A Modern Day BS Man/Liz Encounter

[mariab]

Hunter wrote:
It may be as simple that Liz felt safe in front of a place where there was still some activity... There had been a little talk of a murderer going 'round at the time.
This makes much sense, Hunter.

Hunter wrote:
Also, Liz left the lodging house with 6d. She was found dead, with no money and her pockets had not been rifled.
Very interesting point! I haven't thought of that! I wonder if she spent all 6d drinking, or if her killer quickly went through her pockets after she was dead – but would he do that BEFORE starting with the mutilations (if he was the Ripper), and, obviously, before getting interrupted? Maybe by the time this was his routine, kill, then look for money, them mutilate – so as to not get blood on any of the money he was hoping to find. But in her (intact, as in non-torn) pockets were found objects such as her key, a pencil, some combs, buttons, and pieces of paper.
At any rate, one thing is certain, he didn't start with mugging her, the cachous still in her clutched left hand show that she was completely surprised by the assault. Unless he put a knife on her throat and asked her to give him her money and she did with one hand, while nervously clutching at the cachous with the other hand.
Actually, I don't even care! I'm off.
Oh, and I've looked in the papers and it looks like Ms Diemshitz and friends lied to the police to cover up Diemshitz and his friend having beaten up people during the riot in front of the IWMC, but this is light years away from suspecting poor Diemshitz to have instigated a cover up with Schwartz as a fake witness for Stride's murder.

[Fisherman]

Right, Lynn, here we go!

"Right. Neither did Ms. Malcolm"

It was said that Ms Malcolm had a sister who looked very much like Stride. Such a thing would not be all that strange. But for two women who were lookalikes to visit Berner Street at he exact same time, more or less, would be quite strange. Bearing in mind that there would not be very much more than a mere handful of women out and about at the time we are speaking of, well, then it would be even more coincidental if there were really two women there who were spitting images. And if we add to this that these two women were wearing the same choice of clothes, well then we enter the realms of fairytale land, I´m afraid.

Marshall, Lynn, was the kind of witness that every police force dreams of. He was precise, non-hesitant, and he grounded his testimony on ten solid minutes of observing Liz Stride. He did not say "perhaps it was not her, since the woman I saw had no flower". Instead he said that he was able to identify her positively by both face and clothes (two parametres, that is) and he added that she was not wearing the flower at the stage he saw her. We cannot ever hope for a better, more precise witness testimony than that. It closes the book on any suggestions of mistaken identities with a very loud slam.

"is he then to murder her? I would love to see a sequence whereby this sentimental, quiet clerk turns and kills with his knife. I rub elbows with these types constantly. They do not carry weapons."

Do quiet people sometimes kill? Yes. Do educated people do it? Yes. Is a clerk a less likely killer than a dock labourer? No. And what is this thing about "these types" not carrying weapons? I had a journalist colleague (now retired) who ALWAYS carried a knife in his belt - but I cannot say if he belonged to "these types" of course... I have a number of friends that always carry a Swiss army knife for convenience - it comes in handy every once in a while, when something needs to be fixed. Some of these guys are soft-spoken, clerk-like types. I used to carry a black Swiss army knife myself for a number of years. But that knife disappeared for some reason, and I have not replaced it. And I would say I am rather a quiet type most of the time. Back in 1888, I reckon very many more people carried knives on them for practical reasons. Thus I do not find your argument very useful, I´m afraid, Lynn!

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

business opportunity

Hello Simon. Shhhh! You're making sense again.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Jewish Standard

Hello Maria. If I recall, the story about Diemshitz is in the Jewish Standard.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

plans

Hello CD.

"I still don't get your point. It was a club full of men, i.e., potential customers. Perhaps she didn't know that it was a poor place to do business."

Fine. Liz was smart enough to invest in her appearance, but not smart enough to know where the paying customers were. I can handle that.

"I have no idea what she was doing on Berner Street."

And that seems the major difficulty with the Liz qua solicitor theory.

"Perhaps she was there to meet someone in the club."

NOW YOU'RE TALKING!!

"Maybe he failed to come out to meet her at the appointed time and she felt like she had been stood up. Good time to end a bad evening with a drink but no money to do so. Hmmm. Now what could she do to get the price of a drink?"

See my, "Fine. I'll just turn a trick" above.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

marshall & knives

Hello Fish. I pretty much agree with you about Marshall being a decent witness. I think face is MUCH more valuable than dress.

But, to be convinced, I'd need to put this chap through his paces. I have identified people by their faces, only later to discover my error (yes, they were very similar).

Knives. Well, yes, quiet types can both kill and carry weapons. But Fish, this guy is not just a quiet clerk, he comes off as a downright mousy and sentimental chap. Now, for him to kill, something mighty big must have come up.

Can't you even throw me a crumb of suggestion? Your forensic reconstruction is virtually the same as mine and so I'd like to see something that causes his anger to explode and which also dovetails with Schwartz's story--given you still accept that.

Cheers.
LC

[mariab]

Lynn Cates wrote:
Hello Maria. If I recall, the story about Diemshitz is in the Jewish Standard.
Thank you, Lynn. I've read about it in in The Times and in the East London Advertiser (both posted on casebook). I might look at The Jewish Standard as well, to check out the “Jewish angle“ in this.
As for what Stride might have been doing in front of of the IWMC, might I remind you all that she spoke Yiddish? Perhaps the IWMC was not entirely the wrong place for her to be. That the Club members claimed not to have known her might be an untruth. But I don't think I'll go as far as to accept an entire cover-up theory that the club hired Schwartz as a fake witness.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Maria,

Stride could speak Yiddish?

I believe that particular gem came from Mary Malcolm, sister of the trigamous Elizabeth Stokes.

Regards,

Simon

[c.d.]

Hi Lynn,

How would Liz know that the club was a bad place for paying customers unless she tried it out? In fact, how do we know that they were more interested in gambling? Did that hold true for every member of the club? Did they take a public pledge of sexual abstinence?

Why does Liz have to turn her tricks only on a schedule that suits you?

Maria,

Your point about Liz speaking Yiddish was excellent. I have never heard anybody bring that up before. But now it makes sense that she might use that to her advantage.

c.d.

[Observer]

Hello CD. If what you say is true, Liz would have have the business acumen of a stove salesperson in hell. If she had planned to solicit, Whitechapel high st was excellent as was Commercial rd.

But perhaps her location was not planned? Fine. So what WAS she doing on Berner st?

Cheers.
LC

Using the dark corners of Dutfields Yard in order to satisfy her clients. Picking them up of course in the very very nearby Commercial Road. Not dissimilar in fact to Nichols who may well have been intending to take her killer behind those double gates in Bucks Row. Eddowes was a mile off the beaten track, again possibly intending to service her killer behind double gates in Mitre Square. And Chapman another practitioner of using out of the way locations, the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.

As CD implies, it might be appropriate to rename this thread cloud cuckoo land.

Observer

[mariab]

Stride the multilingual?

Hi Mr Wood,
she DIDN'T? Was this ANOTHER one of her self-gratifying lies?! She TOTALLY had me, as a newbie ! But I can swear I was reading about her somewhere very recently, possibly in one of the “dissertations“ posted here on casebook, and there it said that she allegedly spoke, besides her native Swedish, German and English without a discernable accent. I very much doubt the latter, but I can personally attest to the fact that if one speaks Swedish, native or not, one can understand a bit of German, and Dutch, and even Yiddish (a bit). At least I do. And it very much looks like Liz was an extrovert and a big story-teller, so I'd expect her to also be gifted in foreign languages, as most Swedes traditionally are!
Trigamous? Do you mean sumiltaneously?!! WOW!

[Observer]

Berner Street Fairclough Street junction. Dutfields Yard roughly situated where the fourth white bollard lies on East side of Street . The white office block running east west in the distance is in Commercial Road.

Observer

[Simon Wood]

Hi Maria,

Yep! Elizabeth Stokes had a surfeit of husbands. It's probably the reason she was being blackmailed.

Regards,

Simon

[mariab]

Thank you, Observer. There are some similar photos on Ripper Notes #26.

By the way: The claim of Stride being multilingual I've been reading lately comes from the Paley book, p. 93. With NO footnote or source to prove it! Most probably this is another one of Stride's embellished tales, but I insist that a “well-travelled“ Swede with a bit of knowledge in German might have been able to understand Yiddish better than a semi-analphabete Whitechapel indigenous resident. And allegedly Stride often “mended“ pieces of cloth for Jewish tailors as a “skilled seamstress“.

[The Grave Maurice]

You're right, Maria. We've been going to the films based on the Stieg Larsson novels at a local cinema lately. Pending the American reinterpretation, they are, of course, in Swedish; yet, with only a knowledge of English and a smattering of German, there are large chunks of dialogue that we can understand, even without the benefit of the subtitles.

Nice shot, Observer.