If Schwartz Lied ...

[Herlock Sholmes]

. So after chatting with parcel man for 10 minutes, she decided to solicit by standing in the gateway?

Im not saying that’s what happened. I’m saying that it might have happened.

You keep trying to micro-manage every aspect of these events and your just chasing your tail. There’s no mystery. Let it go.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. There seems to be ambush theory, given anonymously to an Irish Times reporter...

There do appear to be peculiarities in the tale of one of the murders that point more closely to a possible revelation. The woman was not in the company of her assailant. She carried in one hand sweetmeats and in another grapes, as if she were on her way to her home. She was surprised, grasped and her throat severed by a fierce attack, and it is hardly possible that this could have been done without some stains having been made upon the murderer's clothes.

Who did the IT speak to who might have known this, because they witnessed it?

A rumour that can safely be ignored. And I will.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I didn't say he was at the inquest, and neither did Anderson. Yet people at the inquest appear to know about the Schwartz tale. How can that be?

Someone told them.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

But we have Smith who, under anyone’s ‘reasonable judgment,’ would have to be considered as more likely to have been correct about what time he passed then she would. Therefore we can consider it very possible, indeed likely, that Fanny Mortimer went onto her doorstep at or before 12.35. And so any attempt to use her to claim that Schwartz lied should be dismissed. It’s black and white.

Smith took 25 to 30 minutes to go around his beat. So the mean period was 27:30, and the 'margin of error' was plus/minus 02:30.
If Smith had last been near the yard at 12:35, he would have returned between 1:00 and 1:05. A time between 1:00 and 1:02:30 has a 50% probability, as does a time between 1:02:30 and 1:05. That is why Smith's earlier time is often regarded as being too early.

If you're happy with a 1:05 arrival time, then you still need to consider that Smith gets to the top of Berner street when Lamb is already at the yard. He then walks down Berner street at normal beat pace. This means Lamb and Ayliffe must have a arrived a few minutes before Smith. So that would be about 1:02. That is about 90 seconds after Diemschitz supposedly pulled into the laneway.

In that ~90 seconds, Diemschitz has to get down from his cart and observe the victim by match light, go inside to find his wife and assistance, go back outside with Kozebrodski and observe the victim by candle light, run for police all the way to Grove street, return the same way but pause to to pick up Spooner, then go back to the yard. Spooner then observes the wound, and stands by the body for 4 or 5 minutes before Lamb and Ayliffe arrive.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

How would it have been possible for someone to have been able to say “there was definitely no one else in Berner Street at 12.45. I also went along the street checking every window to make sure that no one was looking out!”

No reasonable person can continue to talk in terms of a cover-up. It’s gone. The idea is babyish.

Reid's men did go along the street checking every window. The surrounding streets also. Guess what?
The near universal belief in Schwartz' story, has zero eyewitness accounts to support it. This really is an enigma.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Im not saying that’s what happened. I’m saying that it might have happened.

You keep trying to micro-manage every aspect of these events and your just chasing your tail. There’s no mystery. Let it go.

The Pattern: Makes wild guess followed by a declaration that there is no mystery

[NotBlamedForNothing]

A rumour that can safely be ignored. And I will.

The ambush theory has Stride near the gates for seconds, rather than minutes. By minimizing her time at this location, it maximizes its chance of being correct, because no other witness claimed to have seen Stride standing at the gateway.
Schwartz' account turns reality upside down. He had the woman waiting at the gates and the man with the funny gait walking south. It was exactly the opposite - the man hid in the darkness and grabbed Long Liz, as she walked by to the north.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Someone told them.

That's right, and that is what Anderson's draft letter suggests - the evidence of Schwartz was made available at the inquest.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Smith took 25 to 30 minutes to go around his beat. So the mean period was 27:30, and the 'margin of error' was plus/minus 02:30.
If Smith had last been near the yard at 12:35, he would have returned between 1:00 and 1:05. A time between 1:00 and 1:02:30 has a 50% probability, as does a time between 1:02:30 and 1:05. That is why Smith's earlier time is often regarded as being too early.

If you're happy with a 1:05 arrival time, then you still need to consider that Smith gets to the top of Berner street when Lamb is already at the yard. He then walks down Berner street at normal beat pace. This means Lamb and Ayliffe must have a arrived a few minutes before Smith. So that would be about 1:02. That is about 90 seconds after Diemschitz supposedly pulled into the laneway.

In that ~90 seconds, Diemschitz has to get down from his cart and observe the victim by match light, go inside to find his wife and assistance, go back outside with Kozebrodski and observe the victim by candle light, run for police all the way to Grove street, return the same way but pause to to pick up Spooner, then go back to the yard. Spooner then observes the wound, and stands by the body for 4 or 5 minutes before Lamb and Ayliffe arrive.

But we can’t assume that these policemen lied. So we have to juggle times. You might not like that but it’s a better approach than assuming lies. So we would have something like - Smith arrived at around 1.07 (30 minutes onto 12.35 so that’s only +2 minutes) Lamb and Ayliffe arrived at 1.06 (possibly after Eagle first turned left into Commercial Road) Spooner arrived at around 1.03 (which meant that he arrived 3 minutes before Lamb which he guessed at 5 minutes so no issue there.)

None of the events that occurred in Berner Street can be dismissed if we apply a reasonable amount of leeway and accept that people were largely estimating times and durations of time.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Reid's men did go along the street checking every window. The surrounding streets also. Guess what?
The near universal belief in Schwartz' story, has zero eyewitness accounts to support it. This really is an enigma.

But plotters didn’t do that and that’s the point. Someone deciding to send in Schwartz as a false witness would have had no way of knowing exactly who was in the street at 12.45 (even just passing through) It’s can’t go unmentioned that the police went on considering Schwartz a genuine witness into November despite Fanny Mortimer allegedly being on her doorstep at the time he passed (according to some versions)

If the Police had a reliable witness, sure of the time, who said something like “well I live a couple of doors from the club and I was on my doorstep from 12.30 until 1.00 and I didn’t see any argument near the gates” wouldn’t they have immediately dismissed Schwartz as a liar? Or did they, who heard Mortimer’s statement in full detail rather than the multiple Press versions that we are left with, simply come to the conclusion that she had gone back inside by the time that Schwartz passed? After all, it can’t be suggested that they were desperate to believe Schwartz at all costs.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The Pattern: Makes wild guess followed by a declaration that there is no mystery

You’re the one making the wild guesses though. I’ll I’m doing is suggesting reasonable, plausible, rational explanations based on what we know, taking into consideration that we need to allow for a margins of error in timings and that we need to recognise human error occurs, Press error occurs, exaggeration can occur and inaccurate rumours do occur.

A woman has her throat cut in a yard. The killer is undiscovered. Witnesses of untestable reliability surface. Timings differ.

If you had this scenario at any time in history, at any location, how many times would the answer be that there was a group of politically minded plotters who, on the spot, decide to lie about the time the body was found and to employ a false (non-English speaking witness) to lie about be present during an attack. He then uses an obscure one word insult by the imaginary attacker to ‘prove’ that he wasn’t a club member?

Good luck finding a parallel. 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 the answer is that a man killed a woman and escaped and witnesses gave their honest opinions (some of whom were mistaken.)

There is no mystery here.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The ambush theory has Stride near the gates for seconds, rather than minutes. By minimizing her time at this location, it maximizes its chance of being correct, because no other witness claimed to have seen Stride standing at the gateway.
Schwartz' account turns reality upside down. He had the woman waiting at the gates and the man with the funny gait walking south. It was exactly the opposite - the man hid in the darkness and grabbed Long Liz, as she walked by to the north.

There’s not a smidgeon of evidence for this laughable tripe. Embarrassing.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That's right, and that is what Anderson's draft letter suggests - the evidence of Schwartz was made available at the inquest.

Or Anderson made a mistake.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. This means Lamb and Ayliffe must have a arrived a few minutes before Smith

I missed this whopper of an exaggeration! How far was it from the intersection of Berner Street and Commercial Road to Dutfield’s Yard in your world?

Id suggest that in the real world Lamb and Ayliffe arrived around a minute or so before Smith arrived.

[Herlock Sholmes]

But we can’t assume that these policemen lied. So we have to juggle times. You might not like that but it’s a better approach than assuming lies. So we would have something like - Smith arrived at around 1.07 (30 minutes onto 12.35 so that’s only +2 minutes) Lamb and Ayliffe arrived at 1.06 (possibly after Eagle first turned left into Commercial Road) Spooner arrived at around 1.03 (which meant that he arrived 3 minutes before Lamb which he guessed at 5 minutes so no issue there.)

None of the events that occurred in Berner Street can be dismissed if we apply a reasonable amount of leeway and accept that people were largely estimating times and durations of time.

Another small but I think important point to make is that not only do we have to allow for a reasonable margin for error on timings given but we also have to consider the accuracy of clocks. It would be optimistic to the point of naivety to assume that all clocks were perfectly accurate or perfectly synchronised. So it’s far from impossible that the clock that Diemschutz saw might have been out by a minute or two for example. If, when Blackwell looked at his watch and saw that it was 1.16, someone had, at exactly the same time, looked at the clock that Diemschutz had seen would it also have said 1.16? Or 1.14 or 1.15 or 1.17? Who knows? And so I’ll say again, as long as events tally up after allowing for reasonable margins for error, and they do, then there’s no case to answer for any suggestion of earlier discovery times or plots. It’s not an open-minded re-assessment of events as some would have it, it’s an exercise in clutching at straws to quite deliberately manufacture a mystery from nothing.