Time Factor

[Bridewell]

I think its more like 24 or 48 hours in the wind, as far as Long's testimony goes ..

moonbegger .

Hi MB,

It was Saturday morning and she was en route to Spitalfields Market. What reason is there to suppose that she didn't get the day right?

[Bridewell]

Christ Church

No witness reports something happening at "8:36," or even in tenths of hours.

Cadosch : When he passed the Spitalfields Church it was about 32 minutes past 5. The Christchurch clock was so efficient that it only needed to be wound twice a year. I'm sure I read somewhere that it was known to be accurate, but damned if I can find the source now, The following link is interesting nonetheless.

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/05/05/the-secret-world-of-christ-church-spitalfields/

[Bridewell]

All Timings Are Approximate

Whatever he heard it was not the murder , and whenever she saw, what she claimed to see, it was not the Killer with chapman . I think this is still the best evidence that Dr Philips was right and witnesses confused about TOD .

"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." This after he'd heard "words passed between some persons" in the same yard about 3 minutes previously.

Mrs Long admitted uncertainty on some points, for example the man's coat, but she said she was sure the woman she'd seen was the one whose body she viewed in the mortuary.

Yes, a witness can be sure and still be mistaken but, apart from the minor time discrepancy, the evidence of Cadosch and Long is consistent one with the other. As this thread has its focus on the accuracy or otherwise of timings, can we take that concept to its logical conclusion. Witness timings can only be approximate at best, but so can the times of death estimated by doctors. Cadosch TOD estimate 5.28am. Long sighting suggests about 5 minutes later. Bagster Phillips TOD 4.30am - based on body temperature "but he admitted that the coldness of the morning and the great loss of blood might affect his opinion".

Read more: How to Determine a Body's Time of Death | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_2073756_dete...#ixzz2KdClKB5u

from which the following is taken (bold type added)

Determine the body's temperature, or algor mortis by inserting a special thermometer into the chest cavity. When you are alive, your body maintains its temperature of 98.6 degrees. Once you have died, your body is no longer able to do that. The body cools at a rate of one to one and a half degrees per hour until you meet the temperature of your surroundings. Again, several factors can influence the accuracy of this test, such as it being very cold, causing the body to cool much quicker.

The "several factors" might include disembowelling I would have thought.

[lynn cates]

best witnesses

Hello Colin. Thanks. Entirely reasonable. These may be two of the best witnesses we have.

Cheers.
LC

[moonbegger]

Hello Bridewell ,

It was Saturday morning and she was en route to Spitalfields Market. What reason is there to suppose that she didn't get the day right?

I am very much on the side of Dr Phillips as far as TOD is concerned in this instance . which pretty much rules out the chance that Mrs Long witnessed Chapman and her killer a few yards East of number 29 ..

Having said , i do think there are a few honest alternatives to her sighting.

1) She Simply got the wrong day , chapman was quite often there at 29 .

[Coroner]Was it not an unusual thing to see a man and a woman standing there talking? - Oh no. I see lots of them standing there in the morning.
[Coroner] At that hour of the day? - Yes; that is why I did not take much notice of them.

2) She did see a couple there abouts on that day .. but it was not Chapman & killer

" lots of them standing there in the morning"

. As far as her ID, days later of Annie's dead, mutilated and sunken face that she didn't originally

"Take much notice of"

in the first place goes .. I don't buy it at all .

3) for whatever reason she wanted a bit of spotlight , and possibly a chance to point an accusing finger at johnny foreigner ..

I don't think we will ever know for certain .. but i personally don't believe for various reasons, that Long witnessed Annie with her killer on the morning of the 8th..

cheers

moonbegger .

[moonbegger]

Determine the body's temperature, or algor mortis by inserting a special thermometer into the chest cavity. When you are alive, your body maintains its temperature of 98.6 degrees. Once you have died, your body is no longer able to do that. The body cools at a rate of one to one and a half degrees per hour until you meet the temperature of your surroundings. Again, several factors can influence the accuracy of this test, such as it being very cold, causing the body to cool much quicker.

The "several factors" might include disembowelling I would have thought.

The thing is , Cold temp would slow down the process of rigor , not speed it up . Just the same as Eddows discovery?

Dr. Brown stated that he was called to Mitre Square shortly after 2:00 a.m. and arrived there at around 2:20. By this time Catherine Eddowes had been dead for roughly forty minutes. Brown observed that "the body had been mutilated, and was quite warm - no rigor mortis." We can thus say that, after roughly forty minutes, a body with extensive mutilations that was found under cool outdoor conditions was examined and described as being "quite warm." How do we reconcile this with the idea that the body of Annie Chapman was found to be almost completely cold after only the passing of twenty more minutes? We can't. It is very difficult to believe that in under twenty minutes almost all body heat would have dissipated into the morning air. This would be the work of a couple of hours, not minutes. Again, that observation is more in line with Dr. Phillips' opinion as to the time of death of Annie Chapman.

[moonbegger]

"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." This after he'd heard "words passed between some persons" in the same yard about 3 minutes previously.

Yes like i mentioned on a previous thread , i believe what Cadosh heard may well have been someone else discovering Annies body .. maybe even the couple Long said she witnessed a few yards from 29 .. there are a multitude of possibilities ..

moonbegger .

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

How could what Albert Cadosch heard at 5.20 and 5.23/24 am have had anything to do with Annie Chapman's murder?

Annie Chapman was last seen alive on Hanbury Street by Mrs. Long six minutes later, at 5.30 am.

Regards,

Simon

[RivkahChaya]

The thing is , Cold temp would slow down the process of rigor , not speed it up . Just the same as Eddows discovery?

Would cold temp actually slow it? heat speeds it up, but does cold slow it down? That introduces the question of what is the standard temperature for rigor mortis? Or, I guess, at what temperature is the "standard" speed measured? Body temp? something slightly below that? "room" temp, or about 70'F?

I guess what I'm asking, is this: is there a temperature at which rigor cannot proceed any more slowly than it already is? Can it be halted completely by a very cold temperature? If not, if there is a point to which rigor slows, but then will not slow any more, what is that, and how slow?

On another topic, metal is a heat suck. If a part of her body was on a metal surface, she would have cooled much more quickly.

Regarding Albert Cadosch: this is a very Jewish name, although it's not an East European Jewish name. Usually transliterated "kadosh," it means "holy" in Hebrew. He doesn't seem to be Jewish, if any of the biographical information is correct, but he could have a Jewish grandfather, or something. If he is descended from a converso, he'd be Sephardic, but that's actually the type of Jew people in England were more familiar with.

I'm only mentioning it because of the witnesses who described someone "of Jewish appearance."

[Chava]

RivkahChaya, elsewhere on the site there is a biography of Albert Cadosche. He was born in Paris and was the son of a glass cutter. After the murders he moved to (fairly) rural Essex and then to Newcastle where--obviously his first wife had died--he married again in an RC church. Judging by the names of his kids, the places he lived and his life afterwards, I doubt he was Jewish. Although--as you point out--'Cadosche' is a documented name for Jews from the Magreb. It's probable that he looked darker than the English if he was French. And he may have had a Jewish grandparent. But 'Jewish appearance' had as much to do with clothes, occupation and accent as anything else.

Edited to add that it's true the English Jewish community had been originally Sephardi, but by this time was overwhelmingly Ashkenaz especially in that location and had been for quite a while. to the point that Yiddish was beginning to make its way into the mainstream. Charles Dickens had the first documented use of a Yiddish word in an English novel when he described Joe in Bleak House as a young 'gonoph'. That was 1860 and by that time the Ashkenazi Jews were so well-entrenched in London that they had their own distinct Yiddish dialect and pronunciation of which 'gonoph' is an example. My family--from further East than most of the London Jews--would have said 'ganif'...

[RivkahChaya]

Although--as you point out--'Cadosche' is a documented name for Jews from the Magreb.

It's not even a name that could be Jewish, like some Polish or German names-- it's a really common Hebrew word. It's hard to imagine that it could be anything but a Jewish name, originally, but because Judaism is inherited through one's mother, but one's last name through one's father (usually, anyway), there are lots of people with Jewish last names who are not Jewish.

I only mentioned it, because it almost certainly implies a conversion or intermarriage at some point, and depending on how many generations ago, Cadosche could be "of Jewish appearance." It's probably a coincidence; just curious.

[RivkahChaya]

Charles Dickens had the first documented use of a Yiddish word in an English novel when he described Joe in Bleak House as a young 'gonoph'. That was 1860 and by that time the Ashkenazi Jews were so well-entrenched in London that they had their own distinct Yiddish dialect and pronunciation of which 'gonoph' is an example. My family--from further East than most of the London Jews--would have said 'ganif'...

I'm quite familiar with that word. Out of curiosity, how close is it to the German word? I was under the impression it was close, because people in Wisconsin and Minnesota use a similar word, and that area does not have much of a Jewish population, but lots of German and Scandinavian immigrants.

I'm not trying to say Dickens got the word from Germans, rather than Jews, just, that Germanic Yiddish words may have floated very easily into English. American English has tons of Yiddish words people don't know are Yiddish (and don't use quite correctly-- they say "shmuck" to mean "loser," when it's really a very bad thing to call someone, and a word I would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap for, if I'd used it as a kid).

I'm just still puzzling out what "Jewish appearance" meant to people in the East End in 1888.

[Cogidubnus]

I believe it was algor mortis being referred to by Colin, (and subsequently quoted), rather than rigor mortis...the two are quite different and the references to cooling effects should be seen in that light.

(At this remove it is admittedly difficult to tell, but it does seem from his disclaimer that Dr Phillips was using algor mortis as his primary guide to estimating time of death...unsurprising as the onset/effects/causes of rigor were apparently still not completely determined at this time...)

AS regards Cadosch one could do a lot worse than study Colins recent Ripperologist item...

All the best

Dave

[Simon Wood]

Hi Dave,

Yes, I've read Colin's article. And very good it was.

Everyone agrees with Mrs. Long that Annie Chapman was alive and well on Hanbury Street at 5.30 am.

So what could Albert Cadosch possibly have heard six minutes earlier?

Wynne Baxter's reconciling of these two witness statements was an Olympic long-jump in logic.

Regards,

Simon

[lynn cates]

Well, strike me . . .

Hello Simon. Let's put that at 5.15 (quarter striking) and about 5.18-5.20 for her sighting of Annie.

I used to do that same thing when at university. Easy to be distracted. (Once I inadvertently wandered into a ladies restroom by mistake.)

Cheers.
LC