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Where was Mrs Long at 5:30am?
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Ripper Victims:
Where was Mrs Long at 5:30am?
Author: Jon
Sunday, 04 August 2002 - 08:36 pm |        | One minor point I keep hearing repeated in connection with the time of death of Annie Chapman is that Mrs Long was passing No. 29 when she heard the Brewers clock strike.
".....It was about 5:30. She was certain of the time, as the brewers' clock had just struck that time when she passed 29, Hanbury-street."
The Times, Sept 20, 1888
However......
".....I knew the time, because I heard the brewer's clock strike half-past five just before I got to the street."
The Times, Sept 13, 1888 and
The Daily Telegraph, Sept 11, 1888
Which is it?
The Brewers establishment was a vast complex, precisely where the clock was located is unknown today as far as I know. But, No. 29 on Hanbury St. is almost half-way down the street. On O.S. maps of the period it appears that No. 29 was about 150 yds from the Brick Lane end of the street. The main Brewery complex is about 150 yds to 450 yds, or more, up Brick Lane from the Hanbury St. intersection.
So, the question is, "how far had Mrs Long walked from the Brewers clock striking 5:30am, and had it struck when she passed the brewery on Brick Lane or when she passed No. 29 on Hanbury St.?
The exact whereabouts of Mrs Long may have an impact on the Cadoche/Long timing controversy regarding the time of death of Annie Chapman.
A little niggling inconsistancy.
Regards, Jon |
Author: The Viper
Monday, 05 August 2002 - 05:57 pm | | Jon,
From the two statements you give, I think it is Mrs. Long's distance from no. 29 that we must concentrate on - not her distance from the brewery's clock (which I have no doubt would have been audible for quite some distance).
Most people don't walk at any great speed. If we settle on 3 m.p.h. with the odd halt at a major road crossing, you get somewhere close to 100 yards a minute. On that basis the quote, "...I knew the time, because I heard the brewer's clock strike half-past five just before I got to the street" would mean only about a minute earlier, if I'm right in thinking that you mean Mrs. Long turned into Hanbury Street out of Brick Lane.
Of higher concern to me are these things:-
1). (Especially.) How accurate was the clock?
2). How conscious was she of the time as events unfolded? Was she remembering the chime just a casual recollection (therefore open to greater error), or did she hear the clock and think, "I'm early/late/on time", or whatever?
Sadly I doubt that we'll ever know the answers to those questions.
Regards, V. |
Author: Jon
Monday, 05 August 2002 - 06:34 pm | | Thanks Viper.
Yes, and the accuracy of the stated times is something, as you know, that I have bemoaned about for a long time.
Cadoche testified that it was about 5:32 when he passed the Spitalfields Church clock (did he look up at the clock?), but if Mrs Long had not entered Hanbury St. until after 5:30 then the people she saw in front of No. 29 may not have been the killer with Chapman afterall.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Jeff Hamm
Monday, 05 August 2002 - 08:07 pm | | Hi,
In the first quote listed:
".....It was about 5:30. She was certain of the time, as the brewers' clock had just struck that time when she passed 29, Hanbury-street."
The Times, Sept 20, 1888
She reports hearing the clock strike when she passed #29. Ok, if we take this as accurate, then that means she's in the 2nd 150 yards of Hanbury street.
In the second quote:
".....I knew the time, because I heard the brewer's clock strike half-past five just before I got to the street."
The Times, Sept 13, 1888 and
The Daily Telegraph, Sept 11, 1888
She reports hearing the clock "just before I got to the street." She doesn't say "Hanbury Street" though. What if she's referring to the intersection at the end of Hanbury street, 150 yards away?
Given the 100 yrds/min offered by Viper, that would mean she passed Hanbury street at about 5:28:30. This gives 1 min 30 secs for them to enter the backyard of #29 and for Cadoche to enter his backyard at around 5:30ish as well. Perhaps he heard the same clock strike. It would also mean that he wouldn't see Mrs. Long when he left his house because she's already well passed that area. He reports seeing nobody as well, which would suggest Mrs. Long was long gone (sorry, couldn't resist).
What about something like that? Of course, if Mrs. Long's full quote clearly indicates she's talking about Hanbury Str. as "the street", then it all falls apart.
- Jeff |
Author: Garry Wroe
Monday, 05 August 2002 - 10:05 pm | | Hi All.
Psychologists long ago established that, for forensic purposes, eyewitness testimony is all but valueless. In one study a stooge entered several banks with what were obviously forged cheques. Despite the reality that bank clerks are specifically trained to recognize potentially fraudulent transactions and store an accurate mental portrait of any person who endeavours to convey one, the descriptions of the stooges in this and many other follow-up studies were so inaccurate as to be absolutely useless. Arousal is the factor on which our memory of events is contingent. If we are simply walking down our local high street on any normal Saturday afternoon, we tend not to remember very much about the people or events we encounter. This explains why Lawende and Levy gave such contradictory descriptions of the man they saw on Duke Street in company with Kate Eddowes. As such, the time and description proffered by Mrs Long (as well as all eyewitness accounts in the Ripper case) must be regarded with caution.
Regards,
Garry Wroe. |
Author: Jeff Hamm
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 12:10 am | | Hi Gary,
Very true. And this situation is even less desirable since the testimony we have to interpret comes from the press, which has been shown to be less than 100% accurate in their reporting of what people say. For example,
the quotes the press atrributed to Openheimer (sp?) concerning the Lusk kidney, for example, were categorically denied by him the following day. Still, if we were to throw out all the evidence that is questionable, we would have virtually nothing to examine! The hope is that underneath all the noise (errors in reporting; lost information; etc) that the signal (what actually happened) can still be found.
The errors of eye-witness testimony is important, however, as it calls into question how accurate her recollections of where she was when she heard the clock strike 5:30. But, before we resort to saying "well, she must have mis-remembered", we have to see if her statements as given produce a paradox. If not, we can't justify the "mis-remebered hypothesis". Although eye-witness testimony is highly inaccurate, it's not 100% inaccurate.
- Jeff |
Author: Garry Wroe
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 02:00 pm | | Hi Jeff.
Couldn't agree more. Again, I'm not advocating the dismissal of all Ripper eyewitness accounts. I simply think it prudent to exercise a degree of caution when evaluating them. In context of Mrs Long, for example, she may have been on her way to work and so would have been mindful of the time. Hence I would think it likely that, give or take a minute or two, she was fairly accurate in a temporal sense. But since there was nothing particularly unusual about the couple she saw on Hanbury Street, she would have accorded them very little interest, rendering any description she subsequently gave as almost certainly flawed. And this is in no way meant to impugn Mrs Long. It is simply the reality of human cognitive functionality.
Best wishes,
Garry Wroe |
Author: The Viper
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 03:58 pm | | Jeff,
Mrs. Long’s expression about hearing the clock strike "just before I got to the street" implies to me that she passed 29 Hanbury Street after 5:30, not before it. Her comments to the Times/Telegraph, reported soon after the event, conflict slightly with the above quote (see Jon’s opening entry) from The Times’ 20th September inquest report, but not by much. Number 29 was in fact some way less than 150 yards from the corner of the street, and I’ll settle for Mrs. Long passing the house at 5:31 a.m. With this kind of testimony we should always build in a bit of leeway, but in this case plus or minus one minute is probably sensible – I get the impression that Long’s perception of the time was pretty good in this instance. The one minute leeway brings in the timing stated by Inspector Swanson in his report of 19th October, in which he went for 5:30.
So where was Albert Cadosch at this point? We have no official inquest papers to help us and there are some slight differences in the reporting of his evidence. For instance, The Times tells us that, "Witness [Cadosch] then left the house and went to his work. When he passed Spitalfields Church it was about 32 minutes past 5." (My emphasis).
This contrasts with the version published in the Woodford Times, which stated, "He went into the house again, and then into the street, going to his work. It was about two minutes after half-past five. He saw no man or woman in Hanbury-street when he went out."
There is no mention here of passing the clock at Spitalfields Church at 5:32. The report implies that Cadosch left the house at that time. It’s important because the distance from 29 Hanbury to the front of Christ Church Spitalfields with its clock tower is substantial – at least 250 yards. If this second report were correct then there is a good chance that Cadosch would have seen Mrs. Long on the street, and perhaps her suspect with Annie Chapman. There is also a possibility, but it’s a lesser one, that he would have seen Long if we go with The Times’ report.
However, the fact is that he didn’t see Mrs. Long, (the coroner asked him a specific question to confirm as much), nor did he see Annie or the suspect on the street. A pity because it leaves us with untied ends and various messy possibilities. These can be summarised as follows:-
1). Long’s timing was significantly incorrect.
2). Cadosch’s timing was significantly incorrect.
3). Both their timings were well out.
4). Both Long and Cadosch’s timing was only marginally incorrect and they only just missed one another.
I’d favour option 2) or 4) as the most likely. But that’s just personal opinion, of course.
Unfortunately (and frustratingly) we fall back on all the variables that Jon has hinted at. The reason why there were so many public clocks in Victorian Britain is that time had become important (with the invention of trains etc.), but in 1888 large sections of the population didn’t own wrist watches. For obvious reasons this was especially so in places like Spitalfields. Since both our witnesses mention public clocks we have to assume that neither of them possessed watches. (Incidentally, even the fortunate ones who did would have had problems keeping correct time, there being no radio or tv time ‘pips’ to reset their clocks and watches by). Consequently we are at the mercy of two different public clocks to give us our timings. Either or both these could have been inaccurate. Plus, we have to weigh the reliability of our witnesses whose perceptions of time may have been inaccurate. If Cadosch and Long had been using the same clock we could have eliminated the first variable, but of course they didn’t.
All of which means that we aren’t going to get a definitive answer on this: you pays your money and you takes your choice. For my hard-earned, Long’s awareness of the time seems better than Cadosch’s. Long also identified Chapman, so it seems to me that Annie entered the yard and was killed a few minutes after that sighting at 5:31 (brewery time). This calls into question Cadosch’s evidence. But he does seem genuinely to have heard strangers in the next yard, a call of "No" and a bang against the fence. Surely in that case he heard the prelude to the murder. In which case, one is left to wonder how he derived the times when he arose and went into the yard. It also leads one to the conclusion that the church clock was running several minutes slow. Unless, that is, the brewery clock that Mrs. Long used was several minutes fast… I'm sure we all understand the problem!
Regards, V. |
Author: Jeff Hamm
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 08:05 pm | | Hi Viper,
Actually, re-reading the two quotes again, I realise that the Times report doesn't say the clock struck 5:30 when she passed #29, but that it had just struck when she passed #29, meaning she passes #29 just after 5:30.
But, the time 5:32 reported by Cadoche is rather exact, so I would think he must have paid close attention to it for some reason. However, since these clocks don't have second hands, it could be anywhere between 5:32:01 and 5:32:59. If the clock he's looking at was 250-300 yards, that's 2.5 to 3 min (at 100/min).
To my thinking, we are dealing with Long passing Annie and the Ripper just before they actually enter #29 at 5:30 according to the Brewers clock. They enter the backyard, and she's attacked almost immediately, and Cadoche here's her say No, and later fall against the fence.
From entering to falling against the fence, let's say this requires 2 min, which now puts Long 200 yards passed #29, with Cadoche still at home and about to leave at 5:32ish, which fits with one report.
If, however, he gets the time from the Spitalfields Church as being 5:32, which is still 250 yards away at least he would have to get there within 1 min (before it ticks over to 5:33), then all would be well. However, if the Church clock was only 1 min. behind that of the Brewers clock, then he now has 2 min to cover the 250 yards to pass the churck clock and all stories fit. If the Church clock is behind the Brewers clock by a larger margin, then we have more time to play with. A maximal difference between the two clocks of about 5 min. might be resonable but I'm not sure how consistent the clocks were though.
Anyway, the times are all very close and generally in agreement. Differences between the two clocks of only a minute or two greatly simplifies things provided the time it takes the Ripper to incapacitate Annie is only about 1 or 2 minutes. I guess I'm in agreement with you as I'm sort of describing both Long and Cadoche being a wee bit out (it depends on who's clock one sets as "correct"; if you choose the church, the Long is out, if you choose the Brewers clock, then Cadoche is out).
- Jeff |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 08:07 pm | | (5)Cadosch lived up to his name?
Rosey :-) |
Author: Brenda L. Conklin
Tuesday, 06 August 2002 - 10:15 pm | | | Way off the subject: There is quite a space of time between the last sighting of Annie Chapman before Hanbury street and the Hanbury Street sighting. We already know she was sick, possibly terminally ill? She also at one point during the time before was encouraging herself to get moving, to not give in to feeling so bad. I wonder if she spent a chunk of that time just resting somewhere? I wonder just how sick she really was and how long she would have lived after if she had not been killed by the Ripper? |
Author: Diana
Wednesday, 07 August 2002 - 09:38 pm | | | Part of this whole thing is routines. During the school year I get up, dress, eat breakfast, read the Bible, pray, and head out the door @ 6:30 AM. I arrive at work at @ 6:50. There are slight variations from day to day but it is pretty much static. This could have applied to both Mrs. Long and Mr. Cadosch. |
Author: Monty
Thursday, 08 August 2002 - 08:38 am | | Diana,
Thats a good point.
I too have routines, I think there a few out there that do and when something different happens during this it sticks in my head more.
Monty
 |
Author: Diana
Thursday, 08 August 2002 - 03:35 pm | | | If she always passed that corner about the time the clock sounded or Cadosch always relieved himself in the yard at that time it could work for us or against us. In the gross recollection sense it makes the time line more reliable. But would the daily variations register? In the fine recollection sense, perhaps not. "The clock always sounds just about the time I get to that corner so that must have been when I heard it today" |
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