The Home Office annotations - do they rule out a bayonet?

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Unless you accept - as I do, and believe you ought to - that central message of the Home Office report was that none of the wounds were ultimately considered to have been inflicted by a bayonet..."

You do not for a moment accept that Killeen was correct in saying that two weapons had been used, although there is not a shred of evidence to point in the other direction. You even tell me that I am merely guessing that professional medicos get their judgements abut the number of weapons involved in killings right more often than they get it wrong, thereby apparently suggesting a possibility that these professionals are utterly useless at their job, and that anybody could make these calls just as well as they could.

And after THAT, you now urge me to agree with you that a Home Office annotation that very clearly ONLY speaks of "some of the narrow wounds" in relation to the potential use of a bayonet, MUST be accepted as actually speaking of ALL of the wounds - narrow or not.

Are you really sure you donīt wish to rephrase this?

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

Hi All,

Things are seldom as they seem, and my golden rule is never to rule out any possibilities.

The street attack on Emma Smith, which resulted in her death, came shortly after an official investigation headed by James Monro based on allegations in the press and House of Commons that, across London, the Metropolitan Police were levying blackmail on cabmen, publicans, goods carriers and unfortunates.

Such a scenario could well explain Emma Smith's reticence when it came to identifying her attackers.

Merely food for thought. Check it out in the various newspaper archives.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon, levying blackmail on Emma Smith wouldn't have made one too wealthy.
45 years old.
Five foot too.
Drank more than she could afford.
That's also food for thought, isn't it ?

Cheers Simon

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

Just briefly, to avoid going over yet more old ground, but no, I don't see a problem with my phraseology. I certainly never said that I don't "for a moment accept that Killeen was correct in saying that two weapons had been used". I consider it rather unlikely, but by no means impossible.

The salient point in the Home Office document is that none of the wounds were ultimately considered to have been bayonet-inflicted.

Regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

No, Ben, that is NOT the "salient point" at all. For in fact, nothing at all along those lines is said in the document.
You tell us that Killeen only "opined" that the wounds on Tabram gave away two weapons, and in a sense that is correct. But a trained and qualified doctorīs opinion is the best we can hope for, so that should pose no problem at all.
It is also true that if I tell you that the Empire State building is taller than the loo at my friends summer house, it is only my opinion, grounded in a subjective analysis on my behalf. Opinions may be good and they may be less good. And when they are given by specialists and professionals at an inquest, they can, more often than not, be expected to belong to the former category.

However, when they are offered by posters on a site like this, who have chosen to let a guess of their own prevail over the informed view of a professional given at an inquest, one needs to treat such a thing with the utmost of care. And opining is exactly what you do here, Ben - opining that a totally unambiguously worded phrase - SOME of the NARROW wounds - instead means "ALL of the wounds, INCLUDING the NOT NARROW one".

Therefore, I offer MY opinion, and that opinion is that we should not "read" things into phrasings that are not there, and that it is a better approach to accept a written statement by the Home Office as meaning what is says instead of opting for changing what it says into something that tallies better with what we instead were hoping that it would say.

Some of the minor adventurous posters out here, I suspect, would agree with that suggestion. Not necessarily only the narrow-minded, though ...

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

I forgot about this thread, probably because I expressed my intention to "avoid going over yet more old ground", and optimistically imagined that people would go along with that. Oh well...

No Fisherman, Kileen's opinion is not the "best we can hope for", at least not as far as the issue of weapons is concerned. For that topic, a person with demonstrable expertise in weaponry would represent the dizzy heights to which I personally aspire, although Kileen's insights as to what may have caused Tabram's death (and other related matters) are of undisputed value. I suspect that's probably you all done now with the "professional doctors trump your opinion" argument. You've made your point, and I don't agree with such generalizations. Besides which, you simply don't practice what you preach in this regard, otherwise you would not have advanced certain theories here which militate very strongly indeed against contemporary professional opinion. If it didn't stop you, it isn't likely to stop me either.

I'm not trying to change the content of the Home Office document at all. It said that a bayonet was first suspected of having caused some of the wounds, but that the opinion was later revised. It doesn't matter if one, some, or all of the wounds were initially suspected of having been bayonet-inflicted. The ultimate conclusion was that none of them were.

All the best,
Ben