An even closer look at Black Bag Man

[The Rookie Detective]

Sorry, but to scream "not very loudly" is not to scream at all, but to make some sort of noise similar to a scream but significantly quieter. A squeal need not consist of actual words, as you suggest, but even if it did, Schwartz wouldn't have understood them. Abberline has just accepted the translation, and not put it into his own words. We understand what Schwartz was trying to say.

According to the Saucy Jack postcard, number one (Stride) did just that.... "Squealed a bit"

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I don't doubt Brown was a credible witness, but he didn't notice the flower that every other witness noticed, so there must be some reasonable doubt that Brown saw Stride.

Brown: As I was going across the road I saw a man and woman standing by the Board School in Fairclough-street. They were standing against the wall. As I passed them I heard the woman say, "No, not to-night, some other night." That made me turn round, and I looked at them. I am certain the woman was the deceased. I did not notice any flowers in her dress. The man had his arm up against the wall, and the woman had her back to the wall facing him.

Brown states that he heard the woman say those words as he passed them, and that made him turn around to look. It would seem that he heard those words when roughly level with the man and woman, relative to his path along the street. Given Brown was almost certain that he witnessed the deceased, can we suppose that the man had his left arm against the wall? Had it been his right, her face would have been obscured. If the flower was on the right side of Stride's chest, it could have been obscured from Brown's point of view.

We should also consider the proximity of the man and woman. With his arm against the wall and her back to it and facing him, their faces may have been very close to each other, and the woman does not sound like she was distressed. Is this a woman turning down a willing client? I don't think so. It's interesting that Brown heard the woman's response to a question, but not the question itself. It seems the man was keeping his voice down. This wasn't some horrid, rambunctious drunkard, so what was the woman rejecting?

[Tom_Wescott]

I don't doubt Brown was a credible witness, but he didn't notice the flower that every other witness noticed, so there must be some reasonable doubt that Brown saw Stride.
I might add, you can only arrive at the conclusion you have if you dismiss the more certain witness who did notice the flower - Packer.
He saw who she arrived with, from which direction she came, and who she remained with after he spoke to them.
PC Smith confirmed Packer by describing Stride was with a man carrying a parcel, at the same place, at the same time as Packer described.
Your somewhat 'engineered' rejection of Packer entirely, has led you down the wrong path.

I'm not going to discuss the discredited Packer who never saw a flower but like everyone else in London knew about it the next day. Brown explained that he couldn't have seen the flower because the man's arm was in the way. Did PC Smith notice the flower?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Tom,

WADR, I do not have the slightest concern about being "way behind in the discussion of Mortimer's couple". Discuss as you may, Mortimer's comments are recorded by the press as one who was there at the time. Speculation and conjecture can be applied as to what may have really been meant, but the evidence still stands in the face of post mortem "discussions".

Regards, George

It certainly does.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

[QUOTE=NotBlamedForNothing;n853390]

don't count as published works, but Gavin Bromley has had thoughts on Schwartz as killer.

Egads, dissertations definitely count as published works, assuming they're published where people can read them. I honestly don't recall Gavin Bromley's piece arguing Schwartz as killer, but I must have read it at some point.

to be clear on Wess's comments to the Echo, I think he was hinting that although it had been perceived the pursued man was the killer, he knew that wasn't the case. He seemed to know rather a lot about the incident. I'm sure you know of the misinterpreted police search theory. I doubt very much Wess was dumb enough to get that confused but had Wess used the search as a basis for his man pursued story, he might have thought that alone was worth the price of admission into the club. Without Schwartz's visit to Leman St station, Wess might have been left holding the bag. The metaphorical bag, that is, not Goldstein's shiny black one. Having said that, he did front Goldstein at the same station, after the Star reported doubts about Schwartz's story. Coincidence?

What? Schwartz confronted Leon Goldstein?

trying to picture this scenario. Brown makes his way to the chandler's shop but does not see Schwartz running with another man trailing him. According to Wess, the pursuit went along Fairclough St. So presumably, Brown just missed seeing this. Where then, is Stride when Brown is between his home and the shop? If she didn't wait long to get moving, she could be on her way to Fairclough St, and even with her deformed leg it won't take her long to get there. I suspect Brown should have seen Stride on his outward leg.

Brown spent 3 or 4 minutes in the chandler shop. A lot may have happened in those minutes.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[c.d.]

Tom,

If you would be so kind, could you apply your expertise to the whole damned "screamed" business? What is your take on it? Thanks.

c.d.

[Abby Normal]

According to the Saucy Jack postcard, number one (Stride) did just that.... "Squealed a bit"

And there you have it. A contemporary source, either a hoaxer or the ripper, knowing exactly what "screamed, but not very loudly" meant, and having no problem with it.

End of debate. Good one RD! (and Doctored Whatsit)

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Egads, dissertations definitely count as published works, assuming they're published where people can read them. I honestly don't recall Gavin Bromley's piece arguing Schwartz as killer, but I must have read it at some point.

I stand corrected re publishing.

Bromley: There is also the possibility that Schwartz was lying to protect someone else.

What? Schwartz confronted Leon Goldstein?

I didn't use the word 'confronted'. Wess took Goldstein to the police late in the evening of the day (Tuesday) that the Star published police doubts over the Hungarian's story. In #573, you said "I don't believe much in coincidence ...".

Brown spent 3 or 4 minutes in the chandler shop. A lot may have happened in those minutes.

In that case, I'm going to keep the stopwatch on the 'Schwartz incident' running.

[Doctored Whatsit]

And there you have it. A contemporary source, either a hoaxer or the ripper, knowing exactly what "screamed, but not very loudly" meant, and having no problem with it.

End of debate. Good one RD! (and Doctored Whatsit)

Thank you Abby and R.D. for your observations. I don't believe that anyone who spoke good English would ever say "She screamed, but not very loudly". It is a contradiction, as a scream is loud, and "not very loudly" means it was rather less than a scream. As I said previously, it is almost certainly the result of a translation by someone whose English vocabulary was limited. I see no reason for the club members to have particularly noticed a sound which wasn't very loud, and was probably fairly common around midnight in the East End in 1888.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Thank you Abby and R.D. for your observations. I don't believe that anyone who spoke good English would ever say "She screamed, but not very loudly". It is a contradiction, as a scream is loud, and "not very loudly" means it was rather less than a scream. As I said previously, it is almost certainly the result of a translation by someone whose English vocabulary was limited. I see no reason for the club members to have particularly noticed a sound which wasn't very loud, and was probably fairly common around midnight in the East End in 1888.

I'm still not hearing a good explanation as to why the police accepted this apparent contradiction. Seemingly the Home Office did too, as there was no "please explain" marginal note in Swanson's report.

Hypothetically, if Stride had a sore throat that night due to infection, and as a result had bad breath which she was attempting to mask by consuming cachous, would it be conceivable that she did indeed scream three times, but not very loudly?

Supposing this explanation correct, would it be right to infer that Stride was feeling quite relaxed when she had the cachous in her hand in the passageway? Could the broad-shouldered man have made her feel that way? Unlikely, unless the ill-using described by Schwartz was fictitious.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If we do know, then we have some reason to doubt Schwartz. We should also doubt that a man supposedly called out 'Lipski' just outside a mostly Jewish occupied club. Not a great way to avoid detection if his intent was to kill and mutilate.

We can’t assume that he intended to mutilate if he wasn’t the ripper but the fact is that we would have to consider the time between him calling out Lipski and the moment that he killed Stride. Not a huge length of time but it might have been a thirty seconds or a minute or even longer. If no one had come out of the club in response to someone shouting Lipski then he would have been confident that he was ok.

If the screams sounded like background talk, you might want to consider that that's what they really were.

But there is a difference between someone hearing background disembodied voices and one’s coming from a woman a few feet away.

There was no physical evidence for Stride having been thrown on the footway.

There’s no evidence that Fanny Mortimer spent any more than a minute or so on her doorstep but do you doubt that she did spend longer? We can assume that anyone might have been lying.

Perhaps Schwartz witnessed the victim and saw a couple of men on the street at the same time or nearly the same time, but there never was any shouting, throwing down the victim, screaming (of whatever intensity), and running. In other words, Schwartz was on the street at roughly the time he claimed, did see the victim, but most of the rest of his story was made up.

As I said, we can ‘suggest’ that any witness was lying but it gets us nowhere if there’s no evidence for it. I don’t have figures but I’d suggest that witnesses are generally truthful, if often mistaken. I’d also suggest (and I’ll happily consider any info to the contrary) that most of whatever percentage of witnesses lie usually lie for a reason. If Schwartz lied then, as far as we know, he’d have been lying for no reason. What if the two men showed up and backed each other up in that neither laid a hand on Stride? What if they found the killer and he looked nothing like BS man? What if some neighbour had been looking out of a window, unknown to Schwartz, and then came forward to prove him a liar to the police?

Can you really see two men running off in fear while Stride does not even make enough sound to alert the women in the kitchen?

Yes.

Perhaps Schwartz was an attention seeker. What's with "the appearance of being in the theatrical line"?

It’s just how he was described but we have no proper description. He’d have had to have been a very stupid attention seeker. What if Mortimer was just a self-important busybody who only spent a couple of minutes on her doorstep? What if PC Smith wasn’t as observant as he himself might have assumed and that the woman that he’d seen wasn’t Stride? What if Eagle had asked someone at his girlfriend’s house what the time was and he’d misheard the answer?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm still not hearing a good explanation as to why the police accepted this apparent contradiction. Seemingly the Home Office did too, as there was no "please explain" marginal note in Swanson's report.

Hypothetically, if Stride had a sore throat that night due to infection, and as a result had bad breath which she was attempting to mask by consuming cachous, would it be conceivable that she did indeed scream three times, but not very loudly?

Supposing this explanation correct, would it be right to infer that Stride was feeling quite relaxed when she had the cachous in her hand in the passageway? Could the broad-shouldered man have made her feel that way? Unlikely, unless the ill-using described by Schwartz was fictitious.

How do you know that they didn’t speak to Schwartz again after The Star article appeared? Or…perhaps the police to the sensible approach that I and others are taking on this subject. That Schwartz spoke no English. That the interpreters English or Hungarian might have been imperfect. That no English speaker would have used that phrase. That the important part of the phrase was “..not very loudly.”

If a non-English speaker had given a statement which said “I was walking across the field until I came to a small brook on the far side. I jumped under it and continued on my journey.” Would you assume that something dodgy was going on or would you assume the obvious - that the man had used ‘under’ when he meant ‘over?’ I know which one I’d go for.

[The Rookie Detective]

I know it's generally accepted that the Schwartz incident occurred after the Brown sighting, but what if it actually occurred the other way around?


Smith sees Stride on the opposite side of the road to the club, roughly level with the gateway.

But after Smith leaves and Parcelman either leaves OR is Lave/Eagle...then where does Stride go next?

It's assumed that she walks over to stand in the gateway and is then assaulted by BS man.

But what if she chooses to leave Berner Street, and instead of walking into the gateway, she heads south and walks around the corner of the board school, and is then seen by Brown with Overcoat man.

She then manages to fob him off and walks back around the corner to Berner Street and attempts to walk into the yard, and is then assaulted by BS man.

The assault then plays out.

Bs man then leaves.

All observed by Pipeman

Pipeman then walks over to Stride with the pretence of trying to help her, but he instead cuts her throat and casually walks off.


Pipeman being the same Overcoat man seen with Stride by Brown.


There's a clear height discrepancy, but considering that both men were seen with an overcoat, may suggest that they're the same man (as mentioned previously by Tom)



Of course, if the generally accepted view that the Brown sighting occurred AFTER the Schwartz account, then BS man couldn't have been the killer.


It's interesting that in both versions, there's a man with an overcoat relatively close to Stride; Overcoat man and Pipeman.

Also, if Stride did encounter Overcoat man after Bs man, then she would have walked from the gate after the assault, met overcoat man in Fairclough street, but then ended BACK in the gateway.

That doesn't make much sense

IMO, the Brown sighting occurred BEFORE the Schwartz assault.




The anomaly of course being Parcelman.

What happened to Parcelman?



Well, unless he was either BS man, Pipeman, or Overcoat man, then he can't have been the killer.


But what's odd, is that Parcelman was clearly considered the prime suspect when the story first broke in the press. The description given supported the idea that the man seen by PC Smith was the likely killer.


Now at first, this would make sense because PC Smith would have been able to tell his superiors almost immediately about the man he saw with Stride.


And so when Schwartz gave his statement, one would then expect the focus to switch from Parcelman to Bs man.


But it doesn't.


Why?


It's even more bizarre that Schwartz actually gave his account to the police very early on. This is evidenced by his story being referenced in the newspaper the day after the murder. His name isn't mentioned, but it's clear that Schwartz went to the police very soon after the murder, because in the paper it mentions there having been an incident where a man witnessed what he thought was a domestic and tried to steer clear.

On that basis, it seems odd that Schwartz's suspect didn't take priority over Parcelman, especially seeing as Bs man was seen with Stride AFTER Parcelman was.


Is that an indication that while the police believed that Schwartz was a credible witness; that his story wasn't as accurate as they initially thought it was?


Fascinating indeed

[The Rookie Detective]

Duplicate post, my apologies

[NotBlamedForNothing]

We can’t assume that he intended to mutilate if he wasn’t the ripper but the fact is that we would have to consider the time between him calling out Lipski and the moment that he killed Stride. Not a huge length of time but it might have been a thirty seconds or a minute or even longer. If no one had come out of the club in response to someone shouting Lipski then he would have been confident that he was ok.

So, what is Stride doing all the while - standing there sucking cachous?

There’s no evidence that Fanny Mortimer spent any more than a minute or so on her doorstep but do you doubt that she did spend longer? We can assume that anyone might have been lying.

This is an apples and oranges comparison. We could have physical evidence for Stride being thrown down. Someone standing in a doorway doesn't leave a physical trace.

As I said, we can ‘suggest’ that any witness was lying but it gets us nowhere if there’s no evidence for it. I don’t have figures but I’d suggest that witnesses are generally truthful, if often mistaken. I’d also suggest (and I’ll happily consider any info to the contrary) that most of whatever percentage of witnesses lie usually lie for a reason. If Schwartz lied then, as far as we know, he’d have been lying for no reason. What if the two men showed up and backed each other up in that neither laid a hand on Stride? What if they found the killer and he looked nothing like BS man? What if some neighbour had been looking out of a window, unknown to Schwartz, and then came forward to prove him a liar to the police?

The police already allowed for the possibility of BS Man not being the killer. Your other options are time-based. What about all those lectures on the lack of clock and watch synchronisation? Specifically, regarding two men showing up or being arrested, we see arrests in the Star that seem to be related to a loss of confidence in Schwartz's story.

Yes.

I doubt such a scenario has ever occurred in world history.

It’s just how he was described but we have no proper description. He’d have had to have been a very stupid attention seeker. What if Mortimer was just a self-important busybody who only spent a couple of minutes on her doorstep? What if PC Smith wasn’t as observant as he himself might have assumed and that the woman that he’d seen wasn’t Stride? What if Eagle had asked someone at his girlfriend’s house what the time was and he’d misheard the answer?

Not sure what your point is regarding Smith or Eagle. If Mortimer only spent a couple of minutes on her doorstep, what justifies calling her a self-important busybody?