Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[A P Tomlinson]

At the Eddowes inquest:

Constable Long

[Coroner] Had you been past that spot previously to your discovering the apron? - I passed about twenty minutes past two o'clock.

Detective Halse

I came through Goulston-street about twenty minutes past two,

Do we consider this to be a problematic conflict?

Hypothetical Scenario.

There’s a fight in a street. Two days later one of the men dies as a result of his injuries. Two weeks later two witnesses came forward both of whom had gone on holiday abroad after seeing the fight so were unaware of the significance of their evidence. One witness says that she’d seen the fight at 1.50 pm and that she’d arrived at her time by the fact that she’d left her house at around 1.45 and the location was around 5 minutes away. The other witness said that he’d seen the fight a little after 1.30 pm and he took his time because he’d left his phone in his car and so had asked a passerby who told him that it was 1.30 around 2 minutes or so before he saw the fight.

So should the police doubt the validity of these two witnesses because there is an apparent 20 minute discrepancy between the two?

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.

[Lewis C]

I did not say that we can conclude that the two testimonies are in conflict.

I said that there is a conflict which would need to be resolved in order for the witnesses' testimonies to be taken to support one another.

That there is a conflict that needs to be resolved was acknowledged by the coroner:


There is some conflict in the evidence ... but this variation is not very great or very important... 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 ...


The discrepancy in the evidence cannot vanish, because there is no evidence that the brewery clock was six or more minutes fast nor that the church clock was similarly slow.

Consequently, the conflict remains unresolved.

The coroner didn't mean quite the same thing when he referred to a conflict as what I have meant when I've used the term here. Baxter just means that the times don't line up perfectly. When I have said that there's no conflict, I mean that when making reasonable allowances for time estimates, it is possible for the 2 testimonies to be reconciled with one another. When looking at Baxter's whole statement, including where he said "this variation is not very great or very important", I agree with Baxter, other than his apparent assumption that Cadosch must be the one whose time is a bit off. It could just as easily be Long, or a little of both.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Clocks could be wrong and could be poorly synchronised, but that does not make it likely that one particular clock would be 6 minutes fast and another particular clock nearby would be 6 minutes slow, and that no one would notice.

[Lewis C]

That's exactly it! Obviously, if it were possible, one would then test that possibility by going to the two clocks and working out what the relative time differences are between them. But at that point, one no longer needs to deal with ranges because by measuring the actual clock settings one no longer has to deal with a range of possibilities. However, when faced with unknown actual values, then as long as the ranges allow for a resolution one cannot conclude there is a conflict. As such, with regards to Long and Cadosche, we cannot conclude there is a conflict, and therefore given the information we have there is nothing to resolve.

That is how range information is interpreted. It's not an opinion, it is simply the method by which one analyses such noisy data. In an active police investigation today, of course, such noisy information is unacceptable and one would be sent out to clarify the settings on the clocks. That wasn't something the police did at the time, but methods have improved since then.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I'm glad that you followed up on my post because I wasn't sure that I expressed my ideas in the clearest way possible, and I think that this post of yours and your follow up post added clarity to what i was trying to say.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If people were unable to rely upon the accuracy of public clocks, why did PC Harvey do so in Aldgate?

Because he had no choice but to do so.

And again……no one has said that all clocks were always wrong.

The clocks could be wrong and could be poorly synchronised should be accepted without question. Do you accept that fact without question?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Talking of reasonable possibilities, I suppose another reasonable possibility is that the 40-plus dark foreigner entered Mitre Square from Mitre Street and there met Catherine Eddowes, who after taking her hand off the fair sailor's chest had decided not to conduct any business with him, and instead had walked to Mitre Square alone.

To claim that the man was a sailor is inaccurate and an assumption. Lawende said that he had the appearance of one which could only have come from some item of clothing. He didn’t elucidate. But ‘having the appearance of’ doesn’t allow us to state that he was a sailor. Especially when we apply the police’s ADVOKATE system and see that he was actually a less reliable witness than Elizabeth Long.

And although the fair sailor was seen by someone,

You mean the man who a witness (in the dark, after visiting a club until late, looking briefly across a street) said had the appearance of a sailor.

the 40-plus dark foreigner was seen by no-one that night,

Inaccurate. He could have been seen by a dozen people. He was hardly a clown on a unicycle was he? Why should anyone have noticed a normal looking man in the streets of Spitalfields?

nor seen by anyone to enter #29 nor leave it, even though it was already getting light and people were already up and about.

It happens. Not every event that occurs in daylight is observed. This is fairly obvious I’d have thought?

And John Richardson had already visited the back yard.

Proving that Annie Chapman was still alive at 4.45.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ah. So it’s believed by one of the two that all clocks should be considered as accurate and synchronised on the grounds that we can find examples of clocks being accurate and synchronised. It’s good to know the position.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Aye, which translates to: the clocks may have been wrong, we cannot prove in what way they were wrong, and therefore it is equally likely that the clocks were wrong in a fashion that means Elizabeth and Albert were in Hanbury Street at more or less the same time.

Which would be perfectly correct and proper.

It is another version of 'we just don't know' appeal to ignorance.

That we don’t know is simply a fact.

You are told by the witnesses what time they thought they were there, and in order to believe they were there at the same time you have to bend their times up one way and down the other.

You can’t be accused of ‘bending’ if we don’t know what the time was in the first place. This is the nature of an estimate. It’s an estimate. Accurate or inaccurate. Fast or slow. An unknown. The only error is to falsely assume that we can evaluate the estimate.


'Last post on that: in my opinion it is not equally as likely, you're free to have your opinion.

It is equally likely. It cannot be otherwise.

This is a bit newer and so worthy of carrying on with this. I reckon your '5 or 6 minutes apart', is not generally agreed upon.

Can you explain how you have come up with this from the witness statements.

The last part was an error on my part. I mixed up ‘5 or 6 minutes out’ with ‘5 or 6 minutes’ apart.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

In answer to a question I have been asked, it is unlikely that one particular clock would be 6 minutes fast and another particular clock 6 minutes slow, and that neither of the two witnesses would realise that they were so early or late upon arriving at work, and that none of their work colleagues or superiors would notice either.

If people were unable to rely upon the accuracy of public clocks, why did PC Harvey do so in Aldgate?

If no one could rely on any two clocks or watches telling something like the same time, why did Lechmere worry that he would be late for work because he was already behind time, and why did he worry that his employers would know that he was late if no one actually had any confidence in their ability to tell the time?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Talking of reasonable possibilities, I suppose another reasonable possibility is that the 40-plus dark foreigner entered Mitre Square from Mitre Street and there met Catherine Eddowes, who after taking her hand off the fair sailor's chest had decided not to conduct any business with him, and instead had walked to Mitre Square alone.

And although the fair sailor was seen by someone, the 40-plus dark foreigner was seen by no-one that night, nor seen by anyone to enter #29 nor leave it, even though it was already getting light and people were already up and about.

And John Richardson had already visited the back yard.

[Fleetwood Mac]

An estimated time, which we are unable to evaluate, is no more or less likely to have been incorrect one way than the other.

Aye, which translates to: the clocks may have been wrong, we cannot prove in what way they were wrong, and therefore it is equally likely that the clocks were wrong in a fashion that means Elizabeth and Albert were in Hanbury Street at more or less the same time.

It is another version of 'we just don't know' appeal to ignorance.

You are told by the witnesses what time they thought they were there, and in order to believe they were there at the same time you have to bend their times up one way and down the other.

'Last post on that: in my opinion it is not equally as likely, you're free to have your opinion.

It is the witness testimony that puts the times at 5 or 6 minutes apart. I had no involvement in the matter.

This is a bit newer and so worthy of carrying on with this. I reckon your '5 or 6 minutes apart', is not generally agreed upon.

Can you explain how you have come up with this from the witness statements.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I asked FM this question in post #717 and received no answer despite it being a simple yes or no type. So I’ll ask it again to both FM and PI:

Do you believe that we should assume that all clocks and watches in Victorian London were accurate and perfectly synchronised and that it would be unlikely in the extreme that there could have been a margin for error of 5 minutes or so?

The whole debate stands or falls on this point rather than on the inaccurate use of the ‘logical fallacies’ argument.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That is quite correct.

But it is actually worse than that, because previously we were being told that it is virtually certain that Long did see Chapman and that Cadoche did hear her.

Now it seems to have been reduced to just an evens chance.

I would like to return to the issue I raised in #250.

There are no conflicts between the timings given at the Mitre Square inquest.

Lawende's and Levy's timings agree.
Watkins' and Morris' timings agree.
Watkins' and Sequeira's timings agree to within 5 minutes.
Watkins' and Collard's timings agree to within 2 minutes.

Harvey gave a timing based on the post office clock.

No one has questioned it.

What I would like to know is: why is it that the clocks were so especially badly out of sync in the vicinity of Hanbury Street?

If the clocks are correct in your house would you put money on the clocks being correct in your neighbours house?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Straw man argument.

It has been agreed that it is possible that Albert's time was not correct.

The flaw in your argument is not in suggesting the possibility that the times were wrong, it's fallacious because you're moving them to coincide with one another and then claiming it's as likely a scenario as any other scenario.

Again we have an inaccurate use of logical fallacies. By allowing for a reasonable margin for error I’ve repeatedly emphasised that this margin has to apply both ways. For example, if a time of 3.00 is estimated then 2.57 is just as likely as 3.03. Therefore incorrect times in favour of alignment are no more or less likely than incorrect times not in favour of alignment.

While we're on with memory distortion, in the event Albert's recollection did not match the event then it's all academic anyway.

So your ‘reasoning’ is that if someone misremembered one thing then we should assume that he misremembered other things? The actual reason that it’s academic is that we have no evidence that Albert misremembered anything.

I'd suggest that when you claimed Albert could not have had a memory error in relation to two sounds, it was a very inflexible, 'dismiss out of hand without consideration' argument; while here, your argument is very much 'anything is possible and so it's equally as likely'.

I reckon the approach and reasoning is inconsistent.

My reasoning is not only consistent it allows for all possibilities. That Albert and Long’s times might have aligned is simply a fact. Therefore it cannot be raised as a point to try and dismiss their evidence. It’s a very simple point which you have consistently sought to complicate and obfuscate with your repetitive misuse of logical fallacies with the intention of distracting the conversation.

Ill repeat that we are getting nowhere boringly. You and PI agree with each other….fine. I’m happy that the majority disagree.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This is pretty much the 'invincible ignorance fallacy'.

1) You are told by the witnesses that they were there at different times.

2) Your argument supposes they were wrong in their estimate of the time.

Incorrect again. My ‘argument’ is that the possibility exists that they could have been wrong. Which is absolutely correct.

3) Furthermore, your argument supposes that their timings were out in a fashion that moves one earlier to exactly coincide with the other, and the other later to exactly coincide with the other.

You have some hurdles to get over there, which render your argument the least likely.

An estimated time, which we are unable to evaluate, is no more or less likely to have been incorrect one way than the other.

This is misrepresenting the facts, you have bent the times to '5 or 6 minutes apart'.

Difficult to see how you’ve managed to arrive at this last point. It is the witness testimony that puts the times at 5 or 6 minutes apart. I had no involvement in the matter.

As you are disinclined to discuss the actual details of the evidence, for very understandable reasons, no purpose is served by the repeated use of inaccurately applied logical fallacies. The ‘discussion’ becomes a boring one of repetition and obfuscation that serves no further purpose. My points have been proven. They are toward the acceptance of the existence reasonable possibilities - something that only a very small minority (two) are against and no one can fail to notice which side of the fence that small minority sits on.