John Richardson

[Herlock Sholmes]

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.

Really? Are you an expert in Forensics? These people are though…..

From: Forensic Biology For The Law Enforcement Officer by Charles Grady Wilber,1974

'The stiffening of the body or rigor mortis develops usually within an hour or two hours after death.'

or,

From: EstimationOf Time Of Death by Ranald Munro and Helen M.C. Munro.

"The time of onset is variable but it is usually considered to appear between 1 and 6 hours (average 2-4 hours) after death.'

or,

"Francis E. Camps stated that.Ordinarily the rigor mortis appears between 2-4 hours, but sometimes it is seen within 30 minutes of death and sometimes the onset is delayed for 6 hours or more."

or,

"Bernard Knight described the method of testing the rigor mortis by attempting to flex or extend the joints though the whole muscle mass itself becomes hard, and finger pressure on quadriceps or pectoralis can also detect the changes. The stiffness may develop within half an hour of death or may be postponed indefinitely."

or,

Werner Uri Spitz (1993), a German-American forensic pathologist, "reported that in temperate climate, under average condition, rigor becomes apparent within half an hour to an hour, increases progressively to a maximum within twelve hours, remains for about twelve hours and then progressively disappears within the following twelve hours."

or,

From the English physiologist Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley (1974), who lived and worked in a temperate climate, we get this: 'the rigor mortis, which is cadaveric rigidity, starts developing within 1 to 2 hours after death and takes around 12 hours after death for complete development.'

or,

Furthermore, according to K.S. Narayan Reddy, author of 'Essentials of Forensic Medicine', "In death from diseases causing great exhaustion and wasting e.g. cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and cancer and in violent deaths as by cut throats, firearms or electrocution, the onset of rigor is early and duration is short".The paper alsostates that,according to W.G. Aitcheson Robertson, author of 'Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology', in "death followed by convulsions, muscular exertion, racing, the rigor mortis will appear earlier". We are told thatMason JK stated "The onset of rigor will be accelerated in conditions involving high ante-mortem muscle lactic acid e.g. after a struggle or other exercise.". So a struggle could bring on rigor earlier than the average, just like a cut throat. Then what about the physical condition of the deceased? Well according to S.C. Basu, author of the Handbook of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, rigor is "hastened or accelerated in feeble, fatigued and exhausted muscles"

or,

Simpson's Forensic Medicine, updated 13th edition by Jason Payne James, Richard Jones, Steven Karch and John Manlove (2011):

"The only use of assessing the presence or absence of rigor lies in the estimation of the time of death, and the key word here is estimation, as rigor is such a variable process that it can never provide an accurate assessment of the time of death. Extreme caution should be exercised in trying to assign a time of death based on the very subjective assessment of the degree and extent of rigor."

or,

From the Textbook Of Forensic Medicine And Toxicology:

The time of onset and duration of Rigor is varied by multiple factors as will be discussed shortly but in general it is likely to be apparent in about 1-2 hours after death,


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?

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Three witnesses, with no reason to lie, simply seeing and hearing, all align show that Chapman died at around 5.30.

And what do you have……an clearly false opinion of the skills of a Victorian Doctor and your own opinion that you don’t think the killer would have killed at that time followed by some blatant nitpicking to try and discredit three witnesses.

It doesn’t get much weaker.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Hello George,

We have this and much more.


From Simpson's Forensic Medicine, 13th edition (updated by Jason Payne James and others)

'...a body is not a uniform structure: its temperature will not fall evenly and, because each body will lie in its own unique environment, each body will cool at a different speed, depending on the many factors surrounding it.'

[FISHY1118]

By stating that the police reports were not taken into account, surely you must have some reasoning as to which method the doctors used.
You have not answered the question I posed.

So I ask again, what method do you believe the doctors used to fix TOD.

Asking for a statement in which the doctor says, "I don't know, but the police said", is not only unrealistic, given no doctor was going to admit such; but also a clear attempt to not answer the reasonable question I asked.

If you don't know which method they used, which could scientifical fix the TOD to the range suggested at the Inquest, that's fine, just say so.

Again a clue, there was and is no method on its own, that can fix TOD to the degree suggested.

However, While the doctor does not explicitly state he used the police times, we do have the following information .

The doctors were clearly told the body was NOT in the square on Watkins last beat, approximately 15 minutes early.

Do you accept that?

The doctors were clearly of the opinion that the murder occurred where the body was found.

Do you accept that?

If so, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the doctors used the fact the body was not there when Watkins last patrolled, to help set the TOD.
In addition they probably used Harvey's comments too.


Steve

Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown was then called, and deposed: I am surgeon to the City of London Police. I was called shortly after two o'clock on Sunday morning, and reached the place of the murder about twenty minutes past two. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.


So given the fact that we know Eddowes was killed between 1.30am and 1.45 am thanks to P.C Watkins testimony, just how did Dr Brown get his estimate almost spot on ?

''If so, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the doctors used the fact the body was not there when Watkins last patrolled, to help set the TOD.
In addition they probably used Harvey's comments too.''

This may be reasonable to assume but its not a fact !, unless we can show some sort of evidence that Dr Brown spoke to both P.C s before he gave his t.o d .

If its not documented as evidence then its an asumption based on probablities . So in all likelyhood Dr Brown was right .

Dr Blackwell was also right with Liz Strides t.o.d as his testimony shows his accuracy ,again without any documented evidence to say he used other witnesses times and or statements as a reference.
.

Doctors testimonies are to easily dismissed when considering evidence as a whole surrounding T.O.D imo .

Then theres Dr Phillipps

[Elamarna]

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.

No, not disagreeing at all Jon, so I think a misunderstanding.

On temperatures, yes it clearly says temperatures should be taken not by touch.
My problem is that no temperatures are ever mentioned, we only ever have the the vague terms cold, cool or warm, which suggest touch, even if not an a thermometer was used, the terms used are still subjective, as are external body temperature.

In Chapman, Phillips compares general temperature of the body to that of the internal parts, but again gives no figures.

True, we do not have the PM reports, so we simply speculate on what the real readings were.

One interesting point in the Stride case, Phillips does mention the temperature of the mortuary, this to me strongly suggest that he is very well aware of the effects Environment temperature can have.
It might also imply, temperatures were indeed taken at the PM.
And yes the McKenzie report does suggest far more detail. However, I would expect the PM to record temperatures, sadly the suriving record does not. Maybe it was on a separate document.

Knowledge was at this point was increasing rapidly. The book, clearly identifies all the issues with using temperature to determine death, such as external temp, body type, age, clothing.

The one thing it does not really cover, is how the damage to the body affects body temperature. Such is understandable.
And I doubt few doctors would ever encounter bodies such as Chapman and Eddowes and be asked to estimate TOD.

Phillips is clearly aware of the issues and mentions the air temperature. He does not however, appear to allow for the mutilations, maybe he does. But he doesn't say so.

One interesting part of the information on temperature is the table on page 47.
This shows external heat lose over a number of hours, giving both max, min and average body temps.

We can see that under 2-3 hours the range quoted is some 30 degrees. This alone shows the variability involved.

What is missing is a reliable rate for body temp drops hour by hour.
To be fair, this is still not perfect even today, but the rule of thumb often applied is 0.8 c per hour.

Looking at the data in the book, it seems there was still disagreement over cooling, the author disagreeing with another researcher over how long before the body was Cold.

I guess my main point is that without actual temperatures, it's impossible to determine how reliable or unreliable the TODs were.
That 3 of them appear to be very accurate is seen by some as indicating that the methods used were reliable.
I of course argue that in those 3 cases and also McKenzie, the doctors were assisted in fixing TOD by the police reports that no body was present x minutes before.

We are in broad agreement Jon,

Steve

[Mark J 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.

I don't get this. Why would an inquest of this kind require a doc to 'present his working' in the form of the specific methods and actual readings used to arrive at an estimate? Is the jury required to understand or approve the methods? Is the Coroner meant to check over the calculation for errors? Surely not.

There seems to be a determination hereabouts to present these medics as simply sticking their hands into piles of human offal rather than using a thermometer, even though we have evidence that the latter had been seen as best practice for literally years and had the beginnings of a data set to support it.

Mark D.

[Elamarna]

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

This is the problem George what does COLD mean.
It's subjective by definition.

In my view debating how such terms can be applied to different victims cannot give meaningful answers.

Steve

[Herlock Sholmes]

What’s really weird (and there’s much that’s weird) is the claim to know what did or didn’t happen in a period where Chapman’s movements are completely unknown. How can this position be at all tenable? It’s baffling.

There appears to be an opinion that Chapman and women like her took a very casual, laid back approach to food. As if they could pick and choose due the abundance of dining options. Phillips noted:

“…but there were signs of great deprivation, and he should say she had been badly fed.”

So solid evidence that food was in short supply.

We also know that Chapman, like the other women, were forced to carry all of their possessions with them (Eddowes had tea and sugar in her possessions) so why is it remotely strange that if she did acquire some item of food she would have carried it with her? Where else could she have put it if she wasn’t going to eat it straight away?

Then we get the pointless argument that she could only have acquired food from a purchase in the earlier hours when there were no vendors open? Could anything make less sense? As I said above, and as others have pointed out, she could have had food with her in the lodging house but only ate the potato. She could have picked up a bit of food there and pocketed it. She could have been give some food….although these women were desperately poor they were also human beings. They had friends, and those friends had concern for each other. So why is it so ridiculous that while trudging the streets she ran into a friend who offered to share a bit of food with her. Then there’s the fact that some women sold themselves for food on occasion. Yes, of course her priority was earning money but if she walked for ages without a client then finally a bloke appears, who is willing but has no cash but he had food, would a woman utterly desperate, never knowing where the next meal would come from, turn him down for the sake of two minutes.

There are numerous ways that Annie could have eaten after 1.45 and we also have to remember that lung illnesses can also affect digestion. A simple bit of Googling shows this.

So basically digestion can only be used toward estimating ToD if we know for certain when the victim ate last….and we don’t in Annie’s case no matter how some try to manufacture this point. One question still stands out for me….

Why are some so desperate to achieve an earlier ToD that they will greatly exaggerate a Victorian Doctor’s skills, they will assume that they know what occurred in a period of unknown activity and they will go to extraordinary lengths to denigrate witnesses. I’ve said it before but there is no better witnesses in this case than Richardson and Cadosch. If we dismiss them then we should dismiss all witnesses.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown was then called, and deposed: I am surgeon to the City of London Police. I was called shortly after two o'clock on Sunday morning, and reached the place of the murder about twenty minutes past two. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.


So given the fact that we know Eddowes was killed between 1.30am and 1.45 am thanks to P.C Watkins testimony, just how did Dr Brown get his estimate almost spot on ?

''If so, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the doctors used the fact the body was not there when Watkins last patrolled, to help set the TOD.
In addition they probably used Harvey's comments too.''

This may be reasonable to assume but its not a fact !, unless we can show some sort of evidence that Dr Brown spoke to both P.C s before he gave his t.o d .

If its not documented as evidence then its an asumption based on probablities . So in all likelyhood Dr Brown was right .

Dr Blackwell was also right with Liz Strides t.o.d as his testimony shows his accuracy ,again without any documented evidence to say he used other witnesses times and or statements as a reference.
.

Doctors testimonies are to easily dismissed when considering evidence as a whole surrounding T.O.D imo .

Then theres Dr Phillipps

Dismissed by every single forensic expert on the planet. But hey, what would they know eh Fishy.

[Elamarna]

Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown was then called, and deposed: I am surgeon to the City of London Police. I was called shortly after two o'clock on Sunday morning, and reached the place of the murder about twenty minutes past two. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.


So given the fact that we know Eddowes was killed between 1.30am and 1.45 am thanks to P.C Watkins testimony, just how did Dr Brown get his estimate almost spot on ?

I think you have answered that yourself, both above and below.

If you believe that Brown fixed TOD on medical evidence alone, what method did he use to arrive at that conclusion

Body temperature, no matter how it was taken, by touch or by thermometer could not fix TOD to within 30-40 minutes.
Neither could Livor Mortis or Rigor Mortis.

So just how did he arrive at the TOD?

''If so, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the doctors used the fact the body was not there when Watkins last patrolled, to help set the TOD.
In addition they probably used Harvey's comments too.''

This may be reasonable to assume but its not a fact !, unless we can show some sort of evidence that Dr Brown spoke to both P.C s before he gave his t.o d .

If its not documented as evidence then its an asumption based on probablities . So in all likelyhood Dr Brown was right .

Agin what method would allow him to fix a TOD so pricisely , if he not using the information provided by the police.?

Dr Blackwell was also right with Liz Strides t.o.d as his testimony shows his accuracy ,again without any documented evidence to say he used other witnesses times and or statements as a reference.

Again if he does not use the evidence of the police, what method does Blackwell use to establish TOD of under an hour?

To say, we don't have documented evidence that he was told she wasn't present x minutes before, is proof he wasn't told is unreasonable and unrealistic.
The doctors were not working in a vacuum.
.

Doctors testimonies are to easily dismissed when considering evidence as a whole surrounding T.O.D imo .

Then theres Dr Phillipps

It's very simple just tell me what method any doctor could use, to fix TOD in under an hour.

Steve

[Elamarna]

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.

Jon, I don't think my previous post fully clarified my position on reflection .

So very simply, the work you linked to is very important, it shows us what was known.at the time.
It lets us see what methods they had at their disposal and how such could be applied.
It also clearly shows the limitations.
It was these limitations I was trying to point out in my original post, poorly I think.


Thank you

Steve

[Elamarna]

In error.

[Wickerman]

No, not disagreeing at all Jon, so I think a misunderstanding.

On temperatures, yes it clearly says temperatures should be taken not by touch.
My problem is that no temperatures are ever mentioned, we only ever have the the vague terms cold, cool or warm, which suggest touch, even if not an a thermometer was used, the terms used are still subjective, as are external body temperature.

In Chapman, Phillips compares general temperature of the body to that of the internal parts, but again gives no figures.

True, we do not have the PM reports, so we simply speculate on what the real readings were.

Thankyou for responding Steve.

We can only speculate, sadly, though I can well understand the doctor making all his post-mortem notes on a note pad, including any mathematical calculations. The coroners report of course will be an official document composed later at the doctors office where he can provide a clean, precise, terse document that only presents the basic information to enable a coroner to do his job. As always, the doctor is present to answer any questions.
Coroner's were elected, if I recall, so not always sufficiently informed on medical issues as Mcdonald would be being a surgeon himself, but Baxter was only a politician.

The pdf also points out how a post-mortem requires the opening of the head, none of the reports for these murders include such details.
The fact Phillips opened Chapman's head was obviously edited out of all press reports but luckily(?), we do find a passing mention of this in a medical journal. Suffice to say this document informs us of how the late 19th century doctors conducted their post-mortems, that there was considerably more involved than what we read in the press.

What is missing is a reliable rate for body temp drops hour by hour.
To be fair, this is still not perfect even today, but the rule of thumb often applied is 0.8 c per hour.

Funny you should mention that, I did come across a line that said the steady temp. drop of 1 deg Fahr per hour was normal, or words to that effect.

I guess my main point is that without actual temperatures, it's impossible to determine how reliable or unreliable the TODs were.
That 3 of them appear to be very accurate is seen by some as indicating that the methods used were reliable.
I of course argue that in those 3 cases and also McKenzie, the doctors were assisted in fixing TOD by the police reports that no body was present x minutes before.

Agreed, and it has always intrigued me how Dr Bond arrived at an estimated time of death for Kelly of between 1:00-2:00, unless he had figures to support the conclusion. It does look like he used digestion to arrive at that number, so they must have been told when it was assumed that Kelly last ate, which would be due to Abberline's enquiries.
Once the doctors come across food in the digestive system they had to bring this to Abberline's attention, he must have made enquiries of every eatery in the vicinity.

We are in broad agreement Jon,
Steve

Good to hear, thankyou.

[Wickerman]

Jon, I don't think my previous post fully clarified my position on reflection .

So very simply, the work you linked to is very important, it shows us what was known.at the time.
It lets us see what methods they had at their disposal and how such could be applied.
It also clearly shows the limitations.
It was these limitations I was trying to point out in my original post, poorly I think.


Thank you

Steve

Great, that was my intention, to make things clearer, not to support one view over another.
That they were still professionals, but with 19th century methods and procedures.

[JeffHamm]

Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown was then called, and deposed: I am surgeon to the City of London Police. I was called shortly after two o'clock on Sunday morning, and reached the place of the murder about twenty minutes past two. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body.


So given the fact that we know Eddowes was killed between 1.30am and 1.45 am thanks to P.C Watkins testimony, just how did Dr Brown get his estimate almost spot on ?

''If so, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that the doctors used the fact the body was not there when Watkins last patrolled, to help set the TOD.
In addition they probably used Harvey's comments too.''

This may be reasonable to assume but its not a fact !, unless we can show some sort of evidence that Dr Brown spoke to both P.C s before he gave his t.o d .

If its not documented as evidence then its an asumption based on probablities . So in all likelyhood Dr Brown was right .

No. The fact is that his estimate is far too precise. We cannot, even today, make estimates of the ToD with such narrow ranges of time. So, given his narrow range corresponds to what must have happened (unless you want to argue PC Watkins lied about doing his patrols), then either he knows about PC Watkins' patrol, and is including that in his evaluation, or he's unaware of PC Watkins' patrol and is just unduely confident in his abilities (and therefore, the fact he's accurate is luck, and nothing more, because even today we cannot narrow things down as much as he has). Given he's clearly accurate, it appears he must have known PC Watkins' patrol information and what he's doing is confirming that she likely was killed during his last patrol and not, for example, killed elsewhere and then dumped in the square (which is also consistent with the crime scene evidence, so he's probably got it right, but not because in 1888 they were better at estimating the ToD than we are today - he appears to have information over and above that).

Dr Blackwell was also right with Liz Strides t.o.d as his testimony shows his accuracy ,again without any documented evidence to say he used other witnesses times and or statements as a reference.
.

Again, Dr. Blackwell's estimate is overly precise, which either reflects the ignorance of doctors in 1888 (because we hadn't learned what we now know), or reflects his knowledge of other information. I know it is tempting to grasp at the straws the medical testimony, as stated, provide. But those straws are, sadly, unreliable. Where they look good, and look precise, always comes from cases where there are witnesses who narrow things down. If that doesn't make you stop, sit up, and think, nothing will.

Doctors testimonies are to easily dismissed when considering evidence as a whole surrounding T.O.D imo .

Then theres Dr Phillipps

The doctors' testimonies are not being "dismissed" at all. They are simply being evaluated, and while nobody disputes where the doctors place their estimate, the argument is about taking into account the error of those estimates. While the doctors do not go into error ranges, their statements (as you've posted above), do lead the the impression that they thought they could be more precise than we now know is the case. That increased precision, though, also only occurs in cases where there is other (non-medical) information that limits the time range, and low and behold, those are the cases where the doctors do well. That pattern creates the evidence that the doctors appear to have used outside information (beyond the medical), when formulating their opinion.


Do you think it weird that people will incorporate stuff they know even if it is not part of the "equation"?

- Jeff

[GBinOz]

Hello George,

We have this and much more.


From Simpson's Forensic Medicine, 13th edition (updated by Jason Payne James and others)

'...a body is not a uniform structure: its temperature will not fall evenly and, because each body will lie in its own unique environment, each body will cool at a different speed, depending on the many factors surrounding it.'

Hi Herlock,

I would not dispute that statement, however the environments were not all that unique. The factors surrounding the bodies of Chapman and Eddowes are:
Only three weeks apart
Within a mile in location
Very similar injuries
Both in the corner of an enclosed area
Both lying on paving

Steve says "Body temperature, no matter how it was taken, by touch or by thermometer could not fix TOD to within 30-40 minutes.
Neither could Livor Mortis or Rigor Mortis.".

But we are not talking about 30-40 minutes. We're talking about 13 hours. Phillips said Chapman had been dead two hours, probably more. What is usually called his caveat would apply equally to Eddowes. Two hours is a long way from the 13 hours that it took for Eddowes body to achieve a similar level of cold. Also, with medical opinions, I feel that we should be confining ourselves to averages rather than the extremes on the edge of the bell curve, as there is no evidence for the latter.

We have agreed to disagree. I trust that you can appreciate my difficulty in reconciling a time elapsed since death of only one hour when in a very similar case the body took about 13 hours to reach a similar state.

Cheers, George