Ripper Confidential by Tom Wescott (2017)

[Tom_Wescott]

Okay, so Mortimer hears Smith pass at a time between 12:40 and 12:45. Let's assume that is true. Let's also assume Brown does see Stride at the board school corner, and later than the 12:45 recorded by both the Times and the Daily Telegraph. Shall we say 12:50? So, are these are Stride's locations and 'companions'?...

12:42/43: Berner St, near the club, with Parcel Man
12:46/47: Dutfield's Yard gateway, alone (?)
12:50/51: Board school corner, Long Overcoat Man
12:55/56: Murder location, murderer

Can you explain all the moving around, in a short space of time?
Did I get the murder time about right?
When does Goldstein pass by - before or after the murder?

That's not a lot of movement. It's all within several yards. I'm fluid on Smith/Parcel man. It may have happened a bit earlier than that (Mortimer did not say she saw Smith, after all). She's in the gateway of Dutfield's Yard but is pulled out and pushed away. It makes sense she might move away from the sight. She is seen shortly thereafter at the board school corner by Brown, and found dead a little later in Dutfield's Yard, where she had either led her killer or was led by him.

I wrote RC several years ago and believe I did a pretty good job of putting everything in context then. I've forgotten more than I remember about the minutia, but I spent a LONG time working all that stuff out and digging up as many sources as possible. More sources than have appeared in any book before or since. Those sources make a more accurate timeline possible, and once the work is done, we find there's no logical reason to dismiss ANY of the witnesses the police found viable. It's a mystery to me why anyone would want to do that.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Mortimer couldn't give a time when she saw Goldstein, and Parcel-man was a genuine police suspect. We can speculate that he left Stride after Smith saw them together, or that Parcel-man took her into the yard, which could provide the reason she was standing there, she was not alone.
Parcel-man, in this scenario, is the killer.

No, she couldn't, and it's understandable why. She had no idea the timing would be significant. Likewise, PC Smith could only guess at the timing. I don't see when/how Parcel Man became a 'genuine police suspect'. The police were far more interested in Black Bag Man and Schwartz's men.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

The motive for displacing witnesses in time and/or space, regarding the Stride murder, is always about one thing - Israel Schwartz.

I don't understand your meaning.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Wickerman]

Yet this sequence ignores Stride walking up Berner St. with a man, who then buy's grapes from Packer.
The man, now carrying a parcel of grapes is seen by PC Smith with Stride at about 12:35
Two men, both carrying parcels, both seen with Stride, both about the same time 12:30-35.
PC Smith confirms Packer's story, up to that point.

The all important 'flower' was not noticed by Brown, neither was a man with a long coat seen by anyone else.
We have a standing couple, and previously, a walking couple, neither the twain shall meet.

[GBinOz]

12:42/43: Berner St, near the club, with Parcel Man
12:46/47: Dutfield's Yard gateway, alone (?)
12:50/51: Board school corner, Long Overcoat Man
12:55/56: Murder location, murderer

H Andrew,

I am put in mind of the Sesame St question - "Which of these things is not like the other", and my answer would be 12:50/51: Board school corner, Long Overcoat Man.

IMHO the woman that Brown saw was not Stride. JMO.

Cheers, George

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I would wholeheartedly agree if not for the fact that Mortimer's black bag man came forward to corroborated her. Shame Smith's parcel man didn't do the same. In any event, I don't prefer one over the other. They're both equally there. It's how we interpret them that matters.

Okay, so Mortimer hears Smith pass at a time between 12:40 and 12:45. Let's assume that is true. Let's also assume Brown does see Stride at the board school corner, and later than the 12:45 recorded by both the Times and the Daily Telegraph. Shall we say 12:50? So, are these are Stride's locations and 'companions'?...

12:42/43: Berner St, near the club, with Parcel Man
12:46/47: Dutfield's Yard gateway, alone (?)
12:50/51: Board school corner, Long Overcoat Man
12:55/56: Murder location, murderer

Can you explain all the moving around, in a short space of time?
Did I get the murder time about right?
When does Goldstein pass by - before or after the murder?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Everybody was home at 1am. But cries of 'murder' and running feet outside your window tends to make people curious. Within minutes, there was a large crowd outside Dutfield's Yard. Among this crowd were the young woman and Fanny, who spoke to each other and then reporters.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

The Echo sweethearts report:

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.

This young woman lived in Berner St. What about her young man? Did she meet him where Berner St meets Commercial Road, because he too lived in Berner St (or perhaps Fairclough St), or did he live some distance away?

What is clear from this report is that this was a 'walking couple', whereas the other couple "had, she said, been standing there for about twenty minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises".

The walking couple said nothing to indicate that they "were standing at the corner of the street, about 20 yards away, before and after the time the woman must have been murdered". [Mortimer]

I cannot see the point of merging these two couples into one, other than to eliminate witnesses who were in a position to see or hear some of what Schwartz claimed to witness.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Hi Tom,

I don't wish to dismiss James Brown. I think it's possible that he correctly identified Liz Stride whether there was one young couple or two. I just don't see how it can be claimed that the young couple that Mortimer talked to couldn't have been the couple that Brown saw on the grounds that they went home at 12:30, when we know that Mortimer talked to them after 1:00. If they were in the area after 1:00, then they could also have been in the area at 12:45 or 12:50.

The motive for displacing witnesses in time and/or space, regarding the Stride murder, is always about one thing - Israel Schwartz.

[Wickerman]

I would wholeheartedly agree if not for the fact that Mortimer's black bag man came forward to corroborated her. Shame Smith's parcel man didn't do the same. In any event, I don't prefer one over the other. They're both equally there. It's how we interpret them that matters.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Mortimer couldn't give a time when she saw Goldstein, and Parcel-man was a genuine police suspect. We can speculate that he left Stride after Smith saw them together, or that Parcel-man took her into the yard, which could provide the reason she was standing there, she was not alone.
Parcel-man, in this scenario, is the killer.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Tom,

I don't wish to dismiss James Brown. I think it's possible that he correctly identified Liz Stride whether there was one young couple or two. I just don't see how it can be claimed that the young couple that Mortimer talked to couldn't have been the couple that Brown saw on the grounds that they went home at 12:30, when we know that Mortimer talked to them after 1:00. If they were in the area after 1:00, then they could also have been in the area at 12:45 or 12:50.

Everybody was home at 1am. But cries of 'murder' and running feet outside your window tends to make people curious. Within minutes, there was a large crowd outside Dutfield's Yard. Among this crowd were the young woman and Fanny, who spoke to each other and then reporters.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Red flags should be raised when we read that "Mortimer's accuracy" is being preferred, to the statement of a beat constable.

I would wholeheartedly agree if not for the fact that Mortimer's black bag man came forward to corroborated her. Shame Smith's parcel man didn't do the same. In any event, I don't prefer one over the other. They're both equally there. It's how we interpret them that matters.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Someone engaging in speculation that says it's speculation instead of defending it as if it were graven on stone tablets and brought down from the mountain?

That's a refreshing change of pace. I wish more posters followed your example.

Thanks for that, Fiver. Almost 100% of what I write is speculation, whether my own or my source's. PC Smith says he sees something at about a certain time, then he's speculating. James Brown says he's pretty sure the woman he saw was Stride, he's speculating. In fact, it's only received wisdom that anybody was murdered in Whitechapel that Autumn. None of us were there to bear witness. But when you're working with an incomplete picture as we are, it's still possible to grasp the truth, or something close to it, using reason, logic, and deductive (as opposed to inductive) reasoning. In the case of the smitten couple on Berner Street, up to a certain point, we had only a random newspaper article about the couple and this allowed a generation or two of Ripperologists to speculate that Brown saw this couple and not Stride. This was important to particular suspect theories where they wanted to dismiss Brown. Others just saw it as a reasonable possibility, which it most certainly was. However, in RC I introduced additional contemporary sources that to a reasonable mind put the young couple at the opposite end of Berner Street from where Brown was, making it ever more likely that Brown saw Stride. More over, I demonstrated via the inquest coverage from various newspapers (not just The Times) that Brown puts himself leaving his house at 12:45 and not witnessing his couple until some time after that. These are, to my mind, rather significant details when piecing together what happened and when and who saw what. I understand that they may still be inconvenient to certain theories, in which case the author or commentator is welcome to ignore my research and pretend it's still the dark ages. Which, I've noticed, some do.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Lewis C]

Hi Lewis. Truthfully, we don't "know" anything. But if we accept the fragments we're given by the press, the young woman joined Fanny at the murder site after the body was discovered and either told Fanny her story or else Fanny overheard her telling it to journalists. There's no reason to suppose a separate young woman was walking on the street with her sweetheart around that time, and certainly a second couple was no witnessed, so it's sufficiently reasonable to assume there was just the one young couple, and based on the evidence given, they would have been at the Commercial Road end of Berner Street, and so were not the couple witnessed by James Brown.

The Berner Street murder is mucky enough without us adding to it by conflating a young woman with her sweetheart to TWO young women with their sweetheart in an effort to discount James Brown's evidence. As mentioned before, it stands to reason that the young woman who spoke to the press, at the same time Fanny did, was precisely the same woman who spoke to Fanny and at the same time. That is why every mention of the couple mentions one couple and not two. I understand it is somewhat important to various theories to downplay or outright dismiss James Brown's evidence, but the fact is he was "almost certain" he saw Stride and not some young woman with her sweetheart. We really don't have any right to be any more or less certain than he was, and so it's probably he saw Stride with her killer.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,

I don't wish to dismiss James Brown. I think it's possible that he correctly identified Liz Stride whether there was one young couple or two. I just don't see how it can be claimed that the young couple that Mortimer talked to couldn't have been the couple that Brown saw on the grounds that they went home at 12:30, when we know that Mortimer talked to them after 1:00. If they were in the area after 1:00, then they could also have been in the area at 12:45 or 12:50.

[Wickerman]

As Andrew says in post 532, "not 50 yds" means less than 50 yds, the corner of Berner & Fairclough was 20 yds = 60 ft from Dutfields Yard.

[GBinOz]

Quoting from RC:

The Evening News reported that ‘when the alarm of murder was raised 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.’ We’re now out to 50 yards, which puts the couple at the corner of Berner Street and Commercial Road and nowhere near the Board School.

Hi Andrew,

If not 50 yards puts a couple at the corner of Berner and Commercial, could it just as well put them at the corner of Berner and Christian...in front of the Bee Hive pub....where Spooner was standing with his girlfriend? Just a speculation, of course.

Cheers, George