Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery

[NotBlamedForNothing]

If he passed at 12.35 and his beat on that occasion took 30 minutes that gets him there at 1.05. Factor in the synchronisation of clocks and there’s no issue.

You can't invent 5 minutes of extra time by referring to "the synchronisation of clocks". If your timeline has Smith arriving at 1:05 and Lamb at 1:06, it's wrong.

Why is it obvious “ that Smith must arrive a few minutes or more after Lamb…?” We have no indication from Lamb as to how long he’d been there when Smith arrived so as far as I can recall so Smith could have arrived 30 seconds or a minute after Lamb for all that we know.

Read what he says. He heard no calls, nor did he see men running into Berner St. He proceeded to the yard at beat pace, to find two other PCs already there. 3 minutes gap, minimum.

As an addition - how do we know that Smith didn’t have an issue or two to deal with on his beat putting him 5 minutes behind - making his beat take 35 minutes on that occasion?

Because he tells us how long his regulation beat takes, within a margin, and gives the very same timespan and margin when mentioning his Berner-to-Berner roundtrip - 25 to 30 minutes.

Again, it’s where she was in the house at the time. I don’t understand why you’ve taken exception to this point in the past. Surely if anything is ‘unlikely’ it’s that she stayed in the same position? Kitchen, outside loo, upstairs back bedroom?

I was responding to a specific scenario you mentioned - she heard BS man and thought it was a PC. As for her being somewhere else in the house from which she could not hear heavy footfall or not very loud screams or whatever, that must be a possibility, but we know it's more complicated than inside doesn't hear, because apparently, she did hear the boots when inside.

I haven’t ‘jammed’ anyone in so why are you claiming that perfectly normal occurrences are somehow unrealistic? If I came to your house and knocked on the door but you didn’t hear me because you were in the loo would you later accuse me of not actually knocking the door saying ‘oh yeah, what are the chances of me being in the loo just as you called?’

Did Fanny forget that after hearing the passing plod, she didn't go immediately to her door, but went to the loo first (or did some other brief activity), and missed all the drama going on outside because of it?

Accepting estimated times/ Accepting estimate time periods/ Accepting unsynchronised clocks/ Accepting a poorly lit street it’s impossible to get to a version of events that we can be totally confident with.

What about 90% confident?

[Herlock Sholmes]

If Schwartz's account was genuine then we wouldn't need to alter his timings to fit in.

The way to look at this is to NOT alter his timings and see what we are left with...

We need to keep his witnessing the assault as close to 12.45am as possible because that's what he claimed.

By that time Eagle was already back in the club
PC Smith had already passed
Marshall was nearly an hour earlier

If we can explain Lave, Brown and Mortimer then perhaps Schwartz's account fits in.

What we must realize though is that if Schwartz was truthful AND accurate BUT BS man wasn't her killer, then why did Stride not seek help or assistance AFTER she was assaulted?

On that basis, IF Schwartz's account is correct, then he witnessed the initial assault just before her throat was slashed.

That would then almost certainly eradicate Stride as a Ripper victim because the Ripper would not have attacked his victim with other witnesses around and then proceed to cut her throat.

He also wouldn't have stood with Stride in the rain for over half an hour "almost opposite" Packer and then cut her throat.

Don't even get me started on Packer

Ironically, Packer is one of those witnesses who ruins Schwartz's account.


If we strip this back and just run a timeline that stays faithful as possible to the times claimed by ALL witnesses, then it will demonstrate how the entire scenario just doesn't fit together...

And why is that?

The only reason why everyone tries to move the timings around is because we all know it doesn't fit if we base it on all the witnesses claims respectively.

I still haven't seen a single person display a timeline based on all the witnesses statements as they were claimed WITHOUT any alterations to timings.

That tells you everything you need to know.


RD

That must mean that you believe that all of the stated times were accurate and all of the sourced timepieces were perfectly synchronised RD?

I’d refer you back to Long and Halse who both stated that they had walked along Goulston Street at exactly the same time. Was one of them lying or was it simply a error of timing?

We can either approach events in Berner Street with common sense and accept that it’s simply wrong to take times at face value and we can allow that that we are dealing with different timepieces (possibly not synchronised) and people stating times based on seeing a timepiece at some point in the recent past and estimating the gap of time between then and the event, or we can assume perfection and that people were making things up. I prefer the former.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

PC Lamb said "Last Sunday morning, shortly before one o'clock, I was on duty in Commercial-road, between Christian-street and Batty-street, when two men came running towards me and shouting." That is Lamb stating what part of his beat Lamb was on, not Lamb claiming he did not walk a beat.

PC Lamb referred to constables who patrolled a beat and constable on fixed-point duty. Lamb said "I am not on the Berner-street beat", which means that he was not on that beat, not that PC Lamb didn't have a beat to patrol.

Instead, you seem to be trying to create a third duty besides beat and fixed-duty, calling it patrol and meaning whatever you want it to mean.

Patrolling was walking a beat.

"I had been patrolling the beat continually from ten o'clock at night until one o'clock on Sunday morning." - PC Watkin, Eddowes Inquest

Smith: On Saturday I went on duty at ten p.m. My beat was past Berner-street. I went from the corner of Gower’s-walk, Commercial-road, as far as Christian-street, down Christian-street to Fairclough-street, Grove-street, and back to Church-lane, up there to Commercial-road again. It takes about 25 minutes to half an hour to go round the beat. I was in Berner-street at about 12.35. About one o’clock I saw a large crowd of people outside the gate of No. 40.

Smith gave the coroner the timespan and journey of his beat. Why no equivalent details for Lamb?

[JeffHamm]

...

This leaves a difficult to explain long gap of 9 minutes between Fanny going back inside and her hearing Louis.
...

Hi Herlock,

I just wanted to comment on this one point. I believe Fanny gave an estimate of 4 minutes. Since the 1800s, it has been known that people tend to over-estimate short durations (on average), although the range of any give estimate will vary from well short to well long. A lot of experiments on this have been conducted, and the finding is quite robust, although the methods used in most experiments are well removed from eye-witness type testimonies. I found a paper, though (when I was putting together the Stride simulation), which was applicable to eye-witness type of estimations of durations.

Based on their data, which had a good sized sample so would be pretty reliable estimates of the general population, would suggest that when someone estimates a duration as being 4 minutes, on average the true duration would be around 2m 49s. However, for any given estimation (rather than averaging a bunch of estimations), we could expect the true duration value to fall between 1m 15s and 12m 31s 95% of the time (so 2.5% of the time the true duration is even shorter than that lower cut off, and 2.5% of the time it is even longer!). Seriously, people are pretty rubbish at estimating durations with any degree of accuracy. (note, over an hour, though, they tend to over estimate the true duration, but that isn't something we generally need to deal with in the JtR cases).

What I'm getting at, though, is that given she estimated the duration to be 4 minutes, even a true duration of 9 minutes isn't hard to explain because it falls within the expected range of true duration values we would expect given a 4 minute estimate (the range goes out to over 12 minutes).

I think in the simulations I did, I had the "true" duration even longer, over 11 minutes I think, but it was under the 12m 31s upper limit of acceptable. Your 9 minute value is not hard to explain, because it doesn't need explaining because it's in the range of error that is associated with this kind of information.

And before anyone accuses me of "manipulating what she said", I'm not doing that. I accept she said 4 minutes. What I'm pointing out is that it is important to factor in human performance, and with regards to estimating the duration of events, we're pretty bad at it. Sure, some people might be very good, others will be really bad, and even the same person's accuracy will depend upon what they were doing. But we have no information that allows us to assess Fanny's ability, so the best we can do is use the population average. If push came to shove, I would point to the fact that her news reports have her stating different things in different papers (10 minutes on the step, nearly the whole time between 12:30 and 1:00, so 30 minutes; etc) as indicating that perhaps she's more on the rubbish end than a temporal savant.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Assumption - That neither the couple that PC Smith saw (couple A) or the couple that Brown saw (couple B) were connected to Stride. Smith saw a woman of similar look and build in fairly generic clothing. We all accept that witnesses can be mistaken. Smith was just a man with no exceptional Holmes-like skills. Capable of error.

Smith did not seem to make a mistake regarding the flower.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

I just wanted to comment on this one point. I believe Fanny gave an estimate of 4 minutes. Since the 1800s, it has been known that people tend to over-estimate short durations (on average), although the range of any give estimate will vary from well short to well long. A lot of experiments on this have been conducted, and the finding is quite robust, although the methods used in most experiments are well removed from eye-witness type testimonies. I found a paper, though (when I was putting together the Stride simulation), which was applicable to eye-witness type of estimations of durations.

Based on their data, which had a good sized sample so would be pretty reliable estimates of the general population, would suggest that when someone estimates a duration as being 4 minutes, on average the true duration would be around 2m 49s. However, for any given estimation (rather than averaging a bunch of estimations), we could expect the true duration value to fall between 1m 15s and 12m 31s 95% of the time (so 2.5% of the time the true duration is even shorter than that lower cut off, and 2.5% of the time it is even longer!). Seriously, people are pretty rubbish at estimating durations with any degree of accuracy. (note, over an hour, though, they tend to over estimate the true duration, but that isn't something we generally need to deal with in the JtR cases).

What I'm getting at, though, is that given she estimated the duration to be 4 minutes, even a true duration of 9 minutes isn't hard to explain because it falls within the expected range of true duration values we would expect given a 4 minute estimate (the range goes out to over 12 minutes).

I think in the simulations I did, I had the "true" duration even longer, over 11 minutes I think, but it was under the 12m 31s upper limit of acceptable. Your 9 minute value is not hard to explain, because it doesn't need explaining because it's in the range of error that is associated with this kind of information.

And before anyone accuses me of "manipulating what she said", I'm not doing that. I accept she said 4 minutes. What I'm pointing out is that it is important to factor in human performance, and with regards to estimating the duration of events, we're pretty bad at it. Sure, some people might be very good, others will be really bad, and even the same person's accuracy will depend upon what they were doing. But we have no information that allows us to assess Fanny's ability, so the best we can do is use the population average. If push came to shove, I would point to the fact that her news reports have her stating different things in different papers (10 minutes on the step, nearly the whole time between 12:30 and 1:00, so 30 minutes; etc) as indicating that perhaps she's more on the rubbish end than a temporal savant.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for that.

I was just thinking about Levy who is certainly a ‘troubling’ witness and I think we might have missed an obvious possibility as to why he saw nothing. Maybe part of his ‘getting some fresh air’ was actually ‘using the outside loo?’

[Herlock Sholmes]

Smith did not seem to make a mistake regarding the flower.

True, but was she the only woman to wear a flower? If there was a nearby flower seller some other guy could have bought his girl a flower.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Excellent post. The times above, using researched figures from yourself and George, are right in line with my estimations and back up what would be called the ‘official’ version.

Didn't you once post a table illustrating ‘ranges’ in regard to estimating periods of time? I can’t recall where they were from, a study I believe, but is there any chance of you posting it again so that I can refer to it in future? Could you also mention the source please?

Thanks.

Hi Herlock,

Looks like we overlapped! I had just referred to this table in my previous post. Here it is. To be clear, I had to take their data and "invert it" (as they had true ranges and the range of estimates given; I inverted the information to go from estimated ranges to true ranges; and at some point I want to do the inversion again, but using a different technique to either verify the table's values or to get more reliable ones - if my table is wrong, it's wrong in a way that makes us look better at this than we really are, meaning the ranges are only likely to get larger, rather than smaller).

I don't have the source at hand for the study. I did post it in a previous thread on the Stride case though, so I know the information is available here on Casebook somewhere.

Note 95% CI means we can be "confident" that 95% of the time, if someone gives an estimate in the far left column, that the true duration was between the min and max value, and on average it will be around the average value. Note, the difference between the min and average is much less than the max and average, so the distribution isn't bell shaped, but "skewed". In a "skewed" distribution like this, the median (1/2 will be shorter, 1/2 will be longer), will be less than the average, so the median "true" duration tends to be shorter than the average.

But for assessing an individual estimate, as long as it is in the 95% CI, you don't need to defend yourself other than to say "It falls within the acceptable range of expected values given the person's estimation of the duration".

- Jeff

[FISHY1118]

If Schwartz's account was genuine then we wouldn't need to alter his timings to fit in.

The way to look at this is to NOT alter his timings and see what we are left with...

We need to keep his witnessing the assault as close to 12.45am as possible because that's what he claimed.

By that time Eagle was already back in the club
PC Smith had already passed
Marshall was nearly an hour earlier

If we can explain Lave, Brown and Mortimer then perhaps Schwartz's account fits in.

What we must realize though is that if Schwartz was truthful AND accurate BUT BS man wasn't her killer, then why did Stride not seek help or assistance AFTER she was assaulted?

On that basis, IF Schwartz's account is correct, then he witnessed the initial assault just before her throat was slashed.

That would then almost certainly eradicate Stride as a Ripper victim because the Ripper would not have attacked his victim with other witnesses around and then proceed to cut her throat.

He also wouldn't have stood with Stride in the rain for over half an hour "almost opposite" Packer and then cut her throat.

Don't even get me started on Packer

Ironically, Packer is one of those witnesses who ruins Schwartz's account.


If we strip this back and just run a timeline that stays faithful as possible to the times claimed by ALL witnesses, then it will demonstrate how the entire scenario just doesn't fit together...

And why is that?

The only reason why everyone tries to move the timings around is because we all know it doesn't fit if we base it on all the witnesses claims respectively.

I still haven't seen a single person display a timeline based on all the witnesses statements as they were claimed WITHOUT any alterations to timings.

That tells you everything you need to know.


RD

The part you mentioned about why stride didn't "seek help or assistance" has no bearing as to Schwartz account of her assault.

We can't or shouldn't speculate as to what a witness or for that matter a victim may or may not have done at any given time .

Also there is no reason to suggest that the man responsible for the attack on stride couldn't have cut her throat after Schwartz and pipe man had left the area..

Did Packer see the attack on stride at 12.45 ?

No one ruins Schwartz account unless they themselves witnessed the same event with a different interpretation.

As Herlock has already responded regarding witness times ,I needn't comment any further on that .

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for that.

I was just thinking about Levy who is certainly a ‘troubling’ witness and I think we might have missed an obvious possibility as to why he saw nothing. Maybe part of his ‘getting some fresh air’ was actually ‘using the outside loo?’

Hi Herlock,

I believe there are a few reports of what Levy says he did, I think at least 3? One puts him in the yard for 5 minutes, one for 10, and one for 30 minutes. The 30 minute one is clearly wrong (it covers everyone's time for the murder, so unless someone is putting Levy up as Stride's killer, the 30 minute one is clearly an error of some sort - perhaps the reporter muddled things, and had Levy outside from the time he went to the yard until the time the body was found type thing). Anyway, if he was only out in the yard for 5-10 minutes, then I think he's inside before 12:45, and so he fits with the idea that there was nothing of interest to see to that point.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

This is interesting. Regardless of what PC Lamb's beat was. I'm pretty sure he had a beat, as fixed point duty means he would have been stationary, which he isn't, and the alternative to Fixed point is patrolling a beat. Regardless, we know his beat didn't include Berner Street, but did involve Commercial-Road for some portion during which he would pass the north end of Berner Street.

Since he was met on Commercial to the east of Berner Street, and was at that point heading in the direction of Berner Street, he was heading west. So during his pass 6-7 minutes prior it sounds like he was at that time heading east.

What it suggests, though, is that on that easterly pass, there was no commotion at the club at that time.

That suggests, that the body was discovered, the club alerted, and the men go seeking the police during that 6-7 minute interval.

One possibility is that as PC Lamb is passing Berner Street, Deimshutz has just got his cart into the ally and is in the process of finding Stride (or is in the process of alerting the club - the one thing we can be sure of is that they haven't as of yet come outside and started their searches for the police though).

Alternatively, Deimshutz arrives after PC Lamb has passed Berner Street of course.

I'm not sure it makes a huge difference which scenerio one goes for.

I pretty much agree with this, it's just that had Lamb been on a beat, what street or streets do you suppose he might have patrolled before heading back West on Commercial Rd? Perhaps he went up Settles St, right into Fordham St, right into Parfett St, and then right into Commercial Rd? That would take him about as far East as Smith on Grove St.

PC Lamb was between Christian and Batty Street when the men contacted him. At a running pace of 6.1 mph, that would require about a minute for the men to get from the club to mid-way between those streets.

A year or two ago, George did a recreation of the Deimshutz's "pony shy and check to find the body, etc" and found that to do all that required about 1 minute 50 seconds (call it 2 minutes for easy numbers). Add another 1 or 2 minutes for him to run in, alert the members, for them to examine the body, before they head out to find the police. That would suggest the body was found say 4-5 minutes before PC Lamb was alerted by the club members.

The above presumes, of course, that the members that found PC Lamb headed north immediately. Some of the press reports suggest they all headed along Fairclough first, bringing Spooner back with them. To run on that search, and get back to the club, would take just over 2 minutes (about 2m 15 s), placing the discovery 6-7 minutes before PC Lamb was contacted.

That would place PC Lamb's arrival roughly 2 or 3 minutes after Spooner's arrival. Spooner estimates that PC Lamb arrived roughly 5 minutes later. When people estimate an interval to be around 5 minutes, the ranges of the actual interval tend to be 1m 38s to 15m 06s, with an average of 3m 37s. So if PC Lamb arrived 2-3 minutes later, that is well within the ranges of actual times associated with an estimate of 5 minutes.

Now, if the body was found 4-5 minutes prior to PC Lamb being alerted, and Dr. Blackwell arrives at 1:16 and roughly 10 minutes after PC Lamb, then PC Lamb arrives at roughly 1:06 (and was contacted 1 minute prior, so at 1:05ish) and the body was discovered 4-5 minutes before he was alerted, then that places the time of discovery at 1:00 to 1:01 if the men who found PC Lamb headed north immediately. If, however, they first went along Faircough as well, then the discovery would be more like 12:58-12:59. Either of those tie in nicely with Brown hearing the men run down Fairclough around 1 o'clock.

Since all of those times are with reference to Dr. Blackwell's watch time, I think it is reasonable to suggest that Deimshutz's "clock" could easily read 1:00 (or appear to from his vantage point on his cart) whether the "Blackwell" time is 12:58 through to 1:01.

Obviously, the above times are only estimations, but they are estimations that are derived from measurements of the distances and travel times, taking into account the error of estimations people make with regards to time intervals, and so forth. What emerges, though, is a timeline sequence of events that is entirely consistent with what people testified to.

Nice analysis. So, what is the story with Smith's timing?

[The Rookie Detective]

Did Packer see the attack on stride at 12.45 ?

No one ruins Schwartz account unless they themselves witnessed the same event with a different interpretation.

But that's my point.

If someone sees or hears Schwartz's account but with a different interpretation, then it supports Schwartz's story subjectively.

However, if noone hears or sees anything that Schwartz claimed, or Schwartz himself AND are in the same location at the same time (Packer, Lave, Mortimer etc...) then that would indicate that Schwartz's account didn't happen at all.

And IF it did, then someone would have at least HEARD the assault take place.

That's the reason why Schwartz claimed Stride's reaction wasn't very loud...because if asked WHY nobody heard her, he can just say "well, she wasn't loud"

RD

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hello Fishy,

I’ve never really seen it as an issue that no one saw the incident. I think that if it had taken place today and we had CCTV footage we would see that even starting from BS man and Schwartz walking along Berner Street the whole thing would only have taken a minute or so whilst the actual incident, from BS man meeting Stride to Schwartz turning into Fairclough Street we would be looking at 20 or 30 seconds.

What if the footage starts when Schwartz was still a few minutes up Commercial Rd? Would we see Stride standing in the gateway, patiently waiting for someone or something?

I have nothing to back up the alcohol speculation of course but I always wonder when I hear of a guy out that late at night. It’s a ‘maybe’ and nothing more.

Having second thoughts about Schwartz?

[The Rookie Detective]

That must mean that you believe that all of the stated times were accurate and all of the sourced timepieces were perfectly synchronised RD?

I’d refer you back to Long and Halse who both stated that they had walked along Goulston Street at exactly the same time. Was one of them lying or was it simply a error of timing?

We can either approach events in Berner Street with common sense and accept that it’s simply wrong to take times at face value and we can allow that that we are dealing with different timepieces (possibly not synchronised) and people stating times based on seeing a timepiece at some point in the recent past and estimating the gap of time between then and the event, or we can assume perfection and that people were making things up. I prefer the former.

On the Contrary

I am saying that the timings don't work with all the witnesses, but rather than swapping all the times to try and make the witness statement all fit, we need to look at WHY the witness accounts don't fit in the first place.

When you consider the amount of witnesses and what was said to have transpired between 12.30am to just after Stride was found, there was lots going on and yet multiple witnesses said it was all quiet on the Western front.

Lave and Mortimer make it sound nothing happened whatsoever

Eagle, Lave and Goldstein walk directly past the murder site after 12.30am

Schwartz says it all kicks off and yet nobody else hears or sees ANYTHING he claimed

At least 3 different witnesses saw a "couple"

Packer saw or heard nothing, but then remembered he saw Stride with a man who bought grapes from him and then stood almost opposite him in full view for over half an hour

It's all a bit of a mess that doesn't ring true....and using the altering of timings by a few minutes here or there can't explain away the major inconsistencies with the witness statements.

RD

[FISHY1118]

But that's my point.

If someone sees or hears Schwartz's account but with a different interpretation, then it supports Schwartz's story subjectively.

However, if noone hears or sees anything that Schwartz claimed, or Schwartz himself AND are in the same location at the same time (Packer, Lave, Mortimer etc...) then that would indicate that Schwartz's account didn't happen at all.

And IF it did, then someone would have at least HEARD the assault take place.

That's the reason why Schwartz claimed Stride's reaction wasn't very loud...because if asked WHY nobody heard her, he can just say "well, she wasn't loud"

RD

But that's just it tho, Those you mentioned may have well been in the same location, but which of them claimed to be there at 12.45 as Schwartz did ?. If so, why weren't they informed that a witness ( Schwartz) has stated that there was an attack on a women at that time? The question required should be Did you also see it ? ,if not why not ?

You honestly believe that Schwartz thought ill make this whole story up especially the part about the not so "loud scream" just so when ask why no one heard the attack he can use that excuse ? Geez big call .