If Schwartz Lied ...

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have already answered this multiple times. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension?

I clearly answered "Who was the man pursued" in Post #1324.

I clearly answered "Who was the man pursued" again in Post #1359.

According to the October 1, 1888 Echo, the man pursued was "man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer"

According to the October 1, 1888 Star, the man pursued was a Hungarian who was not the killer.

My point is that the club secretary did not implicate Schwartz. At the time the club secretary gave his interview to the Echo, Schwartz' account had not been been published in the Star. The Star account also did not name the Hungarian. You can't deliberately implicate someone when you don't know who they are, let alone that after you give your interview Schwartz would give an account of being pursued.

When are you going to tell us who was the man pursued Fiver?

[Fiver]

Where do you get this 11:45 from? I've already said (more than once) that this was the time she were first seen by Marshall.

I get the 11:45 from William Marshall's statement that he say Stride with a man at about 11:45 and that "They went away down the street, towards Ellen-street". Marshall said he went back indoors at "About twelve o'clock", which occurred some time after Stride and the man left.

But even if we assume midnight, that does not help your theory at all.

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why did she do nothing to clean herself of mud before she got to Dutfield's Yard at 12:45?

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why did no one who saw Stride after 11:45 but before her death notice any mud on her?

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why had none of that mud dried to dirt by the time that George Baxter Philips examined the body nearly two hours later?

If you want anyone to accept your speculation that Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street at 11:45, you will need to answer all three of these questions. So far, you have failed.

[Fiver]

What exactly could she have done, to clean herself up?

I already answered this in Post #1362.

At a minimum, I'd have expected her to use the corner of a skirt to wipe the mud off of her face.

That's before we consider that many period pubs had horse troughs and that the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association had installed hundreds of drinking fountains and hundreds of horse troughs across London.

[Fiver]

It was dark, she had dark hair, and she wore dark clothes. Other than that, who would have noticed, who also became a statement giving witness?

Mud would stand out clearly against dark hair and dark clothes. For clothing that would make it hard to notice mud, Stride should have been wearing khaki.

As to statement giving witnesses who saw Stride after midnight and before her body was found, we have

PC Smith, who testified at the Inquest, saw Stride around 12:30am to 12:35am. He noticed details such as "The woman had a flower in her breast", but make no mention of mud.

James Brown, who testified at the Inquest, saw Stride around 12:45pm. Brown also makes no mention of mud.

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street at midnight, why didn't PC Smith notice any mud on Stride at 12:35am?

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street at midnight, why didn't James Brown notice any mud on Stride at 12:45am?

[Fiver]

Phillips: On Oct. 1, at three p.m., at St. George's Mortuary, present Dr. Blackwell and for part of the time Dr. Reigate and Dr. Blackwell's assistant; temperature being about 55 degrees, Dr. Blackwell and I made a post-mortem examination, Dr. Blackwell kindly consenting to make the dissection, and I took the following note: "Rigor mortis still firmly marked. Mud on face and left side of the head. Matted on the hair and left side. We removed the clothes. We found the body fairly nourished. Over both shoulders, especially the right, from the front aspect under colar bones and in front of chest there is a bluish discolouration which I have watched and seen on two occasions since. On neck, from left to right, there is a clean cut incision six inches in length; incision commencing two and a half inches in a straight line below the angle of the jaw. Three-quarters of an inch over undivided muscle, then becoming deeper, about an inch dividing sheath and the vessels, ascending a little, and then grazing the muscle outside the cartilages on the left side of the neck. The carotid artery on the left side and the other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through, save the posterior portion of the carotid, to a line about 1-12th of an inch in extent, which prevented the separation of the upper and lower portion of the artery. The cut through the tissues on the right side of the cartilages is more superficial, and tails off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. It is evident that the haemorrhage which produced death was caused through the partial severance of the left carotid artery. There is a deformity in the lower fifth of the bones of the right leg, which are not straight, but bow forward; there is a thickening above the left ankle. The bones are here straighter. No recent external injury save to neck. The lower lobe of the ear was torn, as if by the forcible removing or wearing through of an earring, but it was thoroughly healed. The right ear was pierced for an earring, but had not been so injured, and the earring was wanting. On removing the scalp there was no sign of bruising or extravasation of blood between it and the skull-cap. The skull was about one-sixth of an inch in thickness, and dense in texture. The brain was fairly normal. Both lungs were unusually pale. The heart was small; left ventricle firmly contracted, right less so. Right ventricle full of dark clot; left absolutely empty. Partly digested food, apparently consisting of cheese, potato, and farinaceous edibles. Teeth on left lower jaw absent." On Tuesday, at the mortuary, I found the total circumference of the neck 12« inches. I found in the pocket of the underskirt of the deceased a key, as of a padlock, a small piece of lead pencil, a comb, a broken piece of comb, a metal spoon, half a dozen large and one small button, a hook, as if off a dress, a piece of muslin, and one or two small pieces of paper. Examining her jacket I found that although there was a slight amount of mud on the right side, the left was well plastered with mud.

Nothing in that blockquote answers my question - If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen Street at midnight, why had none of that mud dried to dirt by the time that George Baxter Philips examined the body over two hours later?

[Fiver]

The ten minutes is the last 10 minutes of the 30 minutes in the other account. No contradiction.

That is not what the two accounts say. That is you jumping through hoops to try to explain away the contradictions between the two two accounts.

The accounts very clearly contradict each other.

In one account, Mortimer went to her doorstep around 12:45 and stayed there "for ten minutes". In the other account, Mortimer "was standing at the door of my house nearly the whole time between half-past twelve and one o'clock"

That's a 15 minute difference in when Mortimer supposedly started observing the street and a 15 to 20 minute difference in how long Mortimer observed the street.

There are multiple versions of Fanny Mortimer's story. These accounts contradict each other on several points - when she went to her door, how long she was at her door, whether she saw anyone leave Dutfield's Yard, what direction the man with the black bag was going. The biggest time contradiction is between two different accounts in the same issue of the same newspaper.

[Fiver]

Fiver thinks Diemschitz didn't lie. London Evening News, Oct 1:

Her hands were tightly clenched, and when they were opened by the doctor I saw immediately that one had been holding sweetmeats and the other grapes.
...
When I first of all came across the woman, she was lying on her left side, her left hand was on the ground, while the right was lying across her breast.

Inquest:

I cannot say how much of the body was sideways. I did not notice what position her hands were in, but when the police came I observed that her bodice was unbuttoned near the neck.

Fiver is obviously wrong, but Fiver thinks there is no credible reason for Diemschitz to have lied, and therefore he didn't.

You have proved that Diemschutz' Inquest testimony is different from what London Evening News, Oct 1 claims that Diemschutz said.

You have not proved that Diemschutz lied about anything.

You have not proved that Diemschutz lied about when he found the body.

You have not provided any credible reason for Diemschutz to lie. The burden of proof is on you.

You have selectively quoted the October 1, London Evening News. It clearly says "The body was discovered by a Russian Jew named Diemschitz, about one o'clock yesterday morning, on his return from the neighbourhood of Sydenham, where he had been selling cheap jewellery."

As I said "There is an invented chunk of Ripperology related to Diemschutz, but the invention is by people who assume Diemschutz was lying about when he found the body. There is no evidence that Diemschutz lied and so far no one has provided a credible reason that Diemschutz would lie."

[erobitha]

I can see no reason for dismissing Schwartz at all. Firstly and at the very least we have to give Abberline at least some credit. He’d have dealt with so many witnesses over the years that his instinct (whilst not infallible) would have been a valuable aid and he felt that Schwartz was genuine. So we have to consider 3 possibilities. That Schwartz was truthful, mistaken or a liar. It’s difficult to see how he could have been mistaken about where and when this event took place as he gave his evidence a very few hours after they occurred. He could certainly have been mistaken about what he saw though. If he was of a timid nature then he might have mistaken a bit of drunken horseplay for a serious argument. Would he have lied? It’s not impossible of course but we’d have to ask why? Why would he place himself unnecessarily at the scene of a murder which would in all likelihood have been connected to the series? We can of course eliminate his being part of a plot because no plot occurred. I really can’t see why it’s an issue that no one else saw an incident which couldn’t have taken more than a very few seconds?

Schwartz gave his address to the police. Whether they followed up on this or not who knows? I’d suspect that there’s a simple explanation for why he hasn’t been tracked down by modern researchers. Maybe Schwartz wasn’t his real name?

I for one accept there are always issues around the reliability of exact timings and therefore we should take such things with an element of a pinch of salt if the person ascribing the time is unable to say how they knew it was that time. In Louis D's case, we can safely say he is as accurate as the clock he saw moments before.

We can assume most police constables would have either refer to a basic pocket watch or have a generally good sense of timings as their beats would generally provide them markers of how long certain point to points it takes to walk.

Now. On that basis, we have to question the exact timings of Fanny Mortimer as she is unable to provide any indications of how she knew the time was what she thought it was. The same for James Brown, William Marshall and others. However, that does not mean we get to dismiss what they saw - just when. If you extract all of the information from all the witnesses there are many overlapping corroborations.

With Schwartz, there are none. Zilch.

He cannot prove his timings. None of what he claimed to see can be corroborated with any other witness.

That doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, but it would be nice for some independent corroboration somehow.

I don't think Abberline was stupid. I'd imagine the men who gave the statement were very convincing. They may have been highly motivated to be so.

If Israel Schwartz ever appears in any official capacity beyond Abberline's statement and The Star "interview", I will happily hold my hands up for getting it wrong. I just feel Schwartz cannot be trusted at all. I think the police thought so too in the end.

I believe 100% that Schwartz was not his real name. Doesn't change my feelings on the above.

[Abby Normal]

I for one accept there are always issues around the reliability of exact timings and therefore we should take such things with an element of a pinch of salt if the person ascribing the time is unable to say how they knew it was that time. In Louis D's case, we can safely say he is as accurate as the clock he saw moments before.

We can assume most police constables would have either refer to a basic pocket watch or have a generally good sense of timings as their beats would generally provide them markers of how long certain point to points it takes to walk.

Now. On that basis, we have to question the exact timings of Fanny Mortimer as she is unable to provide any indications of how she knew the time was what she thought it was. The same for James Brown, William Marshall and others. However, that does not mean we get to dismiss what they saw - just when. If you extract all of the information from all the witnesses there are many overlapping corroborations.

With Schwartz, there are none. Zilch.

He cannot prove his timings. None of what he claimed to see can be corroborated with any other witness.

That doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, but it would be nice for some independent corroboration somehow.

I don't think Abberline was stupid. I'd imagine the men who gave the statement were very convincing. They may have been highly motivated to be so.

If Israel Schwartz ever appears in any official capacity beyond Abberline's statement and The Star "interview", I will happily hold my hands up for getting it wrong. I just feel Schwartz cannot be trusted at all. I think the police thought so too in the end.

I believe 100% that Schwartz was not his real name. Doesn't change my feelings on the above.

with all due respect ero
this is the type of reasoning that dosnt surprise me from someone who thinks maybrick was the ripper. i guess bs man dosnt fit the description of maybrick, does he? harsh, but there it is. and true as the day is long.

there is zero reason to dismiss schwartz. or whatever you think his real name is, yeesh.

oh and there is corroboration, from all the witnesses that also described seeing a suspect wearing a peaked cap that night, but again, not surprised you missed it.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Another reasonable possibility is that Stride had popped into the yard to use the privy, and as she returned to the gateway, BS man spotted her and took against her for some reason.

This 'reasonable possibility' has to consider that, as usual, no one heard or saw this...

Mrs D: In the yard itself all was as silent as the grave.

Maybe he thought she was trying to avoid him, or was looking for customers as they entered or exited the club.

Why would she attempt to avoid him? Was she in the habit of picking and choosing her customers?
If she had been looking for customers from the club, then why had prostitutes rarely if ever been seen in that location? What are the chances that she would had stood there soliciting, been seen by no one except Schwartz, and then get roughed-up (and possibly murdered) by the first drunk she encounters?

I mean, something must have angered the man who assaulted this defenceless woman, regardless of who actually killed her and whether it was another ripper murder.

Something must have angered the man, to the point that he assaults a defenceless woman, else Schwartz' story collapses and we all look silly. So can someone please dream something up...?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

If we can't have it both ways, NBFN, that goes for you too. You are the one who wants Schwartz to go away and stay away, while I allow for him to have told the truth, as far as he was able to make sense of what he saw and heard. Just the four people visible and audible in the street around the time of the assault: Stride, BS man, Schwartz and Pipeman, with nobody watching or listening from an overlooking window or front door to confirm or deny what happened. You need one person - the right person - to have watched the whole time and seen nothing and nobody, either in the street itself or curtain twitching, if Schwartz was given the tip that he'd be safe to describe such an incident happening around 12.45, give or take a minute or two. How likely is that, considering the murder had not even taken place when this mystery witness was busy watching nothing?

Schwartz wants to put 4 people on the street (including himself), and claim that there was an assault that included screaming, a noisy exchange of information between the other two men, and him running as far as 'the' railway arch, with one of the men following part of the way. No one hears or sees any of this, and so the implication is that Schwartz could have made this up and got away with it. I don't need anything - there were no witnesses!

Your only alternative would appear to be that Schwartz did indeed have to guess, but was prepared to take that risk, for whatever reason he was volunteering a false story to the police to begin with.

I don't think you intended to make your theory even less credible, but that's quite a feat. I'm not sure how you managed it.

This is quite incredible. You seem to think that it fine that Schwartz' story has no witnesses in reality, but if it is claimed to be a fake story, you ask about the possibility of witnesses? What witnesses? The hypothetical ones? There were no witnesses, and therefore your argument is null and void.

Four things stand out to me in support of a 1am discovery by Louis D.

1) He gave the time because he saw an actual clock, just as he was about to arrive back in Berner Street.

He may well have seen a clock. Was he honest about the time it read? Was he honest to the coroner when he said he did not notice the position of the victims hands? I don't think he was. I do not regard Diemschitz as being a reliable witness.

2) Fanny heard a pony and cart followed by the commotion, after retiring to bed. This caused her to go and see what the fuss was all about, and this was shortly after 1am. If she'd been on her doorstep almost the whole time between 12.30 and 1am, she'd have seen the arrival of Louis D before retiring for the night, had he arrived even a few minutes earlier. She expressed no doubts about whose cart she had heard from the bedroom, which was downstairs, at the front of the house.

Nearly the whole time does not necessarily mean right up until 1am.
Now if you're going to take the cart hearing report seriously, then let's consider this part...

It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat.

The problem with that timing is it would mean Smith does not return until about 1:10, which is too late.
There is a simple explanation - the clock in the Mortimer residence was a few minutes ahead of the real time.
Yet that would mean...

It was just after one o'clock when I went out...

...could really mean...

It was exactly o'clock when I went out...

Spooner was in the yard when she got there.

3) Fanny was unaware of any other pony and cart arriving at any time, and nothing earlier than 1am.

I've never suggested anything about another pony & cart.

4) There is no reason for Louis D to have lied about the time on the clock - unless that reason has been manufactured to fit a theory.

Yes is there is a reason, and I have already given it. Diemschitz likely knew from talking to Fanny that she had locked up before 1am. He then only need sharpen up his arrival from 'about o'clock' to 'exactly one o'clock', and there is now a significant gap between the two events. Just enough of a gap for the murder to have taken place, unnoticed.

Very little 'manufacturing' is required to make interruption a possibility. Nor is it necessarily sinister of Diemschitz to have done this. I would have done the same, assuming I had thought of this neat little trick.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Rumour isn’t evidence.

I don't think it is a rumour, and I don' think the Irish Times had a habit of publishing rumours.
Someone seems to have known when the murder occurred, and when the victim was last scene by a witness.

EN, Oct 4: There are no suppositions or probabilities in the story we have to tell; we put forward nothing but simple facts, each substantiated by the evidence of credible witnesses. What they go to establish is that the perpetrator of the Berner street crime was seen and spoken to whilst in the company of his victim, within forty minutes of the commission of the crime and only passed from the sight of a witness TEN MINUTES BEFORE THE MURDERand within ten yards of the scene of the awful deed. We proceed to five hereunder the story of the two detectives, Messrs. Grand and J.H. Batchelor, of 283 Strand:

Try responding by referring to the evidence, and not me personally. I'm getting rather bored of your 'anti-conspiracy' diatribes.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Schwartz gave his address to the police. Whether they followed up on this or not who knows? I’d suspect that there’s a simple explanation for why he hasn’t been tracked down by modern researchers. Maybe Schwartz wasn’t his real name?

You mean Schwartz may have give the police a pseudonym, rather than his real name? Why might that be?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I have already answered this multiple times. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension?

I clearly answered "Who was the man pursued" in Post #1324.

I clearly answered "Who was the man pursued" again in Post #1359.

According to the October 1, 1888 Echo, the man pursued was "man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer"

That is just rephrasing the question.

According to the October 1, 1888 Star, the man pursued was a Hungarian who was not the killer.

Not the killer, according to the Hungarian. LOL

My point is that the club secretary did not implicate Schwartz. At the time the club secretary gave his interview to the Echo, Schwartz' account had not been been published in the Star. The Star account also did not name the Hungarian. You can't deliberately implicate someone when you don't know who they are, let alone that after you give your interview Schwartz would give an account of being pursued.

Wess didn't need the papers to know what had occurred. He didn't learn from the papers - he was the content.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I get the 11:45 from William Marshall's statement that he say Stride with a man at about 11:45 and that "They went away down the street, towards Ellen-street". Marshall said he went back indoors at "About twelve o'clock", which occurred some time after Stride and the man left.

But even if we assume midnight, that does not help your theory at all.

You don't get to assume midnight, on my behalf. I estimate the grapes sale occurred after midnight, but before 12:15. The incident occurred after that.

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why did she do nothing to clean herself of mud before she got to Dutfield's Yard at 12:45?

She would have wiped her face. Not much she could do about her clothes or hair, unless she left area. Her face would get dirty again, especially if she hit the ground hard when the murder occurred. There is evidence for that...

Irish Times, Oct 1: ...the savagery of her assailant is evidenced not alone by the terrible wound in her throat but also by two severe contusions on the head - one on the temple, the other on the cheek...

She was not found lying on her face, yet Phillips said: Mud on face and left side of the head.

The IT report also says: Her black curly hair had been well combed and tied up.

Yet the hair was matted. Phillips: Matted on the hair and left side.

Phillips would have discovered this after untying her hair - the condition of her mortuary photo.

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why did no one who saw Stride after 11:45 but before her death notice any mud on her?

Someone like who? When seen by Smith her left side was mostly facing away from him.

If Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street around midnight, why had none of that mud dried to dirt by the time that George Baxter Philips examined the body nearly two hours later?

Can you quote Phillips referring to the mud, while he was in the yard with the victim?

If you want anyone to accept your speculation that Elizabeth Stride was assaulted in or close to Ellen street at 11:45, you will need to answer all three of these questions. So far, you have failed.

Blackwell: The blood was running down the gutter into the drain in the opposite direction from the feet. There was about 1lb of clotted blood close by the body, and a stream all the way from there to the back door of the club.

No mud to stop it.

Coroner: Were there no spots of blood about?
Blackwell: No; only some marks of blood which had been trodden in.

There were marks of blood on the stones, with footprints on them. This would be rather difficult to achieve, on muddy ground.