Time of Death Analyzation

[Tom_Wescott]

You've lost your sense of humor, Michael. I meant Robert Mann as in Jack the Ripper. And it's your choice to dispose of whatever evidence you wish, but you might find yourself with none to work with. The club members were there on the spot, so I'd be weary about disposing of their evidence pall mall. And Stride was not hidden behind the gate. I'll let you do your own homework on that one.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Sam Flynn]

We have illustrations of the murder scene, Mike. Stride isn't tucked behind the gate in any of them.

[perrymason]

You've lost your sense of humor, Michael. I meant Robert Mann as in Jack the Ripper. And it's your choice to dispose of whatever evidence you wish, but you might find yourself with none to work with. The club members were there on the spot, so I'd be weary about disposing of their evidence pall mall. And Stride was not hidden behind the gate. I'll let you do your own homework on that one.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

I didnt say she was hidden behind the gate TW....Ive read all the accounts of the yard and the investigation in there Tom....I do suggest that if Eagle wasnt just mouthing off when he suggested she might have been lying there and unnoticed by him, then she would have to have been at least partly obscured by the gate...that swung in towards her.

When all the statements concerning Liz Stride between 12:45am and 1am are from Jewish Socialists, outside the Jewish Socialists Club or in it, and the yard they own is the one that Liz is found dead in, and none can be validated by other witnesses who could see in front of the gates during that period of time, I take all their statements as potentially being self serving and contrived.

The Club bought the Arbeter Fraint in 1886, they were known anarchists and a drop in place for European malcontents and likely some budding Marxists, the cops knew the clubs reputation and had attempted before to have it shut down.

But on this night, no-one is in the yard, the nice members are singing and bothering no-one, and they are truly mortified to find that any violence was done in that yard ...the same yard they club police in a few months later....

Do you recall seeing one remark from any club witness that suggested violence was foreign to them, or that the yard never had "low" or bad men in it? They just blamed the murder on a phantom and left it at that.

All the best T

[Sam Flynn]

I do suggest that if Eagle wasnt just mouthing off when he suggested she might have been lying there and unnoticed by him, then she would have to have been at least partly obscured by the gate...that swung in towards her.

According to every illustration I've seen she was well clear of the gates, tucked up at an acute angle near a grille affixed to the wall. Wait until Phil Hutchinson's photo is published, and you'll see that - although narrow - there was, in fact, plenty of room on her "eastern" side to allow folk to pass by without necessarily noticing her lying there.

[JennyL]

Diemschutz' pony's reaction

So how is it that Diemshutz's horse shies to the left as if startled.... based on a woman lying slightly behind the door and not actually in front or at the side of the horse or cart? It seems to me as the horse entered the yard only a scent of blood or something would even alert it to the fact that anything was behind the gate....I cant see the body itself being directly in its way.

Just thought I'd put in that in my experience a horse would not have a reaction to the "scent of blood" from Liz Stride on the ground; I've been around horses and people in the immediate vicinity who were bleeding and they couldn't care less. It's not something I believe horses take any particular notice of-certainly not to result in one's "shying".

I've wondered moreoever about what exactly was going on with Stride's body, the pony and its reaction: first, the horse shies, which by Diemschutz' description I think means the pony makes a sudden, startled jerk backwards/to the left.
Some have said the pony also refused to go further, but according to testimony this was not so--in fact the pony & cart had passed Stride's body when Diemschutz got down from his cart, and there was plenty of room for the horse to have passed the body-which it in fact did with no further balking: [Coroner] Any person going up the centre of the yard might have passed without noticing it? - I, perhaps, should not have noticed it if my pony had not shied. I had passed it when I got down from my barrow" [Diemschutz' testimony at the inquest].

Point is--I can't see the body being "in the way" of the horse either. They weren't crowded by Stride lying there. There was no chance of the pony stepping on her(another reason a horse might refuse/shy moving forward, as horses don't like to climb on untested obstacles-IF they are obstacles).

Nor do I suspect the horse was really reacting to the body lying absolutely still on the ground. I know Diemschutz thought so-or said so, but given the fact that the pony not only passed by the supine body, but then stood quietly alone in the yard, untied on a "windy" evening while Diemschutz went inside the club,it's also possible that the pony shied at what all the horses I know shy at 99% of the time: a sudden unexpected movement in their field of vision, something that startles them. When that thing is gone, that same 99% of horseflesh will then settle down and return to their prior state. I think it's possible the pony saw a person flit across its field of vision-in the dark, where it has far superior vision to a human's, especially one seated behind it. Horses are all about movement. Movement much more than any stationary object elicit reactions and can set off a fright/flight mode in them.

They do, it's true, react to strange things but those things need to be close up to make a difference-i.e. underfoot. Stride wasn't-Diemshutz said he wouldn't have noticed her if the pony hadn't shied. Otherwise, the common/ normal reaction from a horse wary of a thing on the ground is to continue to show nervousness/balking at The Boogey Object until it's been able to check it out on its own or get used to it. But Diemshutz' pony, who one imagines would be bombproof/implacable to lumps on the ground as any decent city slum hack has to be in that LVP traffic, reacts enough to get a reaction for the driver-then while the thing is still there, immediately does a 180 and is normal/bored enough to be left alone in the yard? I don't think he shied at the body.

Much more likely that the pony's behavior was a reaction to a furtive, fast (this is almost guaranteed to spook a horse-a fast feint/run/jumping a wall, perhaps) movement of someone in front of them, to the rear of the yard they entered.
I'd love to know if the horse was blinkered. If he wasn't, there are still two absolute blind spots for a horse: directly in front of its nose and directly behind its hindquarters. Each eye of a horse sees independently, in an almost perfect 180 field each-left eye sees left side, the right, right side.
That's why horses are dangerous if someone comes up directly behind them-they will seem to "pop" in from nowhere to the horse, which almost always, very commonly freaks them out. Ditto anything that is initially directly in front of it that moves either left or right, especially if it moves quickly.

The pony shying made Diemschutz take notice of the object on the ground. The pony at the same time is by then ignoring the body and had returned to standing as normal...because, perhaps, whatever frightened it had gone by the time the driver was looking at the body and prodding it.

[Sam Flynn]

Some interesting horse-psychology there, Jen - thanks. Thought provoking indeed

Although... I would ask whether the bleeding persons in whose company you've seen horses not bat an eyelid had bled to quite the extent that Liz Stride had.

[lynn cates]

interruptus

Hello Mike. I have been considering this often of late, but if one wishes to go with the usual interruption theory, it may be fruitful to claim that "Jack" always made 2 cuts--an initial shallow one, followed by a heavier one down to the bone. Then one could claim that "Jack" made his first shallow cut and was preparing to roll Liz over when he heard the pony cart coming up. (For an argumentative flourish, one could even claim that "Jack" had put his left arm behind round Liz and his slightly bloodied right hand on hers to turn her on her back. This might explain the enigma of the blood on Liz's right hand.)

Regarding her position, if she were unmoved when the PC arrived (a very big if!) her feet were 9 feet from the gates. The passage from kitchen door to gates was 18 feet. Liz was a tad over 5 feet. If she were drawn up a bit, let's say 4 or 5 feet. That would make her head about 4 or 5 feet from the door.

The best.

LC

[JennyL]

Some interesting horse-psychology there, Jen - thanks. Thought provoking indeed

Although... I would ask whether the bleeding persons in whose company you've seen horses not bat an eyelid had bled to quite the extent that Liz Stride had.

Eh, no, happily no jugulars spurting, although it's amazing what a surface wound on the head can do bleeding wise...yeesh. Nasty! But while I have read about the reaction of cattle and other livestock to the copious bloodletting in a slaughterhouse, I have never read that their reactions were a result of smelling blood. In fact, in herd animals it's all much more a matter of what they see/hear-or if their fellow cows or horses are themselves terrified, yes, it's apparent that animals can smell extreme fear in other living animals. Liz was well past fear at the stage Diemschutz drove in.

I've seen people take nasty falls from their horses and dislocate shoulders, break arms, lie unconscious, and bleed right there...the horse showed no interest or reaction even to those people they are supposedly intimate with(no cracks please Mr. Flynn!--too easy!). No, they only react to whatever stimulus made them spook in the first place--if it's still doing whatever scared them. If that "threat" is gone it's amazing how quickly most horses settle back down.

Liz Stride was unconscious and was slowly(15 minutes wasn't it?), steadily bleeding to death, quite quietly apparently. I cannot imagine any vet stating that a horse will freak because a woman is lying on the ground with her throat cut and her blood is flowing. But if a person in the shadows makes a sudden/unexpected movement? Spooks em every time.

ETA: Mind you, yes there are horses who are high strung enough that they might be spooked at Stride simply lying three, dying/dead--but those horses that would be bothered by a body would logically continue to be bothered if it was the blood etc. that bugged them in the first place. Stride's presence hadn't changed yet even before Diemshutz enters the Club, the pony has-he's calm enough to be left standing all alone with the cart! A truly nervous horse couldn't be trusted like that; if I believed the woman's body had spooked my horse I'd have called for a person from the club and stood holding my horse's head or seen him to the back to the yard before I'd just leave him there. Otherwise the pony might if spooked again damage the cart or injure himself-both very bad circumstances for a poor salesman.

[Sam Flynn]

I don't know how definitive these are, Jen, but they might suggest otherwise...


From a hunting website: "Some horses do not like the smell of blood or even seeing an elk carcass. You don’t want to learn your horses don’t like smelling blood on your hunting trip. If you have frozen elk meat or another game animal, unwrap it and take the bloody package with its blood smell to your horses and see how they react. I put elk meat in my grain feeders to get my horses used to the smell and nail fresh bear hides to my fence posts to get the horses used to bear smell. I do this every spring. Some horses never get use to the smell of blood. Years ago I had a mare, Rosie, we packed out 5 elk and 1 moose on her in one year and she never improved. On the last pack trip, loading my wife's moose, she reared up and hit me in the head with her front hoof."


From a Wikipedia entry on the subject of War Horses:"A common misconception is that a war horse is simply a horse in armor. In fact, much training was required to overcome the horse's natural aversion to the smell of blood."


From an article on slaughterhouses, with due deference to your comments about them: "Horses also tend to be more excitable than cows—hence the blinders—and the smell of blood makes them nervous."


From a website giving 12 purported facts about horses: "A horse has an acute sense of smell that allows it to detect nervousness in a handler, and old-time horsemen would smear aromatic fluid on their hands when dealing with a difficult horse. Horses also become nervous around the smell of blood."


... I could have cited more examples.

[JennyL]

From a website giving 12 purported facts about horses: "A horse has an acute sense of smell that allows it to detect nervousness in a handler, and old-time horsemen would smear aromatic fluid on their hands when dealing with a difficult horse. Horses also become nervous around the smell of blood."


Can smell/"feel" nervousness-yes, definitely. Dead women aren't nervous, though.
Smell of blood? Again, I haven't seen it to be so, but it can depend on what breed of horse one is talking about. There is an awful lot of horse lore that is as strongly argued for/against as voicferously as anything here

But again, if it was the smell of blood that disturbed Diemschutz' horse, than it would have in all likelihood have stayed disturbed-at least to the point that a minute after it shied, while it's still right near the murdered woman, it wouldn't have settled enough to be left alone unattended. After all, the bleeding woman was right there.

I can easily believe any racing horse freaking out over a lot less-and staying freaked out as anyone trying to load a 3 year old into a gate at the races can attest! But Diemschutz was driving a cold-blooded pony hack, in all likelihood an old one. A carthorse-not a hotheaded hunter-jumper.

Sorry...I'm doing a dissertation on "horses and the Whitechapel murders" here.
But honestly I have wondered about the pony's actiosn/nonactions, and that it might have meant something different from what it's presumed to.

[perrymason]

Good examples Sam, and they suggest that its possible the horse shied from the scent of blood...not a body directly in its path.

If you look at the artist sketch of Liz on the ground by the wall, the gate is swung inwards but its unclear how far into the yard you would have to be to see around it. Her head was inches from gutter and then the actual wall...she may have been partially obscured to the horse and Diemshutz initially.

Best regards

[Supe]

Lynn,

it may be fruitful to claim that "Jack" always made 2 cuts

Ah, but he didn't. Eddowes was dispatched with a single cut to the throat and while the sequence of wounds is diffficult to decipher, it seems likely that Kelly was also given one fatal slice to the throat. Did expediency with Stride lead Jack to the ergonomic discovery that one cut was enough and gave him that much more time for his mutilating games?

Don.

[c.d.]

Stride's body wasn't behind the gate, Michael. This Brown fellow killed his wife in a frenzy with a knife at home. Stride was silently killed in a strange yard with a SINGLE stroke of a knife. No frenzy, no passion, no loud fight. It bears none of the hallmarks of a domestic murder. So where does that leave us? With the one guy who we know was in that area at that time, carrying a sharp knife and looking for prostitutes to kill. I'm speaking of course of Robert Mann.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,

The mere mention of Brown makes me foam at the mouth. It is the worst straw man argument and yet it seems to be a favorite of the it wasn't Jack crowd. It was clearly a domestic argument as you point out and his wife was NOT A PROSTITUTE. There really should be some sort of penalty for even bringing it up as an example to show that a woman could have her throat cut and not have it be by Jack. Just a pitifull argument. Pitifull I tells ya.

c.d.

[Roy Corduroy]

Did expediency with Stride lead Jack to the ergonomic discovery that one cut was enough and gave him that much more time for his mutilating games?

I dont' see why not. That's good, Don.

Roy

[lynn cates]

irony

Hello Supe. Is it not ironic that the 2 whose place in the canon is most tenuous also show such a disparity in cutting technique?

The best.
LC