An even closer look at Black Bag Man

[Tom_Wescott]

By Brown being mistaken that the woman he saw was the deceased.

Except that Fanny's couple were at the other end of Berner Street and had separated well before 12:45 a.m.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[NotBlamedForNothing]

An opportunity where someone else was seen "ill-using" the victim and would be blamed for the murder.

Blamed by who?

I don't think he was ill-using her to start with, but at this stage he is only seeing a woman on the ground with a man standing over her.

Perhaps I should add Abberline's reference to ill-using, to the list in #390.

I think that his initial impulse may have been towards Schwartz, but followed by a thought that he would be better to sort out what actually happened. By this time Schwartz had scarpered, not looking back to see if someone was following.

If Pipeman is thinking that, he is not following Schwartz let alone pursuing him. So, Schwartz's scarpering becomes a causeless effect.

How could Pipeman know who was the culprit? I don't think Pipeman did "run".

If he didn't see anything happen, due to (supposedly) being in the Nelson doorway, he couldn't even assume someone was a culprit, let alone who it was. A woman is on the ground - does he conclude that one of the men did a bad, bad thing? Maybe, but if so, it would likely be the man standing over the woman, not the man across the road. However, if Schwartz crossed the road in the opposite direction to that always assumed, then the confusion that Wess refers to in the Echo report becomes understandable, as does the otherwise inexplicable reference to an intruder, in the Star report.

Schwartz presumed that he may have been pursued. He didn't look back so he was unsure. I look toward the report by Wess.

Didn't you say the situation escalated when Schwartz walked away, and that is why he became fearful and ran off? Wouldn't that fear have him glancing over his shoulder? If Schwartz imagined being pursued, but really wasn't, can we say he is a reliable witness?

[Tom_Wescott]

So, you believe Schwartz, mostly due to his credibility with senior policemen. Yet, you do not believe what these senior officers tell us about multiple points of the incident. Seems you are in the process of creating your own, preferred reality.

Come on, Pot. Be nice to Kettle

I'm joking. But since you brought it up, I want to point out that there is actual source material on all of this. And most of it really isn't that complicated to interpret. There was no Mortimer couple on Berner Street. I disproved that myth in 2017. James Brown said himself he didn't notice a flower on Stride's chest because the man had his arm against the wall block his view. But he did see her face. Brown left his house 'about 12:45' and saw the couple five or more minutes later. Even Begg, an ardent traditionalist (my observation, not his), acknowledges this in 'The Facts'. This makes Brown the last reliable (though not infallible) witness to have seen Stride alive. He didn't get a good enough look at the man to have had any value to police, but they believed him and he appeared at the inquest.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The problem is that there is nothing to talk about with black bag man. We know his name, where he’d been and where he was going. He was absolutely uninvolved in these events. Of all of the names mentioned in connection to Berner Street Goldstein is the least significant.

This assumes there was only one black bag of note.

You've previously noted that references to up versus down Berner St, could be explained as journalistic error or are interchangeable, but the reference to a man possibly coming from the club is not so easy to explain away. Fanny made it clear that her black bag man came from Commercial Rd. Houston, we have another problem.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Echo, Oct 1: From twelve o'clock till half-past a young girl who lives in the street walked up and down, and within twenty yards of where the body was found, with her sweetheart. "We heard nothing whatever," she told a reporter this morning. "I passed the gate of the yard a few minutes before twelve o'clock alone. The doors were open, and, so far as I could tell, there was nothing inside then." "I met my young man (she proceeded) at the top of the street, and then we went for a short walk along the Commercial-road and back again, and down Berner-street. No one passed us then, but just before we said "Good night" a man came along the Commercial-road; and went in the direction of Aldgate."

Good post, NW. But I'm not sure we can put a long overcoat on BSM, can we? As I demonstrated in Ripper Confidential, Fanny Mortimer did not see a young couple. She (and some reporters) spoke to a young woman outside the Dutfield Yard gates following discovery of the murder. The young woman told Mortimer she and her beau had been standing out on the corner around the time the murder was committed which, for some reason, they assumed was around midnight. The young woman told a reporter (who had also spoken to Mortimer) that she and her young man were standing at the opposite end of Berner Street (not the Fairclough corner) around midnight but had split up and gone home long before 12:45.

This is questionable for several reasons.

- The woman knows where the body was subsequently found, but otherwise the report says nothing about the murder, so there is no reason to suppose the couple assumed anything about the time of the murder.

- After meeting at midnight, the couple walk along Commercial Rd and then down and up Berner St, before saying their goodnights. They do very little standing, by their own account, so hard to see why anyone would be confusing them for a couple standing anywhere, let alone at the board school corner.

- Fanny said the couple "were standing at the corner of the street, about twenty yards away". Twenty yards is the approximate distance to the Berner/Fairclough intersection. Commercial Rd is considerably further.

- We cannot say for sure where and when Mortimer spoke the couple. Fanny and a couple standing nearby could all conceivably have ended up inside the gates when they were locked, and talked then. Supposing that Mortimer spoke to the couple after sunrise, is therefore, another assumption.

The 'walking couple' looks like a different couple, to me. However, I would concede that Fanny probably didn't see the couple before turning in for the night.

Regarding Spooner, Brown was looking out his window when the clubmen approached Spooner yelling 'Murder!' and 'Police!' Brown watched as Spooner accompanied the men back to the yard. Brown mistook Spooner, who he probably only saw in shadow, for a constable.

Spooner didn't have a constable's uniform, so what was it about him that gave Brown that impression?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I wondered about this too, especially since Andrew's post was a response to my post, which was a response to this post of his: "Brown said the woman he saw was almost certainly the deceased." The implication there seemed to be that if Brown said that, then the woman probably was Stride, otherwise, why mention it? I'll say it again: if Brown really did see Stride, then the couple that Fanny talked to had to have been a different couple, because when she talked to them, Stride was dead.

I don't think it was Stride, but I could be wrong. I posted that more as a reminder, than to indicate my opinion.

Brown's timing correlates well with the following. Daily News, Oct 1:

A young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found. She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises.

If the end of that 20 minutes marks the beginning of the commotion that Fanny was alerted by, the beginning of the period is around 12:45. That would mean the Schwartz stuff likely occurs before then, yet Eagle does not report seeing a woman standing in the gateway.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

It still allows for Stride to have walked to the gateway after Brown passed and we don’t know how his 12.45 estimate stood against other timings. So I won’t write off my suggested scenario at the moment.

Walked to the gateway to do what? If she is intending to find clients, hasn't she just found a punter at the corner?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Except for the 'suggestion' I provided in #335.

That explains nothing. As per Swanson’s synthesis of the Police interview Schwartz walked away then began running when he saw Pipeman walking in the same direction. Abberline’s mention of ‘running’ could have been, and most likely was, in regard to when Schwartz began running.

Perhaps you could discuss with George regarding Schwartz looking around or not.

Pending that debate, let's take stock of all the things you believe senior police officers got wrong about Schwartz. You claim:

- He had not reached the gateway when the man stopped to talk to the woman.

Because it’s a very silly idea. I can’t understand why you would suggest that Schwartz pretty much ‘walked into’ BS man.

- He did not stop to watch.

Because you are simply latching onto a word used by Abberline. ‘Stopped’ doesn’t describe a period of time. If he had stopped it might only have been for a second but the reality of the situation and Schwartz actions tells us how unlikely this was. He crossed the road to avoid even being close to the incident. He then left the scene rapidly and began running when he saw Pipeman just walking in the same direction. And you think that this guy just stood across the road a few feet away and pulled out the popcorn? Come on. Apply a bit of common sense.

- The woman did not scream.

Really? Wordplay? ‘Screamed’ was clearly a word used incorrectly. And when might a word be used incorrectly in this way? When a non-English speaker was speaking via an interpreter of unknown competence of course.

- Pipeman did not run.

Just going on the Swanson synthesis of the police interview.

So, you believe Schwartz, mostly due to his credibility with senior policemen. Yet, you do not believe what these senior officers tell us about multiple points of the incident. Seems you are in the process of creating your own, preferred reality.

I’m not setting hard and fast rules. Everything has to be tempered with common sense. You are simply scrambling around to latch onto a words or interpretations which allow full reign to your overactive imagination which is what you usually do. You begin by thinking…there’s obviously something going on here, people are lying, there’s some kind of cover-up…then you shape every opinion to suit that agenda.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This assumes there was only one black bag of note.

You've previously noted that references to up versus down Berner St, could be explained as journalistic error or are interchangeable, but the reference to a man possibly coming from the club is not so easy to explain away. Fanny made it clear that her black bag man came from Commercial Rd. Houston, we have another problem.

Yes we do have a problem. The obviously unreliable Fanny Mortimer.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Walked to the gateway to do what? If she is intending to find clients, hasn't she just found a punter at the corner?

I’d suggest that she was either intending to meet someone which is possibly why she said “not tonight…” (if it was she talking to the man seen by Brown) or that she was heading home and saw BS man approaching in the distance and ducked into the gateway hoping that he hadn’t seen her. BS man is very similar in description to Marshall’s man so maybe she had reluctantly agreed to meet up with him later? Or maybe she was trying to avoid him?

[Tom_Wescott]

NotBlamed. Surely you're aware that you are quoting sources that contradict your own arguments and support the arguments of those you're attempting to argue against? You've just presented several sources that put the 'young couple' on Commercial Road (not Fairclough) at a much earlier time than 12:45/50, which is precisely what I've been saying. Yet you they attempt to state this dovetails perfectly with Brown's statement and rules him out! Are you 'taking the piss' as they say? You wouldn't be the first to do so on a Stride thread, I can assure you that. If so, I won't bother wasting my time.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott