The fire in the grate explained

[GUT]

People (not just Pierre) constantly talk about how the Miller's Court murder scene was "risky" for the killer - how somebody could have come home, how somebody could have heard through a partition, how somebody could have put their hand through the broken window, etc. People, not just Pierre, have been saying this on Casebook for years.

I find it utterly absurd in the context of the Whitechapel murders. Whatever the security flaws at Millers Court, it was the least risky murder scene of the entire murder series! Thus I don't think that Pierre's assumption that the murderer would not dare light a fire during the murder or mutilation holds.

Inside a room v Out in the Street.

One has a greater chance of being trapped, but a lower chance of anyone knowing a murder was happening in the first place.

I know which I would have chosen if I had the choice.

But that may not suit some people's hypothesis.

[GUT]

[b]I especially ask David Orsam and GUT here in the forum to abstain from trying to destroy this thread by putting belittling and ridiculing commentaries in it.

And by that you mean anything that disagrees with you, or shows the glaring mistakes in your hypothesis?

Sorry.

Oh great Historian.

C and D are pure fantasy.

B is imaginative I give you that much.

and E doesn't account for the later sightings, by Maxwell and Lewis.

[Damaso Marte]

People (not just Pierre) constantly talk about how the Miller's Court murder scene was "risky" for the killer - how somebody could have come home, how somebody could have heard through a partition, how somebody could have put their hand through the broken window, etc. People, not just Pierre, have been saying this on Casebook for years.

I find it utterly absurd in the context of the Whitechapel murders. Whatever the security flaws at Millers Court, it was the least risky murder scene of the entire murder series! Thus I don't think that Pierre's assumption that the murderer would not dare light a fire during the murder or mutilation holds.

[The Good Michael]

Hi,

I have analysed the original inquest papers and have decided on an interpretation for the fire in the grate, as you have seen in my thread "Let there be light!"

I analysed the sources and postulated the hypothesis that the fire was lit by the killer to use the light for revealing the murder scene to a witness.

I am now adding a few data contained in the original sources to confirm that I can not reject this hypothesis:

1. Abberline´s statement at the inquest:

"I have taken an inventory of what was in the room, there had been a large fire so large as to melt the spout off the kettle I have since gone through the ashes in the grate & found nothing of consequence except that articles of woman´s clothing had been burnt...".

Interpretation: The fire was lit by the killer, since the victim was poor and would not afford to burn clothes.

2. Bowyer´s statement at the inquest:

"...there was a broken window in the farthest window...I looked through the window and there was a curtain over the window I pulled the curtain aside and looked in...".

Interpretation: Putting a hand inside the room and pulling the curtain aside was all it took to look into the room and see what was there.

Therefore, the murderer would not have lit the fire during the murder and mutilations. The risk of discovery was too high.

Conclusions:

A) The murderer lit the fire since women´s clothes were burned. The victim could not afford to burn clothes.

B) The murderer did not light a fire before or during the murder and mutilations since the risk of discovery was too high: anyone could have put their hand through the window and pulled aside the curtain at any point in time.

C) The murderer therefore lit the fire to light up the room for the witness.

D) Evidence for the last conclusion is the scream "Oh, murder!" observed by two different witnesses living close to the murder site.

E) Given the facts I now establish above, we have very good evidence for a TOD before or about 04.00. At 04.30, Kelly <script id="gpt-impl-0.8029405969450973" src="http://partner.googleadservices.com/gpt/pubads_impl_83.js"></script>was definitely dead.

[B]I especially ask David Orsam and GUT here in the forum to abstain from trying to destroy this thread by putting belittling and ridiculing commentaries in it.

A is correct. E might be. the rest are doubtful.

Mike

[Mayerling]

"IF" is not an historical concept. "IF" Hitler had not invaded Poland, "IF" the Romans had not invaded Greece, "IF" Christ was born or not born, "IF" there was no "Jack the Ripper". And so forth and so on.

We can only talk about what the sources have given to us. It is there.

Oh, and by the way. The "problem" of Prater talking about screams is no problem. You can NOT generalize from Prater. You need at least 50 randomly selected persons if you want to know if such screams were common. So what Prater thought was common is useless.

Regards, Pierre

Actually Pierre, you are quite off center about "iffy history". Yes we are aware it did not occur, but it sharpens our minds as to what did occur. For example, if Hitler had not invaded Poland (your first point here) we would have had to wonder what would have prevented him doing that in September 1939. This leads us to consider the flow of events in that awful summer of 1939. Most likely von Ribbentrop can't reach terms with Molotov about the pact Hitler was relying on to prevent a two front war. This figure might trigger a revolt against Hitler's regime (though I'd doubt it). It certainly would slow down his war time table. Or perhaps he has a car accident and dies, and his successor is smart enough to cool things off and let Nazi Germany consolidate it's gains from 1935 to 1939. If that had happened his successes would have entitled Hitler to a higher level of respect for his drive at restoring German power (much as we'd hate to admit). Iffy history (a term that was created in the 1930s by FDR in the wake of a series of essays by historians looking at events like the Spanish Armada winning or Napoleon escaping to the United States in 1815) does have it's uses - but it should not be used too far. A book I have about the fate of King Edward V of England and his brother Richard, Duke of York in 1483 (?) suggests they are not deposed and slain, but have two successful reigns - and then proposes a series of really far out, "and we all lived happily ever after" kind of idiocies that ruin proper use of the concept.

Jeff

[Elamarna]

Pierre,

It is clear you struggle with any challenge to your views

"You are intentionally interpreting everything I say about historical methods wrong. But if you would like to read a book about "Jack the Ripper" written by an actor or a journalist, go on, I will not try to stop you. That does not mean that actors or journalists are lacking "intellect and understanding", but they are not historians and I am not an actor. They are not historians and I am not a journalist. You would not want to see me act and you would not want me to write your local newspaper, so why would I want to read their books, called "history", which is no history? And saying that, am I making "derogatory comments"? No, I am stating the obvious: They are not historians."


No I am not misinterpreting what you say.
Once again there is an attempt to change the issue, I was not, and am not talking about writers, or actors or historians; I was commenting on the replies that are given to the other posters on here.
That was perfectly clear from my post and the section you quoteed before giving the above statement:

"Like normal when questions are asked, which are difficult to answer, the response is to make derogatory comments about the posters intellect and understanding. "





"Those questions are not the questions I have been working with: "Did the killer add clothes"? "Was the fire already lit"? Read the first post."



You replied to a question, the reply was not clear, you were asked for clarification.

I asked this because your statement about the importance of Bowyer looking in the hole in post #1:


"Therefore, the murderer would not have lit the fire during the murder and mutilations. The risk of discovery was too high."


Gives no indication or evidence to whom lit the fire. The answer you gave required further explanation.

Now it is not a question you want to answer. That is simply unreal!



""Or is it so weak?" What sort of nonsens question is that? Is it a question about the subject of the thread? No. Are you a troll, Steve?"


I will not even bother answering the last sentence; however it does back up the the comments made earlier.

You suggested I was trying to dismantle the thread, by asking a simple question on clarification, this would suggest that the hypothesis is not very robust.

indeed it was you who raised this issue, not me:

"You are killing all the conclusions as well as the hypothesis I have presented to you. You point out only one item."


While I was not pointing out only one issue with the conclusions anyway, see post #15; how could one point kill an hypothesis if it were robust.


""Established as stated"? What?"


In post #1 it was stated:

"E) Given the facts I now establish above"



Well they are not facts, they are suggestions and opinions, and they are not established.


to go back to the comment:

"You are killing all the conclusions as well as the hypothesis I have presented to you. You point out only one item."


Is an hypothesis, not meant to be challenged? During that process are failings and faults in said hypothesis not be discussed?
It appears that comments are only welcome if they agree with the hypothesis in the first place.
Therefore one asks why bother to post it at all if you cannot accept the criticism.

Steve

[Pcdunn]

Hello, Pierre.

A) is logical, I think, if we assume the burnt articles of clothing belonged to Kelly, and she needed them. We have sources indicating they may have not been her possessions, despite having been found in her room, specifically in the fireplace.
Can we assume that a poor person would burn articles of clothing, such as a child's blouse, which she herself had no use for, except perhaps as fuel for a fire on a cold night?

C) This is an interesting statement, but leads a reader to wonder: what witness? You seem to refer to a witness in the room itself, rather than someone outside or in a neighboring room. Can you explain your thinking here?

[David Orsam]

Oh, and by the way. The "problem" of Prater talking about screams is no problem. You can NOT generalize from Prater. You need at least 50 randomly selected persons if you want to know if such screams were common. So what Prater thought was common is useless.

I see that you added the above paragraph after posting. It's completely untrue. If screams in the night were common it only needed one person to have heard them to establish that they were common. Why you think "at least 50 randomly selected persons" are needed to confirm this is utterly baffling.

[David Orsam]

Pierre I found your reply basically incomprehensible.

I think that what you are trying to say is that Prater heard two or three screams of murder by a female during the night. In order to explain to the police why she did nothing about them she tried to pretend that she "frequently" heard such cries. Then, when it came to the inquest, she further attempted to minimize her responsibility by telling a second lie: namely that she only heard the cry of murder once in a faint voice. She then repeated the lie that such a cry was "nothing uncommon", again to absolve her from responsibility of doing nothing.

I understand THAT if you are trying to say it. But then you have some problems. If Prater heard two or three screams in the night then why did Sarah Lewis, who sat awake from 3.30 to 5am, only hear one scream? Why did Mary Ann Cox, who did not go to sleep at all that night, and who said that she "should have heard any cry of murder" had there been one, hear nothing at all?

Suddenly your hypothesis that there actually WAS a cry of murder starts to crumble. Prater you tell us is basically a liar. She lied in her police statement and she lied on oath at the inquest because she lied about hearing only one scream and she lied about such cries being common. Then Lewis must have lied too because either there were two or three screams, as Prater originally told the police, or there were none. Mary Ann Cox was very clear that there was no scream at all during the night. If Lewis lied then we have two untruthful witnesses at the inquest so why should be believe anything they said?

The above is written in plain English Pierre and if you are able to reply to me in plain English it will be appreciated.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hello David,

I must admit that I find the Kelly murder scene something of a conundrum. Thus, the fact that her clothes were neatly folded on the chair, coupled with the fact that the body was found in the middle of the bed, suggests to me that she may well have been asleep when she was attacked.

However, although I believe she was killed by JtR I find it hard to believe that he would have waited for Kelly to fall asleep until striking. After all, the other murder scenes suggest a killer who struck quickly and decisively, with little evidence of self restraint.

Of course, he could have accessed the room whilst Kelly was asleep, but this isn't at all consistent with JtR's MO. Also, there is no evidence of forced entry, and how would he have known about accessing the room via the broken window unless Kelly was known to him? It could have been a crime of opportunity, however, I can't somehow envisage JtR wandering through the local neighbourhood in search of asuitable solitary victim, asleep in a suitable residence with an easy access point.

The most important pieces of evidence suggest she was killed when lying on the right hand side of the bed, and this would suggest to me that the killer was in bed with Kelly: otherwise why not lie in the middle of the bed in the event of sleeping alone.

This doesn't necessarily suggest he waited a while. He may simply have waited only until she was compromised lying between him and the wall, which could have been a matter of a few minutes from stepping inside the room. That would have been convenient for Jack in the sense that he didn't have to subdue her to get her into position.

[Elamarna]

The conclusion you stated was this:

A) The murderer lit the fire since women´s clothes were burned. The victim could not afford to burn clothes.

based on this:

1. Abberline´s statement at the inquest:

"I have taken an inventory of what was in the room, there had been a large fire so large as to melt the spout off the kettle I have since gone through the ashes in the grate & found nothing of consequence except that articles of woman´s clothing had been burnt...".

Interpretation: The fire was lit by the killer, since the victim was poor and would not afford to burn clothes.

But Abberline's statement does not lead to your conclusion. He says nothing that implies the fire was lit by the killer. As I said, the fire could have been already lit (presumably by MJK) and the killer added the clothes. This could be interpreted from Abberline's statement just as well as your interpretation could.

Then, your conclusion:

C) The murderer therefore lit the fire to light up the room for the witness.

Would indeed be a reason why the fire was not already lit.. however you had come to the "killer lit the fire" conclusion from JUST Abberline's statement, ie before considering Bowyer's statement in any way.

So I agree that you one could combine the two together to make a "killer lit the fire" interpretation, your stated interpretation A is flawed as it stands.

Azarna

The fire is out or nearly so by the time Bowyer arrives, it is broad daylight.
How can his looking in at 10.45, he is not the "witness" who cries out, be any indication of who lit the fire?
Pierre suggests that Bowyer looking leads him to the conclusion:


"Therefore, the murderer would not have lit the fire during the murder and mutilations. The risk of discovery was too high."


It does not give any indication or evidence to whom lit the fire.


However you are perfectly right about A being flawed.

Steve

[Azarna]

The conclusion you stated was this:

A) The murderer lit the fire since women´s clothes were burned. The victim could not afford to burn clothes.

based on this:

1. Abberline´s statement at the inquest:

"I have taken an inventory of what was in the room, there had been a large fire so large as to melt the spout off the kettle I have since gone through the ashes in the grate & found nothing of consequence except that articles of woman´s clothing had been burnt...".

Interpretation: The fire was lit by the killer, since the victim was poor and would not afford to burn clothes.

But Abberline's statement does not lead to your conclusion. He says nothing that implies the fire was lit by the killer. As I said, the fire could have been already lit (presumably by MJK) and the killer added the clothes. This could be interpreted from Abberline's statement just as well as your interpretation could.

Then, your conclusion:

C) The murderer therefore lit the fire to light up the room for the witness.

Would indeed be a reason why the fire was not already lit.. however you had come to the "killer lit the fire" conclusion from JUST Abberline's statement, ie before considering Bowyer's statement in any way.

So I agree that whilst you one could combine the two together to make a "killer lit the fire" interpretation, your stated interpretation A is flawed as it stands.

[Pierre]

And this is my last post for today.

[Pierre]

Well Pierre, here is what you posted:

"Yes, I have. I have drawn the conclusion that there is a correlation between the scream and the murder and have done so due to the results of the internal and external source criticism of the Prater sources:

There is a tendency in the Prater inquest source. This tendency gives the source a bias, where Prater tries to add explanations for why she "took no notice" of the scream.

The tendency is revealed by Prater saying that "I did not hear it a second time", thereby constructing an inconsistency in the inquest source compared to the police investigation source, where Prater states that she heard the scream "about two or three times".

So at the inquest, she is trying to diminish the relevance of the observation of the scream, by giving another statement than she did in the police investigation, thereby making the observation seem less serious.

So we can not use Praters testimony about how "common" such screams where, since there is a tendency in the most important source. And since there was a murder in the room below Prater and opposite Lewis that night - this is something we know - the conclusion should be that there is a correlation between the observations of the scream and the murder."

You will have to forgive me if I have misunderstood anything because it is written in typical "Pierrespeak" not easy to understand - and, as usual, you muddle up sources with witnesses - but let's see what we can make of it.

1. In saying "Prater tries to add explanations for why she "took no notice" of the scream." you are surely implying that by adding an explanation that a cry of murder was not uncommon she was providing perjured evidence at the inquest are you not?

No, David. That statement was in the first source too! She is changing the number of times she heard the scream.

2. Support for this conclusion comes from your statement that, "she is trying to diminish the relevance of the observation of the scream, by giving another statement than she did in the police investigation, thereby making the observation seem less serious."

3. Then you say: "So we can not use Praters testimony about how "common" such screams where, since there is a tendency in the most important source." You are confused here because Prater is not a source she is a witness (and the source, being her deposition, is presumably accurate) but you appear to be concluding that she had a "tendency" or "bias" and was thus giving false evidence at the inquest.

Oh, dear. Not again.

I am sure you can read, can´t you? "since there is a tendency in the most important source." Do not MIX the source with the witness or the person speaking in the source. You frequently do this. It is a major error.

How am I doing so far?

?

4. The only support for your claim that she had a tendency or bias - and was giving perjured evidence - is that her police statement was inconsistent with her inquest testimony thus you say: [I]"The tendency is revealed by Prater saying that "I did not hear it a second time", thereby constructing an inconsistency in the inquest source compared to the police investigation source, where Prater states that she heard the scream "about two or three times"."[/I]

I do not do "support". I criticize the sources. It is also a matter of external source criticism. Prater is in a highly formalized situation at the inquest. And in spite of this, she changes her testimony. So it is important to her. Therefore, the substantial significance of the change is high.

5. You must be suggesting, therefore, that Prater was lying during her inquest testimony when she said that she did not hear the cry a second time. If she was telling the truth it cannot be revealing a "tendency" can it?

It is not an issue if she is lying - since this is NOT AN INQUEST! We are NOT IN COURT right now! We are analysing old sources! I have not asked the source: Did Prater lie? And would not. Since it is not a relevant historical question in the context of the explanation.

6. But if Prater was lying during the inquest this means she must have heard two or three screams which then raises the question of why Lewis only heard one scream does it not?

There are two sources for Prater. In one of them, she made a different statement. This can not be explained by the statement of another person.

7. I have tried to ask you whether Prater was or was not lying at the inquest on this part of her testimony but have managed to get nowhere with you.

No. See above.

8. So I will ask you this directly:

1. When Prater said that a cry of murder in the street was common or uncommon was she telling the truth about that or lying?

That is not a research question I have been working with. Perhaps you will, so come back with the results if you will.

But do not generalize to "the area" or "the neighbourhood" from the statement of one single person.

2. If she was telling the truth then does that not undermine your suggestion that the cry of murder she had was someone seeing the mutilated body of Kelly?

If we really, really believe that Prater really, really felt and really, really believed that such cries were common in the area, would it be really, really true then?

3. If, however, she was lying, please explain clearly what basis you have to suggest that she was giving perjured evidence at the inquest.

"IF" is not an historical concept. "IF" Hitler had not invaded Poland, "IF" the Romans had not invaded Greece, "IF" Christ was born or not born, "IF" there was no "Jack the Ripper". And so forth and so on.

We can only talk about what the sources have given to us. It is there.

Oh, and by the way. The "problem" of Prater talking about screams is no problem. You can NOT generalize from Prater. You need at least 50 randomly selected persons if you want to know if such screams were common. So what Prater thought was common is useless.

Regards, Pierre

[Elamarna]

Pierre

To Get back to the hypothesis conclusions,

if there was a witness who cried out "oh murder"

1. Who was this person?
2. what was this person doing at 13 Millers Court at 3.45 approx?

to take this further you must have suggestions for these two questions

steve