Originally posted by A P Tomlinson
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I have no idea why you think I should get back on the subject of Albert's reliability.
I do not recall that it was being discussed.
The passageways that led to the two respective backyards were situated side by side. This means that, if the activity that Cadosch claims that he had heard was actually caused by the murder of Annie Chapman, then he was literally only two or three of feet away from the murderer and his victim! Yet he heard no other noises and couldn't tell exactly from where the voice came from even though when he heard it, just as he walked through the back door, he was closest to where Chapman's body was discovered. Also, the killer must have possessed an incredible amount of cool daring, or a total lack of disregard for his own safety, if he continued the attack on his victim even though there were obvious signs of someone moving about in the adjacent yard only feet away. All of this does not seem plausible.
Secondly, there is trouble with the entire time frame between Cadosch's and Mrs. Long's stories.
Albert Cadosch claimed that the activity he heard, supposedly the actual murder itself, happened between 5:20 and sometime before he left the house, say 5:30. Elizabeth Long claimed that she saw Annie Chapman alive and talking to a man on Hanbury Street just seconds after 5:30. They can't both be right and as the two tales don't really dovetail at all, this is a problem that casts doubt on one or both of these witnesses.
The easiest course of action at this point is to just ignore the discrepancy in times or to attempt to explain it away. Wynne Baxter admitted in his summing up during the inquest that "there is some conflict in the evidence about the time at which the deceased was despatched. It is not unusual to find inaccuracy in such details, but this variation is not very great or very important." 16 He resolved the issue in his mind by suggesting that perhaps if Albert Cadosch "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." 17
Baxter's reasoning makes little sense considering that whatever Cadosch heard, he heard before 5:30 that morning and thus several minutes before Mrs. Long turned onto the street. In order for the two times to mesh, or at least to be driven together like the proverbial square peg hammered into the round hole, Mrs. Long must have been off by fifteen or twenty minutes since she has to be placed in Hanbury Street at about the time that Cadosch awoke.
One theory has it that instead of hearing the brewery clock strike the half hour, it actually struck the quarter hour and so Mrs. Long was merely mistaken about the time.
Forget for a moment that Mrs. Long would probably have heard this clock strike on every working day but somehow didn't realize that it struck the quarter hour. Also forget that she stated at the inquest that she arrived at the market a few minutes after 5:30 which would mean that the two blocks she had to cover between Hanbury Street and work would have to have take her fifteen minutes to cover! The real problem with this neat solution is that it doesn't take into consideration how clocks actually work.
Some clocks strike the half hour as well as the hour (a single bong signifying the half hour) while some clocks give you hour, quarter hours and half hour. These clocks, the type that it is suggested the brewery had, do not strike, they chime. A good example is the Westminster clock which chimes four notes to signify the quarter hour; eight notes signify the half hour; twelve notes the three-quarter hour and sixteen notes the top of the hour. This is followed by the bonging of the hour. This is not just a possible confusion over a single note or bong but confusing the difference between four notes and eight. It is difficult to see how Mrs. Long was unable to distinguish the difference between 5:15 and 5:30 on such a clock.
In the end, given the basic facts offered to us, there is a disturbing discrepancy between what Elizabeth Long and Albert Cadosch said.
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