Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery

[Herlock Sholmes]

Any chance of actually getting answers on these few?


Why did Fanny Mortimer not see Eagle or Stride or her killer or anyone going for a Constable at around 12.40?

Why didn’t Fanny or anyone else see or hear Louis’ cart returning at around 12.40?

Why did Kozebrodsky say that he found out about the body at 12.40 and Heschberg at 12.45 if the body was found at around 12.30 according to what Spooner said?

If Spooner was correct then Lamb must have got to the yard at around 12.40 (5 minutes after Lamb) How could it be ok for Lamb to be 20 minutes out but it’s not ok to suggest that Koz and Hesch were wrong?

What are the chances of Fanny hearing a horse and cart at around 1.00 and it wasn’t Louis?

Why is it such a problem that no one saw or heard the incident at around 1.00 but apparently it’s not a problem that no one saw or heard a horse and cart clattering along Berner Street at around 12.40?

Did Brown lie or imagine the voices shouting for a Constable at around 1.00?

If Lamb got to the yard much earlier than 1.05ish as claimed then how could it possibly have taken Johnson and Blackwell takes so long to arrive.

Why did the alleged false witness Schwartz manage to put a knife in the hand of the wrong man?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Many of us on here have put forward possible timeline’s of events in Berner Street for discussion. None of us have claimed that these are set-in-stone, just that they are possible explanations of how things might have panned out that night using the stated times but with an allowance for differences from clock to clock to watch and also an allowance for how accurately/inaccurately people estimate periods of time. It’s surprising therefore, to put it mildly, that the one person who has a longstanding, worked out theory as to how things occurred differently consistently refuses to put forward his own timeline to explain how he feels that events occurred. It’s one thing to alight on certain witnesses and make claims about who can or can’t be trusted it’s another to put forward a cogent timeline and then to defend it against possible criticism from other posters. So I think that it’s entirely reasonable to ask yet again….


Michael, could you please put forward your timeline of events in Berner Street that evening from 12.30 until Dr. Blackwell arrived please? The rest of us have all done it and have been entirely prepared to be questioned and possibly disagreed with. You are the person who for years has been proposing a version of events that is entirely different to the ‘official’ version and so I would have assumed that rather than simply criticising the opinions of others you would take a more proactive approach by setting out in detail your own version of events so that they can be discussed.

[New Waterloo]

Its very early in the morning and I am tired. But I will throw another idea into the pot. I have been thinking about the Stride murder (havn't we all) and its a right muddle up as they say in Norfolk! I have tried thinking of a fresh scenario and what about this. The murder does take place earlier (bear with me) whilst Fanny is not looking, PC Smith has exited the area. whoever else is in the street at about 1245hrs are players in this.

There is an incident just inside Dutfield Yard gates with a few people involved. Now we don't know what the incident is but at least part of it is witnessed by Schwartz who leaves the scene.

The players in the game go into the downstairs of the club/kitchen to decide what to do because they know AT THIS TIME that a person lies dead in the yard. Before they decide they are interrupted by Diemschutz entering the yard with his horse and cart. Nobody would have been aware of the exact time he would be arriving back.

In other words he is not the person who discovers the body. There is some evidence which may support this. He says at the inquest No.

'I went into the club and asked where my wife was. I found her in the front room on the ground floor.
[Coroner] What did you do with the pony? - I left it in the yard by itself, just outside the club door. There were several members in the front room of the club, and I told them all that there was a woman lying in the yard, though I could not say whether she was drunk or dead. I then got a candle and went into the yard, where I could see blood before I reached the body'.

'How big was this front room and what were several members doing there?'

There is no choice now no options. They all start running around like headless chickens shouting murder, lets go and get the police.

Why would they not get the police as soon as they realize somebody has been killed. Well because whatever the incident was it was illegal, or that a killing was the last thing they needed when the police have already been attending disorder on previous occasions. They needed a few minutes to think and discuss what to do. Thats all they got because in drives Diemschutz.

So Diemschutz does arrive back at 0100hrs and 'discover' the body THAT SOME ARE ALREADY AWARE OF and Schwartz does see part of the incident. Because of the dark Morris Eagle enters without seeing the body or slightly before the incident. Goldstein is probably involved somehow.

I am still thinking about this

I dont know. I think I am going back to bed

NW

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi NW,

We have no way, as far as I’m aware, of gauging the size of that ground floor room. We know that upstairs was a large room used for lectures but i don’t think that we know if that was the only room. We know that there were at least two rooms on the ground floor though. The one that you’ve mentioned and the kitchen. Wess said that after the evenings meeting and most attendees had gone home there were 20-30 members left in the club. Some still upstairs and some went to the downstairs room.

[JeffHamm]

I've been having a little play.

I took a measurement of the distance from Berner Street to the Lem.Str. Police Station and measured it at 1827 ft.
I then measured the distance from Berner Street to Batty Street and back, as that is where PC Lamb says he was when Eagle alerts him. that was 400 ft.
I then measured the round trip from Berner Street to Fairclough and on to Grove Street (where the other runners said they got to before returning with Spooner).
Finally, based upon George's recreation, I'm assuming it requires roughly 1m 50s for Deimshutz to do his checking, exiting the cart, etc, stuff, before getting inside and alerting people in the downstairs. I'll add 10 seconds to Georges' estimate for Deimshutz to go in a door and to the next room and call people to him, just so that Deimshutz requires 2 m between his arrival and the start of the Fairclough search.

While there is some uncertainty discussed about whether the search for PC Lamb by Eagle started at the same time as the search along Fairclough or if the Fairclough was first and Eagle starts after that was completed, I am going with the sequential version. In part because I think that's the more challenging.

Ok. We know Eagle is supposed to arrive at the Police Station at 1:10. I've got a distance, but I don't know how fast he's moving. Does he walk? Does he run? Does he do a combination (so an average speed in between those?). I use 3.1 mph as the average walking speed, and 6.1 as the average running speed. Those are based on some searches and other evidence based estimates.

Let's go with a walking speed. To be clear, my opinion is that I think that's the low end, and would argue it's probably unlikely that he's not at least walking faster than average. But this gives us a lower limit. The journey would take 6m 42s, and if he arrives at 1:10, that means he left at 1:03:18. He left at PC Lamb's instruction, so PC Lamb arrives at that time. (I'm not going to add in "sluff time" as these are estimates after all, I'm just going to string the events together).

Lamb has to run from where he was alerted to Berner Street, which is 400 feet, and at 6.1 mph that would require 44s, but Eagle had to first cover that 400 feet (another 44 seconds), so Eagle starts his run 1m 28s before PC Lamb arrives; so at 1:01:06, with PC Lamb being alerted at 1:01:50 (which I think most people would be fair to call "around 1:00").

The run from Berner Street to Grove and back is a distance of 1182 ft, which would require 2m 10s, so that starts at 12:58:56.

And we remove 2 minutes from that to get to Deimshutz's arrival, at 12:56:56 (so roughly 12:57, and the notion of a 3 minute difference between the clock Deimshutz referred to and the one at the Leman Street Police Stage is entirely acceptable).

Those times are the "walk to the police station times", and give us this rough timeline:
Eagle Walks:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:18 Eagle sent to Lemen Street Pollice
1:01:50 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:01:06 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
12:58:56 Fairclough Runners Start
12:56:56 Deimshutz Arrival

If Eagle ran the whole way to the station, though, and we leave all the other calculations the same, we get this:
Eagle Runs:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:06:35 Eagle sent to Lemen Street Pollice
1:05:07 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:04:23 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
1:02:13 Fairclough Runners Start
1:00:13 Deimshutz Arrival

If I average the walk time and run time for Eagle's Police station journey, and convert that to mph, we get 4.11 mph, which gives us:
Eagle goes quickly:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:56 Eagle sent to Lemen Street Pollice
1:03:28 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:02:44 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
1:00:34 Fairclough Runners Start
12:58:34 Deimshutz Arrival

Now remember, all of those "times" are in reference to the Leman Street Police Station clock. Moreover, all of the times are based upon measuring the distance of journeys, and using average values for walking and running (we have nothing to suggest anybody was particularly fast or slow, so in these kinds of recreations one just uses average values).

Looking at any of those, at no point do I see anything that conflicts with PC Lamb's statement that he was alerted around 1:00, or with Deimshutz's statement that it was 1:00 when he arrived (well, when passed the clock at the top of Berner Street). All of the journey based estimates of the time line produce estimated times (in reference to the Leman Street Police Station clock of course), that are entirely acceptable given that witnesses who state times are referring to a different clock.

What is also interesting to me is that when I did these sorts of calculations based upon Dr. Blackwell's watch, and his arrival at 1:16 (based upon his watch, not the Leman Street Police Station clock), very similar arrival times for Deimshutz were obtained. I haven't tried to work forwards, to estimate a "sync error" between the Police clock and Dr. Blackwell's watch, but if I do, I'll post that as well.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

I've been having a little play.

I took a measurement of the distance from Berner Street to the Lem.Str. Police Station and measured it at 1827 ft.
I then measured the distance from Berner Street to Batty Street and back, as that is where PC Lamb says he was when Eagle alerts him. that was 400 ft.
I then measured the round trip from Berner Street to Fairclough and on to Grove Street (where the other runners said they got to before returning with Spooner).
Finally, based upon George's recreation, I'm assuming it requires roughly 1m 50s for Deimshutz to do his checking, exiting the cart, etc, stuff, before getting inside and alerting people in the downstairs. I'll add 10 seconds to Georges' estimate for Deimshutz to go in a door and to the next room and call people to him, just so that Deimshutz requires 2 m between his arrival and the start of the Fairclough search.

While there is some uncertainty discussed about whether the search for PC Lamb by Eagle started at the same time as the search along Fairclough or if the Fairclough was first and Eagle starts after that was completed, I am going with the sequential version. In part because I think that's the more challenging.

Ok. We know Eagle is supposed to arrive at the Police Station at 1:10. I've got a distance, but I don't know how fast he's moving. Does he walk? Does he run? Does he do a combination (so an average speed in between those?). I use 3.1 mph as the average walking speed, and 6.1 as the average running speed. Those are based on some searches and other evidence based estimates.

Let's go with a walking speed. To be clear, my opinion is that I think that's the low end, and would argue it's probably unlikely that he's not at least walking faster than average. But this gives us a lower limit. The journey would take 6m 42s, and if he arrives at 1:10, that means he left at 1:03:18. He left at PC Lamb's instruction, so PC Lamb arrives at that time. (I'm not going to add in "sluff time" as these are estimates after all, I'm just going to string the events together).

Lamb has to run from where he was alerted to Berner Street, which is 400 feet, and at 6.1 mph that would require 44s, but Eagle had to first cover that 400 feet (another 44 seconds), so Eagle starts his run 1m 28s before PC Lamb arrives; so at 1:01:06, with PC Lamb being alerted at 1:01:50 (which I think most people would be fair to call "around 1:00").

The run from Berner Street to Grove and back is a distance of 1182 ft, which would require 2m 10s, so that starts at 12:58:56.

And we remove 2 minutes from that to get to Deimshutz's arrival, at 12:56:56 (so roughly 12:57, and the notion of a 3 minute difference between the clock Deimshutz referred to and the one at the Leman Street Police Stage is entirely acceptable).

Those times are the "walk to the police station times", and give us this rough timeline:
Eagle Walks:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:18 Eagle sent to Leman Street Pollice
1:01:50 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:01:06 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
12:58:56 Fairclough Runners Start
12:56:56 Deimshutz Arrival

If Eagle ran the whole way to the station, though, and we leave all the other calculations the same, we get this:
Eagle Runs:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:06:35 Eagle sent to Leman Street Pollice
1:05:07 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:04:23 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
1:02:13 Fairclough Runners Start
1:00:13 Deimshutz Arrival

If I average the walk time and run time for Eagle's Police station journey, and convert that to mph, we get 4.11 mph, which gives us:
Eagle goes quickly:
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:56 Eagle sent to Leman Street Pollice
1:03:28 PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street
1:02:44 Eagle leaves to find PC Lamb
1:00:34 Fairclough Runners Start
12:58:34 Deimshutz Arrival

Now remember, all of those "times" are in reference to the Leman Street Police Station clock. Moreover, all of the times are based upon measuring the distance of journeys, and using average values for walking and running (we have nothing to suggest anybody was particularly fast or slow, so in these kinds of recreations one just uses average values).

Looking at any of those, at no point do I see anything that conflicts with PC Lamb's statement that he was alerted around 1:00, or with Deimshutz's statement that it was 1:00 when he arrived (well, when passed the clock at the top of Berner Street). All of the journey based estimates of the time line produce estimated times (in reference to the Leman Street Police Station clock of course), that are entirely acceptable given that witnesses who state times are referring to a different clock.

What is also interesting to me is that when I did these sorts of calculations based upon Dr. Blackwell's watch, and his arrival at 1:16 (based upon his watch, not the Leman Street Police Station clock), very similar arrival times for Deimshutz were obtained. I haven't tried to work forwards, to estimate a "sync error" between the Police clock and Dr. Blackwell's watch, but if I do, I'll post that as well.

- Jeff

Sigh. Minor correction to the above tables. I made a miscalculation and have Lamb's arrival time at what should be Eagle's departure time!

I've just put together a workbook to do the calculations for such time line sequences of events, and have retained a bit more precision in the calculations to avoid accumulating error along the sequence.

Note, the "Diemshutz" bit where it says not including his pony cart stuff is for the additional 10 seconds I've added onto George's 1m 50s recreation for the time between his arrival and the completion of what he describes before going inside (the Pony Cart stuff). 10 seconds at a walking pace would cover around 41 feet or so, and all he's doing is going inside, to another room, grabbing a candle and returning with some other people.

Obviously, 10 seconds is on the short side, but even if we increase that by another minute (1m 10s), all that does is push the final time for Diemshutz's arrival 1 minute earlier. That would make the earliest calculation for his arrival (based upon Eagle just walking to the police station) to be 1:56:36, which is less than a 3.5 minute difference between the Leman Street Police Clock and the clock that Deimshutz says he based his 1:00 time upon. So even under a "worst case scenario", his stated time for his arrival is not suspect.

Anyway, based upon the workbook which I have more confidence in, those tables should read as follows:
Eagle Walks to the Leman Street Police Station: (3.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:18 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:02:33 PC Lamb Alerted
1:01:48 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:59:36 Fairclough Run Starts
1:59:26 Deimshutz time for alerting (not including his pony cart stuff)
1:57:36 Deimshutz Arrival

Eagle Runs to the Leman Street Police Station: (6.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:06:35 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:05:51 PC Lamb Alerted
1:05:06 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:02:54 Fairclough Run Starts
1:02:44 Deimshutz time for alerting (not including his pony cart stuff)
1:00:53 Deimshutz Arrival

Eagle goes "quickly" to the Leman Street Police Station: (4.11 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:56 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:04:12 PC Lamb Alerted
1:03:27 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:01:15 Fairclough Run Starts
1:01:05 Deimshutz time for alerting (not including his pony cart stuff)
1:59:15 Deimshutz Arrival


Anyway, sorry about the initial error. I put it together quickly and only spotted it when I was reorganizing the workbook to be a bit more versatile in case I want to do this sort of thing again (which, knowing me, I will), when I noticed the discrepancy.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I thought I would make the timeline calculation excel book available to anyone interested. I've put a few text notes in try and show where to enter things (generally, blue cells are where you enter information on the Calculation page; don't edit or enter anything on the Table page though, that will populate based upon what you fill for your calculations).

I hope it is more or less self explanatory; you enter a "known time" (i.e. Dr. Blackwell's arrival at 1:16:00; Eagle's arrival at the Leman Street Station at 1:10, etc) near the top and to the right (cells L3 through N3). Give that event a "name" in cell C3.

Then, list the events working backwards in time in column C (the bright blue cells) that you want to estimate the time at which they happened. So, for example, my first event is the time at which Eagle departs for the police station. I want to estimate that based upon a journey, so I need a speed and distance, which I fill in the details of in the speed and distance columns. The workbook then calculates how long that journey would take given that information, and subtracts it from the "known time".
Since Eagle begins his journey to the police station after PC Lamb arrives at Berner Street, our next event of interest is when was Eagle alerted to the murder? Well, Eagle gives us a location of where he was when alerted (about 400 feet), and they ran (6.1 mph), so I fill in that journey's information to get to the time he was alerted, and it now calculates the time at which that journey is estimated to have started.

Some "events" aren't journeys, though, like Deimshutz's messing about at his Pony cart that George did his recreation to give us the estimate of 1m 50s (110 seconds). For those sorts of things, you enter the # seconds in the "Fixed time" column.

It populates a table on the Table page, listing the estimated clock times and the event descriptions you give.

It is not 100% user proof, meaning there are ways to make it "blow up", which I'm sure you will discover, but I've tried to catch a few of them.

Anyway, I've never tried to make a document available this way before, so I'm not sure how well this will work? You will need Excel to use it by the way, and of course, I advise scanning it with your virus checker in case at some point the file becomes corrupted. It's fine on my end at the time I uploaded it, but on the internet there be monsters! I think it should be available for "download", but maybe it will try to open in Google Docs version of Excel?

If I've not done this correctly let me know and I will try again.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oHlUpwdIw4ZltCjhy_QziyMmeI74W2hw/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100935042269010881666&rtpof=true&sd=true

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Oh, and because I'm having fun, while PC Lamb says he was approached by Eagle (not by name) around Batty Street, I believe Eagle says he found the police closer to Grove, which would extend those journeys. I tend to think PC Lamb's statement is more likely to be correct, but what I tend to think and what is true are not always the same thing. But, to cover all of the bases, I extended the journeys for Eagle to Lamb (and so Lamb to Berner Street) from 400 ft to 750 ft (I just did a quick measurement from roughly the club door to the corner of Commercial and Grove and got 750 ft, which at a run would be 1m 23s, rather than the 44s run to Batty Street).

And also, I've allowed for 1m 10s for Diemshutz to go into the club, ask about his wife, find a candle, alert those present, and go back outside. To get an idea of how long that is, it's almost as much time as it would require one to run from Berner Street, up to Commercial, then east to Grove Street. So in these tables, we're looking at a new "worst case scenario", which gets worse if Eagle walks to the police station, improves a bit if he goes "quickly" (half walk half run type thing), and is as good as these settings can get if he runs.

If I do that, we get the following tables:
Eagle Walks to Leman Street Police Station: (3.1 mph) - absolute worst case
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:18 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:01:54 PC Lamb Alerted
1:00:30 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:58:18 Fairclough Run Starts
1:57:08 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:55:18 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle Runs to Leman Street Police Station: (6.1 mph) - best we can do with worst case location for PC Lamb
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:06:35 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:05:11 PC Lamb Alerted
1:03:48 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:01:36 Fairclough Run Starts
1:00:26 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:58:36 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle goes "quickly" to the Leman Street Police Station: (4.11 mph) - intermediate
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:56 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:03:33 PC Lamb Alerted
1:02:09 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:59:57 Fairclough Run Starts
1:58:47 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:56:57 Diemschutz Arrival

So even if we go with what Eagle said, where had to go all the way to Grove to meet up with PC Lamb (despite him saying he was closer, at Batty Street), we would estimate the clock at the Leman Street Police Station to read about 1:55:18 at the time that Diemschutz arrives, meaning the two clocks may be out of sync by roughly 4m 42 seconds. But that is only if Eagle walked to the station at an average walking speed, which seems a stretch to me.

If Eagle "hurries", then the clock at the police station would be expected to read around 1:56:57 (so 1:57 for ease), meaning the clocks would only be out of sync by about 3 minutes.

And if Eagle ran the whole way, we're looking at the police clock reading 1:58:36, so the two clocks would appear to be out of sync by around 1m 24s.

While opinions may vary, in my view, even if we allow for a fairly extended time for Diemschutz's activities inside the club, and we place PC Lamb at the most extreme distance (which goes against PC Lamb's statements, but conforms to Eagle's), and we have Eagle walk at an average pace to the police station, we're still looking at a difference between the estimated time on the police clock that is within 5 minutes of the time Diemschutz says his corner clock showed. Every other version of course narrows that difference, but even the most extreme still falls within a range of clock differences that would be entirely unsurprising given the time period.

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh, and because I'm having fun, while PC Lamb says he was approached by Eagle (not by name) around Batty Street, I believe Eagle says he found the police closer to Grove, which would extend those journeys. I tend to think PC Lamb's statement is more likely to be correct, but what I tend to think and what is true are not always the same thing. But, to cover all of the bases, I extended the journeys for Eagle to Lamb (and so Lamb to Berner Street) from 400 ft to 750 ft (I just did a quick measurement from roughly the club door to the corner of Commercial and Grove and got 750 ft, which at a run would be 1m 23s, rather than the 44s run to Batty Street).

And also, I've allowed for 1m 10s for Diemshutz to go into the club, ask about his wife, find a candle, alert those present, and go back outside. To get an idea of how long that is, it's almost as much time as it would require one to run from Berner Street, up to Commercial, then east to Grove Street. So in these tables, we're looking at a new "worst case scenario", which gets worse if Eagle walks to the police station, improves a bit if he goes "quickly" (half walk half run type thing), and is as good as these settings can get if he runs.

If I do that, we get the following tables:
Eagle Walks to Leman Street Police Station: (3.1 mph) - absolute worst case
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:18 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:01:54 PC Lamb Alerted
1:00:30 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:58:18 Fairclough Run Starts
1:57:08 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:55:18 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle Runs to Leman Street Police Station: (6.1 mph) - best we can do with worst case location for PC Lamb
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:06:35 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:05:11 PC Lamb Alerted
1:03:48 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:01:36 Fairclough Run Starts
1:00:26 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:58:36 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle goes "quickly" to the Leman Street Police Station: (4.11 mph) - intermediate
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:56 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:03:33 PC Lamb Alerted
1:02:09 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:59:57 Fairclough Run Starts
1:58:47 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:56:57 Diemschutz Arrival

So even if we go with what Eagle said, where had to go all the way to Grove to meet up with PC Lamb (despite him saying he was closer, at Batty Street), we would estimate the clock at the Leman Street Police Station to read about 1:55:18 at the time that Diemschutz arrives, meaning the two clocks may be out of sync by roughly 4m 42 seconds. But that is only if Eagle walked to the station at an average walking speed, which seems a stretch to me.

If Eagle "hurries", then the clock at the police station would be expected to read around 1:56:57 (so 1:57 for ease), meaning the clocks would only be out of sync by about 3 minutes.

And if Eagle ran the whole way, we're looking at the police clock reading 1:58:36, so the two clocks would appear to be out of sync by around 1m 24s.

While opinions may vary, in my view, even if we allow for a fairly extended time for Diemschutz's activities inside the club, and we place PC Lamb at the most extreme distance (which goes against PC Lamb's statements, but conforms to Eagle's), and we have Eagle walk at an average pace to the police station, we're still looking at a difference between the estimated time on the police clock that is within 5 minutes of the time Diemschutz says his corner clock showed. Every other version of course narrows that difference, but even the most extreme still falls within a range of clock differences that would be entirely unsurprising given the time period.

- Jeff

An excellent and very useful piece of work Jeff.

Another thing to throw into the works of course is the time that Eagle arrived at Leman Street. Whose to say that he didn’t actually arrive at 1.11 or 1.12?

[FrankO]

I've been having a little play.

I took a measurement of the distance from Berner Street to the Lem.Str. Police Station and measured it at 1827 ft.
I then measured the distance from Berner Street to Batty Street and back, as that is where PC Lamb says he was when Eagle alerts him. that was 400 ft.
I then measured the round trip from Berner Street to Fairclough and on to Grove Street (where the other runners said they got to before returning with Spooner).
Finally, based upon George's recreation, I'm assuming it requires roughly 1m 50s for Deimshutz to do his checking, exiting the cart, etc, stuff, before getting inside and alerting people in the downstairs. I'll add 10 seconds to Georges' estimate for Deimshutz to go in a door and to the next room and call people to him, just so that Deimshutz requires 2 m between his arrival and the start of the Fairclough search.

While there is some uncertainty discussed about whether the search for PC Lamb by Eagle started at the same time as the search along Fairclough or if the Fairclough was first and Eagle starts after that was completed, I am going with the sequential version. In part because I think that's the more challenging.

Hi Jeff,

Great work! The only minor observation I have, is that I arrive at slightly different measurements for the distances.

Mine are:
From Dutfield’s Yard to the Lem.Str. Police Station: 514 m/1687 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard close to Christian Street & back: 390 m/1282 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard to Fairclough and on to Grove Street & back: 296 m/972 feet

I've measured them both on Google Maps and this Georeferenced Map: Georeferenced Maps - Map images - National Library of Scotland (nls.uk). In the scheme of things, they would only have a minor influence on your calculations, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. I'm curious as to where and how you made your measurements.

Cheers,
Frank

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Jeff,

Great work! The only minor observation I have, is that I arrive at slightly different measurements for the distances.

Mine are:
From Dutfield’s Yard to the Lem.Str. Police Station: 514 m/1687 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard close to Christian Street & back: 390 m/1282 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard to Fairclough and on to Grove Street & back: 296 m/972 feet

I've measured them both on Google Maps and this Georeferenced Map: Georeferenced Maps - Map images - National Library of Scotland (nls.uk). In the scheme of things, they would only have a minor influence on your calculations, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. I'm curious as to where and how you made your measurements.

Cheers,
Frank

Ahhh but you’re using a Dutch clock Frank.

[FrankO]

Ahhh but you’re using a Dutch clock Frank.

You got me there, Mike.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Great work! The only minor observation I have, is that I arrive at slightly different measurements for the distances.

Mine are:
From Dutfield’s Yard to the Lem.Str. Police Station: 514 m/1687 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard close to Christian Street & back: 390 m/1282 feet
From Dutfield’s Yard to Fairclough and on to Grove Street & back: 296 m/972 feet

I've measured them both on Google Maps and this Georeferenced Map: Georeferenced Maps - Map images - National Library of Scotland (nls.uk). In the scheme of things, they would only have a minor influence on your calculations, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. I'm curious as to where and how you made your measurements.

Cheers,
Frank

Hi Frank,

I use the NLS maps with the OS 25 inch, 1892-1914 overlay, as I like the detail. However, some streets are renamed on that map and so don't correspond to 1888 street names which can be a pain.

I only took one measurement for each of the distances, and for a more stable value one would take the measurements a few times and average them since where you set the points can make a difference. I re-did a bunch just now, for example, and I've got 621 feet for Berner-Fairclough-Grove (so 1241 round trip rather than the 1182 I had before. But this time, the distance from Berner to Commercial to Grove I've got 717 instead of 750). Individual measurements of anything will tend to have variation, and for something like plotting out routes, where there are turns and so forth, that variation will increase as each turn requires another placement, and that is what introduces a lot of the variation.

Anyway, below are the set of measurements I made just now (I didn't make a copy of the map when I did the above, I just recorded the values as it was really just an exercise at that point to see if I could put together a workbook to do this sort of thing that would have some versatility in it as to where the times come from (journeys and durations), and would do all the formatting of the results for me in a quick and easy way. I'm happy with the result and think it is functional enough.

I would be curious to see the measurements as you get them though, as some of them seem different by more than I would expect (but to be fair, I've never quantified the error range, so perhaps our distances to the police station, for example, are indeed within that range). Or, maybe the police station had moved, and our maps have it in different locations? It's possible, like the street names, I have the police station at the wrong location for 1888, and it used to be a bit further south.

- Jeff
P.S. I just tried another measurement to the police station, this time going straight down to Ellen Street then across, and this time I got 1839 feet, so almost identical.

[JeffHamm]

An excellent and very useful piece of work Jeff.

Another thing to throw into the works of course is the time that Eagle arrived at Leman Street. Whose to say that he didn’t actually arrive at 1.11 or 1.12?

Hi Herlock,

I would think the police would record the time he arrived to report things. If anything, there could be an argument he arrived a bit before, and when he then tells them he's reporting a murder, they record the time at that point due to the seriousness of his business. However, as I suspect Eagle would make it clear upon entry that he was reporting a murder, it's probably a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Of course, I don't know if clocks had second hands, and clearly they aren't going to record those, so I suppose one could argue that the "real time" was anywhere between 1:10:00 and 1:10:59. Since we don't know where the second hand was, perhaps the "proper" target time is 1:10:30. If one thinks that is the best approach, then just subtract 30 seconds from all the tabled times.

Of course, nobody has to agree with me that the time at the station as reported in the news is, in fact, the time actually recorded by the police but only the time the reporter was given (or how they chose to report it: i.e. if told 1:11, did they just report 1:10 because it's a more "normal" time? But in that case, I think one has to allow for it to be 1:09 as well.

While these are all interesting hypotheses to consider, there's no way for us to test them as we don't have the police records to consult to see what was actually recorded. As such, my approach has been to use the benchmark time as stated, then compare the estimated times derived from journeys and so forth, to see if the calculated times correspond within reason to the testimony witnesses give. It is my opinion that even in the worst of all possible configurations the calculated time on the Police Clock is well within the acceptable values of clock sync error when compared to the times given by witnesses who based their stated time upon a different clock. And when we look at more probable versions, the differences only get smaller. Obviously, opinions on the acceptability of these time comparisons will vary.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

So, if I use the distances I just re-measured in the above map (with PC Lamb at Commercial and Grove), keeping Diemschutz's "post-pony" activities at 1m 10s (the long version), and as per my reponse to Herlock above, go with Eagle arriving at the station at 1:10:30 (since we don't know the second hand, it could be anywhere in the minutes of 1:10, so I put it half way to neither favour earlier nor later in the minute), we get the following tables:

Eagle Walks: (3.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:30 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:03:44 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:02:24 PC Lamb Alerted
1:01:04 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:58:45 Fairclough Run Starts
1:57:35 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:55:45 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle Runs: (6.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:30 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:07:04 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:05:43 PC Lamb Alerted
1:04:23 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:02:05 Fairclough Run Starts
1:00:55 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:59:05 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle "hurries": (4.11 mph)
Time Event
1:10:30 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:05:24 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:04:04 PC Lamb Alerted
1:02:44 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:00:25 Fairclough Run Starts
1:59:15 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:57:25 Diemschutz Arrival
-----------------------------------------------------
And if I use the distances Frank mentions, I get these:

Eagle Walks: (3.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:04:18 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:03:24 PC Lamb Alerted
1:02:30 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:00:11 Fairclough Run Starts
1:59:01 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:57:11 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle Runs: (6.1 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:07:21 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:06:27 PC Lamb Alerted
1:05:32 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:03:13 Fairclough Run Starts
1:02:03 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:00:13 Diemschutz Arrival

Eagle "Hurries": (4.11 mph)
Time Event
1:10:00 Eagle Arrives at Leman Street Police Station
1:05:50 Eagle departs to Station/PC Lamb's Arrival
1:04:55 PC Lamb Alerted
1:04:01 Eagle departs to find PC Lamb/Fairclough runners return/Spooner's arrival
1:01:42 Fairclough Run Starts
1:00:32 Diemschutz time for alerting (after his pony cart stuff)
1:58:42 Diemschutz Arrival

And there's no real difference in the conclusions. The exact values will, of course, shift, but these are estimations and the key point is that in the end the estimated values correspond well with the witness testimonies. More importantly, that correspondence is robust, and we can test a range of values (different travel speends; re-measure the distances to get slightly different values, etc), and the estimation for Diemschutz's arrival remains within a fairly conservative estimate as to how much "clock sync error" one might expect. I've been working with a rule of thumb of +-5 minutes, but based upon the papers I've read about the unreliability of the public clocks in Victorian London, that's probably underestimating just how wide a margin of error there really was. (I've posted those bits before, so that information is on file here).

- Jeff