If Schwartz Lied ...

[NotBlamedForNothing]

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.

When Fanny went to the door with the intention of shooting the bolts, she had already been outside.
When she had been outside previously, she saw Goldstein. Then when she decided to stay at her door a while longer, she saw him again.

[erobitha]

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.

Not harsh Abby, as I said previously, it’s good there are so many different viewpoints.

It does not bother me that people dismiss what I say because I am a Maybrickian. People can believe what they want. You and I for example pretty much agree on the GSG.

Nothing I have said is factually incorrect with regards to Schwartz. I can argue the reverse. Some want his statement to be factually correct for their own reasons too.

The peaked cap is clutching at straws. It’s like saying he had a moustache too. In Victorian London?

[Herlock Sholmes]

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.

Just a small point Erobitha but I don’t think that we can assume that most Constable’s had a pocket watch. We know that Lamb for example didn’t have one so I’d say, and I’ll stand correcting of course, that they were no more likely than the average man to have one. You’re right of course that they would have been more aware of the time than most.

I don’t see the fact that no one else saw Schwartz or the incident as a serious issue though. This was 12.45 am after all and in an area that was hardly a busy thoroughfare. The incident itself would have been over in a matter of seconds.

We can’t completely dismiss the suggestion that Schwartz lied of course. The possibility exists. I can only think of the desire for 15 minutes of fame as a possible reason for lying though but this seems more than a little strange to me. Apart from the fact that he was placing himself at the scene of the murder unnecessarily the police would have been able to check where he’d been before and after the incident to check that he had a legitimate reason for being there.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Originally posted by caz View Post
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”<


Another example of your strange thinking. How would anyone inside the club have heard someone walk into the yard and slip into the outside loo? Unless you’re suggesting that Stride was playing the trombone at the time or singing at the top of her voice…

[Herlock Sholmes]

Caz - 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?

Maybe he was violent? Maybe she owed him money? Maybe she had other reason to dislike this man?

If she had been looking for customers from the club, then why had prostitutes rarely if ever been seen in that location

’Rarely.’ But not ‘never.’ Also, might it not have been the case that club members would have been reluctant to admit that prostitutes sometimes used their yard?

[Herlock Sholmes]

.
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...?

And so Schwartz can be dismissed because we cannot name the exact cause of the dispute between Stride and BS Man?

As long as we’re being fair minded……

[Herlock Sholmes]

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.

And I’m getting tired of you’re attempts to distort and manipulate.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When Fanny went to the door with the intention of shooting the bolts, she had already been outside.
When she had been outside previously, she saw Goldstein. Then when she decided to stay at her door a while longer, she saw him again.

She didn’t see Goldstein again! She didn’t say that she saw Goldstein again! You’re making things up!

[Herlock Sholmes]

.
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

There isn’t a single, solitary snippet that could lead us to suggest that Diemschutz lied about what time he discovered the body. You are basing your opinion on the desire to make it fit a plot scenario.

Its little short of remarkable that you label Diemschutz as ‘unreliable’ and yet you constantly quote and rely on Fanny Mortimer for whom, as Fiver has shown, we have varying versions of what she allegedly did on that evening.

Diemschutz at least has backing. His wife, Eagle and Gilleman, Fanny Mortimer hearing the horse and cart. And as you like to focus on what wasn’t seen we can add that he wasn’t seen returning earlier than 1.00. Then we have witnesses confirming the search for a Constable just after 1.00.

This all points to events occurring as we know that they did.

Is there any aspect of this case that you don’t see as having an undercurrent of suspicious behaviour which leads to a conclusion of subterfuge of some kind?

[Herlock Sholmes]

. 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

And how do you know that the Mortimer’s owned a clock?

Nice piece of manipulation by the way

Try this…..again…

She was simply estimating her time and was wrong. Smith was correct in that he passed between 12.30 and 12.35. I know that you are reluctant to admit that Smith might have been correct because it provides a simple explanation that you seek to avoid or dismiss. That she was back indoors when Schwartz passed.

[caz]

It is great that there are so many different viewpoints and theories.

On this issue of Schwartz, I struggle greatly with his testimony. No one can seemingly find head nor hair of him after his statement to Abberline and the highly fortuitous encounter by The Star with him and his seemingly live-in interpreter.

Not one element of his story aligns with any detail of the other witnesses. Park timings for one moment, nothing in his story aligns with any other statements.

Something really does not add up.

Either his evidence was so good that he should be called to the inquest to give his version of events as potentially the last person to see Stride alive (aside from her killer). Alternatively, the 'evidence' was treated for what it was - not reliable and ultimately dismissed by the police. It even somehow got mixed up by Swanson that the murderer was a Jew because Schwartz may have been called 'Lipski' by the potential killer. Come again? Do we just dismiss that as a mistake?

None of it makes sense with Schwartz. He should be dismissed as being simply an unsafe witness.

I stand by what I said. I will eat my hat if anyone can actually find proof that the man Israel Schwartz existed on record outside of the Police statement and Star Report.

Hi erobitha,

What do you think could have motivated Schwartz to tell his story to begin with?

I thought there were just two schools of thought on the use of "Lipski": that Pipeman was addressed by that name by BS man [which Schwartz originally assumed was the case], suggesting they were both Jewish and acting together; or that it was shouted at the obviously Jewish Schwartz as an insult [which Abberline put to Schwartz as the more likely explanation, and Schwartz conceded ignorance on the point], in which case Pipeman need not have been involved and BS man was probably not Jewish.

If Schwartz went to the police and the Star with a prepared story that had no basis in fact, and made Pipeman an accomplice to the assault on Stride, why did he not stick to his script under police questioning, but let Abberline talk him out of it? The end result was a dog's breakfast that was open to interpretation, according to whether one preferred to believe BS man was the murderer, the ripper, a Jew, an invention, or none of the above.

If Pipeman was traced, or came forward voluntarily [possibly after reading about himself in The Star], and confirmed the basics: the assault and when and where it happened, the police would have had to take both witnesses seriously, in which case they could have been held back in case there was a future trial. They'd have had the potential to identify a suspect as the same man they saw assaulting Stride. Could have been a biggy.

Love,

Caz
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[NotBlamedForNothing]

Another example of your strange thinking. How would anyone inside the club have heard someone walk into the yard and slip into the outside loo?

Because they were in the yard too? For example, Lave.

Unless you’re suggesting that Stride was playing the trombone at the time or singing at the top of her voice…

I guess it's possible she sang three tunes, but not very loudly.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

And so Schwartz can be dismissed because we cannot name the exact cause of the dispute between Stride and BS Man?

As long as we’re being fair minded……

Let's have another look at the evidence. The People, Oct 7:

The police authorities who have the inquiries with respect to the murders in hand, have received a statement with regard to the murder in Berner street that a man, aged between 35 and 40 years, and of fair complexion, was seen to throw the murdered woman to the ground, but that it being thought by the person who witnessed this that it was a man and his wife quarrelling, no notice was taken of it.

The witness perceived a quarrel between a man and his wife - not a random drunk and a street prostitute. Consequently the witness took "no notice of it". No running away, and no chase.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

She didn’t see Goldstein again! She didn’t say that she saw Goldstein again! You’re making things up!

Goldstein was not the only man she had seen, but he was the only man she had seen walk down the street previously. That was previous to going to the door to shoot the bolts. She decided to stay at her doorstep a while longer, and that's when she saw him again - possibly coming from the club. Fanny saw Leon twice.

[caz]

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.

Also, Stride was fastidious enough to borrow a clothes brush before venturing out that evening, so I can't see her making no effort to wipe off any mud from an earlier assault where she was thrown to the ground.

Love,

Caz
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