One on one with Stephen Senise

[Sam Flynn]

There is every reason to dismiss "Kennedy", Jon, not least because it beggars belief that a genuine witness with such important information would not have been called to the inquest. If Caroline Maxwell was summoned to give her story, then surely they'd have heard Kennedy's evidence as well.

[packers stem]

Unfortunately Jon , I can see we think completely differently .
You mention the importance of cross referencing newspaper reports which I know full well only to shoot yourself in the foot by dragging out possibly the only one to mention that the woman seen by Lewis was not wearing a hat and another telling me that Abberline interviewed Kennedy and would abberline not know they were the same .... of course , if there were two separate people and he interviewed them both .
Feel free to produce Mrs Kennedy's statement written in 'abberline's own hand' whenever you wish as there must be one !
The clue was in my last post
The statement was Kennedy /Lewis .... she was led and was dictated to as shown by the sheer gulf between the Lewis statement and her testimony.
It altered beyond all recognition , nothing else could explain it ..... apart from being so stupid she should never have got near the stand ... my view is that what she came out with bears no resemblance to what she saw ..... Kennedy interview , the honest sounding one lol

[Wickerman]

Jon we have a number of issues here ....

Firstly , at no point did Sarah Lewis ever mention the lack of headgear or that the second couple walked up the court .The official transcript, the times or the telegraph , I'm not going to check every newspaper but I don't recall seeing it anywhere .
And in her statement they didn't even exist .

Did you read this post?

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=449029&postcount=12

Secondly there are two quite different Kennedy press statements on the same day .
The star on the 10th gives the one you mention and tells us of her passing a young respectably dressed man with a woman along with a dishevelled woman (here's where the lack of headgear comes in) .... Kennedy didn't know any of them at this juncture .
The evening news of the same day she tells of passing a couple outside the Britannia ...on this occasion it was the deceased along with shiny bag man ....

There was at least 10 newspapers who published an account of the interview with Kennedy. Four of them on the 10th, the day after the murder.

Did you read this about Abberline interviewing Kennedy?
"Detective-Inspector Abberline has interviewed a girl named Kennedy, who states that about half-past 3 on the morning of the murder she went to her parent's house, which is opposite the room occupied by Mary Jane Kelly,..."

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/times/18881112.html

Do you think he would have known if Kennedy was also Sarah Lewis he had previously taken the statement from?

Going on to Sarah Lewis and things become even more bizarre
What was between 2 and 3 in the statement became 2.30 three days later as she now remembered passing the church clock, how does that happen ?
The man watching the court , who of course didn't exist with Kennedy , was talking to a woman initially in the statement til someone crossed it out and she also couldn't describe the man .At the inquest ,as if by magic , she could .... even down to hat style and colour .

The statement was in Abberline's hand, the strikeout is likely Abberline making a mistake in taking down her statement, nothing more mysterious than that.
2.30 is between 2 and 3, so I'm not sure why you object.
How precise do you expect these people to be when none of them had watches?
All times given are guesswork, except if they make reference to hearing the Spitalfields clock strike, because that was all they had as a guide.

Mrs paumier recounted the brushfield street tale with Sarah Roney at the heart of it along with two others .Was Roney Lewis ? Maybe but if Kennedy and Lewis were two of the three (or just the two ) you do have to question why Lewis was oblivious to the fact that the female accompanying her was her sister !

The issue of whether the other woman was a "sister" or a "friend" could easily be the reporters error. It has no bearing on the content of their stories.

I thought for a long long time that Kennedy and Lewis were different the same as you but the number of inconsistencies with Lewis make me think that they were one and the same and that the Star Kennedy report is the correct one , it seems more natural and more to it .
I suspect from that point and the point of giving a statement she was led and dictated to

The value of press accounts is when they are taken together. Researchers do not select one preferred source and dismiss the rest. Each account adds a small detail which is not contained in the others, so collectively we can build up a better picture of what happened.
I have around a dozen various Kennedy accounts and the value is with them all together, not with one at the expense of the others.

It's the same with press coverage of an inquest, each newspaper (the editor), had his own opinion on what was of interest to publish, not one of them provide the complete testimony of anyone. So, here again, the value is to collate all the versions to obtain a more complete picture of what was said.

If the existence of Mrs Kennedy is proven then great , happy to be proven wrong and accept the Kennedy sighting as the last one .
Only ones who need to dismiss that sighting are those wishing to push the Hutchinson story

Some have even suggested Kennedy was made up (good grief!), yet no-one has offered a reason why they reject what Kennedy is reputed to have said.
There is no valid cause to reject her statement, nothing she said has been contradicted, or shown to be wrong.
It just seems to be ill conceived bias.

[packers stem]

Lewis & Kennedy's account of what happened Wednesday night is the same, because they were together.
It's only their Friday morning statements which differ, because they arrived separately.
What Lewis saw that morning does not match what Kennedy saw, neither do their times match.
There is no cause to suggest they were the same woman. So to talk about a 'real' Mrs Kennedy only feeds into this false narrative.

As has been pointed out before, Lewis's account serves to confirm Hutchinson's story in so far as she saw a man & woman in the street while this lurker was standing opposite the court. She didn't describe the man, but she did offer some details about the woman. That she was the worse for drink, & without a hat, and that this couple both walked up the court.

None of this was recounted by Kennedy, but it is of some importance to acknowledge that Kennedy was credited with seeing Kelly alive around 3:00 am, standing outside the Britannia.

Once we accept these two accounts, Hutchinson's story is of no more importance. Astrachan is no longer a suspect, and Hutch himself is off the hook too.

Jon we have a number of issues here ....

Firstly , at no point did Sarah Lewis ever mention the lack of headgear or that the second couple walked up the court .The official transcript, the times or the telegraph , I'm not going to check every newspaper but I don't recall seeing it anywhere .
And in her statement they didn't even exist .

Secondly there are two quite different Kennedy press statements on the same day .
The star on the 10th gives the one you mention and tells us of her passing a young respectably dressed man with a woman along with a dishevelled woman (here's where the lack of headgear comes in) .... Kennedy didn't know any of them at this juncture .
The evening news of the same day she tells of passing a couple outside the Britannia ...on this occasion it was the deceased along with shiny bag man ....

Going on to Sarah Lewis and things become even more bizarre
What was between 2 and 3 in the statement became 2.30 three days later as she now remembered passing the church clock, how does that happen ?
The man watching the court , who of course didn't exist with Kennedy , was talking to a woman initially in the statement til someone crossed it out and she also couldn't describe the man .At the inquest ,as if by magic , she could .... even down to hat style and colour .

Mrs paumier recounted the brushfield street tale with Sarah Roney at the heart of it along with two others .Was Roney Lewis ? Maybe but if Kennedy and Lewis were two of the three (or just the two ) you do have to question why Lewis was oblivious to the fact that the female accompanying her was her sister !

I thought for a long long time that Kennedy and Lewis were different the same as you but the number of inconsistencies with Lewis make me think that they were one and the same and that the Star Kennedy report is the correct one , it seems more natural and more to it .
I suspect from that point and the point of giving a statement she was led and dictated to

If the existence of Mrs Kennedy is proven then great , happy to be proven wrong and accept the Kennedy sighting as the last one .
Only ones who need to dismiss that sighting are those wishing to push the Hutchinson story

[Simon Wood]

At the time of the Bethnal Green Road incident, Mrs Kennedy was in the company of "her sister," and Sarah Lewis was in the company of "another female".

Regards,

Simon

[Wickerman]

....
If Debs comes across a real Mrs Kennedy that's great news as I'll never have to concern myself with Hutchinson ever again 😀

Lewis & Kennedy's account of what happened Wednesday night is the same, because they were together.
It's only their Friday morning statements which differ, because they arrived separately.
What Lewis saw that morning does not match what Kennedy saw, neither do their times match.
There is no cause to suggest they were the same woman. So to talk about a 'real' Mrs Kennedy only feeds into this false narrative.

As has been pointed out before, Lewis's account serves to confirm Hutchinson's story in so far as she saw a man & woman in the street while this lurker was standing opposite the court. She didn't describe the man, but she did offer some details about the woman. That she was the worse for drink, & without a hat, and that this couple both walked up the court.

None of this was recounted by Kennedy, but it is of some importance to acknowledge that Kennedy was credited with seeing Kelly alive around 3:00 am, standing outside the Britannia.

Once we accept these two accounts, Hutchinson's story is of no more importance. Astrachan is no longer a suspect, and Hutch himself is off the hook too.

[Abby Normal]

another thread that has gone down the semantic rabbit hole.
Ugh.

[packers stem]

Yes, I'm aware Schwartz's evidence was courtesy of an interpreter.

Brown's, which was not, uses a near identical term, "stoutish built" (versus "stoutly built").

I don't understand why the Hungarian language would have less words available to it than English for the various terms under discussion ? For those of us so blessed to know more than just English, it allows us an intimate understanding of the richness of vocabulary and quirks of language, expressed as a universal medium. Why would English trump Hungarian or any other language for that matter, ipso facto?

Further, if Schwartz and friend were leaning on Yiddish as well as their Hungarian (and whose to say it wasn't the other way around), they may have had scope for even greater depth to their word choice. Yiddish, being a hybrid, is renowned for its rich vocabulary and turn of phrase.

In fact, just on a peripheral note: is there anything to rule out Yiddish as the language, at least in part, used between between Schwartz and his interpreting-friend in this instance ?


Stephen
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Senis...ne_cont_book_1

English is a concoction of various languages influenced by a number of invasions from various countries over thousands of years all contributing to the language .
This is why we have a wide range of words all having similar meaning .
Hence why i said i doubt Hungarian would have the range of synonyms .
We only have the reporter's word that the interpretation was from Hungarian and without anything else to go on it would be highly speculative to suggest anything else .
All we've got as evidence of the usage of the word 'stout' is what hasn't been addressed , the inquest conversation between Bond and the coroner which I posted above .
Browns 'stoutish built' is almost certainly still fat ,podgy,portly , overweight " .....
Just that Brown ,like everybody else , was being polite in his wording .
We can accept ,I'm sure ,that overweight people were in existence somewhere at this time .Therefore common sense dictates that there must have been a word used to describe them , and yet it seems that no word was ever used to describe them if we don't believe it to be stout , strange that ....
Now unless we were a nation of bodybuilders then I suggest that the people of the LVP were using the word stout , as Bond did , to describe the stomach .
Victorian politeness and nothing more

[cnr]

speak Yiddish to me...

Your star quote was translated from Hungarian yet stout still appesrs !! I seriously doubt the Hungarian language has as many varied words for overweight as English does. Fact is nobody called anybody 'fat'.... it was impolite.The polite words were stout or portly .Both having an identical meaning. All those Berner Street quotes mean us that the fat guy attacked her while the thin pipeman(described as 'not so stout' ) came out of the doorway

Yes, I'm aware Schwartz's evidence was courtesy of an interpreter.

Brown's, which was not, uses a near identical term, "stoutish built" (versus "stoutly built").

I don't understand why the Hungarian language would have less words available to it than English for the various terms under discussion ? For those of us so blessed to know more than just English, it allows us an intimate understanding of the richness of vocabulary and quirks of language, expressed as a universal medium. Why would English trump Hungarian or any other language for that matter, ipso facto?

Further, if Schwartz and friend were leaning on Yiddish as well as their Hungarian (and whose to say it wasn't the other way around), they may have had scope for even greater depth to their word choice. Yiddish, being a hybrid, is renowned for its rich vocabulary and turn of phrase.

In fact, just on a peripheral note: is there anything to rule out Yiddish as the language, at least in part, used between between Schwartz and his interpreting-friend in this instance ?


Stephen

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Senise/e/B071HCHW3N/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

[cnr]

Stephen,
Why couldn't stout in any of your examples be a euphemism for fat?
That's my understanding of its meaning. Not large in a general sense, which would be described as 'big-boned' or 'heavy-set' , but plump, rotund - fat.
My opinion was not arrived at by googling but by hearing Eastenders, some of them Victorians, using the term.
Gary

Thanks, Gary.

To clarify. I take the reference to "built" in those two particular examples cited in my post, to refer to 'build' or frame (not weight); but fair enough if you're saying that I shouldn't preclude weight from entering the equation. I can see that point of view.

My conventional take of "stoutish-built" would include a degree of stockiness / bulkiness of frame, but as I suggested earlier, maybe consensus rests on that continuum meaning both corpulence (in terms of weight-to-height dimensions) and stockiness of frame.

It may lie neither here nor there in terms of the two poles of that spectrum if the attached image is an indication. It's Ferdinand Fermo Fissi's take on Blotchy (Famous Crimes, Harold Furniss, 1903) with the accompanying comment, "A Short Stout Man".

I don't propose it to be the be-all and end-all, but it's maybe a fair indication - being of Fissi / Furniss' broadly contemporary view of what was meant by "Stout" - and might provide a rough idea of where along that continuum a general understanding might rest.

BTW, I can see that the issue of "Short"-ness might muddy the waters a little, but visually it's the only image I could readily think of that might be helpful - if I get the chance, I'm going to keep looking over the weekend.


Stephen

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Senise/e/B071HCHW3N/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

[packers stem]

And lastly in such poor lighting and in overcoats you aren't going to be able to judge upper body .
You may however notice a bit of a gut if you see them side on especially

[packers stem]

...seriously, though.

Here are two quick Victorian-era references, perfect for our purposes for obvious reasons, where "stout" is referenced in the context of build, not weight (or over-weight):

“rather stoutly built” (based on Schwartz) 1 October 1888, Star

"He appeared to be stoutish built" (James Brown, at the Stride inquest) 6 October, Times

Might I also suggest, that in the case of other witnesses/instances where "stout" is used free of any affixing reference to frame: try substituting it (or its relevant grammatical variant) for the word 'fat'; the result doesn't quite work in my opinion. Comparatively, it goes from being a natural enough expression to one, less-so, almost awkward.

For example. Sarah Lewis' "stout-looking man"* becomes, "fat-looking man".

* Inquest testimony, reported in the (London) Echo, 12 November 1888.

Maybe the best general understanding we could agree on is that the term existed on a continuum and meant both stocky of framework and heavier-set in terms of weight-to-height dimensions.


Stephen
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Senis...ne_cont_book_1

Your star quote was translated from Hungarian yet stout still appesrs !! I seriously doubt the Hungarian language has as many varied words for overweight as English does .
Fact is nobody called anybody 'fat'.... it was impolite .
The polite words were stout or portly .Both having an identical meaning .
All those Berner Street quotes mean us that the fat guy attacked her while the thin pipeman(described as 'not so stout' ) came out of the doorway

[packers stem]

Stephen,

Why couldn't stout in any of your examples be a euphemism for fat?

That's my understanding of its meaning. Not large in a general sense, which would be described as 'big-boned' or 'heavy-set' , but plump, rotund - fat.

My opinion was not arrived at by googling but by hearing Eastenders, some of them Victorians, using the term.

Gary

One of the relevant sections of the Whitehall torso inquest

Was the woman stout? - Not very stout, but thoroughly plump; fully developed, but not abnormally fat. The inference is that she was a tall, big woman. The hand was long, and was the hand of a woman not accustomed to manual labour

It should be noted that prior to this Bond had already confirmed that she would have been a large ,well nourished woman .

It's from the telegraph on October 9th
Required reading and shows quite clearly that Bond and the coroner were both perfectly aware of the meaning of the word stout .

She wasn't VERY stout ,thoroughly plump but not abnormally fat .....couldn't be misinterpreted

[packers stem]

Quite the about-face there Packers, you might wanna sit down before you get dizzy.

Kennedy's story is not the same as Lewis's, and we've been over this too many times.

Missing the point aren't you
Yes the two Kennedy stories (which are both completely different ) are themselves different to both Lewis stories .There are four entirely different stories between the two of them .
Yes , we have been over these things many times ..... and this should have sunk in by now surely .
But the main problem is differentiating between the two people due to the similarities in a part of their tales .
If Debs comes across a real Mrs Kennedy that's great news as I'll never have to concern myself with Hutchinson ever again 😀

[MrBarnett]

...seriously, though.

Here are two quick Victorian-era references, perfect for our purposes for obvious reasons, where "stout" is referenced in the context of build, not weight (or over-weight):

“rather stoutly built” (based on Schwartz) 1 October 1888, Star

"He appeared to be stoutish built" (James Brown, at the Stride inquest) 6 October, Times

Might I also suggest, that in the case of other witnesses/instances where "stout" is used free of any affixing reference to frame: try substituting it (or its relevant grammatical variant) for the word 'fat'; the result doesn't quite work in my opinion. Comparatively, it goes from being a natural enough expression to one, less-so, almost awkward.

For example. Sarah Lewis' "stout-looking man"* becomes, "fat-looking man".

* Inquest testimony, reported in the (London) Echo, 12 November 1888.

Maybe the best general understanding we could agree on is that the term existed on a continuum and meant both stocky of framework and heavier-set in terms of weight-to-height dimensions.


Stephen
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Senis...ne_cont_book_1

Stephen,

Why couldn't stout in any of your examples be a euphemism for fat?

That's my understanding of its meaning. Not large in a general sense, which would be described as 'big-boned' or 'heavy-set' , but plump, rotund - fat.

My opinion was not arrived at by googling but by hearing Eastenders, some of them Victorians, using the term.

Gary