Narrow street

[kensei]

I'm an American who has been to London and toured all the Ripper sites. Having been at the location of the Stride murder on Henriques Street (formerly Berner Street), I was struck by how extremely narrow the street is, just as every other street, road, and highway I traveled in Britain. Lanes of travel in America are wider by far and it was something I found very hard to get used to during my visit. It occurs to me in that context that IF the man seen by Israel Schwartz assaulting Liz was JTR (which I know is in dispute), and that the man Schwartz saw lighting his pipe was right across the street, Pipe Man and the Ripper would have been practically staring each other in the face. In my experience, had it happened in America the street would have been wide enough to have provided at least a slight bit of separation from the event. I do believe that Liz was killed by JTR, and that Pipe Man was an innocent bystander just as Schwartz was. So it seems unlikely that JTR would have commenced his attack on Liz if Pipe Man had been obviously standing there for any length of time so close by. It suggests that Pipe Man may have just come outside or happened by about the same moment that Schwartz appeared on the scene. Any comments?

[Grabbit]

If Pipe Man was the lookout and he was that close to BS.... then he wasn't doing a very good job of looking out given that Israel Schwartz managed to wander into the middle of the scene. Bystander seems more likely under the circumstances.

Er... sorry our British roads are so narrow.

[Bailey]

Basil Fawlty: Most of the British cars have steering wheels...

[Jay Batsford]

I don't think he was standing right on the opposite side of the road because of the narrow road he may have been 15-25 yrds away up or down the street which gave him a good view of the moment but didn't give his presence away to JTR but was seen by Pipe man who in turn may have been unable to see due to his positioning on the street or who may not have even realised that a murder was taking place at all? There was a lot of underworld crime going on at the time and pipe man may be guilty of nothing more then not wanting to get involved in what may have appeared to him to be no more than a simple act of prostitution or domestic if JTR killed his victims with little noise as i think was the case!

[Jon Guy]

Hello

Pipeman was standing on the same side of the road as Liz and her attacker.

He was standing a few doors down from the club, apparently in the doorway to Nelsons Beer shop. He only became apparent to Schwartz when Schwartz crossed the road. There is a fair chance that Liz and her attacker could not see Pipeman from where they were standing.

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

How about this point;

The pipe man was a man of the underworld, thus not wanting to show up?!


All the best
Jukka

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello you all!

How about this point;

The pipe man was a man of the underworld, thus not wanting to show up?!


All the best
Jukka

Hello Jukka

This is similar to the caveat about George Hutchinson, that he was possibly up to something illegal, and thus this was the reason that he didn't give evidence at the inquest.

Chris

[C. F. Leon]

There's a good chance (although I don't think it probable) that Pipeman was Stride's "date" and that she was waiting for him to relieve himself in the doorway (or if arranged in advance, perhaps he was waiting for her or even worked at the pub). BS Man comes by, hits Stride up, is refused and strikes/knocks her down in anger. He thinks Schultz is the john and shouts at him. PM gets scared, remembers his wife & six kids (#7 on the way) at home, and decides he'd rather catch Jack Parr on the telly than be a hero. BS yells- this is heard by people in the club, which see one guy running away from a woman, being "chased" by another. Alternative: Someone has suggested that BSMan was Morris Eagle, and Stride was in the gateway and he told her to move on, perhaps a bit roughly. Along with this idea, perhaps Pipeman was someone that Eagle knew NAMED Lipski (or something similar), and the shout was basically to "get them out of here" (PM doesn't HAVE to be a lookout set up in advance).

Objections might be that if either was what they considered "in the right", why didn't they come forward? Well, if Pipeman was the date or john, the wife & seven kids (with #8 started down the pipe) or the past warrants for whatever he's been a bad boy about. (If he worked or was a customer at the pub why didn't someone there recognize him? Because he's the boss that pays them?) If BS was Eagle, maybe he had something that HE wanted to keep from the cops.

- CFL