Annie's last meal

[Fleetwood Mac]

Perhaps she took something to eat , when no one was looking [ potato or otherwise ] to consume later.

'Anything's possible but the way I look at it is where does that possible land on the spectrum of likelihood.

We know Annie left the lodging house to get her doss money and told them not to let her bed. That would firmly suggest she wasn't planning on being long. And then you'd have to ask the question: why is she squirreling away potatoes when in her own words she's expecting to be asleep within a couple of hours maximum after she ate at 1.45am.

[Fleetwood Mac]

That's ok FM, no worries. Just trying to offer possible reasons for the stomach contents.
As I've said in other posts I have no answers so I work from "queries not theories ". I have soooo many questions which is why I don't presume to have any answers .....probably makes me an irritant lol.

Helen x

Aye, there are boatloads of possibilities and more than enough unanswered questions!

[Parisi North Humber]

That's ok FM, no worries. Just trying to offer possible reasons for the stomach contents.
As I've said in other posts I have no answers so I work from "queries not theories ". I have soooo many questions which is why I don't presume to have any answers .....probably makes me an irritant lol.

Helen x

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hi FM!

Absolutely no offence taken!

I hadn't felt dismissed or shut down!

You'd made it clear in your original post that you wanted hard facts and evidence, and I'd provided speculation and interesting anecdotes about baked tattie sellers in the LVP!

That said, I don't personally perceive the notion that Annie may have saved a little of her potato dinner to eat later to be such a huge leap of faith.

It's more a little bunny-hop of belief, I'd say.

We disagree.

That's completely fine!

Grand! I think we differ in terms of what is and isn't a leap of faith but that's fine!

Aye, your post is useful. It helps to have an idea of exactly what Annie was eating. Given Donovan states: "potatoes", that suggests to me this is not a jacket potato in the sense we know it. So, we're left with chips, peeled and boiled potatoes, or, as per your post; boiled potatoes with the skin left on them. At this point I would say that it may not make a great deal of difference for this particular conversation given that potato of any variety is deemed to be an easily digestible food. Mind you, I have George's post to read so perhaps that will lend towards it really making a difference (skin or no skin).

And, for clarity, I'm not necessarily asking for irrefutable evidence. I think that's unfair given that some of the source material was destroyed and it is pretty much an argument that no one on the receiving end can win given it's not possible to just magic evidence out of thin air. 'Just some sort of connection that you can look at and think: "aye, that's food for thought" and the balance is redressed a bit.

[Herlock Sholmes]

There’s nothing wrong with asking for, or hoping for evidence of course but common sense tells us that there are times when this simply isn’t going to happen. We have Annie Chapman and an unaccounted for period of time from 1.45 to her TOD (disputed of course) which could have amounted to around 3½ hours. We can’t know what she did, who she met or where she went apart from eventually to 29 Hanbury Street. We certainly can’t say that she must have done x or y or z but equally we can’t really name anything that she couldn’t have done (unless it was something silly or impossible of course)

So when she left the doss house looking for money what where her options? Look for a client? Very possibly but she might have struggled at 2am so what could she have done but walk around if she couldn’t find one? Perhaps she went to find a friend to see if she could borrow a few pennies? Maybe she went to try and borrow money as soon as she left the doss house? Who knows? Maybe a friend couldn’t lend her any money but offered to share a bit of food with her? Maybe Annie already had some food with her? A few maybe’s and plenty of unknowns.

We can’t know what Annie did during that time period and we can’t know what she didn’t do. So something as banal as having something to eat has to be a reasonable possibility, especially for a woman as poverty stricken as Annie Chapman who was unlikely to have turned her nose up at any offer of food. We can get nowhere on the subject of her last meal because we simply can’t assume that we know when she last ate just because we know that last time that she was witnessed eating.

[Ms Diddles]

This paragraph from the article you posted caught my eye particularly;

"Even though potatoes were sold for eating, not all potatoes were eaten. Sometimes potatoes were purchased just to warm hands. Such potatoes were considered “a cheap luxury to the poor wayfarer, who was benumbed in the night by cold, and an excellent medium for diffusing warmth into the system, by being held in the gloved hand.”"

Yeah, I found that interesting too Joshua.

It also got me pondering the notion that if baked potatoes were so cheap, perhaps any leftover ones would be given away when the vendor was finishing his shift and packing up for the night.

More bunny-hopping on my part though!

[Joshua Rogan]

That said, I don't personally perceive the notion that Annie may have saved a little of her potato dinner to eat later to be such a huge leap of faith.

This paragraph from the article you posted caught my eye particularly;

"Even though potatoes were sold for eating, not all potatoes were eaten. Sometimes potatoes were purchased just to warm hands. Such potatoes were considered “a cheap luxury to the poor wayfarer, who was benumbed in the night by cold, and an excellent medium for diffusing warmth into the system, by being held in the gloved hand.”"

[Ms Diddles]

Hi Ms Diddles,

I posted this to Helen, it's for you also:

I've just re-read my posts and it appears they are very dismissive of what you have to say. I probably didn't explain myself very well.

Any suggestion is a good one, and I do agree with you that there are a lot of possibilities and one of them may well turn out to be correct. That much is obvious to me given we do not have all of the source material.

For clarity, all of the known options are not without obstacles so there is no near certainty in my mind. Where I'm coming from is this: which of the propositions require the least in the way of leap of faith.

In order to believe Annie had 'little food' in her stomach and was murdered at 5.30am, we have to invent scenarios with no basis. We have to invent that she had digestion issues which is a real leap of faith given she had a lung disease and was not displaying the features of gastrointestinal TB, e.g. weight loss, had no known history of such a disease and it is comparatively rare when compared with TB of the lungs. Or, we have to invent Annie was squirreling away potatoes for a rainy day, which is not supported by the evidence given Annie left the lodging house with the express purpose of getting her doss money and told them not to let her bed, i.e. she wasn't planning on being long and so it follows she wasn't accounting for a scenario where she needed a potato at half four in the morning or whatever. These are two instances to illustrate my point and there are others, but what we're talking of here are huge leaps of faith to make the 5.30 TOD work.

On the other hand, in order to believe Annie's last meal was at 1.45am there is virtually no leap of faith required. It is supported by the evidence, i.e. she was seen eating potatoes in the kitchen. She didn't have money to buy more. The provision of food is not a prerequisite for street prostitution. Reasonably, Annie will not have eaten again before 3am so from where is she getting this food.

I think there is a clear distinction between the two in terms of leap of faith.

'Hope that clarifies my earlier posts and it certainly wasn't an attempt to shut you down.

Hi FM!

Absolutely no offence taken!

I hadn't felt dismissed or shut down!

You'd made it clear in your original post that you wanted hard facts and evidence, and I'd provided speculation and interesting anecdotes about baked tattie sellers in the LVP!

That said, I don't personally perceive the notion that Annie may have saved a little of her potato dinner to eat later to be such a huge leap of faith.

It's more a little bunny-hop of belief, I'd say.

We disagree.

That's completely fine!

[Fleetwood Mac]

Oh, and just to add for Helen and Ms Diddles:

That's my take on it as it stands, perhaps someone will come up with something that tips the balance towards Annie eating later than 1.45am.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hi FM,

There is some information on the topic here:

https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rn-doubt.html

Dr. Phillips states that there was still some food in her stomach so her last meal was only partially digested at her time of death so how long does it take for a meal of potatoes to fully digest?

Dr. Robert Court, who contributed to a discussion about this issue on the Casebook: Jack the Ripper website several years ago, asked colleagues in the pathology department this very question. His personal opinion was that it would take about an hour for a potato to be fully digested but was told that "a time of less than half-an-hour was realistic." One forensic pathologist that I talked to told me that a small meal of potatoes would be fully digested "in about an hour to an hour and a half," ³² while another told me "this small solid meal would take some time like 2 3 hours, 'let us say' to be digested." ³³ Here we have a range of between half an hour to three hours for Annie Chapman's meal to have become fully digested, which would suggest that as the food was only partially digested at death the range for estimated time of death falls somewhere after 1:30 to1:45 a.m., the last time we know she ate, and sometime before 4:30 a.m. or, the time offered by Dr. Phillips.

31. Both the Times and the Daily Telegraph reported that Dr. Phillips had stated that Chapman's stomach had "contained a little food" which would seem to correspond with her dinner of baked potato. However, the Daily News, 14 September, reported "there was a full meal in the stomach" while the Eastern Post, 15 September, reported that "the stomach contained a meal of food", both which seem to suggest more food than a simple potato. The inquest coverage provided by the Daily Telegraph is consistently the most reliable so I have gone with its interpretation of what Dr. Phillips actually said. I leave it up to the reader to accept or reject this assertion.

32. Letter to the author from Dr. Randy Hanzlick, 2 May, 2000. Dr. Hanzlick is the Chief Medical Examiner for Fulton County, Georgia; Associate Professor of Forensic Pathology at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta and a Forensic Pathologist for the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta.

33. Letter to the author from Dr. Wilmes Teixeira dated 11 July, 2000. Dr. Teixeira had been a Forensic Pathologist for over fifty years and was still teaching Forensic Pathology at the Centro de Medicina Forense de Mogi das Cruzes at the University of Mogi das Cruzes outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was Dr. Teixeira who coordinated the team of international forensic experts during the exhumation and autopsy of the body of wanted Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele, the so called Angel of Death.

Cheers, George

Hi George,

Thanks a lot for this. It's exactly what I've been looking for.

I've had a scan of it and every credit to the person/people who went to the trouble to ask the questions and pull this together.

I'll have a good read of this a few times before replying.

Cheers.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Lovely, but I digress.....

Hi Ms Diddles,

I posted this to Helen, it's for you also:

I've just re-read my posts and it appears they are very dismissive of what you have to say. I probably didn't explain myself very well.

Any suggestion is a good one, and I do agree with you that there are a lot of possibilities and one of them may well turn out to be correct. That much is obvious to me given we do not have all of the source material.

For clarity, all of the known options are not without obstacles so there is no near certainty in my mind. Where I'm coming from is this: which of the propositions require the least in the way of leap of faith.

In order to believe Annie had 'little food' in her stomach and was murdered at 5.30am, we have to invent scenarios with no basis. We have to invent that she had digestion issues which is a real leap of faith given she had a lung disease and was not displaying the features of gastrointestinal TB, e.g. weight loss, had no known history of such a disease and it is comparatively rare when compared with TB of the lungs. Or, we have to invent Annie was squirreling away potatoes for a rainy day, which is not supported by the evidence given Annie left the lodging house with the express purpose of getting her doss money and told them not to let her bed, i.e. she wasn't planning on being long and so it follows she wasn't accounting for a scenario where she needed a potato at half four in the morning or whatever. These are two instances to illustrate my point and there are others, but what we're talking of here are huge leaps of faith to make the 5.30 TOD work.

On the other hand, in order to believe Annie's last meal was at 1.45am there is virtually no leap of faith required. It is supported by the evidence, i.e. she was seen eating potatoes in the kitchen. She didn't have money to buy more. The provision of food is not a prerequisite for street prostitution. Reasonably, Annie will not have eaten again before 3am so from where is she getting this food.

I think there is a clear distinction between the two in terms of leap of faith.

'Hope that clarifies my earlier posts and it certainly wasn't an attempt to shut you down.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Narcotic medication can also slow digestion. I believe Annie was taking some pills although I have no idea what they contained. It's all speculation of course but a slower digestion due to alcohol, medication or disease is not impossible, nor is saving some of her potato for later.

Helen x

Hi Helen,

I've just re-read my posts and it appears they are very dismissive of what you have to say. I probably didn't explain myself very well.

Any suggestion is a good one, and I do agree with you that there are a lot of possibilities and one of them may well turn out to be correct. That much is obvious to me given we do not have all of the source material.

For clarity, all of the known options are not without obstacles so there is no near certainty in my mind. Where I'm coming from is this: which of the propositions require the least in the way of leap of faith.

In order to believe Annie had 'little food' in her stomach and was murdered at 5.30am, we have to invent scenarios with no basis. We have to invent that she had digestion issues which is a real leap of faith given she had a lung disease and was not displaying the features of gastrointestinal TB, e.g. weight loss, had no known history of such a disease and it is comparatively rare when compared with TB of the lungs. Or, we have to invent Annie was squirreling away potatoes for a rainy day, which is not supported by the evidence given Annie left the lodging house with the express purpose of getting her doss money and told them not to let her bed, i.e. she wasn't planning on being long and so it follows she wasn't accounting for a scenario where she needed a potato at half four in the morning or whatever. These are two instances to illustrate my point and there are others, but what we're talking of here are huge leaps of faith to make the 5.30 TOD work.

On the other hand, in order to believe Annie's last meal was at 1.45am there is virtually no leap of faith required. It is supported by the evidence, i.e. she was seen eating potatoes in the kitchen. She didn't have money to buy more. The provision of food is not a prerequisite for street prostitution. Reasonably, Annie will not have eaten again before 3am so from where is she getting this food.

I think there is a clear distinction between the two in terms of leap of faith.

'Hope that clarifies my earlier posts and it certainly wasn't an attempt to shut you down.

[Darryl Kenyon]

On the night she was murdered and two or so hours before Annie was seen eating a baked potato, Annie asked for permission to go into the kitchen, at the lodging house. Perhaps she took something to eat , when no one was looking [ potato or otherwise ] to consume later .
Regards Darryl

[DJA]

That was for someone else.
You and I posted at the same time with you seconds ahead of me.
Great info on the baked potatoes.35 Dorset Street would have been an important market segment for those vendors.

[Ms Diddles]

Gut microbiota - Wikipedia

Any vegetarian would be having a good laugh.

I'm saying nowt, Dave!!!