questions about body temps

[praline]

I am very much a noob when it comes to this case and do not pretend otherwise lol

My question however is why is there no record of body temp? I know Philips says the body was quite cold except for the intestines but this does not give me an exact temp. which is very important when working with time of death.
Is there any record of a body temp being taken?

In 1865 (or so as I am not sure on the exact year and would have to look it up) Taylor Wilkes published a ground breaking forensic paper that was all the rage for the time period. He introduced to the medical community in England the use of body temperatures and plateaus to determine cause of death. The only thing debated was the use of Celsius as degrees during 1888. The medical community was using exact body temps to determine the cause of death for years before Jack the Ripper.

I understand them not taking Polly Nicholl's temp or crime scene with any care as sadly back then prostitutes weren't thought of as important enough to pull out the big guns. By the second murder however there was a certain degree of panic in a huge city with the latest forensic science at their finger tips.

Maybe they took the temps and just didn't make them available to the public?

Here is a light hearted example why I think this would be important. A married couple in bed, the wife places her feet on her husband who jumps up and yells, "Your feet are like ice woman!" The woman feels her feet and sees nothing ice like about them and tells her husband to hush and go back to sleep.
Same pair of feet with 2 very different conclusions on body temperature.

Was the Annie's murder not considered serious enough to use the latest sciences? It does leave in doubt for me the approach the forensic team takes with this murder.

The same could be said about the food contents found. we know she had potatoes but we are not told what the contents of her stomach was ~ just that there was food present. This is important ... heck it could have been pork chops for all that is said in the inquest. If the food content was anything other then potato it could have given investigators an idea where she was during the time in question and might have led them closer to Jack... or not but it seems the exact contents of partially digested food should have some detail in the consistency and amounts. Maybe it did and I am just not reading the right information?

[Addy]

Hi,

I think it also depended on which dr was conducting the investigation. In Stride's case, they determined exactly what was in her stomach. And in this case they determined that there was alcohol present.

Perhaps they didn't use body temperature in these cases because they knew (in at least three cases) when the murder took place? Or they thought it wouldn't work because the victims had lost so much blood it wouldn't give an accurate reading?

Greetings,

Addy

[praline]

Addy,
Thank you for your replies. It does make me wonder if what they "knew" scientifically was very different then what was in practice at the time (Ie.. well it worked in the lab...)

I do think since they had the "know how" that having the body temp and the actual contents of the stomach would have helped a great deal in the investigation. I am very curious as to where annie was during the time frame leading up to her body being found. The witness accounts are difficult (for me at least) to take as the biblical truth and there seems to be a great discrepancy with them. I have read many "theories" as to what she was doing and I personally can see holes in each theory and none make me comfortable as calling them my own.

One of the things I am looking at is the reason why JTR burned Kelly's clothing. I know this is a Chapman thread but I am trying to establish what forensic investigating was done leading up to Kelly's death along with what was known to be accurate in the medical community of the day and also what was published. I know that finger prints were not used for investigative purposes but they were used as a way to identify people as far back as 700BC Babylon. We are on the edge of one of the larger forensic tools being invented (blood typing) along with the use of finger printing. Why is this important to me? If the medical community was debating and hashing out these forms of ID and JTR burned clothing and possibly stopped or changed MO's or moved .. this would mean he got scared of being caught due to leaving some type of evidence on the articles he burned. If he knew about these new techniques being spoken about in learned medical circles it would show he did have medical training and was educated. I will leave my ideas of Kelly's death with that as this forum is for Chapman evidence and discussion.

I was hoping that the DR was able to take an accurate body temperature but then "dumbed" it down for the jury by saying the body was cold. I wasn't looking for the actual temp to tell me anything due to the environmental factors but the importance would be that it was done and those in the medical community knew it was being done. If given the choice of believing in eyewittness accounts or physical evidence ~ 99% of the time I am going to believe the physical evidence. This is hard to do when they leave so many details out.

[Errata]

Addy,
Thank you for your replies. It does make me wonder if what they "knew" scientifically was very different then what was in practice at the time (Ie.. well it worked in the lab...)

Well, it is entirely possible that while doctors and medical examiners knew the science of body temperature but did not see a practical use for it. Forensic science was in it's infancy. Something like opium. Western doctors have known the effects of opium for hundreds of years before using it as a pain killer.

Also, police generally determined time of death through witness statements. It may not have been deemed necessary to establish time of death forensically. Even today, while establishing time of death through temperature is standard practice, in cases where a body is found not too long after being seen alive the statements from witnesses are given far more consideration in court. Say a woman goes out, comes back half an hour later to find her husband dead. Her testimony as to the time frame is more important than body temperature. And most of Jack the Ripper's victims were found relatively quickly.

[praline]

Errate, I would mostly agree with you except (using your same example of the wife) if the husband's temp is 86 degrees which would show that the wife was clearly lying about her 30 minute jaunt making her suspect #1. I think both the physical evidence (body temp) along with witness accounts are used to correlate each other rather then one being more important then the other.

[Hunter]

One criticism that has been made about the investigations of these murders is that, given their unique appearance, the authorities should have been more creative in their investigation and utilized some of the methods that were known, but not yet part of standard procedure. It was the extraordinary nature of these murders that caught them off guard. They had never experienced such an outbreak of unsolved, seemingly motiveless murders before.

Detailed forensics, beyond establishing the cause of death, had not usually been necessary. Most murder cases were quickly solved through a rather successful method of basic detective work... Obtaining witness statements, locating likely suspects such as relatives, friends, aquaintances...etc...and submitting them to interrogation, whereas the suspect usually 'cracked' and admitted his guilt, or at least, there was an established motive and credible witnesses to the crime to convict an individual.

The authorities were forced to play catch up mist a rapidly developing series of murders. Some things they didn't change - such as the primitive method of hand placement to determine body temperature. Some others, they did... such as having more than one attending physician at the crime scene and post-mortem, analyzing stomach contents, sketching and/or photographing the body and examining vital organs such as the heart, lungs and brain for indications of cause of death.

By the time of the MacKenzie murder the forensic aspect had improved considerably in comparison to that of Mary Ann Nichols. In the end, I'm not sure if using every known forensic technique would have apprehended the killer. It is difficult, even now, to bring a murderer such as this to justice. By the time the investigation had matured to a better effectiveness, the murders had ceased (with the exception of Coles a couple of years later)... leaving the police with a cold trail and a lot of theories and suspicions of individuals whose 'character' came into play more than actual hard evidence against anyone.

[praline]

Hunter,
This is what I find so daunting and yet so fascinating. There is no physical proof linking any of the suspects to the crime. A person could point to anyone and say they were JTR and have no better or worse proof then any other allegation. Heck they could say the Prince of Wales did it ..oops they already did that
I wonder if someone tried to pin the murders on Queen Victoria herself due to her Victorian era and modesty and moral conduct.

As a mother of 3 (yes, I said THREE) teenagers I am extremely cynical of anything that comes out of the mouth. One of my favorite sayings around the house when I am given a fabricated story is : If your mouth is moving and your jaws are flapping your lying.
I love my 3 teens with all of my heart but between them and their friends I do not take witness accounts to heart unless there is physical proof backing up the story being told.

Due to my own personality and cynical trends I see I am going to have an extremely difficult time with this case

[Hunter]

Hi Praline,

I don't believe you will have a difficult time. I've read your posts and I believe you have exactly the right attitude. You obviously have a well established background in certain relevant aspects of Victorian history such as medical and cultural... and you've experienced enough in life to understand the pitfalls of human nature. Establishing a well rounded base to work from helps one to pinpoint where certain information is needed, its reliability and how it fits in the overall context.

Being cynical with a proper perspective is healthy. It keeps one from latching onto theories that play hard and fast with the known evidence, offers too much supposition and destroys objectivity with a locked in bias. Just keep doing what you are doing. Read all that you can from primary sources such as 'The Ultimate Jack the Ripper'. Ask questions and challenge the answers if they conflict with what you already know or even defy common sense. Treat suspect theories as suspect, they all can't be guilty and they all just might be innocent of these most infamous of murders.

Form your own conclusions and be flexible enough to change them if new information or a valid perspective comes your way.

I have a feeling you are going to be a valuable asset to the discussions here.

[praline]

Thank you so much Hunter. To be honest as of right now in the infancy of my "serious" research I don't think the killer is among any of the known suspects. I see enough holes in each suspect to doubt them being JTR. This doesn't mean I, in all my computer chair detective glory, have even a hint or idea who the killer was or am planning for a new theory on the case

From what we know about the behaviors and whatnot from more modern killers and how those investigations finally caught them ~ none of the known suspects seem to fit for me just right. The closest I see would be a combination of Kosminski/ Cohen type of person with both traits seen. I see the killer as being very much an Albert Fish type of person. Not the same MO but the outward appearance and total dementia while living a perfectly "normal" family life raising his 6 kids alone. Does that make sense? I am not sure if I am explaining it right

[Mitch Rowe]

Actually the "best" way to estimate TOD using body temp is to measure the core temp while the body is in exact place and position of death. Let some time elapse and then measure again so that one can calculate a rate of change.
But even if that was done here I wouldnt put much creedence to it because I believe the body was covered at least once before Philips arrived. And theres no way of knowing if JTR himself covered the body and returned some hours later to uncover it again. (Although not likely it is possible).
So in Annies case I myself consider that She could have died anytime from the time it took her to walk from Little Paternoster Row to 29 Hanbury to the time her body was discovered!

[Errata]

Errate, I would mostly agree with you except (using your same example of the wife) if the husband's temp is 86 degrees which would show that the wife was clearly lying about her 30 minute jaunt making her suspect #1. I think both the physical evidence (body temp) along with witness accounts are used to correlate each other rather then one being more important then the other.

Certainly that is true now. Although as far as court testimony goes, assuming the time of death established by temperature corroborates the wife's story, they tend to present the witness statement with a little caveat saying that the witnesses timeline was corroborated by the coroner.

But this may not have been true then. Establishing TOD by temperature was used, but in my readings the scientific analysis of precise body temperature was rare. A doctor would say that the victim was still warm, cool, or cold. It takes about an average of 6 hours for a body to reach room temperature, beyond which it isn't going to continue to cool, and you go by rigor, and after 48 hours (I think) you have to go by decomposition. So if a doctor goes by warm, cool, and cold it would makes sense that the first hour or so would be warm, the next five would be cool, and anything after six hours is cold. Which is not too shabby to establish a time frame.

Now there has been speculation that the TOD on Chapman was wrong, that the doctor did not take into consideration the accelerated cooling from the opened abdomen, nor the unseasonably cold weather the night before. Even today it is not a perfect art. Water screws it up, as does exposure, dehydration, starvation, dismemberment, decapitation, disemboweling, certain drugs, fire, etc. Personally, I think it likely that the police did not ask for an official TOD (which medical examiners did not provide back then), because they were used to building a timeline based on witness statements. And I think the doctors called to the scene decided that within a few hours was an acceptable time range. By the time these women got to autopsy in most cases, body temperature was moot. They had been dead for at least half a day, possibly as long as two days.

I think it may have been seen as trivia. It's sort of amazing the things we don't put together. Doctors read an article about two guys who sat in a lab for weeks and figured out how to formulate time of death through internal temperature. And they think that is fascinating. And no one says "Hey! you know what we can do with that? Solve crime!" Doctors in 99% of the situation know when their patient died. The butler brought him his paper in bed at 9, when he came in for lunch the man was dead. Most doctor's patients died of illness, accident or old age. Murder was pretty rare. Doctors signed death certificates. They did not engage in the solving of crime. Even Police doctors typically just ascertained death, and then manner of death. "Yup, he's dead. Cause of death, hit in the head with a sharpish object." Autopsies were still rare. (Dissections less so, and most of the "autopsies" in the little sheds by the poor houses were dissections) Families rarely consented to autopsies, even when they knew that their loved one had been murdered. It was seen as a gross violation. And that didn't appreciably change until the forties and fifties. Given all of that, I would actually be astonished if someone decided to use this seemingly trivial formula to determine TOD for a crime. Someone figured out that your foot is exactly the length of your forearm from elbow to wrist. Since it's a standard thing in humans, it feels like there should be a reason for it. No one has figured it out. At this point, still just trivia.