Mr Blotchy

[Joshua Rogan]

There are a couple of courts on the south side of Whitechapel High Street, just before you reach George Yard if walking westward, and I have been trying to find this section of buildings in Goads. I've had no luck yet, it's identified as Sheet 97, Vol. V., but there is no sheet 97 in Vol. V.
Which may mean that sheet has not survived, unless someone else has better luck than I have.

No luck either, that sheet does seem to be missing. Fortunately the OS maps name some of the courts!

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom...layers=163&b=1

[Wickerman]

Lewis was under oath - and was liable for a fine if misbehaving and with no conflicting testimony, Lewis's shadow Mrs.Kennedy was not.

I doubt a witness in an inquest felt they were under any significant threat. This was not a murder trial. Maria Harvey was "misbehaving" according to the press, giving back-chat to the Coroner, and Maxwell, as we all know was warned about her testimony being contrary to others.
It depends what you mean by "misbehaving".

[As a side note, I always wondered about that comment from Macdonald. I do not read anything spoken by other witnesses which was contradicted by Maxwell. The witnesses who spoke both before Maxwell and after her, none of whom suggested Kelly had died overnight - contradicting Maxwell]

[Wickerman]

No luck either, that sheet does seem to be missing. Fortunately the OS maps name some of the courts!

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom...layers=163&b=1

Thankyou Joshua, I recall you using that site before, I keep forgetting about it.

[RockySullivan]

Hi Rocky. The coffee stall keeper claimed the man who visited his stall only resembled George R. Sims. The stallkeeper knew it couldn't have been Sim because this other man ordered and consumed many sausages and a meat pie. I'm guessing Sims writing as Dagonet must have reported throughout his writings of some intestinal condition that didn't allow him to eat sausages, maybe. Either way, was the stall something mobile like a food cart, or was it a brick-and-mortar shop where sausages and meat pies could be cooked?

Howdy Devil, I know haha i gathered that. Still it sounds as if the coffee man's story took place before the double event, so i'm wondering where can that be found?

[RockySullivan]

There are a couple of courts on the south side of Whitechapel High Street, just before you reach George Yard if walking westward, and I have been trying to find this section of buildings in Goads. I've had no luck yet, it's identified as Sheet 97, Vol. V., but there is no sheet 97 in Vol. V.
Which may mean that sheet has not survived, unless someone else has better luck than I have.

Ok Wick I was thinking the white spaces were courts

[jerryd]

This 1868 map names a few of them.

[jerryd]

Wasn't it Spectacle Alley where the coffee shop was located that Leon Goldstein visited?

[Fisherman]

Lewis was under oath - and was liable for a fine if misbehaving and with no conflicting testimony, Lewis's shadow Mrs.Kennedy was not.

It still does not explain why Lewis/Kennedy (if the two names should be sorted in like that) was all over the place when giving information. Why would she deliberatley misinform as Kennedy and be truthful as Lewis? That makes no sense whatsoever, not least as she would compromise her own testimony rather badly by doing it.

[Sam Flynn]

It still does not explain why Lewis/Kennedy (if the two names should be sorted in like that) was all over the place when giving information. Why would she deliberatley misinform as Kennedy and be truthful as Lewis? That makes no sense whatsoever, not least as she would compromise her own testimony rather badly by doing it.

The "Kennedy" stories all appear to date back to November 10th - there are later "Kennedy" reports that dribble out until the 17th November, but they contain ostensibly the same information as was reported in the Star, Evening News and St James Gazette on the 10th. As such, this is probably less a matter of "deliberate misinformation" on Lewis/Kennedy's part, but an instance of the typical confusion and/or hearsay that often characterised early press coverage.

Apart from the dribbled-out recurrence of the names "Kennedy" and "Gallagher" in subsequent reports, it's noteworthy that the names "Lewis" and "Keyler" don't seem to appear in the press until the papers covered the inquest proper. I suspect that it was at this point that the correct names of the protagonists (the witness and the relatives with whom she was staying) became definitively known.

[Fisherman]

The "Kennedy" stories all appear to date back to November 10th - there are later "Kennedy" reports that dribble out until the 17th November, but they contain ostensibly the same information as was reported in the Star, Evening News and St James Gazette on the 10th. As such, this is probably less a matter of "deliberate misinformation" on Lewis/Kennedy's part, but an instance of the typical confusion and/or hearsay that often characterised early press coverage.

Apart from the dribbled-out recurrence of the names "Kennedy" and "Gallagher" in subsequent reports, it's noteworthy that the names "Lewis" and "Keyler" don't seem to appear in the press until the papers covered the inquest proper. I suspect that it was at this point that the correct names of the protagonists (the witness and the relatives with whom she was staying) became definitively known.

Please observe, Gareth, that I am not saying that they were or were not just the one person. However, as Jon has pointed out, there are a number of matters where the two differ:

Kennedy is at the Britannia at about 3 AM and Lewis at the Keylers at 2.30 AM. That is no mishearing or misreporting, as far as I´m concerned. Kennedy says she is with Kelly outside the Britannia but Lewis does not know Kelly. That is no mishearing or misreporting as far as I´m concerend. Kennedy has one man and two women outside the Britannia and Lewis has just the one woman and a man there. Kennedy does not mention any loiterer outside the court, but Lewis does.

It all becomes a bit too much when we try to explain away all of this as mishearing or misreportings. Going down that lane, we can rearrange the case to make anybody out as the killer.

It becomes quite apparent that if the two names stood for the same woman, then that woman is not to be relied upon testimonywise. From the moment she swops names, she tells differing stories about the same matters time and again. That means that we should not touch her information with a pair of pliers if we want to be taken seriously ourselves.

Of course, the real problem is that you say that two women cannot possibly ("not a chance", is how you word yourself) present that close stories without being the same person, whereas you have no problems at all claiming it as the by far most logical solution that two serial killers may more or less simultaneously and in the same town engage in cutting away abdominal walls, ripping from ribs to pubes, taking out uteri, taking out hearts, stealing rings, targetting prostitutes.

Having noticed that, you deduct that one of them lived in the East End and the other it the West End, "almost certainly" so. And that they cut out uteri for different reasons, even!

If you can accomodate THAT kind of thinking, then there should be acres of space to allow for Lewis and Kennedy being two women.

It´s either that, or we are left to conclude that you only choose to follow your own logic when it suits your suggested scenarios. It´s a massive cop-out the way I see it.

[Sam Flynn]

It all becomes a bit too much when we try to explain away all of this as mishearing or misreportings.

A bit too much? Early press reports were frequently erroneous throughout the Ripper case, so it's quite likely that this is what we're dealing with here.

It´s either that, or we are left to conclude that you only choose to follow your own logic when it suits your suggested scenarios. It´s a massive cop-out the way I see it.

I'm not in the least "copping out" or "following my own logic" - quite the contrary, I'm applying my experience of the case, and the source materials, to the matter in hand.

[Sam Flynn]

Of course, the real problem is that you say that two women cannot possibly ("not a chance", is how you word yourself) present that close stories without being the same person, whereas you have no problems at all claiming it as the by far most logical solution that two serial killers may more or less simultaneously and in the same town engage in cutting away abdominal walls, ripping from ribs to pubes, taking out uteri, taking out hearts, stealing rings, targetting prostitutes.

The chances of two independent women doing exactly the same things on the same night (leaving home to stay with relatives in the little room opposite Mary Kelly, for instance) are very small.

The chances of more than one independent killer doing rather different things to women in different circumstances and in entirely separate parts of London is another matter entirely. The primary reason why you don't acknowledge the significance of these differences is because there's an agenda to pursue.

In contrast, I don't have an agenda when it comes to Kennedy; on the contrary, I'd welcome another instance of reliable, independent witness testimony in respect of Kelly. However, it's obvious to me that the "Kennedy" accounts don't fall into that category.

[Fisherman]

[QUOTE=Sam Flynn;436344]A bit too much? Early press reports were frequently erroneous throughout the Ripper case, so it's quite likely that this is what we're dealing with here.

No, it is not. If "Kennedy" said that she was at the Britannia before 2.30, the papers would not write that she said 3 AM by mishearing or mistake. As I said, facilitating your Ripperology like this makes for a wonderful world of opportunitites, but a bleak reality of having tampered with the evidence. You are probaly going to dislike that wording, but if we say that Kennedy probaly told the press all the things Lewis did, and in the same fasion, then we ARE tampering with the evidence, because it tells another story. If that story should not dovetail with how we want things to be, we are not at liberty to say that this was because the press misreported things, over and over again and in very peculiar fashions.

I'm not in the least "copping out" or "following my own logic" - quite the contrary, I'm applying my experience of the case, and the source materials, to the matter in hand.

You have no experience of the case that tells you that the two killers had different reasons for cutting the uteri out, for example. It has nothing at all to do with experience and everything to do with following your own logic. It´s supposition and conjecture throughout.
The source material tells us that these two killers did many similar things to their victims, some of them extremely rare. When we say that they were nevertheless not just the one killer, we therefore impose upon the laws of logic. Consequently, in my world, you cannot employ one sort of thinking in the Lewis/Kennedy case and a totally opposing methodology in the Ripper/Torso killer matter.

I fully understand that you will do so nevertheless, and you may perhaps want to dub that a prime example of logic and fair source handling. Which is why I take the time and effort to point out that it is anything but, at least in the world I inhabitate. I will therefore stand by what I say and call it a cop-out.
Then again, maybe I do not have as good an "understanding of the case" as you have, and maybe I cannot handle the source material with the same light hand as you.

[RockySullivan]

Here's a quetion for jerryd, if Arnold had a boil or boils why did the reporter suggest Dennis Lynch as John Leary? Did Dennis Lynch also have boils or a skin condition? Or was Arnold's skin condition perhaps not so prominent or not in the description the newspaper man heard

[Harry D]

The primary reason why you don't acknowledge the significance of these differences is because there's an agenda to pursue.

That might be the case for Fisherman, but I have no dog in this fight (so to speak) and I recognise the similarities between the two cases.