Window of Time for Nichols murder

[Abby Normal]

Yes it is. If he left home at 3.20, he would have passed Bucks Row at 3.27, eons of time before Paul was there.
But of course, I think that Lechmere was the killer, and my thinking is that he may well have left well before both times. However, his wife and family will have had a time when they THOUGHT he left home, and if he was not the killer, that would probably be a correct time. If he WAS the killer, though, he would be very likely to produce a time to the police that was in keeping with what the family thought, in case they asked. But given that he knew that he was in Bucks Row at around 3.40-3.45, he was not going to say 3.20 when the police asked. I think he said "Well, normally I leave at 3.20, but on this day I was late and so I did not leave until 3.30", hoping to cover for his late presence in Bucks Row. As we can see, it still does not fit the bill, though, since he should have passed the street at around 3.36-3.37 if he left home at 3.30.

agree fish. and I mistakenly wrote"

that the more likely time he left that day was 3:30?".

meant to say 3:20 and I went back and corrected.

[Abby Normal]

Yup - the exact double of Pauls walk, that took 17 minutes according to Google Maps. Which is why I say that Lechmere would normally have afforded 40 minutes, starting out at 3.20, whereas Paul would have started out at 3.40, allowing him 20 minutes. And so I believe we can conclude that Paul was due at work at 4 AM in the mornings, just as Lechmere was. And normally, Paul would pass Bucks Row at 3.41, some fourteen minutes after Lechmere, who would have passed it at 3.27. That all explains why the two had not seen each other before. But they should not have seen each other on the murder morning either, since Lechmere should have passed some eight minutes ahead of Paul.
But he didn't, did he?

agree. if it took around 34 minutes to walk to work every day, someone like lech would be leaving evry day no later than 3:20, to give himself plenty of time to get to work early.

and if 3:20 was when he left that morning he would be well ahead of Paul. and if innocent hard to see why he would be lingering around pollys body for so long before Paul arrived. indeed by his own description its only seconds it seems before he discovers its a woman and Paul arrives. something dosnt add up.

[Fisherman]

agree. if it took around 34 minutes to walk to work every day, someone like lech would be leaving evry day no later than 3:20, to give himself plenty of time to get to work early.

and if 3:20 was when he left that morning he would be well ahead of Paul. and if innocent hard to see why he would be lingering around pollys body for so long before Paul arrived. indeed by his own description its only seconds it seems before he discovers its a woman and Paul arrives. something dosnt add up.

Or it adds up eminently - if he was the killer. If that was the case, the ONLY scenario in which he would have an alibi would be one where he arrived at the murder site in so short a time before Paul that he could not have had the time to do the deed. And lo and behold, that is EXACTLY what he claims. Whaddayaknow!!
But Lechmere cannot support this, of course. It would have helped immensely if Paul had said that "there was this man who walked in front of me. I first saw him as he passed outside the lights of the Bath Street brewery, and then he walked into Bucks Row some little time before I did.I could hear his steps as he walked down the street in the darkness, and then it went silent. Some seconds later I saw that he had halted in the middle of the street..."

Then again, if Paul never saw or heard him, why would he say such a thing?

It tells a story about the level of prejudiced thinking prevalent with the police at that stage, I'm afraid.

[Abby Normal]

Or it adds up eminently - if he was the killer. If that was the case, the ONLY scenario in which he would have an alibi would be one where he arrived at the murder site in so short a time before Paul that he could not have had the time to do the deed. And lo and behold, that is EXACTLY what he claims. Whaddayaknow!!
But Lechmere cannot support this, of course. It would have helped immensely if Paul had said that "there was this man who walked in front of me. I first saw him as he passed outside the lights of the Bath Street brewery, and then he walked into Bucks Row some little time before I did.I could hear his steps as he walked down the street in the darkness, and then it went silent. Some seconds later I saw that he had halted in the middle of the street..."

Then again, if Paul never saw or heard him, why would he say such a thing?

It tells a story about the level of prejudiced thinking prevalent with the police at that stage, I'm afraid.

yup. any way you look at it lech is in bucks row far longer than his story would allow and certainly enough time to be her killer. certainly longer than described by his own story of finding the body and how soon after paul arrived.

[Sam Flynn]

yup. any way you look at it lech is in bucks row far longer than his story would allow

Really? How many of the people involved was wearing a watch? Of those who had a watch, how many used it to keep careful and precise note of the time at any given point?

[John G]

And still, people competing in walking at speeds up to around seven miles per hour! Athletic walking is of course something that people normally don't engage in, but it is nevertheless a sport that requires one foot on the ground at all times, meaning that it is NOT running.
regardless of this piece of information, it applies that people can walk quickly when required, just as it applies that Pauls assessment of "no more than four minutes" cannot be discounted in any shape or form.

I find it kind of typical that once I point to how people Can walk at speeds at around seven miles per hour, there is an immediate outcry based on a faulty belief that I would have somehow claimed that Lechmere and Paul did (not that you are doing it, but others seem to!). I am merely pointing out that a sprinter can easily cover 300 yards in about 45 seconds and a walking athlete can do it in much under two minutes. Make of that what you will, as long as you don't make it into an assertion that I am comparing Lechmere and Paul to Jesse Owens and Usain Bolt!

Athletics walking is highly specialized, involving a unique style, amounting to a very unusual gait: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article

Put simply, it isn't realistic to hypothesize that an ordinary individual would adopt such a style during an everyday walk, let alone an individual from 1888, i.e. before race walking had even been developed as an athletics event.

[Elamarna]

I am not establishing any measurement of accuracy, Steve - I am saying that Paul said "no more than four minutes", and that this assessement is what we have to go by. Once we add or detract from it, we make a weaker case, and the more we detract or add, the weaker it gets. That is not equivalent to any such suggestion necessarily being wrong, but it is a general guideline that we need to relate to.

We certainly do not have to go by it, the reliability of such Estimates needs to be seriously considered, and not just taken at face value. The very language used, "No more than four minutes", strongly suggests that he has nothing to use for comparison, that it is a rough guess.
I see your argument is now that any variation on a guess/estimate is weaker than the original, that is your belief.

Once we say "He was probably 30 seconds wrong there, and who knows if that other guy was not three minutes wrong there, and that wording should probably read A, not B, plus there is no need to accept that the timing X is correct, we allow ourselves learoom to do just about anything. Just about as in "adjust about". I have given my reasons for why I think Paul must be our safest bet, and as long as nobody has presented any good reason for me to abandon that stance, I will stay by it. But believe me, if such a reason comes along, I will leave it!

People have given reasons, that unless he has a watch, any estimate he gives cannot be seen as reliable. This is because the perception of passing time is a very well documented variable. that you refuse to accept such is your choice.
Christer you would never change your view, because that view is set in stone, to say otherwise is not in accordance with reality.

Saying that Neils "at 3.45" is an exact timing is not going to do the trick, however. I think that he had a half-hour beat, and that he simply may have counted backwards to find at which point in time he was due in Bucks Row, and then he took it from there. According to that schedule, he was there "at" 10.45, 11.15, 11.45, 01.15, 01.15, 02.15, 02.45, 03.15 and 03.45. And once he had testified on the first day of the inquest, the two other PC:s were likely to follow suit. In the initial articles, we have this wording in the East London Advertiser: " The facts are that Constable John Neil was walking down Buck's-row, Thomas-street, Whitechapel, about a quarter to four on Friday morning, when he discovered a woman between 35 and 40 years of age lying at the side of the street with her throat cut right open from ear to ear, the instrument with which the deed was done traversing the throat from left to right."

"About" a quarter to four. Other papers say "at" a quarter to four. Regardless, it may well be that both wordings rely on Neils half-hour orbit timings - and they could well have been off quite a lot if he had no timepiece to check them by.

The usual tricks I see, that quote is from the Advertiser of the 1st, before the inquest.
It is a journalistic report, it is not the words of Neil, or are we going to say it's some form of interview? Been there before, have we not.
The article being purely reporter based, is far less reliable than a report form the inquest, all of which as far as i am aware say at 3.45 or at a quarter to four.


Steve

[Fisherman]

Athletics walking is highly specialized, involving a unique style, amounting to a very unusual gait: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article

Put simply, it isn't realistic to hypothesize that an ordinary individual would adopt such a style during an everyday walk, let alone an individual from 1888, i.e. before race walking had even been developed as an athletics event.

Sigh! I wrote: "I find it kind of typical that once I point to how people Can walk at speeds at around seven miles per hour, there is an immediate outcry based on a faulty belief that I would have somehow claimed that Lechmere and Paul did (not that you are doing it, but others seem to!)"

And now you did it!

I know quite well that the carmen did not walk like that. But it IS an example of how fast a person can walk, when walking is at a maximum speed - seven miles per hour.

I suggest that the carmen hurried as best as they could and made the 300 yards stretch somewhere around 2-3 minutes, allowing for Pauls approximation to be correct.

[Abby Normal]

Really? How many of the people involved was wearing a watch? Of those who had a watch, how many used it to keep careful and precise note of the time at any given point?

hi sam
his story of stopping and discovering the body was only seconds, maybe a minute the way he described before paul arrives. yet according to when he left, either 3;20 or 3:30 he was there for far longer even if you go with 3:30. and since he usually left home around 3:20 I would go closer to that.

you don't need a watch to figure it out, its simple logic.

[Fisherman]

We certainly do not have to go by it, the reliability of such Estimates needs to be seriously considered, and not just taken at face value. The very language used, "No more than four minutes", strongly suggests that he has nothing to use for comparison, that it is a rough guess.
I see your argument is now that any variation on a guess/estimate is weaker than the original, that is your belief.

I said that we have to relate to it, not that we have to go by it, Steve. Please read! And yes, retrospective estimations that differ from approximations are generally speaking not as good as the approximations themselves. And just as I said, the further removed from the approximations we get, the less likely it is that the estimations are better than the original approximations. It is a law of nature, more or less. If somebody says "It took around an hour", then if there is no reason to disbelieve that approximation, estimating that two hours is more correct is not a sensible thing to do. Estimating ten hours is worse. Estimating a hundred hours even more so. If you had bothered to read what I said, you would know that I said that the estimations must not be wrong, but the general rule is that the original approximations are what we must work with as being closest to the truth until we have evidence that alters that view.
Reading before you answer is never a bad thing, you know.


People have given reasons, that unless he has a watch, any estimate he gives cannot be seen as reliable. This is because the perception of passing time is a very well documented variable. that you refuse to accept such is your choice.
Christer you would never change your view, because that view is set in stone, to say otherwise is not in accordance with reality.

Don't be a complete nutter, please. I have never said or implied in any way that I refuse to accept that people can mistake time spaces. I would be a complete idiot if I did. What I say is that once we HAVE an estimation, that estimation is what we must work from unless we know it is wrong or more likely to be wrong than correct. it is like somebody saying that a pickpockets shirt was blue - that may be wrong, m but if there is no evidence to the contrary, then regardless of our knowledge that people get these things wrong every now and then, our best guess is that the shirt WAS blue. How hard can it be? It can obviously be VERY hard, eh?


The usual tricks I see, that quote is from the Advertiser of the 1st, before the inquest.
It is a journalistic report, it is not the words of Neil, or are we going to say it's some form of interview? Been there before, have we not.
The article being purely reporter based, is far less reliable than a report form the inquest, all of which as far as i am aware say at 3.45 or at a quarter to four.

The article as such was taken down at a remove in time closer to the deed than the inquest. Psychological empire tells us that we tend to reshape matters in our minds over time. Apparently, that never entered your mind, eh? If it was said at the inquest, it is more likely to be true?
The only "usual trick" at play here is your dribbling with the cards. Saying "at" was never another way of saying "exactly". It is an expression that is often used in combination with "around"; "Iīll be there at around ten o clock". People who say they go to bed at 8 PM do not stand by the side of the bed looking at their watches, only to dive, head first, into bed at 8.00.00. When people say "Dinner is served at seven o clock", that is an approximation - that is the time around which dinner will be served. Neil was, is and remains a much less confident and secure source of information than Paul in this respect, regardless of your efforts to twist and distort. Plus, of course, Neil may well have based his take on. how he knew that he was SUPPOSED to be in Bucks Row "at" 3.45 - approximately. If a cheese had as many holes in it as your argumentation, it could double as an oxygen tube at your local hospital.


Steve

Read the bold above. I mean it: READ it.

[Elamarna]

I have no way of agreeing about when you arrived at work, Steve.

... but I DO agree that victorian working men may have had good reason to arrive a few minutes before starting time, more so than we have today. However, if we accept this, then we must also accept that the employers had immaculate timings to offer - their clocks could not be a few minutes off, since that would possibly get innocent workers into trouble. Which is why I think that there was a clock at Pauls place of work that the employers went by, and that they had legal reason to do so - this clock will have been correct and checked frequently.

Please tell how the clocks were synchronized, and what was the source used? This is imaginative thinking.

Similarly, anybody with an interest to stay employed and who had a timepiece, would have been acutely aware of how important it was for that timepiece to correctly relate to the employers ditto. Which is why I think Paul knew exactly what the time was on that morning, and in its turn that is why I say that we need to listen to him. Not least since we know that he claimed to have been late! If, as you suggest Steve, he wanted to be some little time ahead of the starting time at work, then leaving home at 3.40 would ensure that this succeeded - the 17 minute walk would be completed at 3.57, and he would be in the clear.
If, however, he didn't leave home until 3.44, arriving in Bucks Row EXACTLY at 3.45, he would stand to arrive a minute late at work, so he would effectively be late and he would have reason to hurry to make up for that lost time.

He may have had a time piece in the house, however how accurate was it?
How was it synchronized with the supposed clock highly accurate, at work.

Are you suggesting he had a watch on him ?
If so how was that time piece synchronized and what source was used? The same question as above.

I see we have this fictional 17 minutes appearing again. Where does this 17 minute walk come from, it appears to be imagination.
The distance from 30 Foster St to his place of work is approx 1364 yards, depending on his exact workplace, which is unknown. to take 17 minutes he is walking at just over 2.5mph.
I asked you earlier where this 17 minutes comes from? I ask you again?

If Pauls timepiece was totally unreliable he would A/ need not to rely on it, and B/ not have said with confidence that it was EXACTLY 3.45 as he passed into Bucks Row.

I am a stickler for times myself, and I think I recognize that in Paul too.

Who is saying it was totally unreliable? A clock or watch can be 100% reliable but will give the wrong time if not synchronized with GMT, which it was not.

That is all that is being said.

Steve

[Fisherman]

Really? How many of the people involved was wearing a watch? Of those who had a watch, how many used it to keep careful and precise note of the time at any given point?

We donīt know that, do we? All we know is which timings were given and the implications of them if they were correct or near correct. And that is material for the waste paper basket as long as it implies what it does, right? If we don't like it, change it. Itīs a brave new world!

[Elamarna]

thanks El
I think someone who seemed to be rather anal, and held down a job where punctuality was crucial for over twenty years that he would be giving himself plenty of time to arrive early! Im thinking like you he would plan on getting there at least ten minutes early every day.

Now if he normally left at 3:20. then isn't it more likely that between the two times we have for when he left for work that fateful morning-3:20 and 3:30, that the more likely time he left that day was 3:20?

Hi Abby

if one wishes to start from the premise that he is lying of course.
He said he was late, it happens. so was Paul apparently, was he being untruthful too?

Steve

[Elamarna]

Google maps has the distance Doveton Street - Broad Street Place down as 34 minutes. That will be a decent indicator. But given that it is a fair distance, differences in walking speed and traffic may influence it to a significant degree.

I have no issues with that, especially as the routes has changed considerably to the east of Bucks Row.

[Elamarna]

thanks-a 34 minute walk?

Abby

At speeds above an average of 3.1 mph, using the routes then available it could be done in under 30 minutes.

Steve