AC and TOD

[curious]

Hello All. If Annie Chapman died before 5.00, why didn't Davis hear someone in the passageway? He was awake from 3.00 until 5.00.

Cheers.
LC

Hi, Lynn,
Wasn't Davis 56? Who knows how good his hearing was, plus, he was on the third floor.

Since people moving about in the house was apparently something that happened all the time, would he have even paid any attention or noticed it?

curious

[Chris]

Fisherman

I really think you have to look at some numbers in order to evaluate Phillips's estimate.

[Wickerman]

Having Cadosch hear the "no", and then a bump against the fence, at the same time that a body is lying there in the morning light is hardly convincing.

[lynn cates]

Davis

Hello All. If Annie Chapman died before 5.00, why didn't Davis hear someone in the passageway? He was awake from 3.00 until 5.00.

Cheers.
LC

[curious4]

Take it back

Hello again Fisherman,

Please ignore my last, can't find the reference now and have a feeling it was mentioned in a documentary, so probably not true.

Apologies and best wishes,
C4

P.S. If I do find it, I will post the reference, but don't hold your breath, as they say!

[lynn cates]

exception

Hello (again) Christer.

Glad you found that exception.

And rigor mortis can have onset in as little as ten minutes.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

why?

Hello Christer. Thanks.

Why do you think Annie died earlier?

When I held this view, it was because I believed that "Jack" was a shrewd and cunning monomaniac.

Cheers.
LC

[curious4]

Door

The possibility that Richardson lied to cover up for his failure to see to his lock-checking duties have been discussed at times. It is, I guess, a possibility.
Myself, Iīm more inclined to believe that Richardson realized that he may well have spent the odd minute in company of a freshly killed Ripper victim, without seeing her. This would have made him look somewhat ridiculous, and so he elaborated somewhat on how thorough his check was, in order to try and establish that the body could not have been there when he was.

I think he told Chandler the truth from the beginning. I believe he gave the door a smallish shove, just enough to be able to get a cursory glance on the padlock, and then he left.
And that would have meant that he failed to do his duty thoroughly, just as it meant that he failed to see a ripped-up woman lying more or less straight beneath him.
Uncontent with this picture being painted, he fabricated a second scenario in which he claims to have stayed for a while on the stairs, have gotten further out on them, have secured a better look at the padlock but first and foremost, have seen enough to be able to decide that Chapman could not have been there as he was.

Regardless of how he did things, he would have done it with the door falling onto his left hand side (or his back, depending on how he stood/sat on the staircase). And the further to the right he would have moved as he stepped onto the stairs, the more acute the angle of the door would be. Consequently, the more it would obscure things on his left side.
I can easily see how this would have played a role when the police decided that there was a very real chance that Richardson could have missed Chapman even if he DID sit on the middle stair for a minute.

All the best,
Fisherman

Hello Fisherman,

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading that the door was like a stable door, it could be opened top and bottom separately. If this was so, and he just opened the top half to glance at the cellar, perhaps he could have missed seeing Annie.

Best wishes,
C4

[Wickerman]

.... Phillips found a more or less totally cold body with onsetting rigor, something that he as well as any expert today would ascribe to death having occurred two-three hours prior. He was, however, not accustomed to establishing TOD for people who had been opened up and left out in chilly weather, ....

Hi Christer.
It also goes without saying that your source, R N Karmaker, was not talking about a body which had been eviscerated.

The first medical man to arrive at a murder scene, even in 1888, should have taken the ambient temperature and the core body temperature. In the case of an evisceration it would be the brain or the buttocks/thigh muscles.
None of these medical men make references to this on their arrival at any of the crime scenes.

Three weeks later, Eddowes bore witness to the fact that at least roughly 40 minutes after death, your body is still quite warm in spite of chilly conditions and thorough evisceration.

Any value of a comparison between the Eddowes murder and the Chapman murder is compromised by the fact the opinions came from different doctors.
Had Phillips given an opinion on the body temperature of Eddowes, we could then at least a degree of reliability compare his words on both cases.

The situation is that we cannot assume the opinions of these men differed to any great degree based soley on their brief comments.

[Fisherman]

Fisherman

I suggest you should take a look as some of the 'rules of thumb' that have been used to estimate time of death - crude as they are and inconsistent with one another as they are - and see what difference a degree of uncertainty in measured body temperature makes, or a degree of uncertainty in temperature at the time of death, or a degree of uncertainty in ambient temperature. Then think about how accurately temperature can be measured by touch. Then maybe about whether Phillips is likely even to have used any kind of formula. Then about what difference it might make if the victim had been disembowelled and the doctor was rooting around in the wreckage.

I think if you actually look at some numbers you will find it difficult to escape the conclusion that there would have been an uncertainty of several hours in any estimate of the time of death that Phillips could have made.

I have said it before, Chris: Nothing is written in stone. Itīs a world of exceptions and strange things happen and all that. I do not challenge truths like these, since they are universal.

What it all means, though, is that we need to turn to exceptions in order to be able to explain why Chapman managed to grow completely cold, develop rigor mortis in an hour or less and fail to digest a potato in three and a half hours.

And we can do that, sure. At any rate, we must concede that it COULD have happened.

Likewise, we must accept that Phillipsītouch may have been off to some extent on the morning in question.

But however much we twist and turn things here, we are left with the facts that people who die normally donīt loose all bodily warmth, more or less, in an hour or less, that people who die normally develop rigor mortis in two to three hours, earlier in warm conditions, later in cold conditions and that people normally digest a potato in an hour or two, meaning that it should have been gone at 5.30.

Medically, these three parameters are all in line with each other, speaking for Phillips being right.

Then there are three witnesses, all speaking for him being wrong. Apparently Baxter did the math, and made his pick.

I believe that was wrong. I think Phillips has more than enough to go on in the combination of the thee parameters to make a great case for Chapman dying consistently with the times of Tabrams and Nicholsīdemise. And I think that overrides the witnesses, especially given the built-in inconsistencies of their evidence.

Long said that sheīd have trouble to identify her couple, Cadosh could not tell where the voices he heard came from and Richardson said different things from one day to another.

Thatīs how I make my call. If you make yours differently, I fully understand.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Chris]

Fisherman

I suggest you should take a look as some of the 'rules of thumb' that have been used to estimate time of death - crude as they are and inconsistent with one another as they are - and see what difference a degree of uncertainty in measured body temperature makes, or a degree of uncertainty in temperature at the time of death, or a degree of uncertainty in ambient temperature. Then think about how accurately temperature can be measured by touch. Then maybe about whether Phillips is likely even to have used any kind of formula. Then about what difference it might make if the victim had been disembowelled and the doctor was rooting around in the wreckage.

I think if you actually look at some numbers you will find it difficult to escape the conclusion that there would have been an uncertainty of several hours in any estimate of the time of death that Phillips could have made.

[Fisherman]

I thought Iīd publish this, in order to strengthen my suggestion. Itīs from "Forensic Medicine and Toxicology" by R N Karmakar, Academic Publishers, first published 2003.

"Dead body does not loose temperature obeying the Newtonīs law of cooling like inert heated substance by conduction, convection and radiation, where in the first few hours temperature is to fall comparatively quickly and in the later phase when it approaches nearer the surrounding temperature, the rate of fall is gradual and slow.
During cooling of dead body, the outer layer (outer core) which is more than 1 inch in thickness comprising about 50 per cent of the body mass having heat insulating property better than cork and susceptible to changes in the environmental condition will have significant lower temperature than the ”inner core”, temperature of which varies from place to place depending upon depth from surface, state of circulation of the part and solidity or hollowness of the viscera.
During first 1 to 3 hours after death rate of cooling is slow, rather little or no cooling of the inner core takes place until significant dissipation of heat occurs trough outer core. Particularly during first hour after death, there occurs no fall of rectal temperature, even it may rise as much as 2,6 degrees Fahrenheit in a body of 70 kg due to glycolysis."

... meaning that we should not expect Chapman to grow totally cold in an hour or less. Instead - just as in the Eddowes case - we should expect to find a body that was still quite warm within that remove of time. Phillips found a more or less totally cold body with onsetting rigor, something that he as well as any expert today would ascribe to death having occurred two-three hours prior. He was, however, not accustomed to establishing TOD for people who had been opened up and left out in chilly weather, and so he added that these were the prevailing conditions of the case, opening up for some potential difference in cooling off due to this.
Three weeks later, Eddowes bore witness to the fact that at least roughly 40 minutes after death, your body is still quite warm in spite of chilly conditions and thorough evisceration.

I think we may need to accept that Baxter made the wrong call.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

I really think people need to be aware that there's a considerable margin of error in the estimation of time of death from body temperature, even under 'normal' conditions today, with the benefit of accurate temperature measurements and a proper understanding of the physical processes involved.

Looking at the numbers, it is very difficult to believe that Dr Phillips, without actual measurements of either body or ambient temperature, without an accurate model of how post mortem temperature decreased with time and in exceptional circumstances (a disembowelled corpse), could have guessed the time of death with a margin of error less than several hours.

Of course Phillips ran the risk of getting it wrong. But he was a man of vast experience and he would have been the best man for the job in many a respect. Plus we do have another disembowelled victim in the Ripper series that offers a crude comparison; Eddowes, who was quite warm roughly 40 minutes after dying in Mitre Square.

That is not to say that we may reach a definitive conclusion in the Chapman case. But the physical pointers make me vote for her lying dead in the backyard of Hanbury Street as Richardson opened that door. Building a case against that involves accepting that Chapman deviated from the normal in rather a flagrant manner.
She may have done so. I donīt think she did, though. But as I say, itīs anybodys prerogative to hold another opinion.

The best,
Fisherman

[Chris]

I really think people need to be aware that there's a considerable margin of error in the estimation of time of death from body temperature, even under 'normal' conditions today, with the benefit of accurate temperature measurements and a proper understanding of the physical processes involved.

Looking at the numbers, it is very difficult to believe that Dr Phillips, without actual measurements of either body or ambient temperature, without an accurate model of how post mortem temperature decreased with time and in exceptional circumstances (a disembowelled corpse), could have guessed the time of death with a margin of error less than several hours.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman,

I agree in regards to the Hanbury Street murder.... but what if Jack was around looking for a victim. It would be interesting to know when the witness stopped being followed/chased....maybe both were scared off by the 'LIPSKI' shout and both just happened to run away in the same direction....Maybe Jack (the chaser) simply ran away and disappeared up another road or alleyway and found himself by chance in or around Mitre Square, where he managed to compose himself before the death of Eddowes.... Plausible?

More like possible, Iīd say. But never mind me - we all have our own different ways of looking upon this, which is good. That way, we cover as much ground as possible.

The best,
Fisherman