Chapman’s death.

[Fisherman]

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.
- Jeff

And NOW we arrive in Mitre Square. And its an even cooler morning! And THERE we find a body that has just been disemboweled and exposed to the morning air in an even more open and unprotected position than Chapman was. And that would therefore have cooled faster than had she been strangled and left full clothed. The clothing is cut open and the gut left just as open, so there is immediately a temperature gradient from her internal cavity and the outside air and she cools immediately.

Or not.

[Fisherman]

I´ll go walk my dog now. Its cool outside today. Let's hope I don't leave him for dead out there.

[DJA]

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.

MAKES A BLOODY BIG DIFFERENCE IF HER TEMPERATURE WHEN STILL ALIVE WAS AS LOW AS 32C.

You are a waste of space. Arrogant as all get up.

Non-conductive surface ...... what complete and utter nonsense. Heat radiates.

[Sam Flynn]

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.

Good analogy, Jeff, and you're quite right.

[Fisherman]

MAKES A BLOODY BIG DIFFERENCE IF HER TEMPERATURE WHEN STILL ALIVE WAS AS LOW AS 32C.

You are a waste of space. Arrogant as all get up.

Non-conductive surface ...... what complete and utter nonsense. Heat radiates.

32 degrees Celsius is moderate hypothermia:

Hypothermia (when the body is too cold) is said to occur when the core body temperature of an individual has dropped below 35° celsius. Normal core body temperature is 37°C. (1) Hypothermia is then further subdivided into levels of seriousness (2) (although all can be damaging to health if left for an extended period of time)

• Mild 35–32 °C: shivering, vasoconstriction, liver failure (which would eventually be fatal) or hypo/hyper-glycemia (problems maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, both of which could eventually be fatal).
• Moderate 32–28 °C: pronounced shivering, sufficient vasoconstriction to induce shock, cyanosis in extremities & lips (i.e. they turn blue), muscle mis-coordination becomes more apparent.
• Severe 28–20 °C: this is where your body would start to rapidly give up. Heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure fall to dangerous levels (HR of 30bpm would not be uncommon - normally around 70-100). Multiple organs fail and clinical death (where the heart stops beating and breathing ceases) soon occurs.

People do not have a temperature of 32 degrees Celsius. It is a state that borders on shock. Of course, we may enter that kind of temperature range before dying - but we can be quite sure that Chapman never did, because she did not freeze to death - she died on account of having her throat cut, and I don't think we should surmise that she had suffered hypothermia before that happened.

The normal body temperature range goes like this:
Normal body temperature chart


Body temperature readings vary depending on where on the body a person takes the measurements. Rectal readings are higher than oral readings, while armpit readings tend to be lower.

The table below gives the normal ranges of body temperature for adults and children according toa thermometer manufacturer:

Type of reading	0–2 years	3–10 years	11–65 years	Over 65 years
Oral	95.9–99.5°F (35.5–37.5°C)	95.9–99.5°F (35.5–37.5°C)	97.6–99.6°F (36.4–37.6°C)	96.4–98.5°F (35.8–36.9°C)
Rectal	97.9–100.4°F (36.6–38°C)	97.9–100.4°F (36.6–38°C)	98.6–100.6°F (37.0–38.1°C)	97.1–99.2°F (36.2–37.3°C)
Armpit	94.5–99.1°F (34.7–37.3°C)	96.6–98.0°F (35.9–36.7°C)	95.3–98.4°F (35.2–36.9°C)	96.0–97.4°F (35.6–36.3°C)
Ear	97.5–100.4°F (36.4–38°C)	97.0–100.0°F (36.1–37.8°C)	96.6–99.7°F (35.9–37.6°C)	96.4–99.5°F (35.8–37.5°C)

We can of course assume any temperature at all in Chapmans body as she walked the East End streets. After all, there are examples of people surviving as low a temperature as 13 degrees Celsius. But much of the point I am trying to make within all that arrogance is that once we start believing that Chapman was totally extreme from a medical point of view, we have kind of lost the whole idea of the discussion.

Plus, as I keep saying, the colder a person is and the colder the surroundings, the less likely it becomes that he or she will develop rigor in a very short period of time.

So basically, you are caught inbetween a rock and a hard place.

PS. Any forensic examination of a dead body, looking to establish the TOD, will weigh in the conduciveness of the surface the body is lying on. Concrete, for example, is rather an efficient conductor. The bare ground is not. And Chapman lay on bare ground, the way I understand things.
To you, it is "complete and utter nonsense". To forensic science, it is an important factor. It may sound arrogant, of course, but it is nevertheless a fact. Go read up.

[Fisherman]

Good analogy, Jeff, and you're quite right.

And of course, Phillips would not have been aware that warm hands put into or onto a body in cold surroundings will play a role?

Come on, its time to be realistic. Phillips was able to discern some little heat under the intestines, and so he was fine-tuned enough, I ´d say.

Feeling for warmth by hand would not be something he himself invented on the day. It will have been something that was part of his education, and it will have been made very clear to him what influence the surrounding circumstances had and how to make a proper examination.

It is ALWAYS about deviations and colossal mistakes and extreme temperature drops and mysteriously onsetting rigor when we discuss Chapman. What happened to the very obvious option that it was business as usual, and that Phillips knew his way about what he did?

[Fisherman]

Hero is back, by the way. My dog.

[Elamarna]

32 degrees Celsius is moderate hypothermia:

Hypothermia (when the body is too cold) is said to occur when the core body temperature of an individual has dropped below 35° celsius. Normal core body temperature is 37°C. (1) Hypothermia is then further subdivided into levels of seriousness (2) (although all can be damaging to health if left for an extended period of time)[LIST][*]Mild 35–32 °C: shivering, vasoconstriction, liver failure (which would eventually be fatal) or hypo/hyper-glycemia (problems maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, both of which could eventually be fatal).[*]Moderate 32–28 °C: pronounced shivering, sufficient vasoconstriction to induce shock, cyanosis in extremities & lips (i.e. they turn blue), muscle mis-coordination becomes more apparent.[*]Severe 28–20 °C: this is where your body would start to rapidly give up. Heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure fall to dangerous levels (HR of 30bpm would not be uncommon - normally around 70-100). Multiple organs fail and clinical death (where the heart stops beating and breathing ceases) soon occurs.

Think you have missed a decimal out Christer at 3532 degrees C, there will be no body.

[Elamarna]

All this temperatures being thrown around are totally irrelevant to the TOD of Chapman, there were no temperatures recorded at the Chapman Murder scene or afterwards, so how fast a body cools or not is pointless. Jeff's post was very good on that matter, but it seems some just don't want to listen.


Steve

[Fisherman]

All this temperatures being thrown around are totally irrelevant to the TOD of Chapman, there were no temperatures recorded at the Chapman Murder scene or afterwards, so how fast a body cools or not is pointless. Jeff's post was very good on that matter, but it seems some just don't want to listen.


Steve

True. They put their fingers in their ears and chant noooo, nooooo, nooooo.

Phillips KNEW quite well that he would not be able to establish any temperature. So why did he feel for warmth? What would his purpose have been? If he knew that he could not establish the exact temperature?

[Fisherman]

Think you have missed a decimal out Christer at 3532 degrees C, there will be no body.

Is that a joke? I fail to see the number 3532 in print. Maybe its funny nevertheless? Do explain. Or don't. Whichever.

Hey, here's MY joke: If Phillips had felt a body of 3532 degrees for warmth, he would not be able to tell if there was any since he didn't use a thermometer!

[Elamarna]

Is that a joke? I fail to see the number 3532 in print. Maybe its funny nevertheless? Do explain. Or don't. Whichever.

Hey, here's MY joke: If Phillips had felt a body of 3532 degrees for warmth, he would not be able to tell if there was any since he didn't use a thermometer!

Well for some reason when I posted your post was not showing a dash between the 35 and 32.

It does now.
Surprisingly when looking my post in edit mode it, it still shows 3532, must be a glitch in the system.

[Elamarna]

True. They put their fingers in their ears and chant noooo, nooooo, nooooo.

Phillips KNEW quite well that he would not be able to establish any temperature. So why did he feel for warmth? What would his purpose have been? If he knew that he could not establish the exact temperature?

Funny.

He felt for warmth because it was common flawed practice in 1888. That you refuse to acknowledge just how flawed the argument is truly astounding


steve

[Fisherman]

Funny.

He felt for warmth because it was common flawed practice in 1888. That you refuse to acknowledge just how flawed the argument is truly astounding


steve

Flawed practice? It was not flawed. It was inexact. And even today, policemen and investigators who have no thermometer will feel dead bodies for warmth.
But I will explain to you exactly why Phillips did what he did: He felt for warmth because he knew that a warm body would give away a death close in time whereas a cold body would point to hours of death.

He therefore was not trying to establish any exact temperature (so you can abandon that line of arguing here and now) - he was establishing that Chapmans body represented the cold extreme, and he cannot have mistaken a warm body for a cold one.

It would be like mistaking your argument for a good one.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We are simply going around in circles here of course. I keep posting sourced evidence from acknowledged experts in the field and Fish takes that evidence and jumps up and down on it, twists it and bends it, adds bits or leaves bits out to suit, applies weird interpretations, alters the English language and gives a Victorian Doctor skills and knowledge that he simply couldn’t have had. Reason, logic, science and a regard for objectivity rebels against this.

To that end I’ll post this summing up of the position. One based on facts, evidence and the opinions of the experts on the subject (without exception) This argument is over! It’s been over for quite a while now and anyone actually reading the evidence with an unbiased mind must see this:



Without providing any supporting evidence in any of your posts, Fisherman, you are simply Fishplaining into the wind. I appreciate that you are so convinced that Lechmere murdered Chapman on his way to work at shortly after 3.30am that you have convinced yourself in the supernatural ability of Dr Phillips to do what every single forensic pathologist in the world today would say he couldn't do, namely reliably estimate a time of death as being "probably more than" 2 hours prior to 6.30am on the basis of touching Chapman's body for warmth (and, to the extent it was factored into his calculations, the onset of rigor).

Even in 1888 it was known by specialists in the field that feeling whether a body was cold was totally useless due the way human hands can be misled into subjectively feeling a warm body as cold. As we've seen, Drs Taylor and Burman made clear that temperatures needed to be taken with a thermometer for any reliable readings. We've also seen that a body will cool "rapidly" at the surface after death which makes any attempt to estimate time of death on simply whether a body feels cold at the surface as pointless and, indeed, useless.

Even taking the rectal temperature would not have assisted in providing a reliable time of death. That's why forensic pathologists, even today, with all the advances in medical science since 1888 are required to caution investigators that any estimate they produce could be "significantly" wrong. In 1888, Dr Phillips had no way of knowing of all the variables which can accelerate body cooling (and rigor). He was aware of two (cold air and blood loss) but we now know there are many more than this, at least one of which is crucial in Chapman's case.

To the extent you have ever acknowledged the existence of these variables, you pooh-pooh them on the basis that you think they would accelerate cooling or rigor by only a few minutes but you provide no evidence whatsoever to support such a conclusion and it must be clear from the stress placed on these variables by modern pathologists, including Payne James himself, that they will significantly affect any estimates.

Payne James, like all other renowned modern forensic pathologists, tell us that estimating time of death is fraught with difficulty and that methods such as temperature and rigor are very unreliable. They don't normally even bother to discuss the idea of touching a body to feel for warmth because that is such an inaccurate method that it isn't even considered.

We've seen clear evidence that a body can feel cold within an hour – it was known as early as 1856 - and it must be obvious that this is the case, given how rapidly we know a body can cool at the surface and of how warm hands can be misled into thinking a body feels cold. In the case of Chapman, we know for a fact that she was in an advanced state of a wasting disease, and was severely undernourished, and there is no scientific basis for saying that, because her body felt cold after death, she must have been dead for at least two hours. None whatsoever. Dr Phillips was mistaken in forming this view (but, at the same time, in fairness to him, he obviously accepted he could be wrong and the experienced coroner had no problem in accepting that Chapman had only been dead an hour, despite the fact that she felt cold to the doctor).

You have imagined (made up) the notion that there was a special technique available to Dr Phillips to test the warmth of the core beneath the skin (or to use your EXACT words, that he would have been "able to feel the underlying warmth…by touching the skin…it is the underlying core warmth….underlying warmth of the core can…be felt on the surface" #665 and #836). but that absurd notion has been exploded by the evidence from Dr Taylor's leading textbook on medical jurisprudence in the Victorian age that there was no such technique. Let's remind ourselves of his words, as summarized by Dr Burman in 1880: "Dr Taylor draws attention to the fallacious results which may arise from the customary method of judging of the degree of coldness of the body by the mere and unaided sense of touch….the surface may appear cold (though it be not really so) to a moderately warm hand; and that moreover, the condition of the hand itself may lead to an erroneous impression."

That knocks on the head everything you have been saying about the magical abilities of Dr Phillips.

That leaves us in a position where we cannot take into account Dr Phillips' estimate as being of any utility, at least if we want to avoid convicting an innocent man for the crime of murder. I'm sure you don't want to do that Fisherman. That leaves the witness evidence. I'm not saying you have to accept the witness evidence but what you cannot do is dismiss the witness evidence on the basis that it doesn't agree with Dr Phillips' estimate. That would be to disregard science in favour of magic and prejudice, something we must not do in 2019.