Richardson's View

[etenguy]

A doctor using unreliable methods can be virtually dismissed as an irrelevance. His TOD estimation was a toss up. Just as likely to have been wrong or right and so worthless. Your faith in him is touching Fish.

I appreciate the above statement is made in the heat of debate, but the underlying issue is whether we should dismiss medical evidence in this case. It is absolutely true, beyond argument, that estimating time of death was not a precise science and prone to error. Though the closer to the time of death an estimate is made, the more likely it is to be more accurate. We have two medical estimates of time of death in this case - one at the scene based on the condition and temperature of the body - where it was estimated as about 2 hours or more earlier (so 4.30am or earlier). There was also an estimate to be made based on digestion of a meal of potatoes which Annie was known to have eaten at about 1.30-45am. The digestion of that meal suggested she had eaten two to three hours before death, this agrees roughly with the other time of death estimate. Two, admittedly not entirely reliable, estimates which support each other strengthens the medical estimate, in my view. It could still be incorrect, but the two methods corroborate each other in the same way as multiple witnesses corroborating each other provides more confidence in their stories.

Of course witnesses can lie but this is usually used as a ‘get out’ clause. There’s not a shred of evidence that Cadosch lied. And all we have on Richardson is the knife confusion and Chandler (who of cause cannot have been wrong)

We do not know what Cadosch and Long heard and saw - even accepting, as I do, that they were honest. They both had reason to know the time they made their observations. Of course they could have been wrong about the time (as they could about their observations). If we take them as being accurate, Long saw Annie alive after Cadosch heard a voice and crash against a fence. So whatever Cadosch heard it was not connected to the murder. If one or both are mistaken about the time, or Long saw someone who was similar looking to Annie, but not Annie (compare with the two witnesses generally disregarded as mistaken about seeing Mary Kelly hours after she died), we could argue that what Cadosch heard was connected to the murder, but we do not know. It is only when we add in Richardson's evidence that we start to get some confidence the witness evidence is more compelling than the medical evidence (IMHO). I do take your point that however confusing and contradictory Richardson's evidence is about everything he did that morning, he was clear there was no body in the yard when he was there. But his evidence is so contradictory, we have good reason to question everything he tells the inquest.

Which is more reliable, the medical evidence or the witness evidence, is difficult to conclude. For that reason I do not think we can be confident about when the murder took place.

[Fisherman]

A doctor using unreliable methods can be virtually dismissed as an irrelevance. His TOD estimation was a toss up. Just as likely to have been wrong or right and so worthless. Your faith in him is touching Fish.

And that is where you go wrong, as always. In order to rely on the three witnesses, you dub Phillips and his work unreliable and a toss-up, whereas it is common knowledge that a body as freshly dead as half an hour to an hour will not loose much if any temperature at all.

Weīve been over this before, though, and I consider it a waste of time to keep at it.

Of course witnesses can lie but this is usually used as a ‘get out’ clause. There’s not a shred of evidence that Cadosch lied. And all we have on Richardson is the knife confusion and Chandler (who of cause cannot have been wrong)

It is not about how we can prove that any one of them did. It is about how we KNOW that this is a factor that may play a role, and therefore it detracts from the overall veracity of witnesses as a group, whereas police surgeons do not have this flaw.

Of course you can try to use Long and Cadosch to cancel each other out but what does it leave us?

A very clear implication that neither of them saw or heard Chapman, and a very good reason to accept that she was killed at aproximately the same time as the other victims. In the shielding darkness of the early morning hours. Thatīs where it leaves us.

They both lied - we have no evidence for this apart from each other and the unreliable TOD from Phillips. Wish thinking.

Actually no, if I could have my wish, I would wish that nobody lied, misconstrued, misremembered or misinterpreted. Ever.

If only one of them lied - it’s still a later TOD and Richardson was right.

Whether they lied or got it wrong is immaterial. Chapman was neverthless long since dead when they made/claimed to have made their observations.

Or they were both truthful but there times were slightly out - all 3 witness fit, later TOD.

It was you (and Wynne Baxter) who introduced the concept of wishful thinking, not me.

Richardson and Cadosch were right. Long possibly out with her time.

Long possibly lying. Long possibly having seen another couple. Long not having seen Chapman at around 5.30.

When John Richardson said that he couldn’t possibly have missed the body had it been there we have no valid reason to disbelieve him.

You donīt think the verdict of a very experienced doctor who weighed together numerous factors before saying "NOT later than 4.30 and probably significantly earlier!" is a valid reason to disbelieve Richardson. I do. And thatīs something that willl not change, so you are going to have to live with it.
Heaps of experts all have said the same thing: feeling for warmth is an unreliable method.
I am no expert, but I agree with them.
I nevertheless think that the question should be posed like this: Is a highly experienced police surgeon who feels a woman who has seemingly been dead for less than an hour going to mistake her for somebody who has been dead numerous hours, thereby loosing almost all of her discernable body warmth? And is such a victim, dead for only between 45 minutes and an hour likely to develop rigor in that time? In cold conditions, and with a totally cut up body?
That is something entirely different from trying to tell a ten hour dead woman from a five hour dead woman by feeling for warmth. In such a case, the method is more or less useless.
Once again, I have explained all of this to your deaf ears before, and it would be wasting time to do it further times. You will just have to wait and see what happens as people look into the issue from a less closed mindset than the one that has prevailed for many a year within ripperology.
It takes time - and a better argument - to change these things.
I have both.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

When John Richardson said that he couldn’t possibly have missed the body had it been there we have no valid reason to disbelieve him.

Yes we do.

JR: I looked to see if the cellar door was all right, and, although I did not go down into the yard, I could see that it was all right. I saw the padlock in its proper place. The sole object I had in going there was to see whether the cellar was all right. When I come home at night I go down and try if the cellar is all right.

So at nighttime, Richardson cannot see the padlock from the doorstep, so he goes right to it to check it. Whereas at a quarter to five in the morning, he can supposedly clearly see the padlock by peeping around the corner from the top doorstep.
Would Richardson really walk from John St to Hanbury St every market morning, to check the cellar padlock, but stop a few steps short of the cellar door?
I find this very difficult to believe. Seems Richardson is keen for us to believe that he did not go into the yard that morning. Why might that be?
It is also questionable that Richardson could have got a good view of the the cellar padlock from the top step, as the cellar door seems to me to be flush with building's back wall...




JR: [... I] cut a piece of leather off my boot with an old table-knife, about five inches long. I kept the knife upstairs at John-street.

Where else would he keep a table knife, other than where he lives?

JR: I had been feeding a rabbit with a carrot that I had cut up, and I put the knife in my pocket.

Really?
How many of these rabbits eating carrots, have had the carrot cut up for them with a good sharp knife, let alone a blunt broken table knife?

JR: After cutting the leather off my boot I tied my boot up, and went out of the house into the market.

So where is the piece of leather? (I could ask the same of the rabbit - was it's existence ascertained by the police?)

Daily Telegraph: He added that as it was not sharp enough he had borrowed another one at the market.

Seems he lied about cutting the leather on the step.

JR: I did not close the back door. It closed itself. I shut the front door.

I find it difficult to believe that Richardson would not have pushed the door wide open to get it out of the way of his (failed) boot cutting excise.
In that case, why would the door have closed itself?
If the door was pushed wide open (which I believe is a reasonable assumption), where would Richardson have to have stood to grab it, to pull it closed?
Well if Chapman had been killed in the dark (< 4:45), he would have to step where Annie's head was, otherwise on the ground between steps and fence.
The huge problem with the second scenario is of course; Jack must have killed in almost broad daylight.

JR: By the Jury: My mother has heard me speak of people having been in the house. She has heard them herself.

Really?

Coroner: Did you ever know of strange women being found on the first-floor landing?
Mrs. R.: No.
Coroner: Your son had never spoken to you about it?
Mrs. R.: No.

Seems he lied about that too. Either that or Mrs. Richardson had a really bad memory.
Does this sound like someone suffering from poor memory?...

Mrs. R.: On Thursday, Sept. 6, I found my son's leather apron in the cellar mildewed. He had not used it for a month. I took it and put it under the tap in the yard, and left it there. It was found there on Saturday morning by the police, who took charge of it. The apron had remained there from Thursday to Saturday.

JR: I saw the body two or three minutes before the doctor came. A man in the market told me of the murder, and I went to the adjourning yard, and saw it from there. The man's name is Thomas Pearman, and he told me there had been a murder in Hanbury-street, but he did not say that it was at my house.

Dr. Phillips: On Saturday last I was called by the police at 6.20 a.m. to 29, Hanbury-street, and arrived at half-past six.

So how did this Thomas Pearman at the market find out about the murder soon enough that Richardson was able to return to Hanbury St before Phillips arrived, which itself was only a little more than half an hour after the time of discovery?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Funny how we should dismiss Dr. Phillips detailed and professional report in favour of a Jon in Wonderland story, with rabbits jumping from nowhere!



The Baron

You just can’t leave out the Bunnies can you Baron. The methods for ascertaining TOD were unreliable. That’s not my opinion Baron it’s the opinion of medical experts. Why do you find that so unbelievable? Because it’s not what you want to hear.

And so we have methods of judging TOD which we know are unreliable up against a man who simple had to
look into a yard and who wasn’t visually or spatially impaired and who, as far as we know, wasn’t a complete moron. And Cadosch who also was none of the above.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Witnesses, especially in cases like the Ripper case, with nation-wide coverage, have been known to many times exaggerate. They are given to making mistakes, they sometimes look for those illusive fifteen minutes of fame, they are likely to misinterpret many things, they sometimes come forward with the hope of earning a few quid from the papers, etcetera.

Police surgeons are a different breed altogether, and just about all those fears we should always have about amateur witnesses are non-existant in their cases.

So no, the weight is ceratinly not in favour of the witnesses (who introduced incompatible stories in the first place) in my opinion. My take on it is that we can be certain that Cadosch and Long were wrong and pretty certain that Richardson was too.

Your trust in them is touching, but thatīs as nice as I can be. So Iīll abstain from the rest of my judgment.

A doctor using unreliable methods can be virtually dismissed as an irrelevance. His TOD estimation was a toss up. Just as likely to have been wrong or right and so worthless. Your faith in him is touching Fish.

Of course witnesses can lie but this is usually used as a ‘get out’ clause. There’s not a shred of evidence that Cadosch lied. And all we have on Richardson is the knife confusion and Chandler (who of cause cannot have been wrong)

Of course you can try to use Long and Cadosch to cancel each other out but what does it leave us?

They both lied - we have no evidence for this apart from each other and the unreliable TOD from Phillips. Wish thinking.

If only one of them lied - it’s still a later TOD and Richardson was right.

Or they were both truthful but there times were slightly out - all 3 witness fit, later TOD.

Richardson and Cadosch were right. Long possibly out with her time.

When John Richardson said that he couldn’t possibly have missed the body had it been there we have no valid reason to disbelieve him.

[The Baron]

Funny how we should dismiss Dr. Phillips detailed and professional report in favour of a Jon in Wonderland story, with rabbits jumping from nowhere!



The Baron

[Fisherman]

The weight is in favour of the witnesses.

Witnesses, especially in cases like the Ripper case, with nation-wide coverage, have been known to many times exaggerate. They are given to making mistakes, they sometimes look for those illusive fifteen minutes of fame, they are likely to misinterpret many things, they sometimes come forward with the hope of earning a few quid from the papers, etcetera.

Police surgeons are a different breed altogether, and just about all those fears we should always have about amateur witnesses are non-existant in their cases.

So no, the weight is ceratinly not in favour of the witnesses (who introduced incompatible stories in the first place) in my opinion. My take on it is that we can be certain that Cadosch and Long were wrong and pretty certain that Richardson was too.

Your trust in them is touching, but thatīs as nice as I can be. So Iīll abstain from the rest of my judgment.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

You know you can get pot noodles for two, nowadays?
They're harder to over-season.

I tried, but half sat uneaten, mocking me.

[Joshua Rogan]

Beats my Pot Noodle for one seasoned with my own tears of loneliness.....

You know you can get pot noodles for two, nowadays?
They're harder to over-season.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Over to cooking now! Cod, mushrooms, port and herb sauce, oven grilled potatoes and sweet peas, together with a New Zeeland chardonnay. Cheers!

Beats my Pot Noodle for one seasoned with my own tears of loneliness.....

[Herlock Sholmes]

... and 99,9 per cent found Galilei a liar. Polls reflect sentiments, not facts.

One fact is that Cadosch was unable to tell where the spoken "No" came from, and he did not establish whether it was a man or woman who supposedly uttered it. Another fact is that a woman falling against a fence will make a heavu thud and then you wil hear her falling to the ground, clothes rustling in the process. Whatever it was Cadosch heard, it was not Chapman and her killer, unless the killer was celebrating the two hour anniversary of her death. I know you disagree, but as you can see, the police realized that even Richardsons timing was not compatible with the medical evidence, and that says a lot about Long and Cadosch.

Before this is realized, no real insight can be had about the murder, if you ask me (and you ALWAYS do, donīt you? Well, you should! ). Once there are two options (Phillips or the timeless triumvirate), we should look to how the murder fares in a comparison with the others. And the others all died in darkness, in the wee hours of the morning.

Not that we are ever going to agree, and not that you are going to stay away from trying to mock the ones who disagree, but thereīs the rub, Herlock.

Over to cooking now! Cod, mushrooms, port and herb sauce, oven grilled potatoes and sweet peas, together with a New Zeeland chardonnay. Cheers!

When you accuse me of mockery Fish are you being ironic? Pot...kettle etc.

Telegraph version:

. As I returned towards the back door I heard a voice say "No" just as I was going through the door. It was not in our yard, but I should think it came from the yard of No. 29.I, however, cannot say on which side it came from. I went indoors, but returned to the yard about three or four minutes afterwards. While coming back I heard a sort of a fall against the fence which divides my yard from that of 29. It seemed as if something touched the fence suddenly.

Times version:

. As he returned across the yard, to the backdoor of his house, he heard a voice say quite close to him, “No.”As I returned towards the back door I heard a voice say "No" just as I was going through the door. It was not in our yard, but I should think it came from the yard of No. 29. I, however, cannot say on which side it came from. I went indoors, but returned to the yard about three or four minutes afterwards. While coming back I heard a sort of a fall against the fence which divides my yard from that of 29. It seemed as if something touched the fence suddenly. He went into the house, and returned to the yard 3 or 4 minutes afterwards. He then heard a sort of a fall against the fence, which divided his yard from No. 29. Something seemed suddenly to touch the fence. He did not look to see what it was. He did not hear any other noise.

From Swanson’s report on 19th Oct.

....had occasion to go into the yard at the rear of number 27, separated by a wooden fence about 5 feet high, and he heard words pass between some persons apparently at No. 29 Hanbury Street, but the only word he could catch was “No.” On Cadosch going back into the yard again he heard a noise as of something falling falling against the fence on the side next to No. 29 Hanbury Street, but he did not take any notice.

Its fairly clear that Cadosch’s first impression was that the ‘no’ came from number 29. Why else would he have mentioned it in the first place? But when pressed he exhibited the caution that he showed in his Inquest statement. And if he did mention ‘which side’ it was from I’m sure that the police would have checked and eliminated number 25.

Can we really believe that a word heard from under 6 feet away could actually have come from yards away? I think Cadosch was being extremely over cautious.

~~~

Fish, that Richardson’s evidence doesn’t tie in with Phillips virtual guesswork is hardly an issue. They might as well have gotten Old Mother Richardson to check the tea leaves.

~~~

Fish quote:

. Another fact is that a woman falling against a fence will make a heavu thud and then you wil hear her falling to the ground, c

A straw man argument. I’ve not suggested that the noise was Annie falling against the fence. I don’t think it was. I think it was the killer brushing against the fence.

~~~

Theres no escaping the fact that Cadosch heard the ‘no’ and a noise from number 29 at a time when Annie was supposed to have been dead. There’s an issue though that causes chagrin amongst some.....Annie simply wasn’t there.

We we know that Phillips was using unreliable methods.

We know that Richardson wasn’t blind or a complete moron and that he had no reason to lie.

We know that Cadosch had no reason to lie and that he wasn’t subject to hallucinations.

And even if Long saw Annie and her killer the possibility of her being 15 minutes out (or even of her and Cadosch being 7 or 8 minutes out) is more likely that Richardson missing a mutilated corpse.

The weight is in favour of the witnesses. A combination of bunny stories and weird logic won’t change that.

[Fisherman]

It’s interesting to note that in the two threads that I started on the witnesses 89% of posters felt Richardson reliable whilst 93% found Cadosch reliable.

... and 99,9 per cent found Galilei a liar. Polls reflect sentiments, not facts.

One fact is that Cadosch was unable to tell where the spoken "No" came from, and he did not establish whether it was a man or woman who supposedly uttered it. Another fact is that a woman falling against a fence will make a heavu thud and then you wil hear her falling to the ground, clothes rustling in the process. Whatever it was Cadosch heard, it was not Chapman and her killer, unless the killer was celebrating the two hour anniversary of her death. I know you disagree, but as you can see, the police realized that even Richardsons timing was not compatible with the medical evidence, and that says a lot about Long and Cadosch.

Before this is realized, no real insight can be had about the murder, if you ask me (and you ALWAYS do, donīt you? Well, you should! ). Once there are two options (Phillips or the timeless triumvirate), we should look to how the murder fares in a comparison with the others. And the others all died in darkness, in the wee hours of the morning.

Not that we are ever going to agree, and not that you are going to stay away from trying to mock the ones who disagree, but thereīs the rub, Herlock.

Over to cooking now! Cod, mushrooms, port and herb sauce, oven grilled potatoes and sweet peas, together with a New Zeeland chardonnay. Cheers!

[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s interesting to note that in the two threads that I started on the witnesses 89% of posters felt Richardson reliable whilst 93% found Cadosch reliable.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Because in the real world where evidence is closely scrutinized his testimony is unsafe to totally rely on its as simple as that, but in your world you seem to readily accept the witness testimony without question.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

And in your world you simply assume unreliability without evidence of unreliability. Cadosch can be scrutinised and there’s zero.

[Trevor Marriott]

It’s always baffled me Michael when Cadosch is called ‘unreliable.’ (Except when Trevor says it of course because he thinks everyone was unreliable) I’d go so far as to say that there’s no more reasonable sounding witness in the entire case. And so unless he lied (something we have zero evidence for) Or that the noise from the fence right next to him was the noise from a fence three streets away. Or that the noise was a blind man leaning on next doors fence, what else could it have been? Any effort to discredit Cadosch leaves me wondering ‘what’s the real reason for it?’

Because in the real world where evidence is closely scrutinized his testimony is unsafe to totally rely on its as simple as that, but in your world you seem to readily accept the witness testimony without question.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk