Scenarios for other murders with Lechmere as culprit

[Lechmere]

Yes the newspaper accounts were sufficiently vague to allow for this and would a working class granny read the papers?

[Fisherman]

How about this scenario for Mizen:

-He meets the carmen, and speaks to one of them.
-He goes to Buck´s Row, sees Neil there and has had the carman´s story confirmed - or so he thinks.
-He leaves the scene and goes home with the perception that Neil had spoken to the carmen.
-He makes the (logical) assumption that the carmen belong to the official material gathered, since he knew that Neil had spoken to them.
-He is left out of the investigation until Sunday, when the Paul interview surfaces and alerts the police to the need of checking with him and Thain if they had seen the carmen.
-Instead of asking whether Mizen had seen the carmen, his superiors instead ask him, in a generalized manner, whether he had seen any suspicious men leaving Buck´s Row.
-Mizen answers in the negative. But he does so being convinced that he need not speak of the two men who he thinks must already be included in the investigation material; he thinks that he is being asked for any OTHER man, somebody who had ran off or sneaked away. After all, why would his superiors ask him about the two men whos´ existance had already been established?
-He then catches wind of the serious questioning of Neil, and realizes that Neil claims never to have seen the carmen.
-He approaches his superiors and tells them about the men.
-At around the same time, Lechmere goes to the police and tells his tory, clinching the truth of the rumour about the carmen.

As an alternative, the police may have approached Mizen a second time, after having had Lechmere arrive, in order to find out whether Mizen´s denial of having seen any suspicious men really was all there was to say about the errand.

This is a scenario that puts Mizen in the clear totally, and I cannot see why it would not be a feasible scenario.

Comments, anybody?

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

I think this thread is supposed to be about the non Nichols murders!

[Fisherman]

Right you are!

I´ll move the post.

Fisherman

[Mr Lucky]

"That's just a quibble, Fisherman, the point remains, if the killer has pulled the dress up why can't Paul pull it down again?"

With respect, it is NOT "just a quibble". It is the correct description of what happened. Paul managed to pull the dress down some way, and that means that the weight of Nichol´s body would not have disenabled the killer to pull the clothes up in order to get at her stomach, nor had it hindered him in covering what he had done.

Hi Fisherman,

Let’s not quibble over whether something’s a quibble or not, Fisherman, or we’ll be here all day.

To put it another way. Why did the killer not pull the dress down as far as possible ? Leaving it high enough to cause Paul to pull it down further, why do that and risk Paul discovering the crime ?

If Paul had not been able to pull the dress down at all, then we would have had a situation where the killer pulled the dress up, cut her abdomen, lifted the body from the ground, tucked the dress in under her and laid her down on it, effectively locking the dress and disenabling anybody to pull it down.

Interesting thought his would have been, it never happened. And I think the details are of great importance here, as ever.

The details include the fact that the abdominal injuries were not noticed until the body arrive inside the mortuary building, so there’s an large range of possibilities, but I don’t think the killer lifting her body up and tucking her dress underneath her, one of the better ones.

But if the killer had pulled the dress down as far as it would go, then Paul when he tried, would not have been able to pull the dress down at all, this could have happened without the killer tucking her dress underneath her as you describe above

So why did the killer leave the dress where it was, pulled down but not as far down as it would go, and not far enough down for Paul to leave it alone?

[Fisherman]

Mr Lucky:

"Let’s not quibble over whether something’s a quibble or not, Fisherman, or we’ll be here all day."

Then let´s - since I don´t think my response WAS any quibble! But OK, let´s move on.

"To put it another way. Why did the killer not pull the dress down as far as possible ? Leaving it high enough to cause Paul to pull it down further, why do that and risk Paul discovering the crime ? "

Paul would not discover the crime by pulling the dress further down. Only pulling it further UP would do that trick - and Paul was a Victorian.

But I do see that the lifting as such could offer a glimpse, so I will say that haste may have been the reason for the incomplete pulling. And maybe - just maybe. the clothes came to a stop just below the abdomen as the killer pulled, leaving Paul to need some sort of harder pulling to add those extra inches.

"The details include the fact that the abdominal injuries were not noticed until the body arrive inside the mortuary building, so there’s an large range of possibilities, but I don’t think the killer lifting her body up and tucking her dress underneath her, one of the better ones. "

Nope. the idea is slightly ludicrous.

"But if the killer had pulled the dress down as far as it would go, then Paul when he tried, would not have been able to pull the dress down at all, this could have happened without the killer tucking her dress underneath her as you describe above"

Hmm? But Paul WAS able to add some extra stretch - he took the clothing down to the kneecaps, justaboutish. Am I misunderstanding you here?

"So why did the killer leave the dress where it was, pulled down but not as far down as it would go, and not far enough down for Paul to leave it alone?"

See the above, Mr Lucky!

The best,
Fisherman

PS. We are on the wrong thread, so if you wish to proceed, then do so on some other, better suited Lechmere thread!

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

From there, Edward and I have the audacity to extrapolate that Lechmere, like all logically thinking people, may have used the fastest route to work.

But he didn't use that route on the morning of the Nichols murder, and there must have been a good reason for that, i.e. he didn't know that Old Montague Street was quicker, or perhaps knew that it was but didn't fancy walking through such a notorious thoroughfare. Check out Booth's poverty map and compare Hanbury Street with Old Montague Street. You'll notice the latter was flanked to a large extent by black splodges to indicate a "vicious, semi-criminal" neighbourhood. If it were a matter of five minutes between them, I know which one I'd pick!

How do we know the Hanbury Street route was longer anyway? What was preventing him from walking straight through the Liverpool Street Station terminus after Bishopsgate, for instance? He didn't even need to pass #29 if he took the marginally shorter Booth Street, Princelett Street, Fournier Street route. Such a route would certainly be quicker than heading unnecessarily too far south after Old Montague Street, and thus explain why he took the former on the morning of the Nichols murder.

Your claim that there is absolutely no good reason to believe that Lechmere - like 99,9 per cent of us - would favour the shortest route to work occasionally if not habitually, is not a very good one, I have to say.

As above, I don't believe it was the shortest route, but how would Cross have known for certain? Unless he studied maps and held a stopwatch, he was hardly in a position to judge.

Regards,
Ben

[Ben]

The notion that Charles Lechmere would not have known that the Old Montague Street route was shorter and quicker is utterly ludicrous

I utterly dispute that "Old Montague Street was shorter and quicker", Lechmere If he took the second left off Hanbury Street, thence to Fournier Street and Brushfield Street, he wouldn't only have been taking the shortest, quickest route, he'd be facing the direction of his work place for more or less the whole walk, unlike Old Montague Street.

Regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"he didn't use that route on the morning of the Nichols murder, and there must have been a good reason for that, i.e. he didn't know that Old Montague Street was quicker, or perhaps knew that it was but didn't fancy walking through such a notorious thoroughfare. "

No. As in no, there MUST have not been a good reason for choosing Hanbury Street one day, at least not a reason that ruled out that he chose Old Montague Street THE NEXT day. Full stop.

"How do we know the Hanbury Street route was longer anyway?"

We measure.

"how would Cross have known for certain? Unless he studied maps and held a stopwatch, he was hardly in a position to judge."

Studying maps would alone do the trick, Ben. And Pickfords was a firm specialized in logistics - I can´t rule out that they DID have a map of some sort. (In fact, I strongly suspect they had hundreds of them, the more important ones being hung on the walls of the terminal. But that´s just me - and I can´t prove that spedition firms and logistics specialists dealt with maps in 1888!)

The best,
Fisherman

[Scott Nelson]

Wouldn't Lechmere have run into Kosminski at some point?

[FrankO]

"How do we know the Hanbury Street route was longer anyway?"

We measure.

So, I measured, lads. On Google Earth, that is.

Not the whole way from Doveton Street to Broad Street, but from the intersection of Baker’s Row, Hanbury Street & Old Montague Street to the corner of Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate Street.

Hanbury Street route:
Hanbury Street - Commercial St – Brushfield St – Steward St – Artillery Lane – Bishopsgate St: 1,443 meters/1,578 yards

Old Montague Street route:
Old Montague St – Wentworth St – Middlesex St – Horrow Alley – White St – Devonshire Square – Devonshire St – Bishopsgate St: 1,380 meters/1,509 yards

Thus, a difference of not even 70 meters/75 yards in favour of the Old Montague route. Walking at a pace of 5 km/3,1 miles per hour, that stretch would be covered in less than 50 seconds.

The best,
Frank

[Fisherman]

Scott:

"Wouldn't Lechmere have run into Kosminski at some point?"

I sometimes try to imagine Hutchinson sneaking past the schoolhouse corner in Buck´s Row as Lechmere enters it from Brady Street. Just can´t make that work, though.

The best,
Fisherman

[FrankO]

What was preventing him from walking straight through the Liverpool Street Station terminus after Bishopsgate, for instance?

That's a good point, Ben (how are things, btw?). If possible, that would probably shorten the route a bit and I can imagine there was such a short cut.

He didn't even need to pass #29 if he took the marginally shorter Booth Street, Princelett Street, Fournier Street route. Such a route would certainly be quicker than heading unnecessarily too far south after Old Montague Street, and thus explain why he took the former on the morning of the Nichols murder.

I measured another 2 possible routes.

Hanbury Street route 2:
Hanbury Street – Spelman St – Booth St – Princelet St – Wilkes St – Fournier St – Brushfield St – Steward St – Artillery Lane – Bishopsgate St: 1,386 meters/1,516 yards

Hanbury Street route 3:
Hanbury Street – Spelman St – Booth St – Princelet St – Wilkes St – Fournier St – Commercial St – Dorset St – Raven Row – Whitegate St – Bishopsgate St: 1,380 meters/1,509 yards

So, the shortest route isn't shorter than the Old Montague route, but it isn't longer either. Hope that clears things up for once & for all.

All the best,
Frank

[Fisherman]

Hi Frank!

Do you stop short at Bishopsgate, or do you round Liverpool Street Station, ending up at where the Broad Street Pickfords was situated underground?

"Hope that clears things up for once & for all."

That is something you need to speak to Edward to. He has walked and measured this distance numerous times, and I am sure he knows exactly what shortcuts there were - or were not.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

I may add that I believe that the entrance to the underground stables of Pickfords was situated at Broadgate, to the Southwest of Liverpool Street Station, and therefore we may need to add a hundred yards or so to the Hanbury Street route to allow for catching up with the Old Montague Street path that was more to the south.
But as I said, Edward really is the one who has this best in hand, so let´s hear what he has to say.

The best,
Fisherman