Originally posted by Fleetwood Mac
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Richardson had noticed previously that the leather on the inside of the boot was irritating him (probably having been repaired by a second or third rate cobbler) and cut a some of it away. He realised the next day that it was still irritating him. So he had to have cut enough of it away in the first instance to reduce the irritation to the point where it wasn't noticeable when he put the boot back on. Otherwise he would have simply taken the boot off again and finished the job.
It was only the following day that he realised it needed a bit more attention.
He tried to do that at 29, and wasn't able to cut enough of it away with the blunt knife, so went to work and used a better knife that he borrowed.
So... in your opinion how big would this piece of leather that was removed at Hanbury Street have been?
Here's mine. It was TINY. Maybe even just a few little scrapings with the blunt bladed knife.
(Maybe the knife simply wasn't good enough to cut all the way through and there was no leather left on scene at all.)
This was the yard of a semi derelict slum terrace building where they made packing cases. Many of those cases would have been finished IN the yard due to the size of the door and the cellar steps. There were probably little offfcuts of wood, splinters, bent nails, and all sorts of common detritus in the yard. It wasn't a tidily kept garden. A TINY and I'm talking nail clippping sized, piece of leather would barely have been noticed by a modern organised fingertip search on hands and knees. Victorian coppers wandering round the yard weren't looking for that sort of evidence. What would they even DO with it???
"I found a box guv!"
"No blood stained knife yet?"
"No guv..."
"OK... take the box, it won't help, but we need to show we made an effort..."
Was about as good as it got
This is NOT one of those instances where an absence of evidence IS evidence in itself.
The Police officers on scene quite possibly DID remove it!
On the bottom of one of their boots.
It might have been IN the ruddy box they took, and so small they still considered the box empty! (And that's only HALF joking...)
If you think it was big enough to notice, please... say how big you think it was and why you think it would BE that big given the previous repair, and subsequent failure to complete it in the yard.
I've shown my working out... over to you.
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