Lets get Lechmere off the hook!

[The Baron]

You shouldn’t have edited that, rjpalmer. See, before, it was just a dismissal, just a wave of the hand، but now?

Now you’ve acknowledged it. You felt it, didn’t you? That little hesitation, that tiny crack in the wall, that moment where you thought, hmm, maybe I should tweak that. And that’s beautiful. That’s all I need.

Because suspicion isn’t about whether it’s “weak” or “strong” whether it “should” or “shouldn’t” exist، it just does. Like a shadow, like a whisper in a quiet room.

You can argue against it all you want, but the second you felt the need to edit your words, suspicion was already standing right behind you, smiling.



The Baron

[Geddy2112]

And we can take it as read that Cross wasn’t wearing a pair of night vision goggles I assume Fiver?

Funny you should say that. I've tried to prove and I think I have successfully that the corner of the Wool Warehouse to where Polly was lying was 61 feet so on this diagonal the middle of the road was 30.5 feet from the body. (YouTube punters can't understand how this is possible if the road is only 25 feet wide, apparently they missed the day Pythagoras was being taught.)

So the point being according to YouTubers Cross can't have been 30.5 feet away and see well enough in the dark unless he had.....

Was he wearing X ray glasses to see that well in the dark?

Christ on a bike....

[rjpalmer]

You shouldn’t have edited that, rjpalmer. See, before, it was just a dismissal, just a wave of the hand، but now?

No, not really.

As I say, suspicion is just a state of mind--like joy, anger, curiosity, etc. It can be warranted or unwarranted, it can be well-deserved, or it can be bonkers.

There IS--for some reason--suspicion in your mind about a Victorian laborer stopping to inspect a tarpaulin, so it was foolish for me to deny your suspicion. That hardly means I share it.

As I see it, your suspicion about a simple act is based on a false assumption that a tarpaulin had little or no value. That's incorrect.

And what difference does it make? As I've roamed my own city, I've seen average, everyday people stop and inspect all sorts of things, including bags of garbage.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I do have a minor quibble. The East London Observer, the Daily News, Lloyd's, the Illustrated Police News, The Daily Telegraph, and other papers identified the tarpaulin as a 'tarpaulin sheet,' and I suspect that that is what it was. It just goes to show that different sources give conflicting data.

I don't think it matters, though. A tarpaulin sheet was hardly a worthless piece of fabric as suggested by The Baron. I've seen estimates of their worth, dating to the 1880s, as anywhere between one pound and two pounds. That's a lot of money for a working man, and it would be entirely natural that a man who dealt with tarpaulins to make a wrong assumption about an object in dim light, briefly assuming it was something he was used to seeing.

A dressmaker might have assumed a manikin, a rag-and-bone woman might have assumed a bundle of rags, etc.

Another weak attempt to muster suspicion where there isn't any.

Edit: suspicion is just a state of mind so let me rephrase that. Suspicion where there shouldn't be any.

Roger, as someone that used to work for a road haulage company a tarpaulin sheet is just another way of describing a tarpaulin. There is no such thing as a ‘tarpaulin’ and a ‘tarpaulin sheet.’ Cross thought that it might have been a tarpaulin, which could have fallen from a cart. And as he wasn’t an owl he couldn’t distinguish a dark tarpaulin in the pre-dawn in a very poorly lit street in a shadowed area.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Funny you should say that. I've tried to prove and I think I have successfully that the corner of the Wool Warehouse to where Polly was lying was 61 feet so on this diagonal the middle of the road was 30.5 feet from the body. (YouTube punters can't understand how this is possible if the road is only 25 feet wide, apparently they missed the day Pythagoras was being taught.)

So the point being according to YouTubers Cross can't have been 30.5 feet away and see well enough in the dark unless he had.....



Christ on a bike....

When you have to explain to those people the concept of the difficulty of seeing things in the dark in a poorly lit street you know what you are dealing with.

[Geddy2112]

It's clever how Lechmere somehow assumed the identity of an actual person living at No. 30 Berner Street in the 1881 census... And his father was a carman so that seals it!

But the YouTuber states -

your own your own flella , so maany folk thinkj its cross, top barristers ex detective superintendants ,im sorry but WHO ARE YOU?ever heard the expression if you carnt beat em , get some digging done with your new clue.

So he is convinced Lechmere and Letchford are the same man. I mean apart from Lechmere was already married and living in Doveton Street when the marriage cert you found showed Letchford married Christmas Day 1889. Evidence seems not to be important in this case... unless it's another bigamous marriage in the Lechmere clan.

[Geddy2112]

Fair enough, but quintuplets do happen, and the American boxer George Foreman had several sons named...George Foreman!

...and a grill, do not forget the grill.

[Geddy2112]

You shouldn’t have edited that, rjpalmer. See, before, it was just a dismissal, just a wave of the hand، but now?

Now you’ve acknowledged it. You felt it, didn’t you? That little hesitation, that tiny crack in the wall, that moment where you thought, hmm, maybe I should tweak that. And that’s beautiful. That’s all I need.

Because suspicion isn’t about whether it’s “weak” or “strong” whether it “should” or “shouldn’t” exist، it just does. Like a shadow, like a whisper in a quiet room.

You can argue against it all you want, but the second you felt the need to edit your words, suspicion was already standing right behind you, smiling.

The linguistics in your post seem rather 'fishy' to say the least. Mmmmm

[The Baron]

So Lechmere, the absolute legend, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, except he wasn’t really in the right place to help. He was just there, chilling by Nichols’ body, like a casual bystander at a crime scene. How considerate, right?

Let’s give him credit for noticing something was wrong. Who wouldn’t stop to gawk at a woman lying on the ground? It’s definitely not suspicious. He could’ve walked past, but no, Charles is a stand up guy, he stopped to take a look and, in a true act of heroism, decided to drag Paul into it.

“Hey, come over here, check this out, there's a woman on the ground.”

Paul, naturally, is like, “Is she alive?”

Lechmere, without missing a beat, goes, “Eh, she might be, but who cares? Just look at her, mate.”

And then comes the cherry on top, Paul, being an actual human being, suggests maybe sitting her up, just, you know, checking if she’s actually alive. But oh no, Sir Charles the Brave suddenly turns into the most fragile man in Whitechapel, “Nah, I’m not touching her. Too risky.”

Ah yes, the hero we all aspire to be. Stops to watch, drags in a witness, but when it’s time to actually do something, he’s suddenly got a strict no touching policy.

What happened, Lechmere? Scared of catching a case of basic human decency? Or were your hands already busy before Paul showed up?

Lechmere’s Guide to Emergency Situations:

• See a woman possibly dying? Stop and stare.
• Find a random stranger? Make them stare, too.
• Need to actually help? Absolutely not.
• Asked to assist in any way? Hard pass.
• Need to throw the police off your trail? Lie through your teeth.

But wait, it gets better.

Our fearless guardian of Whitechapel then tries to delegate responsibility. “You had better go on, and if you see a policeman, tell him.” Oh, fantastic leadership, Charles. Truly inspiring. Calls in backup, refuses to help, then tries to send the backup away.

The man is operating on a whole new level of useless.

And just when you think he’s peaked, he tops himself, he meets Constable Mizen and drops this masterpiece, “Another policeman wants you in Buck’s Row.”

So, to summarize, Lechmere stops to spectate, drags in an audience, refuses to interact, delegates responsibility, and then misleads the police. A flawless display of heroism.

We should all be grateful that Charles Lechmere never went into medicine.

“Doctor, this patient is dying!”
Lechmere: “Ah, yes. Someone should really do something about that. Not me, though.”

Or law enforcement. “Officer, there's a crime happening!”
Lechmere: “Wow. Fascinating. Let’s call over another bystander to have a look”

Truly a pioneer, a hero’s hero. The only man who could walk into a crime scene, pretend to help, and still manage to do absolutely nothing.



The Baron