Annie's last meal

[Ms Diddles]

Hi Ms Diddles,

Very interesting articles. Thank you.

Cheers, George

You're welcome, George!

It actually brought back fond memories of growing up in York.

At Christmas time, you would see lots of chestnut sellers out on the cobbled streets as the Sally Army played on.

It was like stepping into a Victorian style Christmas card if it was snowing too.

Lovely, but I digress.....

[GBinOz]

I don't expect this to sway you in any way, but here's an interesting article about baked tattie sellers in the LVP;

https://www.geriwalton.com/baked-potato-sellers/

Also Henry Mayhew interviewed numerous street traders as part of his survey of the under-classes.

This included a baked potato guy who reported that he sometimes gave tick.

No time to post link but Google "Henry Mayhew interview baked potato man" and you'll see it.

Not the hard facts or statistical analysis which you're intent on, but interesting (and in my opinion) pertinent nonetheless.

Hi Ms Diddles,

Very interesting articles. Thank you.

Cheers, George

[GBinOz]

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

[Wickerman]

Alcohol slows digestion, so it would also depend how much she drank

Once again we have Phillips telling us she hadn't taken alcohol in some hours.

[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

Thanks Helen.

I agree in that there are countless possibilities but for me I just need something with some substance in order to arrive at a conclusion.

I appreciate I started this thread asking for a reasonable interpretation and that doesn't necessarily require evidence.

Having said that, my conclusion from the thread thus far is that there is no convincing argument to suggest Annie ate later than 1.45am or had digestion issues (there is no evidence to suggest either). You're free to form a different conclusion of course.

[Parisi North Humber]

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

[Fleetwood Mac]

Helen,

Do you have any further information on this?

The evidence we have is that Annie had a disease of the lungs not the intestines. There is no reason to think Annie was suffering from Gastrointestinal TB. It wasn't observed by Dr Phillips during his examinations and nor was Annie displaying common symptoms such as weight loss.

As it stands, I'm not seeing a reasonable case to suggest Annie had a stomach related disease that would impede digestion in the stomach.

In addition to the above, I'd point out that Gastrointestinal TB is rare by comparison with TB of the lungs.

Gastrointestinal Tuberculosis - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov)

Gastrointestinal (GI) tuberculosis (TB) accounts for 1% to 3 % of all TB cases worldwide. It can occur in the context of active pulmonary disease or as a primary infection without pulmonary involvement.

[Yabs]

Alcohol slows digestion, so it would also depend how much she drank

[Fleetwood Mac]

Just found that T.B. can affect digestion.

"Gasrointestinal tuberculosis can affect any part of the digestive tract but it mostly affects the small and large intestine. Here are some symptoms of Gastrointestinal tuberculosis: Loss of body weight: People suffering from Gastrointestinal tuberculosis have trouble in proper digestion of food"

Helen X

Helen,

Do you have any further information on this?

The evidence we have is that Annie had a disease of the lungs not the intestines. There is no reason to think Annie was suffering from Gastrointestinal TB. It wasn't observed by Dr Phillips during his examinations and nor was Annie displaying common symptoms such as weight loss.

As it stands, I'm not seeing a reasonable case to suggest Annie had a stomach related disease that would impede digestion in the stomach.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And whatever the research on digestion (which I’ll leave to Mr. Hamm and others) we still have the possibility that Annie might have eaten again in the proceeding 3½ hours. The argument against this has amounted to - well, we don’t know what she did after she left the doss-house so we can’t suggest possibilities, or - because she went out to earn money and not to get food then we have to assume that she didn’t eat, or - because it was no-ones responsibility to provide a prostitute with free food then she couldn’t have eaten again.

Digestion estimates are only of use when we know for a fact when she had her last meal to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

I don’t see why it’s any kind of ‘out there’ suggestion that when Annie was eating her potato she might have had 2 and cooked one and ate it and kept the other. These women didn’t know where there next meal was coming from after all. And if someone had offered her a potato at some point it’s unlikely that she’d have refused it. Or if she hadn’t been able to find a customer then she would have been left just to roam the streets. Why couldn’t she have eaten her second potato? How do we know that she didn’t meet a friend who shared her food with her?

When we have a gap of time for which we have no record of an events occurring there are two things that we can’t do. We can’t assume that she did x, and we can’t assume that she didn’t do y. Unless y is ‘paint a landscape’ or ‘climb onto the roof of Buckingham Palace.’ So eating is hardly unlikely and it certainly isn’t impossible.

[JeffHamm]

As I said, Jeff, in terms of widely accepted it is there to be googled. I don't want to go down the road of this discussion being hijacked. The Richardson thread became a massive mess due to squabbling over the bits and pieces 'round the edges and unsubstantiated links from sites, of which I was a part by the way. 'Lesson learned: once bitten, twice shy.

In the end, I'm confident perceived wisdom is that in the event Annie's last meal was potatoes at 1.45am, they would have been fully digested in the stomach by 5.30am. A cursory google produces links on the first page where commentators are unequivocal on this. You see it differently, that's fine. Others can make their own mind up.

Either way, in the absence of any research to the contrary, I won't be getting involved in an argument on perceived wisdom regarding easily digestible potatoes and an almost 4 hour timeframe.

So, that's that on this particular issue (in the absence of research/data).

Ah, ok. So you don't have information from actual research, just a google search. Understood. What I know of digestion is that the food has to pass through the small intestines, and that takes a few hours, so no solid meal is "fully digested" in an hour. I suppose a small bit of food would be though, but of course we don't know how much potato Annie ate, or how it was cooked, etc. The stomach can take a few hours (2 - 5 hours I think is the usual range of times, but I'm not sure what governs shorter vs longer parts of that range). Again, only small amounts of her last meal were found in her stomach contents, so it looks like a fairly complete emptying, which places things on the longer side. From 1:45 to 4:30 that's 2h 45 minutes, and to 5:25ish, that's 3h 40 minutes. Again, there's under an hour between them and the variation of times associated with anything biological is pretty large, so we're not likely to get anywhere with this. The Richardson thread has revealed how presenting research rarely sways people from their original view, rather it seems to just make people more entrenched in the side they were on before the research was presented.

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just found that T.B. can affect digestion.

"Gasrointestinal tuberculosis can affect any part of the digestive tract but it mostly affects the small and large intestine. Here are some symptoms of Gastrointestinal tuberculosis: Loss of body weight: People suffering from Gastrointestinal tuberculosis have trouble in proper digestion of food"

Helen X

Thanks Helen,

It seems a very fair point to me.

[DJA]

Again, the Richardson thread was hijacked and a decent discussion turned into a mess due to posts like this one.

In the event you disagree, then add some meat to the bones and explain your link.

Could not be bothered as you will switch the goal posts again

[Fleetwood Mac]

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Just for jolly Gut feeling secures medical Nobel for Australian doctors | Nature

Again, the Richardson thread was hijacked and a decent discussion turned into a mess due to posts like this one.

In the event you disagree, then add some meat to the bones and explain your link.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I don't expect this to sway you in any way, but here's an interesting article about baked tattie sellers in the LVP;

https://www.geriwalton.com/baked-potato-sellers/

Also Henry Mayhew interviewed numerous street traders as part of his survey of the under-classes.

This included a baked potato guy who reported that he sometimes gave tick.

No time to post link but Google "Henry Mayhew interview baked potato man" and you'll see it.

Not the hard facts or statistical analysis which you're intent on, but interesting (and in my opinion) pertinent nonetheless.

Hi Ms Diddle,

I lay no claim to knowing exactly how these potatoes were cooked.

My only observation is that given Timothy Donovan stated: "potatoes", I think we're not talking about what we term a jacket potato.

They could have been chips, they could have been peeled and boiled and they could have been cooked with the skins left on.

Either way, potatoes of any form are an easily digestible food, and we're talking of an almost four hour timeframe from 1.45am to 5.30am.