Oh, murder!

[Harry D]

I still find it weird that someone's response would be "Oh, murder!" in that situation. Not "Help!" or even a sudden scream but a literal cry of murder. It still could've come from MJK's room, but maybe the cause was Blotchy clumsily spilling some of his beer over her linens.

[David Orsam]

Why would she have added that detail, if she had not heard the cry coming from the back of the lodging-house on this occasion?

Sure, but you are missing the real point here. If the cries of murder she heard regularly came from the back of the lodging house, and the cry of murder she heard during the night of 9 November came from the back of the lodging house, then there was nothing to distinguish the cry of murder during the night of 9 November from all the other other cries she regularly heard.

[David Orsam]

It might have been some other floozie larking about in the "quad" between Lewis' and Kelly's room for all we know, it might have been imagined by Prater/Lewis, it might even have been Kelly's death-cry, but - whatever it was - it wasn't "any old noise in any old place", no matter how much one might like to dismiss it as such.

You've lost me again Sam. I've never used the expression "any old noise in any old place" but if it was some other floozie larking about, as you seem to be suggesting it might have been, then surely that does make it any old noise in the surrounding neighbourhood. And if it was, then it can be dismissed as such.

[David Orsam]

I really can't be bothered discussing this further with you. You're impossible.

No problem Sam. But I think you what you mean is,"It's impossible to prove that the cry of murder came from Kelly's room", which is why you are so frustrated.

[John G]

Speaking from personal experience, as some one who used to live on a block of four flats-two upstairs, two downstairs-I can confirm that it was incredibly difficult to determine which flat noise/sounds might have been emanating from. In the kind of multiple occupancy that existed in Dorset Street at the time, I would have thought it would be near-on impossible to do so with any degree of certainty.

[Sam Flynn]

Speaking from personal experience, as some one who used to live on a block of four flats-two upstairs, two downstairs-I can confirm that it was incredibly difficult to determine which flat noise/sounds might have been emanating from. In the kind of multiple occupancy that existed in Dorset Street at the time, I would have thought it would be near-on impossible to do so with any degree of certainty.

Thanks to the joys of stereophonics, two ears are usually sufficient to pinpoint the direction of a sound, but that can sometimes be ambiguous. However - and I can't emphasise how important this is - in this case we have four ears; one pair of ears out front (Prater) and another pair of ears out back (Lewis). The pair of ears out front indicate a noise coming from the back of the lodging-house, while the pair of ears out back indicate the noise coming from the direction of Kelly's room. These two "lines of hearing" intersect in the vicinity of Room 13.

Now, I'm quite happy to accept that both Prater and/or Lewis imagined this but, if they did, they didn't imagine some vague shout in the general neighbourhood, but a specific cry of "Murder!" which can feasibly be placed only within Miller's Court close to (or inside) Kelly's room, and nowhere else.

[John G]

Thanks to the joys of stereophonics, two ears are usually sufficient to pinpoint the direction of a sound, but that can sometimes be ambiguous. However - and I can't emphasise how important this is - in this case we have four ears; one pair of ears out front (Prater) and another pair of ears out back (Lewis). The pair of ears out front indicate a noise coming from the back of the lodging-house, while the pair of ears out back indicate the noise coming from the direction of Kelly's room. Whichever way we cut it, the two "lines of hearing" intersect very neatly with Room 13 or its immediate vicinity.

Now, I'm quite happy to accept that both Prater and/or Lewis imagined this but, if they did, they didn't imagine some vague shout in the general neighbourhood, but a specific cry of "Murder!" which can most feasibly be placed within Miller's Court, and nowhere else.

Okay, but how many residents occupied Miller's Court?

[Sam Flynn]

Okay, but how many residents occupied Miller's Court?

How many residents were there between Sarah Lewis's vantage point and Kelly's room?

Sorry to respond with a question, but it's a key issue.

[John G]

How many residents were there between Sarah Lewis's vantage point and Kelly's room?

Sorry to respond with a question, but it's a key issue.

I haven't got any statistics, however, I think that would be very difficult to determine, particularly when you consider that, in addition to official residents, there may have been an indeterminate number of guests/visitors.

[Sam Flynn]

I haven't got any statistics, however, I think that would be very difficult to determine, particularly when you consider that, in addition to official residents, there may have been an indeterminate number of guests/visitors.

Absolutely, John, but I'm not making any claim that the cry was made by Kelly or by a visitor/guest, nor even that there was a sound at all. My only point is that the evidence clearly indicates that the cry was heard/imagined coming from the vicinity of, or perhaps inside, Mary Kelly's room. None of the evidence is congruent with the idea that Prater/Lewis heard some sort of "street noise" arising from Dorset Street, Commercial Street or anywhere else.

[David Orsam]

My only point is that the evidence clearly indicates that the cry was heard/imagined coming from the vicinity of, or perhaps inside, Mary Kelly's room.

Could you quote the evidence which "clearly indicates" this?

[Pierre]

Oh my dear boy, I explained to you that your questions did not arise out of what I had posted, so there was no reason for you to be addressing them to me. You are as capable as I am of reading the evidence, my dear fellow, so there is no need for me to tell you what the witnesses said or did not say.

You sound like Oscar Wilde, David. Perhaps you should try your luck in the field of poetry?

Regards, Pierre

[John G]

You sound like Oscar Wilde, David. Perhaps you should try your luck in the field of poetry?

Regards, Pierre

Noel Coward?

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=David Orsam;412598]

Hi David,

going into historical and methodological detail now with your talk about "corroborating evidence" and "probability".

You wrote:

What I posted was corroborating evidence that the cry of murder was a frequent one in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, as Prater said,

The source you have for this is East London Observer 18 Aug. 1888, where superintendent Francis Hewitt and his wife - according to yourself - told a reporter:

'the district round here is rather rough, and cries of 'Murder' are of frequent, if not nightly, occurrence in the district.'

You have a very serious problem with this source: it is not a statistical study but merely presenting a subjective opinion. Still, you use this article, which has no reliability, claiming that it is

reducing the probability that the one heard in the early hours of 9 November by residents around Millers Court had anything to do with Kelly's murder.

You make four significant mistakes in this case:

1. You use two (or three including the wife) subjective statements to generalize about statistical occurence of a specific event.

2. You use your own generalization for conclusions about the Kelly murder, thereby taking a giant unscientific leap from a false generalization constructed by yourself on non reliable and non valid data, to a murder case for which you do not have any data at all concearning the possibility or probability for the event discussed to occur or not to occur as a consequence of attempted murder or murder.

3. The superintendent is talking about the "district". You can not draw from a whole district to a small area without knowing its implications. The cry was "frequent" in a much larger area. The type of deduction you make here is well known to be a non valid deduction within science.

4. You are being very sloppy with the concept "frequent", which means that you twist the substantial significance in the concept.

To make it easy for you, I will show you how you treat the concept and how the concept is twisted by you, by giving you a comparing example. Here we go:

This is your actual hypothesis:

A cry of "Oh, murder!" could not follow as a consequence of murder or attempted murder on the night of a murder, since there were cries of "Murder!" heard in the larger area on other nights.

Comparing with a funcionally equal hypothesis:

A sound of a car stopping could not follow as a consequence of a bank robber stopping his car outside the bank on the night of a bank robbery, since there were sounds of cars stopping heard in the larger area on other nights.

As you can see, in the second example the substantial significance is low. This means that the event of the car stopping is very common, it happens many times every day, perhaps hundreds of times.

But: the cry of "Murder!" is a much less frequent event. Therefore you use the concept of "frequency" appearantly sloppy, but it is just your own strategy to get your own biased opinion through to others who have other opinions than yourself. In this case Sam. (And still you take it upon yourself to ask him for "evidence"!)

I think your strategy is very cheap and misleading. I would recommend anyone who discusses the issue of "Oh, Murder!" with you to be very careful with everything you say.

And by the way, the "frequent" sound of murder differs from "Oh, Murder!". There is an "Oh!" missing. That could also be discussed by others who are serious when they approach the issue.

Now, I am afraid that you will just answer me that you do not understand much of what I have told you here. That may indeed be your strategy. We will see.

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

Oh my dear boy, that was most kind of you to type all those words out for me in such an amusingly random order but you are quite right, and remarkably prophetic, I couldn't decipher the code at all.

But allow me to offer another example, in addition to the evidence of Prater and the reported remarks of the Hewitts, which can be found in the evidence of Sarah Lewis as reported in the Evening Post:

Sarah Lewis, living at 24, Great Pearl-street, Spitalfields, a laundress, said she went to Miller’s court on Friday morning at 2.30 a.m. She went to a Mrs. Keller’s. Standing outside a lodging-house she saw a man on the pavement. He was by himself; he was not very tall but rather stout, and wore a black wideawake hat. He was looking up the court, as if waiting for someone to come out. She heard no noise in the court; there was no one there. On getting into Mrs. Keller’s room she sat in a chair and dozed. She woke up at half-past three. She heard the clock strike, and sat awake till nearly four, when she heard a female voice scream loudly – it seemed to be a young woman – “Murder!” It was only one scream. They often hear such screams and cries in the neighbourhood, but no notice is taken of them.