Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery

[JeffHamm]

Hi RD,

...

Now, regarding Eagle, you state approximately 12.35am, whereas I would suggest nearer to 12.40am. The reason being is that if Eagle arrives at 12.35am, he would have seen Stride, based on PC Smith's timings.
...

RD

How do you know he didn't see them, but just can't recall?

From his testimony at the inquest we have:

[Coroner] Did you see anyone about in Berner-street? - I dare say I did, but I do not remember them.

So we can't say that Eagle cannot have seen Stride with someone at the time he returned, as he himself indicates there's a good possibility he did see some people around, but he doesn't recall anything about them.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The other issue that noone has seems to realize is that when Schwartz approaches the murder site, he notices BS man walking towards Stride and then grab her to try and grab her into the street before spinning her around and throwing her onto the footway into the yard...but the question is...

Where was BS man BEFORE Schwartz saw him?

Was BS man already between Schwartz and Stride?

If so, he would have been just outside Mortimers front door...but she saw nobody in the street.

Does that mean that BS had just walked into Berner Street and was slightly ahead of Schwartz and walking in the same direction?

If so, he would have walked past Mortimers door...but again, she saw noone.

In the reality of physical space time, the only location that BS Man could have been just before Schwartz saw him approach Stride, is inside the gateway.

When I first read this, I wondered what you on about. Don't you know he said he followed the BS man down Berner St, catching up to him* by the gates? But then I remembered the police reference to his statement is ambiguous about the man's direction of travel.

...on turning into Berner St. from Commercial Road & having got as far as the gateway where the murder was committed he saw a man stop & speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway.

For all we know the man could have been travelling in the opposite direction to Schwartz - going North toward Commercial Rd. It is only in the press account that we get a more specific picture.

As he turned the corner from Commercial-road he noticed some distance in front of him a man walking as if partially intoxicated. He walked on behind him, and presently he noticed a woman standing in the entrance to the alley way where the body was afterwards found. The half-tipsy man halted and spoke to her.

The picture painted in the press account is how most (all?) students of the case understand the BS man's movements. It is also true that most students look down their nose at the press account, having arbitrarily blamed the paper for the reference to the knife. What happens is that the press account is publicly dismissed, but the mental models remain based on a blend of the two accounts.

* The catching up to him by the gates (in the police account) seems to have little acceptance. The press account is preferred to the notion of Schwartz watching what goes on from a distance of 1 or 2 yards.

The Hungarian saw him put his hand on her shoulder and push her back into the passage, but, feeling rather timid of getting mixed up in quarrels, he crossed to the other side of the street.

That sounds more realistic, so let's go with that.

The other interesting thing about Schwartz catching up to the man, is that it hints that he was hurrying along. Once again, he sounds just like the other guy, but no problem, as this further parallel with black bag man can be avoided by reference to the press account - the man walked as if partially intoxicated, so Schwartz's pace was probably normal.

The police/press account differences are another example of Schwartz getting an easy time - the press account is explicitly dismissed and implicitly used to smooth some of the rough edges of the police account. Why students of the case feel the need to give Schwartz an easy time, is open question.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

There are two problems with Fanny:

1) She said that she was on her doorstep for nearly the whole time between 12.30 and 1.00 but gives no more than that. So how many times did she come onto her doorstep and go back inside? We have no way of knowing.

Implicit in this is the assumption that when inside, Fanny was oblivious to the outside world. The evidence we have does not support that assumption. As we are told her own room was at the front of the ground floor, her movements from inside to doorstep and back again, may have just amounted to a few steps either way.

Another interesting point about Fanny moving inside and outside, multiple times, is that the meaning of the word 'previously' in the following sentence, becomes ambiguous in regard to the time the witness believed it to occur.

It was soon after one o'clock when I went out, and the only man whom I had seen pass through the street previously was a young man carrying a black shiny bag, who walked very fast down the street from the Commercial-road.

This is usually assumed to have occurred just before 1am, or at least just before Fanny locks up, but where is the evidence for this? It is true that Swanson's report refers to Goldstein walking through Berner St at "about 1am", but Goldstein cannot put words in Fanny's mouth, and neither can we.

2) She also said that she went onto her doorstep after hearing the tread of a beat Constable. To be honest I’d assumed that she’d said that this was at 12.45 which would create an issue but in the two papers that I’ve seen that mention this (London Evening News and Daily News) both say that it was ‘shortly before a quarter to 1.00.’ If this is what she actually said then I’m fairly confident that she actually went onto her doorstep just after PC Smith passed; 12.35 is shortly before 12.45 as there is no set definition of ‘shortly’. She also said that she was there for 10 minutes and Jeff has illustrated how poor we are at estimating periods of time…so how long was she actually there?

So if she went onto her doorstep at 12.35 (after Smith passed) when did she go back inside (considering that 10 minutes was an estimate)? 12.42? 12.43? 12.44? 12.45?

So if Schwartz passed at 12.43/ 12.44/ 12.45/ 12.46 Fanny is back indoors.

If she is, then by a remarkable coincidence, Goldstein and Mortimer were both out in their estimate by +18 to +20 minutes. This is yet another example of the heroic assumptions that are required to save Schwartz's account from dismissal. Having decided that Schwartz could not possibly have lied, or even greatly exaggerated what he did witness, I guess people feel justified in making these heroic assumptions.

It's interesting to compare your claim that Mortimer had locked as early as 12:42 and no later than 12:45, with some of your recent posts. In #220, the more likely scenario has Fanny locking up 12:55. In #59, you gave us this timeline...

The Schwartz incident could have occurred before Fanny went onto her doorstep at around (perhaps the footsteps that he heard were Schwartz or BS man instead of PC Smith?) and if we accept the inexactness of times given then perhaps…

The Schwartz incident occurs at 12.44/12.45 (Fanny is indoors)
Fanny comes onto her doorstep at 12.46
Goldstein passes between 12.46 and 12.56
Fanny stays for around 10 minutes then goes back inside around 12.56
Fanny hears Louis pass at around 1.00

You seem to constantly oscillate between two scenarios; one in which Fanny is safely locked away by 12:45 at the latest, and another in which she locks up close to 1am, having been inside when the incident supposedly occurs, 10 to 15 minutes earlier. The funny thing is that no-one other than me seems to notice. I guess when you 'know' what happened, none of this discussion really matters.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Lave was in the yard, not on the street, so the only thing he would see from the yard if he was there the whole time is the actual murder, which he didn't see. Therefore, the one report that says he was there for 30 minutes is the wrong one. The others place him in the yard for 5 to 10 minutes, before 12:45, during which nothing of interest happens in the yard. A few things do occur in the street, but he could no more see them from the yard then he could from being inside the building.

- Jeff

The wrongness of the 30-minute report has already been noted.

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

This places Lave at the gates pretty much right when we might expect Stride to be there too. So, like Mortimer, Lave will have to be moved out of the way.

I note you said nothing in this post about the jarring transition from Stride being seen with a man by Smith, across and up the road a bit from the gates, and then a few minutes later she's supposedly standing in the gateway, alone.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

So, your latest theory requires:

- A woman who looks just like Stride - was Stride in any way unique in her appearance?
- and who was dressed just like Stride - did poverty-stricken women dress so individualistically?
- to be seen standing near and when Stride was killed - two women in the same street at different times had to have been the same woman?
- and to be wearing a flower - Stride was the only woman in Whitechapel wearing a flower that day?
- obtained from a nearby flower seller - just a suggestion that two women might have been bought a flower by a male friend from a nearby seller. Maybe they got them from different sources? How is this important?
- who the police never identify - the police never identified the couple that Brown saw; did they not exist? The police never identified the man seen with Eddowes; did he not exist? Did Blotchy man not exist?
- The woman and her companion must leave the scene just before Stride arrives - people move.
- and waits for some unknown person for unknown reason - people do things for reasons that are known to only themselves.
- who never enters the picture when he arrives and she's nowhere to be found - people don’t show up sometimes; maybe he showed up to see the commotion at the yard but didn’t get involved? Maybe he didn’t want to own up to a connection to Stride? Maybe he was married?
- and is never identified by the police - he couldn’t have been if he hadn’t turned up or hadn’t come forward.


Why does Schwartz's story require all this invention?

We aren't talking about all of Whitechapel, we're talking about a particular part of Berner St. Most of the rest of this is just further invention and supposition built on supposition.

It doesn’t ‘require’ it because as I made clear earlier I was only speculating on ‘what if’ the woman that Smith saw wasn’t Stride. It could have been Stride; it changes nothing. The couple could have been the couple that Brown saw; who parted after he went home and Stride went to the gates. Or, Stride and the man could have move either way along Fairclough Street or further along Berner Street, and another couple stood on the corner to be seen by Brown. They moved on and Stride returned alone to the gates.

If you doubt Smith's identification of Stride, how do you feel about Brown's?

[JeffHamm]

The wrongness of the 30-minute report has already been noted.

I am aware of that, as I have made the same point. However, I was responding to a post where the 30 minute time of Lave was the only one that created the issue covered in the original post. As such, I, like you, was simply re-stating that the 30 minute report is clearly wrong.

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

This places Lave at the gates pretty much right when we might expect Stride to be there too. So, like Mortimer, Lave will have to be moved out of the way.

No, it places Lave at the gate at some point during his outting, for an unstated amount of time. If he did no more than pace around the yard, and make one stroll to the gate and back, he would only be at the gate for a second or two as he turns around. We can't say how long he was at the gate. Moreover, his estimate of the time could be off by some unknown amount, and finally, we cannot be sure if the reported sightings of Stride are all actual sightings, and so cannot be sure of where we should expect her to be. If we presume all are genuine sightings, and still can work out a sequence that works, then we know that the given testimony (accounting for error) is not suspect under any circumstance (because if any of the sightings are not of Stride, then things just become easier after all).

I note you said nothing in this post about the jarring transition from Stride being seen with a man by Smith, across and up the road a bit from the gates, and then a few minutes later she's supposedly standing in the gateway, alone.

No, I've not gone into that. The Stride case has a lot of people and is quite complicated. I factored in as many as I could in the simulations though, where I show that even if we take all of the sightings as valid, then we can still create a workable sequence of events. I don't claim the times in the simulation are exactly true, of course, rather I simply demonstrate there's nothing impossible.

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

Okay, some of that works I agree.

So based on your timeline you have Pc Smith between 12.30am - 12.35am. That is generally accepted as accurate. Any earlier than 12.30am wouldn't be due to his next beat arrival after the murder.

I would suggest that a more refined time of somewhere between 12.32am 12.35am is as close as we can get for Pc Smith.

And so, based on PC Smith's viewpoint, Stride is already standing close to the yard with Parcelman. Thus Stride is standing near to her murder site no later than 12.30am, because she is already there when PC Smith walks past.

So far, so good...

Now, regarding Eagle, you state approximately 12.35am, whereas I would suggest nearer to 12.40am. The reason being is that if Eagle arrives at 12.35am, he would have seen Stride, based on PC Smith's timings.

But that’s an ‘if.’ We could also suggest that Smith could have passed at 12.30 or 12.31 or 12.32 which would make it possible for Eagle to have returned at 12.35 or earlier without him seeing Smith (or vice versa)

The other options are...Parcelman and Stride walk off somewhere with the parcel after PC Smith has passed at 12.35am, but are gone BEFORE Eagle arrives. My time of 12.40am gives Parcelman and Stride more time to go before Eagle arrives, whereas your time of 12.35am gives no time for Parcelman and Stride to go before Eagle sees them.

Bearing in mind that Smith doesn't see Eagle and far as I am aware, Eagle would have been walking from the direction that Pc Smith would have been travelling?

If so, then why didn't they see each other?

We don’t know what time the couple arrived so they could have been there since 12.25 for all that we know. So if Smith passed at say 12.30 or 12.31 or 12.32 then the couple could have walked on just after Smith passed and been around the corner in Fairclough Street by 12.31 or 12.32 or 12.33.

Now IF Eagle returns closer to 12.40am, it should give enough time for Parcelman to have gone, Pc Smith to have gone and Eagle to have arrived back at the club.

The issue is, there's no evidence to suggest that Stride left with Parcelman. But she must have gone somewhere because Eagle didn't see her.

I’d also suggest the we should consider the possibility that Smith might have seen a woman who looked similar to Stride. But as the couple weren’t there when Eagle arrived that is strong evidence that they left and possibly/probably together.

Of course, IF Parcelman was Eagle, then it solves all the above.

There’s no problem that requires solving though.

Eagle returns at 12.35am (as you said) just as Pc Smith approaches. Pc Smith then sees Eagle standing with Stride. He is perhaps holding a parcel full of illegal contraband Cigars for a late-night lock-in party at the club.

Eagle may have even given/sold one of his cigars to Pipeman.

Or perhaps Lave was Pipeman, who picked up a Cigar from Parcelman as he came out to the street for some fresh air?

IF Eagle was Parcelman, and Lave was Pipeman, then it would explain away the need for Parcelman and Stride to need to leave before Eagle said he returned.

But we don’t need a reason to explain away something so everyday as - Constable passes and sees couple - couple leave - Eagle arrives. With ample time for all this to have happened no matter what the times actually were.

But I also have a way we can eradicate BS Man.

Bs man needed to have arrived BEFORE Schwartz...and based on your timings, that would mean BS man needs to be there before 12.45 or 12.47am, but regardless, 12.45am is the latest that Bs Man could have got there.

But we have Parcelman and Stride there at 12.40am

How do we? In theory Parcelman and Stride could have been gone by 12.31 if Smith passed them at 12.30. Or at 12.32 if Smith passed them at 12.31 and so on.

this begs the question...

What if Eagle was Parcelman and he and Stride went nowhere, because she was there on behalf of her new lover to buy some contraband?

Could her lover who she was seen with outside the Bricklayer's Arms at 11pm have been a dealer in illegal cigars?

This would explain the parcel

This would explain Goldstein's later "empty black bag"

In reality though RD we could come up with any piece of speculation (what if Diemschitz had been seeing Stride and she arrived at the yard demanding cash or she would tell Mrs D so Louis kills her. It gives Stride a reason for being there and explains why no one was seen running away) My main point though is that we don’t need to explain anything because the times easily allow for those things to have happened.

And so, what IF Parcelman and Stride were there to do some business, but the deal goes wrong?

In other words, could Eagle have been Parcelman have Parcelman have ALSO been Bs Man?

If Stride's Yiddish wasn't as effective as she thought and/or if she said something along the lines of... "I am not going to buy your cigars" then he may have become angered.

Imagine this scenario...

Parcelman and Stride are talking, Stride is dressed to impress and sent to seal the deal. Eagle is street dealing and supplying to the club for the night.

Remembering that the police could easily have gone to his girlfriend’s house to check his story.

Stride has a packet of Cachou on her person because part of their role is to taste test the merchandise before buying. She needs the Cachou to take away the taste of the Cigar.

He offers her to try one, and she accepts but makes the mistake of taking the box from him.

For whatever reason the deal goes south and Parcelman becomes angry and the box somehow falls onto the floor inside the gateway. out of sight.

Eagle gestures to go to the main entrance, which is locked and meaning he has to walk past Stride...

It's then at THIS point that he walks BACK to Stride, just as Schwartz arrives.

It then plays out just as Schwartz says.

Bs Man aka Eagle assaults Stride, then notices Schwartz and shouts "Lipski"

Lave aka Parcelman who has walked as far as the corner of the street looks up just as he is about light the cigar he got from Eagle.

Schwartz runs, Lave gives a half-hearted chase. He is more interested in smoking his cigar.

In the meantime, Eagle has threatened Stride who is still lying on the floor. He picks up the box and walks back inside the club.

Stride picks herself up and composes herself just as Pipeman aka Lave walks into the yard.

He sees she is in distress and offers her his cigar that he has just lit.

She accepts, and this time tries the cigar, but as she expects it's a cheap poorly made product.

He bids her goodnight and she replies in Yiddish

She takes out her Cachou.

Unfortunately, Stride is unaware that Lave has drawn out a knife and before she can react he pulls her back by her scarf and cuts her throat before she can make a sound. He places her down, puts his knife away and walks back into the club at 12.55am

Eagle then has to state he never saw anyone or anything to cover the assault

The club then needs to destroy the contraband, using Goldstein as a witness decoy to explain the "empty black bag"

The club discovers that Lave has a history of violence, having been on the run for a reason, and he leaves soon after the murder.

The club then covers up the murder, but the press and WVC get wind of it and so send in Le Grand, who pushes through the idea it's a Ripper killing with the generic witness account that he forces Packer to give.

Bachert and Le Grand then use the fake letters; some written by Bachert himself to drive through the idea of the double event.

The murder of Eddowes later that night is just one retrospective coincidence.

Eagle also has the opportunity to dispose of the murder weapon when he goes to the police station shortly after the murder.

And all of the above, just to give Schwartz's account some contextual justification.

The problem here RD is that if we put out a request for possible scenarios to serve the same purpose that made you come up with yours we would be inundated with them. It would end up being a case of ‘who could come up with the most imaginative.’ When I look at and situation I start with - witnesses usually tell the truth as they recall it (not always but usually) and that unknowns usually have a simple explanation. Our problem here is one of timing of course.




Of all of the witnesses involved we only know how two of them arrived at the times that that gave (Diemschitz and Blackwell - and with them we still have to ask how well or otherwise their times were synchronised with others - Spooner describes that he estimated from pub closing times but he ended up being wrong by 25 minutes or so) Eagle for example might have based his time on learning it at his girlfriends house; perhaps her father said ‘you’re late, it’s…..’ or perhaps he saw a clock in the club when he got back or perhaps he got into the club and asked someone the time who had a watch (and we have the same question of synchronicity with all of those timepieces) Then we have someone like Heschberg, as an example, we don’t know which clock he’d last seen (but we know that he hadn’t just seen one because he was estimating) so the first question is - how was that clock synchronised in regard to others, the second question is - how long ago had he seen the clock; requiring him to estimate that period of time. Then - how good was he at estimating times.

We can never come up with a definitive timeline because we don’t have accurate, verifiable information but we can come up with several scenarios/timelines which account for the events described and which don’t involve deception. I firmly believe that one of them is the correct one.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Implicit in this is the assumption that when inside, Fanny was oblivious to the outside world. The evidence we have does not support that assumption. As we are told her own room was at the front of the ground floor, her movements from inside to doorstep and back again, may have just amounted to a few steps either way.

Another interesting point about Fanny moving inside and outside, multiple times, is that the meaning of the word 'previously' in the following sentence, becomes ambiguous in regard to the time the witness believed it to occur.

It was soon after one o'clock when I went out, and the only man whom I had seen pass through the street previously was a young man carrying a black shiny bag, who walked very fast down the street from the Commercial-road.

This is usually assumed to have occurred just before 1am, or at least just before Fanny locks up, but where is the evidence for this? It is true that Swanson's report refers to Goldstein walking through Berner St at "about 1am", but Goldstein cannot put words in Fanny's mouth, and neither can we.

I can’t understand why you find it such a difficult concept that people don’t just hear everything? That they can hear one thing but not another. Or why you appear to believe that Fanny Mortimer didn’t move around in her own house?

If she is, then by a remarkable coincidence, Goldstein and Mortimer were both out in their estimate by +18 to +20 minutes. This is yet another example of the heroic assumptions that are required to save Schwartz's account from dismissal. Having decided that Schwartz could not possibly have lied, or even greatly exaggerated what he did witness, I guess people feel justified in making these heroic assumptions.

Goldstein has no estimate. He never gave a time that he passed so we are reliant on Fanny who requires deciphering rather than simply reading. And she’s impossible to decipher accurately. As I said at the start, Fanny is a fairly useless witness, and yet she’s relied on implicitly to facilitate all plot/deception/false witness scenarios.

It's interesting to compare your claim that Mortimer had locked as early as 12:42 and no later than 12:45, with some of your recent posts. In #220, the more likely scenario has Fanny locking up 12:55. In #59, you gave us this timeline...

You seem to constantly oscillate between two scenarios; one in which Fanny is safely locked away by 12:45 at the latest, and another in which she locks up close to 1am, having been inside when the incident supposedly occurs, 10 to 15 minutes earlier. The funny thing is that no-one other than me seems to notice. I guess when you 'know' what happened, none of this discussion really matters.

There’s nothing to ‘notice’ as I’m sure that everyone can understand that I’ve simply given two possible scenarios which explains the events whereas your approach is to say ‘these times don’t add up perfectly if taken as set-in-stone therefore someone must be lying.’ Mine aren’t the only timelines of course and no timeline can be stated as proven but they are vastly more likely than one which suggests that a man deliberately placed himself at the scene of a murder surrounded by a cast of totally invented characters that can’t back up his story (making him a potential culprit in the police’s eyes.) A prerequisite of this scenario is also that Schwartz was so careless of lying to the police that he wasn’t concerned that someone might actually have been present to refute his fantasy. Why would you believe this instead of the ‘official’ version, explained easily by poorly synchronised clocks (hardly science fiction) and inaccurate guesswork (an everyday occurrence)?

Its a case of ‘feet on terra firma’ or a fantasy scenario.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We aren't talking about all of Whitechapel, we're talking about a particular part of Berner St. Most of the rest of this is just further invention and supposition built on supposition.



If you doubt Smith's identification of Stride, how do you feel about Brown's?

Im not suggesting that you do this intentionally but you appear not to appreciate the difference between a suggestion and a statement of fact. I’m not saying that the woman that Smith saw wasn’t Stride. The likelihood perhaps is that she probably was. All that I’m suggesting is the possibility of misidentification. We all know of the fallibility of eyewitness identification. It’s a little strange for example that there appears to be no problem in suggesting ‘Elizabeth Long was mistaken when she identified Annie Chapman’ when she passed within a foot of her but it’s almost blasphemous to suggest that we should at least consider the possibility that Smith might have seen a woman that just resembled Stride who standing on the other side of the road in a poorly lit street.

With Brown I’d apply the same thinking. Maybe, maybe not.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

No, it places Lave at the gate at some point during his outting, for an unstated amount of time. If he did no more than pace around the yard, and make one stroll to the gate and back, he would only be at the gate for a second or two as he turns around. We can't say how long he was at the gate. Moreover, his estimate of the time could be off by some unknown amount, and finally, we cannot be sure if the reported sightings of Stride are all actual sightings, and so cannot be sure of where we should expect her to be. If we presume all are genuine sightings, and still can work out a sequence that works, then we know that the given testimony (accounting for error) is not suspect under any circumstance (because if any of the sightings are not of Stride, then things just become easier after all).

If Lave is assumed to have reached the gates after Smith sees Stride, a second or two at that location would be enough for him to have noticed Stride standing right next to him. Apparently, she wasn't. Nor was she there when Eagle returned to the club. If we can work out a sequence that works, then where do these two men fit into it, and when does this standing in gateway episode commence?

[JeffHamm]

If Lave is assumed to have reached the gates after Smith sees Stride, a second or two at that location would be enough for him to have noticed Stride standing right next to him. Apparently, she wasn't. Nor was she there when Eagle returned to the club. If we can work out a sequence that works, then where do these two men fit into it, and when does this standing in gateway episode commence?

Eagle testifies that he probably did see people in Berner Street, but he doesn't remember anything about them, so we can't say Stride wasn't in the area when he returned.

We don't know at what point Lave walked to the gate, but from what he says, all we know is Stride was not at the gate, she could have been 20 feet down the road and Kave would not have seen her. Again, we can't say Stride wasn't in the area based on Lave either.

So really, neither Eagle nor Lave put any real limits on the possibilities.

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I can’t understand why you find it such a difficult concept that people don’t just hear everything? That they can hear one thing but not another. Or why you appear to believe that Fanny Mortimer didn’t move around in her own house?

You're missing my point, which is that the inside she doesn't hear anything outside notion, is not supported by the evidence we have. You can suppose all you like that at just the moment your theory requires, Fanny went to her outside loo, but this will always amount to a leap of faith.

There’s nothing to ‘notice’ as I’m sure that everyone can understand that I’ve simply given two possible scenarios which explains the events whereas your approach is to say ‘these times don’t add up perfectly if taken as set-in-stone therefore someone must be lying.’ Mine aren’t the only timelines of course and no timeline can be stated as proven but they are vastly more likely than one which suggests that a man deliberately placed himself at the scene of a murder surrounded by a cast of totally invented characters that can’t back up his story (making him a potential culprit in the police’s eyes.) A prerequisite of this scenario is also that Schwartz was so careless of lying to the police that he wasn’t concerned that someone might actually have been present to refute his fantasy. Why would you believe this instead of the ‘official’ version, explained easily by poorly synchronised clocks (hardly science fiction) and inaccurate guesswork (an everyday occurrence)?

Its a case of ‘feet on terra firma’ or a fantasy scenario.

Actually, my approach is to say that the continual attempts and reattempts to create a coherent timeline, should hint that something is not right. The problem is, very few of us are prepared to take that hint.

You've made this "explained easily by poorly synchronised clocks" claim, over and over again. The irony is that I'm much more cognizant of the unsynchronised clocks issue that yourself. It's evident from your timeline related posts, that you've never really accepted that PC Smith and Louis Deimschitz cannot have been referring to synchronised clocks.

Diemschitz: On Saturday I left home about half-past eleven in the morning, and returned exactly at one o'clock on Sunday morning. I noticed the time at the baker's shop at the corner of Berner-street.

Smith: I was in Berner-street about half-past twelve or twenty-five minutes to one o'clock, and having gone round my beat, was at the Commercial-road corner of Berner-street again at one o'clock.

Up until quite recently, it was well accepted that one or both of these claims must be wrong. That acceptance now seems to be diminishing. There are, I would say, four basic approaches to dealing with the Smith/Diemschitz timing anomaly.

- Assume Smith was right and Diemschitz was wrong
- Assume that Diemschitz was right, and Smith was wrong
- Split the difference
- Ignore the difference


It's evident from your #220 post that you go with the fourth option. In that post you present two timelines, both of which contain these lines:

12.32 Smith sees couple A - a minute or two later they leave never to be seen again.

1.00 Fanny hears Louis horse and cart.

If you accept Smith's claim that he was last in Berner St in the 12:30-35 region, you must also accept that he was about to re-enter the street at 1am. You can't cherry-pick and can't suppose that Diemschitz was about to do the same thing. Your problem is that you need the extra minutes to make your theory work - in other words, to justify your belief in the claims of Israel Schwartz.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Goldstein has no estimate. He never gave a time that he passed so we are reliant on Fanny who requires deciphering rather than simply reading. And she’s impossible to decipher accurately. As I said at the start, Fanny is a fairly useless witness, and yet she’s relied on implicitly to facilitate all plot/deception/false witness scenarios.

Swanson states it was about 1am, in his report. Who do you suppose was responsible for this estimate, if not Goldstein?

[Herlock Sholmes]

You're missing my point, which is that the inside she doesn't hear anything outside notion, is not supported by the evidence we have. You can suppose all you like that at just the moment your theory requires, Fanny went to her outside loo, but this will always amount to a leap of faith.

How can someone not hearing something be supported by evidence? It’s actually your suggestion that requires the leap of faith because you are suggesting that when the incident occurred and also when Diemschitz passed she was in the same part of the house. I don’t really understand why you think that this is a valid argument. I could hear one thing whilst standing in my living room but I wouldn’t have heard it if I was in the kitchen.

Actually, my approach is to say that the continual attempts and reattempts to create a coherent timeline, should hint that something is not right. The problem is, very few of us are prepared to take that hint.

There’s no hint to take unless you believe that somehow all clocks and watches used and the time periods estimated were all almost miraculously accurate. And apparently this is what you appear to believe.

You've made this "explained easily by poorly synchronised clocks" claim, over and over again. The irony is that I'm much more cognizant of the unsynchronised clocks issue that yourself. It's evident from your timeline related posts, that you've never really accepted that PC Smith and Louis Deimschitz cannot have been referring to synchronised clocks.

More accurately - we cannot assume that they were.

Diemschitz: On Saturday I left home about half-past eleven in the morning, and returned exactly at one o'clock on Sunday morning. I noticed the time at the baker's shop at the corner of Berner-street.

Smith: I was in Berner-street about half-past twelve or twenty-five minutes to one o'clock, and having gone round my beat, was at the Commercial-road corner of Berner-street again at one o'clock.

Up until quite recently, it was well accepted that one or both of these claims must be wrong. That acceptance now seems to be diminishing. There are, I would say, four basic approaches to dealing with the Smith/Diemschitz timing anomaly.

- Assume Smith was right and Diemschitz was wrong
- Assume that Diemschitz was right, and Smith was wrong
- Split the difference
- Ignore the difference


It's evident from your #220 post that you go with the fourth option. In that post you present two timelines, both of which contain these lines:

If we were being accurate I would say that it’s not about Smith or Diemschitz being wrong it’s about how they arrived at their times. Unless we could go back in time and ask Smith what clock he used to arrive at his time and then check how it was synchronised to the Baker’s clock we have no way of knowing. All that we know is that it’s entirely plausible that there was a synchronisation issue which is far more likely that Diemschitz lying.

If you accept Smith's claim that he was last in Berner St in the 12:30-35 region, you must also accept that he was about to re-enter the street at 1am.

Then why can’t you accept that 12.35 + 30 minutes = 1.05?

You can't cherry-pick and can't suppose that Diemschitz was about to do the same thing. Your problem is that you need the extra minutes to make your theory work - in other words, to justify your belief in the claims of Israel Schwartz.

No one needs extra minutes. What we need is common sense:

The fact is that Smith arrived at the yard after Lamb who, in turn, arrived after Diemschitz.
The fact is that Lamb arrived around 10 minutes before Dr. Blackwell.
The fact is that Blackwell checked his watch as he arrived and got 1.16.
The fact, therefore, is that Lamb arrived at around 1.06.
The fact, therefore, is that Eagle must have met Lamb shortly before that.
The fact, therefore, is that this places Diemschitz return at around 1.00.

This fits like the proverbial glove. All we then have to do is to fit in Smith who arrived after Lamb. If you insist that there was just one time to fit all and that Smith arrived at set-in-stone 1.00, then not only do we call Diemschitz a liar but we call Lamb, Johnston and Dr. Blackwell liars too. This isn’t tenable and can’t be considered for a second.

The suggestion of dishonesty on Diemschitz fails at every single hurdle. Why would a man on a horse and cart lie about what time that he got back knowing full well that all that it needed was for one person to say ‘I heard a cart and looked out of my window and saw Mr Diemschitz from the club going passed. I told my husband who said ‘he’s back late…it’s twenty to one’’ What if someone had been on their doorstep and Louis hadn’t noticed them and they saw that he’d returned long before 1.00.

There’s no choice to make. It’s obvious which version is correct and it certainly doesn’t involve lying.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Swanson states it was about 1am, in his report. Who do you suppose was responsible for this estimate, if not Goldstein?

Clearly he’s estimating very loosely. Some time when Fanny was on her doorstep (and no one knows that)