Charles Lechmere, finally vindicated, proof ?

[Lechmere]

I was in the area and had some spare time so I thought it would be a useful exercise to do some timings (with a stop watch!)
The distances are all short so differences in pace or length of legs etc would only account for a few extra seconds either way.

22 Doveton Street to Brown’s Stable Yard (direct route) at a brisk pace (Charles Lechmere was supposed to be late for work).
6 minutes and 10 seconds.

22 Doveton Street to Brown’s Stable Yard (indirect route via Whitechapel Road and Court Street) at a brisk pace up to Whitechapel Underground Station and then a slow pace round to Brown’s Stable yard.
9 minutes seconds.

30 Foster Street to Brown’s Stable Yard at a brisk pace (Robert Paul was supposed to be late for work).
2 minutes.

Brown’s Stable Yard to the junction of Hanbury Street with Vallance Road (PC Mizen’s location) at a brisk pace (Charles Lechmere and Robert Paul were supposed to be late for work).
2 minutes 45 seconds.

Dr Llewellyn’s residence at 152 Whitechapel Road to Brown’s Stable Yard at a medium pace.
2 minutes and 25 seconds.

My estimation for the time it took for PC Thain to get from Brown’s Stable Yard to 152 Whitechapel Road is 2 minutes 25 seconds, plus the the tyime it would have taken to cut back up Winthrop Street to retrieve his cape and have a chat with the three jolly butchers. The extra walk would have taken in excess of a minute and the chat how long – at least 2 minutes to tell them the gory details?
That probably means he took around six minutes to get from Brown’s Stable Yard to 152 Whitechapel Road.

[Ben]

But what nonsense is it that I've been reading about the murders being uncannily in line with Cross's journeys to work?

Hi Caz,

Just playing catch-up here, but nonsense it most certainly is!

Setting aside the complete absence of any good reason to think that a mutilating serial killer would kill and dispose of his victims en route to work (and accordingly, the complete absence of any examples of it happening), the claim is simply false. Cross' workplace was in the Liverpool Street area, and his home - which he'd recently moved into - was just to the northeast of Buck's Row. This would necessitate a work-route that traversed the general murder region, but of course, there's nothing remotely noteworthy about this when there a potentially thousands of ripper "candidates" actually living in that region

His only known work-route is the one he reportedly took on the morning of the Nichols' murder: via Hanbury Street, and since he was a relatively recent arrival at Doveton Street, the reasonable assumption is that he had always used this obvious, crow-flies route and hadn't bothered exploring alternatives. Certainly, he didn't do what modern day Cross-fanciers do now, i.e. look at an old map of London on the internet and note that Old Montague Street was a minute or two shorter! Amazingly, if you look at some of the older Cross threads, you'll even spot the false claim that he had taken a different route from his "usual" on the morning of the murder. No evidence for this at all, of course. There is no evidence that he had ever taken Old Montague Street, let alone that it was his "usual" route. Hence "30 yards from Old Montague Street" is completely meaningless. There is no good reason to think that his work route ever took him there.

After Buck's Row, the only crime scene-to-be that he passed was Hanbury Street, but then if Cross the Ripper was supposed to be deflecting suspicion away from himself, how clever was it of him to advertise to the newspaper reading public that his work route continued to Hanbury Street, and then commit a murder ON Hanbury Street a week later?

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"There is no good reason to think that his work route ever took him there."

... other than that is was the swiftest route to his job. Which is not a bad reason at all, come to think of it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Posted on wrong thread.

[Ben]

This alone tells us that the police, in spite of knowing that Lechmere was first on the spot, did not in any manner rule out guilt on behalf of Paul - at least this is what Dew seems to tell us.

This tells us nothing about what the police thought at the time, and as a collective, Fisherman.

This is just Dew, yet again offering his own personal, independent thoughts on the matter, just as he was in the case of the Goulston Street Graffiti, where he opined that that it was unrelated to the murders, in contrast to the views of his senior police colleagues, which were expressed at the time of the murders, as opposed to the late 1930s. Perhaps if he hadn't confused himself and his readers into believing that Paul was already loitering on the opposite side of the road at the time of Cross' discovery, he wouldn't have considered the former so suspicious.

Of course it would not have helped Paul's credibility that he did not come forward, but that would not have obfuscated the reality that he was the second man at the scene of the crime, and not the first.

All the best,
Ben