he may have weighed in the possibility that he himself could have in some way misheard or misunderstood the carmans words.

What I think he did was to then go to the inquest and state as honestly as he could what he thought had transpired, and I think he did so without nourishing any suspicion against Lechmere, something that was overall reflected by the rest of the participators too. None of them will have realized the explosive power built into the disagreement between Mizen and Lechmere. I have heard it stated that this suggestion is stupid and that anybody would realize that power, but the fact of the matter is that it was overlooked by generations of ripperologists and armchair detectives, and so I think it must be accepted that it was simply overlooked by the inquest too.

Two possibilities here, Fish, if Lechmere did lie to Mizen about another PC wanting him in Buck's Row.

One: Mizen saw no reason to suspect Cross of any wrongdoing, despite the fact that PC Neil had not seen the two men or sent them to fetch him. In this situation, Mizen alone knew how likely it was that he had misheard or misunderstood the message, or had not paid sufficient attention to what was said, and he had to give the carman the benefit of the doubt, leaving him in the clear.

Two: Mizen did suspect Cross when he realised he had been lied to, but didn't dare say so or make a fuss, because he had failed to ask a single question, take any details or search either man, so any opportunity to catch the killer red-handed, with the murder weapon still on him, before he went on to kill more women, was lost.

Which option do you favour?

Or are there more?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have overall lost interest in "debating" with some of the people of this thread, and for very obvious reasons.

I now read from Herlock, who dabbles in the fine art of misrepresenting me on a daily basis, that I would have said that all Eastenders hated the police.

I have - of course, and as is so often the case when Herlock is involved - not said this at all. But in order to be able to attack me, Herlock needs to invent this falsehood.

What I said that there is absolutely no guarantee that the person who arrived after Lechmere did up at Browns would press the point to contact the police. And I said this because Herlock assured us all that this person WOULD press that point.

What I tried to do was to offer some necessary nuance, therefore. A contact with reality, if you will.

The Eastenders had a degree of distrust towards the police. It is an ascertained fact. And when this important point of mine is made to dissolve Herlocks misunderstanding or misleading, he says "Fisherman says that there is not a chance in hell that an Eastender would speak to the police!"

Are you never ashamed of yourself, Herlock, for doing this time and time again?

Or are you so entrenched in your efforts to tarnish me that you don´t even notice it?

It is an absolute shame for any sort of debate, and I am feeling embarrased to be on the same site. Please try and sober up and stop this malice, Herlock. It would do the debate a world of good if you could manage that.

If you are pondering some sort of retaliation post, kindly keep to the subject and explain to me where I have supposedly said what you claim I have said. It is simply not true, is it? Anyone who can read knows who is the misrepresenter.

I will keep an eye open for your answer, Herlock, just in case that you do not come clean - or avoid the point.

I think that the quoted post should be preserved for posterity because I would describe it as ‘Fish to a tee’. Only he could use misinterpretation to accuse another poster (me as Usual) of misinterpretation whilst adopted a ‘wounded’ tone.

I’m not going to bother trawling back through previous points but I’ll just reiterate my original point. It was simply that in electing to remain at the scene and to involve another witness (Paul) CL would have known that this scenario (one that was of his own making) would have in all likelihood have led to a confrontation with the police. And, as he might have been contaminated with Polly’s blood and he would have been in possession of the murder weapon then this confrontation with the police would likely have been a fatal one.



Disagree with that if you wish but does anyone see it as in any way dishonest or a misinterpretation of the facts?

In a previous post I also speculated on the possible outcomes for CL in approaching Paul. As i said, I haven’t trawled back, but I’m pretty certain that I said that Paul might have wanted to just walk on and not get involved. I thought it perhaps unlikely but I didn’t ignore it. My point was of course, which is apparent to anyone unblinkered, that CL could not have relied on Paul not suggesting the police (ie. that it was a risk too far.)

I’ll now allow others to judge. But I really am getting tired of the nasty, insulting comments. We can all see where they originate and why.

I accept criticism, I accept being disagreed with, I even accept being disliked. I also accept that I can get a little ‘full on’ in the heat of debate but I don’t constantly attempt to belittle others points of view. This all comes from an overarching obsession with being ‘the man that caught the ripper.’

[caz]

This must be one of the very worst posts i have seen on casebook in a long time, all over the place, ignoring the OP that we cannot place Lechmere in the area of the murders at the time of the murders other than for Nichols.
Is the whole post simply constructed to avoid that issue?

I agree, Steve.

Even today, a reliable TOD is extremely hard to establish without recourse to supporting evidence of a non-scientific nature, such as CCTV and witness testimony, indicating the victim's movements and last known sightings and so on. At least the difficulty is acknowledged these days, while back in 1888 they were working largely in the dark and only thought they knew.

If Fish rejects all witness testimony that clashes with his preferred TOD for any of the victims, he's lost, starting with Nichols. He rejects Lechmere's testimony because he obviously needs him there at the time of attack, and it goes downhill from there, needing him to be with Chapman when she died, but not be late for work.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just another post before I leave again.

I notice Steve says that Lechmere´s mothers lodgings were not very close at all to Berner Street.

Gary wisely asks me to confirm that the lodgings were in Cable Street, and points out that this is not in line with a visit to his mother.

This is one of the matters where it seems nobody is listening to what I am saying. It was said in the docu that she lived in Cable Street, but I have corrected this since - a number of times, actually. But the Cable Street address, it seems, dies hard - if at all.

When Stride died, Lechmere´s mother did not live in Cable Street. Edward Stow found this out after the docu was made. She instead lived in 1 Mary Ann Street.

I hope it is close enough for you, Steve. But as you say, there were so many OTHERS living in these streets. Not that they all "found" Nichols alone, but anyway - surely they must dissolve Lechmere´s candidacy on the geographical point? As Herlock so neatly points out, it is simply "irrelevant" where she lived. It does not belong to the case, and plays no role when we look at it. We can - and should - forget about it.
Problem solved, à la Herlock and Steve!

You go on doing ripperology your way, gentlemen, and I will do it my way.

But not out here for some time.

Why would he kill near to his mothers house or any other family dwelling.
What connection does any family dwelling have to the case.
Is it likely that a CL, contaminated with blood and in possession of body parts, would arrive at his mothers house.
If stopped by the police at 3am would CL have said “it ok officer im on my way to visiting Aunty Joan!”

You can do Ripperology your own way Fish. Which is to manoeuvre every single fact so that it points to CL’s guilt. Its transparent to all. The case against CL, which not strong to begin with, is crumbling around your feet.

[caz]

Yes, Griffiths was very clear about the suggested murder victims and the order in which they died.

And yes again, Caz, you are sooooooo correct: if you use the ruse Lechmere used in Bucks Row, then you cannot use it again later.

What are you suggesting? That he should have run and saved it for another day?

Lechmere could have walked away from the scene and then he'd have had his joker to play if he was caught near one of his subsequent scenes of crime and had no other option but to be ready with an innocent explanation.

And I suggest this is precisely what the killer did - he simply walked away before the next person, or beat copper, could come along, and never drew attention to himself. That way, if he was in fact seen negotiating with Chapman, for instance, or manhandling Stride, or canoodling with Eddowes, or going with Kelly into her room, he couldn't possibly have been identified as the same man who had claimed to find Nichols and attended the inquest.

If any of those sightings were of the killer himself with his victim, I'd say there is next to no chance that this was Lechmere behaving so recklessly after his close call in Buck's Row. He'd have been insane to draw attention to himself a second time, because as you say, I am 'sooooooo correct' that he 'cannot' use his joker a second time.

Love,

Caz
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