Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why not?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Cadoche could not have heard 'no' at 5:26 and passed the church at 5:32.

Swanson estimated that he heard the fall against the fence at 5:28.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What would they even check the times against? The clock at Greenwich? The Police station clock? Which station? The ME's arrival on scene? The watch of the most senior investigator on scene?

When the times are all matched up at Mitre Square, are ALL the Police watches at the City division so well synchornised to be able to agree that Watkins precision at 1.44am wasn't out by a minute or so compared to the Inspectors' watches? Or is it more likely that when establishing the timeline they might go by the coroners offering of Morris' estimate of "about quarter to two" and work back a minute?
When the police made an established timeline, like Buck's row and Mitre Square they would have been the MOST accurate, and the specific position of the hands of the clockface are slightly less relevant to any discrepancies between witnesses. Timelines that the police didn;t establish would be less accurate, especially if no formal timeline were even presented.
A few minutes here or there are quite clearly a normal matter of routine 1888 criminal investigation. If more precision were possible and expected you can be sure the coroners would have wanted to know why the times WERE so disparate.

People keep treating elements of Victorian life such as forensic pathology and accurate time keeping like they would a modern, 21st century situation, and by modern I mean how almost everything in life these days comes equipped with a time stamp.
Medical science was barely aware of the need for things like simple disinfection in 1888, but we are expected to accept that these quacks by modern day standard could use the back of their hand more efficiently than a modern medical examiner with a digital thermometre and probe for liver temp, who also understands lividity and that measuring post mortem processes are more important in establishing ToD than a guess at the scene... And these people could tell time as accurately as if every low born guttersnipe had a synchronised wrist watch (that had only just been invented as a concept.)

We've got witnesses who would apparently have been absolutely ****-on with their to-the-minute time keeping but couldn't recognise a human face???
We've a doctor who knew Time of Death but thought the wounds took quarter of an hour to inflict... and he's apparently MORE reliable on the situation he has never encountered before, than his estimations over the practice of cutting someone up... and he's a bloody surgeon. (Oh he was WAY off with the time on the wounds... but that Time of Death... see no reason to doubt THAT!)
But it's ALBERT.... ALBERT is the one whose evidence and reliability are questioned, because some scientists say that memory can be faulty... we've not got any specific events or conditions or situations that we can point at that would cause him to have any of these episodes... but his memory is unreliable because a sudden psychic storm MIGHT have made him conflate the news of a murder with an old memory of a packing case hitting a fence... but most importantly ALL those things that point toward a later time of death than the doctor said, NEED to be brushed aside or discredited.
Not because the evidence says so, but because people who don't like the evidence, because it interferes with their wider theory, say so.

Couldn’t have put it better AP. We have to separate then from now. It’s the same as when it’s assumed that we can deduce how a woman like Annie Chapman would or wouldn’t have thought and acted. We just can’t begin to understand how much their lives differed from ours. How much their thinking differed from ours. And then we get it stated that the killer wouldn’t have done this or that. A man who murders and disembowelled women can hardly be considered as a paragon of logical thought and action. There’s often a reluctance to accept just how much we don’t and cannot know.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When we talk about a margin for error we’ve repeatedly stated that we have to allow for both ways. So if we say 5 minutes then 5.25 - 5.35.

So the suggestion is:

Cadosch gets up at around 5.20.

Long passes the couple at around 5.25.

Cadosch goes into the yard at around 5.25/6 and hears the ‘no.’

He returns an estimated 3/4 minutes later so around 5.30.

He goes back inside and straight out as he said so around 5.31.

He passes the Spitalfields clock which said 5.32.


I see no issue.

[A P Tomlinson]

And we have Cadosch’s own words which clearly tell us that he was only estimating times so there can be no mistaking the fact. I really can’t understand the resistance to something so everyday and normal AP. To suggest that times are somehow being ‘moved’ makes no sense because we don’t have a time in the first place so it can’t apply to Cadosch.

And as no checks were done into the accuracy of the brewer’s clock as far as we know combined with the indisputable fact that even today clocks can be significantly wrong and poorly synchronised there really should be no problem accepting the possibility of that clock being fast.

To sum up AP what we can say is that whilst we clearly can’t prove that Long and Cadosch’s testimony tied up perfectly as far as times go we also cannot claim that they didn’t tie up. We don’t have enough information to suggest either on the subject of times.

What would they even check the times against? The clock at Greenwich? The Police station clock? Which station? The ME's arrival on scene? The watch of the most senior investigator on scene?

When the times are all matched up at Mitre Square, are ALL the Police watches at the City division so well synchornised to be able to agree that Watkins precision at 1.44am wasn't out by a minute or so compared to the Inspectors' watches? Or is it more likely that when establishing the timeline they might go by the coroners offering of Morris' estimate of "about quarter to two" and work back a minute?
When the police made an established timeline, like Buck's row and Mitre Square they would have been the MOST accurate, and the specific position of the hands of the clockface are slightly less relevant to any discrepancies between witnesses. Timelines that the police didn;t establish would be less accurate, especially if no formal timeline were even presented.
A few minutes here or there are quite clearly a normal matter of routine 1888 criminal investigation. If more precision were possible and expected you can be sure the coroners would have wanted to know why the times WERE so disparate.

People keep treating elements of Victorian life such as forensic pathology and accurate time keeping like they would a modern, 21st century situation, and by modern I mean how almost everything in life these days comes equipped with a time stamp.
Medical science was barely aware of the need for things like simple disinfection in 1888, but we are expected to accept that these quacks by modern day standard could use the back of their hand more efficiently than a modern medical examiner with a digital thermometre and probe for liver temp, who also understands lividity and that measuring post mortem processes are more important in establishing ToD than a guess at the scene... And these people could tell time as accurately as if every low born guttersnipe had a synchronised wrist watch (that had only just been invented as a concept.)

We've got witnesses who would apparently have been absolutely ****-on with their to-the-minute time keeping but couldn't recognise a human face???
We've a doctor who knew Time of Death but thought the wounds took quarter of an hour to inflict... and he's apparently MORE reliable on the situation he has never encountered before, than his estimations over the practice of cutting someone up... and he's a bloody surgeon. (Oh he was WAY off with the time on the wounds... but that Time of Death... see no reason to doubt THAT!)
But it's ALBERT.... ALBERT is the one whose evidence and reliability are questioned, because some scientists say that memory can be faulty... we've not got any specific events or conditions or situations that we can point at that would cause him to have any of these episodes... but his memory is unreliable because a sudden psychic storm MIGHT have made him conflate the news of a murder with an old memory of a packing case hitting a fence... but most importantly ALL those things that point toward a later time of death than the doctor said, NEED to be brushed aside or discredited.
Not because the evidence says so, but because people who don't like the evidence, because it interferes with their wider theory, say so.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

There really should be no problem accepting the possibility of that clock being slow rather than fast, in which case the church clock has to have been about 20 minutes too slow.

[Herlock Sholmes]

.
Is it at all likely that Long would have been able to identity Chapman three days after the murder, even though it seems that she was unable to describe any of her clothing?

We have absolutely no way of knowing. Memory is far from infallible of course but it’s simply the case that some people have a better memory for faces than others do so maybe Long was in that category? Maybe she wasn’t…..we can’t know. The fact that she paid more attention to her face than her clothing can’t really be surprising combined with the fact that the poorest women were hardly extravagantly dressed. Most of them would have worn very similar clothing unlike today.

What is worth remembering though is that she was much closer to her subject and in better conditions than Lawende was to the couple that he saw. The reality is that we have absolutely no way of gauging the accuracy of Long’s sighting. She might have been mistaken or she might not have been. But still, what we are left with is a woman who had no reason to lie claiming to have seen a woman who at least looked like Annie Chapman at (around) the correct time and in the right place (close to number 29) on the morning of the murder. This makes her evidence at the very least important. Impossible to prove or disprove.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Back to the clocks...

I have to ask the following question.
"Do i consider it more likely that a couple of people in London 1888, used general expressions around the times of events... not having the means by which to ascertain the precise time, not having any reason to commit the event to memory at the time of it occuring... or more likely that three people experienced unconnected mental/psychological events causing one to experience delayed auditory hallucination, another to confuse which day they had seen a woman and man, and another to somehow erase a body in the backyard from his mind/memory WHILE he was looking at a it to the point where could sit on a step inches away from the discarded innards of the body and pooling blood and focus on his own FEET?

We are asked to believe that those things "might" have happened.
But suggesting that witnesses, just like so many other people who lived in that place, in that period, estimated the time of day rather than knowing it exactly, and that a five minute estimation was probably pretty good for people who didn't have watches or particularly demanding appointment schedules.
THAT's the crazy talk???

And we have Cadosch’s own words which clearly tell us that he was only estimating times so there can be no mistaking the fact. I really can’t understand the resistance to something so everyday and normal AP. To suggest that times are somehow being ‘moved’ makes no sense because we don’t have a time in the first place so it can’t apply to Cadosch.

And as no checks were done into the accuracy of the brewer’s clock as far as we know combined with the indisputable fact that even today clocks can be significantly wrong and poorly synchronised there really should be no problem accepting the possibility of that clock being fast.

To sum up AP what we can say is that whilst we clearly can’t prove that Long and Cadosch’s testimony tied up perfectly as far as times go we also cannot claim that they didn’t tie up. We don’t have enough information to suggest either on the subject of times.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Apologies to the brass.
I'll keep that in mind, must have missed it in the rules...

It’s only a fairly recent thing AP. You weren’t involved in the thread.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Is it at all likely that Long would have been able to identity Chapman three days after the murder, even though it seems that she was unable to describe any of her clothing?

[A P Tomlinson]

Back to the clocks...

I have to ask the following question.
"Do i consider it more likely that a couple of people in London 1888, used general expressions around the times of events... not having the means by which to ascertain the precise time, not having any reason to commit the event to memory at the time of it occuring... or more likely that three people experienced unconnected mental/psychological events causing one to experience delayed auditory hallucination, another to confuse which day they had seen a woman and man, and another to somehow erase a body in the backyard from his mind/memory WHILE he was looking at a it to the point where could sit on a step inches away from the discarded innards of the body and pooling blood and focus on his own FEET?

We are asked to believe that those things "might" have happened.
But suggesting that witnesses, just like so many other people who lived in that place, in that period, estimated the time of day rather than knowing it exactly, and that a five minute estimation was probably pretty good for people who didn't have watches or particularly demanding appointment schedules.
THAT's the crazy talk???

[A P Tomlinson]

Couldn’t agree more AP. Just as a warning because you may not be aware, the subject of the JFK assassination is a banned topic on here.

Apologies to the brass.
I'll keep that in mind, must have missed it in the rules...

[Herlock Sholmes]

What certainly is a Straw Man argument is that we are attempting to ‘move’ Cadosch’s time……because Cadosch didn’t quote ‘a time.’ He quoted ‘an approximated time,’ and an approximated time allows for a measure of leeway. Just as a reminder to assist those who might have forgotten:

“On Saturday, Sept. 8, I got up about a quarter past five in the morning, and went into the yard. It was then about twenty minutes past five, I should think.”

Cadosch’s uncertainty could hardly have been more clearly stated. In a house full of clocks I could tell you ‘about’ what time I went to bed last night but in my case I’d have to give a + or - 10 minutes on that (possibly even slightly longer)

Cadosch arrived at the estimated time that he entered the yard by adding an estimated period or time (probably around 12 hours or so earlier) to an estimated time that he got up. He estimated his time period at around 5 minutes. So he could have got up at 5.18 and the period of time could have been 7 minutes.

These are tiny amounts of time….applied either way (so he could equally have been later or earlier) So, by applying a minimal margin for error, he could have gone into the yard from around 5.15 to around 5.25. This should be an acceptable way of assessing undoubted estimations.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Try reading the Warren Commission's assessment of the events around the shooting of JD Tippit, in assessing witness times and them coming to a conclusion that the shooting happened around the time that the shooting was actually being reported to the Police via the Police radio.
The witnesses (very broadly and using phrases like "about" and "around" describe a whole series of events that start from a good ten minutes before the stated time of 1:17, only one witness is able to give a definite time, (he arrived after the shooting at 1:10 tried to help and eventually got the radio working at 1:17, but the WC choose to ignore that because watches in 1963 were unreliable...) they also discounted the Police Dispatch time given because it was know to often be out by up to ten minutes...

It had absolutely NOTHING to do with Oswald being seen too far away to have gotten there in time to have done the shooting at the time the wtinesses say, and that giving him an extra 8 to 10 minutes to get there makes it the only plausible way that he was the shooter... no siree... no shenanigins here! And you would have to be a liar and a communist to suggest otherwise!

The fact that (as much as it was complete horse crap,) this was an entirely plausible situation put forward by the WC, (as accepted by pretty much everyone at the time, and to challenge it made you a "Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy Nut") shows that even in 1963, personal anecdotal time, wrist watches and timings provided by the Police themselves were considered to have the same level of unreliability, and not considered accurate enough to establish a "True and Accurate" timeline.

Couldn’t agree more AP. Just as a warning because you may not be aware, the subject of the JFK assassination is a banned topic on here.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is it at all likely that someone at the market would have thought “Elizabeth got here around 5 minutes early 3 days ago on the day of the murder?” I think that we can say this would have been unlikely in the extreme unless someone was remarkably observant and clued up enough to have considered that this 5 minutes or so might have been materially useful to the police in helping to align times accurately.

As far as Elizabeth herself was concerned is it all likely that she arrived at the market at exactly the same time every day (to 5 minutes or so?) And how likely would it have been for her, in a market place, to have sought out a clock to check what time she’d actually arrived. And how likely would it have been for a woman like her to have been aware, three days later, of the potential importance of a discrepancy of a very few minutes; enough to even think of mentioning this to the police?