Charles Cross (Lechmere)

[drstrange169]

>>so you cant admit to your mistakes which is what you accuse others of doing, which also makes you a hypocrite.<<

When I actually make a mistake I'm happy to, but any mistake is in your interpretation not my intent, just like when you claimed I said Christer was "obligated" to congratulate Chris and Pat. Did I call you a hypocrite for you not acknowledging your mistake? Let's try and keep this debate civil, Abby.

[JeffHamm]

Forget the bloody documentary, it’s a piece of cheap entertainment. Have Christer and Ed never entertained the idea that a later Chapman TOD might be explained by Lechmere having been in the area an hour or more after he started work?

Hi MrBarnett,

Fisherman (Christer) has argued very strongly in the past that the doctor's estimation of ToD by touch is what he believes, and the eye/ear witnesses are all wrong when they place the ToD closer to 5:25ish. While Cross/Lechmere killing Annie during his working hours would allow for an adjustment on that, it then means that the murder locations should be related to his work delivery route, and Fisherman argues that it is the location along his possible walks to work that links the cases. Also, Stride and Eddowes become harder to fit in because he was not working that evening, but Stride, at least, he connects to his mother's residence. Basically, I think Fisherman's belief in the accuracy of the touch based estimation of ToD would tend to suggest that while he wouldn't think your suggestion a problem in some ways, he would be inclined to disagree with you because, in his view, she was dead long before he started work at 4:00 am.

- Jeff

[Paddy Goose]

Christer has left the building.
But this could be a good sequel. I would like to see that little chap in the TV show again, this time with his buggy all loaded up with HORSE FLESH. Yeah.

[MrBarnett]

Chapman must have been killed between 3-4 am, anything else will ruin the Documentary, the book their alleged 'killing on his route to work" profiling.



The Baron

Forget the bloody documentary, it’s a piece of cheap entertainment. Have Christer and Ed never entertained the idea that a later Chapman TOD might be explained by Lechmere having been in the area an hour or more after he started work?

[The Baron]

Chapman must have been killed between 3-4 am, anything else will ruin the Documentary, the book their alleged 'killing on his route to work" profiling.



The Baron

[MrBarnett]

Understood, but the reason this is an irritant to many of us is that the goal posts keep shifting. Several people have commented on this. Christer himself was the one that insisted that Lechmere went to work at 4 a.m. When someone suggests this contradicts with one of the murders, someone else pops in and states that his work schedule is unknown. It comes across as wishy-washy.

At least you're now arguing that Lechmere was in Hanbury Street at 5.30 a.m., even though he was now on the clock, but this still undermines Christer's theory. It was the 3-4 a.m. pattern that supposedly convinced Scobie.

If there's no pattern, there's no reason to suspect Lechmere.

As far as I know, Christer is still of the opinion that Lechmere killed on his way to work. His goal posts haven’t moved.

I’ve never been convinced by the whole ‘the murders took place on his work routes at times he would have been there’ idea. I’ve challenged that many times before. My goal posts haven’t changed.

When someone claims that Lechmere had an ‘alibi’ for Chapman, though, I feel that’s also worth challenging. As far as we know, he really didn’t. Because of my HB obsession, I use that as a possible scenario: At just after 4.00 am, Lechmere drove his cart, laden with provincial horse flesh consigned to HB in Bethnal Green, into Liverpool Street, turned left, then left again into Bishopsgate, right into Brushfield Street, then across Commercial Street into Hanbury Street and then on to Coventry Street. His single load of horse flesh took considerably less than an hour to unload and he returned to Broad Street by a similar route. If anyone can explain to me why that would have been impossible or so implausible as to be virtually impossible, then I’ll reconsider my refusal to accept that Lechmere had an alibi for Chapman.

[rjpalmer]

My reason for commenting on this subject is to contradict the suggestion that Lechmere had an alibi for Chapman. He didn’t, and there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for why he may have been near Hanbury Street at around 5.30 that morning. I’m not saying he was, or insisting that he carried horse meat on his cart, but the idea that he couldn’t have been is flawed.

Understood, but the reason this is an irritant to many of us is that the goal posts keep shifting. Several people have commented on this. Christer himself was the one that insisted that Lechmere went to work at 4 a.m. When someone suggests this contradicts with one of the murders, someone else pops in and states that his work schedule is unknown. It comes across as wishy-washy.

At least you're now arguing that Lechmere was in Hanbury Street at 5.30 a.m., even though he was now on the clock, but this still undermines Christer's theory. It was the 3-4 a.m. pattern that supposedly convinced Scobie.

If there's no pattern, there's no reason to suspect Lechmere.

[MrBarnett]

Maybe but from what was discussed by more learned people like yourself on this case it would depend on what Pickfords told him to carry wouldn't it? He may have done meat one day, and something else another. We just don't know. But historically he seems to have been a solid worker due to the length of time he had the job and his future beyond that job. So to me he doesn't seem like the kind of man to jeopardize his livelihood and his family's doing something he apparently could do at another time if this theory is to be correct.

You’d imagine drivers might specialise, though, wouldn’t you? Certain trains carrying certain goods arrived at certain times. Might not the same drivers, with experience of the goods, customers and routes have carried them each day? I believe there was a certain amount of shuffling of drivers to discourage theft/collusion, but who’d want to nick a cart load of (potentially diseased) horseflesh?

[MrBarnett]

Thanks, Gary. Yes, I suppose I formulated my question very poorly, but you answered it nonetheless, if Pickford's is known to have delivered cat's meat.

It's taken me a while to grasp why you think Lechmere's mother selling cat's meat is a link to Lechmere hauling knacker's meat for Pickford's, but maybe I've been too rash in dismissing it.

It could be true, but if a woman runs a petrol station and her son is a truck driver, it doesn't necessarily follow that he hauls petrol.

On the other hand, if he had hauled petrol for years, and had obviously made contracts with petrol stations through his work, I suppose he might have come to realize it was a lucrative business for a family member. A natural sort of 'spin off' from observations & contacts he made through his own work. Or I suppose it could have even worked the other way round, and a cat's meat seller might have found an 'in' with a bloke who was hauling meat from the knackers.

And, as you note, the grandson also followed in the cat's meat trade. The Lechmere threads are so vast and scattered around that I haven't read them all, but I suppose James Hardiman has been used to supply a theoretical link between Hanbury Street and Lechmere.

His son was a cat’s meat carter and while being so lived in Winthrop Street, a few doors from HB’s yard. According to Ed Stow, there was a Lechmere family connection to the horse flesh/cat’s meat trade well into the 20th century. Old Ma Lechmere was in that trade from at least 1890.

I’m not aware of any suggested connection between Hardiman and Lechmere. As far as I can tell, Hardiman was running a cat’s meat shop in Clerkenwell in 1888. If Lechmere was delivering horse flesh from Broad Street to HB, he’d have no obvious reason to be in contact with retail cats meat folk like the Hardimans, but if he’d been delivering that commodity for a number of years he may have brushed shoulders with them.

My reason for commenting on this subject is to contradict the suggestion that Lechmere had an alibi for Chapman. He didn’t, and there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for why he may have been near Hanbury Street at around 5.30 that morning. I’m not saying he was, or insisting that he carried horse meat on his cart, but the idea that he couldn’t have been is flawed.

[Columbo]

I’m not saying he did. I’m saying there’s not sufficient evidence that he couldn’t have done so, that he had an ‘alibi’ for Chapman.

The Lechmere family connections to the horse flesh trade make it slightly more plausible that that’s what he carried.

Maybe but from what was discussed by more learned people like yourself on this case it would depend on what Pickfords told him to carry wouldn't it? He may have done meat one day, and something else another. We just don't know. But historically he seems to have been a solid worker due to the length of time he had the job and his future beyond that job. So to me he doesn't seem like the kind of man to jeopardize his livelihood and his family's doing something he apparently could do at another time if this theory is to be correct.

[MrBarnett]

Yeah, I've always thought that David Orsam's article on "Cutting Point", was a good and fair analysis of Christer's book.

Did you find the Signature section ‘good’ and ‘fair’?

[rjpalmer]

Not sure where to start here, RJ.

Thanks, Gary. Yes, I suppose I formulated my question very poorly, but you answered it nonetheless, if Pickford's is known to have delivered cat's meat.

It's taken me a while to grasp why you think Lechmere's mother selling cat's meat is a link to Lechmere hauling knacker's meat for Pickford's, but maybe I've been too rash in dismissing it.

It could be true, but if a woman runs a petrol station and her son is a truck driver, it doesn't necessarily follow that he hauls petrol.

On the other hand, if he had hauled petrol for years, and had obviously made contracts with petrol stations through his work, I suppose he might have come to realize it was a lucrative business for a family member. A natural sort of 'spin off' from observations & contacts he made through his own work. Or I suppose it could have even worked the other way round, and a cat's meat seller might have found an 'in' with a bloke who was hauling meat from the knackers.

And, as you note, the grandson also followed in the cat's meat trade. The Lechmere threads are so vast and scattered around that I haven't read them all, but I suppose James Hardiman has been used to supply a theoretical link between Hanbury Street and Lechmere.

[MrBarnett]

Provided he could get to work at 4a, get a loaded cart or help load one depending on what his job was, get to his location and unload well before 5:30a so that he can be at that destination, park his cart and horse and start skulking around for a victim. Not to mention he would need to be delivering meat in the first place, which we don't know that he did.

I’m not saying he did. I’m saying there’s not sufficient evidence that he couldn’t have done so, that he had an ‘alibi’ for Chapman.

The Lechmere family connections to the horse flesh trade make it slightly more plausible that that’s what he carried.

[Columbo]

What’s being described here are the collections of cat’s meat by retailers and wholesalers from HB. Their deliveries of provincial meat would have to have taken place before their customers turned up. So why does a delivery, say, from Broad Street to HB’s wholesale depot in Bethnal Green between 4 and 5 prevent Lechmere from being in or near Hanbury Street at 5.30? Quite the opposite - it would put him there at exactly the right time.

Provided he could get to work at 4a, get a loaded cart or help load one depending on what his job was, get to his location and unload well before 5:30a so that he can be at that destination, park his cart and horse and start skulking around for a victim. Not to mention he would need to be delivering meat in the first place, which we don't know that he did.

[MrBarnett]

I would think this would put a hole in the Cross killing Chapman theory, but only if he was delivering meat. he would need to be there before 5a I would think.

What’s being described here are the collections of cat’s meat by retailers and wholesalers from HB. HB’s deliveries of provincial meat would have to have taken place before their customers turned up. So why does a delivery, say, from Broad Street to HB’s wholesale depot in Bethnal Green between 4 and 5 prevent Lechmere from being in or near Hanbury Street at 5.30? Quite the opposite - it would put him there at exactly the right time.