Was Mrs Maxwell lying

[Jon Guy]

Hi Richard

Maxwell's husband has never been looked into , so the answer is he has never been eliminated from suspicion.

I have covered this angle in my article "Trouble Brewing at Maxwell House"

;-)

[pinkmoon]

needs investigating

Hi Richard,having read through this thread I do believe you have something here this certainly needs more investigation .Let's face it people have thrown time and money at a lot more crazy things like royal coaches and diarys from Liverpool

[richardnunweek]

Hi Jon.
I never knew there was a article written, is it available.
Don't tell me two of us are on a certain path.
Regards Richard.

[curious]

Both Bond and Phillips had trouble estimating Times of Death, this much is evident.

Are we sure about that?

Perhaps we, 125 years distance, need to believe they could not estimate deaths accurately for reasons of our own.

curious

[Jon Guy]

Hi Jon.
I never knew there was a article written, is it available.
Don't tell me two of us are on a certain path.
Regards Richard.

Hi Richard

Sorry, I was only codding about the article, hence the little wink. but I have mentioned this angle a couple of times on the boards in the past.
I was so tickled by the title I may go for it after all.

[Robert]

Wouldn't Mrs Maxwell be doing the precise opposite to shielding her husband? She timed the sighting by her husband's return from work. The effect of post-dating the murder would be to remove his alibi, wouldn't it?

[Jon Guy]

Wouldn't Mrs Maxwell be doing the precise opposite to shielding her husband? She timed the sighting by her husband's return from work. The effect of post-dating the murder would be to remove his alibi, wouldn't it?

I don`t know, Robert, playing with this premise, if her husband was on the night shift in the building opposite Millers Court, and everyone was assuming that Kelly was killed during the night, Maxwell may have thought that making out Kelly was alive later that morning alibied her husband.

[Robert]

Hi Jon

But surely we don't know where Henry was working. If he was working at #14, and Mrs Maxwell lived there too, then how could he "return from work"?

[Beowulf]

Only my opinion, but I do tend to think that leaving the victim in Mary's bed would probably kind of ruin the plan to disassociate the victim from Mary.

Except that people down to this day throw out the theory it wasn't Mary Kelly in the bed, and Mrs. Maxwell's tale is part of their supposed proof of that mystery.

[Robert]

Hi Beowulf

But are we to suppose that Mary Kelly went to her room, found a mutilated body and didn't bother to mention it to Mrs Maxwell? If on the other hand there was nobody on the bed at the time of the Maxwell sighting, then it makes more sense to suppose that Kelly was killed subsequently, rather than that someone else was murdered.

[richardnunweek]

Hi Guys ,
First of all nobody knew accept the killer, or people who he admitted to, that there was a body in room 13 , Millers court.
When Mrs Maxwell claimed to have seen Kelly , nobody knew there was a body lying on a bed..except the killer.
You refer to the fact that Maxwell dates the sighting around 815-830am, and by that time her husband had left work, and was most likely [ for any alibi to be effective] seen with reliable types who would vouch for his location after the time Maxwell claimed to have seen the victim.
Yet during the night he may not have had a alibi.and may not have been able to account for his exact movements.
So when it became clear that the body had not yet been discovered , after she had returned on a milk errand, by coming forth after 1045am, knowing that her husbands whereabouts could be checked from the time of her alleged sighting, to the discovery of the body, it surely would not point to him as a suspect.
Regards Richard.

[Robert]

Hi Richard

Are you suggesting that Henry Maxwell sneaked out of his job, killed Kelly and then sneaked back to his job? Or that he killed Kelly on the way home from work?

[Wickerman]

Are we sure about that?

Perhaps we, 125 years distance, need to believe they could not estimate deaths accurately for reasons of our own.

curious

The reason we can be sure is because in the Chapman case Dr Phillips voiced his own reservations himself. No better authority on that score.

The Kelly murder presented a more problematical situation than even that of Chapman. And, as the same three principal methods of estimating ToD (Rigor/Livor/Algor Mortis) were no use with the Chapman case then naturally they are once again useless in the Kelly case.

Hence Dr Bond's need to fall back on Digestion.
Thats how we know.

[richardnunweek]

Hi Robert,
I will have to get my crystal ball out for that one .
The obvious answer would be sneaked out of work, but I have no idea if that would have been possible.
I should remind, that this solution of mine is tongue-in cheek, in an attempt to get away from the mistaken identity , wrong day , or a staunch belief in TOD accuracy discussions.
Regards Richard

[Graham]

As I understand it, Dr Bond arrived at Miller's Court at about 2.00pm on the Saturday, when he found the corpse in the early stage of rigor mortis which, he said, increased as his examination continued. He said the body was relatively cold when he first saw it. The food he found in the stomach and intestines was partly digested which suggested to him that death occurred about 3-4 hours after the food was taken. He stated that in his opinion death had occurred at approximately 1.00 to 2.00 am, or about 12 hours before he first examined the body. I do not know if the measurement of rectal temperature was, in 1888, an established procedure to assist in the estimation of t.o.d., but from what I understand of Dr Bond's reporting, he did not carry out this procedure.

Bill Beadle suggested that in those days it was difficult for t.o.d. to be even approximated, so he says that it is certainly not impossible for Kelly to have been alive even 4 or 5 hours prior to Dr Bond examining the corpse. I can't comment, as I just don't know. He also says that Morris Lewis and an unidentified woman claimed to have seen Kelly early on the Saturday morning, but how seriously the police followed up these claims I simply don't know.

Mrs Maxwell said that she had got the date right because it was the day she returned some china borrowed by her husband to a house over the road, but it seems that the police never followed this up, doubtless because they didn't believe her. By her own admission Mrs Maxwell had spoken only twice to Kelly prior to the murder, so it seems she didn't know her very well but probably enough to have recognised her at a short distance.

I really can't see why Mrs Maxwell should have lied. It seems to me that she was confused about the date, maybe even confusing that Saturday morning with the day before. Maybe she'd had a few bevvies herself, and was a bit fluttery as a consequence. Walter Dew said he discounted her evidence, and apparently he knew her quite well.

Graham