John Richardson

[GBinOz]

You could have 18 posters on here claiming the moon is hoisted up into the sky every night at 9pm and taken down at 6 in the morning. As with your poll, it would merely be indicative of the way 18 people think as opposed to any reflection on reality.

At one time most of the catholic population believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the stars and planets revolved around the earth, held in place by spheres of glass. When Galileo used a primitive telescope to observe that Jupiter had satellites it was explained to him that that was impossible as a satellite would break the glass sphere. For his reply, Eppur si muove (And yet it moves) he was relegated to the study of the motion of pendulums. Johannes Bruno was not so fortunate. He was burned at the stake for his troubles.

Chat rooms were tough in those days.

[FISHY1118]

Not really, Fishy.

I couldn't go as far as saying Dr Biggs agreed with Dr Phillips.

What Dr Biggs does tacitly acknowledge is that some estimates will be more accurate than others (he said a wider timeframe is more likely to be accurate).

It follows that had Dr Phillips stated: "5.20am to 5.30am", Dr Biggs is telling us this is less likely to be accurate than: "at least two hours and probably more".

We can only assess the value of an option in relation to the other options.

And then of course, Dr Biggs makes reference to someone "unaccustomed to manipulating dead bodies". What does this mean in relation to Dr Phillips? We have no idea because the question goes unanswered. We're left with no good reason as to why Dr Phillips was unable to discern the stage of rigor he observed.

In the end though, Dr Biggs doesn't commit to either scenario, whereas Professor Thiblin commits to 3-4 hours being more likely. So, 1 expert in favour of an earlier TOD and the other non-committal.

The claim that a Victorian doctor couldn't possibly have been correct, is a logical fallacy. Dr Phillips tells us the least time possible is two hours. The other option was the most time possible is two hours. One of these options is correct and so logically Dr Phillips could quite conceivably have been correct depending on which option he chose and when Annie was murdered.

Thanks Mac just wanted some clarity from you on that part .

i find these part interesting tho

,''It follows that had Dr Phillips stated: "5.20am to 5.30am", Dr Biggs is telling us this is less likely to be accurate than: "at least two hours and probably more".

''What Dr Biggs does tacitly acknowledge is that some estimates will be more accurate than others (he said a wider timeframe is more likely to be accurate''

[GBinOz]

And yet the police are said to have taken an eye witness (possibly Lawende or Schwartz) to ID a suspect,

Hi etenguy,

It has never really been confirmed whether or not that story was apocryphal. After that story, where a suspect was supposedly identified, Lawende was taken to identify Sadler. Why would they do that if they already had a confirmed identification? Lawende stated that Sadler was not the man he sighted, but is reported to have identified Grainger.

Cheers, George

[FISHY1118]

The coroner understood exactly what Dr Phillips intended, which is why he said "miscalculated". Your interpretation leaves no room for Dr Phillips miscalculating.

As for the 18 posters:

I haven't looked at your poll but given it is irrelevant I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, I'll accept that you worded the poll in a manner whereby everyone understood the options and the implications.

The conclusion from your poll is simply this: there are another 17 posters on the board who think like you.

What you're proposing is Dr Phillips intended this: the least time possible is two hours but possibly less.

That is a contradiction in terms and nonsensical. In the event another 17 posters agree with you, it simply means they, like you, are unable to grasp a contradiction in terms and a nonsensical statement.

You could have 18 posters on here claiming the moon is hoisted up into the sky every night at 9pm and taken down at 6 in the morning. As with your poll, it would merely be indicative of the way 18 people think as opposed to any reflection on reality.

A common sense approach to the poll debate, let's hope that gets put to bed now.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Not that silly poll again

Lets stick with the evidence for a change, ,
The evidence point to an earlier .t.o.d just as others have used it for a later one.Fact ,not poll. , polls are useless

Stop changing the subject Fishy.

You said that most people go for an earlier TOD. I simply pointed out that of the 20 people discussing it on here only 4 go for an earlier TOD. So how does a fifth qualify as ‘most people?’

So an earlier TOD is the minority opinion.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No that's not the case , dr Phillips has been supported by modern day medical experts. ,refer to fisherman post , and George 1320 post for clarification about the witnesses, also modern day expert assessment.

I wouldn’t comment on this point if I were you because you’re simply embarrassing yourself as you clearly don’t understand. Even Trevor, who supports an earlier TOD, admits that the Doctors estimate is useless based on Biggs. There’s not a single medical expert on the planet who ‘favours’ either an earlier or later TOD.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What nonsense herlock, if theres one person who's trying to derail this thread its you. ,your refusal to leave others to their own opinion when assessing all the evidence to come to a t.o.d based on that evidence, it is you can't get this simple fact.

Why can't you understand that.

Its nothing to do with ‘opinion.’ That Phillips TOD estimate cannot be relied upon is a FACT. Only you, Meetwood and Fisherman disagree.

[Herlock Sholmes]

''If you dismissed witnesses just because witnesses can be wrong then you would have to dismiss every single witness ever.''.


Classic Herlockism,

The topic is on the witnesses in regards to the Chapman murder, not every single witness in every crime , Richardson, long , Cadosch should be judged on the evidence as a whole. If one decides to eliminate them based his or her opinion and interpretation of that evidence which is ambiguious , uncertain and contradictory , and shown many many times over thousands of post now. Then they are free to do so. You really should let it go


Just the same way as Israel Schwartz testimony has been eliminated be some of those posters youve mentioned.

I mention this subject because you keep bringing up George’s quote. This quote tells us how witnesses can be wrong. No one questions this Fishy so how does this help us. If you aren’t claiming that witnesses shouldn’t be dismissed because they ‘can’ lie and they ‘can’ be mistaken then why keep telling us this.

You’re description of the witnesses is biased of course. But we all know that.

The biased way that these witnesses have been assessed by some has been jaw-dropping. Richardson is a strong witnesses. Completely unambiguous, absolutely certain and entirely non-contradictory. You discredit him people have to resort to inventing things.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That's not assessment, Sherlock.

This is you fanatically arguing that Richardson's statement was accurate, and it follows any other piece of information that contradicts Richardson must be discarded.

Do you want to try assessing Mrs Richardson in a reasonable manner or is she simply too inconvenient for your 5.30am proposal?

I have assessed her reasonably unlike you. I’ll do it again for you. Let’s look at all that she said.

“I went to bed about half-past nine, and was very wakeful half the night. I was awake at three a.m., and only dozed after that.
[Coroner] Did you hear any noise during the night? - No.”

So after 3.00 she claims to have dozed - which means that she slept lightly. This isn’t ‘awake.’ It’s still ‘asleep.’ So she was asleep. How do any of us know how deeply we are asleep when we’re asleep? We don’t lie there thinking “well this is quite a deep sleep.

[Coroner] At what time was this? - Between half-past three and four o'clock. I could hear anyone going through the passage. I did not hear any one going through on Saturday morning.

She’s referring here to previous incident when she heard someone in the passage. Ok. But not all people make the same amount of noise as others and some things are louder than others. So a person not hearing x when he passed is not rendered impossible or unlikely just because that person didn’t hear y. We also had to recall that the ripper had a very good reason to keep especially quiet.

[Coroner] You heard no cries? - None. Supposing a person had gone through at half-past three, would that have attracted your attention? - Yes.

Dont you think that’s a bit over-confident for someone who was asleep and considering that she’d have had no way of knowing how much noise that person made?

[Coroner] On Saturday morning you feel confident no one did go through? - Yes; I should have heard the sound. They must have walked purposely quietly? - Yes; or I should have heard them.

And here she is, prompted by the coroner adding some common sense, admitting that if she hadn’t heard someone it was because they had intentionally kept quiet. Which a killer and his victim most certainly would have done.

Conclusion….Amelia Richardson, from her own mouth, admitted that she might have missed hearing someone had they kept quiet. And let’s face it, she didn’t hear her own son arrive.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So it seems now Dr Biggs and professor Thiblin are both in some away in agreement dr Phillips .

It's that how you see it Mac?

You mean ‘dishonestly?’

[Herlock Sholmes]

Convenient = Mrs Richardson: half asleep, heard nothing and taken as gospel.

Inconvenient = Harriet Lilley: probably heard Polly being murdered. I'm sure the train time estimate can be allowed to vary a lot and other other timings must be exact.

Apart from being half asleep, why would Mrs R hear anything? Chapman was going through to the yard for prostitution, so chances are she'd have been quiet, the ripper was going there to murder her, so he would have been very quiet.

This is the kind of logic we’re up against Wulf. It’s pure bias because adults can’t ‘not understand’ this. It’s all intentional and toward an agenda of promoting an inaccurate guess by a Victorian Doctor.

[Fisherman]

Having read this thread extensively for quite some time now, I am going to abstain from attacking some of the posters who I believe are making a very deplorable impression out here. I will name no names and make no criticism against these posters.

What I will instead do, is to take you back number of years, and describe what happened on Casebook then. Some will remember it, but to other it will be news.

Back then, there was a very popular suspect named George Hutchinson doing the rounds out here. He is well known to most of us as a witness in the Mary Kelly case. And among a number of posters, me included, an idea was formed that one of the signatures on the police report signed by the witness George Hutchinson was incredibly similar to the signature of George William Topping Hutchinson, a plumber who had raised a son by the name of Reg, who was to state in an interview that his father was the witness of Ripper fame.

That idea did not go down well with the ones in favour of George Hutchinson being the Ripper.

Amongst those who fought the idea that the witness had been identified was foremost a guy who has not posted out here for quite some years now. We can call him B. He was very much the leader of the criticism against the idea of an identification of the witness as Topping. He was well read up on the case, quite intelligent and eloquent. He had a lot of things going for him, but accepting possibly being wrong was not one of them.

As the debate went on, I contacted the leading forensic document examiner in Sweden, Frank Leander of the SKL (Sveriges Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium, The Laboratory of Criminal Technique of Sweden) and supplied him with the one of the three witness statement signatures that I thought was a very close match to that of Topping Hutchinson, plus, of course, Topping own signature/s. And Leander was able to confirm what I suspected - the signatures were quite likely by the same hand, as far as he was able to tell.

What Frank Leander made clear was that for him to be able to make a definitive match that could stand up in court, he would have needed ten samples of both mens signatures. Until that happens, all there can be is an indication. This indication can of course be weak or strong, and what Leander said was that he fully anticipated that any forthcoming more signatures would go to confirm his take of a similar originator of the signatures.

Foolishly, I thought that this material should be enough to clear up the matter - obviously, George Hutchinson the witness and George Hutchinson the plumber were one and the same man, just as Reg Hutchinson had said.

That was when something very similar to what is going on on this thread erupted. B questioned everything that Leander had said, and claimed that I had misunderstood him totally. Plus I had gone about things in the totally wrong manner. And there was no lack of ingenuity on B:s behalf when it came to thinking up alternative interpretations of what Leander had said. Some of them were outright preposterous, just as is the case here, but the thing is, I could not prove them wrong. Some times preposterous suggestions are proven true, against all odds.

If we had come no further that time, it would have been a case of a twin matter, compared to the one on this thread. But luckily, I contacted Frank Leander, and he was just as outraged by how B twisted what he had said as I was, and he accordingly agreed to comment further on the matter, dismantling everything B had claimed. And he dubbed B :s posts ”malicious” in the process.

Eventually, we were able to back B into a corner from which there was no escape. No more alternative suggestions for what Leander meant could be made, since Leander himself had quashed them all.

Now, guess what B did at this stage? Accept that he had been wrong all along? Oh no; he said ”No, Leander does not agree with you at all, he has simply grown tired of you pestering him and he is now fobbing you off by feigning an agreement with your claims!”

This, and its latter day ugly offspring, resurfacing again and again, is by and large why I avoid Casebook. When somebody contributes to our joint knowledge by contacting experts and gaining valuable insight and information from them, it should arguably be met by enthusiasm. It should not be met by obfuscation, wriggling and malevolent misinterpretations. I can fully understand why experts who have come into contact with ripperology and its students will not touch it with a ten foot pole afterwards. Which is, for example, why I am not contacting Thiblin again to ask him if what he said was actually what he meant. He had given a clear and valuable piece of information, and he really does not need to be questioned about it any more.

Now that I have written about this and made my picture clear, I anticipate to have it confirmed by a line of posters who chime in and go:

”He cannot defend his rotten ideas, that is why he flies like a coward.”

”Of course Ben was correct, anybody would be worn down by Fisherman and want to get rid off him!”

”Just listen - he is happy about experts that seem to endorse him, but he scuffs at Biggs!”

”He is an expert when it comes to misleading experts!!”

And

”He is trying to use a case that has nothing to do with this one for a comparison, thats what happens when he knows he cannot win the debate!”

Let it be known that I have seen all of this before, and that I have no problems recognizing it. And let it be known that I find it an utter waste of time spending pages on end in a useless effort to make my point, knowing that no argument I make and no expert I quote, regardless of his or her status, will be listened to. And let it be known that this is why I normally avoid posting here nowadays.

Many thanks to those who have battled on in such a great and composed style, piling logical points on each other - to no avail at all. Never believe that you cannot win, because you already did. It is the acceptance of this you are deprived of, not the win itself.

All the best to everybody - and I really, really mean that.

Now you will not see me out here for quite some time, and that’s a promise.

[Trevor Marriott]

I mention this subject because you keep bringing up George’s quote. This quote tells us how witnesses can be wrong. No one questions this Fishy so how does this help us. If you aren’t claiming that witnesses shouldn’t be dismissed because they ‘can’ lie and they ‘can’ be mistaken then why keep telling us this.

You’re description of the witnesses is biased of course. But we all know that.

The biased way that these witnesses have been assessed by some has been jaw-dropping. Richardson is a strong witnesses. Completely unambiguous, absolutely certain and entirely non-contradictory. You discredit him people have to resort to inventing things.

The term which should be used to describe the witness testimony is that "it is unsafe to conclusivey rely on" if everyone accepts that including you all of this constant bickering can end.

I think this thread has run its course and given all the same repetetive arguments admin should close it down for the sake of everyones sanity

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock, really. Do you actually believe that the justice system is built on the premise that witnesses never lie and are never mistaken. You should try to be a little less hyperbolic with your assertions.

Cheers, George

That’s not what I’m saying at all George. I’m responding to Fishy who appears to believe that just because witnesses can lie and that they can be mistaken then we should just dismiss them alongside Phillips when this clear,y isn’t the case. Phillips guess can’t be assessed because there are too many unknowns whereas the witnesses can and should be assessed. But what I’m having to respond to is blanket claims tha witnesses were ‘ambiguous’ and ‘contradictory.’ As if their testimony is worthless and this isn’t the case. Especially in terms of Richardson who is a very strong witness. One of the strongest in the case imo. And I’ll make the obvious point again - if it wasn’t for Phillips unreliable guess then no one would have questioned Richardson.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Not really, Fishy.

I couldn't go as far as saying Dr Biggs agreed with Dr Phillips.

What Dr Biggs does tacitly acknowledge is that some estimates will be more accurate than others (he said a wider timeframe is more likely to be accurate).

It follows that had Dr Phillips stated: "5.20am to 5.30am", Dr Biggs is telling us this is less likely to be accurate than: "at least two hours and probably more".

We can only assess the value of an option in relation to the other options.

And then of course, Dr Biggs makes reference to someone "unaccustomed to manipulating dead bodies". What does this mean in relation to Dr Phillips? We have no idea because the question goes unanswered. We're left with no good reason as to why Dr Phillips was unable to discern the stage of rigor he observed.

In the end though, Dr Biggs doesn't commit to either scenario, whereas Professor Thiblin commits to 3-4 hours being more likely. So, 1 expert in favour of an earlier TOD and the other non-committal.

The claim that a Victorian doctor couldn't possibly have been correct, is a logical fallacy. Dr Phillips tells us the least time possible is two hours. The other option was the most time possible is two hours. One of these options is correct and so logically Dr Phillips could quite conceivably have been correct depending on which option he chose and when Annie was murdered.

He couldn’t have given a 2 hour minimum time accurately. That was an impossibility.