Chapman’s death.

[The Baron]

Phillips can very safely be dismissed.

The poster who spent his entire time defending Macnaghten, and arguing against dismissing him, Macnaghten who did not join the force until June 1889, and Commissioner Charles Warren described him as incompetent and blocked his original appointment in 1887...

Yet the same poster wants us to safely dismiss Dr. Phillips who was active on the ground during the murders in spite of all his experience, qualifications and examinations.

This is a special moment indeed, and shows how far a biased mind can go.



The Baron

[Herlock Sholmes]

The poster who spent his entire time defending Macnaghten, and arguing against dismissing him, Macnaghten who did not join the force until June 1889, and Commissioner Charles Warren described him as incompetent and blocked his original appointment in 1887...

Yet the same poster wants us to safely dismiss Dr. Phillips who was active on the ground during the murders in spite of all his experience, qualifications and examinations.

This is a special moment indeed, and shows how far a biased mind can go.



The Baron

If you'd been following the discussion in this thread Baron, you'd know that Dr Phillips' experience, qualifications and examinations (aren't the last two the same thing?) count for nothing because medical science in 1888 (as, indeed, today) didn't have the knowledge to reliably estimate a time of death. More to the point, it wasn't possible to feel the warmth or coldness of a body and then come up with an accurate and reliable estimate, be it one hour, two hours, three hours etc. So Phillips was doing what was impossible, as any forensic pathologist today would confirm.

As for your laughable comment about Macnaghten (a man you appear to, like myself, have an obsessive dislike of) the less said the better except that it’s difficult to see how you can question his competence in the job on he grounds of Warren’s criticism of him which was based on events in India before he became a Police Officer.

Every single post of yours is nonsense Baron. You’re desperately backing Fish even though you obviously don’t understand the argument. Get used to this idea Baron - Fish lost the argument long ago. If you, like him, want to exist in a fantasy world where every single Forensic expert is disregarded in favour of the actions of a Victorian Doctor then that’s up to you but don’t expect to be taken seriously.

[etenguy]

More to the point, it wasn't possible to feel the warmth or coldness of a body and then come up with an accurate and reliable estimate, be it one hour, two hours, three hours etc.

Certainly, even with good measurements, estimating TOD based on core body temperature is fraught with difficulty and is unreliable, especially in the circumstances in which Annie Chapman's body was found. I cannot find any model for using skin temperature to estimate time of death (doesn't mean one does not exist, but if it does it is not a common approach). It would appear Phillips did not take any temperature measurements and instead relied on his touch. This seems to me to give no basis for estimating TOD with any sort of reliability.

You may remember in the Julia Wallace thread there was a doctor who was equally remiss in his examination of a body and TOD was crucial in trying to establish the murderer.

[Sam Flynn]

I understand what you are saying Sam and I can't say that you are wrong. Only that the normal procedure to test for warmth was to place the hand beneath the part of the body in contact with the ground.

In which case Phillips would have referred to the "small of her back", or similar, not under the intestines IN the body.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Certainly, even with good measurements, estimating TOD based on core body temperature is fraught with difficulty and is unreliable, especially in the circumstances in which Annie Chapman's body was found. I cannot find any model for using skin temperature to estimate time of death (doesn't mean one does not exist, but if it does it is not a common approach). It would appear Phillips did not take any temperature measurements and instead relied on his touch. This seems to me to give no basis for estimating TOD with any sort of reliability.

You may remember in the Julia Wallace thread there was a doctor who was equally remiss in his examination of a body and TOD was crucial in trying to establish the murderer.

Yes I do Eten it was Dr Mcfall. This is an interesting snippet from the Leeds Mercury of 25 April 1931, reporting on the trial of Wallace at Liverpool Assizes:

"Professor Dibble of London University said the rigor mortis method of fixing the time of death was very unreliable. In this case, according to the evidence, death might have taken place after seven o'clock or before six o'clock.

Mr Justice Wright: There seems to be a big difference of opinion among medical experts on this point.

Professor Dibble: It is a notoriously difficult subject."

[Herlock Sholmes]

In which case Phillips would have referred to the "small of her back", or similar, not under the intestines IN the body.

Yes, I understand Sam. I said I regarded it as an odd form of words. On a pure interpretation of the words alone, as reported, you must be correct but I still hold the opinion that he couldn't have meant what it seems like he was saying because I'm taking into account my general understanding of how a doctor would operate at the crime scene. The only thing I can really think of that would make sense of the language is that in moving the body, or reuniting parts of the removed intestines with the body itself, Phillips happened to feel heat from Chapman's remaining intestines. I just don't think it would have formed part of an examination at the crime scene to test for heat there. I've never even seen it mentioned as being done in post-mortem examination! I've never seen a single expert suggest that this is a way to test body temperature during a PM (although if one could be found that would make a difference to my way of thinking). But it's just my personal belief in the absence of any clear explanation as to what he was doing. It doesn't matter for the purposes of estimating time of death. I could be wrong about this, I could be right but either way it's not relevant. I only mentioned it in response to Fisherman's observation to John, and I wanted to make clear that I don't necessarily accept that he was sticking his hand into Chapman's intestines to feel if there was l heat there, which I still think is very unlikely, but it's impossible to know for certain. That's why I said I didn't want to argue with Fisherman about it!

[Fisherman]

No, he does not say that the only thing he felt inside the body was heat. He says the only heat he could find was under the intestines, and that otherwise the body was COLD. And that means that whichever other area inside or on the outside of the body he felt, there was NO heat.

Hold on, is it your position now that Dr Phillips fumbled around inside Chapman's body testing for heat throughout the inside her body? Because that's crazy talk isn't it? Personally I don't believe for one second that he stuck his hand into her body to feel the heat of the intestines. I can't think for one moment why he would have done that.

It is my position that Phillips would have done his best to detect whatever heat there could have been in Chapman. I tend to think he identified that as part of his work.

What I suspect he did was follow the recognized technique of feeling the part of her back in contact with the ground and he naturally surmised that the heat he felt there was being generated by the intestines. But there's no point in arguing with you over a detail like that. The point is that there was heat. Yet, you asked John: "How on earth could Phillips, after having stuck his hands INSIDE Chapmans body, NOT be correct in saying that she was cold?" But the fact of the matter is he found heat when (according to you) he "stuck his hands INSIDE Chapman's body". So he didn't say she was cold full stop. He said she was cold (at the surface) but there was also heat still in the body.

You think that he felt the back and said that there was a certain heat under the intestines? I see.

Phillips was clearly saying that Chapmans' body was cold on the surface save for heat being generated by the intestines. But that is only based on what he could feel with his own hands. And his hands wouldn't necessarily have been able to feel the warmth of Chapman's body as we've seen from Dr Burman and Dr Taylor. His hands were not a thermometer. What he could feel was subjective only and subject to misinterpretation.

Why do you think that intestines generate heat, Herlock?

A thousand victorian doctors and todays collected knowledge would be the source.

That's another way of saying that you have no source, isn't it? I mean, just one would do. Even Dr Phillips qualified his own two hour estimate and the coroner found that Chapman, despite feeling cold, could have been murdered an hour before the examination.

Nope, he never allowed for anything less than two hours.

What the doctors felt (and feel) for was always the core warmth, conducted up to the surface when the fingers are put towards it. The target areas would have been where the vessels are shallowly placed and many.

All you are saying there in a convoluted way is that the doctors feel the surface warmth. It doesn't matter where the heat comes from, be it the internal body core, from the circulating blood (if the person is still alive) or from an external furnace blowing heat at the body's surface. All they can feel is the warmth on the surface and they are using their (warm) fingers to do so, which means they just get a subjective and possibly inaccurate result. Without a thermometer you can't actually test whether there is warmth there or not.

There IS no surface warmth per se, after twenty minutes. You have offered that information yourself.

No, he does not, because he knows that skin warmth will disappear in a matter of ten to twenty minutes as per Seddon-Smith (the guy you claim has me panicking).

You originally stated that Seddon-Smith's information was "useless". Now you accept it. But what he told us explains why the body can get cold at the surface very rapidly UNLESS the heat being lost is replaced by heat generated internally, within the body, which has managed to make its way through to the insulated surface. Where you have an emaciated and undernourished woman, the metabolic heat from the muscles and liver may be non-existent. Out in the open, on a cool evening, a dead body can, therefore, FEEL cold to an observer very quickly, regardless of the actual surface temperature when taken with a thermometer. That's why all the experts say that estimating time of death on the basis of whether the body feels "warm" or "cold" is entirely inappropriate, unreliable and should not be done. Unfortunately that's what Dr Phillips did.

Seddon-Smiths information was and is useless to the case. I accept that he is correct, though.

It might amaze you that Dr Phillips could have carried out a test with his hands that was so obviously flawed and unlikely to lead to any kind of reliable estimate of time of death but that's what Victorian doctors did I'm afraid. It was common practice. Wrong but common.

As I've been trying to tell you throughout the entire thread, what Dr Phillips was attempting to do with his hands was IMPOSSIBLE.

Okay, so when a doctor in victorian days noted that a body was cold to the touch, he had done something impossible? I see.

It is not. Otherwise, the procedure of feeling for warmth would not have been employed after the twenty minutes it takes the skin to grow cold. When will you learn?

You are right in one sense. Dr Phillips should definitely not have employed the procedure he did. He should have taken Chapman's rectal temperature. It's what I've been saying to you all along. Even in the 1880s this was known to be the case. He couldn't get any useful information in respect of time of death from simply feeling Chapman's body. I've already explained to you in a long post why some bodies will retain heat for hours in certain circumstances and thus feel warm for an extended period. But others, in different circumstances, will feel cold within an hour. When will you learn?

Of course he could get useful information about the TOD by recognizing that Chapman was cold. Although he could not say WHEN she died, he COULD rule out that it was close in time.

It is the warmth from the core, felt THROUGH the skin. Of course, the skin takes on the warmth from underneath as the medico puts his fingers to that skin, but the warmth he feels is core warmth, seeping into the skin. Once the doctor removes his fingers, the skin will cool off quickly, whereas the core will NOT do so. The warmth from it can be felt through the skin for a period of roughly three hours in the normal case.

This is the thing you are making up. He can't feel the warmth from the core "THROUGH" the skin. You've never provided a source for this and it is the most absurd nonsense. The core warmth is completely difference from the surface warmth. Or to put it another way, as we've seen from the sources, the core can be warm, raging hot even, while the surface can still feel cold.

Then no doctor has ever felt any warmth on the surface of a body that has been dead for 20 minutes plus. Because that is how your reasoning goes: the skin (surface) grows cold in 10-20 minutes. No warmth from the underlying core can be felt on the surface. Ergo, no doctor can feel any of the underlying core warmth by feeling for warmth with his hands pressed to the surface of the body. That is the inevitable conclusion from your reasoning.
So what heat is it the doctors feel for the first three hours after death, Herlock? Are they imagining it? Lying about it? "Making it up"? I want your explanation to this!

You are closer to the truth when you say that, after an hour, when the existing surface heat has been lost, any warmth on the surface will be the warmth from the core that has been seeping into the skin. But we've been told that the skin is insulated from the core. We've been told that the normal metabolic heat generated from the muscles and liver isn't generated in all cases. We've been told that even though there might be warmth from the core at the surface, an observer with warm hands might not feel it. We've been told that there is rapid heat loss at the surface within an hour. All these things put together mean that a body can feel cold within certain circumstances within an hour. It's just a fact. No forensic pathologist would deny this.

And no forensic pathologist would deny that the warmth of a body that is in the core one hour only after death CAN and WILL be picked up on, REGARDLESS of how the skin ITSELF is cold to the touch.



And that is why no victorian doctor will ever say "the body appeared to be only one hour dead, but was cold".

I've given you examples of two Victorian doctors actually saying it!!! In the case of Dr Fowler, you went off on a long diversion about lividity, actually quoting sources!!!! - but we now know that the lividity was a symptom of the prussic acid. So it doesn't affect Fowler's opinion. In the case of Dr Kennedy, you haven't come up with anything sensible at all!

Herlock, just because you don't understand things, you really should not predispose that what you are told makes no sense. In this case, it is an example of your inability to understand what I am saying.
Once again, if Fowler actually thought that the body appeared to be at most an hour dead, then which parameter did he use to make that assumption? Temperature was the ONLY parameter that lent itself to establish such short a space of time only having passed, and if temperature WAs established to determine a TOD one hour distant only, it would be on account of how the body was TOO WARM to allow for more! There was never a doctor in history who would say "cold to the touch, not dead for more than an hour"! It would be an example of a total lack of medical insight.

I could even add a third doctor, in Dr Phillips who qualified his opinion to allow for Chapman to have been dead an hour, as understood perfectly by the coroner, who found, as a fact, that Chapman was murdered at about 5.30 despite knowing that her body was cold at 6.30.

You are hallucinating again.

[Fisherman]

Steve, your posts do nothing to change the picture. Almost immediate rigor? Bring on the examples!

[Fisherman]

A typical expression of Herlocks "debating technique" is when he claims that I need Phillips to have "magical hands". Of course, what I "need" is for Phillips to be able to tell a warm body from a cold one, nothing more magical than that.

What Herlock himself needs is the REAL Penn & Teller: A body growing cold in an hour, developing rigor alongside that process (and rigor is heat conducted) and a medico who could not tell warm from cold.

Magic was never anything but a questions of making the viewers look the other way.

[Fisherman]

Is either side going to reach any kind of consensus here?
Will one side make a concession and change their opinion?
Or are both sides entrenched in an endless back-and-forth of bickering and point-scoring?

Absolutely not. The moment Herlock admits he has got it all backwards, we will be able to agree in no time at all.

[JeffHamm]

Determining body heat by touch is, as most seem to realize, not a reliable indicator of ToD, nor is it even a reliable method for determining if the body is hot or cold. There are so many things that influence our perception of temperature, that it is just pointless to base anything on it. For one thing, the environment influences our own personal sense of temperature. As an everyday example, get in a swimming pool that is at a comfortable temperature, then, go sit in the hot tub for a while and go back into the pool. What originally felt to be a comfortable temperature will now feel much colder despite it being the same actual temperature.

Now, the doctor arrives at the crime scene. It's a cold morning, Chapman's body has been exposed to the air, morning breezes, and has been disemboweled. Her body will cool far faster than had she been strangled and left full clothed; her intact body would retain heat, and the clothes around it would have retained that heat longer. Cooling requires the heat trapped by her clothing first dissipate in order to create a temperature difference between her skin and the surrounding air, inside her clothes, and then that draws heat out of the body. That would be the normal situation that the doctors would be experienced with. But, that's not how Chapman's body was found, there were no insulating clothes, no intact skin over her gut, so there is immediately a temperature gradient from her internal cavity and the outside air and she cools immediately. By touch alone, even if it were accurate, she would feel much colder than the doctor's experience would suggest. The degree he could accurately account for all of these variables by "guestimation" has to be assumed to be high to put any stock in his ToD estimation. That's an assumption I would argue is unsound.

But, factors we don't know also have to be assumed. First, was the doctor wearing gloves when he arrived? (Obviously he takes them off for his examination). But if he was wearing gloves, his hands will be much warmer than the surrounding environment, and his "hot tub hands" are now touching Chapman's "swimming pool" body, and it would feel colder. But if he's not wearing gloves, and it's a cold day, then his hands might underestimate how cold she really was. Regardless, his estimation of her body temperature is nothing more than guesswork.

It's absolutely unsound to draw any conclusions from any of the ToD estimations based upon how cold the body felt. It just doesn't work.

- Jeff

[Fisherman]

And would you beleive it - I have never claimed that the EXACT core temperature will be readable on the surface. That was never going to happen! If you think this is what I am saying, you have misunderstood me totally. Maybe that is where your charming accusations of me making things up come from? Another misunderstanding of yours?

No, Fisherman don't try and put up a strawman defence, pretending that you have been misunderstood. What you have been saying loud and clear is that, if the core is warm, the surface must feel warm too.

This is a very clear example of how you either misunderstand or try to mislead.

What I am saying - and always have said - is NOT that the surface of a body must be warm if the core is warm. It is instead that ALTHOUGH the skin itself is insulated and will take on a cold character quickly after death, the underlying warmth of the core can nevertheless be felt on the surface. The difference is pivotal.

This means that if a person dies and is left lying in cold conditions, then the skin WILL get cold in a short time only. It will feel cold to the touch when you put your fingers against it. HOWEVER!! If the person has been dead for many hours, there will not be sufficient core warmth close to the surface to be picked up on by a medico who feels for warmth, whereas if the person has been dead for an hour only, the core warmth will not have started to drop, alternatively it will have dropped only by very little, and as a result of that, the medico will be able to feel that warmth because it can be felt through the skin.

If the medico was only allowed to touch the skin very lightly and for a fraction of a second, then he would likely not be able to feel the underlying warmth, but since no such rules have ever been imposed on medicos, they will do their job competently and they WILL pick up on the warmth in a body where the core temperature has not even begun to drop!

I know this may sound harsh, but NEVER misrepresent what I have said when you are arguing against me, Herlock! Not even if you really, really want to win an argument. It will never work, believe me.

[Fisherman]

I think he did place his hand in the body under the intestines, Herlock. If he'd felt her back, he'd have said as much; no doctor is going to describe the back as "in the body" or "under the intestines", which is what Phillips says.

BRAVO! We cannot allow things to descend into sheer madness. Much as I know that you are as fond of me as you are of blisters, I salute you for having the clear-sightedness to point to this.

[Fisherman]

Posts #690 and #694, which showed Chapman's temperature would have been expected to be low due to TB having infected her brain, have been ignored.

Given that Phillips displayed excellent knowledge of Jack's weapon of choice and that an attempt had been made to remove Chapman's head,does anyone find his opening of her brain of particular interest!

I ignore these things because there are matters that speak for BOTH sides, and I think it is better if we allow them to cancel each other out. She was seemingly lying on a non-conductive surface, she had warm stockings on, she was found in a recess and so on; quibbling over how we may need to detract one tenth of a degree here and add two tenths there will get us nowhere. Regardless if she was 36,5 instead of 37,2, that temperature would not have dropped much (or indeed it may not have dropped at all!) in one hour, and so Phillips would have had a lot of warmth to detect anyway. It is NOT a case on the margins, and we need to respect that.

[Fisherman]

I understand what you are saying Sam and I can't say that you are wrong. Only that the normal procedure to test for warmth was to place the hand beneath the part of the body in contact with the ground. Obviously there is no "normal" procedure for a crime scene examination of a body that has been cut open but that's why it's unusual. Sticking one's hand in a body is usually something to be done at a post-mortem. It just seems a strange thing for Phillips to have done, if he did it, at the crime scene and I've never seen any other examples. I've obviously read the report of the inquest and your comments and, while you may be right, and I can certainly see why you interpret it in the way you do, I still personally don’t believe he did this. However, it's a bit of a diversion, irrelevant to the main topic under discussion, and not, I think, worth arguing a

If the medico put this hand against the part lying against the ground and deducted from that, and if he felt heat there when doing that - why do you think is it that he says that the body was cold?
It is obvious in the extreme that he made the observation about heat IN COMPARISON to other areas of the body he had checked, otherwise he would not have said that the body was cold BUT FOR the smallish heat under the intestines.

How do we end up in back alleys like this? I cannot for the life of me understand it!