Was Liz's "Date" Necessarily a Romantic One?

[lynn cates]

average height

Hello Christer. Well, it's NOT a height reference. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Abby Normal]

To me it seems that Stride may have been more out looking for a sugar daddy than just out working for quickies. She had just broken with Kidney. JtR of course, was looking for a quickie, found Stride and after spending more time and effort trying to maneuver her to a dark alley eventually lost his temper (Schwartz's account). Which may be why Stride only ended up with a cut throat and not the mutilations.

[mariab]

Well, it's NOT a height reference. (heh heh)

Is this a reference to Get shorty? Haven't seen it, so I'm not up on it.

[Wickerman]

There is actually an article that offers some sort of possible corroboration, Jon. It was published in "The Scotsman" on the 2nd of October ....

Thankyou Fisherman, I seem to recall that all those details were published on the evening of 1st Oct. by the Star. Is there some reason you think this is corroboration rather than repetition?

Thanks, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Agreed, Jon and Fish. Attempts to identify Marshall's suspect with the man described by Best and Gardner are far less convincing.

I think that the suggestion is being formed that Marshall's man = BS-man = her date, so who killed her?
We need another body, possibly someone she was with earlier than the Marshall/BS-man personage. The Best/Gardner-man?

Though I lean towards the PC Smith-man = Marshall's man = BS-man, otherwise Stride took up with the PC Smith-man after being with Marshall's man.
So where did he go, and why?

Then we need to entertain the idea that this same man, aka BS-man, was walking down Berner St. from Comm, Rd.
Pieces of the puzzle...

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Lynn:

"I'm wondering if you can envision a natural sequence in which he leaves and comes back, and which accounts for the timing?"

One could easily put together a scenario in which Lis spends the whole evening in the company of the same man. PC SMiths man is not all that far off the mark, compared to Marshallīs man and BS man.

Precisely!

Please observe we have no sightings of Liz where she was all alone - even in the Schwartz scenario, she was joined by BS man at the gate.

So he leaves her around Dutfields Yd?, and walks away, only to be seen returning back down Berner St. by Schwartz(?)

And if she spent the whole evening in one manīs company, I donīt find it too hard to accept that he could have said "Iīll just pop over to XX and knock on his windowsill to swop a few words - back in a jiffy!" or "Jeez, I should not have drunk that last beer, now Iīll have to go off and take a leak round the corner" or anything else totally equally profane. He need not have been away for many a minute.

Is this the same "leaving" as in the previous sentence? or something else?

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

"And if she spent the whole evening in one manīs company, I donīt find it too hard to accept that he could have said "Iīll just pop over to XX and knock on his windowsill to swap a few words - back in a jiffy!" or "Jeez, I should not have drunk that last beer, now Iīll have to go off and take a leak round the corner" or anything else totally equally profane. He need not have been away for many a minute."

Entirely agree. Of course, this bloke--if he existed--had NOTHING to do with her slaying. Else, how explain the sudden change?

Cheers.
LC

Also agree. That said, I'm not convinced Stride was a Ripper victim, so was her killer a previous client, previous to the Marshall encounter?

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

sightings

Hello Jon. Permit me to say something completely radical. I trust NONE of the sightings EXCEPT PC Smith's.

Christer is obviously correct that Marshall is the best--insofar as he recognised face AND clothes. But the flower was missing. Tom Wescott theorises that the man's arm may have obstructed the view. Still, Marshall did not say, "I can't say" but rather, "No."

Sound improbable? Well, do you remember the points of similarity between Watts and Stride? Count them. Freakish, eh?

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

Jon:

"I seem to recall that all those details were published on the evening of 1st Oct. by the Star. Is there some reason you think this is corroboration rather than repetition?"

In the Star, the 1st of October? Can you post the relevant section? All I find in that paper is this:

"The police have been told that a man, aged between 35 and 40 years of age, and of fair complexion, was seen to throw the woman murdered in Berner-street to the ground. Those who saw it thought that it was a man and his wife quarrelling, and no notice was taken of it."

... and since Schwartzīs story has already been run before this is mentioned, one may reason that this would be corroboration for it. But if one takes a look at the papers of this time, one will see that repetitions like these do occur every now and then. It is hard to say how many reporters have had their fingers in it, and under how much stress these articles are compiled. If there had been corroborating witnesses, supporting Schwartzīs story, one would have expected this to be recorded officially or mentioned by Swanson, for example, in his estimation of it all.

But the story in the Scotsman is something else - in it, we have a description of two men running down Fairclough street, one seemingly chasing the other, and that tallies well with what we know happened AFTER the incident at the gate. Plus, like I said, the timing puts it nicely within the frame. It is also said that the chaser did not belong to the club, meaning that there was no confusion with the clubbers running out on the streets, looking for a policeman, in connection with the murder.

"So he leaves her around Dutfields Yd?, and walks away, only to be seen returning back down Berner St. by Schwartz(?)"

We cannot fix the exact positions, of course - so letīs just say he leaves her for some unknown period of time in that general vicinity, and when he returns, Schwartz has entered the stage, he sees the exchange at the gate, is scared, runs off, followed by Pipeman, and the two are then seen by some unidentified person or persons, a story that eventually is told in The Scotsman.

This is all guesswork, of course. We cannot be sure that it WAS the same man all along. But we DO know that she was apparently alone in the gateway as BS man approached her, so if it WAS the same man, we must conclude that he HAD left her for some unestablishable period of time.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Lynn:

"How do you know this was the same woman?
- I recognise her both by her face and dress."

That was what Marshall said. He had ample time to take a look at the couple - they stood where Marshall saw them for about ten minutes, although it must be said that there was no street light there, and Marshalls certainty would owe to the fact that the couple passed him at close range as they went away. That would be when he took in Strides looks, but was unable to do the same with the man since he had his face turned towards Stride and away from Marshall.

The Evening News further enhances our certainty, by the way: "Witness was quite sure that the deceased was the woman he saw." No doubts at all, thus.

In comparison with that, Best, who was the only one speaking of Stride having had a flower in her dress BEFORE Marshallīs sighting, is a somewhat less adamant witness, since he is only "almost certain the woman there (in the mortuary) is the one" he had seen with his friend Gardner at the Bricklayerīs Arms.

At any rate, since Marshall was standing on the western side of Berner street as the couple passed him by heading south, then the clerkly man would have been between Marshall and Stride. We may conclude this since Marshall tells us that the man turned his face away from him, looking at Stride, as they passed. It means that the arm the clerkly man had put around Strides shoulders was his left arm. And since Stride wore her flower on the right side of her jacket, chances are that it was simply obscured from Marshalls sight by the clerkly mans chest.

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

Making great Strides.

Hello Christer. Thanks. I thought I had covered that. If the flower was there, then the better answer was, "I cannot say." Perhaps he just thought it was not. maybe uncertain? (heh-heh)

Certainty? Well, when I was a young man, I had a dispute with my brother about Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Turns out my "certainty" was ill founded. I mistook each for the other.

Last, have you noted ALL the parallels listed between Watts and Stride?

Cheers.
LC

[Abby Normal]

Lynn:

"I'm wondering if you can envision a natural sequence in which he leaves and comes back, and which accounts for the timing?"

One could easily put together a scenario in which Lis spends the whole evening in the company of the same man. PC SMiths man is not all that far off the mark, compared to Marshallīs man and BS man.
Please observe we have no sightings of Liz where she was all alone - even in the Schwartz scenario, she was joined by BS man at the gate.

And if she spent the whole evening in one manīs company, I donīt find it too hard to accept that he could have said "Iīll just pop over to XX and knock on his windowsill to swop a few words - back in a jiffy!" or "Jeez, I should not have drunk that last beer, now Iīll have to go off and take a leak round the corner" or anything else totally equally profane. He need not have been away for many a minute.

Such a thing would be very common to me.

The best,
Fisherman

Hi Fish
But why would he return to Liz with such an immediate angry mood and behaviour if he breifly left her for such an innocent reason, especially since they had been hanging out peacefully, even lovingly, for a long period of time?

[Fisherman]

Lynn:

"If the flower was there, then the better answer was, "I cannot say." Perhaps he just thought it was not. maybe uncertain?"

Have you noticed, Lynn, how Marshall seemingly offers his flower information with no preceding question? I think it may well have been there - I am pretty certain that the witnesses often responded to questions but had it reported in the papers as if it was their own initiative to speak of something.

In this case, I suspect that the coroner (or a juryman) may have asked "did she wear her flower then?" and gotten the answer "No, I donīt think so". And then it went into the paper as "she was not wearing the flower then". Just a hunch, but there you go.

"Certainty? Well, when I was a young man, I had a dispute with my brother about Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Turns out my "certainty" was ill founded. I mistook each for the other."

By the looks of things, Stride did not look all that bad. I think you may be doing her a disservice by comparing her to Lee and Cushing. Otherwise, point taken, Lynn ... but we can never reach any further that "I am certain", Iīm afraid.

"Last, have you noted ALL the parallels listed between Watts and Stride?"

Well, unless I have missed something, I think I have. And thatīs a ridiculous heap of coincidences, one must say. Maybe the same woman went under FOUR names: Stride, Watts, Lewis and Kennedy...?

The best!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Abby:

"But why would he return to Liz with such an immediate angry mood and behaviour if he breifly left her for such an innocent reason, especially since they had been hanging out peacefully, even lovingly, for a long period of time?"

Maybe he didnīt, Abby. Letīs not forget that we do not have all the bits and pieces, and we tend to include only what we know when looking for a logical solution.

We have it on record that BS man stopped and exchanged words with Liz before the altercation with the physical exchange took itīs start.
So what did she say? We donīt know.
Letīs - just to point to one possibility out of a thousand - assume that when he left her (after Smithīs sighting) he may have done so in a manner that Stride did not like at all. Maybe he said "Iīm through with you, silly cow" and went away. We just donīt know. After htta, maybe he had a drink, softening his heart up, and he returned to make up, only to find that Stride asked him to go to hell, and then ...

The bits and pieces, Abby - thatīs what we lack here. And depending on how they looked, the scenario may have differed wildly.

Iīm sure that you can think of other, equally mondane and viable solutions to the question you ask!

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

What a coincidence.

Hello Christer. Splendid. We are agreed, then, that the coincidences boggle the mind and, if we didn't know better, would be dismissed by us as impossible?

Cheers.
LC