Chapman’s death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh, I do know it. That is why I am saying that his minimum was two hours. Accordingly, it seems I can manage without your help.

You said:

"Oh, I do know it. That is why I am saying that his minimum was two hours. Accordingly, it seems I can manage without your help."

My response:

This again demonstrates that you don't know what a qualification of an opinion is. Dr Phillips already said that Chapman had been dead "at least two hours". That was his opinion. So his opinion already included the notion of a "minimum of two hours". If he qualified THAT opinion, what does it mean? Do you even know? I can tell you what it means. It means that he was saying it could have been less than two hours due to the coolness of the air and the immense loss of blood. If he had been aware that a person in ill-health and emaciated with TB, at the time they died, will lose heat faster than a normal person, which he probably wasn't aware of, he would no doubt have included that into the reason for qualifying his opinion too.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the "qualifying" business, how common is it that doctors give THREE times in one sentence? Supposedly, Phillips established the time he REALLY believed in ("probably MORE than two hours") and TWO minimums ("at least two hours" and the open option, allowing for anything at all).

Nope. Doesn't happen. Any doctor can in retrospect say "I said at least two hours but probably more than so, but since I have now considered the factor X, I am willing to concede that it could have been less than two hours." NO doctor will bake all three times into one sentence.

You said:

"On the "qualifying" business, how common is it that doctors give THREE times in one sentence? Supposedly, Phillips established the time he REALLY believed in ("probably MORE than two hours") and TWO minimums ("at least two hours" and the open option, allowing for anything at all).

Nope. Doesn't happen. Any doctor can in retrospect say "I said at least two hours but probably more than so, but since I have now considered the factor X, I am willing to concede that it could have been less than two hours." NO doctor will bake all three times into one sentence."

My response:

I think this is your third attempt at responding this question but you still don't make any sense. When Phillips said "at least two hours" that is a single estimate that a child could understand. It could be more than 2 hours but he thinks it is a minimum of two hours. However, he qualified that minimum by adding in the word "BUT", noting that it was a cool morning and Chapman had lost a lot of blood. So his own "minimum" COULD have been wrong. It's so simple. The coroner understood it perfectly. The Lancet (to which you refer elsewhere) also understood it perfectly, noting how Phillips had remarked that, "the almost total draining of the blood, added to exposure in the cold morning air, may have hastened the cooling down of the body." Your nonsensical claim about "three times in one sentence" is absolutely ridiculous. And you need to remember that we are in a situation where it is now known (although not known in 1888) that it was NOT POSSIBLE for a medical man to accurately estimate the time of death through body temperature. Go and check Payne James.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You need to envisage a post mortem room with ten bodies lying inside it, Herlock. Body one died at 3.00, body two at 3.30, body three at 4.00, body four at 4.30, body five at 5.00, body six at 5.30, body seven at 6.00, body eight at 6.30, body nine at 7.00 and body ten at 7.30.

The uncertainty that adhered to the victorian method of feeling for warmth would have meant that it would be hard to say whether body seven died before body eight, for example - had an hour is something that would be hard to recognize and the latter the examination takes place, the harder it will be to tell the real order. If a medico was to examine these two bodies at, say 9.00, 2,5 to 3 hours would have passed and things would be a lot harder than if one to one and a half hour only had passed. It would nevertheless be a procedure that could go wrong.
But take the extremes! Let a doctor look at bodies two and seven at 7.00! In that case, body seven will have one hour only to have cooled off and would likely not have cooled at all, since the postmortem temperature plateau will have kept the temperature up. Body two, however, will have had three and a half hours to cool off, and will likely feel just about all cold to the touch (you may remember Seddon-Smith, who tells us that the body will grow totally cold in 4-6 hours? And Phillips who says "just about all cold, but for a certain remaining heat under the intestines"?).
Would a doctor mistake THOSE two bodies? Is he even remotely likely to say that body seven is all cold? Is he even remotely likely to say that body two is totally warm?

The simple answer is no, he is not remotely likely to do that. And so the much spoken about uncertainty flies out the window in cases where we are comparing extremes. Whooooosh! Watch them go! We are NOT establishing any exact time of death, mind you, we are telling cold from warm. And no doctor would mix them up, end of. Least of all a medico who had examined thousands of corpses, in all likelihood.

Find me such a case, where an experienced medico mistakes one extreme for the other, and cannot tell cold from warm! (And please, no examples from outdoor bodies in wintertime Siberia!)

Chapman? Nope.

You said:

"you may remember Seddon-Smith, who tells us that the body will grow totally cold in 4-6 hours? And Phillips who says "just about all cold, but for a certain remaining heat under the intestines"?.

My response:

No, Fisherman, I don't remember either of those comments, for the good reason that they were never said.



Seddon-Smith said that body will feel stone cold after 4-6 hours. Phillips said the body of Chapman (or rather just the left side) "was cold". He didn't say "just about all cold". So why do you put such a phrase in quotes? Seriously, tell me! Because you do it time and time again. You have a pathological desire to falsify the evidence with words which haven't been said in order to twist meaning to support your case. Would you stop doing it please?



Your entire case seems to rest on what some medicos in the 19^th century believed to be the amount of time it took for every single human body under all circumstances, and all variables, to became cold. The problem is that they didn't know. Today, forensic pathology experts know that there are so many variables and that it's perfectly possible, in some circumstances, that a body can feel cold an hour after death. Furthermore, they know there are so many variables that they recommend not estimating time of death based on body temperature. Now, if you have any modern forensic expert opinion against that please post it, but could you stop telling us your own personal opinion because you obviously know nothing about forensic pathology. If you wish to continue the debate, we need some independent expert opinion, not your own thoughts based on plastic bags.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And that is the problem! A lot of speculation and mistakes and freakish things must be in place to make Phillips wrong. She must have taken a second meal while out on the streets looking for customers, although we know she had eaten already. Possible? Yes, but unlikely. And Phillips must have mistaken warm for cold! Possible? No. Unless Chapman had grown cold quicker than anybody else in medical history. Possible? Maybe if she was stuck in a freezer before placed in the backyard. Plus she would have developed a very quick rigor. Possible? Yes, but not very likely.

The other way around, if she died 3.30, the meal she had was in the shape it should be, the body temperature was where it should be and the rigor was where it should be. Plus the murder was committed at a time consistent with the others.

It really is a no-brainer.

Your response to Packers Stem:


"Unless Chapman had grown cold quicker than anybody else in medical history."

My response:


Do you have any kind of source to support this absurd statement?



By contrast, let me introduce you to this page



https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-bo...ontrolled-room



"Once dead for about an hour, a body’s temperature adjusts to whatever the ambient temperature is, and therefore will feel cold, compared to how they usually feel."



I suppose that must be wrong in your book?



Now, what about this from the Times of 6 March 1861 reporting proceedings at Mansion House Police Court regarding a charge of assisting in the suicide of Thomas Richards by Sarah Rose Ferry:



"Mr Robert Fowler, surgeon, Bishopsgate-street, said on Friday afternoon, his assistant, who had been called to see the deceased, returned with an empty bottle which had a strong smell of prussic acid. Witness went and saw deceased. The body was cold, and the deceased appeared to have been dead about an hour."




And this is from a report of a meeting of the Surgical Society of Ireland in the Dublin Medical Press dated 23 April 1856, reporting the comments of Dr. H. Kennedy:




"The heat of a body was also a subject worthy of investigation; for it was a remarkable fact that one body would be as cold within an hour after death as another would be at the end of six".

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ve said this before Fish and I won’t apologise for repeating it. You really do need to give this one up.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock affirms that Dr Phillips' estimate was not an exact science, and gives more weight to the three independent witnesses whose testimony, although incongruous in timings, would appear to put the TOD around 5.30am at the earliest.

Fisherman, on the other hand, puts more stock in Dr Phillips' expertise when assessing the rigor & body temp of the victim which puts her murder around two hours earlier, and discredits the reliability of the three witnesses, who were either mistaken or attention-seeking.

That's the gist of it, yes?

I’ll rephrase it Harry at the risk of boring you.

Yes, that is the issue nicely summarised in a nutshell. I think, however, that Fisherman would not be happy with a murder at 4.30am because Charles Cross would have been safely at work by then so he really needs Chapman's murder at around THREE hours earlier, at 3.30am, or perhaps 3.45am, when Cross was on his usual morning walk to work when he liked to knock off a victim or two before making his merry way to Liverpool Street. Fishy on the other hand supports the Knight/Sickert theory so he needs an earlier time because a) he wants Annie dead but elsewhere, and b) darkness would provide a cover for two men lugging a dismembered corpse along the pavement.


While I do give more weight to the three witnesses and believe that 5.25-5.35 was probably the correct time of death, I think that the most important thing is that Phillips' estimate was not only not an exact science but highly misleading and dangerous. In her book, Time of Death: The Story of Forensic Science and the search for Death's Stopwatch, Jessica Snyder Sachs makes the point that many innocent people throughout history will have been wrongly convicted, while an equal number of the guilty will have escaped scot free, all because medical men have given impossibly confident evidence relating to time of death, coming up with fairly precise times that they should never have offered up in court. I think most forensic pathologists would say that witness evidence is a more reliable indicator of time of death. That doesn't of itself mean that the three witnesses in this case were correct but I think it does mean that we need to ignore what Phillips said, however certain he might have been at the time, albeit that, as we know, he qualified his opinion.

[etenguy]

I thought it worth revisiting the record of the Inquest to see if there was any information that might help us resolve the issue of the time of death of Annie Chapman. I found nothing conclusive but did find some interesting points.

A) Could John Richardson have missed the corpse had it been there at 4.45am?

According to Joseph Chandler, Inspector H Division Metropolitan Police:

[Coroner] Did you see John Richardson? - I saw him about a quarter to seven o'clock. He told me he had been to the house that morning about a quarter to five. He said he came to the back door and looked down to the cellar, to see if all was right, and then went away to his work.
[Coroner] Did he say anything about cutting his boot? - No.
[Coroner] Did he say that he was sure the woman was not there at that time? - Yes.
By the Jury: The back door opens outwards into the yard, and swung on the left hand to the palings where the body was. If Richardson were on the top of the steps he might not have seen the body. He told me he did not go down the steps.

This evidence is in contrast to that provided by John Richardson who told the inquest he had gone down the steps to sit and cut his boot. So, he either lied to Joseph Chandler at the scene, Joseph Chandler misunderstood John Richardson or John Richardson never descended the steps. If his inquest testimony is true, he would have seen the body if it was there. If the statement he supplied Joseph Chandler is true, he may have missed seeing Annie's corpse. So, was Richardson inserting himself into the crime for some reason (attention seeking?) or was he initially trying to avoid being considered a suspect? In light of him actively lying to Chandler (or lying to the inquest), his inquest evidence must be considered suspect. This supports the view Fisherman has espoused that Richardson could have missed the body if his initial statement to Chandler is more accurate than his inquest statement.

However the position of the body as described by Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police casts some doubt in Chandler's opinion:

I found the body of the deceased lying in the yard on her back, on the left hand of the steps that lead from the passage. The head was about 6in in front of the level of the bottom step, and the feet were towards a shed at the end of the yard.

b) Could Dr Philip's have been wrong about the TOD?

According to Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police:

[Coroner] How long had the deceased been dead when you saw her? - I should say at least two hours, and probably more; 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.

This qualification to his estimate of the TOD supports Herlock's view that the TOD could have been later than 4.30am. Although not conclusive, Philip's himself accepted a later TOD was possible.

None of this gets us closer to resolving the issue.

[FISHY1118]

Couldn’t you at least drip-feed the nonsense without flooding me with it?

For you and other it appears necessary to accuse everyone connected with the case of idiocy, apart from the infallible Dr P of course, in your attempt to shoehorn your theory into place? You are now suggesting that the ripper, a man than remained at liberty, was such an unutterable buffoon that he’d have murdered Annie Chapman in full view of someone standing at the other side of a fence! The suggestion is preposterous! Of course he would have remained out of site. It’s lunacy that you would even suggest such a thing.

Hmmmmm perhaps it might have been better to drip feed you Herlock as your a bit slow in picking up on thing where Chapman is concerned. You've made my point exactly he wouldn't have killed her in those circumstances ive mentioned, dont you get it .....it was much earlier than that, even before Codosch was ever in his yard . Shhhhhhishhh its sure lunacy that you cant see that .

That the thud could have been anything is just pathetic I’m afraid. What? According to Phillips there was an horrifically mutilated corpse lying there! So it couldn’t have been a person for very obvious, at least to most of us, reasons. As I’ve said earlier, was it an overweight and very clumsy cat who wasn’t squeamish? There was a noise in a yard where a murder took place just 30 minutes after a man had said that the yard was empty and we have a high level of confidence that no one else had entered that yard in the meantime.

Whats really pathetic Herlock is the nonsensical way you try and justify your logic, its truly amazing .You know as well as i you can never prove that the thud Codosch heard was Annie Chapman hitting the fence . IT WAS JUST A NOISE WASN'T IT , so yes its quit possible any animal could have made such a noise, or even something falling against the fence whos knows , but the fact remains ,we shouldn't just assume it was Annie Chapman because codosch heard a thud, now can we .[ wait dont answer that ,you do ]

Now pay attention to this bit ok , Phillips t.o.d puts Chapman in the yard at between lets say 3.30 to 4.30 am Richardson then stands on the step ,looks to his right at the cellar door ,turns and goes off to work, according to chandlers report . Thus by totally missing the corpse of Annie Chapman to his left blocked by the open door. [ why this part is so hard for you to understand or at least say yes thats possible based on the what Richardson told chandler escapes me] .So when you say there was a noise in the yard where a murder took place 30 mins earlier after a man said the yard was empty is totally irreverent, as Chapman was already dead for at least 1 whole hour maybe two before Codosch heard the thud at 5.20 . Again Codosch statements is not the gospel truth[ and that why its ok to have a another opinion and scenario to how and when Chapman was murdered. why cant you see that ?] that it was the killer and Chapman he heard in the back yard at 5.15 and 5.30am .

This 17 people comment is a smokescreen. No matter where the killer had chosen to kill that morning there would have been people getting up for work. They weren’t getting ready in the yard. Chapman was a prostitute desperate for cash. She would have assured the killer that they were safe and wouldn’t be disturbed. Turned out she was correct.

Long was flat out wrong. Congratulations on this display of your psychic powers.

ITS far from a smoke screen Herlock, would such a cold heated, calculated ,elusive killer such as jack the ripper, really have butchered a prostitute in day light hour at 5.30 and 5.45 behind a 5/6 fence with Albert Codosch walking to and from 4 times just two feet away?. Possible i guess, but highly unlikely in this case given the contradictory testimonies of L.C.R.

And finally ill take that as compliment that Mrs long was indeed flat out wrong . Now which cake do you want to eat as you cant have them both?, you go on and on about codosch hearing the killer and the thud ,yet for that to be true long must be wrong mustn't she ? because she says that she saw them at 5.32 longgggggggg after CODOSCH heard the ''NO '' AND ''THUD''. so please pick one if you must they cant both be right . Please refrain from using the clocks were probably wrong excuse, or there times were slightly off or whatever else to try to use to align their stories, that part becoming very tiresome and boring on your behalf .

Your arguments reek of desperation Fish. Because you are desperate for Phillips to have been correct.

Its looking more likely that he was tho doesn't it Herlock ?

[Fisherman]

Basically Harry the experts tell us that neither methods are reliable. The criteria can occur that affect the outcomes. Those criteria existed at the time so it is quite reasonable to suggest that Phillips could have got it wrong. Fish is trying to give everyone the impression that these things could only have occurred in freak circumstances. This simply isn’t the case. I’ve asked Fish more than once to provide evidence for accuracy of the word freak. He has failed to do so because freak circumstances aren’t required. In any case throat cutting and horrific mutilation are hardly normal. Renowned authorities tell us that these methods are not to be relied upon. The proper way for a Doctor to use temperature as a guide is for him to use a thermometer and to check rectally (and even then it’s not totally accurate) but Phillips just used touch. Fish is almost implying some magical level of skill for Phillips. He was a Victorian Doctor using unreliable methods. He could have been wrong, he could have been right. We can get no further than this. And so for me the balance is tipped by three witnesses that all contradict Phillips and point to Chapman dying after 5.00am.

This is just sad. "Some magical level of skill for Phillips"? No, I am not predisposing anything such. The problem is that you are claiming that there are no cases where Phillips would not be very likely to get it wrong. You are grossly misleading by employing the difficulties involved in SOME operations to involve ALL operations! In your world, it is not a question of Phillips PERHAPS not being able to get sensitive and difficult calls right, you have expanded it to Phillips not being able to get ANYTHING right!

You simply cannot do what you do, because it is misusing history and crippling logic. Can you get it into your head that there were different LEVELS of difficulties involved in feeling for warmth? Please answer! Do you understand this? Can you see that whereas establishing an exact TOD going on feeling for warmth only is something VERY different from telling a cold body from a warm one? Or are your gifts of understanding insufficient to accomplish this fairly mundane task? No squirming, just tell me!

[Fisherman]

Please don’t persist in trying to give the impression that you are the saint and I’m the devil.

Is not about that, its about me being more clever and better read up than you. I am every bit as much a devil as anybody else.

I do try and remain calm and yes I don’t always succeed.

Ah - you got that mirror at long last. Good.

And yes, I’ll quite happily apologise for this.

Yes, I can feel your happiness all the way here.

But apart from our disagreements and the lack of logic I get from Fishy I also have a stalker to contend with. A poster who doesn’t join in any other debates on Casebook but just surfaces occasionally always on threads that I’m on and only to post mocking comments directly to me.

I'm sorry, but I may not be the best person to make these kinds of complaints to.

On your second point.

This is nonsense Fish and you know it. It is you that keeps insisting that we fall back on the 2-4 hours by default. As I’ve put it before it’s simply not logical to say that, for example

if x occurs 70% of the time and y occurs 30% of the time but we don’t know which of the two is correct then we should assume x.

This is inaccurate.

Eh - no. It is not inaccurate. If one outcome is more likely, then that outcome IS what we should expect.

We should look to other ways.

I.e. the witnesses.

No, we should not - if the witnesses cannot have been right, then we should look away from them. They do not influence an already established outcome in retrospect, I'm afraid. And this is why I often use the word freakish - if we have a situation like this, where there is one very likely and one very unexpected outcome and there are witnesses that are in favor of the very unexpected outcome, then what we must do is to say that there is a freak possibility that the unexpected has happened. And that is as afar as I am willing to go!

One MUST also look at the quality of the witnesses, and it is NOT good in this case, is it? One cannot treat matters the way you do, saying that we must beleive in Richardson because he was sure about what he said. Well, so were Long and Cadosh about the timings! They BOTH were 100 per cent certain about the timings they gave and they BOTH supported them by clock observations that cannot have been wrong. They also both would have arrived at their destinations at times that dovetailed with what they heard from the clocks, and so the timings ARE given as safe and reliable an unshakable things.

Are we to believe both of them because they were sure? If so, we must envisage a scenario where Chapman bounced back from that fence - or it was not the murder that Cadosch overheard!

There is also the possibility of accepting that although they were both **** sure, one of them MUST have been wrong. Or both!

What does that do to your assertion that Richardson MUST have been right? Hm?

Herrens a question for you that In want answered: Do you or do you not beleive that Richardson was asked whether he looked behind the door, into the recess? In my world, that question will have been asked. And in my world, it will have been answered with a no. and probably with an added "but surely I must have seen her if she was there!?"

What do you think? Did the police or did they not ask him this? And will it or will it not form part of the ground for how they reasoned that he may have missed her?

[Fisherman]

I really cannot pick up the will to read extensively through your posts. I saw two connected things and decided that the rest will be along the same line, and so I will take the two things up and leave the rest because I fear it will be along the same lines. These two matters will be enough to show you why I see your reasoning as unworthy of a serious debate:

1. You claim I went into "full panic mode" when you brought up Seddon-Smith. That is the laugh of the year! Herlock, what Seddon-Smith speaks about has nothing at all to do with the topic we are discussing! But you seem unable to take that in.
What Seddon-Smith speaks about is the temperature of the SKIN! The temperature of the skin will quickly grow cold as we die. For each and every one of us that means that our skin will grow cold to the touch when we perish, and it will do so in a period of ten to twenty minutes only. But although a medico puts his fingers to the surface of the skin, it is not the temperature of the skin he is feeling for - it is the underlying temperature, stored in the underlying structures of the body!
I have explained this a hundred times now, it seems, and you still cannot take it in? Or do you refuse to believe it, quite simply? When George Bagster Phillips knelt beside Annie Chapman in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street on that morning, he KNEW that the skin would have grown cold quickly. he KNEW that the skin was insulated from the body core and therefore would be colder than it. He KNEW that he would nevertheless be able to feel the warmth of the core THROUGH the skin, because although insulated from the core, the skin will nevertheless conduct heat from the deeper structures once you put your fingers against it. If the lower structures are cold, no heat will rise up through the skin when a medico feels for warmth, if the lower structures are warm, it WILL do so.

Therefore, Seddon-Smith has nothing at all to do with the process and the phenomenon of skin cooling is not linked to the issue in any manner at all.

2. The next thing I noticed has to do with the same thing. You ignorantly asked in an earlier post that if the skin was cold, then how could a medico know that there was warmth underneath. I then said that if you fill a cold plastic bag with warm water and feel the surface, you will feel the warmth of the water THROUGH the plastic bag. And now I find you asking me if I really believe that a plastic bag and warm water is the same as a body and its warmth...?

Just when you think the bottom has been reached, somebody gets a shovel and takes the bottom to new and deeper levels.

I will try and keep my cool:

No, I do not think that a plastic bag and warm water is the same as the body and its warmth. But I DO think that it can explain to you how a surface can convey underlying warmth from within! And that is exactly what this is all about. The victorian doctor KNEW that the underlying structures of the body would be somewhere around 37 degrees celsius in a living person. He also KNEW that the skin of a person never is 37 degrees celsius, it is cooler than so. And he also KNEW that this is because the skin is insulated from the body core and its warmth. And, yes: he KNEW that the warmth of the core could be felt THROUGH the skin - actually, that was precisely why he would do that kind of thing when faced with a dead body.
Basically, insulation is what keeps us from freezing to death. Some mammals, like seals, live under extremely cold conditions, and their skin will ALWAYS be icy cold to the touch when they emerge from arctic waters. Seals furthermore have a thick layer of fat that allows for further insulation.

Question: If we were to put a thriving seal, fresh from the icy water, before Bagster Phillips, do you think he would believe the seal was dead on account of its skin being cold? Or would he surmise that there was underlying heat? And would he be able to feel that heat, if checking for it where the blood vessels of the seal were plentiful and close to the surface of the skin?

While you ponder that question, I will try and do something better with my day than answering things like these, that really require no answer at all once you have some basic knowledge about the mechanisms we are dealing with.

That is how "fully panicked" I am by Seddon-Smiths telling me what I already knew, and that is how a plastic bag and some warm water explains how it works in a crude and pedagogically accessible way.

Excuse me? What? Do I really think that Annie Chapman was a seal?

Herlock, Herlock....

PS. I fully realize that I am leaving myself open to suggestions of not being able to answer your points now that I cannot muster any will to wade through more material like the above. I will Kindly ask you not to employ that technique once again, but instead reproduce in shortness whatever questions there may be hidden inside your massive texts (why am I being pointed to as the one who writes too long...?) that you feel are in any way important to the issue and that I have not answered ten times before - like I have done with the Seddon-Smith material. So please?

[Fisherman]

I thought it worth revisiting the record of the Inquest to see if there was any information that might help us resolve the issue of the time of death of Annie Chapman. I found nothing conclusive but did find some interesting points.

A) Could John Richardson have missed the corpse had it been there at 4.45am?

According to Joseph Chandler, Inspector H Division Metropolitan Police:


This evidence is in contrast to that provided by John Richardson who told the inquest he had gone down the steps to sit and cut his boot. So, he either lied to Joseph Chandler at the scene, Joseph Chandler misunderstood John Richardson or John Richardson never descended the steps. If his inquest testimony is true, he would have seen the body if it was there. If the statement he supplied Joseph Chandler is true, he may have missed seeing Annie's corpse. So, was Richardson inserting himself into the crime for some reason (attention seeking?) or was he initially trying to avoid being considered a suspect? In light of him actively lying to Chandler (or lying to the inquest), his inquest evidence must be considered suspect. This supports the view Fisherman has espoused that Richardson could have missed the body if his initial statement to Chandler is more accurate than his inquest statement.

However the position of the body as described by Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police casts some doubt in Chandler's opinion:


b) Could Dr Philip's have been wrong about the TOD?

According to Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police:


This qualification to his estimate of the TOD supports Herlock's view that the TOD could have been later than 4.30am. Although not conclusive, Philip's himself accepted a later TOD was possible.

None of this gets us closer to resolving the issue.

Please, PLEASE be a better post than Herlocks!

Okay, let´s see here.

Yes, it IS better, and in a better tone (not that MY tone is always good, but really...)

I asked Herlock a question, and I don't mind asking you the same:

Do you think there is any realistic chance that Richardson was NOT asked whether he had checked behind the door, in the recess? I think the police MUST have asked this, and I believe it will have been answered with a "no". And so, the idea that Richardson MUST have seen the body is blown out of the water in my world. If he had answered "yes", the police would have had less doubts in him, the way I look upon things.

As for Phillips accepting a possible TOD beyond 4,30, that never happened. Baxter made a rather hamfisted attempt at con artistry, THAT is what happened.

Once we realize and accept this, we will be much, much closer to resolving the issue. And we will get there - I was always an optimist!

[Fisherman]

Herlock affirms that Dr Phillips' estimate was not an exact science, and gives more weight to the three independent witnesses whose testimony, although incongruous in timings, would appear to put the TOD around 5.30am at the earliest.

Fisherman, on the other hand, puts more stock in Dr Phillips' expertise when assessing the rigor & body temp of the victim which puts her murder around two hours earlier, and discredits the reliability of the three witnesses, who were either mistaken or attention-seeking.

That's the gist of it, yes?

Once you understand that this is not a question of two equally balanced sides, yes, that is what its about. It is a debate that has been around since 1888, grace a Baxter, and that should never have been around at all. It was resolved before the coroner muddled the waters by misrepresenting Bagster Phillips in a mediocre manner. The police quickly saw through it, and so should Ripperology have done, but no such luck!

Its time to put things right now.

[Fisherman]

I often turn to the Morning Advertisers ad verbatim reports when I look at things. Many a nuance can be found there that is lacking in other reports, and this his how the exchange between Baxter and Bagster, if you will, was portrayed:

- How long do you suppose deceased had been dead before you saw the body?
- At least two hours, probably more, but the morning was fairly cold, and the body would have become cold sooner in consequence.

It is very clear that Phillips delivers a minimum time of death and that this minimum time is two hours. It is also very clear that he really do NOT believe that two hours is the correct estimation, because he adds that it was PROBABLY MORE. That is where he puts the TOD, BEYOND two hours. There really cannot be any doubt at all that this was what he believed.

Now notice that he does not say that the body COULD have grown cold sooner on account of the cold circumstances, he says that it WOULD do so. Does that mean that he is saying

A: I believe the deceased had been dead for at the very least two hours, and I also believe that she had probably been dead longer than so but she MUST actually have been dead shorter than two hours because it was cold.

or

B/ I believe that the deceased had been dead for at the very least two hours and that is a minimum. My real estimation is that she would have died before that time, but since the morning was cold and she will have cooled of quicker than what is normally the case, I am willing to concede that it may have been two hours only.

There goes the idea of that "qualification". Shame on you, Baxter!!

[Herlock Sholmes]

I thought it worth revisiting the record of the Inquest to see if there was any information that might help us resolve the issue of the time of death of Annie Chapman. I found nothing conclusive but did find some interesting points.

A) Could John Richardson have missed the corpse had it been there at 4.45am?

According to Joseph Chandler, Inspector H Division Metropolitan Police:


This evidence is in contrast to that provided by John Richardson who told the inquest he had gone down the steps to sit and cut his boot. So, he either lied to Joseph Chandler at the scene, Joseph Chandler misunderstood John Richardson or John Richardson never descended the steps. If his inquest testimony is true, he would have seen the body if it was there. If the statement he supplied Joseph Chandler is true, he may have missed seeing Annie's corpse. So, was Richardson inserting himself into the crime for some reason (attention seeking?) or was he initially trying to avoid being considered a suspect? In light of him actively lying to Chandler (or lying to the inquest), his inquest evidence must be considered suspect. This supports the view Fisherman has espoused that Richardson could have missed the body if his initial statement to Chandler is more accurate than his inquest statement.

However the position of the body as described by Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police casts some doubt in Chandler's opinion:


b) Could Dr Philip's have been wrong about the TOD?

According to Mr. George Baxter Phillips, divisional-surgeon of police:


This qualification to his estimate of the TOD supports Herlock's view that the TOD could have been later than 4.30am. Although not conclusive, Philip's himself accepted a later TOD was possible.

None of this gets us closer to resolving the issue.

Much is made of what Richardson said to Chandler. Firstly, we have to remember that he wasn’t compelled to speak to the police. He came forward voluntarily. I think that by far the likeliest explanation is that, when he spoke to Chandler in the passageway he simply said to him something like this -

I got here and ten to five. I went to the back door to check the cellar doors and there was definitely no body there or I’d have seen it.

Is that a lie? No. He might simply have felt..

a) this was sufficient detail. The police were getting the most important piece of information I.e. that there was no body at 4.50.

b) If he deliberately withheld the info about him sitting on the step then he might simply have been wary of putting himself at the seen of a murder in possession of a knife?

We have to remember of course that at The Inquest, under oath, he told the full story (obviously after it had been pointed out to the police that it would have been possible for him to have just looked outside and missed the body.) If that was indeed all that he’d done Richardson simply have had to have admitted it - no problem - yes, I suppose I might have missed it. Hardly a disgrace for him but no, he was adamant. He’d sat on the step with a view of the entire yard and he couldn’t have missed a mutilated corpse had it been there.