Every minute counts

[MrBarnett]

Nichols was dead, Gary. Was there a rush to try and get the ambulance in place after 29 and a half minutes instead of 30 minutes?
Who says that Mizen was "immediately sent off to fetch the ambulance"? More than you, that is?
What Neil said at the inquest was that he sent Mizen for the ambulance. End of, I beleive, although I have not checked all the papers (I can only bring myself to so much...) He does not say that he did so "immediately" and he mentions not that he saw to it that Mizen did not take a look at the victim before scarpering off, does he? Mizen himself does say that he at once went for the ambulance, but that does not mean that he could not have had a look before Neil told him to do so.

We cannot invent things like these and try to elevate them to something that exonerates the carman, Iīm afraid.

Moreover, the blood Mizen described was STILL running, it looked FRESH and it was SOMEWHAT coagulated. Once again, that fits 100 per cent with him looking at the blood as he arrived in Bucks Row the first time and very poorly with his second arrival half an hour later.

If you choose the illogical solution over the logical one, it is your choice and prerogative. Just donīt claim things as facts that cannot be claimed as facts, please.

Fine tooth saws?

Answer that and all will be forgiven

[Fisherman]

I notice the doctor originally used the word ‘flow’ and then corrected himself and said ‘ooze’.

I don’t imagine Mizen had time to determine whether the blood was moving when he initially arrived at the scene and was immediately sent off to fetch the ambulance. When he returned and handled the body he became aware of liquid blood or blood-coloured fluid exiting the body.

Nichols was dead, Gary. Was there a rush to try and get the ambulance in place after 29 and a half minutes instead of 30 minutes?
Who says that Mizen was "immediately sent off to fetch the ambulance"? More than you, that is?
What Neil said at the inquest was that he sent Mizen for the ambulance. End of, I beleive, although I have not checked all the papers (I can only bring myself to so much...) He does not say that he did so "immediately" and he mentions not that he saw to it that Mizen did not take a look at the victim before scarpering off, does he? Mizen himself does say that he at once went for the ambulance, but that does not mean that he could not have had a look before Neil told him to do so.

We cannot invent things like these and try to elevate them to something that exonerates the carman, Iīm afraid.

Moreover, the blood Mizen described was STILL running, it looked FRESH and it was SOMEWHAT coagulated. Once again, that fits 100 per cent with him looking at the blood as he arrived in Bucks Row the first time and very poorly with his second arrival half an hour later.

If you choose the illogical solution over the logical one, it is your choice and prerogative. Just donīt claim things as facts that cannot be claimed as facts, please.

[Fisherman]

"Hopefully the 'blood evidence theory' is now dead"...?

Thats not a bad sense of humour, actually!

And if the blood was actively flowing Neil could not have been sure that she was beyond all help and so he should have staunched the blood flow?

Amazing!

Has it not occurred to you, Dusty, that IF Neil had thought that Nichols could be alive, he WOULD have staunched the blood? To recap, Neil noticed that the throat was cut from ear to ear, leaving a gaping wound down to the spine. Nobody can survive that kind of wound, and so no staunchin would be of any other use than to disturb the crime scene.

Do you seriously beleive that Neil stood by and waited for her to perish? Of course you donīt!

Neil speaks of "the deceased" when he speaks about Nichols, and he would have been very much aware that she was dead. He would also have been aware that death does not preclude people from bleeding. I think this is something we actually all are aware of. Or?
The kind of person you describe is the type who would enter execution scenes to staunch the blood from decapitated people, Dusty."He bleeds, so he may be alive!", sort of.

I think we need to be a bit more discerning and careful about what we argue out here. The examples I posted from the Old Bailey tells us that "ooze" could well depict events where a lot of blood exited a wound. It proves this. The wordings are clear and unambiguous, and so there can be no discussion about it. Or maybe I should say "no serious discussion". And whether the victims were alive or dead does not belong to the dicussion at all, unless you can prove that "ooze" has a different meaning inbetween dead and living people. If not, the parameter has nothing at all to do with the discussion.

We have a mutual duty not to turn the threads into some sort of fairground. Letīs try and honour that, shall we?

[drstrange169]

Also Gary, if the blood was actively flowing when Neil arrived, he could not be sure she was beyond all help. One would have thought he would have attempted to staunch the flow. Certainly, if it was still flowing at a rate of knots when Mizen arrived, there are some serious questions that should have been asked about Neil, Thain and Mizen's actions.

[drstrange169]

What you say makes sense Gary.

Of course this does not exonerate Cross, but it shows conclusively that there was plenty of time (forensically) for another killer to have been at work before he arrived.

Hopefully the "blood evidence" theory is now dead and buried alongside all the players in our 1888 story.

[MrBarnett]

And then I found the smoking gun!

WILLIAM SMITH (25), indicted for the Wilful Murder of Sarah Milson 11th June 1866. The case can be read in full here.

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18660611-534&div=t18660611-534&terms=ooze#highlight

The attending doctor was called about 20 minutes after the murder and he stated that the body continued to ooze blood whilst he was there!!!

I notice the doctor originally used the word ‘flow’ and then corrected himself and said ‘ooze’.

I don’t imagine Mizen had time to determine whether the blood was moving when he initially arrived at the scene and was immediately sent off to fetch the ambulance. When he returned and handled the body he became aware of liquid blood or blood-coloured fluid exiting the body.

[drstrange169]

And then I found the smoking gun!

WILLIAM SMITH (25), indicted for the Wilful Murder of Sarah Milson 11th June 1866. The case can be read in full here.

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18660611-534&div=t18660611-534&terms=ooze#highlight

The attending doctor was called about 20 minutes after the murder and he stated that the body continued to ooze blood whilst he was there!!!

[drstrange169]

I went through the Old Bailey cases. I chose 1858 to 1918 to keep it relevant to our time period.

Oozed got 25 hits, 21 were used as per the dictionary definition.

2 were used to describe getting information out of someone slowly.

And 2 were used to described flowing blood. in both those cases the victims were still alive and, as in the example below the amount of blood coming out was clearly explained.



Oozing got 72 hits.

65 were used as per the dictionary definition.



5 were used to describe flowing blood. Again, all the victims were alive and the about of flow was made clear.

Ooze got only 3 hits during the same time period. All of them were used as per the dictionary definition.

Based on those results, it is not impossible that Neil meant flowing blood, but it is very unlikely.

[drstrange169]

Thanks for the Old Bailey reports Christer, points worth considering and I'm off to at them now look now.

In the mean time, I've Googled, "a lot of blood oozed" as you suggested and it makes it clear that it means exactly what I, Gary and all the major (and probably minor) dictionary stated it means .. slow movement.





The etymology of the word makes it abundantly clear:

ooze (v.)

"to flow as ooze, percolate through the pores of a substance" (intrans.), also "emit in the shape of moisture" (trans.), late 14c., wosen, verbal derivative of Old English noun wos "juice, sap," from Proto-Germanic *wosan (source of Middle Low German wose "scum"), from same source as ooze (n.). The modern spelling is from late 16c. The Old English verb was wesan. Related: Oozed; oozing.

ooze (n.)
"fine soft mud or slime," Old English wase "soft mud, mire," from Proto-Germanic *waison (source also of Old Saxon waso "wet ground, mire," Old Norse veisa "pond of stagnant water"), probably from a PIE root meaning "wet." Modern spelling is from mid-1500s.

All in all, it is possible PC Neil mis-used the word, but the sheer weight of evidence strongly suggests he didn't.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fish - In the three cases you cite from the Old Bailey archives, the three wounded people are still alive. Two of them don't even die. The witnesses may have used the word 'ooze' or 'oozing' but the victims' hearts were still pumping, so pressure was pushing the blood from them.

Nichols, by contrast, was dead. Her heart was stopped. Any 'oozing' noticed by the observers would have been strictly from gravity.

So you are describing the use of this word by people who are observing entirely different circumstances. That is relevant, is it not?

Cheers.

It depends, R J.

If you cut your thumb, it will not kill you (hopefully). But will the blood spurt out of the thumb, owing to the underlying heart pressure?

Nope.

It is only when we cut of main blood vessels, particularly arteries, that such a thing happens.

In my examples, we deal with a wound to the scalp (which will not produce a blood spurt) a wound close to the waist (that is not likely to have severed any main artery) and a wound where the witness HEARS the blood flow, comparing it to running water - and speaking about oozing.

If anything, the fact that people speak about oozing in living people further strengthens my argument since the bloodflow is more likely to be lively in such cases.

The overall issue is however one of a more general character: must "ooze" always mean trickling only very slowly and in small proportions? And that is where my three examples emphatically prove that this is not so, and it was not so in the mid 19th century either. It can - and could - describe quite a significant flow.

What has gotten lost to a degree in this discussion is that I do not mean that blood gushed out of Nichols as Neil saw her. If it had, then it should have produced a much larger quantity of blood underneath the neck, and we know that it didnīt (presumably owing to how most of the blood had already collected in the abdominal cavity as the throat was cut, as per Llewellyn).

What I envisage is a steady running, perhaps like when you tilt a small jug or two of maple syrup over your pancakes, as Neil took a look. That flow then kept on for a further few minutes until Mizen arrived. At this stage, just as the PC said, the blood was "still running" and "looking fresh", and the time of bleeding suggested is well within the realms suggested by professor Thiblin, who suggested a maximum bleeding time of ten to fifteen minutes at most.

So it is all in line; the bleeding, the partial coagulation, the timings, the blood running over the brim before Mizen arrives - all of it. And it points a VERY clear finger at Lechmere, Iīm afraid, not least since the pathologists both said that a bleeding time of 3-5 minutes was the likeliest span, although they both (as shown above) allowed for a longer time.

It is a chain of evidence that is very full and in itīs own bizarre way also beautiful in itīs completeness. To try and break it up, we need to certify that "ooze" means "will end very soon" or that Mizen believed that the blood had run for around half an hour as he lifted Nichols onto the stretcher, that he believed blood coming from a long dead person would look fresh and that he looked at the blood dripping onto the coagulated clot on the ground, thinking "Hey, look - that blood is somewhat coagulated!"

It only makes sense when we lay the pieces of the puzzle in a logical manner (he said, oozing with confidence... )

[rjpalmer]

Hi Fish - In the three cases you cite from the Old Bailey archives, the three wounded people are still alive. Two of them don't even die. The witnesses may have used the word 'ooze' or 'oozing' but the victims' hearts were still pumping, so pressure was pushing the blood from them.

Nichols, by contrast, was dead. Her heart was stopped. Any 'oozing' noticed by the observers would have been strictly from gravity.

So you are describing the use of this word by people who are observing entirely different circumstances. That is relevant, is it not?

Cheers.

[Fisherman]

Sorry, Christer, you can Google all you want, but you are not going to change the meaning of ‘ooze’:

I havenīt changed the meaning of "ooze". I have posted examples from the 19:th century of how the word was many times used to describe a significant or very significant blood flow.

It is not about what the dictionaries say, Gary, itīs about how the common man makes use of a word, and very clearly, the common man in the mid 19th century spoke about how blood was "oozing out very bad indeed" and running down somebodyīs hair, how oozing blood sounded like running water and how blood could "ooze very profusely".

What shall we say to those who used the term like that? That they should have looked it up in dictionaries before doing so...?

What good does it do to point to a dictionary when we can show that the dictionaries do not cover the true/full use of a term? Language is a living beast, and it will change over time, rules or not. Spellings, meanings and grammar was not the same yesterday as it is today and tomorrow it will have changed again.

Thatīs why dictionaries need to be updated every now and then.

[MrBarnett]

OOZE

Synonyms: distill, drop, drip, percolate, perspire, sweat, drain, leak, transude.

Antonyms: rush, flow, stream, disgorge.


From,

A COMPLETE DICTIONARY

OF

SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS,


OR


SYNONYMS AND WORDS OF OPPOSITE MEANING.


1898


THE RT. REV. SAMUEL FALLOWS, A.M., B.D.

[MrBarnett]

Just one more. Pay particular attention to the antonyms given here.

[MrBarnett]