John Richardson

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hard to argue with plain English from inquest testimony between Richardson , Chandler and the Coroner , theres no misinterpreting the evidence below.


Again, the fact you have to say George Trevor P.I and Myself are ''wrong'' based on the ''exactly'' the same evidence we all share and interpret and give opinions on is sad and i feel sorry for you .

The hypocrisy is laughable .



It’s not simply to say ‘I believe in an LATER ToD and I’ll defend it at all costs. No matter if I have to overrule the worlds authorities regarding unsafe witness testimony, no matter if I have to tear up the rules of grammar, no matter if I have to ignore what a medical point actually means, no matter if I have to resort to generalities like why would witnesses lie .

The hypocrisy is laughable



Now that we all know [because you couldnt answer to the question below ] Richardson didnt look at the cellar lock from the back yard , im putting this one to bed and moving on .












Can someone show me a Doorstep at the spot where some would have us believe John Richardson was standing in the backyard at the top of the cellar entrance steps.?



John Richardson, ''When I was on the ''doorstep'' I saw that the padlock on the cellar door was in its proper place.''

''WHEN I WAS ON THE DOORSTEP''!!!!!






Coroner] Did you see John Richardson? - I saw him about a quarter to seven o'clock. He told me he had been to the house that morning about a quarter to five. ''He said he came to the back door and looked down to the cellar'', to see if all was right, and then went away to his work.

''HE SAID HE CAME TO THE BACK DOOR AND LOOKED DOWN TO THE CELLAR''


Chandler confirms what Richardson said he did .


Richardson confirms to the Coroner what he did .




Daily News
United Kingdom
13 September 1888


[Coroner,] Did you go into the yard at all?-Not at all, sir.!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought you went there to see that the cellar was all right?- [Richardson] Yes; ''but you don't need to go into the yard'' to see that. You can ''see the padlock'' of the cellar door ''from the back door steps.''!!!!!!!!!!








Of all the different press reports regarding inquest testimony ,there is no evidence to suggest one was more accurate than another when reporting what was said at any inquest for the whitechapel murders.

The very fact that the wording from one report differs slighty from another which in turn leads some to interpret certain information in a different way , is in itself the very definition of uncertainty.


Doorstep noun [C] (STEP)

a step in front of an outside door: DOORSTEP | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

Unlike you, I don’t duck questions Fishy.

Richardson sat on the back door steps exactly as he told the inquest and exactly as appeared in the papers on the 10th.

Just because one reporter stated something in one version doesn’t make something a fact. What is a FACT though Fishy is that Richardson very obviously wouldn’t have claimed that he didn’t go down the back door steps whilst in the same breath saying that he’d sat on the step with his feet on the flags (meaning that he had to have gone down those steps. If you believe that John Richardson stood at the inquest and talked gibberish then it’s up to you. It doesn’t make for a particularly powerful argument though.

What you, and others are suggesting is this - that for whatever ever reason John Richardson was so desperate to prove that he couldn’t have missed the body that he was prepared to lie, but the lie that he told was so weak that it left on the table the suggestion that the door might have hidden it….it also put a knife into his own hands when he was alone at the scene of a knife murder. And he told this ‘lie’ despite of the huge contradiction in that he denied going into the yard……whereas if he’d said that he’d gone into the yard he’d have absolutely achieved what he was desperate to achieve in the first place!

All suggestions that Richardson lied are twaddle.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I know you keep pasting this over and over, but you need to understand that as you point out with your link, the doorstep is that big stone block ''in front of" the door.
NOT the doorway itself.
You recall Richardson saying that he sat on the one in the backyard?
Well, THAT is him saying that he could see the padlock, ''WHEN I WAS ON THE DOORSTEP''!!!!!

So yeah... finally you agree that it wasn't from the doorway that he could see the padlock and that he had to have ventured beyond it onto the door step.
How hard is the leap to him sitting down going to be now that you understand what a door step is?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’d like to ask an obvious and simple question. Yes we know that witnesses can be mistaken but…….

Why do most people accept that Lawende saw Eddowes and her killer fairly close to where she was killed (despite the distance from witness to couple, despite the fact that it was dark at the time, despite the fact that he wasn’t paying much attention etc) and yet they have no qualms about dismissing Long who was even nearer to her place of death (despite the fact that she passed right next to her, despite the fact that it was light)?

Cherrypicking?

[A P Tomlinson]

Thanks for accepting, albeit belatedly, that there was no cadaveric spasm.

That was all I wanted to focus on, as it was you who had suggested the possibility that there had been a cadaveric spasm.

Oh come on...
I danced for you on a point of absolute irrelevance so you could get a win, that makes no difference to the reliability of the 4.30 guess.
The least you can do is offer SOMETHING to support the 4.30 time by way of evidence.
It's got to be out there.
There can't be so many people fighting over defending it there has to be SOME reason.
It HAS to be more than the absolutely flawed, unreliable method used by Philips.
What supports it? Why do we have to hear the convoluted attempts to make the witnesses that argue against it any less reliable than the witnesses who support the times of death in the other cases?
ANYTHING...

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Oh come on...
I danced for you on a point of absolute irrelevance so you could get a win, that makes no difference to the reliability of the 4.30 guess.
The least you can do is offer SOMETHING to support the 4.30 time by way of evidence.
It's got to be out there.
There can't be so many people fighting over defending it there has to be SOME reason.
It HAS to be more than the absolutely flawed, unreliable method used by Philips.
What supports it? Why do we have to hear the convoluted attempts to make the witnesses that argue against it any less reliable than the witnesses who support the times of death in the other cases?
ANYTHING...

It was no guess.

It was based on the commencement of the onset of rigor mortis and the coldness of the body.

There was still some food in the deceased's stomach.

The best evidence is that she last ate about 3 hours 40 minutes before 5:30 AM and that she ate nothing other than potato.

There seems to be general agreement that potato can be expected to remain in the stomach for about one hour.

That suggests that Chapman was killed at some time before 3:00 AM and certainly not as late as 5.30 AM.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I’d like to ask an obvious and simple question. Yes we know that witnesses can be mistaken but…….

Why do most people accept that Lawende saw Eddowes and her killer fairly close to where she was killed (despite the distance from witness to couple, despite the fact that it was dark at the time, despite the fact that he wasn’t paying much attention etc) and yet they have no qualms about dismissing Long who was even nearer to her place of death (despite the fact that she passed right next to her, despite the fact that it was light)?

Cherrypicking?

I think it is a valid question and one which I was thinking about recently.

You could ask why Swanson thought that it was reasonable to conclude that the man seen by Lawende was the murderer and yet he never took the same view about the man seen by Long.

There is corroboration not only for Lawende's sighting of the man, but for the timing of it at about 1:35 AM on the date of the murder.

There is also the indisputable evidence that the murder occurred a few minutes before 1.44 AM.

There is no corroboration of Long's sighting of the man, nor of the timing of it nor of the date of it.

There is no indisputable evidence that the murder occurred after Long's sighting of him.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

I find myself at a loss to understand how you have missed my opinion on this subject, as I have expressed it on a number of occasions.

I don't recall anything from you that was unreasonable.

I believe that I set out a logical rational involving what Phillips may have meant in his estimate set out in Chandler's notes, and the additions made to Phillip's inquest testimony, and PI1 set out those same arguments in a well presented post shortly after. These were proffered in the spirit of discussion but were met with claims that they were dishonest nonsense. This is supported with attempts at logical justification such as "most people agree with me, so I'm right and you're wrong", as Pope Urban VIII explained to Galileo.

This doesn't sound like anything I was referring to.

On the contrary one poster refused to acknowledge the meaning offered in good faith and persisted in rewording what Phillips wrote then insisted we try explain what he meant - for goodness sake's. Another poster was preoccupied with asking about his "less than three", instead of dealing with the actual words used by Phillips.
That is the nonsense, but never mind, that was yesterday... I hope you didn't lose any sleep over it.
It was nothing that couldn't be washed away with a good pint of guinness.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

I've raised this question before. How could the police have broken Richardson's story when they had only his statements, and no evidence to the contrary? Do you believe that if the police fail to break a witnesses' story, then the story must be true? That wasn't your opinion regarding Abberline saying he was unable to break Maxwell's story, and her story never varied.

Just as an example, suppose Richardson was the Ripper. The police wouldn't have broken his story, but that doesn't mean that he didn't do it. It is thought that the police probably interviewed the Ripper at some stage in their investigations, maybe even more than once. They didn't break his story on those occasions, but he was still the guilty party.

Cheers, George

Hi George.

What Swanson possibly meant was they went over his story sort of backwards & forwards, and from different angles to see if they could trip him up in his statement.
It's a known procedure because people who lie very often do not think about their false story in great detail. As opposed to someone telling the truth, they don't have to think about it, their story just rolls of the tongue.
An experienced investigator can tell when someone is trying to come up with an answer they had not considered before.
Maxwell's story was a different case, she was (I think) just mistaken, she did honestly think she had seen Mary Kelly, so Abberline couldn't break her because she was not lying.
There is no difference in the thought process between a person who is truthful and one who is mistaken - because they are both being honest. The difference is between honesty & dishonesty, that's what the investigator is looking for.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think it is a valid question and one which I was thinking about recently.

You could ask why Swanson thought that it was reasonable to conclude that the man seen by Lawende was the murderer and yet he never took the same view about the man seen by Long.

There is corroboration not only for Lawende's sighting of the man, but for the timing of it at about 1:35 AM on the date of the murder.

There is also the indisputable evidence that the murder occurred a few minutes before 1.44 AM.

There is no corroboration of Long's sighting of the man, nor of the timing of it nor of the date of it.

There is no indisputable evidence that the murder occurred after Long's sighting of him.

There is no indisputable evidence that Lawende’s man was the killer. There was more than ample time for Eddowes and the man to have parted company just after Lawende and co passed and for her to have walked through Mitre Square where she met her killer coming the other way.

Cadosch corroborates the fact that Annie died at around 5.30.

Long is dismissed simply because she is inconvenient to those dogmatically committed to an earlier ToD. She is no more or less reliable a witness that Lawende. And yet who dismisses Lawende?

[Herlock Sholmes]

It was no guess.

It was based on the commencement of the onset of rigor mortis and the coldness of the body.

Both of which are unreliable in 2023 but were far more so in 1888……as I have mention around 500 times!

There was still some food in the deceased's stomach.

Irrelevant unless we can be 100% certain when she ate last (or we can prove that any medical conditions that Annie had didn’t affect her digestion -we don’t even know what the small contents of her stomach comprised of)

The best evidence is that she last ate about 3 hours 40 minutes before 5:30 AM and that she ate nothing other than potato.

Invention. We have no evidence of when she ate last. The potato is simply the only thing that we can name. Very poor reasoning.

There seems to be general agreement that potato can be expected to remain in the stomach for about one hour.

How do you arrive at the deduction that there was potato in her stomach?

That suggests that Chapman was killed at some time before 3:00 AM and certainly not as late as 5.30 AM.

Nonsense.

No.

The best evidence is that she was killed at 5.30.

It’s not even close.

[Wickerman]

At the risk of "statin' the bleedin' onbvious..." (delivered in a bad Basil Fawlty voice) wouldn't Philips' ToD count as such evidence to the contrary, if they accepted it above Richardson's testimony?
This is the thing that I can't seem to get my head round about the early ToD proposition. Why didn't anyone on the jury, or the coroner, call back and further question the witnesses who showed a later ToD, in order to address the discrepancy between their forensic expert and the testimonies.
Especially Richardson?
Unless they accepted that the ToD could have been out, and that the three witnesses who put ToD later were probably right?
They may not have broken his story, but woudn't they have at least tried if they considered it important?

I think it was accepted, perhaps reluctantly...

You may recall (or may not?) the summary by the coroner.

It is not unusual to find inaccuracy in such details, but this variation is not very great or very important. She was found dead about six o'clock. She was not in the yard when Richardson was there at 4.50 a.m. She was talking outside the house at half-past five when Mrs. Long passed them. Cadosh says it was about 5.20 when he was in the backyard of the adjoining house, and heard a voice say "No," and three or four minutes afterwards a fall against the fence; but if he is out of his reckoning but a quarter of an hour, the discrepancy in the evidence of fact vanishes, and he may be mistaken, for he admits that he did not get up till a quarter past five, and that it was after the half-hour when he passed Spitalfields clock. It is true that Dr. Phillips thinks that when he saw the body at 6.30 the deceased had been dead at least two hours, but he admits that the coldness of the morning and the great loss of blood may affect his opinion; and if the evidence of the other witnesses be correct, Dr. Phillips has miscalculated the effect of those forces. But many minutes after Mrs. Long passed the man and woman cannot have elapsed before the deceased became a mutilated corpse in the yard of 29, Hanbury-street, close by where she was last seen by any witness.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Please see my replies below.

There was more than ample time for Eddowes and the man to have parted company just after Lawende and co passed and for her to have walked through Mitre Square where she met her killer coming the other way.


Eddowes had her hand on the man's chest.

It is therefore unlikely that they parted company moments later.

The idea that instead of going with the man to Mitre Square, she walked there alone, is farfetched.



Cadosch corroborates the fact that Annie died at around 5.30.


Cadoche cannot 'corroborate' her time of death as having occurred at 5.30 a.m.

He did not see her.

He did not see her murderer.

It is not a proven fact that Chapman died at 5.30 a.m.



Long is dismissed simply because she is inconvenient to those dogmatically committed to an earlier ToD. She is no more or less reliable a witness that Lawende. And yet who dismisses Lawende?


Swanson considered Lawende's evidence to be much more reliable than Long's.

Long did not see the couple standing in front of number 29, did not see them enter number 29, and the conversation she overheard did not even suggest they were thinking of entering number 29.

These facts are surely more inconvenient to those dogmatically committed to a later time of death than those who favour an earlier one.

[Wickerman]

Honestly Wick I just don’t get it. There can only be one interpretation of what Phillips said. I think it’s a case of some (not all) losing sight of the purpose of a discussion. It’s not simply to say ‘I believe in an earlier ToD and I’ll defend it at all costs. No matter if I have to overrule the worlds forensic authorities, no matter if I have to tear up the rules of grammar, no matter if I have to ignore what a medical point actually means, no matter if I have to resort to generalities like ‘witnesses can be wrong.’

As I just posted, even the coroner considered the possibility Phillips had over estimated the time, it could have been a later killing as testified by the witnesses.
And he heard Phillips first hand, the unedited version.

[Wickerman]

No. You need to change your opinion.

The three witnesses corroborate each other perfectly. The witnesses weren’t unreliable though the reporting of what they said probably was.

Trevor doesn't care that the coroner was satisfied, so there was no issue.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The best evidence is that she last ate about 3 hours 40 minutes before 5:30 AM and that she ate nothing other than potato.

(PI1)

Invention. We have no evidence of when she ate last. The potato is simply the only thing that we can name. Very poor reasoning.

(HS)



It is not invention.

It is the best evidence.

It is not poor reasoning.

Now let us see how many people agree with you and how many agree with me.