Chapman’s death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It has become a sad thing when somebody resorts to claiming that posters opposing their views are "making things up". I am doing no such thing, and I think it lies on you to prove that point, not on me to disprove it.

It is all a simple case of Phillips not having been likely to be as wrong as you need him to be, and a case of deciding whether medical facts or witnesses are most likely to be correct. The question answers itself: the medical realities will always have the upper hand.

Your idea works from the presumption that three witnesses would somehow be more likely to be correct than Phillips. Aside from the fact that we already know that two of the witnesses actually contradict each other, the whole premise is wrong. It is not as if criminal history have no examples of three men with funny monikers swearing about how they played cards with somebody called "Godfather" on the night that said "Godfather" is accused of having pumped half a kilo of led into somebody called Earl "Shotgun" DiMeo.

You can - and HAVE! - dig up examples of freak occurrences any day in the week. Lying/mistaken witnesses do not belong to that category, however, and I will not make it my business to dig up the many thousands of examples I could find out there. I will simply point to the fact that claiming that it would not be expected to find attention-seekers in a case like the Ripper case would be an outright stupid thing to do.

We have a series of murders where we know that three victims were found close in time to death (30-60 minutes is what is suggested, although I would myself say that Nichols could not have been a full hour). These three victims were all recorded as being, and I quote, "quite warm". Then we have a fourth victim, Annie Chapman, who was all cold, but for an area under the intestines (so Phillips had to put his hand INSIDE Chapman to feel any warmth at all!), where some remaining heat could be discerned.

And we are asked to believe that the differences all owe to how Chapman was the odd woman out. Because that is likelier than three witnesses being wrong. That she managed to go through a process that will normally take 4-6 hours IN ONE HOUR ONLY! Because, we are told, not all people ARE normal - some are very, very, very far removed from the normal state. It is suggested that Chapman can have started out with an extremely low temperature and so on, and we are asked to accept that all kinds of freakish circumstances can have applied to her - but not to the others in the series.

And once we are told that Chapman grew cold in no time at all, we are asked to believe that she alongside with that achievement also managed to produce onsetting rigor - a condition that is heat-conducted!

The whole project is a complete non-starter. The other victims provide a great ground for comparison, and they show us what we can expect from a badly cut up and opened up victim lying out in the cold streets: nothing special at all.

Am I making this up, or is this what we are asked to believe in? I think we all know the answer to that question.

My response in blue

It has become a sad thing when somebody resorts to claiming that posters opposing their views are "making things up".

It's become a sad thing when an uninformed layman posts forensic medical opinion which he has simply made up in order to support his views. I know you are making it all up Fisherman. I've produced source after source which contradicts everything you say. You've provided nothing! And I could see your level of knowledge when you confused celsius with fahrenheit. And when you confused the results of the post-mortem examination with the scene of crime examination. And when you thought it was possible for a medic to feel the core temperature through the skin!

Your failure to provide any sources for the statements I asked you to support is duly noted by me - and will be noted by everyone else.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Checking back on the prussic acid case, I fond that the original quotation offered did not mention the lividity. If it had been, much aggravation could have been saved together with a lot of time.

My response in blue

Checking back on the prussic acid case, I fond that the original quotation offered did not mention the lividity. If it had been, much aggravation could have been saved together with a lot of time.


The original quotation was from the Times, whereas I ended up, at your request, and in order to be helpful, posting a different report from the Standard. The lividity is irrelevant and gets you nowhere, which you would have known if you had investigated the subject beyond Wikipedia, thus saving yourself the aggravation which you say you wanted to avoid.

[Herlock Sholmes]

A brief summary appears to that those who accept the opinion of experts (as do I) are Sam, Etenguy and John G.

Fish has Fishy and The Baron.

Im happy with that

[The Baron]

A brief summary appears to that those who accept the opinion of experts (as do I) are Sam, Etenguy and John G.

Fish has Fishy and The Baron.

Im happy with that

And Trevor!

Why didn't you mention him?!

I am sure I will listen to him and not to you in such a situation.



The Baron

[Herlock Sholmes]

And Trevor!

Why didn't you mention him?!

I am sure I will listen to him and not to you in such a situation.



The Baron

Let’s face it you will agree with anyone if they disagree with me. This is simply what you do. Your entire interest in being on this Forum is to disagree with and make comments against me. On the Druitt thread, simply because he agreed with me, you chose to disagree with amongst others Paul Begg who is generally agreed to be one of the foremost experts on the case. On this thread you are, by agreeing with Fish, disagreeing with the whole of Forensic science. Those experts tells us categorically that Phillips was using unsafe methods. Methods of ascertaining TOD which shouldn’t be used. Why do you, or I or Fisherman know more than these authorities? We don’t. They tell us that without a shadow of a doubt we shouldn’t rely on Phillips findings. That really should be an end of it but we all know that it won’t be because they need Phillips to have been a magician years ahead of his time. Therefore the only valid position is to dismiss Phillips and go with the witnesses who all tell us that Phillips was wrong too. The attempt to support Phillips at any cost is sheer desperation.

[Fisherman]

My responses in blue

There will be no lividity at all observable in such a person


I hope we don't get bogged down into an argument about whether lividity (or hypostatis) can develop in an hour, because it can. Bernard Knight in "Lawyers Guide to Forensics" tells us that it 'may commence within an hour after death'. Even your own quote from Wikipedia (lol!) says that it starts in 20-30 minutes after death and then is "usually" not observable until two hours after death, hence meaning that it CAN be observable earlier than this. Payne James in Simpson on Forensics tells us that 'The time taken for hypostatis to appear is so variable that it has no reliable role in determining the time of death'.

But, Fisherman, you have entirely missed my point about Robert Fowler. I'm not saying he was correct (or incorrect) in his estimate of time of death. I've consistently said it's not possible to estimate time of death from finding a body to be 'cold' (or from the appearance of lividity). The point about Fowler is that despite the body being cold he STILL estimated a time of death of an hour prior to the scene of crime examination. So it wasn't in his mind a freak or bizarre occurrence.

You are reduced to claiming it's some kind of reporting error! Was it also a reporting error when Dr Kennedy informed the Surgical Society of Ireland that a dead body can feel as cold after one hour as after six hours?

And is this an error too?

"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."


https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-body-be-cold-within-an-hour-of-death-in-a-temperature-controlled-room

The PROCESS of lividity will start when we die. The means that the blood will loose its pressure and start sinking down to the lowest parts of the body on account of gravity. But extensive lividity takes many hours to develop.

Ergo, the example you made is worthless. And I told you so from the outset. The reason for me knowing this was that you quoted a medico who supposedly said that a cold body appeared to have been dead an hour only. No medico will say this, because coldness points to many hours of death.

I will supply one more quote (from ResearchGate) about lividity, and then we will both accept that the example you used has no bearing on the matter at hand. There are no alternatives, see.

"In present study it was found that postmortem lividity usually appears 1 to 2 hours after death in punctate and small patchy form, 2 to 4 hours after death in big patchy form and 4 to 6 hours in homogenous form. Fixation of postmortem lividity occured during the period of 7 to 9 hours after death."

In the example you provided, it was said that "... the body presented great lividity". I hope that you are not going to claim that we are talking about the punctate and patchy form of lividity that manifests itself between 1-2 hours? It takes 2-4 hours to reach the big patchy form that dovetails with the description "great lividity".

It is discussion over, unless you want to pursue the same line as always: maybe this guy was that exception to the rule that topples everything?

The quotation from Dr Kennedy is of course also useless. A body found in a room with a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius will NEVER fall down under that temperature. There is no AC inside us that lowers the temperature BEYOND the ambient temperature, and therefore such a body will always stay at 35 degrees, whereas a body found outside in great cold may well drop quickly in temperature. Plus Kennedy does not define if he speaks of skin temperature or core temperature felt through the skin.

And that quotation of yours! Have we really not got any longer? Of course the body feels colder in death than in life. But that does not mean that a medico can not feel the underlying warmth of the body for around three hours! Its Seddon-Smith all over again, and that will not do, Herlock!!

[Fisherman]

My response in blue

It has become a sad thing when somebody resorts to claiming that posters opposing their views are "making things up".

I know you are making it all up Fisherman.[/B]

And I know that you are ignorant enough to say such things. You have proven it countless times, one more hilarious than the other.

[Fisherman]

My response in blue

Checking back on the prussic acid case, I fond that the original quotation offered did not mention the lividity. If it had been, much aggravation could have been saved together with a lot of time.


The original quotation was from the Times, whereas I ended up, at your request, and in order to be helpful, posting a different report from the Standard. The lividity is irrelevant and gets you nowhere, which you would have known if you had investigated the subject beyond Wikipedia, thus saving yourself the aggravation which you say you wanted to avoid.

More ignorance. Anybody who has an interest in the matter can search the sources and see how long it takes for "great lividity" to develop. And YOU can go search for a source that claims that great lividity appears within the hour.

[Fisherman]

A brief summary appears to that those who accept the opinion of experts (as do I) are Sam, Etenguy and John G.

Fish has Fishy and The Baron.

Im happy with that

I have myself only, and that is all I need. The "my daddy is stronger than yours" approach never was something I was very interested in. Of course, etenguy is telling us that he is trying to find sources that can help him make up his mind, but by all means, if you want him, you can have him. Maybe you should ask him first, though?
I dare say that GUT, Dr Strange, Patrick S and a few other people would be willing to side with you too. The way the rest of the world sided against Galileo, sort of.

The last time I made that comparison, some numbnut answered "So now you are comparing yourself to Galileo - is there no end to your hybris?"

I would advise against making that mistake again. And say hello to the Flat Earth Society from me.

[Fisherman]

One more lesson on lividity, from the US department of justice in a paper named "Forensic Pathology - a handbook for pathologists" (Fisher and Petty, 1977):

"Although lividity is variable, it normally begins to form immediately after death and is usually clearly perceptible within an hour or two. It tends to increase steadily over a period of 4 to 12 hours."

So the first clear signs are evident within an hour or two, and then it develops into what the author of the Times article called great lividity over a period of 4-12 hours.

[Fisherman]

And another one, this from a site (amboss) amimed at medical students: Postmortem skin changes

Summary


Postmortem skin changes include livor mortis, vibices, Tardieu spots, and marbling. Livor mortis refers to the bluish-purple discoloration (lividity) under the skin of the lower body parts due to gravitation of blood after death. Onset of lividity, its location and color, provide information on the time and cause of death. Vibices are pale marks on a dead person's skin that are caused by dermal pressure (e.g. marks around the neck from a rope). Dark pinpoint spots (Tardieu spots) are seen when capillaries rupture due to increased gravitational pressure (e.g. in the legs of a hanged person). A prominent purple discoloration of subdermal vessels appears later in the process of decomposition and leaves a marbling pattern. Livor mortis

• Definition: postmortem discoloration of the skin, resulting from blood pooling into the interstitial tissues under the force of gravity
• Occurence
  • At least 30 minutes to 2 hours after onset of death
  • Maximum observed at 6–12 hours

I helpfully underlined the things to take an extra close look at.

[Fisherman]

Just a question, Herlock. Since you seem to believe that I am "making things up", is that not actually calling me a liar? Or do you think that "making things up" is less stigmatizing?
Just out of curiosity!

[Herlock Sholmes]

The problem is, as I have pointed out, double: You have to drop way too much and quickly from an initial extremely low temperature to reach the kind of temperatures we would need. And that does not happen. Also, a dead person will not drop at all during the first half hour to one hour - we stay at a plateau during that initial stage, the temperature remaining constant! Lastly, if Chapman defied all the laws of nature and differed totally from Nichols, Stride and Eddowes (who all lived under small circumstances and were not well fed and fat) and grew cold in a jiffy, then why is it that she has onsetting rigor after an hour only? Rigor is heat-conducted, so when you cool somebody, rigor will not commence until late in the process.

How do you make all of these factors work, John? How on earth could Phillips, after having stuck his hands INSIDE Chapmans body, NOT be correct in saying that she was cold? And how can a woman described as cold have been dead for an hour only, when we KNOW that we retain temperature for AT LEAST half an hour and very possibly a whole hour too?

It happens? A coincidence? A lucky fluke? Phillips could not tell the difference between cold and warm? Yes, if we factor in outrageous numbers into the Henssge method, we will arrive at outrageous conclusions. Let's not do that.

And please, PLEASE, forget about how the skin may feel cold in living people - they will nevertheless be 37 degrees on the inside!!!

How do you make all of these factors work, John? How on earth could Phillips, after having stuck his hands INSIDE Chapmans body, NOT be correct in saying that she was cold? And how can a woman described as cold have been dead for an hour only, when we KNOW that we retain temperature for AT LEAST half an hour and very possibly a whole hour too?

Hold on Fisherman. You are getting yourself very badly confused. Dr Phillips said there was HEAT inside Chapman's body. So where are you getting the idea from that he stuck his hands inside her body and found it was cold? The coldness could only have been on the surface couldn't it?



Yes, if we factor in outrageous numbers into the Henssge method, we will arrive at outrageous conclusions. Let's not do that.

What "outrageous" numbers are you suggesting I factored into the Henssge method? In fact, I used all the same numbers you did (see #733), estimating the core temperature as being only a little below 37.2 degrees, and using a more correct empiric correction factor (as advised by the calculator itself for an ambient temperature of 9 deg C). Nor was the conclusion "outrageous". But the Henssge method is the most irrelevant and useless nonsense to have been introduced into this thread bearing in mind that Dr. Phillips didn't take the rectal temperature, and the reported coldness at the surface tells us nothing about the temperature in the rectum.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The PROCESS of lividity will start when we die. The means that the blood will loose its pressure and start sinking down to the lowest parts of the body on account of gravity. But extensive lividity takes many hours to develop.

Ergo, the example you made is worthless. And I told you so from the outset. The reason for me knowing this was that you quoted a medico who supposedly said that a cold body appeared to have been dead an hour only. No medico will say this, because coldness points to many hours of death.

I will supply one more quote (from ResearchGate) about lividity, and then we will both accept that the example you used has no bearing on the matter at hand. There are no alternatives, see.

"In present study it was found that postmortem lividity usually appears 1 to 2 hours after death in punctate and small patchy form, 2 to 4 hours after death in big patchy form and 4 to 6 hours in homogenous form. Fixation of postmortem lividity occured during the period of 7 to 9 hours after death."

In the example you provided, it was said that "... the body presented great lividity". I hope that you are not going to claim that we are talking about the punctate and patchy form of lividity that manifests itself between 1-2 hours? It takes 2-4 hours to reach the big patchy form that dovetails with the description "great lividity".

It is discussion over, unless you want to pursue the same line as always: maybe this guy was that exception to the rule that topples everything?

The quotation from Dr Kennedy is of course also useless. A body found in a room with a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius will NEVER fall down under that temperature. There is no AC inside us that lowers the temperature BEYOND the ambient temperature, and therefore such a body will always stay at 35 degrees, whereas a body found outside in great cold may well drop quickly in temperature. Plus Kennedy does not define if he speaks of skin temperature or core temperature felt through the skin.

And that quotation of yours! Have we really not got any longer? Of course the body feels colder in death than in life. But that does not mean that a medico can not feel the underlying warmth of the body for around three hours! Its Seddon-Smith all over again, and that will not do, Herlock!!

Ergo, the example you made is worthless. And I told you so from the outset. The reason for me knowing this was that you quoted a medico who supposedly said that a cold body appeared to have been dead an hour only. No medico will say this, because coldness points to many hours of death.

No medico will say this???? I've given you an example of a medico, Robert Fowler, actually saying it!!!


In the example you provided, it was said that "... the body presented great lividity". I hope that you are not going to claim that we are talking about the punctate and patchy form of lividity that manifests itself between 1-2 hours? It takes 2-4 hours to reach the big patchy form that dovetails with the description "great lividity".

Your "lessons" in lividity all miss the point. You seem to want to open up the inquiry into the death of Thomas Richards in 1861 based on modern forensic knowledge! It's ridiculous. As I've already given you a lesson on the realities of lividity from Prof Bernard Knight and Payne James, the only question is what was in Robert Fowler's mind in 1861.

Now, if you google "great lividity" you will actually find that many if not most examples are from the nineteenth century and are about living people. One should suffice:

From an 1847 paper by T.B. Peacock M.D. entitled 'Case of the Malformation of the Heart"

"During the last few hours, he had violent palpitations of the heart, great lividity of the face and extremities, and extreme dyspnoea."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5822337/pdf/monjmedsci89642-0004.pdf

Then we have to ask, did Fowler think that prussic acid might affect the onset of lividity? This is from an 1834 book, 'On the Motions of the Earth and Heavenly Bodies' by Peter Cunningham, surgeon:

‘deaths by lightning have a close resemblance to those by poisons, a rapid lividity, tumefaction and putrefaction of the body ensuing in both'.

So picking out twentieth century articles (which don't even mention "great lividity") is a complete waste of time because the issue is not about the actual time of death of Thomas Richards. It is about how Robert Fowler interpreted the evidence in 1861 in order to allow him to make an estimated time of death of one hour earlier than his examination.

The only point of issue is that we have a surgeon who found a cold body yet estimated time of death as being within one hour.

Bad luck Fisherman!


The quotation from Dr Kennedy is of course also useless. A body found in a room with a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius will NEVER fall down under that temperature. There is no AC inside us that lowers the temperature BEYOND the ambient temperature, and therefore such a body will always stay at 35 degrees, whereas a body found outside in great cold may well drop quickly in temperature.


Let me just repeat that statement of Fisherman: "a body found outside in great cold may well drop quickly in temperature". Yes indeed, and where was Chapman's body? Outside in the cold. LOL! Thank you Fisherman for confirming this.


Plus Kennedy does not define if he speaks of skin temperature or core temperature felt through the skin.


As it's not possible to feel the core temperature "through" the skin, we can easily eliminate that possibility.

All your ludicrous attempts at sophistry can't disguise the fact that there is nothing in the slightest bit remarkable about a dead body being cold after an hour.


And that quotation of yours! Have we really not got any longer? Of course the body feels colder in death than in life. But that does not mean that a medico can not feel the underlying warmth of the body for around three hours! Its Seddon-Smith all over again, and that will not do, Herlock!!

As you've never provided a source for the claim that a medico can "feel the underlying warmth of the body" the only sensible conclusion is that you are making this up. All a medico can feel is what is on the surface of the skin and we know that the skin can cool very rapidly after death which is why every single expert today says that you can't reliably estimate the time of death from feeling the skin. But that's unfortunately what medicos did at the scene of the crime in the nineteenth century and that's why they came up with unreliable estimates of time of death.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just a question, Herlock. Since you seem to believe that I am "making things up", is that not actually calling me a liar? Or do you think that "making things up" is less stigmatizing?
Just out of curiosity!

No, Fisherman it is not calling you "a liar". What is obviously going on here is that you think you are sufficiently clever to be able to work out everything about Time of Death just from sitting at your desk and thinking about the subject based largely on your observations of plastic bags and bread rolls. And then you think that your opinions should be accepted over the experts who have actually published papers on the subject. But that's not how it works. You need to have sources on which you base your arguments. Your failure to provide any sources, and the fact that everything you say contradicts the experts, not to mention all the basic errors you keep making on the subject, and the fact that nothing you are saying is making any sense, shows me that you are making it all up as you go along.