If Schwartz Lied ...

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I suspect that you want me to add times because you believe that you have some “aha!” moment.

Unlikely, because ...

We know what happened in Berner Street that night.

That should be an end of this silliness.

Unlikely, because what you mean by the previous quote is; "We all pretty much agree with each other, what happened in Berner street that night".

[NotBlamedForNothing]

It is not Herlock that is "talking bullocks" (who brought those cattle in here?). The man tried to pull the woman into the street, she asked him to let go of her and he complies resulting in her overbalancing and falling down. She protests that his actions have caused her fall, but not loudly so they cannot be considered a scream.

So to make sense of Schwartz's story, you had to change it, by watering it down and providing your own embellishments. Is that what a professional historian would do?

The idea of quiet screams is the result of a loss in translation. Dictionary definition of a scream: " give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing extreme emotion or pain". Obviously the "three screams, but not very loud" do not fit this definition and are the product of a translation error. If they were screams as defined in the dictionary they would have been heard in the club and the street.

Abberline appears to have accepted "she screamed three times, but not very loudly". Clearly you think he was wrong to do so. Yet Abberline surely realized that screams (as per the dictionary definition) would have been heard, and that screaming not loudly is a contradiction in terms. As a result, how likely would it have been for Abberline not to have asked for clarification, or even for Schwartz's best rendition? That is, assuming the interpreter had not beat him to it. What you seem to be saying is that the interpreter did not know the English word or phrase for what Schwartz was describing. Or perhaps it was Schwartz's language that the interpreter was less than 100% familiar with?

If, as you suggest, the sounds made were indeed a protest rather than screams, that is, language rather than noise, was the problem that Schwartz mistook language for noise, or that the interpreter couldn't make that distinction? The Star account would suggest that Schwartz's capacity for reading the situation was not the problem ...

A SECOND MAN CAME OUT of the doorway of the public-house a few doors off, and shouting out some sort of warning to the man who was with the woman, rushed forward as if to attack the intruder.

You said "George, are you still keen for me to publish a timeline, for peer review and comment?".
Yes please, preferably as a sequence without times!

Okay, here it is ...

Same as all the others, except for:

* Goldstein - twice instead of once
* Schwartz - left right out


I hope you're suitably impressed!

[GBinOz]

Hi George,

Very good post there and one I completely agree with! This is one of the reasons why I started this thread a while back (but, perhaps, I've already pointed you to it before).

Cheers,
Frank

Hi Frank,

Thank you those kinds words. I have not seen your thread before and look forward to reading it now.

Best regards, George

[Scott Nelson]

We know...but where is it going?? And will it ever get there?

[FrankO]

Hi Herlock,

Might I illustrate my last post with a scenario based on the theory of cumulative and compensating errors.

Witnesses A and B both leave their home at 12 midnight by their clocks and both estimate that they will arrive by walking to the same club in one hour. Witness A's clock is 5 minutes fast so he is actually leaving at 11:55pm, and his estimated walking time of an hour is actually 55 minutes, so while he is sure that he arrives at 1am, it is actually 12:50am. Witness B's clock is slow so he actually leaves home at 12:05am, and his estimated time of 1 hour is actually 1 hour and 5 minutes, so he arrives at 1:10am, but is certain it is 1am. This is cumulative error. (If the witnesses actual times for their estimated hour were reversed, it would be compensating error, and the would both arrive at the same time).

Haha says arm chair detective 130 years later, if they both arrived at 1am, how come they didn't see each other. Someone is lying or mistaken. No one is lying or mistaken. A clock accurate to 5 minutes was a very good clock in 1888, and a five minute error in 1 hour is also an acceptable margin of error. A third level of error is introduced in that people didn't know in advance that they would be asked in the future the time of a current event, and the phenomena of recreative memory. Only the police were required to know the time on an on going basis, and doctor's as time events occurred.

I hope this throws into sharp contrast the absurdity of accurate to the minute timelines for this era. I have been guilty of this in the past, but I have mended my ways and have reformed. Sequences are much better.

Cheers, George

Hi George,

Very good post there and one I completely agree with! This is one of the reasons why I started this thread a while back (but, perhaps, I've already pointed you to it before).

Cheers,
Frank

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why didn't Mortimer hear the measured, heavy tramp when BS man was approaching Stride?

Swanson's report states that Goldstein passed at about 1am. Mortimer tells us she went out just after 1am, after being at her doorstep for most of the period 12:30-1:00. How is that both Goldstein and Mortimer could have been out by +15 minutes? Was it just a coincidence?

.

So Swanson gives an estimated time.

Im tired of this 12.30-1.00 being quoted as a fact.

There’s no issue with any of this.

God I’m bored of conspiracy stuff. Pleeeeeeese give it up. There was no plot, no cover up, no one lied, there was nothing remotely sinister going on. A simple murder occurred. People estimated times and some were wrong. Some events got a bit garbled. That’s it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That interpretation is in no way compatible with this quote:

FM: It was just after one o'clock when I went out, and the only man whom I had seen pass through the street previously was a young man carrying a black shiny bag, who walked very fast down the street from the Commercial road. He looked up at the club and then went round the corner by the Board School.

So she had previously seen a man walking from the direction of Commercial Road. That would require her to have looked to her left, not her right. You're attempting to merge that quote with this ...

I only noticed one person passing, just before I turned in. That was a young man walking up Berner-street, carrying a black bag in his hand.

It's not going to work.

Neither are your efforts to manufacture a mystery.

We’ve discussed the ‘previously’ quote. She clearly and obviously wasn’t saying that she’d seen Goldstein previously. Please let this go. It’s boring and obviously wrong.

If she’d looked right and seen a man walking in the direction of Fairclough Street then very obviously he was was walking from the direction of Commercial Road. My interpretation is compatible although it doesn’t have the attraction of invention like your version.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why didn't Mortimer hear the measured, heavy tramp when BS man was approaching Stride?

.

Possibly she was at the back part of the house at the time?

[Herlock Sholmes]

So you aren't aware that Wess had left to go home before Eagle returned. That passage from the Times contradicts itself ...

Witness worked in the printing office. He remained in the club until about 9 o'clock on Saturday night. He then went out and returned about half-past 10. He then remained in the club until the discovery of the deceased. On the first floor of the club was a large room for entertainments, and from that room three windows faced the yard. On Saturday night a discussion was held in the large room among some 90 or 100 persons. The discussion ceased between 11:30 and 12 o'clock. The bulk of the people present then left the premises by the street door entrance, while between 20 and 30 members remained behind in the large room, and about a dozen were downstairs. Some of those upstairs had a discussion among themselves, while others were singing. The windows of the hall were partly open. Witness left the club about half-past 12. He slept a 2, William-street, and gave as his address 40, Berner-street, as he worked there all day. The distance from his lodgings to Berner-street was about five minutes' walk. Before leaving the club he had occasion to go to the printing office to put some literature there, and he went into the yard by the passage door, thence to the printing office. He then returned to the club by the same way. As he passed from the printing office to the club he noticed the yard gates were open, and went towards them, but did not actually go up to them. There was no lamp or light whatever in the yard. There were no lamps in Berner-street that could light the yard. The only light that could penetrate into the yard was from the windows of the club or the house that was let out in tenements. He noticed lights in one or two windows of the latter house, and they were on the first floor. When he went into the printing office the editor was there reading. Noises from the club could be heard in the yard, but there was not much noise on Saturday night. When he went into the yard and looked towards the gates there was nothing unusual that attracted his attention.

Why do you suppose that no one else corrected you on this point?

I haven’t a clue what you’re getting at.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That extends to all witnesses - times given by all witnesses are unverifiable. Yet that hasn't stopped you from arguing times at length, including for Fanny Mortimer, which necessarily defines a time window for Goldstein and Schwartz too to some extent. So this response seems evasive.

Of course we can suggest possible times if we’re in the process of proposing a timeline but there’s no point in trying to say ‘x must have occurred at 12.48.’ An unwillingness to claim opinion as facts isn’t evasion.

Once you concede that "The interpreter might have been a club member", then the possibility that Schwartz had a connection to the club and may well have been member, must also be conceded. Then you have fertile ground for various theories.

You don’t need any encouragement or ‘fertile ground’ for various theories as long as they involve something sinister.

I note you didn't follow up on my point about the interview with Wess being held on the Sunday afternoon, rather than Monday. A Sunday interview means that Wess was making implicit references to the 'Schwartz incident', before Schwartz had visited Leman street. That is fascinating in its own right, but to suggest that this was due to "a local Jewish grapevine of some sort", surely also suggests that for word to travel that quickly, the police would have had little trouble in finding someone who had heard the story, and maybe even someone who knew someone who was involved in the incident, or a witness to it. Is there evidence for this? Perhaps there is, in the Star, Oct 2:

In the matter of the Hungarian who said he saw a struggle between a man and a woman in the passage where the Stride body was afterwards found, the Leman-street police have reason to doubt the truth of the story. They arrested one man on the description thus obtained, and a second on that furnished from another source, but they are not likely to act further on the same information without additional facts.

Another source? Whoever that was, the outcome does not appear to be favourable to Schwartz. This one report alone, is enough to seriously question the near-universal belief in Schwartz's story, amongst Ripperologists.

Do we know the exact time that Schwartz went to the police with his story? Are you suggesting that someone from the club couldn’t have told Wess about the incident and that he had been asked to accompany him to the station? We don’t know what happened and in what order. We don’t even know who this interpreter was and we don’t know who he spoke to or who else Schwartz might have spoken to and who, in turn, they might have spoken to.

This amounts to rewriting the report, which clearly states that it was supposed that the man being chased was the murderer, and not that the murderer was doing the chasing. So a supposed conflation of Schwartz's first and second man does not explain away the huge discrepancy in the Echo report vs Schwartz's account. Let's be clear, in the Echo report, Israel Schwartz is implicitly regarded as the murderer. If the chase described in each case was real, then it cannot simply be assumed that Schwartz's 'side of the story' is the correct one. Yet that is what almost everyone does.

And it was a mistake. Why are you making a big issue of this. It’s not important. A garbled story.

Your summation of the case against Schwartz is predictably poor. This is a better one, yet far from complete. As for no one seeing or hearing anything, you will at least have to explain away the Echo report ...

... the secretary mentioned the fact that the murderer had no doubt been disturbed in his work, as about a quarter to one o'clock on Sunday morning he was seen- or, at least, a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer- being chased by another man along Fairclough-street ...

The phrase "a man whom the public prefer to regard as the murderer" tells us that Wess knows this is all BS, and had no difficulty maintaining the mental distinction between the chase and the search. My theory does not require us to regard Wess as being a halfwit. The other blatant giveaway is the phrase "about a quarter to one o'clock". Who said anything about about 12:45? Wasn't this misconstrued chase occurring a few minutes after 1am? Clearly Wess had all the details of the Schwartz incident. That is because he authored it.

Childish nonsense. Any theory involving Schwartz being used as a false witness isn’t worth typing about. A Freemasonic conspiracy is more likely.

Then there should be no real issues with you giving times for Schwartz, Mortimer, and Goldstein, within +/-5 minutes.

I suspect that you want me to add times because you believe that you have some “aha!” moment. We know what happened in Berner Street that night. That should be an end of this silliness.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You would think that if Abberline questioned Schwartz closely with respect to the shout of "Lipski" why would he not do the same with respect to screamed but not loudly which would seem to be a contradiction in terms.

c.d.

It’s a fair point c.d. It’s not a phrase that we can easily imagine employing. There has to be the possibility that it was an issue of translation but you’d think that Abberline would have asked for clarification especially as no one heard any ‘screams.’

[GBinOz]

How do you get "boisterousness and horseplay" out of ...?

The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round & threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly.

You're talking bullocks.

Hi Andrew,

It is not Herlock that is "talking bullocks" (who brought those cattle in here?). The man tried to pull the woman into the street, she asked him to let go of her and he complies resulting in her overbalancing and falling down. She protests that his actions have caused her fall, but not loudly so they cannot be considered a scream. The idea of quiet screams is the result of a loss in translation. Dictionary definition of a scream: " give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing extreme emotion or pain". Obviously the "three screams, but not very loud" do not fit this definition and are the product of a translation error. If they were screams as defined in the dictionary they would have been heard in the club and the street.

You said "George, are you still keen for me to publish a timeline, for peer review and comment?".
Yes please, preferably as a sequence without times!

Cheers, George

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I tend to think that ‘scream’ was possibly just a poor choice of word from a non-English speaking Schwartz. I’ve also wondered if Schwartz might have misread the situation. He said that BS man appeared drunk so perhaps the encounter wasn’t actually a threatening one and BS man was just an annoying drunk? Perhaps he mistook boisterousness and horseplay for anger? Not being able to understand what was being said might have contributed toward this.

How do you get "boisterousness and horseplay" out of ...?

The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round & threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly.

You're talking bullocks.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hi Herlock,

My opinion is that Brown saw Mortimer's young couple and that Stride was with the same man, the one from the Bricklayers Arms at least until she was seen with him by Smith. I would agree with your suggestion that Stride knew BSman, maybe as a troublesome admirer or punter but I don't think she was waiting for him. I think that she was either waiting for Parcelman or had arranged a cleaning job in the Club. I suspect the three "screams" may have been more of a remonstration than a cry for help. I am toying with a hypothesis that, if Stride was killed by BSman, he may have been Kosminski, but not the ripper.

Cheers, George

A scream is a scream in any language.

We should not be altering the evidence to make sense of Schwartz's account. It should live or die of its own merits.

You would think that if Abberline questioned Schwartz closely with respect to the shout of "Lipski" why would he not do the same with respect to screamed but not loudly which would seem to be a contradiction in terms.

c.d.

Bingo!

It is highly conceivable that Abberline would have wondered out loud why no one had heard those screams, and only at that point did Schwartz provide the "not very loud" qualification.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Maybe she’d arranged to meet Goldstein but he was late (didn’t Fanny say that she was walking very quickly?) and he quickly looked into the gateway to see if she was there. Maybe Goldstein was hesitant to come forward because his ‘relationship’ with Stride would have been frowned on by his friends and seen as suspicious by the police. Maybe…..maybe not.

Goldstein was half Stride's age. So a relationship between the two seems highly unlikely, even without considering their very different cultural backgrounds. Yet it seems that the notion of Stride standing in that gateway, requires us to come up with these highly unlikely explanations, so why not this one?