Open or Closed-Probabilities

[Guest]

Hi all,

Ive had this discussion with some members here, but I dont believe we discussed this on its own thread.....so here it is....

At approx 3:45am on November 9th, 1888, both Elizabeth Prater...just woken by her cat Diddles, and Sarah Lewis.....dozing in a chair at the Keylers, heard a woman cry out "oh-murder". Elizabeth said she heard it "as if from the court", and Sarah heard it "as if at her door".

Elizabeth Prater testified that she could hear when Mary moved about in her room when within her own room. I would think that means she could also hear a cry from Mary if made from inside the house. She didnt describe it that way though....she heard it "as if from the court".

We also know that no noise was heard by either woman following that cry.

We know that Marys 2 windows were either 3 rows of 5 small panes across, or 5 rows of 3 panes...(I cant find the picture at the moment that shows this best in my files)...and 2 panes were broken...in the lower right portion, and the upper left portion. One was blocked that night by a pilot coat....and the curtains were closed.

I submit that those 2 small holes would not have been sufficient to allow a cry to be heard semi loudly in Sarahs case and "as if from the court" in Liz Praters case. So, I believe that the cry, if from Mary, was while her door was open.

That would mean she;

1. Opened from the outside by herself and cried out for some reason which is unclear
2. She opened it from inside while alone in response to a knock or a sound that woke her
3. She opened it from inside while with company to find someone unexpected standing there
4. She opened it from the outside while with company and exclaimed for some reason that is unclear

The cat upstairs woke Elizabeth seconds before she heard the voice, suggesting that perhaps the cat was startled by noise from the court or the ground floor of the house. That would support a noise or a knock that precedes the voice.

This may seem a trivial point to some, but it isnt, because if the voice was Marys we know that no noise following it means it wasnt the start of a physical engagement between her and her killer. And its quite likely to me that it would mean that her door was open at the time. If she was alone asleep and wakened by sounds at the door or window, and she answered the door and made her exclamation...then its likely one of surprise, not fear. Which is essentially the import it was given by those 2 women....neither assumed a murder was actually occurring based on their impression of the voice. Despite the obvious use of the word in the exclamation. They had heard this kind of thing before....we hear that from a few witnesses throughout the Canonical cases.

Thats the overview of my position to support the primary question Id love some input on.....assuming the call was from room 13......Could Marys voice have been heard as described by the women if her door was closed?

If it was opened, and done by her from inside.....what does that say about her visitor? At the very least that he intentionally woke her to answer her door.

Best regards all.

[Mutt]

If a person can be heard moving about the interior of a room, through the wall of an adjacent room or apartment, then I agree that it is perfectly plausible for a witness to have heard a shout, scream or loud voice from a closed apartment or room. Perrymason indicates that the shouts are heard by the witnesses in the center of this case’s timeline.

The timeline as I understand it:
11:30pm - Thursday Evening - Victim seen walking towards home(2).
03:45am - Friday Morning - Loud shouts or exclamations heard.
10:45am - Friday Morning - Victim's Body discovered(1).

The fact that no indication of forced entry is made by the police leads me to believe that the victim brought her killer into her room or that she allowed the killer into her apartment by opening the door and consenting to entry. You raise an interesting possibility – that the victim was taken unawares in her room by a burglar / killer who utilized an unlocked door. However, given the facts of this case, I would submit that this is an unlikely scenario.

The fact that the victim was a prostitute cannot be overlooked. The hi-risk profession that Mary Kelly engaged in makes her a likely candidate for being victimized. Hookers approach their killers, and do not have to be sought out, the victim does the seeking. With this in mind, I find it difficult to avoid the assumption that the killer was approached on the street by the victim OR that the killer was known to the victim. If this is a Ripper murder, then the first scenario is more likely.

(1) The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, page 373
(2) Ibid, page 375

[Steve S]

I know it may sound obvious......But as both 'earwitnesses' weren't fully awake,there must be some doubt over their ideas of where the noise came from........speaking from when I've heard things when I'm just/half awake........
Steve

[Sam Flynn]

If a person can be heard moving about the interior of a room, through the wall of an adjacent room or apartment, then I agree that it is perfectly plausible for a witness to have heard a shout

Problem is, Elizabeth Prater only testified to hearing movements in Kelly's room in the same context as she mentioned being able to see light through the thin partition, i.e. as she climbed the stairs.

"On the stairs I could see a glimmer through the partition if there had been a light in the deceased's room. I might not have noticed it; I did not take particular notice - I could have heard her moving if she had moved. I went in [to my room] about 1:30 and put two tables against the door." (Inquest deposition of Elizabeth Stride).

Nowhere does Prater state explicitly that she could hear Kelly move about from the vantage-point of her (Prater's) bedroom. The only parts of Prater's testimony which relate to her hearing sounds from her own room was in answer to a question about whether she'd heard tables or chairs being pulled about in #13 after hearing the cry of "Murder!" and, of course, the cry of "Murder!" itself.

[Sam Flynn]

assuming the call was from room 13......Could Marys voice have been heard as described by the women if her door was closed?

Emphatically, yes.

[perrymason]

Well, on those 2 points I think you are way on a limb on Sam....for One, Elizabeth did state that she could hear Mary moving about in her room, and she did not qualify it as being when she was climbing the stairs. There are multiple quotes that back up that point.

On the second, if Marys voice was loud enough that Elizabeth could hear it from inside the house with Marys door and windows closed, then you explain her choice of words for what location she thought the voice came from. It wasnt loud enough to hear within the house? Well, Sarah thought the cry was "at her door". And how could Sarah think that if Marys door was closed? Her windows faced the whitewashed wall, not the Keylers, and 2 small broken panes, one covered by a pilot coat and curtains the other just covered by curtains arent great avenues for sound waves to slip through.

Your objection is primarily based on the fact that you believe the window above Marys windows didnt offer Elizabeth access to sounds from the courtyard...but thats where Liz thought it came from, so did Sarah.

Id rather you didnt discount what I believe is a very valid concept based solely on your personal belief about where Liz's room was located and how that window above Marys, or the one over the archway, or both, factors into the equation here.

We have statements that put to rest where they believed the cry came from. My point is that they could not have heard the cry from that location unless the originating voice spoke the words into the courtyard....via the open door is my premise.

My best regards

[Sam Flynn]

Well, on those 2 points I think you are way on a limb on Sam....for One, Elizabeth did state that she could hear Mary moving about in her room, and she did not qualify it as being when she was climbing the stairs.

I gave you the quote, Mike. That should be enough. That, and a logical, reasoned reading of the sequence of questions in the official inquest transcript and the other papers. Now, some of these we know adopted a "precis" approach to recording proceedings, and some of them got things wrong - the official transcripts aren't immune to this either. The point is, one should look at the totality of what was written down, and draw a reasoned conclusion from all the available sources, not just individual soundbites from the odd one or two.

[perrymason]

I do just that Sam, and as we know this issue drew from you a backing of a single source to contrasting reports numbering 7 or 8 I believe...with different wording but the same content.

We should be mindful of the totality....and the ratios.

Cheers Sam

[Barnaby]

Does "Oh, Murder!" strike anyone else as an odd thing to scream if one is being or about to be attacked? Could this scream be someone actually discovering the murder (and obviously not subsequently reporting it)?

[kensei]

Does "Oh, Murder!" strike anyone else as an odd thing to scream if one is being or about to be attacked? Could this scream be someone actually discovering the murder (and obviously not subsequently reporting it)?

Or the reaction of someone passing by as the killer came out of Mary's room, either holding his bloody knife or with obvious bloodstains on his clothes?

[Hellrider]

Or the reaction of someone passing by as the killer came out of Mary's room, either holding his bloody knife or with obvious bloodstains on his clothes?

what an irony of fate that would be but is it really credible that somebody would stumble upon a guy just like the one the entire district has been afraid of for months and just say a friendly "good night" and go on their way?

[richardnunweek]

Hi.
What are the odds that the T.O.D, was calculated from guesswork, and that famous cry of 'Oh Murder'.
Did Mary open the door to someone?
Was the room entered, without her knowing?
Was the cry uttered by someone else close by , unrelated to the murder?
Was the cry heard, kelly awakeneing from a nightmare?
Why is it that I am the only one on Casebook, who takes the latter suggestion seriously?
There are two witnesses to the kelly murder that endorse that suggestion, one is Mrs Prater, the other Mrs Maxwell.
The former at the inquest , suggested that the cry heard was like'Awakening from a nightmare'
The latter claimed to have seen Kelly some four hours later alive.
If Maxwell was right then clearly Mary was not attacked at 4am, and the explanation of a nightmare becomes plausible.
But lets not just take their evidence, how about Kit Watkins some three years later, who is alleged to have interviewed a court resident named Lottie who told her that the deseased [ Kelly] mentioned to her, that she had had a bad dream , in which she was being murdered.
This dream apparently occured somewhen after Sept 30th.
Unless Lottie was a work of fiction by Watkins, and the dream was invented because it tied in with what Prater recalled at the inquest, I would suggest the following.
According to the woman Lottie, the dream refered to Mary jane being murdered, which rather ties in with what words were heard at 4am that morning....Oh Murder'.
So we have a reoccurance of a nightmare Kelly had previously, brought on quite possibly by Barnetts preaching, and reading of the papers to her, and an awareness quite possibly of women that were known to her being cut to pieces on the streets.
And one should also mention alcohol, and paranoid fear of being alone in room 13 at nights, could also induce a reoccurance of that dream.
Regards Richard.

[Issack]

I am not as knowledgeable on this as all the rest of you on this, but what are your views on the following:-
Further to Barnaby’s observation, could the cry of ‘Oh Murder’ been from Mary Kelly as she returned to Millers Court alone at about 3:45am , and entered the room from the outside. (Hence door open and she was standing just outside the threshold)

She immediately observes that one of her lodging companions had been murdered within the room and gave out the famous cry, and ran away (never to return/ fleeing back to Ireland).
This would mean that the body in the room was not in fact Mary Kelly as has been suggested by some and would place the murder earlier, before the scream.

[Celesta]

Without seeing the actual site of both room and court, and conducting a test, we can do no more than speculate on how the cry would have sounded in that narrow court. If Prater thought the sound came from the area of the door, then we might also remember that the head of Mary's bed was against the same wall the door was in. A cry of murder coming from the bed might have been taken as coming from the doorway. The two were not far apart. Prater was drowsy but awake, and she apparently was used to hearing sounds from Mary's room. When she heard the cry of "O murder" she may have assumed it was coming from the doorway.

Or,

If the cry appeared to come from the area of Mary's door, then perhaps she had opened the door to let a client out, and once he had gone she didn't close the door, right away. JtR was lurking and probably waiting for just such an opportunity. JtR may have been familiar enough with the area to know that prostitutes came and went from Miller's Ct all the time. He could have followed Prater there, or Lewis, or Cox.

Or maybe he just tapped lightly on Mary's door and she opened it.

[c.d.]

I have to wonder whether the police began questioning witnesses by informing them that there had been a murder in the night or whether they started the questioning by asking the witnesses whether they had heard anything unusual in the night and then informing them that there had been a murder? Did they tell witnesses that another witness reported hearing a cry in the night before taking their testimony?

I watch the show "Ghosthunters." Quite often they pick up disembodied voices on their equipment. Many times when they first play it back it is garbled and hard to hear exactly what is being said. But then they say it sounds like blah blah blah. Then they play it again and you find yourself saying yeah it does sound like blah blah blah.

Could we be dealing with the power of suggestion here?

c.d.