Sequence of comings & goings - Stride

[Herlock Sholmes]

There are number of possibilities with Diemschitz.

1. He heard a clock strike a quarter to one, when on Commercial Road or Berner street. He mistakenly believed this was the one o'clock chime.
An Echo reporter interviewed Diemschitz the day of the murder, and got something of a guided tour of the yard and club. In the report:

The steward of the International and Educational Club reached the gate just as the clock struck one.

No reference to actually seeing the clock, or specifying which clock was being referred to.


2. Diemschitz knew he had arrived close to 12:45, but when he heard the '12:45 stories', decided his best interests were served by claiming to have arrived at 1:00.
In the same Echo edition:

... it is alleged that from the time the body was discovered fifteen minutes had elapsed before a constable could be [?] from Commercial-road.

Which fairly neatly takes us from about 12:45, to PC Lamb, stating...

About 1 o'clock, as near as I can tell, on Sunday morning I was in the Commercial-road, between Christian-street and Batty-street. Two men came running towards me. I went towards them and heard them say, "Come on! There has been another murder."

As you said, the club had no position on the time of the murder, at least not officially, so perhaps no reason to suppose that Diemschitz would 'tow the party line'.


3. Someone at the club decided, or possibly panicked into claiming to the press that incidents had been observed by multiple witnesses around 12:45 - both on Berner and Fairclough streets. It was later decided (that day), that these stories were too risky - too many 'witnesses' were involved, to keep it held together.
It was therefore decided to change Diemschitz' claimed arrival time from 'about one o'clock', to 'precisely 1am', and 'play down' the 12:45 stories by sending a single 'witness' to the police, to give a detailed account of an incident which encapsulated all the other stories, but which crucially made it clear that he was the only witness, other than the other characters in the account. The purpose was to:

• make the other stories redundant, by combining them into a single event
• eliminate all other witnesses, external to the incident
• make it unclear as to what occurred to the murder victim, after the witness flees the scene

Regardless of the truth of #3, it is rather fascinating how Wess implicitly contradicts Diemschitz, even more so given the following snippet also comes from the Oct 1 Echo:

In the course of conversation (says the journalist) the secretary mentioned the fact that the murderer had no doubt been disturbed in his work, as about a quarter to one o'clock on Sunday morning he was seen- or, at least, a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer- being chased by another man along Fairclough-street...


4. Diemschitz was part of an fairly elaborate plot, which involved killing prostitutes. The purpose being to draw attention to social and living conditions in the East End.
Diemschitz role was to turn up at one o'clock and 'disturb' the murderer.

The problem is, and yes I’m repeating myself (but only because these things are skipped over) that any kind of cover up is based on the flimsiest of props. It’s the 4 witnesses. I can’t think of 4 worse witnesses for pointing to an earlier discovery time. So if we dismiss these 4 (and we should in terms of early discovery times) then there is zero left and no doubt about Diemschutz and the true discovery time. And so because we have Morris Eagle who, in black and white, said that he first saw the body at 1.00 - dismissed. Abraham Hoschberg who guessed the time incorrectly which can be shown because he was made aware of events in the yard by a policeman’s whistle which we know was from PC Lamb and after 1.00 - dismissed. Edward Spooner who estimated the early time from pub closing times but in the same statement he contradicts this twice! He’s outside the pub until at least 12.55 and then he arrives at the yard 5 minutes before Lamb which means after 1.00 - dismissed. Leaving Kozebrodski who simply guesses wrong. Who knows, Hoschberg and Kozebrodski might have talked and one got his time estimation from the other?

The silly ‘no evidence for interruption’ argument isn’t worthy of discussion. I’m sorry but that’s not opinion...it’s fact.

So what’s left? Nothing. Fanny Mortimer didn’t see Schwartz. So what? If PC Smith was more accurate on his time than she was then she was inside when Schwartz passed. What’s left now? Schwartz non-attendance. We know for a provable fact that this absolutely couldn’t be and wasn’t due to the police not believing him.

So on these flimsy props a cover up is deduced? A cover-up that makes almost no sense. The club think that the police will close them down for being careless enough to have a ripper murder on the premises? A cover up where they don’t tell everyone the plan before the police get there? A cover up with the huge risk of someone popping up and saying “well I was looking out of my window from 12.30 until one and I saw no incident but I did see Diemschutz getting back at 12.35 - I checked my clock when he passed.”

Surely you can’t believe this?

In the course of conversation (says the journalist) the secretary mentioned the fact that the murderer had no doubt been disturbed in his work, as about a quarter to one o'clock on Sunday morning he was seen- or, at least, a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer- being chased by another man along Fairclough-street...

See what I mean about LD and WW not being 'in-sync', at least outwardly?
The Echo apparently missed the anomaly, though.
It's also notable that even later in the week, Wess does not refer to 1am as the murder time, but instead referred ambiguously to '... the time the murder was supposed to have occurred ...'. This may hint at internal disagreement, or maybe it was just Wess taking the mickey .

You will have to explain this ‘anomaly’ I’m afraid. I see no contradiction or any example of the 2 not being in sync.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think that since this all seems to boil down to who you have a comfort level with, there will never been agreement.

This is true if you are comfortable with proposing a conspiracy theory without evidence of course.

I support unaffiliated and without responsibilities for the club witnesses,

Yes, you say that a man who said that he first saw the body at 1.00 confirms an earlier discovery time. Is that logical?

You use a man who said that he arrived at the yard 5 minutes before Lamb as proof of an earlier discovery time. Is that logic?

You use a man who went to the yard after hearing a police whistle which we know occurred after 1.00 as proof of an earlier discovery time. Is that logical?

I believe that to just assume most people didnt have a time piece inside a building is just being naive or argumentative,

I’m sorry Michael but it beggars belief that you can’t accept this possibility. You’ve heard of poverty I assume? These people were dirt poor. Many of them using a pawn shop every week to survive. Why do you think that the police did a knocking up service? Come on.

I see no reason to imagine events or actions that have no traceable evidence at all to support them,

You do that by constantly citing 4 of the weakest witnesses for your cause that you could find. No matter how many times it’s repeated that Eagle first saw the body at 1.00 you still keep using him. This is simply ignoring the evidence.

I support judging each murder as an individual one so that makes the possibility of bias being less prevalent in presumptions and assumptions, and the fact that what would have been the single most important witness evidence in this Inquest is absent in any shape or form most surely suggests that the evidence was not crucial to this Inquests mandate. Which was to decide How Liz Stride dies, not by whom.

Are you being serious here Michael? How would Schwartz evidence help toward establishing how Stride was killed? She was still alive when he walked away. BS Man had no weapon. And Dr Blackwell was competent enough to look at a body and say that she’d had her throat cut without the help and advice of a Hungarian actor.

An assault on her minutes before her earliest estimated cut time..around the same time Israel says she was on the street with 2 other men in addition to themselves,.. would certainly be relevant to that question. So why wasnt his story recorded for this event?
Because, despite what you like to make of what youve read in reflections weeks later, it was not deemed supportable by the authorities. The End. If youd like to waive around what officials said and compare that to what was done thats up to you.

Its not The End. You want it to be The End because you know that your cover up story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. To say that the police had no confidence in Schwartz is a complete denial of unalterable facts which were written in black and white. To deny this is wish-thinking.

Finding corroboration in witnesses is vital in investigation

And if your 4 witnesses were corroborating witnesses then you might have had a case. But they don’t....and you haven’t.

anything that might substantiate unbiased testimony cannot be disregarded. Its fine and damdy to argue points back and forth using evidence,

Perish the thought that we should try and evaluate evidence when we can imagine a conspiracy and shape evidence to fit it.

but lets try to leave imaginative events unseen in evidence or supposition about what Yes or No really means out of it. Or preexistsing presumptions of innocence.....I think people lay wthe the facts here because there has to be some way to indicate Ripper here or the whole concept is invalid. Seeking answers to questions that dont need asking, pretending that human nature isnt relevant,

Human nature can’t subvert facts. Your just doing the age old conspiracy theorist soft shoe shuffle Michael. Inventing a scenario based on a few human discrepancies and weaving a scenario around it. You’re looking at every aspect with the conspiracy goggles on which skews everything in favour of ‘the plot’ and then when people disagree and point out the facts with no leaps of faith the old conspiracy theorist mantra gets rolled out “well you would say that wouldn’t you. You’re just defending the status quo blah blah.”

....its pretty clear.....after 12:35 no-one saw anyone on the street until just after 1am. Believe what you want, doesnt change those facts.

Good logic...... x wasn’t seen therefore x couldn’t have happened.

You’re stating opinions as facts Michael. It’s noticeable that you don’t explain how a man who first saw a body at 1.00 is used as proof that it was discovered earlier? You’re 4 witnesses are completely worthless in supporting your conspiracy. It appears that only you and possibly one other person supports it. Anywhere it seems.

[DJA]

The club house seems to have had an internal passage running the entire length of the building - from the street entrance to the backyard. Perhaps the Mortimer residence was similar?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The more Ive consider how housing was reconfigured in those days Ill look up how many people were at that residence in the census. The front of the house ,may in fact be a single space like Marys room, maybe an ex-parlour like Marys was.

The club house seems to have had an internal passage running the entire length of the building - from the street entrance to the backyard. Perhaps the Mortimer residence was similar?

You have 3 witnesses to that street from 12:30 until 1am, one with sporadic views but for the last 10 minutes of the hour, on a vigil with a view, none of them saw anyone else or anything happen aside from Goldsteins pass. Ergo...Louis was not seen or heard coming down Berner in order for him to arrive "precisely at 1" as he claimed. I sais he was wrong or he lied, if he was wrong, then how wrong...and if he lied, what really was the timeline.

Fanny did not mention seeing or hearing Louis' arrival - at least not to the press (as far as we can tell) - just as she claimed not see anything unusual.
However, she may have mentioned it implicitly, rather than like this...

I was standing at the door of my house nearly the whole time between half-past twelve and when the steward of the club returned home in his pony cart. He told me he discovered the woman right on one o'clock.

That is, it felt to Fanny like half an hour, all up. Neither 'half-past twelve' or 'one o'clock' came from reading a clock. The later was based on simultaneous events (lockup and arrival) and a chat with the steward - the former by subtraction.
The 4 minute gap thing, breaks that simplicity, and demands that Fanny was constantly observing the time. Same with the 'shortly before a quarter to one' - it's pseudo-precision nonsense.

Again, 3 witnesses to the street between 12:30 and 1am, nothing seen or heard on the street aside from Goldstein. Might that be because the woman was cut shortly after 12:35 and that a hullabaloo was going on inside the gates, out of sight? Rhetorical of course, but Yes, it might be. Could all three street witnesses miss something, I suppose they could but it would seem unlikely. So how do members leave for help unseen before 1am...you ask. Perhaps for the young couple its the beginning of what transpires, something that blossoms into more activity at the club..might they associate the events closer together in recollections? Yes. We know many witnesses had access to timepieces...did they?

The members leave for help unseen before 1am, because Fanny had locked up before they leave.

[Michael W Richards]

I’ve mentioned numerous times that most people didn’t have timepieces. We can only be certain of Blackwell of course so any times quoted, by anyone, has to be treated cautiously and with the caveat of + or - whatever amount you choose. The point is that the ‘evidence’ for an earlier discovery time is based on 3 things. 1, the fact that Schwartz wasn’t called to give evidence - which you take to mean that the police had no faith in him, and 2, the 4 witnesses which you claim all tie up to point to an earlier discovery time, and 3, the lack of evidence for the killer being interrupted. These are the props that the theory rest on.

On 1, well we know that the police hadn’t lost faith in Schwartz because on 20th October they put his description of BS Man on the front page of the Police Gazette. Would they have done that if they dismissed his story? Of course they wouldn’t have.

On 2, I still don’t understand Michael why you persist in citing Eagle who said that he’d first seen the body at 1.O0. Kozebrodski was estimating a time. As was Hoschberg, but we know that his attention was drawn by a policeman’s whistle and we know that the only whistle was blown by Lamb and it was blown well after 1.00. There is no other explanation. There was no other police whistle. And Spooner said 12.35 purely based on pub closing times. He could easily have just seen someone leave the pub late for example. More importantly though, in the same statement, he says that he spends 25 minutes between 12.30 and 1.00 talking to a woman. This takes him to 12.55 at the earliest. The final nail in Spooner’s coffin is the fact that he said that he arrived at the yard 5 minutes before Lamb. Which means after 1.00.

So Spooner, Eagle and Hoschberg confirm the 1.00 discovery time. Kozebrodski was just mistaken and very obviously so.

on 3, the interruption. Well we know, and I think that your probably the only person (I won’t speak for NBFN) who disagrees, that if the killer was interrupted just as he’d cut her throat then we could have expected no evidence of interruption. So the ‘no evidence of interruption, point is dead in the water.

So there’s no evidence at all of a cover up. Certainly there are errors and discrepancies. But that’s all they are.

I think that since this all seems to boil down to who you have a comfort level with, there will never been agreement. I support unaffiliated and without responsibilities for the club witnesses, I believe that to just assume most people didnt have a time piece inside a building is just being naive or argumentative, I see no reason to imagine events or actions that have no traceable evidence at all to support them, I support judging each murder as an individual one so that makes the possibility of bias being less prevalent in presumptions and assumptions, and the fact that what would have been the single most important witness evidence in this Inquest is absent in any shape or form most surely suggests that the evidence was not crucial to this Inquests mandate. Which was to decide How Liz Stride dies, not by whom. An assault on her minutes before her earliest estimated cut time..around the same time Israel says she was on the street with 2 other men in addition to themselves,.. would certainly be relevant to that question. So why wasnt his story recorded for this event?

Because, despite what you like to make of what youve read in reflections weeks later, it was not deemed supportable by the authorities. The End. If youd like to waive around what officials said and compare that to what was done thats up to you.

Finding corroboration in witnesses is vital in investigations, anything that might substantiate unbiased testimony cannot be disregarded. Its fine and damdy to argue points back and forth using evidence, but lets try to leave imaginative events unseen in evidence or supposition about what Yes or No really means out of it. Or preexistsing presumptions of innocence.....I think people lay wthe the facts here because there has to be some way to indicate Ripper here or the whole concept is invalid. Seeking answers to questions that dont need asking, pretending that human nature isnt relevant,.....its pretty clear.....after 12:35 no-one saw anyone on the street until just after 1am. Believe what you want, doesnt change those facts.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The problem I’d have with that is that I’d say that although it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that a witness can be mistaken but on this occaision we would be accusing a witness of lying. Diemschutz was adamant that he passed the clock at 1.00.

There are number of possibilities with Diemschitz.

1. He heard a clock strike a quarter to one, when on Commercial Road or Berner street. He mistakenly believed this was the one o'clock chime.
An Echo reporter interviewed Diemschitz the day of the murder, and got something of a guided tour of the yard and club. In the report:

The steward of the International and Educational Club reached the gate just as the clock struck one.

No reference to actually seeing the clock, or specifying which clock was being referred to.


2. Diemschitz knew he had arrived close to 12:45, but when he heard the '12:45 stories', decided his best interests were served by claiming to have arrived at 1:00.
In the same Echo edition:

... it is alleged that from the time the body was discovered fifteen minutes had elapsed before a constable could be [?] from Commercial-road.

Which fairly neatly takes us from about 12:45, to PC Lamb, stating...

About 1 o'clock, as near as I can tell, on Sunday morning I was in the Commercial-road, between Christian-street and Batty-street. Two men came running towards me. I went towards them and heard them say, "Come on! There has been another murder."

As you said, the club had no position on the time of the murder, at least not officially, so perhaps no reason to suppose that Diemschitz would 'tow the party line'.


3. Someone at the club decided, or possibly panicked into claiming to the press that incidents had been observed by multiple witnesses around 12:45 - both on Berner and Fairclough streets. It was later decided (that day), that these stories were too risky - too many 'witnesses' were involved, to keep it held together.
It was therefore decided to change Diemschitz' claimed arrival time from 'about one o'clock', to 'precisely 1am', and 'play down' the 12:45 stories by sending a single 'witness' to the police, to give a detailed account of an incident which encapsulated all the other stories, but which crucially made it clear that he was the only witness, other than the other characters in the account. The purpose was to:

• make the other stories redundant, by combining them into a single event
• eliminate all other witnesses, external to the incident
• make it unclear as to what occurred to the murder victim, after the witness flees the scene

Regardless of the truth of #3, it is rather fascinating how Wess implicitly contradicts Diemschitz, even more so given the following snippet also comes from the Oct 1 Echo:

In the course of conversation (says the journalist) the secretary mentioned the fact that the murderer had no doubt been disturbed in his work, as about a quarter to one o'clock on Sunday morning he was seen- or, at least, a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer- being chased by another man along Fairclough-street...

See what I mean about LD and WW not being 'in-sync', at least outwardly?
The Echo apparently missed the anomaly, though.
It's also notable that even later in the week, Wess does not refer to 1am as the murder time, but instead referred ambiguously to '... the time the murder was supposed to have occurred ...'. This may hint at internal disagreement, or maybe it was just Wess taking the mickey.


4. Diemschitz was part of an fairly elaborate plot, which involved killing prostitutes. The purpose being to draw attention to social and living conditions in the East End.
Diemschitz role was to turn up at one o'clock and 'disturb' the murderer.

[FrankO]

That would be about 30 seconds, Michael.

In addition, Michael, it's quite unbelievabe that you keep making such an enormous fuzz over a whole half a minute while, at the same time, you accept the timings of Isaac Kozebrodski, Spooner and Heschburg without even a second thought.

[FrankO]

Ergo...Louis was not seen or heard coming down Berner in order for him to arrive "precisely at 1" as he claimed. I sais he was wrong or he lied, if he was wrong, then how wrong...

That would be about 30 seconds, Michael.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The more Ive consider how housing was reconfigured in those days Ill look up how many people were at that residence in the census. The front of the house ,may in fact be a single space like Marys room, maybe an ex-parlour like Marys was.

You have 3 witnesses to that street from 12:30 until 1am, one with sporadic views but for the last 10 minutes of the hour, on a vigil with a view, none of them saw anyone else or anything happen aside from Goldsteins pass. Ergo...Louis was not seen or heard coming down Berner in order for him to arrive "precisely at 1" as he claimed. I sais he was wrong or he lied, if he was wrong, then how wrong...and if he lied, what really was the timeline.

Again, 3 witnesses to the street between 12:30 and 1am, nothing seen or heard on the street aside from Goldstein. Might that be because the woman was cut shortly after 12:35 and that a hullabaloo was going on inside the gates, out of sight? Rhetorical of course, but Yes, it might be. Could all three street witnesses miss something, I suppose they could but it would seem unlikely. So how do members leave for help unseen before 1am...you ask. Perhaps for the young couple its the beginning of what transpires, something that blossoms into more activity at the club..might they associate the events closer together in recollections? Yes. We know many witnesses had access to timepieces...did they?

I’ve mentioned numerous times that most people didn’t have timepieces. We can only be certain of Blackwell of course so any times quoted, by anyone, has to be treated cautiously and with the caveat of + or - whatever amount you choose. The point is that the ‘evidence’ for an earlier discovery time is based on 3 things. 1, the fact that Schwartz wasn’t called to give evidence - which you take to mean that the police had no faith in him, and 2, the 4 witnesses which you claim all tie up to point to an earlier discovery time, and 3, the lack of evidence for the killer being interrupted. These are the props that the theory rest on.

On 1, well we know that the police hadn’t lost faith in Schwartz because on 20th October they put his description of BS Man on the front page of the Police Gazette. Would they have done that if they dismissed his story? Of course they wouldn’t have.

On 2, I still don’t understand Michael why you persist in citing Eagle who said that he’d first seen the body at 1.O0. Kozebrodski was estimating a time. As was Hoschberg, but we know that his attention was drawn by a policeman’s whistle and we know that the only whistle was blown by Lamb and it was blown well after 1.00. There is no other explanation. There was no other police whistle. And Spooner said 12.35 purely based on pub closing times. He could easily have just seen someone leave the pub late for example. More importantly though, in the same statement, he says that he spends 25 minutes between 12.30 and 1.00 talking to a woman. This takes him to 12.55 at the earliest. The final nail in Spooner’s coffin is the fact that he said that he arrived at the yard 5 minutes before Lamb. Which means after 1.00.

So Spooner, Eagle and Hoschberg confirm the 1.00 discovery time. Kozebrodski was just mistaken and very obviously so.

on 3, the interruption. Well we know, and I think that your probably the only person (I won’t speak for NBFN) who disagrees, that if the killer was interrupted just as he’d cut her throat then we could have expected no evidence of interruption. So the ‘no evidence of interruption, point is dead in the water.

So there’s no evidence at all of a cover up. Certainly there are errors and discrepancies. But that’s all they are.

[Michael W Richards]

Im surprised to say the least at that response Michael because I’ve previously suggested exactly the same thing in response to the question “why didn’t she hear the Schwartz incident.” So why is this a satisfactory explanation for her not hearing one thing but not a satisfactory explanation for not hearing another?

The more Ive consider how housing was reconfigured in those days Ill look up how many people were at that residence in the census. The front of the house ,may in fact be a single space like Marys room, maybe an ex-parlour like Marys was.

You have 3 witnesses to that street from 12:30 until 1am, one with sporadic views but for the last 10 minutes of the hour, on a vigil with a view, none of them saw anyone else or anything happen aside from Goldsteins pass. Ergo...Louis was not seen or heard coming down Berner in order for him to arrive "precisely at 1" as he claimed. I sais he was wrong or he lied, if he was wrong, then how wrong...and if he lied, what really was the timeline.

Again, 3 witnesses to the street between 12:30 and 1am, nothing seen or heard on the street aside from Goldstein. Might that be because the woman was cut shortly after 12:35 and that a hullabaloo was going on inside the gates, out of sight? Rhetorical of course, but Yes, it might be. Could all three street witnesses miss something, I suppose they could but it would seem unlikely. So how do members leave for help unseen before 1am...you ask. Perhaps for the young couple its the beginning of what transpires, something that blossoms into more activity at the club..might they associate the events closer together in recollections? Yes. We know many witnesses had access to timepieces...did they?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

It might be worth noting that the Daily News and the Evening News were not different editions of the same paper, but entirely separate publications.

Yes, I assumed it.
However, they have shared or had access to the same content, on this occasion, but have made differing editing choices.

[FrankO]

Thanks for that Frank. That’s less time than I’d allowed for which is good for my planned re-think

Glad I could help then, Michael!

The 2 officers were certainly already there then. It was worth asking.

It's always worth asking.

[Joshua Rogan]

It might be worth noting that the Daily News and the Evening News were not different editions of the same paper, but entirely separate publications.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Where does she say she was at her door from “12:50 until just after 1”? The only statement she made that was specific about the times she stood at her door is the one that has her go to her door around 12:45 and that has her go back inside some 4 minutes before she heard a pony cart pass.

I wonder if that statement was actually Mortimer's police statement - the details of which were passed on (at least in part), to the Daily News.
In 1935, Walter Dew wrote:

After the main meeting at the clubhouse had broken up some thirty or forty members who formed the choir, remained behind to sing. Mrs. Mortimer, as she had done on many previous occasions, came out to her gate the better to hear them. For ten minutes she remained there, seeing and hearing nothing which made her at all suspicious.

Just as she was about to re-enter her cottage the woman heard the approach of a pony and cart. She knew this would be Lewis Dienschitz, the steward of the club.

So the 10 minutes is mentioned, but on the other hand, no four minute gap between lockup and cart.
As I've previously suggested, I believe the four minutes was the invention of the Daily News reporter.
The police statement notion is also supported by the fact that the Daily/Evening News report never once quotes Mortimer, even though the statement is deemed important. The reason being, the newspaper does not have the statement, from which to quote.

Dew continues:

At the same moment Mrs. Mortimer observed something else, silent and sinister. A man, whom she judged to be about thirty, dressed in black, and carrying a small, shiny black bag, hurried furtively along the opposite side of the court.

The woman was a little startled. The man's movements had been so quiet that she had not seen him until he was abreast of her. His head was turned away, as though he did not wish to be seen. A second later he had vanished round the corner leading to Commercial Road.

The Evening News deemed it appropriate to omit the following bit of theorizing (which had appeared in the daily):

Thus, presuming that the body did not lay 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. The man who drove the cart 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.

However, the evening edition did carry an interview with Fanny, which included the following:

"I suppose you did not notice a man and woman pass down the street while you were at the door?"

"No, sir. I think I should have noticed them if they had. Particularly if they'd been strangers, at that time o' night. I only noticed one person passing, just before I turned in. That was a young man walking up Berner-street, carrying a black bag in his hand."

"Did you observe him closely, or notice anything in his appearance?"

"No, I didn't pay particular attention to him. He was respectably dressed, but was a stranger to me. He might ha' been coming from the Socialist Club., A good many young men goes there, of a Saturday night especially."

It is also worth noting, how 'in-sync' Mortimer is with Diemschitz, regarding the time, the assassins' suspected escape, and the grapes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Halfway between Batty Street & Christian Street is about 175 meters from Dutfield's Yard, Michael. So, if, for instance, Eagle ran at an average speed of 14.4 km/hr (= 4 m/s), then it would have taken him about 1.5 minutes to go and turn back.

Whether Smith would have been able to arrive 30 seconds later is another question. Before he could arrive, Lamb would first have to send PC Ayliffe for the doctor and Eagle for the Leman Street station, then he had to blow his whistle and PC Collins had to arrive.

There are at least 4 other newspapers that have Smith say that two constables were there/on the spot/had already arrived, so it becomes an even more reasoable assumption that the 2 were already there.

Thanks for that Frank. That’s less time than I’d allowed for which is good for my planned re-think

The 2 officers were certainly already there then. It was worth asking.