If Schwartz Lied ...

[Herlock Sholmes]

Both 'up' and 'down' were used consistently by Fanny, and in keeping with the convention of regarding the northern end as being the top of the street...

Echo, Oct 1: I met my young man 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.



The Home Office asked a question about this man, that Swanson may never have seen, let alone responded to. He was extremely busy. Nor can we be sure that the duty officer at Leman street the evening that Goldstein and Wess went there, was aware of the Evening News interview. Were you aware of it a few months ago, after having studied the case for years?



Commercial Road was to Fanny's left, and the club was to her right. How can you not see this?

There’s no way that it wouldn’t have been noted that this mysterious stranger had been seen twice by FM. This is very obviously an error that, yet again, you see mystery in. Until you find the newspaper report where she says that she’d seen him twice then we can dismiss it.

Am I recalling correctly but didn’t she say something like ‘he might have come from the Club?’ Which would show that he hadn’t walked past her. Isn’t it more likely that she simply meant that as Goldstein was obviously Jewish, and had looked up at the club, then he might have been a member?

Goldstein passed once.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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The fixed point officer - whose shift finished at 1am - was found at or near his fixed point.
PC Smith proceeded to Berner street from Gower's Walk - a few minutes away - at 1am.
There is no way Diemschitz could have turned into Berner street, when he claimed to.

Rubbish!

You keep quoting exact, pinpoint times. Allow even a matter of seconds leeway, and there’s no issue. Diemschutz passed and arrived when he said that he did. The attempts to ‘disprove’ this get more desperate.

[Herlock Sholmes]

.
That's wrong. An approximate time - "about one o'clock" - would have been compared to other witness accounts, and the consensus would have been that Diemschitz arrived at about five to one.

Pleeeeease try a visit to Planet Earth for once! Diemschutz arrived at 1.00. It’s very simple. Beyond argument.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. Diemschitz manufactured a significant chuck of Ripperology

He’s not in the same league as you.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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It's quite simple - he gets to explain how the murderer entered and exited the yard unnoticed. This would help to take suspicion away from the people at the club.

Thinks makes no sense. According to you they were using an imaginary witness. So why didn’t they simply get the imaginary witness to say that he’d seen the incident at 12.30? It would have changed nothing for them. With one scenario they would have been hoping that no one noticed an absent Schwartz in the other they would have been hoping that no one noticed an absent Diemschutz.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

The problem started for me when Swanson sent his report to the Home Office on 19th October 1888. The marginal note bothers me greatly. I know there is a risk a clerk wrote it. However, it could have been Swanson. He was a fan of such things. It could have even been Henry Matthews.

The outcome is because that the slur Lipski was used means the killer was most likely Jewish is absolutely nonsensical. Clearly Schwartz was trying to convey the killer was a gentile because a Jew would not likely call another Jew Lipski. So there is official belief of that view - regardless of who wrote the marginalia.

Then you have the fact no-one can independently corroborate any of the things Schwartz claimed he saw. Abberline was diligent and took the statement as was intended. Between then and the report the feeling that Schwartz was not 100% reliable by the police, is evident in Swanson’s report.

“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered. At the same time account must be taken of the fact that the throat only of the victim was cut in this instance which measured by time, considering meeting (if with a man other than Schwartz saw) the time for the agreement & the murderous action would I think be a question of so many minutes, five at least, ten at most, so that I respectfully submit it is not clearly proved that the man that Schwartz saw is the murderer, although it is clearly the more probable of the two.”

Why do we never see such a disclaimer on any other witness statement “if so so and so is to be believed”? Clearly Swanson is acknowledging the issues with it.

Then we have the railway arch and address that didn’t exist.

I think the false witness was trying to move focus away from the Jewish community by indicating the murderer was most likely a gentile. Yet somewhere along the way it became even more muddled that using the term Lipski made the killer Jewish.

it’s almost like the Jews are the men that should be blamed for nothing.

Hi erobitha,

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Schwartz originally seemed to think Pipeman was being addressed by the name "Lipski", which suggested to him that the two men knew each other and were acting together. It makes no sense otherwise for the police to go looking for men called Lipski, which they did do initially. Schwartz wasn't claiming that BS man was a Gentile. His police statement implied the opposite.

Abberline established that Schwartz had probably misunderstood the situation, not having any English, and that "Lipski" had been used as an insult directed at Schwartz himself, changing the whole nature of the incident and suggesting that BS man was acting alone and was not Jewish. When this was put to Schwartz, he admitted that he couldn't actually say who BS man had shouted the name at. He had made an assumption. That made his initial interpretation unreliable, but not the witness himself or the basics of seeing the murdered woman being assaulted by one man. He needed no English for that.

I agree that it would have been nonsensical to believe the killer was Jewish because he had hurled an anti-Semitic insult at an obviously Jewish witness. But did anyone claim this? Surely it depended on whether one chose to believe Schwartz's initial interpretation, of a Jewish accomplice named Lipski, or the one Abberline put on it, of a Gentile assailant shouting an insult at an unwelcome Jewish witness?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If Schwartz is to be believed.

Look, you want to take Schwartz out of the equation, so be my guest. Take BS man out while we're at it. We were discussing why Stride was in the yard, unseen and unheard by any witness, when her killer - whoever that was - made his move on her.

Are you saying she had no reason to be there, so she wasn't there?

Men were often in the yard, and not just to use the loos. If you want to suppose that Liz could have used one of those loos unnoticed, then you are again taking a virtual risk. At some point the luck has to run out.

Eh? Whether she was in the loo at some point, or elsewhere in the yard, she was unnoticed by anyone but the killer when he struck - or he would have been noticed too, and a very silly billy for not waiting until the coast was clear.

Are you saying that because nobody noticed them together, they weren't there, and the body was a figment of the collective imagination?

So what possible reason would she have for being there?

You win. So she was never there and there was no murder. Great theory - saves a lot of bother looking for evidence if there wasn't any.

[GBinOz]

Well summed up Fiver

What we can say for certain though is that Mortimer cannot be used as proof that the Schwartz incident didn’t take place and yet we repeatedly hear her used for precisely that reason. Of course we have to point out that PC Smith disagrees with Fanny on the time that he passed along Berner Street. He said between 12.30 and 12.35 whilst she had it 12.45. So which one was correct?

We have no way of knowing for certain but we can say that Smith would have been the likelier to have been correct. He was on a regulated beat. He’d probably very recently passed a clock and, as a Police Officer who would have been expected to report incidents noting the time that they’d occurred he’d have had more reason to have been aware of time. Fanny on the other hand had no reason to log the time as it was just another normal night for her. And so, if Smith was right, then she’d have been back inside by the time Schwartz appeared.

Agreed. The clock Smith would have used was just up the street in the Tobacconist window on the corner of Commercial Road. The same clock he was using when he said at the inquest that he was on that corner at 1 o'clock. His estimate of 12:30 to 12:35 was because he had walked away from his reference. When he said he was back on the corner at 1 o'clock he was viewing his reference clock. No estimate necessary as he had an exact time according to the clock that Diemshitz referenced. I have seen a suggestion on this forum that maybe Diemshitz heard the clock chime and mistook the chime for 1 o'clock when it was actually for 12:45. I don't know if a clock in a shop window would have a chime loud enough to be heard in the street but if it did Diemshitz time of passing FM would be pretty close using the 10 minute correction to Tobacconist clock time derived from Smith's earlier passing.

Cheers, George

[caz]

Why would he have immediately left the scene?

Referring to Pipeman, he would also have been there for a reason, but if he was simply minding his own business he could have been on his way home anyway, having stopped in a doorway just to light his pipe. You are looking at a snapshot and inferring that Pipeman had planned to hang around indefinitely, puffing away and taking in the atmosphere, until the quarrel suddenly sent him packing. I don't see the problem either way. He might have taken off a bit more hurriedly to avoid it, and who would blame him? This is what Schwartz could have seen as threatening, because like you he didn't know if Pipeman was about to walk off in that direction anyway.

Schwartz was suggesting that the second man were an accomplice. While this is ambiguous in Swanson's summary, it is made very clear in the Star report, and by Anderson in his letter (in which he refers to "the supposed accomplice"). So there is much more going on than just two different perspectives. It seems to me from the October 1 & 2 Star reports, that initially Pipeman was not wholly believed, and then doubts arose of Schwartz' story. The critical issue is how this was resolved - it's seemingly one man's word against another - yet there was no trial. Therefore Pipeman's story must have been in some way unassailable. It's obvious to me how that could have been the case.

How could there have been a trial if no suspect was ever tracked down and identified as BS man?

I can see how Schwartz might have preferred to believe Pipeman was an accomplice, who had chased him away from the scene, because it excused him for leaving the woman to her fate. That doesn't make it so, nor would it make either witness a liar. Two independent witnesses, telling the same essential story about time and place, but from their personal perspectives, would have had a better ring of truth, especially if both were able to explain their presence and their movements.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Agreed. The clock Smith would have used was just up the street in the Tobacconist window on the corner of Commercial Road. The same clock he was using when he said at the inquest that he was on that corner at 1 o'clock. His estimate of 12:30 to 12:35 was because he had walked away from his reference. When he said he was back on the corner at 1 o'clock he was viewing his reference clock. No estimate necessary as he had an exact time according to the clock that Diemshitz referenced. I have seen a suggestion on this forum that maybe Diemshitz heard the clock chime and mistook the chime for 1 o'clock when it was actually for 12:45. I don't know if a clock in a shop window would have a chime loud enough to be heard in the street but if it did Diemshitz time of passing FM would be pretty close using the 10 minute correction to Tobacconist clock time derived from Smith's earlier passing.

Cheers, George

Hello George, welcome to Casebook

I’ve never been good on directions but when we look at Smith’s Inquest testimony he does mention Backchurch Lane before Commercial Road. Someone posted something about Smith’s route a while back but I can’t find it so maybe someone can help on this? Wouldn’t this raise the possibility that Smith passed on the opposite side to the clock? I don’t know? As Smith doesn’t mention where he got his time from isn’t it possible that he might have got it from a different source? As we know that Lamb arrived after 1.00 and that Smith arrived after Lamb then he couldn’t have been on that corner at 1.00 so I’m wondering if he saw a clock earlier on his route?

[caz]

I think it more likely that, like the young woman in the Echo report, Stride was walking past the gates rather than standing at them. She was pulled into the yard as she passed. There is no good reason for supposing she was standing at the gates of Dutfield's Yard. Given the small chance she had been waiting for someone, the meeting place would have outside a pub, and/or on Commercial Road. The gateway would have been a very odd choice of meeting place, unless she were meeting a club member.

Right, so the killer was in the yard, unnoticed by anyone, and got lucky when Stride just happened to walk past the gates while nobody else was around?

Or are you suggesting something else entirely?

[erobitha]

Hi erobitha,

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Schwartz originally seemed to think Pipeman was being addressed by the name "Lipski", which suggested to him that the two men knew each other and were acting together. It makes no sense otherwise for the police to go looking for men called Lipski, which they did do initially. Schwartz wasn't claiming that BS man was a Gentile. His police statement implied the opposite.

Abberline established that Schwartz had probably misunderstood the situation, not having any English, and that "Lipski" had been used as an insult directed at Schwartz himself, changing the whole nature of the incident and suggesting that BS man was acting alone and was not Jewish. When this was put to Schwartz, he admitted that he couldn't actually say who BS man had shouted the name at. He had made an assumption. That made his initial interpretation unreliable, but not the witness himself or the basics of seeing the murdered woman being assaulted by one man. He needed no English for that.

I agree that it would have been nonsensical to believe the killer was Jewish because he had hurled an anti-Semitic insult at an obviously Jewish witness. But did anyone claim this? Surely it depended on whether one chose to believe Schwartz's initial interpretation, of a Jewish accomplice named Lipski, or the one Abberline put on it, of a Gentile assailant shouting an insult at an unwelcome Jewish witness?

Love,

Caz
X

It’s okay to agree to disagree Caz. Many have and many will disagree with me on many things.

The very fact Abberline is interpreting what he thinks Schwartz means should alone make his statement and claims of what he saw completely unreliable. Too much conjecture before we have even got onto corroboration and timings.

I’m very uneasy about literally everything to do with Schwartz, because nothing fits.

- he came off the street willingly to give his testimony. Do we really know his motivation for doing so? If what he said happened why did he fear he would be implicated?
- Goldstein seemed less concerned as he didn’t show until a few days later and he was actually spotted by Fanny Mortimer
- his timings cannot be corroborated
- where was heading and was he coming from? No-one knows. His wife was moving apparently - from where to where?
- his exact location can’t be corroborated (the railway arch?)
- his address cannot even be corroborated (Ellen St or not Ellen St?)
- he as a human being who existed cannot be corroborated

Then we are to believe he was held back from the inquest because he was a star witness? Really?

He would not be put on the stand today and I’m guessing the police had the same thoughts then.

[caz]

Hi erobitha,

You are assuming that police enquiries didn't get any answers to the questions you ask above. We don't actually know that. We also don't know that Pipeman didn't recognise himself from reading the Star report and come forward with an explanation that confirmed the basics of time and place and the fact that he and Schwartz both saw the assault. So we don't know that Schwartz's story was completely unreliable, or was ever considered to be by the police, even if Pipeman didn't show.

Where is the suggestion that Schwartz would have feared being implicated if what he said actually happened? He volunteered his statement, putting himself close in time and place to the latest murder, and took that risk, whether the story was true or false. He'd have had more reason to fear being implicated if he was lying about it, and got found out. With no English and being a Jew, he could have felt at a distinct disadvantage, telling lies via an interpreter to the authorities, some of whom might have been only too glad to make an example of him. Had the Met been anything like as corrupt as they were a century later, he could have found himself dangling from a rope.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Hi erobitha,

You are assuming that police enquiries didn't get any answers to the questions you ask above. We don't actually know that. We also don't know that Pipeman didn't recognise himself from reading the Star report and come forward with an explanation that confirmed the basics of time and place and the fact that he and Schwartz both saw the assault. So we don't know that Schwartz's story was completely unreliable, or was ever considered to be by the police, even if Pipeman didn't show.

Where is the suggestion that Schwartz would have feared being implicated if what he said actually happened? He volunteered his statement, putting himself close in time and place to the latest murder, and took that risk, whether the story was true or false. He'd have had more reason to fear being implicated if he was lying about it, and got found out. With no English and being a Jew, he could have felt at a distinct disadvantage, telling lies via an interpreter to the authorities, some of whom might have been only too glad to make an example of him. Had the Met been anything like as corrupt as they were a century later, he could have found himself dangling from a rope.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I feel somewhat strange debating against you. We often view many aspects in the same light. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to see what it's like being on the opposite side of the fence for once. Just no switchblades, please!

• This is true - we do not know if their enquiries achieved the results I desire. But the argument does also work in reverse. We don't even how extensive such enquiries were. So, I would dare to argue we are in a Mexican stand-off on this particular point. The fact Swanson has the wrong address in his own notes. I believe he has 22 Helen Street written down. Let's hope their enquiries relied more on Abberline's detective abilities than old Donald, as they would not have found anyone at that address. It wasn't there anymore at the correct Ellen Street. The Star would have struggled too. What's more, a recently immigrated young Jewish girl who could speak no English, was "outraged" by a gang of men on Back-Church Lane in 1885. Very odd coincidence. Gary Barnett I believed unearthed this particular nugget. She left for America soon after. Is it connected in any way? How many Hungarian Schwartzs were living in that area over a 3 year period? Why can't we find any of them, when there must have been clearly more than one? Or is there something else at play here? Could be just pure coincidence. I don't have the answer, just another odd aspect to this whole thing.
  
• We will never know Schwartz's motivation for coming forward. As you say, he must have felt had a compelling enough reason to do so by putting his name and life in possible danger
• History has been kind to Israel Schwartz by accepting his version of events, seemingly without much contest, despite being uncorroborrated by any other available witness. Sorry, a peak cap and a moustache being the only link.
• We don't know if the police even found pipeman or even wanted to - let alone BS man. We have no insight into the detail of this individual. When a void remains people are entitled to theorise about what fills that void

He was a convenient witness until he wasn't. The police most likely did not have enough evidence either way and most likely could not find him after that initial statement. Hence the language of the police "if to be believed" is a disclaimer of caution, because as yet they had no reason to doubt him but clearly they did have doubts to even use that language.

They also most likely couldn't find him. Rather than worrying the public, they lost either a 'star' witness or even potentially the murderer himself, it was easier all round to let him fade quietly into the night.

How Israel Schwartz entered this story remains as odd as how he left it.

That being said, it is also entirely feasible circumstances were as they were as documented and believed by many.

It just does not sit right with me at all.

If any firm evidence proves Israel Schwartz the man actually existed I'd be the first to switch my beliefs based on that evidence alone.

Regards,

Ero

[Herlock Sholmes]

. She was pulled into the yard as she passed.

Opinion stated as fact.

There is no good reason for supposing she was standing at the gates of Dutfield's Yard.

Apart from a witness who saw her there but there’s certainly no good reason to think that she wasn’t.

Given the small chance she had been waiting for someone, the meeting place would have outside a pub, and/or on Commercial Road.

Amazing! How can you possibly state that you know where she would or wouldn’t have elected to have met someone?

The gateway would have been a very odd choice of meeting place,

What is ‘odd’ about it? One choice of meeting place is no more or less likely than another. I used to meet a girl outside a pet shop. Was that an unlikely place?

unless she were meeting a club member

How do we know that she wasn’t. As I suggested in an earlier post, maybe she was hoping to see someone that she felt might have been in the club. We know that she did work for Jews so maybe one of them was a regular at the club and she hoped to catch him for a small loan? As we don’t know we can’t dismiss it. As we can’t dismiss that she might have arranged to meet someone. Or that she was soliciting.

You’re constantly clutching at straws to make something out of nothing. Perhaps you should put more effort into reading the lines rather than constantly trying to read between them?