Elizabeth Prater

[Observer]

Hi

I'm confused

Was the doorway to the stairs leading to Prater's room a later addition to the original house? Were the stairs wooden, and before the partitioning of Kelly's room a means of gaining access from Kelly's room to the upper rooms in the building?

Observer

[bolo]

Whether Lizzie Prater lived right above or slightly behind Kelly is less important IMHO than the fact that she did live in close proximity to the victim--she was probably the closest tenant to the victim--and yet heard nothing of the murder.

More interesting to me is whether Prater did in fact hear nothing, as she testified, or heard something and kept quiet out of fear or whatever. Because I can't compute her being upstairs asleep or not and hearing nothing given that Kelly does appear to have defensive wounds which might suggest that there was a struggle. Even if there wasn't, and Kelly was killed instantly, there would still be noise downstairs of some description no matter how quiet the killer tried to be. He was a busy bugger, and I can't see how he could have accomplished what he did completely without noise. I would believe that Prater fell into a drunken sleep so was basically passed-out, but she was awakened pretty easily by Tiddles the kitten...

There probably were noises but maybe too indefinable to wake Prater up. The fact that she woke up when her cat walked over her neck does not surprise me. Even if she was very drunk, two pairs of cat paws on a sensitive area such as the neck is way more "alarming" than muffled sounds coming from downstairs. I now because we also have a cat that likes to jump on beds in the middle of the night...

[Fisherman]

Tom Wescott writes:
"This approach has worked well for you and the Swedes on the Stride threads, so why not here? Ha ha."

Well, Tom, since you so graciously invite me to join on the thread, I will of course do so.
And I won´t disappoint you: I´m with Sam 100 percent on this one. There is every possiblity that the former apprehension that Prater lived exactly above Kelly needs to be questioned.

Some posts back, Sam quoted the various bits and pieces that were used to describe where Prater lived, and I think the material points away from that dwelling being exactly above Kellys room.
The quotations that most adamantly put her in that spot, though, either put it "just above the room of the deceased" or that "the deceased lived in the room below her".

I think that these two positionings can be questioned semantically:

"Just" does not necessarily mean "exactly", if I am not mistaken: There are expression like "I just missed the train", "Only just", pointing out something that is close, but not exact. "It just by the corner" does not necessarily mean AT the corner - a very short distance away from it is "just" as likely.

As for Mary living "in the room below" Prater, I think that the shed may come into play. Kellys room was partitioned off from the shed by a wall. Above the shed and Kelly, there were rooms 19 and 20, but below 19 and 20 there was only 13 - as far as "rooms" go. The rest was some sort of hallway and the shed, not "rooms" from a tenant point of view. Thus Prater may well have meant that below her part of the dwellings, there was only one room, and that was where Kelly lived. Directly below her, though, that room need not have been.

This means that there are reasonable doubt in the wordings used to establish the back room, facing the court, as Praters quarters. I see no such possibilities to semantically question "the first floor front room", for instance, just as I see no reason for Prater to state that her room was "almost" over Kellys room, if that was not an exact description of the state of affairs.

Add to this that Prater in all probability was enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame, and that the papers would do the best they could to place her as close as they could to the murder scene, trying to sell copies, and we end up with a pretty conclusive case, as far as I´m concerned.
If you want to keep Prater over Kelly, you are welcome to it, Tom. That will add the extra value of giving you the possibility to yell "revisionist" at me once again.

The best!
Fisherman

[Chava]

Whether Lizzie Prater lived right above or slightly behind Kelly is less important IMHO than the fact that she did live in close proximity to the victim--she was probably the closest tenant to the victim--and yet heard nothing of the murder.

More interesting to me is whether Prater did in fact hear nothing, as she testified, or heard something and kept quiet out of fear or whatever. Because I can't compute her being upstairs asleep or not and hearing nothing given that Kelly does appear to have defensive wounds which might suggest that there was a struggle. Even if there wasn't, and Kelly was killed instantly, there would still be noise downstairs of some description no matter how quiet the killer tried to be. He was a busy bugger, and I can't see how he could have accomplished what he did completely without noise. I would believe that Prater fell into a drunken sleep so was basically passed-out, but she was awakened pretty easily by Tiddles the kitten...

[Sam Flynn]

Methinks we're getting our leg pulled by Sam.

Methinks some legs are getting bogged down in the clinging mud of tradition, Tom

As a possible means out of the morass, consider:

"First floor front" - who would make that up? (10th November)

"Above the shed" - who would add that detail, and what purpose would it serve? (13th November, inquest)

"A room (almost) above the deceased" - various newspaper reports

...plus other murder cases after Kelly, where the relationship between rooms 19 and 20 are starkly illustrated and which, arguments for the re-numbering of rooms apart, place room 20 at the front of the house.

I just can't ignore all this. Likewise, I can't - Omar Khayyamesque - move the finger back to erase a single line of it on the basis of one or two (that's all) apparently contradictory newspaper reports and/or the feathery scribbles of MacDonald's inquest scribe.

"regardless of floor plans."

A statement that inspires real confidence in the theory. Eliminate the floor plans, all inquest testimony, and anything else resembling good evidence and you might just be on to something, Perry. This approach has worked well for you and the Swedes on the Stride threads, so why not here? Ha ha. Methinks we're getting our leg pulled by Sam.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Being the half-owner of a Home Renovations company Tom...I do have some insight into the value of relying on drawings that are supposed to account for any and all renovations over the life of the dwelling. To assume any of those drawings represent the actual layout at the time of that murder is risky. McCarthy takes one wall down, and has a suite, or adds walls, and turns 2 rooms into 4. And neither would likely be "permitted" renovations. How do you think landlords justified putting 7 people in one room? Often it wasnt one room on the building plans.

And as for packaging me up with anyone elses opinions, I should think by now you know I disagree with almost everyone at some time anyway, Swedes and Ex Oklahomans alike.

As far as using every scrap of evidence available as gospel,...... hey, go to town, make it all important if youd like, believe every investigative opinion if you like...but it isnt all important, and I prefer to assimilate rather than just regurgitate myself.

I find that helpful when dealing with situations like Carrie Maxwell.

To each his own though.

Cheers

[Tom_Wescott]

The Sam Flynn Manifesto

"regardless of floor plans."

A statement that inspires real confidence in the theory. Eliminate the floor plans, all inquest testimony, and anything else resembling good evidence and you might just be on to something, Perry. This approach has worked well for you and the Swedes on the Stride threads, so why not here? Ha ha. Methinks we're getting our leg pulled by Sam.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

I dont think that Marys "partition" wall is well understood by some. It is not the entire wall. It is the "wall" that partitioned the parlour, part of 26 Dorset not Millers Court, from the rest of the house. But had that "wall", which is in effect an old door plastered in place in an existing doorframe, not been there, Mary could have walked through there and ascended the same stairs Elizabeth did. There was almost certaunly a hallway between that room and staircase. When Liz walks in through that archway door, she turns left...she sees that "partition".

So....what you need to know is when she gets to the top of the stairs, does she turn right or left, or go straight ahead. The answer is she turns right...cause thats where 20 is.

I personally believe she heard the voice through a courtyard window, and noise when Mary moved furniture,..and neither of those would be possible without her room being at least in part directly over Marys room, and without a window facing the court.

Because I cannot conceive of her stating that she heard a voice "as from the court", through only a Dorset window. And she is not the only courtyard witness to hear such a voice, from such a direction.

You can post all the diagrams and plans you like, they are interesting....but walk into any dwelling anywhere that has been standing for some time and compare its original or post renovation plans with its actual layout. If you think that all renovations in the Victorian Era were permit issued with accompanying plans...you obviously know little of home renovations... even today.

The witnesses account of the location of the voice almost eliminates a Dorset window on its own...but I stand with Sam in that there may well have been one facing the court, and one facing Dorset in her room...regardless of floor plans.

Best regards

[George Hutchinson]

I think I have passed my threshold. Life's too short for this!

PHILIP

[Sam Flynn]

And please, don't call me Pat.

...aw, shucks! Another avenue of pleasure closed off

[Tom_Wescott]

And please, don't call me Pat.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Sam Flynn]

You're missing at least one wall, as we know she wasn't sleeping in the hallway.

D'oh!! I meant to mention her door earlier, Dan. Not so sure about a wall, though - Prater was no Vestal Virgin

[Sam Flynn]

Not blasphemy, Sam. It seems your ideas have been given the due consideration you feel they warrant, but that in the face of better evidence

I think that the "better evidence" resides elsewhere, Tom. And that's really not a pat answer. We know from the information that some of the papers picked up during Kelly's (and other) inquests, that the coroner and/or his scribe(s) left out nuggets of information, and I honestly think that we should be cautious in how we treat the official reports on that basis. They must be given due deference, of course, but the fact that they are incomplete and in some cases apparently misleading ought to be self-evident by now.

That's not to say we should take the newspapers as "gospel" either - far from it, they are a minefield. However, it's possible (I'd argue) to steer a path through that minefield by taking more than one source and comparing between them. Those sources extend further than even the contemporary newspaper and inquest reports, I might add, and include amongst other things information from cases relating to other incidents in Miller's Court.

Having taken all these into account, I personally have very little reason to doubt what I have concluded. If others, AP among them, see this the same way then that's fine - and if they don't, that's fine too.

[Dan Norder]

If Prater had indeed lived at the front of #26, then all that separated her from Kelly's room was a thin partition, a stairwell and around nine feet of landing.

You're missing at least one wall, as we know she wasn't sleeping in the hallway.

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, whoever lived in the room above Kelly--and we know there is a room because we can see the window clearly--would have been asked to the inquest.

Not necessarily, if they had nothing of material value to add. Even the Picketts, who lived across the court and had heard Mary singing, weren't called to give evidence.