Chapman’s death.

[Trevor Marriott]

The witnesses are not unreliable. How the hell did you ever arrest anyone? You’d have dismissed a witness if they’d been two inches out in judging someone’s height!!

You are a clown ! why dont you for once extract your head from where it seems to spend much of its time and listen, read, and digest.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman. Good to have you back.

For the sake of argument, let's assume Dr Phillips was experienced with hand palpation and was able to fairly accurately determine the temperature he felt. Even then, to use that temperature to estimate time of death is too unreliable to be in any way useful. When the measurements were made that determined the unreliability of estimates of time of death based on body temperature, thermometers were used, so even if his hands were as sensitive as a thermometer, his estimate would still be unreliable. It is not Dr Phillips ability to tell hot from cold that is in doubt - it is the usefulness and accuracy of then using that to estimate time of death.

I infer from some of Herlock's posts that your theory concerning Lechmere as Ripper is undermined by a later time of death, since we would expect Lechmere to be at work by 5.30am. I disagree with Herlock on this point. We do not know where Lechmere was, his work pattern, whether he had a later start that day, whether he was working at all that day etc...

The reoccurring problem with this debate is that people seem unable to recognize that we are talking about two different matters.

I have no problems acknowledging that trying to establish a TOD by way of hand palpation must always result in a guess. Depending on many circumstances, that guess will be better or worse. Most of the time, it will be a useful guess since most cases involve parameters that are relatively easy to keep track of. But there will also be cases where the initial temperature of the vioctim is not what one would havce expected and there may be other parameters involved, internal as well as external, that can have unforeseen influence of the temperature curve of the body. Couple that with how feeling for warmth is a much cruder method tham using a thermometer, and we are at risk to get things very wrong.

This is all true. Sadly, it is not the one and only exponent of the issue we need to look at.

What we have is a medico who said that the body he examined was cold to the touch (yes, apart from an area under the intestines etc, etc). A medico will be able to feel body warmth for at least three hours, generally speaking. Conversely, a bdoy will start feeling cold to the touch after 4-6 hours, once more generally speaking. This means (and this is of course totally obvious) that what makes the body feel cold to the touch is a drop in temperature in the body core. The body core starts dropping in temperature after half an hour to one hour (there is an initital temperature plateau, led on by chemical reactions in the body after death, where the body temperature is upheld). When the dropping sets in, the temperature falls by roughly once degree celsius per hour (the number mentioned is actually 0,8 degrees, but let´s say that the cold conditions in Hanbury Street made it 1,0 degrees).

That would mean that Chapman upheld something very close to full body temperature after one hour, that is to say at 6.30, when Phillips examined her. If her body temperature was normally 37 degrees celsius (the average is 37.2, with womwen having slightly higher temperatures on average, but let´s keep it simple), then it would have been between 36,5 and 37 degrees one hour after death.

If she instead died at 3.30, then the temperature should have dropped aroundthree degrees, taking us close to the kind of temperatures that are referred to as "cold to the touch".

If she dies at 2.30, we would be more on the safe side to reason that she would feel cold to the touch.

So we can see that if Phillips was right, then some three or four hours would fit what he said perfectly. So the question that must be asked is of course "How likely is Phillips to have been correct?". And before I presented the paper I posted on hand palpation, there was no scientific material at hand that offered a solution to that question. But now there is. There is a less than 5 per cent likelihood that trained therapists will miss out on a temperature difference of 3 degrees or more.

When Phillips said that the body was cold to the touch, he would have made this kind of a mistake - or worse - if the body was in fact warm. And it WOULD have been warm a mere hour after death. There is no telling exactly HOW warm, buyt warm it would have been.

There are no two ways around this. Phillips is unlikely in the extreme to have judged a body dead for one hour only as cold to the touch if it was only one hour dead. This was also accepted by the Lancet at the time, for example, just as it became the stance of the police. The area that needs to be bridged by accepting a mistake on Phillips´ behalf is quite simply way to large.

Add to this how a body is extremely unlikely to develop rigor in an hour in cold conditions, and we have a no-brainer. The one thing that speaks for a OD a mere hour away are two witnesses who gainsaid each other in terms of chronology, who in one case shifted meaning from "No, I could not identify the woman" to "Yes, that was her alright" and in the other case was uncertain where the voices he heard came from and who witnessed about a thud - but no other sounds whatsoever coupled to that thud.

In the end, if Long and Cadosch had swopped times with each other and if Long had said from the outset that she COULD identify the woman and if Cadosch had said that he saw Chapman entering the yeard from window, they would nevertheless not be correct. The medical evidence puts an efficient stop to it.

What the discussionwould benefit from would be if we could refrain from stating that hand palpation is less exact than thermometer measurements. That goes without saying, and it has a tendency to blur the overall issue.

[Fisherman]

Hi Christer,

The core temperature is variable, and body mass is a significant factor. Thus, even the "normal" range varies between 36.5 and 37.5 C. However, it can be significantly less with abnormally thin people: anorexics, for example, are in danger of suffering hypothermia, where the body temperature falls below 35 degrees C.

Of course, Dr Phillips didn't bother with a temperature reading - he simply relied on touch-so we cannot know Chapman's internal body temperature at the time. However, as I noted previously, unusually thin people can feel cold to the touch even whilst still alive.

Moreover, you don't have to be out by very much in order for serious errors to have occurred in your calculations. Thus, in ideal circumstances body temperature post mortem falls by about 0.83 degrees C an hour, although adjustments for environmental factors-partially clothed victim, surface victim was found on etc- may be necessary. However, to put that into perspective, if you, say, estimate a time of death of, say, 4:30 am, based upon an internal body temperature estimate of 37.5 C, but the victim was actually, 36.5 C (still within the normal range which, as discussed, Chapman might reasonably not have been) then your estimate would be out by over an hour, meaning the actual time of death would be later than 5:30 am.

Body temperature is variable, yes. But none of us go around with a temperature of 33 degrees. And Chapman was no anorectic, she was a sturdy but malnourished woman. Moreover, women normally have higher body temperatures than men, generally speaking.

And please, John - can we agree that Phillips would have known quite well that some people have cold hands and feet and foreheads and whatnot? He would ALSO have known that they nevertheless have a core temperature of around 37 degrees!

When Phillips said AT THE VERY LATEST 4.30, that would have entailed the parameters you mention. Phgillips would have reasoned that IF she had a normal temperature of 36 degrees only and IF the weater had a larger infkuence than usual and IF the damage lowered the temp as dramatically a possible, THEN she could perhaps have died as late as 4.30. It is not as if he recommended that as the best solution, is it? He said that it was probaly MORE, since he knew that he would be able to feel warmth for at least three hours in normal cases - but he acknowledged that if all parameters were extremely in favour of cooling of rapidly, then it could perhaps be two hours only.

That is Phillips´ haggling over and done with. We cant ask for a second round of haggling, John. Least of all one that detracts half of the minimum time...

[Fisherman]

You didn't distinguish between myself and those to whom you were directing your kindergarten remark and in fact included me in that remark by saying 'and then we have...'

No, I did not. And I should have.
The reason I chose your post is that you used the word guess in a manner that I beleive is perilous and potentially misleading.

It doesn't matter and I am happy to accept your apology, which was generous but nevertheless unnecessary.

You felt pointed out, and you had reason to do so. That means that I need to apologize, both for your sake and for mine.

My concern is that I was not drawing any distinction between the validity of either time of death, but rather pointing out that we may be in a position where hat is irresolvable and that we need to take a close look at context The word guess was not mine, it was Trevor's (post 1109, for example), and I was using his terminology in a post replying to one by Trevor in which I was trying to encourage him to set the times of death in context, thereby hoping to get him to properly analyse the sources (which he is very bad at), but he didn't pick up that particular ball. No matter.

I fully understand what you are saying, Paul - believe it or not. Regardless of how coined the term "guess" in relation to Phillips´work, I stand by how I believe it is a term that should be regarded with scepticism since although any estimation of TOD (regardelss if we palpate or use a thermometer) must be a guess per se, palpating for warmth is not something that is fraught with total uncertainty. The reliablility of the method has been established on a general level, as has been shown.

[Fisherman]

Pure nonsense I’m afraid.

If you had followed the thread fully you would see that I have, more than anyone else, argued that Dr Phillips could not have accurately predicted the TOD (in the face of posters like Fishy and The Baron who have mocked this suggestion and tried to claim that simply because Phillips was a Doctor then he must have been correct)

This is of course misleading. I am not saying that Phillips must have been correct. I am saying that he is completely unlikely to havce been as wrong as it wouold take for Loing and Cadosch to come into play. Phillips may well have been wrong to some degree - but not to THAT degree.

Furthermore, you should not mockingly speak about how trust is put in Phillips "simply because he was a doctor". The paper I provided tells us that therapists are significantly more skilled than laymen when it comes to palpating, so there is every reason to award Phillips the trust that comes with his territory.

[Fisherman]

Fisherman, it's been pointed out to you by a number of sensible people that you've misunderstood the paper yet you still plough ahead with this nonsense. You are totally wrong in saying that "there is less than a 5 per cent chance that a therapist will get things three degrees wrong or more". The way that you've deliberately and carefully changed the language of the paper shows that you must know this and that you are being disingenuous. The paper says that there is a more than 95% chance that a therapist will DETECT DIFFERENCES of three degrees or more. In other words, in controlled temperature conditions, they touch one pad which is 3 degrees warmer than another and they can sense the difference between the two pads with 95 percent accuracy. That's it. No application whatsoever to a pathologist assessing the body temperature of a corpse.

You say "Any idea that we can feel subtle differences in living people but not in dead is just silly" but the issue is nothing to do with feeling "differences" between temperatures on a dead body. It is about being able to assess whether a dead body is objectively cold or warm. This is what we are told by experts cannot be done. The paper has no bearing whatsoever on this issue.

As I've mentioned, palpation is a technique used to diagnose certain conditions on living people whose tissues are generating heat, and the paper is only concerned with how well therapists can do this. The paper has no application to assessing body temperature of a dead person in conditions faced by pathologists, which is an entirely different issue. You are making a whole series of assumptions from this paper which, as a lay person, you are not entitled to make (and the assumptions are clearly false).

What is amusing is that you seem to now be taking it as read that Dr Phillips palpated the dead body of Nichols. I don't remember seeing this in the evidence!

But it doesn't matter how he did it because Jason Payne-James will be fully aware of all the possible methods of assessing body temperature of a corpse. Yet he still says loud and clear that the "perceived warmth" of a corpse is both "unreliable" and "useless" as an "INDICATOR" of time of death. I don't think there can be any doubt that Dr Phillips was using the perceived coldness of Nichols' body as an indicator of the time of death - but do feel free to challenge that statement if you wish.

It's striking that you didn't mention Payne-James' comments once in your reply to me, despite me underlining that what he said was the definitive answer. Are you going to address his comments? Could you clarify if you disagree with what Payne-James said?

If you agree with him, as you surely must, is your position that, despite the perceived warmth of a dead body being useless as an indicator of time of death, it was still reasonable for Dr Phillips to use the perceived warmth (or otherwise) of Nichols' dead body to indicate a time of death as being no later than 4.30am? If so, on what possible scientific basis do you make such a statement?

I have misunderstood nothing, and the paper is very hard to misunderstand per se. To most people, that is. Palpation is a useful and not very inexact method. Read again, it won´t change.

It is funny how you have in the longest been asking for scientific confirmation of why Phillips could not have been as wrong as you wish, and then, when I provide it, you clim that I have misunderstood it?

How can "Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner" mean that palpation is totally unreliable?

In what universe does "We concluded that palpation can accurately detect temperature differences between skin sites. Accuracy increases with larger temperature differences. Manual physical therapists are more accurate than lay individuals" mean that palpation cannot accurately detect temperature differences?

How does "Manual physical therapists accurately detected the warmer plate > three quarters of the time when differences were 1 or 2 °C and detected differences of ≥3 °C with an accuracy >95%" suddenly begin to mean that nobody can feel sublte temperature differences by palpating?

You once again try to use Payne-James - and you once more misunderstand him, the way you make it a modus vivendi to misunderstand and misinterpret everything you read. I will help you out:

Yet he still says loud and clear that the "perceived warmth" of a corpse is both "unreliable" and "useless" as an "INDICATOR" of time of death.

What Payne-James says here is not that medicos think that they feel warmth where there is none. He says that the warmth a medico perceives is unreliable and useless as an indocator of the TOD.

And I agree! Fully! Becasue if a medico perceives that a body can be around 36,7 degrees, it may in fact be 35,9 and if so, the TOD will be fixed at a time that is a full hour off. Making it unreliable and useless.

What Payne-James does NOT say is that it a medico says that a body is cold to the touch, it may in fact be quite warm instead.

Yours is a crusade of misrepresentations, ignorance and failure to pick up on the essential parts. Not that you are ever going to acknowledge this, but once you claim that "Palpation can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner" can be misunderstood and that it really means that palpation is useless, I think the time has come for some soul searching.

[Fisherman]

Fish’s latest argument has been destroyed by myself, Jeff, Kattrup and Etenguy.

Eh - no. Neither man have come even close to destroying anything.

Protesting vehemently against something is one thing.

Being correct when doing so is another matter.

Once it dawns on you that there is a difference, you may perhaps start making sensible points.

[Fisherman]

What you are missing is that the likes of Herlock are prepared to accept that time of death cannot be firmly established, they are prepared to accept that Dr Phillips' estimated time of death cannot be relied upon on with any degree of certainty, and they are therefore considering the alternatives, namely the time of death suggested by the witness testimony. Why isn't that the right thing to do?

Because, I would say, the paper I posted points to how palpation by hand is a much more reliable method than has been led on by the likes of Herlock Sholmes. What is required for Long and Cadosch to have seen or heard Chapman and her killer is that either

1. the body went cold to the touch in an hour only, which is physically impossible, or
2. the body did NOT grow cold in an hour only - but Phillips mistook a warm body for one that was cold to the touch - although he was able to pick up on the lst little bit of warmth there was under the intestines.

As I say, Phillips can have been wrong, but he cannot have been THAT much wrong. The chances for it are minuscule the way I understand things.

Add to this that all other parameters BUT FOR the witnesses fall in place with a TOD many hours away - the onsetting rigor (that will have been delayed/slowed down by the low temperature and any cooling off in the body) and the fact that all the other killings seem to have been deeds under the cover of darkness.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman,

No, being able to detect that A is warmer than B doesn't tell you the temperature of either A or B, just the relative temperature. Hence, he could tell there was more "heat" under the intestines than elsewhere. Second, the temperature at the surface of the body, even if he could measure it, is not a measurement that could be used to estimate the ToD anyway. If you're hands are exposed to the winter air, they get cold. The surface of them will feel cold to another person. That doesn't mean you've been dead for a few hours. To get anything even close to meaningful, you have to take a temperature with a rectal thermometer (or from the liver), and even then, all the calculations are based upon having an intact body, which Chapman's wasn't. So, even though the paper isn't about estimating the actual temperature, only the relative difference (making it irrelevant to our purposes), the measurement one would get by touching the body is useless with regards to estimating the ToD, particularly under the circumstances in which hers was found.

This was noted even at the time by the corner at her inquest, where during summing up he states "It was true that Dr. Phillips thought that when he saw the body at 6:30 the deceased had been dead at least two hours, but he admitted that the coldness of the morning and the great loss of blood might affect his opinion, and if the evidence of the other witnesses was correct, Dr. Phillips had miscalculated the effect of those forces.” So even the contemporaries recognized Dr. Phillips' estimate was questionable.

You're a journalist, and you live in a country with cold winters. Go interview your local coroner (or the equivalent) and ask them. You can even show them the paper you found and ask if that changes their mind.

- Jeff

Nope. There is no mistaking warm for cold. If Phillips was uncertain about his ability to correctly establish warmth, all he had to do would be to feel his OWN skin for temperature. And it seems he was anything but uncertain - he was able to pick up on the remaining warmth under the intestines, remember.

Of course, Baxter was right: If the witnesses were correct, then Phillips was wrong. That is not exactly rocket science, is it? But why would we predispose that he WAS wrong, when the paper I posted tells us that it is unlikely in the extreme that he would have been?

[Fisherman]

First point, any scientist will tell you a single paper proves nothing, one needs several saying the same thing.
However that is a minor point.

Let's look at this paper itself.

This paper is about detectiting changes in skin temperature by feel.

So we know that people can tell if the skin changed temperature, I am not sure that has ever been in dispute.
Of course the participants had a base to start from, and the test was simply which of two pads was hotter.
It is still subjective as the results clearly show.

This has no relationship at all to Phillips touching a victims skin and claiming to base TOD on such.

The experiment of course in no way it tell us about internal body temperature based on feel or TOD.

There is no evidence in the paper which even hints that one can speculate on actual skin temperature or apply that to internal body temperatures.

As such the paper is irrelevant to the debate.

Once again Christer, you take a scientific paper, which you apparently don't really understand and draw faulty conclusions from the paper.
Last time it was a paper regarding a rise in internal cell pressure which you claimed equated to a rise in blood pressure.


Steve

I´m afraid the paper has a collossal bearing on the subject at hand. What has been under dispute has been whether palpating by hand is a reasonably useful or totally worthless instrument. It has been led on that the latter applies, but the paper I provided showed that it is nothing of the sort. Close to a hundred people participated in the measurements, so the basis is a rich one.

You of course now want MORE papers saying the same, but how about presenting another paper dealing with hand palpation that goes against the paper at hand before trying to dismiss the value of it?

Of course, I foresaw how you and others would say that we need a paper on malnourished cut up prostitutes in East End backyards at temperatures between 9 and 11 degrees celsius being palpated, preferably two hundred or more of them, before it can be of interest to us.

However, I disagree. When we have a very clear and unequivocal paper telling us that palpation "can be used to accurately detecting temperature differences between sites and is more accurately performed by an experienced practitioner", listing the exact outcome in degrees and establishing the human hand as a reliable enough tool, I for one will not go along with anybody trying to sweep it under the carpet.

If we can feel relatively subtle temperature differences in skin with our hands, then we CANNOT claim that a medico who said he was feeling a cold body was in fact mistaking a WARM body for being cold.

The very idea is unhealthy, and any effort to dismiss the paper as such is, quite simply, shameful. It is right down there, together with the knee-jerk claims that I only say what I say because I support Lechmere.

[PaulB]

I am stating a proven fact by highlighting the flaws

You are highlighting the flaws, not stating or proving anything at all. Or perhaps you could explain what 'proven fact' it is that you are stating? Anyway, the point you are missing is that you are as blinkered to alternative arguments as you think they are to yours and that both you and they are batting the same arguments back and forth and you are therefore prolonging the argument as much as they are. The question is, other than asserting that there are conflicts in the witness testimony, which we all knew to begin with, do you actually have anything constructive to offer?

you tell me why conclusively ascertaining TOD would further the investigation.we know that there are conflicts in the witness testimony. We also cannot fully determined the conclusive TOD in the other murders.

Do you read what people write? I wrote, 'Positively ascertaining the time of death probably wouldn't further the investigation ', and your immediate response to that is to shout, 'you tell me why conclusively ascertaining TOD would further the investigation'. When I say it wouldn't further the investigation, why do you ask me to tell you why it would further the investigation? If you can't pay sufficient attention to what people write, it's no wonder that you invariably have a cockeyed understanding of what the sources tell you.

if anyone is biased it has to be you and how many more times do I have to tell you I am not dismissing the testimony I am saying it is unsafe

Herlock has pointed out that you readily challenge the accepted assessments of everything from Eddowes' apron to the Swanson marginalia. So readily do you do this that it must be deliberate, and that suggests bias. Let me put it this way, if the accepted conclusion is 'A', but, no matter what 'A' is, Trevor Marriott will argue 'B', it follows that Trevor Marriott is biased. You can respond to that with a childish ' if anyone is biased it must be you', if you like. It doesn't cut much ice though.Anyway, since you clearly don't read the posts, or, if you do, you have difficulty understanding them, you missed where I clearly stated, 'You have insisted that you are not dismissing the witness testimony...' I am perfectly well aware that you are saying the testimony is unsafe, but my point is that you don't tell us what to do with the witness testimony -if you are not dismissing it, what are you doing with it? How are you using it? In what way are you incorporating it? And into what are you incorporating it? The fact is, Trevor, that by not using the testimony, you are dismissing it!

There has to be a TOD and I like many others do not know what that is and based on what I know and how I interpret the fact and the witness testimony I believe Phillips could have been right

Of course Phillips could have been right. Everyone knows that. But he also could have been wrong. In fact, authority after authority has been cited to show that his estimated time of death probably was wrong, and you haven't refuted any of them have you? But there are three witnesses whose testimony presents some problems, but could be true. You've drawn attention to the problems but haven't shown them to be wrong. As said, some people clearly give credence to the witness testimony and apart from repeating your assertion that the witness testimony is unreliable, you have offered no good reason for it not being true.

[Fisherman]

The witnesses are not unreliable.!

The medical evidence tells us that the witness testimony from Long and Cadosch must be regarded as in all probability being unrelated to the murder. The paper I posted tells us that we are on very safe ground making that call.

[Fisherman]

Of course Phillips could have been right. Everyone knows that. But he also could have been wrong. In fact, authority after authority has been cited to show that his estimated time of death probably was wrong...

A few questions. When you speak of Phillips estimated TOD, which exact time are you speaking of?

What authorities have told us that Phillips was probably wrong in his estimations?

Could you expand on this, please? On question two, I would gladly settle for just one or two examples.

[PaulB]

Because, I would say, the paper I posted points to how palpation by hand is a much more reliable method than has been led on by the likes of Herlock Sholmes. What is required for Long and Cadosch to have seen or heard Chapman and her killer is that either

1. the body went cold to the touch in an hour only, which is physically impossible, or
2. the body did NOT grow cold in an hour only - but Phillips mistook a warm body for one that was cold to the touch - although he was able to pick up on the lst little bit of warmth there was under the intestines.

As I say, Phillips can have been wrong, but he cannot have been THAT much wrong. The chances for it are minuscule the way I understand things.

Add to this that all other parameters BUT FOR the witnesses fall in place with a TOD many hours away - the onsetting rigor (that will have been delayed/slowed down by the low temperature and any cooling off in the body) and the fact that all the other killings seem to have been deeds under the cover of darkness.

You have cited documentation that suggests that Phillips estimate of time of death was unlikely to have been wrong by any substantial margin. Others have cited with equal conviction a string of sources which indicate differently. I am not qualified to decide who is right, and I suspect most people are in the same boat as me, so, until there is a definitive answer, the medical evidence is up in the air. And the fact is that Mrs Long may have seen Chapman after Phillips' estimated time of death, Cadosch may have heard a words from the yard of 29 after Phillips' estimated time of death, and Richardson may have been right when he said Chapman's body wasn't there when he visited the yard, thus placing Chapman's death after Phillips' estimated time of death. The witness testimony presents problems, but not insurmountable ones, and hasn't been shown to be wrong - which is the important thing; Trevor seems to equate unreliability with being wrong, albeit that he asserts he isn't dismissing it. It's therefore only right to look at a scenario that incorporates the witness testimony, even though qualified expert opinion may at some point give the greater weight to Phillips.

[Just to expand on the above, 'Elemarna', above, dismisses the paper to which you give importance and on which you wish us to place reliance. Even if your interpretation of that paper is correct, it needs substantiation.]

[PaulB]

A few questions. When you speak of Phillips estimated TOD, which exact time are you speaking of?

What authorities have told us that Phillips was probably wrong in his estimations?

Could you expand on this, please? On question two, I would gladly settle for just one or two examples.

As already explained, I am not qualified to comment on the medical evidence. Like most people, I have read your arguments and also noted that authorities have been cited by Herlock and others - you'll excuse me if I don't go trawling back through endless posts for their names, but I'm sure Herlock and others will cite them again. Obviously, these sources have not stated that Phillips specifically was wrong, and I'm sure we don't want to get into that kind of semantics.