John Richardson

[JeffHamm]

Nobody is suggesting otherwise, you're arguing against a point that hasn't been made.

The point is as stated above: just eaten, went out to get money for her bed, the vendors are asleep at 3 or 4 in the morning because the custom isn't there to make it worth their while, and so they're in bed until they have a business worth getting out of bed for.

Why did she have to buy food? Why couldn't she have had some other source, say some bread or an apple, with her that she didn't eat at the time because she was sent out to find money? Why do you assume the only way it is possible for her to obtain food was to buy it from a vendor?

- Jeff

[Fleetwood Mac]

You are claiming you know she didn't eat during a period of time we know nothing of her activities. That is rarely considered an opinion based upon a solid foundation.

- Jeff

It's a very solid foundation for the reasons stated.

Your foundation is: "we just don't know".

Applying your foundations, who's to say that George Hutchinson didn't actually peer through the window and see Mary being killed? or why not he actually walked through the door and sat down and watched. I mean: "we just don't know" do we. Your line of reasoning is anything's possible and so they're all equally likely, which, as I say; is a weak opinion built upon nothing other than: "we just don't know".

As said, there are good reasons to think Annie didn't eat after 1.45am.

[GBinOz]

Really?

That's funny, the full quote as given on this site in the Daily Telegraph is

"- I should say at least two hours, and probably more; but it is right to say that it was a fairly cold morning, and that the body would be more apt to cool rapidly from its having lost the greater portion of its blood"

Clear he is qualifying his "two hours or probably more". By saying the body would cool more rapidly.

Or are you about to suggest that he didn't mean it.

Of course that also suggests he based his TOD on how cool the body felt to his touch.
That's totally, 100% Subjective.

And yes, they believed they could fix TOD that way.


Steve

Hi Steve,

Without in any way questioning your expertise, we have two bodies, both disembowelled and with cut throats. One is described as:
The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body.
The other:
The body had been mutilated, and was quite warm - no rigor mortis. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.

My difficulty is imaging that a body could go from "quite warm" to "cold" in 20 to 30 minutes.

Cheers, George

[Fleetwood Mac]

Why did she have to buy food? Why couldn't she have had some other source, say some bread or an apple, with her that she didn't eat at the time because she was sent out to find money? Why do you assume the only way it is possible for her to obtain food was to buy it from a vendor?

- Jeff

'Same weak argument.

Annie's walking 'round with bits of food on her squirreled away for a rainy day.

The only one we haven't had is that there was an apple tree in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, somewhere in between the toilet and Leather Apron's apron.

Maybe that's what Albert heard: an apple falling on someone's head, "oh no".

[Elamarna]

This is an odd line of reasoning.

Dr Phillips told you: "at least two hours and probably more". That is a pretty categoric statement in anyone's book.

However, he didn't have the knowledge to make a different assesment.
Not his fault, not him making it up, but the knowledge simply didn't exist at the time.
He believed what he said, but given he qualified his statement , by saying the air temperature may have had an effect, it's not categotic at all.
It suggests, he knew or at least suspected what was taught was not 100%.

He only talks of body temperature, and the major fact is no Temperature either internal or external is recorded.

Steve

[Fleetwood Mac]

He believed what he said, but given he qualified his statement , by saying the air temperature may have had an effect, it's not categotic at all.

So when he said: "at least two hours probably more", then why say that in the event he didn't mean it?

He only talks of body temperature

He doesn't.

[Elamarna]

Aye, because it is.

You've just plucked out of thin air that there are potatoes lying around in the kitchen at 2 in the morning.

What was she eating at 1.45?
Potato.
It reads as if she had returned to the lodging house with one.
Why is it absurd that she may have still had some left when she left , and eatern it later?

Steve

[Elamarna]

Page 45 would seem to suggest that mere exercise of touch was already decisively outmoded in 1882, let alone 1888. How embarrassingly out of date did these East End doctors feel themselves entitled to be? Or is it likely that they actually used thermometers and simply didn't say so?

Mark D.

One might expect actual temperatures to be mentioned if they did Mark.
We have not a single temperature given. It's all Warm, cool or cold.

Steve

[Elamarna]

Hi Steve,

Without in any way questioning your expertise, we have two bodies, both disembowelled and with cut throats. One is described as:
The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body.
The other:
The body had been mutilated, and was quite warm - no rigor mortis. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.

My difficulty is imaging that a body could go from "quite warm" to "cold" in 20 to 30 minutes.

Cheers, George

Ok George, several issues, All revolving around the subjectivity of the method of touch, and terms used.

1.different victims .

We all know that some people are "Cold" to the touch, whereas others are warm.
Different individuals may even have slightly different temperature due to health.
Poor circulation for instance may lead to the skin being cold.
To say someone is cold, without giving a temperature is rather pointless.

2.I believe different doctors, but I may be wrong.

This goes in with #1, different doctors may also be cold or warm to the touch.
They may even vary one day to the next.
Different doctors may even say the same victim is cold or warm.
It's just incredibly subjective.

Another point to consider, did the doctors wear gloves on their way to the murder site.
If so, how long before examining the body and assessing Temperature were the gloves removed.
Or were gloves not worn at all.
These issues clearly would have a significant effect on a doctors perception on temperature by touch.

3. Different nights, different environmental factors.

The different temperatures and the macro environment at each murder may lead bodies to cool at a different rate.
Indeed Phillips acknowledged this by saying Chapman's body may have cooled faster than he expected.
The shame of course is no actual temperature is given


I would suggest George, that even if the same doctor made comments on the temperatures in all cases, the assesments are still highly subjective.

I really do not think comparison between the body temperatures is really practical, for the reasons above George.

Steve

[Elamarna]

So when he said: "at least two hours probably more", then why say that in the event he didn't mean it?

I have already answered this.
But will do so again.

He believed what he said, but because of the lack of knowledge, his assessment was incorrect.

Why is this so hard to comprehend

I note that you continue to ignore the lines which follow on from."probably more" such as I am sure you know is poor methodology, and may rightly be called "cherry picking "

He doesn't.

Correct, he does mention that limb stiffening had commenced but was not marked, but RM is notoriously unreliable.

However, when asked how long the victim had been dead, he only alludes to the temperature, but I am happy to admit when I am mistaken.


Steve

[JeffHamm]

'Same weak argument.

Annie's walking 'round with bits of food on her squirreled away for a rainy day.

The only one we haven't had is that there was an apple tree in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, somewhere in between the toilet and Leather Apron's apron.

Maybe that's what Albert heard: an apple falling on someone's head, "oh no".

Why do you dismiss the idea that someone as impoverished as Annie might have carried some amount of food with her? I fail to see the logic in that. Also, I was asking you questions, not making an argument per se, and you have not addressed any of them in your response.

So again, to make it clear, I'm asking you about the basis of your assertions that she had nothing she could have eaten with her. That is a pretty bold claim in my opinion. I've mentioned some examples of how easy it would be for her to have done so, but I'm not arguing any of those must be the case on that they demonstrate how simple it would be. You are more or less arguing that she couldn't have eaten anything and yet I see no basis for that claim and such examples demonstrate how trivial it would be for her to have done so.

You seem convinced she didn't eat during the time period for which we have no information about her activities. I do no know from where your confidence comes because so far you are just presenting sophistry, you just saying, without backing it up, that the idea is somehow weak. I do not see how something as simple as having eaten something is such a complicated behavior that it leads to the conclusion that she could not have done so during the hours for which we do not have any information. You've presented no reasoning other than a tendency to dismiss the idea out of hand.

- Jeff

[Fiver]

So Richardson, a 35-year-old working class man, had to chose between letting his mother find out that he hadn't really checked the cellar that day and lying to the inquest of a murder investigation, and he chose the latter? It's possible, but I don't think that's the choice that most people would make in that situation.

And he chose a lie that put himself a few feet from the victim's body with a knife in his hand?

[Wickerman]

Thank you Jon, it's already in my collection.

This is a document from 1882 as you say, and as such it is deeply flawed. reliable methods of Determining TOD were in their infancy.

Let's however, look at those 4 items.7

Body temperature.

They on the whole did not take actual temperatures, but relied on touch for the most part.
They certainly did not take internal temperatures nor was the rate at which the body cools known at that time.

I hope we are not talking at cross-purposes here.
I'm not sure if you are saying the document is wrong. That the author Tidy, has written measures that must be taken that in fact were not used in 1882?

Tidy does advise the physician that estimating body temperature by touch, is absolutely not to be done. Actual thermometers must be used, both internal and external. Yet you say they certainly did not take internal temperatures?

Which means I'm confused at your response. I'm thinking have you even read it?
You say they only used touch, do you mean the doctors in the Ripper cases only used touch, or the general medical community as a whole only used touch?
If so, how would you know that?

We have no Post-Mortem reports from any of the murders to know what their procedures were.
None except in the McKenzie case where Dr Phillips records "temp. moderate" as he arrived at the crime scene. He also makes notes on the temperature on different parts of the body, though he doesn't go into specific detail, but then he doesn't need to. It's his conclusions that the coroner needs to see not his methods.
As we can read he does take various temperatures, so we must conclude he has a reason to do so. And that reason may well be that such numbers are used in helping to estimate time of death.

I'm not prepared to go into each point you raise because I'm not sure what your position is, I may have misunderstood the point you are making.

The reason I provided a link to this important document is that 'we' need to know the actual procedures they took and their limitations, rather than keep judging the 1880's physician by modern methods. They were guided by methods in practice at the time, and it is important for anyone discussing the subject to know how they arrived at their conclusions, as inaccurate as they were compared with today.

[GBinOz]

Ok George, several issues, All revolving around the subjectivity of the method of touch, and terms used.

1.different victims .

We all know that some people are "Cold" to the touch, whereas others are warm.
Different individuals may even have slightly different temperature due to health.
Poor circulation for instance may lead to the skin being cold.
To say someone is cold, without giving a temperature is rather pointless.

2.I believe different doctors, but I may be wrong.

This goes in with #1, different doctors may also be cold or warm to the touch.
They may even vary one day to the next.
Different doctors may even say the same victim is cold or warm.
It's just incredibly subjective.

Another point to consider, did the doctors wear gloves on their way to the murder site.
If so, how long before examining the body and assessing Temperature were the gloves removed.
Or were gloves not worn at all.
These issues clearly would have a significant effect on a doctors perception on temperature by touch.

3. Different nights, different environmental factors.

The different temperatures and the macro environment at each murder may lead bodies to cool at a different rate.
Indeed Phillips acknowledged this by saying Chapman's body may have cooled faster than he expected.
The shame of course is no actual temperature is given


I would suggest George, that even if the same doctor made comments on the temperatures in all cases, the assesments are still highly subjective.

I really do not think comparison between the body temperatures is really practical, for the reasons above George.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I appreciate the contribution of subjectivity on this topic, but we are talking about Police surgeons who must also been aware of subjectivity and attempted to minimise its effect. Mind you, I am astonished that doctors of the time had thermometers available but declined to use them.

While the murders did occur on different nights, Eddowes murder was closer to winter than Chapman's. Both bodies were lying on pavement close to a corner in an enclosed area.

All in all, I agree that there is reason to include subjectivity and environmental circumstances, and temper any comparison accordingly, but the difference ismassive. Re Eddowes:
"We made a post mortem examination at 2.30 on Sunday afternoon. Rigor mortis was well marked; body not quite cold".

Chapman's body cold after 1 hour, Eddowes body not quite cold after 13 hours. Even given that much of that time Eddowes body was in the mortuary, I am not persuaded that this magnitude of difference can be countenanced as due to subjectivity and environmental circumstances .

JMO.

Cheers, George

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Steve,

I appreciate the contribution of subjectivity on this topic, but we are talking about Police surgeons who must also been aware of subjectivity and attempted to minimise its effect. Mind you, I am astonished that doctors of the time had thermometers available but declined to use them.

While the murders did occur on different nights, Eddowes murder was closer to winter than Chapman's. Both bodies were lying on pavement close to a corner in an enclosed area.

All in all, I agree that there is reason to include subjectivity and environmental circumstances, and temper any comparison accordingly, but the difference ismassive. Re Eddowes:
"We made a post mortem examination at 2.30 on Sunday afternoon. Rigor mortis was well marked; body not quite cold".

Chapman's body cold after 1 hour, Eddowes body not quite cold after 13 hours. Even given that much of that time Eddowes body was in the mortuary, I am not persuaded that this magnitude of difference can be countenanced as due to subjectivity and environmental circumstances .

JMO.

Cheers, George

In the case of Victorian murders doctors would have to give an approximate TOD, this would be an important factor of the police investigation. So in the case of Chapman, Phillips airs on the side of caution with his estimated TOD, he doesn't specify a specific TOD but the parameters he uses and how he explains his findings point to an earlier TOD he states there were signs of the onset of rigor which would not have been present with a later TOD.

As to the witness testimony, to prop up a later TOD, it is all over the place and clearly unreliable. Mrs Longs testimony cannot be relied on nor can Cadosh, and would JTR have risked killing at that later time of the morning in such an overlooked confined space where he could have been seen or disturbed?

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