The Schwartz/BS Man situation - My opinion only

[Wickerman]

I am a Russian, and have recently arrived in England from the United States. I am residing temporarily at the club. About twenty minutes before the alarm I went down into the yard to get a breath of fresh air. I walked about for five minutes or more, and went as far as the street. Everything was very quiet at the time, and I noticed nothing wrong.

This could be interpreted to mean that Lave was standing in the gateway, at 12:45. I can understand why people might be keen to dismiss him.

It has always read to me that he was talking about him coming out by the side door - the side door is the only club exit that goes into the yard.
He says he walked around inside the yard, perhaps pacing back & forth for about 5 minutes, but not exiting the yard via Berner St., only going as far as the gates (the street) and turning back.

[Wickerman]

''The official files'' show that the police accepted the statement made by Schwartz and found him to be a credible witness.

There is no exaggeration ,just what the police confirmed at the time .

I don't think that is true.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

It has always read to me that he was talking about him coming out by the side door - the side door is the only club exit that goes into the yard.
He says he walked around inside the yard, perhaps pacing back & forth for about 5 minutes, but not exiting the yard via Berner St., only going as far as the gates (the street) and turning back.

Well, he said street and not gates, so being pedantic, if a man tried to pull the woman into the street but only managed to throw her onto the footway, then the footway is not the street. Therefore, Lave could legitimately claim to have only gone as far as the street, when on the footway outside the club, replacing posters. It's a moot point, because had he been Parcelman, he is not going to say anything specific enough to place him beyond the line of the gates, let alone anything that could point to him being the man seen by Smith.

Lave can and always will be dismissed based on the possible inaccuracy of his timings, and I do think he got his times a bit wrong. I'm sure the two women in the kitchen were referring to Eagle, as the man who entered the club at about 12:40. So, when did Lave return inside? If it is assumed he was a little off his times, rather than way off, then he becomes a candidate for being Parcelman. That leaves unexplained how he came across Stride, seemingly on her own. I can only make something up; that she was on her way back to the lodging house, after a night out.

[JeffHamm]

Again, what he did say is..."I was in Berner-street about half-past twelve or twenty-five minutes to one o'clock.")

So as not to be considered intentionally misleading, how about any time anyone wants to imagine their own sequence of events and times they add a disclaimer first stating something like ...The following is my estimate of times and events, and they do not match the times given by the witnesses themselves.

You are forgetting that other than Dr. Blackwell, all other times that witnesses say will be based upon a different clock. The times presented in the timeline are the times I calculate in an attempt to syncronize all the witnesses to the same clock (Dr. Blackwell's watch). I spelled out, in detail, the way in which I did this when I first posted the results. So no, the times I present is not what people said, but that's because what people said was based upon clocks other than Dr. Blackwell's watch. What I present is after those stated values are put through the calculations. The times represent what Dr. Blackwell's watch would have read (with the obvious caveat that with any such analysis these are estimations of what Dr. Blackwell's watch would have read). So while you are correct in noting the times I present are not the times stated, that is an entirely moot point - it would be shocking if they were in fact.

- Jeff

[Michael W Richards]

You are forgetting that other than Dr. Blackwell, all other times that witnesses say will be based upon a different clock. The times presented in the timeline are the times I calculate in an attempt to syncronize all the witnesses to the same clock (Dr. Blackwell's watch). I spelled out, in detail, the way in which I did this when I first posted the results. So no, the times I present is not what people said, but that's because what people said was based upon clocks other than Dr. Blackwell's watch. What I present is after those stated values are put through the calculations. The times represent what Dr. Blackwell's watch would have read (with the obvious caveat that with any such analysis these are estimations of what Dr. Blackwell's watch would have read). So while you are correct in noting the times I present are not the times stated, that is an entirely moot point - it would be shocking if they were in fact.

- Jeff

Jeff Ive never contended that any of these times would be based on the same reference source, but I have contended that allowances for error need not be in the 20-30 minute range. The presumption by many is that they can arbitrarily decide whose times are the closest to the actual time that would be found on a source local to them based on a presumption that they all had some point of reference that they used shortly before they gave their estimate. They didnt. But some did. And all beat policeman HAD to track their times, so at various points on their beats they would have time references they could use. If the area had a prominent clock to reference publicly, then it would stand to reason that many locals would set their personal timepieces to that time. So many, depending on the working condition of the personal timepiece they had, would have similar times on their own clocks and watches to that publicly displayed time. Would we expect that some would be off as much as 30 minutes of the Police estimated time? Or the medical experts? Or people who had just previously been indoors and had access to a clock or timepiece there? Because IF Louis had arrived at exactly 1...as he said...then Lamb would be wrong by about 20-25 minutes, Issac and Heschberg would be off by that much, and Spooner would have to have loitered outside the Beehive for 20-30 minutes longer than he guessed. He guessed about 25 minutes...well, to match Louis, that needs to be almost an hour.

So...who had access to a timepiece just before they see, hear, or experience something that night? I would suggest bearing in mind that the club would certainly have a prominent clock inside, so would people in their home. So Lamb should have been close to the publicly available time, Issac K and Heschberg come out from inside the club and Fanny would have a time source in her home.

If you use the times by Smith, then Issac K and Heschberg, then Spooner, then Lamb, then Johnson, then Blackwell... you have a continuous timeline that is plausible and works without altering anyones time by more than 5 minutes.

[Michael W Richards]

It has always read to me that he was talking about him coming out by the side door - the side door is the only club exit that goes into the yard.
He says he walked around inside the yard, perhaps pacing back & forth for about 5 minutes, but not exiting the yard via Berner St., only going as far as the gates (the street) and turning back.

On Lave....."In a statement to the press, he claimed that he had gone into Dutfield's Yard at 12.40am to get a breath of fresh air: "So far as I could see I was out in the street about half an hour, and while I was out nobody came into the yard, nor did I see anybody moving about there in a way to excite my suspicions"

Its hard to imagine he meant he spent all that time in the yard, particularly since he says "street". In fact it seems he is saying that he was out there until 1. And somehow missed Schwartz outside on the street, BSM, Pipeman, Eagle returning, Goldstein passing by.....even said specifically that no-one came into the yard during that time. Poor Morris....so unmemorable.

[Wickerman]

Well, he said street and not gates, so being pedantic, if a man tried to pull the woman into the street but only managed to throw her onto the footway, then the footway is not the street....

That would be the first issue then.
The yard is private property, the street is the municipal property, the footpath/footway is part of the street, the responsibility of the city. A street has two components; a walkway for pedestrians, and a road for vehicular traffic.
Therefore, in this case not going into the street means he didn't leave private property, he didn't pass between the gates, which were likely open at that hour.

... It's a moot point, because had he been Parcelman, he is not going to say anything specific enough to place him beyond the line of the gates, let alone anything that could point to him being the man seen by Smith. Lave can and always will be dismissed based on the possible inaccuracy of his timings, and I do think he got his times a bit wrong. I'm sure the two women in the kitchen were referring to Eagle, as the man who entered the club at about 12:40. So, when did Lave return inside? If it is assumed he was a little off his times, rather than way off, then he becomes a candidate for being Parcelman. That leaves unexplained how he came across Stride, seemingly on her own. I can only make something up; that she was on her way back to the lodging house, after a night out.

The police took statements from all at the club, if the coroner thought there was any suspicion attached to Lave he would have been called to the inquest.

[Wickerman]

On Lave....."In a statement to the press, he claimed that he had gone into Dutfield's Yard at 12.40am to get a breath of fresh air: "So far as I could see I was out in the street about half an hour, and while I was out nobody came into the yard, nor did I see anybody moving about there in a way to excite my suspicions"

Its hard to imagine he meant he spent all that time in the yard, particularly since he says "street"....

Why is it hard?
He said he paced up and down, thats back & forth. People do it all the time. Especially smokers today.

Yes, the reports in the press are contradictory, but the fact he was not called tells all of us his story was not suspicious.
Modern theorists are always anxious to cast suspicion on witnesses, as if they have seen something no-one before them has.
Trust me, if you can see something, the coroner was more than capable of seeing the same situation.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

That would be the first issue then.
The yard is private property, the street is the municipal property, the footpath/footway is part of the street, the responsibility of the city. A street has two components; a walkway for pedestrians, and a road for vehicular traffic.
Therefore, in this case not going into the street means he didn't leave private property, he didn't pass between the gates, which were likely open at that hour.

The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round & threw her down on the street...

The police took statements from all at the club, if the coroner thought there was any suspicion attached to Lave he would have been called to the inquest.

Lave places himself in the gateway at about 12:45. If the coroner did not regard that as suspicious, what does that tell us?

[JeffHamm]

Jeff Ive never contended that any of these times would be based on the same reference source, but I have contended that allowances for error need not be in the 20-30 minute range.
...

And none of the the times are different from those stated by 20 to 30 minutes. If you go read what I did, what it produced, how I checked it, and so forth, you would know that.

But, the information you insist I use has Lave in the yard, seeing nothing, while you also have stride being killed in that time, discovered, the doctor arrives, but Lave, in the yard sees none of it. You listed a buch of statements, after criticizing me for not producing a timeline based on what he or she said. So you can claim to recognize the clicks are different, but you show no tolerance for anyone who tries to do anything about that.

Yet you do not seem concerned that Lave, in the statements you provided, claims to have been in the yard from 12;40 until 1;10. Yet during that whole time he sees nothing, yet you claim the body was discovered and the club was out in the yard at 12:45, scheming about how telling the police the body was found at 1 would deflect their interest from the clu members, but discovery at 12:45 is certain doom for the club (I still can't fathom that and it has never been adequately explained how shifting the time of the discovery is supposed to help the club avoid suspicion - oh yah, why is it we can shift Deimshutz's time to be different to what he says? Why is suggesting tines different to what people say worth presenting as a flaw yet your entire idea is based on doing just that?) Based on Lave, from the statements you thin I should use, the murder is after 1:10 , unless you are ok with arbitrarily modifying what Lave says when it doesn't suit your idea, but it is a sin when somebody else suggests adjustments different from the ones necessary to make your idea work ?

I spelled out the rules by which I calculated the times, none of which includes "must have the discovery be at exactly 1", or any other pet theory. But you presented me with a short list of information you insist be used, as said, so no arbitrary changes as you call them. I looked at your list and it produces nonsense, as I pointed out. So if that is the information you use to back you theory, I would suggest you go back and get another subset of the evidence.

- Jeff

[Fiver]

Regarding the lockup-discovery interval, are you sure she said it was about 4 minutes? I regard that as being a calculation of the reporter, as opposed to a paraphrasing of the witness. Put it this way, have you ever heard anyone make an estimate of "about 4 minutes"?

There are two examples from Ripper cases.

"Witness and the other man walked on together until they met a policeman at the corner of Old Montagu-Street, and told him what they had seen. Up to that time not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time he saw the body." - Robert Paul, 18 September 1888 Times

"It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact. The quiet and deserted character of the street appears even to have struck her at the time. Locking the door, she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor, and it so happened that in about four minutes' time she heard Diemschitz's pony cart pass the house, and remarked upon the circumstance to her husband." - Fanny Mortimer, 1 October 1888 Evening News

Those numbers do stand out compared to other witnesses, who appear to be rounding to the nearest 5, 19, or even 15 minutes. Saying 4 minutes might mean Robert Paul and Fanny Mortimer observed a clock or pocket watch. Or it could mean they believed, correctly or incorrectly, that they were better at time estimation. No one asked Charles Lechmere or William Mortimer for comparable time estimates.

Fanny Mortimer's timing meshes well with Louis Diemschutz - she estimates 12:59 for his arrival, while he thought he arrived at 1am.

Mortimer disagrees badly with PC Smith. She thought he passed at 12:45am, he put the time at 12:30 to 12:35am. That might mean the person she heard at 12:45 was someone other than PC Smith. If so, I strongly doubt that it was the killer, the Ripper had too many close escapes to have been clomping around in heavy boots.

Other possibilities are that Mortimer and/or PC Smith were fairly bad at estimating time or that their time pieces, if any, were badly out of sync.

Another possibility is to split the difference with everyone slightly off. If Smith passed at 12:40, then he Mortimer, and Smith would have all been about 5 minutes off, which is entirely possible.

[Fiver]

Yet you do not seem concerned that Lave, in the statements you provided, claims to have been in the yard from 12;40 until 1;10. Yet during that whole time he sees nothing, yet you claim the body was discovered and the club was out in the yard at 12:45, scheming about how telling the police the body was found at 1 would deflect their interest from the clu members, but discovery at 12:45 is certain doom for the club (I still can't fathom that and it has never been adequately explained how shifting the time of the discovery is supposed to help the club avoid suspicion - oh yah, why is it we can shift Deimshutz's time to be different to what he says? Why is suggesting tines different to what people say worth presenting as a flaw yet your entire idea is based on doing just that?)

That is the biggest flaw in his theory. If there were going to be problems with the police it would be over where the body was found, not when the body was found. I have yet to see even an attempt at explaining how falsifying the time helps the club in any way.

Another flaw is thinking that 20 to 30 members of a political club could reach a consensus about anything, let alone agreeing to a conspiracy to lie to the police, in a mere 15 minutes.

[JeffHamm]

There are two examples from Ripper cases.

"Witness and the other man walked on together until they met a policeman at the corner of Old Montagu-Street, and told him what they had seen. Up to that time not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time he saw the body." - Robert Paul, 18 September 1888 Times

"It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact. The quiet and deserted character of the street appears even to have struck her at the time. Locking the door, she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor, and it so happened that in about four minutes' time she heard Diemschitz's pony cart pass the house, and remarked upon the circumstance to her husband." - Fanny Mortimer, 1 October 1888 Evening News

Those numbers do stand out compared to other witnesses, who appear to be rounding to the nearest 5, 19, or even 15 minutes. Saying 4 minutes might mean Robert Paul and Fanny Mortimer observed a clock or pocket watch. Or it could mean they believed, correctly or incorrectly, that they were better at time estimation. No one asked Charles Lechmere or William Mortimer for comparable time estimates.

Fanny Mortimer's timing meshes well with Louis Diemschutz - she estimates 12:59 for his arrival, while he thought he arrived at 1am.

Mortimer disagrees badly with PC Smith. She thought he passed at 12:45am, he put the time at 12:30 to 12:35am. That might mean the person she heard at 12:45 was someone other than PC Smith. If so, I strongly doubt that it was the killer, the Ripper had too many close escapes to have been clomping around in heavy boots.

Other possibilities are that Mortimer and/or PC Smith were fairly bad at estimating time or that their time pieces, if any, were badly out of sync.

Another possibility is to split the difference with everyone slightly off. If Smith passed at 12:40, then he Mortimer, and Smith would have all been about 5 minutes off, which is entirely possible.

Another example is from the Eddowes case, where Lawende estimates they waited 5 minutes for the rain, but one of the other men estimated the wait to be 3 or 4 minutes.


- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

There are two examples from Ripper cases.

"Witness and the other man walked on together until they met a policeman at the corner of Old Montagu-Street, and told him what they had seen. Up to that time not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time he saw the body." - Robert Paul, 18 September 1888 Times

"It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact. The quiet and deserted character of the street appears even to have struck her at the time. Locking the door, she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor, and it so happened that in about four minutes' time she heard Diemschitz's pony cart pass the house, and remarked upon the circumstance to her husband." - Fanny Mortimer, 1 October 1888 Evening News

Those numbers do stand out compared to other witnesses, who appear to be rounding to the nearest 5, 19, or even 15 minutes. Saying 4 minutes might mean Robert Paul and Fanny Mortimer observed a clock or pocket watch. Or it could mean they believed, correctly or incorrectly, that they were better at time estimation. No one asked Charles Lechmere or William Mortimer for comparable time estimates.

Fanny Mortimer's timing meshes well with Louis Diemschutz - she estimates 12:59 for his arrival, while he thought he arrived at 1am.

Mortimer disagrees badly with PC Smith. She thought he passed at 12:45am, he put the time at 12:30 to 12:35am. That might mean the person she heard at 12:45 was someone other than PC Smith. If so, I strongly doubt that it was the killer, the Ripper had too many close escapes to have been clomping around in heavy boots.

Other possibilities are that Mortimer and/or PC Smith were fairly bad at estimating time or that their time pieces, if any, were badly out of sync.

Another possibility is to split the difference with everyone slightly off. If Smith passed at 12:40, then he Mortimer, and Smith would have all been about 5 minutes off, which is entirely possible.

If you consider the 4 minutes to have been due to Fanny's words, rather than an outcome of the journalist piecing things together, then let's consider you last example (which I agree is entirely possible). That would have Diemschitz arriving at 12:55, and Fanny locking up at 12:50/1. She presumably sees Goldstein just before she locks up. So, what else occurs between 12:40 and 12:51?

[JeffHamm]

If you consider the 4 minutes to have been due to Fanny's words, rather than an outcome of the journalist piecing things together, then let's consider you last example (which I agree is entirely possible). That would have Diemschitz arriving at 12:55, and Fanny locking up at 12:50/1. She presumably sees Goldstein just before she locks up. So, what else occurs between 12:40 and 12:51?

Hi NBFN,

That is what I did with the time line reconstruction, but I factored in the empirically based finding that people tend to over estimate short time intervals (so when they say "4 minutes", the true interval is generally somewhat less than that). That resulted in 12:58:24: Diemshutz’s arrival, which is only roughly 3 1/2 minutes off your 1:55. Given I factored in that "shortening" all the way through, and also given that the 12:58:24 is in reference to Dr. Blackwell's watch (not Deimshutz's clock on the corner of Berner and Commercial), I would be surprised if you thought the timeline estimated time is unreasonable.

And as a result, I think it follows that Fiver's point, is therefore not unreasonable (because it leads to a non-adjusted time that is close to the estimated time on Dr.Blackwell's watch, which is likely similar, if not identical, to other clocks that witnesses might have access to; like the one Deimshutz says he referenced).

Times and durations that do result in bizarre conflicts, which make us question the reliability of the statements, are things like Lave's statement of being in the yard from 12:40 to 1:10, and during that time, nothing happened. That is clearly wrong and not useful for determining what happened on the night. And you can't solve a case if you don't know what happened in the first place.

- Jeff