Let there be light!

[David Orsam]

That is easy to explain. Cox was living in No 5, in the last house "top of the court" as she said at the inquest. Cox also said "it was raining hard". So that is another explanation for why she did not hear it. Prater was living above Kelly, Lewis was staying just opposite.

The problem, Pierre, is that Cox said that she would have heard a cry had there been one. That was her evidence. She told the coroner "I should have heard any cry of murder I heard nothing". It's great that you sit at your computer in 2016 and say she was wrong but she did live there in 1888.

[Pierre]

Hello, Pierre.

You suggest that "There are articles in the British Newspaper Archives about people hearing cries of murder. They did not ignore the cries but went to see what had happened. Search the years 1887-1888 for "oh, murder" and "cry of murder" and you will find the articles."

I am certain that such a search may indeed reveal many stories involving people investigating a cry of "Oh, Murder" and then discovering a half-dead victim of robbery or assault lying in the street or in a back garden somewhere.
However, such a search would be valueless as it would be an entirely prejudiced endeavour.
Newspapers are very unlikely to report all the occasions that people investigated a cry of "Oh, Murder" only to find that the old lady next-door had simply spilt a cup of milk on the floor of her kitchen or a cat had knocked over her favourite vase.

Your, Caligo

Hi Caligo,

Well, they did find people murdered. And they found people kicked or beaten half to death.

They might also have found people spilling a cup of milk on the floor. The problem with the cup-of-milk-example is that such examples wasnīt recorded, as you say.

So in the first type of case, there is:

A: Murder!
B: Murder

and in the second type of case, there is:

A: Murder!
B: Maltreatment/Assault/Battery

And in the third type of case there is:

A: Murder!
B: No report of murder.

Which type of case was it 9 November 1888 in Millerīs Court?

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

Most people lie about things in their life even on a daily basis. The tendency in the sources shows that Prater had a motive for not leaving her room and go and look for the source of "Oh, murder!". She was protecting herself.

The phrase, "The tendency in the sources", is meaningless I'm afraid.

If the reason Prater took no action when she heard the cry of murder was that she was afraid, why did she simply not tell the police and the coroner that?

And what about Sarah Lewis. Why did she take "no notice" of it?

[David Orsam]

David, there are no sources telling us how common it was. We have one single source were one single person makes one single statement and that source have a tendency. Firstly, you can not generalize from one single source, it is no statistical source. Secondly, you have not performed any source criticism but you take the statement in the source at face value and believe it is true. History does not work like that. You miss the whole point of the information you can obtain by analysing the sources. You often make this mistake. Sources must be objects for source criticism. You can not just "believe the sources" without any critical thinking.

Of course I don't just "believe the sources" but, at the same time, you can't just ignore the evidence. As far as I can see, if one is being critical, it's just as likely that there was no cry of murder at all as that Prater was lying about it being a common occurrence.

[David Orsam]

As I told you, you can not take a source from a murder inquest and just believe it is telling you the truth. You must perform internal and external source criticism.

It should be obvious to you from this thread that I do not just "take a source" from a murder inquest and assume it is truthful. What you need to do is a careful analysis of the evidence.

[David Orsam]

You are very rude, David. And that is good. It shows everyone here what your true character is.

Pierre when you post passages like this:

"If"..."was not a common occurrence" demands comparison. There is no such data. Therefore there is no possibility to compare areas.

Also, the problem can not be solved from a point of view where it should be more "easy" or less difficult to understand. The understanding subjects - you, in this case, and me - may feel we understand, since we find it "easy". That may lead very wrong indeed."

I am perfectly entitled to describe it as pseudo-scientific gobbledigook.

There is a difference between being rude and being honest.

[David Orsam]

I gave you some search criteria. Go and look. You will find people in the past screaming "Murder!" even when they are committing suicide! How "natural" is that? How "logical" (another of your darlings) is that?

And another thing. "Murder!" was also used as a call for help. Go to the sources.

Give me some examples please Pierre.

[David Orsam]

Oh, no David. That wonīt do.

"Changing Praterīs evidence". It is your "evidence" that Observer would change. Because it is your interpretation of the source that people here want to change. They do not agree with you, David. They do not think that you are right. They want to think by themselves and they do not want you to dictate the past for them.

Prater's evidence was, in her own words, "It is nothing uncommon to hear cries of murder so I took no notice".

She also said: "I frequently hear such cries from the back of the lodging house where the windows look into Millers Court".

So she is clearly saying that the cry of "oh murder" that she heard on 9 November was like all the other cries she had previously heard.

But Observer is trying to say that she never heard anything like the cry of "oh murder" that she said she heard on 9 November and that all the other cries she heard were different. So Observer is changing Prater's evidence.

[Pierre]

QUOTE=David Orsam;386986

The phrase, "The tendency in the sources", is meaningless I'm afraid.

Yes, it is meaningless to you, David. Therefore you can see no meaning in the sources. You can only take their contents at face value.

If the reason Prater took no action when she heard the cry of murder was that she was afraid, why did she simply not tell the police and the coroner that?

I found a source for another case where a witness was called "coward" in court, since he did not go and see what caused the cry of murder.

In the case of the murder on Kelly, Prater lived upstairs and therefore she was one of the neighbours living closest to Kelly.

The case was not a usual case, but it was a murder case involving the Whitechapel killer.

A lot of expectancy could be directed towards people who heard a scream of murder in a location and on a night when the Whitechapel killer committed a murder. Prater understood that herself and that is the background to why she explained away the cry of murder.

And what about Sarah Lewis. Why did she take "no notice" of it?

She was a visitor. She did not know Kelly and therefore did not have the same option as Prater, who knew her. "I did not look out at the window. I did not know the deceased."

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

Yes, it is meaningless to you, David. Therefore you can see no meaning in the sources. You can only take their contents at face value.

Well I asked you on more than one occasion to provide some examples (even a single example) of a published historian using the expression "Tendency of the sources" and you couldn't do it. So it seems to be something unique to you and thus has no real meaning.

[David Orsam]

I found a source for another case where a witness was called "coward" in court, since he did not go and see what caused the cry of murder.

Well that witness was a male, which is a different gender entirely.

No-one was going to call a woman a "coward" for being fearful after hearing a cry of murder.

[David Orsam]

She was a visitor. She did not know Kelly and therefore did not have the same option as Prater, who knew her. "I did not look out at the window. I did not know the deceased."

What does knowing Kelly have to do with anything?

Prater never identified the cry of murder as having come from Kelly.

[Pierre]

What does knowing Kelly have to do with anything?

Prater never identified the cry of murder as having come from Kelly.

The sources, David. When are they produced?

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

The sources, David. When are they produced?

I don't understand your response Pierre. It doesn't seem to make any sense or have any bearing on the post of mine that you are, apparently, responding to.

My point was that Prater never identified the cry as having been uttered by Kelly. As a result, the fact that Lewis did not know Kelly is irrelevant when comparing her response to the cry with that of Prater's.

[Pierre]

I don't understand your response Pierre. It doesn't seem to make any sense or have any bearing on the post of mine that you are, apparently, responding to.

My point was that Prater never identified the cry as having been uttered by Kelly. As a result, the fact that Lewis did not know Kelly is irrelevant when comparing her response to the cry with that of Prater's.

OK. The point is that when Prater testified, it was no longer the night of 9 November. Kelly was no longer alive. She had been murdered in the room beneath Prater.

When Prater heard "Oh, murder!" it was the night of 9 November. Prater did not know that Jack the Ripper was in the room beneath her. Prater did not know that Kelly was not alive.

As you see, the knowledge that Prater had on the night of the 9th is totally different to the knowledge she had 12 November.

So when she testifies at the murder inquest, she is not a tape recorder from 9 November. She is a processor, processing knowledge, trying to remember what happened and trying to protect herself. Therefore, the court does not press a button and out comes a recording.

The same goes for the testimony of Lewis. On 9 November she did not know Kelly. But on 12 November she told the court that the sound of the cry seemed to come from the direction of the deceaseds room. If she was a tape recorder, when do you think the last sentence was recorded?

Regards, Pierre