If Schwartz Lied ...

[GBinOz]

I recall Michael & Tom Wescott suggesting parcel-man was Wess carrying some flyers, yet Wess had left the club by 12:15, and he left with his brother & a friend, three men walking together. He wasn't carrying any flyers, he was going home.

How can anyone connect Wess, who had left by 12:15, with parcel-man outside the club at 12:35?

Hi Jon,

I can't speak for Michael or Tom, but my only connection between Wess and Parcelman would be the print shop as a possible source of flyers for Parcelman and Wess as a possible source of the literature (flyers) being left at the print shop..

Wess:- On Saturday the compositors finished their labours at two o'clock in the afternoon. The editor concluded earlier, but remained at the place until the discovery of the murder. ......
[Coroner] How do you know that you finally left at a quarter-past twelve o'clock? - Because of the time when I reached my lodgings. Before leaving I went into the yard, and thence to the printing-office, in order to leave some literature there.

Cheers, George

[JeffHamm]

Thankyou Jeff, I read your post #2620, a good read. You have pursued the issue as I would have liked to myself. Laying out the sequence of events will naturally include a few anchor points of time. Obviously, Blackwell's reference to his watch being the most significant. My first caution is the time given by Diemschitz may have referred to the actual time he passed the clock out on Commercial Rd, not the minute he pulled into the yard.
I know in our mind the times would be different but in the late 19th century when most activities were governed by a clock chime every 15 minutes at best, it would be normal for Diemschitz to make no distinction. Passing the Tobacconists at 1:00 am meant he arrived home at 1:00 am, it being only a short jog down Berner St. to the yard.
However, I liked your post, the rationale is perfectly reasonable.

The only points I would take issue with is your inclusion of the testimony of James Brown, and you made no mention of the second couple seen by Mortimer.

If you had included Packer that would have eliminated Brown, who didn't see the flower on the woman & did see a man wearing a long coat. Brown saw some other couple in my view.
Mortimer saw a couple across the street by the corner of the Board School, which is where James Brown saw a man & woman as he passed by.

In the Daily News, 1st Oct. we read Mortimer's words:

"...A young man and his sweetheart were standing at the corner of the street, about 20 yards away, before and after the time the woman must have been murdered, but they told me they did not hear a sound."

Note:
The "20 yds" coincidentally is from Dutfields Yard to the corner of the Board School at Fairclough St., but from her press statement it seems she meant from her house at No.36, the actual distance was 30 yds = roughly 100ft.

Hi Wickerman,

Yah, I was thinking about Packer, but given his statements are so widely different, starting anywhere from 11 or so, I couldn't really place him. Also, if we take Parcelman to be holding grapes he purchased from Packer, which I've seen suggested, then we just need to place Packer at sometime earlier than that sighting, but given how all over the place he was with his statements, he could be placed just about anywhere before that one chooses. I was trying to stick with statements that had less play with them. Once those are fitted together, they may help to suggest when the more uncertain events could have occurred. I probably should have mentioned that.

I'm not sure what is considered contentious about James Brown's statement (other than Overcoatman and Ms.Someothernight might not be Stride, though I thought I indicated that?) Is there something else that I'm unaware of (I wouldn't be surprised if there was) or did I make a mistake in my description (I know I had a mixup in my notes, and had him walking up and down Berner Street rather than along Fairclough, but I thought I had corrected that in the post - if not, my mistake).

Oh, and yes, the DNews where Mortimer mentions the "young man and his sweetheart". I suspect that's Brown's OCM and Ms.SON, and if, as the timings worked out, Mortimer goes in before Brown passes, they could still be at that corner when he does (so it seems they could corroborate each other). Part of me wonders if that is Spooner and the lady he says he was chatting with, but further up Fairclough. If it was, that would mean they strolled back up the street after James Brown passed. We know, for example, Mortimer and Spooner were both at the scene, and her comment about talking to them at the scene would be consistent with that suggestion (speculative though it may be). Since Fanny went inside, she can't really say they were there at the time the murder happened, unless she's presuming she was on her doorstep while Stride was being killed, which seems unlikely.

To be clear, the times I presented are, of course all to be viewed as approximations, and things like Deimshutz testimony of arriving at 1o'clock, or at least reading the clock when it said 1, are well within the range we might expect clocks to differ. The time I present is an estimation of what the time was on Blackwell's watch, so if one feels that approximation is acceptable, then one could use it to try and work out the difference between Deimshutz's clock and Dr. Blackwell's watch (provided one also believes Deimshutz to be accurate in his clock reading).

Anyway, I've done the best I can to describe how I built the timeline, and where I had to make one or two judgement calls. In part because then others could, if they wish, see if other statements can be fitted to that structure by following the same approach (to keep things consistent). We can never know exactly what happened, but from what I see, so far none of the statements I've included show any signs of gross inaccuracy, or deception. Just, clock-sync errors, and the typical range expected from human error.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Good luck with persuading Andrew to produce his own timeline. You have produced and published one based on Blackwell time, I have based on Police time, and Frank has with sequences but no times. I have suggested on a number of occasions that, rather than sniping at the work of others, he might care to publish a timeline of his own for peer comment. No result on that suggestion as yet.

Cheers, George

Hi George,

I don't think overall timelines are his thing, he focuses on the minute details and this sort of thing is about the global overall pattern. A full understanding and investigation requires analysis at both levels, and those in between as well. From a global level of analysis, Andrew would be said to be missing the forest for the trees, but at the detail level of analysis, the timeline reconstruction can be seen as forgetting that "the devil is in the details". No one approach is the only approach, but a full understanding of something requires examining things both for its gross overall structure, and at the minute detail level. That's part of the reason why I test the "intervals that get created", if the reconstruction produced intervals that were outside the expected ranges of error, that would show at the detail level where a problem might exist. One would expect some conflict to arise if we add in more and more statements (test something often enough, and sooner or later you'll get one of those 5% cases that just happen to fall outside the range) because real life is not a mathematical model. It's messy, and variable, but testable. If, however, you don't many but you've done a lot of tests, you can be more confident the model is acceptably accurate. So far it appears to be as nothing fell outside the ranges, so there's no conflict between a gross level analysis and the detail level analysis. Once armed with all of the different analyses, it is up to the researcher to make sense of them, and present an interpretation. Guided speculation you could call it. And then more debate begins about the best way to interpret the information from the analyses, and possibly someone thinks of a new way to analyse information we have, because the different ideas being debated make different predictions in this new analysis approach, and so they can again be compared. And as we more and more test the predictions of competing ideas, we slowly paint truth into a corner. Hopefully one small enough that we can call it a solution.

- Jeff

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

I can't speak for Michael or Tom, but my only connection between Wess and Parcelman would be the print shop as a possible source of flyers for Parcelman and Wess as a possible source of the literature (flyers) being left at the print shop..

Wess:- On Saturday the compositors finished their labours at two o'clock in the afternoon. The editor concluded earlier, but remained at the place until the discovery of the murder. ......
[Coroner] How do you know that you finally left at a quarter-past twelve o'clock? - Because of the time when I reached my lodgings. Before leaving I went into the yard, and thence to the printing-office, in order to leave some literature there.

Cheers, George

Parcel-man was in Berner St., not in the yard.
Wess tells us he went to the print shop from the club, which would be by the side door presumably, then returning to the club again by that side door. He called his brother & another man, all three left by the front door.

How do we make Wess into Parcel-man accompanying Stride, out in Berner St.?

[Wickerman]

I was open-minded to Packer until I read about his stories of being stalked by The Ripper. He was cuckoo and I can see completely why the police could not trust the old man.

I haven't followed the whole this thread and perhaps I should go back, but I was hoping we had got to the part when we all realised that Schwartz was mistaken, or at worse lying. His timings and chain of events do not corroborate with anyone else.

Ah, so one witness is cuckoo, the other is lying.
Not exactly how Swanson described them, but perhaps you have not reached that point yet....

[GBinOz]

Parcel-man was in Berner St., not in the yard.
Wess tells us he went to the print shop from the club, which would be by the side door presumably, then returning to the club again by that side door. He called his brother & another man, all three left by the front door.

How do we make Wess into Parcel-man accompanying Stride, out in Berner St.?

Hi Jon,

Sorry, I must be miscommunicating. I certainly don't think that Wess is Parcelman. My proposal is that Parcelman has picked up flyers that Wess had prepared and left with the printers.

Cheers, George

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hi Jon,

Sorry, I must be miscommunicating. I certainly don't think that Wess is Parcelman. My proposal is that Parcelman has picked up flyers that Wess had prepared and left with the printers.

Cheers, George

This is part of Wess's inquest testimony, in the Echo, Oct 1:

I was in the Club on Saturday from 3 p.m. until 9.30, when I went to see a friend. When I returned I went into the Club by the front door. On the first floor is a large room used for entertainments, and from this room three windows look into the yard. When I reached the room on Saturday, a discussion was going on, about one hundred people being present. The discussion ceased between 11.30 and 12, when the bulk of the people left the premises, going through the street door, which is the most convenient exit. About thirty members remained behind, twenty of whom stayed in the hall. They had some singing and discussions amongst themselves. The windows were partly opened. I left the place at about 12.20. I can fix the time, because when I got home, at 2, William-street, where I sleep, it was 12.30.

At 12.10 I went from the Club into the printing office to put some literature away. Upon returning, I went into the yard, and noticed that the gates were opened. There are no lamps in the yard; neither are there any lamps in Berner-street which will light the yard. The only light that comes into the yard is derived from the gas-light in the Club premises. I noticed some one in the printing office, who was reading. There was not much noise from the Club, but the singing could be heard in the yard. When I looked towards the gates I did not see anything unusual to attract my attention. I did not notice anything on the ground. When I re-entered the Club-house yard I called to my brother, and with him and a friend I went home. We went out through the front door. I do not recollect seeing anyone in Berner-street. I often go home late, and I have seen low men and women talking in Fairclough-street. I have not seen them nearer to the Club.

I get the impression from that that the literature had been used at the meeting, and Wess was putting it or the leftovers away.

It's interesting to compare the 30 members Wess estimated remained behind at the end of the discussion, with the number of people on D-I Reid's list...

As soon as the search was over the whole of the persons who had come into the yard and the members of the club were interrogated, their names and addresses taken, their pockets searched, and their clothes and hands examined. There were 28 of them. Each person was dealt with separately. They properly accounted for themselves, and were then allowed to leave.

So there must have been a trickle of departures, after the bulk of the members left. When Eagle returned at what he supposed was about 12:40, he tried the front door, but it was locked. That would suggest that any member leaving between then and 1am (or whatever time is supposed for Diemschitz arrival), left through the side door.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Frank's timeline is in an almost permanent tab on my computer. His point "19, P.C. Lamb arrives, followed by PC 426 H", indicates to me that Lamb had told PC 426 H (Ayliffe) that he had a minute or two before his release time of one o'clock. Herlock disagrees with me here insisting that the fixed point PC had to be released by the supervising Sergeant, but I would think that if that Sergeant were there to release him the Sergeant would have come to the yard as well when th alarm was raised. The fact that the fixed point PC was following Lamb indicates to me that he was called by Eagle and Koze before or at one o'clock. This would support Johnson's testimony that Ayliffe arrived a few minutes after one o'clock. Smith testified: When I came to the spot two constables had already arrived. The gates at the side of the club were not then closed. I do not remember that I passed any person on my way down. I saw that the woman was dead, and I went to the police-station for the ambulance, leaving the other constables in charge of the body. Dr. Blackwell's assistant arrived just as I was going away. This seems to confirm that there was a disparity between police time and Blackwell's pocket watch time, IMO about 7 minutes.

This is from the St. James Gazette, Oct 3:

By Detective Inspector Reid: I passed the top of the street about six or seven minutes before I was called. Police Constable Smith was on the Berner street beat.

By the coroner: He was not the man who went to the yard with me. A policeman was on "fixed" duty at Grove street, near Berner street; but he was relieved at one o'clock and the "fixed" duty is not taken up again till nine o'clock the next morning.

Detective Inspector Reid said the fixed duty was from nine to five and from five to one. The man did not move from the point, so that people might not have to run about to find him.

Taken at face value, Ayliffe had gone off shift when Lamb was alerted, but of course he was still close to or within the fixed point zone. So had it just gone 1am?

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

Sorry, I must be miscommunicating. I certainly don't think that Wess is Parcelman. My proposal is that Parcelman has picked up flyers that Wess had prepared and left with the printers.

Cheers, George

Ah, ok, we were at cross purposes - sorry about that.

[Wickerman]

Anyway, I've done the best I can to describe how I built the timeline, and where I had to make one or two judgement calls. In part because then others could, if they wish, see if other statements can be fitted to that structure by following the same approach (to keep things consistent). We can never know exactly what happened, but from what I see, so far none of the statements I've included show any signs of gross inaccuracy, or deception. Just, clock-sync errors, and the typical range expected from human error.

Hi Jeff.

Agreed, and that's the significant point to take away from your analysis. There is nothing in general wrong with the story handed down to us in the variety of sources, short of having an actual script of events.
I would like to refer to your analysis in future debates if that's ok, it was something I had planned to do myself someday, you've saved me the trouble. Naturally, I would inject Packer's experience into the timeline as I think the man he described was the same as Parcel-man, and the man at the Bricklayer's Arms.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Wickerman,

Hi Jeff.

Agreed, and that's the significant point to take away from your analysis. There is nothing in general wrong with the story handed down to us in the variety of sources, short of having an actual script of events.
I would like to refer to your analysis in future debates if that's ok, it was something I had planned to do myself someday, you've saved me the trouble. Naturally, I would inject Packer's experience into the timeline as I think the man he described was the same as Parcel-man, and the man at the Bricklayer's Arms.

Feel free to refer to it if you think it's worth a mention. I've redone the whole procedure again, remeasuring the distances, redoing the estimations, and so forth, but this time set Dr. Blackwell's arrival time to 1:16:30 (since we don't know where in the 16th minute his clock was, I place it at the 1/2 way mark - just a pedantic touch up), and such, and come to the same thing. Not exactly the same times to the second shifted by 30, because of course, each time you measure the distances you'll get a slightly different value. I wanted to see how variable things might be due to that part of the analysis. It seems pretty stable.

And yes, feel free to slot in Packer if you have an idea where his encounter should occur. I've limited my go to those I felt I had enough information to either just link things by event description, or where any judgements on my part were in the order of a couple minutes.

FYI, I've sent in that 2nd version as a submission for the dissertation section, and if they're still adding to those, it may end up there.

- Jeff

[Wickerman]

Trivial point, there appears to have been two "sweetheart" couples.

I had an exchange with Tom some years ago and if I recall correctly he dismissed the couple by the Board School as he found an interview where she said she had been in the street between 12:00-12:30, so contrary to Mortimer, they simply had not been there at the time she claimed.

I think Tom assumed the term "sweetheart" used in several press reports referred to the same couple, it likely did not.

The woman who spoke to the Echo in this report tells a different story to that spoken by Mortimer.

"From twelve o'clock till half-past a young girl who lives in the street walked up and down, and within twenty yards of where the body was found, with her sweetheart.
"We heard nothing whatever," she told a reporter this morning. "I passed the gate of the yard a few minutes before twelve o'clock alone. The doors were open, and, so far as I could tell, there was nothing inside then." "I met my young man (she proceeded) at the top of the street, and then we went for a short walk along the Commercial-road and back again, and down Berner-street. No one passed us then, but just before we said "Good night" a man came along the Commercial-road; and went in the direction of Aldgate."

Whereas Mrs Mortimer claimed:
"A young man and his sweetheart were standing at the corner of the street, about 20 yards away, before and after the time the woman must have been murdered, but they told me they did not hear a sound."

And again...
"When the alarm of murder was raised a young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found. She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty-minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises".

The walking Sweethearts were gone from Berner St. before Mortimer came out of the house, whereas the standing Sweethearts were still at the corner around 1:00 am according to Mortimer. Hence, it looks like we have two different "Sweetheart" couples.

[Wickerman]

...Frank's timeline is in an almost permanent tab on my computer. His point "19, P.C. Lamb arrives, followed by PC 426 H", indicates to me that Lamb had told PC 426 H (Ayliffe) that he had a minute or two before his release time of one o'clock. Herlock disagrees with me here insisting that the fixed point PC had to be released by the supervising Sergeant, but I would think that if that Sergeant were there to release him the Sergeant would have come to the yard as well when th alarm was raised.

Hi George.

Sorry to pick up on this, pedantic details like the one above tend to tweak my interest.

It's not like Mike to make a definitive statement like that without some justification, though I wonder exactly how that could work.
H Division had 24 Fixed Point duties (two more lasted until 7:00 am), they range from the City border in the west to Wapping in the East, from Bethnal Green in the North down to the Docks. Unless there were at least 24 Sergeants on night duty how could they all be relieved at 1:00 am?

I've seen a list of rank & file for H Div. somewhere, I just can't recall at the moment how many Sergeants they had.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Wickerman,

Trivial point, there appears to have been two "sweetheart" couples.

I had an exchange with Tom some years ago and if I recall correctly he dismissed the couple by the Board School as he found an interview where she said she had been in the street between 12:00-12:30, so contrary to Mortimer, they simply had not been there at the time she claimed.

I think Tom assumed the term "sweetheart" used in several press reports referred to the same couple, it likely did not.

The woman who spoke to the Echo in this report tells a different story to that spoken by Mortimer.

"From twelve o'clock till half-past a young girl who lives in the street walked up and down, and within twenty yards of where the body was found, with her sweetheart.
"We heard nothing whatever," she told a reporter this morning. "I passed the gate of the yard a few minutes before twelve o'clock alone. The doors were open, and, so far as I could tell, there was nothing inside then." "I met my young man (she proceeded) at the top of the street, and then we went for a short walk along the Commercial-road and back again, and down Berner-street. No one passed us then, but just before we said "Good night" a man came along the Commercial-road; and went in the direction of Aldgate."

Whereas Mrs Mortimer claimed:
"A young man and his sweetheart were standing at the corner of the street, about 20 yards away, before and after the time the woman must have been murdered, but they told me they did not hear a sound."

And again...
"When the alarm of murder was raised a young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found. She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty-minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises".

The walking Sweethearts were gone from Berner St. before Mortimer came out of the house, whereas the standing Sweethearts were still at the corner around 1:00 am according to Mortimer. Hence, it looks like we have two different "Sweetheart" couples.

That's interesting. The walking sweethearts appear to vacate the area well before the critical times, but it is interesting to know about general levels of activity in the area. But from what you've presented, I agree it looks like two different couples.

The Standing Sweethearts appear to be a good candidate for Mrs.Mortimer's couple, and could also be the couple that James Brown passes, and his identification that it was Stride who he saw is erroneous. Part of me is toying with the idea that the Standing Sweethearts are Spooner and his lady friend, and that they eventually move down Fairclough to where they eventually meet up with the searchers as they run past after the discovery. We know the searches began around 1, and there is no mention of a couple being at the corner of Berner and Fairclough at that time, but Spooner and his lady friend are just down the road.

Given these are press reports, and it is the young lady who is being spoken to and she seems reluctant to divulge her name or the name of her "young man", the press may never have twigged to the fact that the young man was Spooner, who played a bit more of a role than just being in the area at the time. If she is reluctant to have her name drawn into things, she might not mention that they moved up the street as that would identify Spooner as the young man (or be more likely to result in that), which in turn might reveal her identity. Why she might want to keep her name out of the paper cannot be worked out, but I'm sure one could dream up lots of reasons why that might be.

I'm not suggesting the above as if it should be viewed as "proven", but it does seem an interesting possibility to consider, at least based upon things so far. I may be overlooking something and seeing things through a bias created by my own ponderings, but that's what happens when trying to make sense of things. Find something that makes sense when there's little data, and you can end up stuffing conflicting data into the "I've made sense of it bin", never to be seen again.

- Jeff

[Wickerman]

Hi Wickerman,

The Standing Sweethearts appear to be a good candidate for Mrs.Mortimer's couple, and could also be the couple that James Brown passes, and his identification that it was Stride who he saw is erroneous. Part of me is toying with the idea that the Standing Sweethearts are Spooner and his lady friend, and that they eventually move down Fairclough to where they eventually meet up with the searchers as they run past after the discovery. We know the searches began around 1, and there is no mention of a couple being at the corner of Berner and Fairclough at that time, but Spooner and his lady friend are just down the road.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff.

Perhaps you have come across some detail I missed.
It was my understanding that Spooner was picked up by Diemschitz & Koz. on their way back from the Grove St. end of Fairclough St.
Spooner was with his lady friend at the bottom end of Christian St. at Fairclough.
Spooner joined Diem & Koz. as they returned to Dutfields Yard, no mention of whether his lady tagged along behind.
Would you leave your girlfriend on those backstreets after an alarm has been raised of a murder?, I know I wouldn't, yet no mention of her joining Spooner.

So, as to your thoughts, how do we place Spooner with his lady standing 'smooching' on the corner by the Board School (at Fairclough & Berner) when his own words suggest he came passed that point with two other men without stopping?