Evidence of innocence

[The Rookie Detective]

We don't know that, RD. See Roger's post #6278. He writes: "I haven't been able to confirm this was the case in 1888, but the account below suggests that by 1911 Pickford's men wore company aprons and caps."

Ah yes, my apologies, I completely missed that!



RD

[FrankO]

Ah yes, my apologies, I completely missed that!

No worries, RD - can happen to the best.

[rjpalmer]

No worries, RD - can happen to the best.

Hi Frank,

Sometimes the simplest explanations, and our initial assumptions, are the best.

I spent a little time digging around in newspaper archives last night trying to find other examples of men who were said to look like carmen, and found four.


The first is from 1860, and he looked like a carman because of his white frock.



Next up is an account from 1912. In a road accident, the victim was thought to be a carman because of an apron was found in the road (it was actually a mail bag).




In an 1870 case, a thief merely put on an apron and was assumed to be a brewery worker and/or carman, allowing him to steal a horse and cart.




Finally, an 1851 case.




I take it a "fustian" is a type of tunic over the shoulders, perhaps more like a Victorian cabman than a carman.

Your belief that Cross and/or Paul were wearing their work aprons is the best answer. It may have helped them keep warm during those 3.30 a.m. commutes.

It makes sense that someone picking up goods for transport would require some sort of identification--a company hat or apron or badge--but I'm failing to find any explicit conformation of this.

Cheers.

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi Frank,

Sometimes the simplest explanations, and our initial assumptions, are the best.

I spent a little time digging around in newspaper archives last night trying to find other examples of men who were said to look like carmen, and found four.


The first is from 1860, and he looked like a carman because of his white frock.



Next up is an account from 1912. In a road accident, the victim was thought to be a carman because of an apron was found in the road (it was actually a mail bag).




In an 1870 case, a thief merely put on an apron and was assumed to be a brewery worker and/or carman, allowing him to steal a horse and cart.




Finally, an 1851 case.




I take it a "fustian" is a type of tunic over the shoulders, perhaps more like a Victorian cabman than a carman.

Your belief that Cross and/or Paul were wearing their work aprons is the best answer. It may have helped them keep warm during those 3.30 a.m. commutes.

It makes sense that someone picking up goods for transport would require some sort of identification--a company hat or apron or badge--but I'm failing to find any explicit conformation of this.

Cheers.

Absolutely brilliant post!


RD

[Fiver]

Hi Frank,

Sometimes the simplest explanations, and our initial assumptions, are the best.

I spent a little time digging around in newspaper archives last night trying to find other examples of men who were said to look like carmen, and found four.


The first is from 1860, and he looked like a carman because of his white frock.



Next up is an account from 1912. In a road accident, the victim was thought to be a carman because of an apron was found in the road (it was actually a mail bag).




In an 1870 case, a thief merely put on an apron and was assumed to be a brewery worker and/or carman, allowing him to steal a horse and cart.




Finally, an 1851 case.




I take it a "fustian" is a type of tunic over the shoulders, perhaps more like a Victorian cabman than a carman.

Your belief that Cross and/or Paul were wearing their work aprons is the best answer. It may have helped them keep warm during those 3.30 a.m. commutes.

It makes sense that someone picking up goods for transport would require some sort of identification--a company hat or apron or badge--but I'm failing to find any explicit conformation of this.

Cheers.

Fustian is a type of heavy coarse cloth. I suspect it refers to the apron.

[FrankO]

Hi Frank,

Sometimes the simplest explanations, and our initial assumptions, are the best.

I spent a little time digging around in newspaper archives last night trying to find other examples of men who were said to look like carmen, and found four.


The first is from 1860, and he looked like a carman because of his white frock.


Next up is an account from 1912. In a road accident, the victim was thought to be a carman because of an apron was found in the road (it was actually a mail bag).


In an 1870 case, a thief merely put on an apron and was assumed to be a brewery worker and/or carman, allowing him to steal a horse and cart.


Finally, an 1851 case.


I take it a "fustian" is a type of tunic over the shoulders, perhaps more like a Victorian cabman than a carman.

Your belief that Cross and/or Paul were wearing their work aprons is the best answer. It may have helped them keep warm during those 3.30 a.m. commutes.

It makes sense that someone picking up goods for transport would require some sort of identification--a company hat or apron or badge--but I'm failing to find any explicit conformation of this.

Cheers.

Thanks for all that digging, Roger. And for sharing your findings, of course. Good to see the results are in line with what we were/are thinking.

And maybe in the near future you get lucky and find that Pickford's people did indeed wear company caps and aprons.

Cheers,
Frank

[A P Tomlinson]

So it seems most likely that the "appearance" of someone that would lead a copper to consider that he "Looked" like a carman boils down to "Apron" or "Cap and Apron".
So I think it's most likely that Cross WAS wearing an apron on his way to work that morning.
That also helps, if help were needed, in establishing why he was wearing it to the inquest. If Mizen was required to identify him, he would be expected to look as close to how he did that morning, (along with the high probablity that he had already put a short shift in already and would need to go back to work when he had done at the hearing.)

So the question remains, would either Paul or Mizen be expected to have noticed the blood on the apron that those Lechmerians tell us would have made it easy for him to pass through the streets having performed the acts he is alleged to have done?
It has long been one of the pillars used to support their case. ie, "Wearing a bloody apron would not look out of place..."

I still maintain that he would have had SOME blood on him... and not just a few specks. His hands at the very least and he placed one of them on Paul's shoulder, and given how often people touch their face unconsciously, surely...

Given what he allegedly did, and how he behaved, (according to the other witnesses) what do we think about the blood (or lack thereof)?
Could he have done what they say he did, with literally no opportunity to make an attempt to clean himself up meet and touch a passerby, and get within sufficient proximity of a copper so that he was able to recognise his face and no one see any blood about his person?

[Geddy2112]

Imagine a balloon half full of red paint. There is no pump forcing the paint around the balloon. Stab the balloon with a sharp knife. Would you get paint on your hands, sleeves, body?

Experts can be used to say X, Y or Z in theoretical 'lab' conditions of course they can. However when have you ever got your car to get the advertised MPG? Use some common sense here. What is more likely to have happened? 'Theoretical physics can also prove that an elephant can hang off a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy! But use your eyes, your common sense.'

[Sam Flynn]

Cross was a delivery-man, not a slaughterer or butcher. As someone who once had a job delivering meat myself, I found it far more likely to be contaminated by the post-mortem bowel movements of any poultry I was carrying, than to be splashed in blood. Not that there's much blood to speak of; there's the watery, pinkish myoglobin you can see with any joint, steak or chop, but that's about as gory as it gets. The animals will have been slaughtered, bled and butchered long before, perhaps hours before, the delivery-man arrives to pick up the cargo, so the meat is pretty "clean" at that stage.

Of course, we're assuming that the carman handles much meat anyway, as opposed to the butchers and/or their assistants loading the bulk of it onto the carman's cart.

[A P Tomlinson]

Cross was a delivery-man, not a slaughterer or butcher. As someone who once had a job delivering meat myself, I found it far more likely to be contaminated by the post-mortem bowel movements of any poultry I was carrying, than to be splashed in blood. Not that there's much blood to speak of; there's the watery, pinkish myoglobin you can see with any joint, steak or chop, but that's about as gory as it gets. The animals will have been slaughtered, bled and butchered long before, perhaps hours before, the delivery-man arrives to pick up the cargo, so the meat is pretty "clean" at that stage.

Of course, we're assuming that the carman handles much meat anyway, as opposed to the butchers and/or their assistants loading the bulk of it onto the carman's cart.

I did a short stint in a Saturday job when I was a teenager at our local Co Op butchers shop. Obviously its not a slaughterhouse, so most of the meat came as carcasses. The only ones who got blood on them to any noticeable degree were the genuine butchers who would cut a piece of beef or pork to the customers requirement. They get blood on their hands and wipe them on their smocks before wrapping the meat in greaseproof, then brown or news, paper.
The only time any of the rest of us really got any blood on us would be if we got the unenviable job of scrubbing the butchers block, and there would be some nasty messy goop from that.
Like you say, chickens and ducks were a different matter. There were a couple of women who dealt with cleaning those nasty things out before they were considered "Oven Ready" as that was all the rage back then... The way those two ladies handled a knife... blimey...
I was lucky to get a transfer to the greengrocers after but a few months in that place.

[rjpalmer]

I did a short stint in a Saturday job when I was a teenager at our local Co Op butchers shop. Obviously its not a slaughterhouse, so most of the meat came as carcasses. The only ones who got blood on them to any noticeable degree were the genuine butchers who would cut a piece of beef or pork to the customers requirement. They get blood on their hands and wipe them on their smocks before wrapping the meat in greaseproof, then brown or news, paper.
The only time any of the rest of us really got any blood on us would be if we got the unenviable job of scrubbing the butchers block, and there would be some nasty messy goop from that.
Like you say, chickens and ducks were a different matter. There were a couple of women who dealt with cleaning those nasty things out before they were considered "Oven Ready" as that was all the rage back then... The way those two ladies handled a knife... blimey...
I was lucky to get a transfer to the greengrocers after but a few months in that place.

I suspect that the old Ripperological truism of a blood-stained butcher walking through the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields with utter impunity during the Autumn of Terror is more of a myth than a reality.

In wouldn't hurt, of course, if one followed that trade, but one of the most important early suspects--drawing the suspicion of both Abberline and Warren--was Isenschmid and he was literally a pork butcher. They thought Isenschmid might have been the blood-stained man seen by Mrs. Fiddymont and Abberline, when tossing his lodgings, checked his clothes for blood-stains, even though it would have been natural for him to have had some. (Abberline didn't find any).

That he had a perfectly good reason to be bloody bloodstained didn't disarm their suspicions; indeed, they sought to place him in a police line-up.

[rjpalmer]

I guess what I'm getting at is that a carman wearing a blood-stained apron or "overalls" as he commuted past the murder sites, killing women as he went, even if true, would have been utterly worthless as a ruse.

The inquiring constable or passing pedestrian would have had no idea that this bloody man was a real carman, or a carman who worked with meat, so their suspicions would not have been in any way allayed, though this is what the narrator of the "Missing Evidence" video seemed to be implying.

'Wearing blood-stained overalls his job placed him at four of the killings at the time they occurred.'

If not, what was he trying to imply?

The claim is almost certainly not true, and even if it was true, it doesn't make any sense in reference to criminal behavior.