Tabram Questions

[Bridewell]

Why?

Pearly Poll was reluctant in the way that she skipped town and hid by cops. But she came to the Commercial Street station of her own free will on Aug 9th, identified Tabram as 'Emma Turner' (probably by a photograph), and offered her account regarding the soldiers without prompting. She promised Reid she'd be there the next day to go to the Tower and then immediately left town. I personally believe she made the entire thing up.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,

What reason would she have for doing so? She was put to quite a lot of inconvenience with no obvious benefit.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Sally]

Good, pertinent observations, Sally.

I wouldn't call Conelly a “reluctant witness“. In my interpretation, she was about as reluctant as Fanny Mortimer! And as of her having allegedly been a “drinking buddy“ of Tabram, we have no proof of that but her (Conelly's) self-proclaimed claim. As a matter of fact, witnesses at the pub reported having seen Tabram alone, by herself there. Not with Connelly.

Thanks Maria

I think Connelly thought better of it after her initial statement. Beyond that point, I think her testimony has to be taken with caution - she may well have made it up. The fact that she was cautioned at the inquest supports the idea that she was considered unreliable.

It is of course impossible to know at this remove whether she was with Tabram or not on the night of Tabram's death - clearly she knew her though; and that might have been enough, what with all the other fellow-inmate deaths that had occurred at her lodgings, to make her run off. Why hadn't she done that before? I imagine the effect was cumulative. The murder of Tabram was a step up in savagery from what had happened to prostitutes living at Satchells before.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Bridewell. Motive isn't as important to me as evidence, and the evidence suggests Pearly Poll fabricated her entire story. As for motive, there could have been a number of them, only one being that she was paid by the police not only for her evidence, but her trips to the ID parades, etc.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Cogidubnus]

For what it's worth, my feelings regarding Pearly Poll are much the same as Tom's...I do in fact wonder whether her first appearance as a witness was fifteen minutes of fame conceived out of purely drunken bravado, and her subsequent disappearance a more considered response on sobering up...

All the best

Dave

[Bridewell]

Pearly Poll

For what it's worth, my feelings regarding Pearly Poll are much the same as Tom's...I do in fact wonder whether her first appearance as a witness was fifteen minutes of fame conceived out of purely drunken bravado, and her subsequent disappearance a more considered response on sobering up...

All the best

Dave

Hi Dave,

So just a coincidence that she spoke of herself and Tabram getting together with two guardsmen, and that Pc Thomas Barrett encountered a guardsman on Wentworth Street who was 'waiting for a chum who had gone off with a girl'?

Regards, Bridewell.

[Sally]

So just a coincidence that she spoke of herself and Tabram getting together with two guardsmen, and that Pc Thomas Barrett encountered a guardsman on Wentworth Street who was 'waiting for a chum who had gone off with a girl'?

I'm not sure I'd have referred to either of them as 'girls' - certainly not Poll, who was 35 and looked 50!

That aside, as she'd just come out of the infirmary, Poll would have needed to earn some money - it seems quite plausible that she went out on the holiday night, when there would've been a lot of people in a holiday mood with money to spend, with a friend/acquaintance who also happened to be a fellow inmate. They could work together, look out for each other, and enjoy a night out at the expense of whoever was paying.

And perhaps there were soldiers - but if there were, I don't think she had any intention of identifying them.

[mariab]

So just a coincidence that she spoke of herself and Tabram getting together with two guardsmen, and that Pc Thomas Barrett encountered a guardsman on Wentworth Street who was 'waiting for a chum who had gone off with a girl'?

Maybe she heard about PC Barrett's quote and concocted a story fitting with it. What's significant is that the people at the pub all witnessed Tabram ALONE. No Pearly Poll, no soldiers.

[Cogidubnus]

So just a coincidence that she spoke of herself and Tabram getting together with two guardsmen, and that Pc Thomas Barrett encountered a guardsman on Wentworth Street who was 'waiting for a chum who had gone off with a girl'?

Hi Colin,

There's quite a timing difference between the alleged soldiers pick-up (apparently witnessed by no-one else other than Poll) and the sighting of a loitering soldier by PC Barrett...

And with the number of troops quartered around the capital in those days* a casual sighting like this would've been far from unusual...so yes, quite possibly a coincidence...

Alternatively since Barrett's sighting was at 2am on the day of the murder (7th August), and Poll didn't even turn up at Commercial Street Police Station until 9th August, it's entirely possible she knew about the alleged military connection and decided to cash in on it, (a military connection, even suggesting an arrest, was being touted by the Evening News as early as 8th August)

*always worth remembering that over forty new barracks had been built in London during the Napoleonic Wars (additional to those already in existence) and these were kept manned for security reasons initially during the period of Chartist unrest, continuing latterly through the period of Fenian outrages.

All the best

Dave

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Dave. I'd say it's impossible that Poll DIDN'T know about PC Barrett and the soldiers, as it had appeared in the same newspaper reports that she had read which led her to believe that Tabram was the murder victim.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Cogidubnus]

You may well be right Tom...It's just that the Evening News one was quickest to hand...

Cheers

Dave

[caz]

I believe that Terrorism is indeed still a possible motive with one or more victims.

Possible, perry, but surely not the most likely motive, considering the circumstances of the victims, and the likelihood that they were all willingly in the locations where they were murdered. And of course evidence would be a fine thing.

If Im reading you correctly you seem to believe that the savagery evident in most of the Canonical Murders is something that demonstrates mental illness clearly...

Nope, I never mentioned mental illness. But I do believe the specific savagery of the murders we discuss, including Tabram's, was of too similar a nature, and too rare a nature, to warrant a conclusion that several different savages were likely responsible, for motives other than savagery for savagery's sake.

We know of many confirmed serial murder cases where at least five vulnerable victims (be they sex workers, homeless hitch-hikers, gay men or a rogue GP's elderly patients) were murdered for the sake of exercising power over life and death. I know of no cases resembling the Whitechapel Murders, where it turned out that some were domestics in disguise, or unclaimed acts of terrorism (no point if the world isn't made aware of the point by those responsible), or 'attempts at replication'.

How did all these individual murderers know, in 1888, to jump on a non-existent serial killer bandwagon, and act collectively like so many future serial killers would? Or is the idea that every serial killer since has been formed by this case, and grossly misled into imitating the behaviour of a man who never was?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Back on topic then, the Tabram murder does seem to afford a very promising link between the previous apparent 'gang' attacks on prostitutes, including Emma Smith, and the later 'ripper' murders.

If it's plausible that Jack was involved with others in the gruesome and senseless attack on Smith (and one person alone must have thrust the unidentified object inside her, causing her fatal injury), is it equally plausible that he went on to orchestrate the attack on Tabram, on the later Bank Holiday, possibly encouraging one of his sidekicks to join in with the stabbing - hence the resulting fatal and non-fatal wounds?

Is it even possible (though less likely in my view) that this same sidekick was responsible for Stride (BS Man?), while Jack (who may or may not have been Pipeman) went on to do Eddowes in Mitre Square, to up the ante, so to speak?

It might explain a lot if two thugs started off in competition, but only one could hack it like Jack.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lechmere]

Caz
One minute you are calling for sanity in suspect selection - based on looking at what tends to happen in the real world:

"We know of many confirmed serial murder cases where at least five vulnerable victims (be they sex workers, homeless hitch-hikers, gay men or a rogue GP's elderly patients) were murdered for the sake of exercising power over life and death. I know of no cases resembling the Whitechapel Murders, where it turned out that some were domestics in disguise, or unclaimed acts of terrorism (no point if the world isn't made aware of the point by those responsible), or 'attempts at replication'.

"How did all these individual murderers know, in 1888, to jump on a non-existent serial killer bandwagon, and act collectively like so many future serial killers would? Or is the idea that every serial killer since has been formed by this case, and grossly misled into imitating the behaviour of a man who never was?"

And then...
"It might explain a lot if two thugs started off in competition, but only one could hack it like Jack."
Except Nichols and Chapman showed no signs of being gang attacks. And it isn't as if it is usually the case with serial killers that two blokes start off doing it together and then one loses interest.