Tweet
Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes
View Post
The official Scotland Yard position seems to have been to trust the opinions and evidence of two of its own. Inspector Chandler's evidence, taken at face value and without resorting to impugning the man, cast serious doubt on Richardson's truthfulness. This led to police suspicion against the market porter. How was it, exactly, that he did he not see the body if, as he said, he had sat on the steps? Was he lying? And if so, why? Chief Inspector Swanson's report of 19 October, 188828tells us that the police, rather than seeing him as the crucial witness, saw him as a serious suspect.
"If the evidence of Dr. Phillips is correct as to time of death, it is difficult to understand how it was that Richardson did not see the body when he went into the yard at 4:45 a.m. but as his clothes were examined, the house searched and his statement taken in which there was not a shred of evidence, suspicion could not rest upon him, although police specially directed their attention to him."
The police were obviously depending upon Dr. Phillips' opinions and his standing as a reliable medical expert when directing the course of their investigations. To the detectives working on the Chapman murder, Dr. Phillips' estimated time of death made Long and Cadosch irrelevant.
This sentiment is also expressed in Swanson's report. After listing the actions of the police during the investigation, Swanson was forced to admit that "Up to the present the combined result of those inquiries did not supply the police with the slightest clue to the murderer" thus damning Mrs. Long's description of the man she had seen with no praise at all. Swanson continues, "Again if the evidence of Mrs. Long is correct that she saw the deceased at 5:30 a.m. then the evidence of Dr. Phillips as to probable time of death is incorrect. He was called and saw the body at 6:20 a.m. [sic] and he then gives it as his opinion that death occurred about two hours earlier, viz: 4:20 a.m. hence the evidence of Mrs. Long which appeared to be so important to the Coroner, must be looked upon with some amount of doubt, which is to be regretted."
This "doubt" apparently soon became the conviction that Mrs. Long's testimony was worthless. By the end of 1888, for example, Inspector Walter Andrews stated "The police are perfectly powerless, no one ever having seen the murderer except the victims." 29 Sir Melville Macnaghten said very much the same thing in his 1894 "Memoranda", stating, "no one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer" , although in his draft copy he adds, "unless possibly it was the City P.C. who was a beat [sic] near Mitre Square."
It is now time to look at Dr. Phillips' opinions about the time of death of Annie Chapman, opinions that were supported by Scotland Yard. The doctor was called to number 29 Hanbury Street at 6:20 a.m. and arrived there at 6:30. He then immediately examined the body in situ and observed a couple of things important to us. He stated "the body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body." He also observed that "stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing." At the post mortem, conducted at 2:00 that afternoon, he also observed that "the stomach contained a little food." It is doubtlessly from the first two observations that Dr. Phillips made his estimate of the time of death.
Chandler's report, dated on the day of the murder, said, "The Doctor pronounced life extinct and stated the woman had been dead at least two hours." 30 Later at the inquest he responded to a question about the time of death of Annie Chapman by stating "I should say at least two hours, and probably more" but there was a caveat to this statement, which has been used to explain away Dr. Philips' estimation. The doctor added "but it is right to say that it was a fairly cold morning, and that the body would be more apt to cool rapidly from its having lost the greater portion of its blood." Does this disqualify Dr. Phillips' time frame for the murder? No, it doesn't. The doctor was merely stating the obvious and not changing his estimate of time of death.
Estimating time of death has been called more of an art form than an exact science. It is difficult, with what we have to work with, to know exactly what Dr. Phillips had observed and what exactly were the variables surrounding the death of Annie Chapman. A few things can be gleaned from pathology texts, such as the fact that rigor mortis generally begins two to four hours after death. Many things can affect the onset of rigor but generally the two to four hour period is consistently espoused in the literature. In the case of Annie Chapman, Dr. Phillips observed that rigor mortis had just begun when he examined the body at 6:30 that morning. This alone would explain his opinion that Chapman had been dead for at least two hours.
As I have said, however, several things can hasten or lengthen the time it takes rigor to appear. I have noticed that more than one author writing on the Chapman murder has misunderstood this fact. For some reason authors have confused the fact that subjecting the body to cold temperatures will not hasten rigor but instead will retard its onset, will in fact slow it down. It is correct to say, therefore, that the coldness of Chapman's body would cause a delay in the appearance of stiffening and thus point to a time greater than two hours for her time of death. This fact is apparently reflected in Dr. Phillips' inquest testimony....
...The final observation offered us by Dr. Phillips is the coldness of the body. In effect the doctor stated that the body was stone cold except for some "remaining heat" in the abdominal cavity underneath the intestines. It is to this observation which he added the caveat at the inquest that the body could have cooled faster because of the conditions. What he didn't do was suggest that this had caused him to reevaluate his estimated time of death. He certainly didn't offer any support for Mrs. Long and Albert Cadosch's testimonies.
Phillips' caveat was apparently stated in so offhand a manner that it didn't leave an impression on everyone. At least one jury member, the foreman, remarked aloud at the inquest that the time stated by Elizabeth Long as to when she had seen Annie Chapman alive was not consistent with the time of death stated by the doctor. The coroner answered sharply that "Dr. Phillips had since qualified his statement" 34 or, "qualified it very much," according to the Daily News. This was not true, as the police opinion shows, and in contrast to Coroner Baxter's beliefs was a report in the Times which stated after Dr. Phillips had testified "Dr. Phillips's positive opinion that the woman had been dead quite two hours when he first saw the body at half-past 6, throws serious doubt upon the accuracy of at least two important witnesses, and considerably adds to the prevailing confusion." 35 (emphasis mine)"
So there we are, Herlock, a world of "barking mad" men opens up before your eyes, among them Swanson, Walter Andrews, Melville MacNaghten, the entire Scotland Yard and a reporter or two who actually were at the inquest.
And so, once again I ask you: If you rule out Baxter and accept Phillips´ minimum time frame of two hours, what does that do to your reasoning?
Comment