Lechmere versus Richardson.

[MrBarnett]

What RJ produced with regards to Richardson's mother is more interesting to me than what has been produced thus far with regards to Lechmere's mother.

That is my starting point and I have not ventured beyond that at this stage.

That she read the bible and had toothache?

Have you read this:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/motives-and-reasons/-4-product-of-environment/28472-maria-louisa-roulson-aka-old-ma-lechmere

Or this:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-victims/mary-ann-polly-nichols/578565-interesting-lechmere-trivia

[MrBarnett]

I do find it strange. We can have endless quibbles about debatable and inconclusive ‘bleeding out’ times to try a point to Lechmere as the likeliest killer and yet we are apparently blasé in the face of a man who, according to Doctor Phillips was probably lying about being in a yard with a mutilated corpse!

We again quibble about who was or wasn’t correct in the conversation between Lechmere, Paul and Mizen even though a simply misunderstanding is a perfectly reasonable explanation and yet it’s ok when we here Chandler saying that Richardson lied about telling him that he’d sat on the step!

And then to top it off we have no evidence of Lechmere carrying a knife but in Richardson we have a man who, not only had a knife, but but sent to fetch it by the Coroner returned with one that didn’t look like it could cut leather, raising the possibility that he’d left his ‘other’ knife at home.

Lechmere has nothing against him that comes close to being as ‘suspicious’ as these three points.

If only we knew their shoe sizes, it’d be case closed.

;-)

[MrBarnett]

For Dusty and RJ:

(Stable, my arse!)

John Richardson must have hated his daughter-in-law and grandkids not to have put them up in his grand mansion.

[MrBarnett]

For Dusty and RJ:

(Stable, my arse!)

I believe Brick Lane is in Spitalfields (most of it).

[MrBarnett]

For Dusty: Backchurch Lane or Brick Lane?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I do find it strange. We can have endless quibbles about debatable and inconclusive ‘bleeding out’ times to try a point to Lechmere as the likeliest killer and yet we are apparently blasé in the face of a man who, according to Doctor Phillips was probably lying about being in a yard with a mutilated corpse!

We again quibble about who was or wasn’t correct in the conversation between Lechmere, Paul and Mizen even though a simply misunderstanding is a perfectly reasonable explanation and yet it’s ok when we here Chandler saying that Richardson lied about telling him that he’d sat on the step!

And then to top it off we have no evidence of Lechmere carrying a knife but in Richardson we have a man who, not only had a knife, but but sent to fetch it by the Coroner returned with one that didn’t look like it could cut leather, raising the possibility that he’d left his ‘other’ knife at home.

Lechmere has nothing against him that comes close to being as ‘suspicious’ as these three points.

[MrBarnett]

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.

You read it on Facebook? And where did the person who wrote it on Facebook get it from - a mate down the pub??

Priceless, Dusty.

That said, it sounds interesting. Something RJ said the other day about Francis Towler led to a similar discovery. I’ll see if I can dig it out.

[MrBarnett]

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.

And the fact that you imagine a lowly PC who wasn’t suspicious and who missed the opportunity to detain the two men in the first instance would subsequently be able to question witnesses in a murder case being handled by another police division shows what?

Rather than hide behind vague accusations about the weird political views of ‘Lechmere theorists’ why don’t you have the courage of your convictions and tell all.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Hello George,

My only question would be, why would he pick up a potential victim somewhere and then bring her back to a location that he passed every day?

I think that Lech found the body at around 3.40 but Fish believes it to have been nearer to 3.45. So if he’d met up with Paul at 3.44 then he’s only a minute or so before Neil arrives. Given the possibility that he did, on occasion, run a very few minutes behind time it would seem at least possible that he might have been aware that a Constable passed on his beat around that time. And if he had seen a PC once or twice might he not have considered that that PC might have been running late?

Obviously I’m not claiming anything on this point as a known but given that Lech and Neil were in Bucks Row in such close proximity of time and given the unreliability in regard to timing in those days isn’t there a very reasonable possibility that Lech would have known that a Constable passed sometime around 3.40/3.45?

Id also add the the point that no matter how regulated beats were it could never be the case that Neill or another PC arrived at that spot at exactly the same time every day. And so even a couple of minutes earlier would increase the chances of Lechmere over the years seeing a PC on his beat in Bucks Row.

[erobitha]

Intersting. So what have you seen about Richardson from a psychological standpoint?

What RJ produced with regards to Richardson's mother is more interesting to me than what has been produced thus far with regards to Lechmere's mother.

That is my starting point and I have not ventured beyond that at this stage.

[MrBarnett]

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.

Intersting. So what have you seen about Richardson from a psychological standpoint?

[MrBarnett]

>> 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

Ah, speculation. Of course that has to be a possibility. I read recently in one of the Booth notebooks about landlords achieving higher rents for their properties by packing in more Jewish tenants.

[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.

[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.

[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?