Israel Schwartz,

[NotBlamedForNothing]

In Swanson's October 19 report, there is a sentence which begins...

If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they [Smith, Schwartz] are describing different men...

Why is there a reference to both 'his statement' and 'it'?
Aren't these one and the same, so that the sentence could just read...

If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report casts no doubt upon his statement, it follows if they are describing different men...

I'm not trying to be pedantic.
In the original sentence, I think the first 'it', is a reference to 'his story'.
Swanson sees a police statement as being the written form of a very short story, told by a witness in relation to a crime.
The statement itself, is merely the transcribing of a witness's story to paper, along with the signatures of the witness and attending officer.

This understanding of statements, could have been a big handicap in catching the Ripper.
Take Fanny Mortimer, for example.
Fanny spends most of about a half an hour, on her doorstep, looking up and down Berner street.
She sees some people, and that's it.
What exactly is her story, then?
Contrast to James Brown - his is a story because it has a start, middle and finish - more or less.
So Brown gets called to the inquest, and Mortimer does not, but surely Fanny sees more of interest, and is closer to the action.

Nowadays, a police statement would seem to be more inline with our 'information economy' - more focused on gathering data.
There is more of the who, what, why, where and when - than back then.

Try these dissertations:

Suspect and Witness - The Police Viewpoint
By Stewart P. Evans

THE MAN WHO SHIELDED JACK THE RIPPER:
George Hutchinson & his statement – An analysis.
BY DEREK F. OSBORNE.

[c.d.]

Swanson wrote what he wrote. Are you trying to criticize his writing style? You say that you are not being pedantic but that is how it is coming across. You are going to make yourself nuts if you start analyzing every statement made by the police in the hope of gleaning some hidden message.

c.d.

[Wickerman]

In Swanson's October 19 report, there is a sentence which begins...

If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they [Smith, Schwartz] are describing different men...

Why is there a reference to both 'his statement' and 'it'?
Aren't these one and the same, so that the sentence could just read...

If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report casts no doubt upon his statement, it follows if they are describing different men...

I'm not trying to be pedantic.
In the original sentence, I think the first 'it', is a reference to 'his story'.
Swanson sees a police statement as being the written form of a very short story, told by a witness in relation to a crime.
The statement itself, is merely the transcribing of a witness's story to paper, along with the signatures of the witness and attending officer.

Lets see how pedantic works...

If the sentence by Swanson is merely confirming that the police did believe him, it is a very long winded way of saying that. Especially when he begins the sentence with an "If".

Had a layperson made the same observation we might read, "If Schwartz is to be believed, and if the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, then it follows"......etc.
Which means Swanson has not yet seen a police report of the investigation into his story.

Alternatively, we might read: "If Schwartz is to be believed, and providing the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, then it follows"......etc.

As we can see, in neither case is Swanson confirming that he or the police believe the statement, at this point in time.

The difference in how Swanson structured his sentence when compared to how a layperson might have wrote the same thing, I think is due to Swanson's education. Educated people tend not to use an "if" twice.

In other words, I might say, If it doesn't rain, and if it isn't cold, I might do some gardening...
Whereas Swanson might say: If it doesn't rain, and it isn't cold, I might do some gardening...
The omission of the 2nd "if" is what has confused our understanding of what Swanson wrote.

At the time Swanson wrote that sentence he had not seen a police report of the investigation into Schwartz's statement. He did not know if Schwartz's story was credible.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I was not codding when I gave you the tip - this is not about being pedantic, or over-analysing Swanson's sentence structure.

It is about how this sentence provides a window into how Swanson thinks.

And Swanson thinks, in stories.

Here is a long quote from the 2nd dissertation, linked to above:

Hutchinson stated that he met Mary Kelly on the corner of Flower and Dean Street and that after a few words, she left him to walk down Commercial Street. A man coming in the opposite direction, stopped her and spoke to her. Hutchinson related: “...he then placed his hand around her shoulders. He also had a kind of parcel in his left hand with a kind of strap around it. I stood against the lamp of the Queen’s Head and watched him.” According to his account, Hutchinson was outside the ‘Queen’s Head at the corner of Flower and Dean Street’. But astonishingly, there was no public house by any name at this location. Instead, as a contemporary map reveals, there was only the bleak rise of a tenement block, to be found there. As to the ‘Queen’s Head’: this public house, rather than being located at the corner intersection of Flower and Dean Street, was actually located at the corner intersection of Commercial Street and Fashion Street. And to have reached it, Hutchinson would have to have turned his back on the couple he said he was observing, to walk further up Commercial Street. A distance, according to an Ordnance Survey Map, of one hundred and twenty yards. Therefore, Hutchinson’s contention that he watched a man engage Kelly near Thrawl Street, while he was outside the ‘Queen’s Head’ and that he was able to overhear their conversation, is totally discredited. How could he, by night’s dark cover plus at such a distance, have possibly observed such an innocuous detail as a strap around a small parcel?

In addition to Hutchinson’s uncertainty regarding his position in Commercial Street, we find a most curious break in his narrative. We have worked out that to reach the ‘Queen’s Head’, he would have walked away from the couple he said he was watching. With every step he took, the distance between him and Thrawl Street increased. Yet this episode, this unavoidable walk, is missing or has been erased from his statement. Why? Clearly for a man who could remember or recall the colour of a man’s eyes and eyelashes by night, it is a perplexing omission.

In light of these curious anomalies, I decided it would be worthwhile to examine Hutchinson’s original statement, (which is lodged at the Public Records Office). In doing so I came across a startling fact and one of paramount importance completely absent from the many books published on Jack the Ripper, which have included the statement of this labourer. For the long-held acceptance that Kelly and her client passed him at the ‘Queen’s Head’, is totally at odds with his original statement that he was standing outside another public house, one called the ‘Ten Bells’. And this particular public house we find, was sited at the corner of Church Street and Commercial Street, opposite Spitalfields Market. And this glaring discrepancy in Hutchinson’s testimony, we find was discovered only after his statement, labouriously taken down in longhand had been completed. However it was altered by a simple expediency: The wording of the ‘Ten Bells’ was struck through and substituted by that of the ‘Queen’s Head’.

By such an act, the construction of Hutchinson’s account became more readily acceptable. Yet even this alteration cannot explain or dispel his flawed testimony. Consequently, we are forced to consider that George Hutchinson’s account was a fabrication. The edifice, indeed the very foundations of Hutchinson’s story, rested solely on his points of observation, his locations in Commercial Street. Remove anyone of these key-ins and the whole structure of events he claimed to have witnessed, collapses like a house of cards. And collapse it did, as the police must have discovered.

But why then did the police, in view of this man’s obvious unreliability as a witness, decide to accept his story? To find a possible answer to this question...

...keep reading the dissertation.

However, the point seems to be that the police back then, are not thinking in quite the same way as we do now.
They are looking to create coherent stories, even if that means tampering with witness statements!

So forget about the grammar and context of Swanson's sentence re Schwartz - that is an overly superficial interpretation of what I'm alluding to.
I'm pointing out how Scotland Yard figures of the time, think in terms of little stories, rather than point-by-point analysis, with ambiguities removed.
That is why they gloss over so many small, but critical details.

Remember - the devil's in the details

[Wickerman]

Mr Osborne doesn't seem to have the first clue as to the taking of a witness statement - and you use that rubbish as the basis for an argument?

[Bridewell]

its a possibility. but why admit you were there at all?

Because someone's seen you and has has made it clear, by shouting abuse at you, that that is the case perhaps?