The Schwartz/BS Man situation - My opinion only

[Fiver]

Lave is certainly an interesting character, and in sense he is the anti-Schwartz, which explains why almost all Schwartz believers are very reluctant to discuss him, other than to dismiss him.

Lave contradicts more than just Schwartz. He contradicts Mortimer, Goldstein, Brown, Eagle, Hershberg, Kozebrodsky, Spooner, and PC Smith.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I think that basing the timings around PC Smith's beat is arguably the most reliable timeframe and gives the highest chance of consistency.

I agree with your summary of Smith's timings



RD

Just to be clear I'm not saying Smith's timings are to be preferred, rather I'm considering a few different scenarios, based on police time vs Diemschitz/Mortimer time. Instead of going through everything again, I'll summarize.

- Had Smith been at the top of Berner St at 1am, Diemschitz must necessarily arrive several minutes earlier. This pushes everything else back in time. The 'danger' becomes that Goldstein is then set to clash with Schwartz.

- If Smith is moved forward in time from his own timings to a beat of ~12:40-01:07/8, then the story of a woman being on her doorstep from just before 12:45, would seem to be within a few minutes of GMT. This scenario reduces the plausibility of the events described by Schwartz, from occurring in the following ten or so minutes.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hi NBFN,


Based on that, then I think it would be no later than 1:05, given a 30 minute (the longer) beat and last in at 12:35 (the later time), and no earlier than 12:55, (the shorter beat combined with the earliest time).

However, those are times based upon PC Smith, who would not have access to Dr. Blackwell's watch. The times I mention are based upon trying to coordinate all the times to Dr. Blackwell's watch (what I refer to as "Blackwell Standard Time"; or BST). As a result, the BST times I mention will differ from "Witness Stated Time" (WST), but one wouldn't expect huge discrepancies between BST and WST.

Yes, in the quoted post I initially consider Smith's times, and move onto considering Smith to have been 'ahead of time' by 5 minute or more.

PC Smith's statement "At 1 o'clock I went to Berner-street in my ordinary round." doesn't say he was "in" Berner-Street at 1, but that he "went to" Berner-Street. And while that isn't inconsistent with him being at the top of Berner Street, it also is consistent with him starting to head towards it from Gower (sp?), which in turn would require a couple minutes to get to the top of Berner-Street. And that interpretation starts to fit with his arrival at Berner around, 1:02 or 1:03ish, consistent with his previous estimate of his last patrol, and his patrol time.

He may well have meant he was at Gower's-walk at 1am, so at beat pace I suppose he would then get to the yard at about 1:05. However, it's hard to say exactly what Smith meant...

At 1 o'clock I went to Berner-street in my ordinary round. I saw a crowd of people outside the gates of No. 40.

And if he arrives a few minutes after the other PCs, which seems like the case, then by using the events up to their arrival, and tracing them back to Dr. Blackwell's arrival, we can then roughly estimate PC Smith's arrival in "BST", which are the times I mention, and why they might not correspond to values one calculates using WST.

Right. Some people are going to stick with police time, of course.

Like everyone, I can't be sure of anything that is reported in the News papers is actually what the person said. But, it is all I have to work with. It may be as you say, something the reporter made up, or perhaps she had said something like "3 or 5 minutes", and the reporter reduced that to 4? Maybe she did indeed say 4, as odd as that may be. I don't know, but what I do have is a news report that says she estimated the interval to be 4 minutes.

If the reporter made it up, then that would remove the concern. If, however, she did estimate it at around 4 minutes (either by 3-5 type thing, or did actually say 4), then the simulation value of 11m 24s falls within the range we might expect. As I mentioned, it is a bit on the long side but it is acceptable. Given there are so many time durations that are being dealt with, it is not all that surprising that one or two of them would be further in the tails of the acceptable range. What actually surprised me when I went over everything was how rarely that happened (I think this is largest discrepancy in the simulation, and even that wasn't outside of the error ranges we expect).

I don't think the reporter made it up, rather that he stitched together Mortimer's account with that of Diemschitz, who he 'knows' arrived at 1am. He goes on to say:

Presuming that the body did not lie in the yard when the policeman passed-and it could hardly, it is thought, have escaped his notice-and presuming also that the assassin and his victim did not enter the yard while the woman stood at the door, it follows that they must have entered it within a minute or two before the arrival of the pony trap. If this be a correct surmise, it is easy to understand that the criminal may have been interrupted at his work. Diemschitz says he thinks it quite possible that after he had entered the yard the assassin may have fled out of it, having lurked in the gloom until a favourable moment arrived.

This is 'Ripperology', not just reporting. What I'm saying is that it can't just be assumed that the report is an accurate paraphrasing of Mortimer's words. For all we know Mortimer may have said nothing explicit about locking up some number of minutes before Diemschitz arrived - the reporter has just done a couple of sums and concluded that lockup must have occurred significantly before Diemschitz arrival. As you can see from the quote above, that few minute gap is the basis for his theory.

Again, Brown's time and Dr. Blackwell's time are going to differ slightly. Because I was able to chain events involving the runners looking for the police back to Dr. Blackwell's arrival, I was able to tie in Brown based upon when they were in Fairclough in Blackwell time, and then work backwards based upon his 15 minute estimate to estimate his sighting of the couple also in Blackwell Standard Time (BST). And that estimated BST time, while not the same as what he states in "Brown Time", is not all that different and within the range of what we might expect given Brown is both estimating time and time stamping to a clock other than Blackwell's watch.

That's fine, but what I was pointing out was that assuming the couple were the young couple, why would we not take what they said into account, rather than just going by Brown's estimate and adjusting that to whatever absolute time is preferred. The couple said 20 minutes before the alarm, Brown said 15. Who was right?

In short, what I was trying to do was align as much as I could to one standard clock, which is why the times I mention will not correspond exactly to the time stated by a witness other than Dr. Blackwell. Based upon the calculations and procedures I used, however, the adjustment from "witness time" to BST, generally was in the range of a few minutes. It was a lot of work but also a fun exercise that I was surprised to find produced a coherent series of events.

I probably should emphasize more that the times I refer to are the BST times, and not the WST, to avoid confusion.

- Jeff

Fair enough. Hopefully Blackwell's watch was accurately set.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Like the many other men I mentioned, this man was searched for and not found.

"Two men came along while the body was being placed on the ambulance. With the exception of a man who passed Bucks-row while the doctor was there, these two men, who came from a slaughter-house near, were the first to arrive on the scene. They were on their way home from their work." PC Neil, 1 September 1888 Globe.

"In answer to the CORONER, Inspector Abberline said they were unable to find the man who passed down Buck's-row while the doctor was examining the body." 18 September 1888 Times

Those men were witnessed well after the murder. In that sense they were not controversial.

Neither of the men described by Schwartz were ever identified, and no known witness account even hints at corroborating his claims. What is the best reason you can offer for supposing that the men described by Schwartz, actually existed?

[FISHY1118]

Those men were witnessed well after the murder. In that sense they were not controversial.

Neither of the men described by Schwartz were ever identified, and no known witness account even hints at corroborating his claims. What is the best reason you can offer for supposing that the men described by Schwartz, actually existed?

Show evidence that any known witnesses other than Schwartz claimed they saw the attack on stride ? ,just because no one else saw it ,doesnt mean it didnt happen .

Also show evidence that the men described by Schwartz didnt exist ?. There is not one shread of evidence or proof that Schwartz lied or was dishonest when he gave his statement to police . They indeed thought he was a credible witness .

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Show evidence that any known witnesses other than Schwartz claimed they saw the attack on stride ? ,just because no one else saw it ,doesnt mean it didnt happen .

Which attack are you referring to - the one in the story or the one that resulted in Stride's death? Assuming these to be one and the same amounts to assuming your own conclusion - that Schwartz's story was true and the unidentified BS man killed Stride.

Also show evidence that the men described by Schwartz didnt exist ?. There is not one shread of evidence or proof that Schwartz lied or was dishonest when he gave his statement to police . They indeed thought he was a credible witness .

...the Leman-street police have reason to doubt the truth of the story.

This doubt came after arresting two men, based on his statement. Ain't that peculiar?

[FISHY1118]

Which attack are you referring to - the one in the story or the one that resulted in Stride's death? Assuming these to be one and the same amounts to assuming your own conclusion - that Schwartz's story was true and the unidentified BS man killed Stride.



...the Leman-street police have reason to doubt the truth of the story.

This doubt came after arresting two men, based on his statement. Ain't that peculiar?

Firstly , Schwartz account of the assault on Stride is not as you refer to a ''Story'' your attempt to try and cheaped his account is in poor taste .

So what ? That they arrested two men based on his statement, where does that ''Prove'' the two men he descrided didnt exist ? There could be dozens of men that fitted the same description.

[The Rookie Detective]

By Schwartz claiming that Stride's audible reaction wasn't loud, ergo, she didn't just typically scream out after being thrown to the ground, he is able to give an excuse as to why nobody heard the assault by BS man.

It could be said that her alleged reaction is rather odd because it does beg the question; why didn't she just scream or shout?

Now if I was Schwartz creating a story, I would know that nobody else saw or heard anything because I would know it wasn't true. I would also need a way to explain why nobody else heard anything. By claiming Stride's audible reaction to being assaulted wasn't very loud, it covers his back because it can then explain why nobody heard anything.
But that doesn't alter her fact that her lack of volume to having been assaulted is not consistent with how a typical person would react.

Just to put it into context...

Nobody saw or heard Schwartz
Nobody saw or heard any of what Schwartz claimed he saw or heard
Nobody has been able to definitively identify who he was outside of the events of the night of the murder.

That is rather telling.


You could of course play the "lost in translation" card, but a woman's scream (or lack of) is a universal language.


Schwartz to me seems like an actor or someone else playing a part, and I would suggest that he was either a fantasist, or he was the man who cut Strides throat in the dark.


RD

[Michael W Richards]

You have repeatedly made this claim, but it is still wrong.

PC Lamb, Johnston, and Mortimer support Diemschutz, his wife, Eagle, Minsky, and West that the body was found around 1am.

Hershberg and Kozebrodsky give an early discovery story that the body was found 15 to 20 minutes before 1am. Kozebrodsky was a member of the club. Apparently he didn't get the Conspiracy memo.

Spooner gives a time that contradicts everybody, placing the discovery 10 or more minutes before anyone else and 5 to 10 minutes before PC Smith saw her alive. Spooner doesn't just contradict Smith. He contradicts Hershberg and Kozebrodsky. He contradicts Brown. He contradicts Schwartz. He contradicts Mortimer. He contradicts Goldstein. He contradicts Diemschutz, Eagle, West, Lamb, and Johnston. Spooner even contradicts Spooner.

Pc Lamb, Johnson and Mortimer do not "support" Diemshutz, bizarre that you have interpreted the information in such a convoluted way.

1. Louis stated he arrived at 1am
2. PC Lamb says he saw Eagle looking for help "just before 1am". Seeing the problem yet?
3. Fanny Mortimer saw nothing on the street for 12:45, we dont know whether she was inside or outside at the time, but she reported nothing for that time.
4. Fanny saw Leon at 12:55-56. Liz may have been cut up to 10 minutes earlier by Blackwells estimates. And it confirms she saw the street at that time.
5. Issac Kozebrodski said "About twenty minutes to one this morning Mr. Diemschitz called me out to the yard." Mr Heschberg said "It was about a quarter to one o'clock, I should think, when I heard a policeman's whistle blown, and came down to see what was the matter. In the gateway two or three people had collected, and when I got there I saw a short, dark young woman lying on the ground with a gash between four and five inches long in her throat". Spooner said "We had left a public- house in Commercial-road at closing time, midnight, and walked quietly to the point named. We stood outside the Beehive about twenty-five minutes, when two Jews came running along, calling out "Murder" and "Police." Those 3 statements suggest an approximate discovery time around 12:40-12:45am. This isnt disputable, Im not sure why you are trying to do so anyway.

Issac Kozebrodksi is "apprenticing" with Louis and likely other members, he is not on the payroll. Mrs D is, Louis is..and they live there, Eagle got paid for speaking there often and on that night, and Lave lives there. PC Lambs remarks suggest he saw what turns out to be Eagle and Issac joining them at "just before 1". I would think he could approximate time pretty well, it was part of his job to do so. Eagle went one way looking for help and not finding any immediately, Issac Kozebrodski went another direction, saw no-one and then headed in the direction Eagle had gone and caught up with him as Lamb joined them. Just before 1.

So tell me, how is it that Lamb could see Eagle looking for help before the body had even been found and a search for help had begun? Correct. He couldnt have. He saw Eagle after the initial discovery, after the gathering around the dying woman, after leaving to get help, after having no immediate luck finding anyone, then Lamb sees him. Could that all take place by "just before 1am" if Louis is still just approaching the gates at that time on his cart and hasnt found anyone yet?

I said you can get a cohesive story using the witnesses I suggested without a time variance of more than 5 minutes in any of their statements. Same place, same time, doing the same thing. Validation, corroboration. Louis, Mrs D, Eagle and Lave would be out of work and likely their current digs if anything like suspicions of committing murder..at least the one murder...took hold with the police. They were anarchists, the Bike Gang equivalent of 88. These werent all just pleasant immigrant fellows, some of these were violent activists. Some get arrested within 6 months for attacking police with clubs at that very address...I would imagine the more hardcore the later they would hang out there after meetings. The neighbours thought they were shady with "low men" seen hanging out...again, after meetings. So where are all these low men that could be seen from 12:30 until 1am? Nobody out for a smoke like usual? None down chatting, looking at the street from the entranceway...like would be the norm? Deserted on that night apparently, so dark that men like Lave and Eagle couldnt even see each other when they would be feet apart and there at the same time, and Eagle couldnt be sure there wasnt a body there when he passed by. Sure was deserted and dark on that particular night....see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil. But later that same day, someone comes in and says "Oh yeah, I saw the woman getting mugged right out on the street at 12:45 by some big guy,..another guy was on the other side of the street. The big one yelled "Lipski" at me or that other guy. I hear stuff like that all the time. I was checking to see if my wife had finished moving our 2 suitcases over the past 12 hours...(from what address? unknown).

And this witness, speaking a foreign language, apparently knew Wess, likely had him translating for him like he does later for Leon Goldstein, and he was a poor immigrant Jew living in a district with an abundance of such men, some of which had gathered that night at the club for a meeting, regularly held on Saturday nights. Some still loitered there, over an hour after the meeting had ended.

I believe thats the basic nuts and bolts here, and if you take out the time Louis gives for discovery, the time Eagle says he was told of it, the agreement by Mrs D on that, and the essentially useless statement by Lave,...which, if true, has him there at the same time as Liz and her killer, seeing nothing. Use the 12:40-12:45 discovery time...and voila....Lamb could be there around 1 or just before as he said himself, Johnson could have made it there for 1:10, and we already know that Blackwell WAS there at 1:16.

Louis first arriving at 1am doesnt work with multiple witness statements and times, all of them actually, and makes them all wrong by the same amount of time, not just 5 minutes give or take, but 20 minutes give or take.

Use Lambs time...beat cops knew sources for their times to keep track, use Johnsons...because for him to be there at 1:10 means he heard of this event 10 minutes, at least, earlier,.... and use Blackwells time, bowing to the knowledge of his watch.

[Lewis C]

By Schwartz claiming that Stride's audible reaction wasn't loud, ergo, she didn't just typically scream out after being thrown to the ground, he is able to give an excuse as to why nobody heard the assault by BS man.

It could be said that her alleged reaction is rather odd because it does beg the question; why didn't she just scream or shout?

Now if I was Schwartz creating a story, I would know that nobody else saw or heard anything because I would know it wasn't true. I would also need a way to explain why nobody else heard anything. By claiming Stride's audible reaction to being assaulted wasn't very loud, it covers his back because it can then explain why nobody heard anything.
But that doesn't alter her fact that her lack of volume to having been assaulted is not consistent with how a typical person would react.

Just to put it into context...

Nobody saw or heard Schwartz
Nobody saw or heard any of what Schwartz claimed he saw or heard
Nobody has been able to definitively identify who he was outside of the events of the night of the murder.

That is rather telling.


You could of course play the "lost in translation" card, but a woman's scream (or lack of) is a universal language.


Schwartz to me seems like an actor or someone else playing a part, and I would suggest that he was either a fantasist, or he was the man who cut Strides throat in the dark.


RD

HI RD,

A women's scream is a universal language, bu the word for scream isn't. If he made it up and wanted there to be a reason why no one heard it, he wouldn't have had to have said that she screamed at all.

There are a lot of unsubstantiated witnesses. Lack of substantiation may mean that we can have reason to question whether the story was true, but it doesn't mean that the story isn't true. The story being true should be considered as one of the possibilities. (Others might note that I used the word "story" in the context of "it could be true".)

[JeffHamm]

...
Fair enough. Hopefully Blackwell's watch was accurately set.

Hi NBFN,

But what do we mean by that? Is it likely Dr. Blackwell's watch was exactly GMT? I doubt it, but then, I doubt any of the clocks available to any of the witnesses were likely to be in 100% correspondence with GMT. For me, it is not so important that the time be exactly GMT, but rather, to try to get all of the witnesses' events aligned to a common reference point, which in this case would be Dr. Blackwell's watch. By doing that, I was attempting to work out the temporal sequence of the events, roughly placing as many of the people doing what they were doing, and where they were doing it, with appropriate amounts of time between events.

There is no way to do that with 100% accuracy, of course, and I never claim to have done that. I have to make estimates, using average movement speeds, and I have to make estimates of a temporal interval based upon the average true interval associated with a witness's estimated interval, and so forth. Estimates will be associated with ranges of error, of course, but not doing those things means we have the error associated with witness's estimate of the time in the first place, coupled with the fact they each will make their estimate based upon having at some prior point seen a clock, which in turn is likely to read a different time from the reference clock of someone else.

By making the calculations and using the procedures I've mentioned (I presented them in full in some other thread a while back, and apologize for not being able to recall where that is), I wanted to see how well the time line hangs together. And it generally hangs together very well, and tends to reflect the unadjusted times the witnesses state within a few minutes (well within a range that such time statements are likely to err).

One could, if they wished, simply work out the difference between the time I suggest as Dr. Blackwell Time and the stated time for any of the witnesses, and simply shift everything to align with that witness's statement. For example, if "Joe Bloggs" said they arrived at 12:45, and in the recreation I suggest that in Dr. Blackwell Standard Time that would correspond to 12:43, then just shift everything 2 minutes later, and now everything is in Joe Blogg's Standard Time. Nothing about the sequence of events changes, and we're still left with "I hope Joe Blogg's got the time right". I went with Dr. Blackwell because I know he looked at a watch at the time he arrived and recorded that time, but none of us knows how well his watch was synchronized to GMT - but we don't, and can't, know that for any of the potential clocks or witnesses.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Firstly , Schwartz account of the assault on Stride is not as you refer to a ''Story'' your attempt to try and cheaped his account is in poor taste .

So what ? That they arrested two men based on his statement, where does that ''Prove'' the two men he descrided didnt exist ? There could be dozens of men that fitted the same description.

That's true - dozens of men could have fitted those descriptions. Yet two men at most seem to have caused substantial doubt to arise, so the issue must run deeper than matching descriptions.

[FISHY1118]

That's true - dozens of men could have fitted those descriptions. Yet two men at most seem to have caused substantial doubt to arise, so the issue must run deeper than matching descriptions.

Mere Speculation i fear , So i dont really see how .

[Michael W Richards]

Hi NBFN,

But what do we mean by that? Is it likely Dr. Blackwell's watch was exactly GMT? I doubt it, but then, I doubt any of the clocks available to any of the witnesses were likely to be in 100% correspondence with GMT. For me, it is not so important that the time be exactly GMT, but rather, to try to get all of the witnesses' events aligned to a common reference point, which in this case would be Dr. Blackwell's watch. By doing that, I was attempting to work out the temporal sequence of the events, roughly placing as many of the people doing what they were doing, and where they were doing it, with appropriate amounts of time between events.

There is no way to do that with 100% accuracy, of course, and I never claim to have done that. I have to make estimates, using average movement speeds, and I have to make estimates of a temporal interval based upon the average true interval associated with a witness's estimated interval, and so forth. Estimates will be associated with ranges of error, of course, but not doing those things means we have the error associated with witness's estimate of the time in the first place, coupled with the fact they each will make their estimate based upon having at some prior point seen a clock, which in turn is likely to read a different time from the reference clock of someone else.

By making the calculations and using the procedures I've mentioned (I presented them in full in some other thread a while back, and apologize for not being able to recall where that is), I wanted to see how well the time line hangs together. And it generally hangs together very well, and tends to reflect the unadjusted times the witnesses state within a few minutes (well within a range that such time statements are likely to err).

One could, if they wished, simply work out the difference between the time I suggest as Dr. Blackwell Time and the stated time for any of the witnesses, and simply shift everything to align with that witness's statement. For example, if "Joe Bloggs" said they arrived at 12:45, and in the recreation I suggest that in Dr. Blackwell Standard Time that would correspond to 12:43, then just shift everything 2 minutes later, and now everything is in Joe Blogg's Standard Time. Nothing about the sequence of events changes, and we're still left with "I hope Joe Blogg's got the time right". I went with Dr. Blackwell because I know he looked at a watch at the time he arrived and recorded that time, but none of us knows how well his watch was synchronized to GMT - but we don't, and can't, know that for any of the potential clocks or witnesses.

- Jeff

Ive captured this bit from the above to address, now underlined, "I wanted to see how well the time line hangs together. And it generally hangs together very well, and tends to reflect the unadjusted times the witnesses state within a few minutes (well within a range that such time statements are likely to err)."

Im actually pretty sure you know that isnt true, the time variances in this case are well beyond what people might consider within a reasonable doubt. The evidence is there, this isnt a theoretical dispute. When you remove the times Ive suggested, if for no other reason than a high probability of them having some bias or another filter into their statements...(Im confused why people are shocked at the idea that the men employed and paid by the club might tailor the events they report so they appear to show themselves in the best light possible. Isnt Damage Control a Universal term..and a perfectly natural response, be you law abiding or not?)...... then you have a sequence of events that confirms the time estimates given by the majority of the witnesses. The "adjustments" you and others make to a stated time by a witness is so it can work within some kind of continuous timeline. Well, the evidence Im talking about does just that with any "adjustments" beyond a 5 minute period, give or take. Yours is 20 minutes...and coincidentally all the witnesses you attempt to discredit for their ability to know what the real time all had the same times, within 5 minutes of each other. It creates a continuous report of events and activities by multiple witness statements from a variety of POV's and doesnt require simply changing times that were stated to enable some sort of similar cohesive timeline.

I am not offering any theory here, the witness statements just needed to be referenced in a way that allows for a story to be told ONLY by the people who experienced it, not altered by people 136 years later. Once again, if Lamb arrived just before or at 1, it is well known that a beat cop would regularly check time sources on his beat, then it is impossible for Louis to have arrived at that same time. If Louis arrived 15-20 minutes earlier then Eagle and Issac Kozebrodski have enough time to come downstairs, stand there for a minute figuring out what to do, then head out for help, and return with Lamb at around 1am. Trouble is that Issac Kozebrodski says that happened around 12:40-12:45 and Eagle back Louis's times. Why would he do that? He said he arrived at 12:40, so if that actually was the time she is discovered, he had no personal risk there... he obviously wasnt there when she was killed, why not just say that? In my opinion he just followed Louis's lead and made sure to say nothing provocative. Yes, he said he wasnt sure whether there was a body there when he arrives, but it was dark and the streets were deserted so thats understandable, right? Well, Issac isnt a paid employee at the club, but Louis, Mrs D, Morris Eagle and Joseph Lave are and everyone but Morris lives on that property. They all stood to lose employment and lodgings if the cops closed down the club....so, want to reconsider the Damage Control idea again now?

Louis lied. The paid staff lied, The anarchist hosts. And later that evening, so did someone else.

[c.d.]

They all stood to lose employment and lodgings if the cops closed down the club....so, want to reconsider the Damage Control idea again now?

Except even if that is true it doesn't necessarily mean that that is the path they chose. It was one of several options available to them. It also didn't guarantee that they would be off the hook and it could have resulted in even greater problems and possible jail time if their cover up was discovered.

So simply showing the club had something to lose is not sufficient in and of itself.

c.d.