Framing Charles

[MrBarnett]

I have to hold my hand up to an error. CAL’s aunt Charlotte was not a Vicar’s wife, she had been the wife of a butler to a senior clerical bod, but was a widow by 1888.

Checking this out led me to an interesting discovery. On the 1891 census, Maria Louisa’s two sisters, Charlotte and Harriet, were recorded at 9, Park Street, Hereford - both ‘living on own means’.

All three sisters had received a legacy in the form of income from investments from their father’s estate. It seems the estate was managed by the Clive family for whom their father had worked as a butler. The Clives in question were related to ‘Clive of India’. They were at the top of the Herefordshire social tree.

Just compare Harriet and Charlotte, two financially independent widows, living in Herefordshire and possibly still receiving income from the Clives, to Maria, twice bigamously married and living in the East End with a shoe maker until 1889 and then selling cats meat from a shop in the Ratcliffe Highway.

The idea that CAL would stand up in open court and say my proper name is CAL but I am known as Cross which was my stepfather’s name. Thomas Cross also came from Herefordshire. The scandal that would have occurred if CAL had told all in court doesn’t bear thinking about. He was never going to do so.

[MrBarnett]

It does not detract from how Charles Lechmere was only two generations removed from the wealth, influence and historical importance of the Lechmere family of Fownhope, though.

Not at all. Nor from the respectability of his butler Roulson grandfather. If anything, a butler in a good household might have been more of a snob than his employers.

[MrBarnett]

Im not sure....does anyone have evidence that people identifying themselves using 2 distinctly different names was in any way unusual in the LVP? Has anyone read through the Old Bailey records and seen how many people are entered into the records with multiple unique names? Nicknames aside, when you live in an era where there is no accepted single piece of identification that people would have to verify they are who they claim to be, aliases were all the rage.

I haven’t carried out a survey, but I’ve done enough digging into this stuff to know that most people used just the one surname. And when they used more than one for innocent reasons (such as informally adopting their stepfather’s name) and appeared as witnesses in court they very often felt it was appropriate to disclose both names. The concept of a ‘real’ or ‘proper’ name was firmly fixed in the Victorian psyche.

[Fisherman]

Im not sure....does anyone have evidence that people identifying themselves using 2 distinctly different names was in any way unusual in the LVP? Has anyone read through the Old Bailey records and seen how many people are entered into the records with multiple unique names? Nicknames aside, when you live in an era where there is no accepted single piece of identification that people would have to verify they are who they claim to be, aliases were all the rage.

How would we be able to tell if somebody who was named A presented themselves as B unless it was afterwards discovered? And logged? Any such case would be likely to be linked to criminality. There is also the possibility that somebody who had used the name Smith for years on end in spite of being baptized and registered by the name of Jones would simply forget to mention the latter detail on account of never using that name - but that was not the case for Lechmere, because he always otherwise called himself Lechmere when speaking to authorities. The anomaly is a glaring one and there is no way of denying that. The only realistic alternative to foul play would be an effort to protect the family name of Lechmere from being sullied - but would finding the body and calling upon the next person on the site to help out and subsequently directing a PC to the place not instead be an act of helpfulness and social responsibility?

What there is, is a series of examples where people were identifying themselves by TWO names - and that is not the same as the Lechmere case, where apparently one name only was given, and it was not the name by which the carman was registered or otherwise used.

If aliases were "all the rage" on account of allowing people not to verify who they really are, what category of people do you primarily think would make use of that possibility?

[MrBarnett]

How would we be able to tell if somebody who was named A presented themselves as B unless it was afterwards discovered? And logged? Any such case would be likely to be linked to criminality. There is also the possibility that somebody who had used the name Smith for years on end in spite of being baptized and registered by the name of Jones would simply forget to mention the latter detail on account of never using that name - but that was not the case for Lechmere, because he always otherwise called himself Lechmere when speaking to authorities. The anomaly is a glaring one and there is no way of denying that. The only realistic alternative to foul play would be an effort to protect the family name of Lechmere from being sullied - but would finding the body and calling upon the next person on the site to help out and subsequently directing a PC to the place not instead be an act of helpfulness and social responsibility?

What there is, is a series of examples where people were identifying themselves by TWO names - and that is not the same as the Lechmere case, where apparently one name only was given, and it was not the name by which the carman was registered or otherwise used.

If aliases were "all the rage" on account of allowing people not to verify who they really are, what category of people do you primarily think would make use of that possibility?

Aliases were not ‘all the rage’ in the general population - far from it.

[Trevor Marriott]

No, Trevor, the anomaly is that on this occasion he used the name Cross but did not volunteer the information that his ‘proper’ name was Lechmere.

In all your time as a copper did you never once take a statement from someone who had two names, one his ‘proper’ name and one he was commonly known by?

You dont know that he didnt volunteer that information. It is not a crime to use an alias and as keeps being said he was fully entitled to use the two differnet names.

From an investigative perspective if the authorities were aware of the anonamly then they would have taken steps to find out why he was using two different names. As stated in the absence of anything to show that that course of action was not carried out then we must draw the proper inference that it was.

Therefore the suspicion Christer seeks to rely on with regards to the differing names is clearly negated.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

Aliases were not ‘all the rage’ in the general population - far from it.

Whats that got to do with it? he used a name he was fullly entitled to use it was not an alias in the true sense and was not used with intent to deceive.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

Aliases were not ‘all the rage’ in the general population - far from it.

Correct, of course.

[Fisherman]

Whats that got to do with it? he used a name he was fullly entitled to use it was not an alias in the true sense and was not used with intent to deceive.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

And this you know because ...?

[MrBarnett]

Whats that got to do with it? he used a name he was fullly entitled to use it was not an alias in the true sense and was not used with intent to deceive.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

It’s a response to Michael’s statement that aliases were all the rage.

[Fisherman]

You dont know that he didnt volunteer that information. It is not a crime to use an alias and as keeps being said he was fully entitled to use the two differnet names.

From an investigative perspective if the authorities were aware of the anonamly then they would have taken steps to find out why he was using two different names. As stated in the absence of anything to show that that course of action was not carried out then we must draw the proper inference that it was.

Therefore the suspicion Christer seeks to rely on with regards to the differing names is clearly negated.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

This is priceless: Since we have no mentioning at all by the authorities about how Lechmere used two names, the logical conclusion must be that they found out, made no fuzz about it since it was innocent and decided not to mention in their own reports that there were actually two names involved.

It takes the biscuit, really it does. The fewest are able to muster the power to come up with something so genuinely senseless.

[MrBarnett]

You dont know that he didnt volunteer that information. It is not a crime to use an alias and as keeps being said he was fully entitled to use the two differnet names.

From an investigative perspective if the authorities were aware of the anonamly then they would have taken steps to find out why he was using two different names. As stated in the absence of anything to show that that course of action was not carried out then we must draw the proper inference that it was.

Therefore the suspicion Christer seeks to rely on with regards to the differing names is clearly negated.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

So, Trevor, can we take it from that that if you were interviewing the discoverer of a body and he told you that he used two names, you wouldn’t have bothered to record both?

You can’t answer that question without undermining your position. ;-)

[Trevor Marriott]

So, Trevor, can we take it from that that if you were interviewing the discoverer of a body and he told you that he used two names, you wouldn’t have bothered to record both?

You can’t answer that question without undermining your position. ;-)

There is no position to undermine.

If the person had a good reason for using another name there would there nothing sinister behind that?

He came forward and voluntarily placed himself at the crime scene, and so according to you and Christer and other deluded individuals that makes him a prime suspect, He found a body on his way to work, a route he took every day. If he hadnt found the body somebody would have. If he had been 5 mins late, Paul might have found the body, someone had to find the body. It coould have been Florence the flower seller would you all be suggesting she was the killer

Did we see any other bodies turning up on his route to work? No we didnt

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[rjpalmer]

In all your time as a copper did you never once take a statement from someone who had two names, one his ‘proper’ name and one he was commonly known by?

What I'd ask Trevor is whether he ever met a criminal who tried to pull a 'fast one' on the authorities, but retained his correct first and middle names, gave his actual place of employment, and his correct home address, so he could be later summoned to a legal hearing? The police must have received that information from someone. Who was it, if not Lechmere himself? If this was deception, it was certainly a funny sort of deception

In other words, what would Lechmere/Cross have hoped to achieve by this ruse? That's the weakness of the argument. The police knew where to find him: which is the main thing a criminal wants to avoid. He can be just as easily be thrown into a jail cell or strung up by the neck under the name Cross, Lechmere, or Horatio Hornblower.

The fact that Lechmere cooperated with the authorities has to count for something. At some point, he must have given the police enough details that they could lay their hands on him. He did not do a runner. He did not give a false address. He duly appeared at the inquest, and did not avoid it (unlike Robert Paul, who appears to have gone to ground for a spell).

'Cross' not wanting his legal name in the papers could be as banal as 'Lechmere' owing someone money. Why advertise your full legal name alongside your place of employment if you owe some bloke two pounds, and the police are fine with the name 'Cross'?

[rjpalmer]

It could have been Florence the flower seller would you all be suggesting she was the killer

Yes, she sold flowers, but her legal name wasn't Florence, it was Jane! Tell to Billington to get the rope ready.