Descriptions.

[Tom_Wescott]

There are a bunch of witnesses I consider solid witnesses but who I think might be irrelevant. All of the Berner Street witnesses before Schwartz, for instance. Possibly Long. I haven't figured out the Dorset Street crowd, but I'm pretty sure the woman Maurice Lewis was talking about wasn't MJK. The ones I put more faith in (recognizing it may be misplaced) are Lawende (both the Met and City Police appear to have liked him), Schwartz (in spite of the fact all investigators forgot he existed by Dec. 1888), Brown (in spite of how modern writers have totally f-d up their handling of his evidence), and possibly some of the non-murder witnesses who survived an assault in the area around that time. Might be something in those. I feel like I'm forgetting someone.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Yes, I find Hutch to be not very credible. I would not only rank Long ahead of him, I would also rank PC Smith, James Brown, and Mary Ann Cox ahead of him.

I rank Brown towards the top or at least alongside Schwartz as he saw Stride after Schwartz but potentially with the same man (Overcoat Man). Brown and Schwartz probably didn't know each other but go a long way towards corroborating each other. PC Smith definitely saw a man but any of the men seen with Stride prior to Schwartz are highly unlikely to have been her killer, so I don't put them on the list. The Dorset Street witnesses give me a headache. All of them. I don't know if they're liars, blind, drunk, or what. There's something in the Dorset Street murder we're missing, though.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Abby Normal]

In my opinion the likeliest to have seen the ripper are Elizabeth Long, Joseph Lawende (with Levy and Harris), Isreal Schwartz and George Hutchinson.

Elizabeth Long - “…brown deer-stalker hat, and she thought he had on a dark coat, but was not quite certain of that. She could not say what the age of the man was, but he looked to be over 40, and appeared to be a little taller than deceased. He appeared to be a foreigner, and had a 'shabby genteel' appearance.”

Joseph Lawende - “… age 30, height 5 ft. 7 or 8 in., complexion fair, moustache fair, medium build; dress, pepper-and-salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same material, reddish neckerchief tied in knot; appearance of a sailor.”

Israel Schwartz - “…age about 30, height 5 ft. 5 in., complexion fair, hair dark, small brown moustache, full face, broad shouldered; dress, dark jacket & trousers, black cap with peak.”

George Hutchinson - “…about 34 or 35. height 5ft6 complexion pale, dark eyes and eye lashes [“dark” – deleted] slight moustache, curled up each end, and hair dark, very surley looking dress long dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astracan. and a dark jacket under. light waistcoat dark trousers dark felt hat turned down in the middle. button boots and gaiters with white buttons. wore a very thick gold chain white linen collar. black tie with horse shoe pin. respectable appearance walked very sharp. Jewish appearance.”


Age - 30 to 40

Height - 5’5” to 5’8”

Complexion- Fair to pale in the three descriptions where it’s mentioned.


Ok so far


Moustache - (mentioned in three only) fair(L) or small brown(S) or slight and curled(H)


At a push (making an allowance for observation although Hutch’s ‘curled’ raises an eyebrow imo)


Build - (mentioned in three) medium, broad shouldered.


Unless Schwartz’ man had shoulders like Sonny Liston they maybe this isn’t as big a difference as we might assume?


Hat - brown deerstalker(Lo) grey cloth with peak(La) black cap with peak(S) dark felt, turned down in the middle(H)


Hutchinson’s is clearly a different kind of hat. Brown deerstalker and grey cloth might be mistaken in a certain light and at distance. A black cap brings doubts though.


Clothes - possible dark coat, shabby genteel(Lo) loose pepper and salt jacket(La) long astrakhan, dark jacket, light waistcoat, dark trousers(H) dark jacket and trousers(S)


Long and Hutch and Schwartz/Lawende were on different days of course but we still have a problem with Lawende’s ‘pepper and salt’ against Schwartz dark jacket.


The rest of Hutchinson’s description gives us a very ‘stand out’ looking man. But we can add a little at him giving Kelly a red handkerchief while Lawende has his man wearing a reddish neckerchief.


Given how unreliable witnesses can be I don’t think that we can conclude anything particularly useful from the descriptions.

imho long, lawende and co, schwartz, marshall and pc smith were most likely to have seen the ripper. maybe cox(blotchy).
i dont beleive hutch, everything about his story screams attention seeker.

[Abby Normal]

For the record, since Chris brought him up, I'm not trying to rule in Le Grand. What year is this, anyway? I'm merely arguing that a presumed fence height tells us absolutely nothing about the killer's height for several factors. I'm hoping Chris will take time to work through these factors for himself. But it appears more expedient for him to presume motives on my behalf than to stop and apply critical analysis. Consider the tears on Chapman's pockets, for instance, or the actual location of her personal items when found by Chandler. Or the hyperawareness of the killer. Stuff like that. None of it will tell you the killer's height but it will inform you that allowing the height of a fence to rule in/out suspects is likewise fruitless.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

completely agree.

[Lewis C]

She did, but made no note of her, which is my rub. Still, I'd probably rank her over Hutchinson simply because we know nothing about him and his statement is so sketch. Oh how I wish Baxter had been allowed to do the Kelly Inquest!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Yes, I find Hutch to be not very credible. I would not only rank Long ahead of him, I would also rank PC Smith, James Brown, and Mary Ann Cox ahead of him.

[Fiver]

In my opinion the likeliest to have seen the ripper are Elizabeth Long, Joseph Lawende (with Levy and Harris), Isreal Schwartz and George Hutchinson.

IIRC, we have no evidence of Hutchinson or Schwartz outside of these incidents. Long and Lawende had alternate surnames that they didn't mention at the inquest, something that some suspectologists take.as proof of guilt when done by their favorite suspect.

One key element is that we don't know which, if any, of these witnesses saw the Ripper. We also only have secondhand accounts, not inquest testimony.

Here's my rating from most to least credible. (I'm not saying that any of the witnesses are lying, just that human perception and memory are fallible.)

* Schwartz gives an account that shows him abandoning a manhandled woman and running away. Nobody looking for 15 minutes of fame would tell a story that makes them look bad

There's also a newspaper account of a Ripper suspect being pursued around this time, that might be a garbled account of Pipe man pursuing Schwartz. IIRC, there are indications that Pipeman was identified.

On the other hand, I doubt Broad-shouldered Man was the Ripper. The Ripper was good at quietly persuading his victims to go somewhere while not attracting attention. Broad-shouldered Man was rather bad at all of that. If he killed Stride, he probably wasn't the Ripper. If Stride was killed by the Ripper, he probably played White Knight and scared Broad-shouldered Man off

* Long had the best light of any witness. Nothing seems dramatized or overly detailed.

* Hutchinson's account seems over detailed, but he had by far the most time to observe the suspect. The description of the suspect as Jewish may have more to do with Hutchinson's prejudice than the man's actual ethnicity.

* I put Lawende last on accuracy. He gives a detailed description of an unremarkable stranger seem for a few moments in poor lighting. That could be Lawende having well above average night vision and memory, but an overactive imagination seems more likely.

The statements of the other two men reinforce my opinion. Levy only noticed the suspect's height, and disagreed with Lawende on that. Harris said the suspect's back was turned, which would have made it impossible to tell if the suspect had a mustache, let alone the size and color.

There's also the problem of the three secondhand reports of what Lawende was disagree on the suspect's height, hair color, mustache size, and how well the suspect was dressed.

But even if we accept the description in the OP, it's not certain that the suspect was the Ripper. Lawende was the only one of the three witnesses to identify the woman as Eddowes and he could have been wrong. None of the three witnesses observed the couple head towards Mitre Square.

Church Passage was one of three possible routes to Mitre Square. If the woman wasn't Eddowes, she and the Ripper could have entered Mitre Square by one of the other routes and had more time to commit his crime.

[Tom_Wescott]

Also, Long got more of a frontal view of the woman she saw than Lawende did of the woman he saw, which leads me to think Lawende was more likely than Long to have been mistaken about whom he saw. However, I agree with Tom's point that even if Long saw the Ripper, her description of him doesn't help us very much.

She did, but made no note of her, which is my rub. Still, I'd probably rank her over Hutchinson simply because we know nothing about him and his statement is so sketch. Oh how I wish Baxter had been allowed to do the Kelly Inquest!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Lewis C]

One way of putting it Tom is that if we assume Lawende saw Eddowes and Long saw Chapman then I think that there is more chance of Eddowes and the man parting company and Eddowes meeting her killer either just as the man left (in Duke Street) or as she was walking through Mitre Square than there is of Chapman being killed by someone other than the man that Long saw him with. That said Tom, it has to be very likely of course that Eddowes was killed by the man that she was with.

Also, Long got more of a frontal view of the woman she saw than Lawende did of the woman he saw, which leads me to think Lawende was more likely than Long to have been mistaken about whom he saw. However, I agree with Tom's point that even if Long saw the Ripper, her description of him doesn't help us very much.

[Tom_Wescott]

One way of putting it Tom is that if we assume Lawende saw Eddowes and Long saw Chapman then I think that there is more chance of Eddowes and the man parting company and Eddowes meeting her killer either just as the man left (in Duke Street) or as she was walking through Mitre Square than there is of Chapman being killed by someone other than the man that Long saw him with. That said Tom, it has to be very likely of course that Eddowes was killed by the man that she was with.

That would be a really tight crunch for Eddowes, though. I've struggled with the time frame (less than 10 minutes) as it is, let along an even more narrow one in which Eddowes leaves her man and finds another and makes her way into the square. I believe either Lawende saw Eddowes with her killer or he saw an entirely unrelated couple. I don't think any other scenario can work. Assuming he saw Eddowes and her killer (and that is all we can do - assume), then he got a much better look than did Long.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Herlock Sholmes]

Likelier than Lawende? I'm surprised you say that.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

One way of putting it Tom is that if we assume Lawende saw Eddowes and Long saw Chapman then I think that there is more chance of Eddowes and the man parting company and Eddowes meeting her killer either just as the man left (in Duke Street) or as she was walking through Mitre Square than there is of Chapman being killed by someone other than the man that Long saw him with. That said Tom, it has to be very likely of course that Eddowes was killed by the man that she was with.

[Tom_Wescott]

hi rookie
i agree with everything you say except it rules out le grand. he could have been crouching down over her when the fence was brushed. The hearing of no is a little more problematic as one would expect they were standing up talking whenCadosch passed, but he said he took no notice of it, so perhaps he didnt even really look.

For the record, since Chris brought him up, I'm not trying to rule in Le Grand. What year is this, anyway? I'm merely arguing that a presumed fence height tells us absolutely nothing about the killer's height for several factors. I'm hoping Chris will take time to work through these factors for himself. But it appears more expedient for him to presume motives on my behalf than to stop and apply critical analysis. Consider the tears on Chapman's pockets, for instance, or the actual location of her personal items when found by Chandler. Or the hyperawareness of the killer. Stuff like that. None of it will tell you the killer's height but it will inform you that allowing the height of a fence to rule in/out suspects is likewise fruitless.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Abby Normal]

Likelier than Lawende? I'm surprised you say that.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

imho they are both at least equally likely to have seen the ripper. but neither got a good look at him. i think the ripper was good at concealing his face. except with stride, where he probably lost his temper and schwartz appearance kind of surprised him.

[Abby Normal]

There's nothing wrong with what I said, and Tom knows that.


The fence stood no higher than 5ft 7"


I never said it was 5ft 7"


The fence could have been 5ft 4" for all I know.


But the fence wasn't 5ft 9" for example.


That's just a fact.


The Frenchman did visit the toilet twice in close succession and unless he was lying; he did hear Chapman hit the fence as the killer attacked her; likely whilst he was strangling her.

The killer was no taller than 5ft 8" unless he crouched or had an "awkward gait" that impacted on his physical posture.


It's the one fact that rules out Le Grand as the Ripper.


He was 5ft 11"


Sometimes I receive counter arguments just for the sake of it; and usually because I have upset someone.


Nothing new there then.

hi rookie
i agree with everything you say except it rules out le grand. he could have been crouching down over her when the fence was brushed. The hearing of no is a little more problematic as one would expect they were standing up talking whenCadosch passed, but he said he took no notice of it, so perhaps he didnt even really look.

[Tom_Wescott]

I wouldn’t dispute the value of the sighting Tom in terms what they tell us in matters of detail I was merely saying that in my opinion Long is the likelier to have actually seen the killer.

Likelier than Lawende? I'm surprised you say that.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

There's nothing wrong with what I said, and Tom knows that.


The fence stood no higher than 5ft 7"


I never said it was 5ft 7"


The fence could have been 5ft 4" for all I know.


But the fence wasn't 5ft 9" for example.


That's just a fact.


The Frenchman did visit the toilet twice in close succession and unless he was lying; he did hear Chapman hit the fence as the killer attacked her; likely whilst he was strangling her.

The killer was no taller than 5ft 8" unless he crouched or had an "awkward gait" that impacted on his physical posture.


It's the one fact that rules out Le Grand as the Ripper.


He was 5ft 11"


Sometimes I receive counter arguments just for the sake of it; and usually because I have upset someone.


Nothing new there then.

Everything in this post is correct.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott