Lechmere versus Richardson.

[Mark J D]

No I think I am getting the gist of exactly what you are saying. But again, you continue to talk down to me. To mock me.

Paddy, you haven't understood a single thing I've said. That's not an insult: I say it with sadness and a real sense of failure. I'm sure you're a decent guy; but we're not going to get anywhere. So let's just forget it, okay? You win.

Thanks.

M.

[drstrange169]

Caveat warning! I don't know if this is true, I read it on a facebook group about a month ago.

The writer claimed Richardson's daughter was born in Backchurch Lane.

[drstrange169]

>> I don’t recall anyone stating that Lechmere disliked Jews. Perhaps you can unearth that for us. <<


"I've speculated before that Lech might have been a raging antisemite desperate to get out of an increasingly Jewish area."

Mark J D Evidence of innocence thread

[Paddy Goose]

Paddy,

It was the coroner who picked up on the fact that the police did not go house to house in Buck’s Row and politely suggested they did so.

Gary

Thanks Gary, and yes I knew that. I'm sure the police took the coroner's suggestion to heart. And if we don't know the results of their enquires house to house in Buck's Row, I can make an educated guess as to where those results were. In police notebooks.

You recall Gary I have been mocked here for even mentioning the term police notebooks on Lechmere threads.

[Mark J D]

>> i don’t recall anyone stating that lechmere disliked jews. Perhaps you can unearth that for us. <<

m.

[Paddy Goose]

Paddy, you haven't understood a single thing I've said. That's not an insult: I say it with sadness and a real sense of failure. I'm sure you're a decent guy; but we're not going to get anywhere. So let's just forget it, okay? You win.

Thanks.

M.

Yes it is certainly an insult that you state I don't "understand" a single thing you've said.

But that is simply your "posting" personality. To denigrate.

Mark I'm sure you are a decent guy too. None of this is personal in any way.

Pads

[Paddy Goose]

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m.

Thanks, when did he move? Do we know the date?

[Mark J D]

Thanks, when did he move? Do we know the date?

June 1888, to judge from the date we know his kids changed school.

M.

[SuperShodan]

I don't have a problem with Lech being a suspect. It is the utter nonsense BS fabrication that goes along with him that is just so stupid. Fictitious statements about his character, his dislike of Jews, domineering mother, his fantasy illness in October and so on. From being seen standing where he said he was, we have this quarter century reign of terror based on nothing. No evidence he even used prostitutes, which I think is a basic requirement in this case I think, or even owned or carried a knife day-to-day.

Yes a suspect, but cut out all the bull. It was you I believe (but may be wrong so apologies if so), that had Lechmere chalking up 23 victims/attacks. Pure fiction based on no character traits or known behaviours that this is even remotely possible.

I don’t know what Lechmere thought of Jewish immigration. In terms of his character we can only guess. I suspect like many serial killers he was outwardly completely normal. It’s partly why they are so hard to catch.

For example, Dennis Neilson was a civil servant who had previously been a policeman. A model citizen if ever there was one. However, he had body parts in bags in his wardrobe, he flushed bits down the toilet and boiled peoples heads in pots. He still attracted no attention whatsoever and had a good job and an ordinary life. So Lechmere’s character isn’t a factor for me. Being a hardworking family man in no way excludes him from being a suspect. I do wonder about the move in June 1888 though. He moved his large family into just 4 rooms, and he moved away from where he had lived for many years. I think something happened, why else would he decant to a smaller home in Doveton Street ?

Moving on, Lechmere’s domineering mother is a suggestion. It’s possible. It could be the opposite, he could be a mummy’s boy. He lived with his mother even after he got married and prior to June 1888 never lived more than a street away from her.

I’ve never heard about a mystery illness but I would be interested in the theory.

However, the point is that his relationship with his mother, his character, a potential illness and such like is just speculation, and it’s not why I think Lechmere is JTR. I don’t recall any Lechmere researcher basing his candidacy on any of these factors. I certainly don’t.

Lastly, the 23 victims. I have a list of 23 potential JTR attacks. These are just my notes and I doubt if all of them are JTR. My position is that the C5 gives us a misleading picture. In particular looking for suspects who were incarcerated or died shortly after MJK (like Druitt) will likely lead us down dead ends. I also think that Nichols was definitely not his first murder.

[Paddy Goose]

Mark, Gary, both of you said to me the coroner suggested the police conduct a house to house on Buck's Row. Neither of you made it clear whether you thought the police in fact did conduct the house to house as suggested.

Because in looking further into the thread Evidence of Innocence on Feb 4, I saw this you posted Gary -

There are numerous references to the investigations undertaken by the police in the Nichols and Chapman cases, but no mention of any into ‘Cross’ or Paul.

Look at the HO index to the Nichols file compiled on 25/10/1888:

(The numbers are page numbers)

And you showed this image



Gary, or anyone - are you proposing this list includes the house to house inquiries on Buck's Row suggested by the Coroner? Or not.

Because Gary this was the one thing you reiterated to me after I had initially replied to Mark. Just this one thing. I don't understand the level of police incompetence you are suggesting, either of you. Was it

(a) the police had to be told or rather suggested to conduct the house to house in Buck's Row
or
(b) they blew off the coroner's suggestion and never bothered to conduct the house to house anyway

[GBinOz]

So….yes we can say ‘what if’ Lechmere had arrived at the scene earlier? He could have killed her? Correct but even then there’s a huge ‘but.’

If he’d left the house at 3.25 and arrived at Bucks Row at 3.33 and the murder took 2 minutes tops, why was he still there when Paul arrived? Did he fancy a cigarette and a quick read of the paper before moving on to works? And then we could ask ‘well he could have left the house at 3.00 or 2.30 for all that we know?’ True, but did he loiter around in Bucks Row on the off chance of a victim turning up? Or did he find one somewhere else and for some unfathomably bizarre reason bring her back to the spot that he himself passed everyday at that time on the way to work? No, all that we know is that we cannot construe a gap. Therefore this should never be used when discussing these events and the deliberate leaving out of ‘about’ should be acknowledged but of course it won’t be.

Hi Herlock,

It seems to me that an inordinate amount of time has been dedicated to what time CAL left home, when all we have is what time he said he left home. IF he was guilty he would have chosen a time that appeared reasonable. It is unlikely that he discovered Polly in Bucks Row, more likely that he picked her up in Whitechapel Road but she would have taken him to Bucks Row. There can't be a "gap" when we can't know the actual start time.

While I'm fence sitting on CAL, I agree with your proposal that there is also reason to scrutinise Richardson. He originally told the police that he just looked into the yard (confirmed by his mother), then later invented sitting on the step trimming leather from his boot, and when asked by the coroner for the knife involved produced a blunt rusty knife with no handle saying that he hadn't actually succeeded in trimming the leather and had finished that job at work with another knife. Additions and augmentations to testimony always creates suspicion. I think all that saved him from further scrutiny was the testimony of Long and Cadoche, which I found to be flimsy.

Cheers, George

[rjpalmer]

I never cease to be amazed at the way white anglophone attitudes to the police manifest all the irrational characteristics of a religion multiplied by an addiction.

What an appalling example of pseudo-intellectual posturing. 'White anglophone attitudes'? The weird political leanings of the Lechmere theorists is a topic that interests me, but I'll save that for another time.

Who is to say that I was even praising the police or taking their side? As a matter of fact, I wasn't--not particularly. The run ins I've had with the police have always involved officers who were deeply suspicious--whether they had a right to be suspicious or not. That's just a fact of life.

The fact that you think two men could walk through the slums at 3.45 in the morning and tell a policeman that a woman needed his attention in the next street, and on eventually going there, the policeman finds the woman murdered and mutilated and yet it never dawns on him to question or look skeptically at those two men shows that you don't inhabit the real world--and probably have never stepped foot in a slum in your life--but merely dwell inside some pseudo-intellectual fantasy of your own making.

[rjpalmer]

I can see by Abby's reference to 'bigamy' that he has drank deeply of the Lechmerean Kool-Aid. Yes, I am aware that Ed Stowe and Gary Barnett never lose the opportunity to 'slut shame' Maria Lechmere in hopes that some of the innuendo might rub off on young Charlie, but their efforts strike me as rather empty.

Beyond being a very simplistic take on the realities of Victorian law (women were frequently allowed to remarry after 7 years with little or no legal jeopardy in instances where their dead-beat husbands had done a runner), I also think it is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Please show me how this has any coherent bearing on the idea that Lechmere was serial-murderer.

CAL's home life with Thomas Cross could have been entirely stable and loving. There is no indication that Maria Lechmere was sleeping around or that her 'bigamy' was anything more than a technicality. By all appearances, Tom Cross took in the lad when Charlie was still quite young and raised him to adulthood. They appear to have had a stable home. Show me otherwise. And when Maria married a third time (after her second husband's death--showing that there was nothing at all untoward about that) CAL was already an adult. Is this somehow supposed to have warped him?

In short, constantly calling Maria 'twice bigamously married' (note to Mark: is this an example of a 'white anglophone attitude'?) is just ol' fashioned Ripperology: smoke without any fire. Just a rather clumsy and transparent attempt to imply that Lechmere lived in an unstable, sexually perverse household when there is nothing to show that he did.

By contrast, there may well have been something amiss with Amelia Richardson, although I admit that we are just playing around and this is not entirely clear. As far as I can tell, all her children had stable homes by the turn of the 19th Century, yet they all left Dear Old Mom to wander homeless in the slums, bouncing from workhouse to workhouse. Its rather curious and doesn't say much about their love for the old gal. She is twice listed as a 'book folder' in the census returns. This is just a guess--but might this have involved cranking out religious tracts at some half-baked organization?

[MrBarnett]

I can see by Abby's reference to 'bigamy' that he has drank deeply of the Lechmerean Kool-Aid. Yes, I am aware that Ed Stowe and Gary Barnett never lose the opportunity to 'slut shame' Maria Lechmere in hopes that some of the innuendo might rub off on young Charlie, but their efforts strike me as rather empty.

Beyond being a very simplistic take on the realities of Victorian law (women were frequently allowed to remarry after 7 years with little or no legal jeopardy in instances where their dead-beat husbands had done a runner), I also think it is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Please show me how this has any coherent bearing on the idea that Lechmere was serial-murderer.

CAL's home life with Thomas Cross could have been entirely stable and loving. There is no indication that Maria Lechmere was sleeping around or that her 'bigamy' was anything more than a technicality. By all appearances, Tom Cross took in the lad when Charlie was still quite young and raised him to adulthood. They appear to have had a stable home. Show me otherwise. And when Maria married a third time (after her second husband's death--showing that there was nothing at all untoward about that) CAL was already an adult. Is this somehow supposed to have warped him?

In short, constantly calling Maria 'twice bigamously married' (note to Mark: is this an example of a 'white anglophone attitude'?) is just ol' fashioned Ripperology: smoke without any fire. Just a rather clumsy and transparent attempt to imply that Lechmere lived in an unstable, sexually perverse household when there is nothing to show that he did.

By contrast, there may well have been something amiss with Amelia Richardson, although I admit that we are just playing around and this is not entirely clear. As far as I can tell, all her children had stable homes by the turn of the 19th Century, yet they all left Dear Old Mom to wander homeless in the slums, bouncing from workhouse to workhouse. Its rather curious and doesn't say much about their love for the old gal. She is twice listed as a 'book folder' in the census returns. This is just a guess--but might this have involved cranking out religious tracts at some half-baked organization?

‘Slut shame’? What a charming expression.

The simple fact is that Maria did marry bigamously - twice. Not being privy to the dogma of the party line, I have no idea whether Ed or Christer believe or want to portray the Cross family household as ‘unstable’ or ‘sexually perverse’, but I wouldn’t have thought so judging by what I’ve read from them. I certainly don’t. That idea has sprung from your fevered imagination RJ. I’m beginning to have concerns about you, young man.

In your world, a household living in one room in Bethnal Green where the breadwinner is a casual market worker is a stable one, is it? And the families of anyone forced on to the parish in the Victorian age must have hated their destitute relative?

There are strange things going on in your head RJ. Following the anti-Lech party line can lead to some very dark corners.

[erobitha]

Lechmere was the first to discover the body. That is it. He is interesting for that and that only. Everything else is non-relevant.

Thousands of people lived and grew up in that area. Most of those people would have also worked in that area. Many would start work in the early morning hours and walk to their job. Many of those families would have unstable backgrounds. Many claimed they were married and were not. Some were married but could not find their estranged partner to get a divorce. Some went onto remarry without divorcing. There is nothing wild or unusual about any of this for the context of the time. We know very little of Lechmere's psychological state to make any assertions of his character or motives.

Aside from the accident with boy being run over, is there any indication of any other form of criminal or violent behaviours? Generally, the rule of thumb is that most serial killers continue until their are caught or killed. I say rule of thumb, because there are exceptions to this. In those cases there is often a reason. They find a substitute for their desires, or they either get ill or too old. I don't see any indications of the latter and we have simply no idea of the former.

Based on what I have seen about Richardson so far, from a psychological standpoint, I find him more interesting than Lech.