Matthew Packer : Greengrocer & Witness

[Lynn Cates]

doctor, doctor

Hello Jon. Thanks.

In that case, the good doctor would be mistaken. But my rule is doctors before coppers--or anyone else.

Cheers.
LC

[Maria Birbili]

And where did the fruit stains on her handkerchief come from?

Those were old.

Damn, someone ate the evidence...

I could easily do that, but as it happens, just had some spaghetti, so I'm feeling magnanimous. :-)

I MAY have saved your posts in one of my files, but haven't had the chance or time to go and look.

That's why I'm saving everything related into a big Word file called Berner Street article. File must be over 55p. long by now, lol. The article(s) still require(s) tons of research, and I'm orienting myself towards 2014, after my Rossini book is semi-done.

Reductionist? Part of my training.

Lol.

But my rule is doctors before coppers--or anyone else.

Not for me. I'll trust Abberline a thousand times over Dr. Lewellyn or (gasp) Dr. Bond. Abberline knew Whitechapel real well. Victorian doctors were often conceited and plausibly not at 100% reliable. I'd trust Swanson more than a doctor too.

[Lynn Cates]

the master

Hello Maria. Thanks.

"I'll trust Abberline a thousand times over Dr. Lewellyn or (gasp) Dr. Bond."

Well, if you want to put it that way, so do I. But these lads saw one cadaver apiece. I'm thinking about good old Bagster Phillips.

Cheers.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

I like Phillips too, Lynn. He wasn't perfect and could make mistakes, but he wasn't for sale like Bond nor completely inept like Llewellyn. A stand up guy.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Howard Brown]

Tom:
With all due respect to your previous post...I'd like to mention that Bond was of the opinion that Mackenzie was a Ripper victim, while Sir Robert Anderson...not around at the time of the July 1889 murder...felt otherwise.
I take it that you refer to Anderson & Bond's relationship when you stated that Bond was for sale.
Sorry for the diversion...back to the thread.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Howard. I'm not saying that Anderson dictated his every move or necessarily cared at most times what Bond determined. But it seems in the one time it really mattered to Anderson, Bond changed his mind accordingly. Could be coincidence, but Anderson seems to have preferred to surround himself with Yes Men, casting all others to the side, so that alone might give us reason to question the veracity of his favorite doctor. But again, it could be all coincidence.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Howard Brown]

Sheffield & Rotherham Independent
November 16, 1888
****************

[Wicker Man]

Hi Wick,

The stains came from fruit, just not from grapes eaten the night of her death. And there was no grape stalk there after her murder. It didn't appear until Le Grand placed it there days later. But you already know all this.

Er, you mean I've heard it all before?, yes, I've heard it all before.

When did Stride eat fruit, and who provided it to her?

I tend to think we might 'know' that LeGrand placed it there if he admitted placing it there, or, heaven forbid, someone saw him place it there.
As neither condition is true, then the assertion that he did place it there is also untrue.

Hi Wick,

Quite some time back you were posting about Lawende's man and offering what I felt was pretty valuable insights. You were also providing different descriptions attributed to Lawende (or Harris), which I felt was rather eye opening since authors seem to be very selective about what they'll present.

Ah yes, if I recall I offered a number of descriptions attributed to Lawende, but over time these descriptions appeared to change. From Lawende's position he should not have been able to see all the details eventually provided in subsequent publications.
I thought Lawende's suspect took on more characteristics of Schwartz's man.

P.S. I was just kidding about the Cartel audition, although you seem to be more pro-police than you used to be. Maybe it's just me.

Maybe it is, I've always been pro-police, and pro doctors. Rarely do either comment on the profession of the other.

You mean in the alternate universes which Packer and Smith inhabited, whereby in one the man was holding a package and talking to a woman with clear skies overhead, and in the other the man was not holding a package, the woman was eating grapes, and the skies were pouring on them?

Yes there were differences in descriptions, but this in itself is not unusual in modern cases. The general public can be astonishingly unreliable when detailing what they saw, but that does not change the fact they saw someone.

We all know the grapes were first brought up by both Diemschitz & Kozebrodski, if Packer had said nothing the problem would still exist.
I can't think of a single reason that two people would make up the same detail.

Neither am I at all surprised that no remains of grape 'meat' was found in Stride's stomach. Grapes digest rapidly because they are mostly water.
The autopsy was conducted about 38 hours after they were presumably eaten (if so), then of course there would be no remains in the stomach.
The digestion acids do not neutralize at death.

.

[Maria Birbili]

I thought Lawende's suspect took on more characteristics of Schwartz's man.

It's not too big a stretch.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Wick,

Yes, we know Le Grand placed the stalk there and invented the grape story. By 'we' I mean everyone but you. The police spent many hours in that yard, searching the ground, the huts, the people, and the gutter. No grape stalk.

As for Packer, his statement to the police is that he saw and heard nothing. As you note, differences in his later statements do not change that.

And we don't know that grapes were first brought up by Diemshitz and Kozebrodski (former being the latter's mouthpiece, by the way). All we know is that the grape thing appears in a handful of newspapers. What we DO know is that there were no grapes. Diemschitz says as much himself at the inquest. And every other source says this.

If you want to argue for police corruption, there's plenty of real evidence about without having to fabricate any. Why are you so anti-police, anyway?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Debra Arif]

When did Stride eat fruit, and who provided it to her?

Hi Wickerman.
Personally, I don't think the fruit stains had to be fresh or recent? I think the stains may have been noticed and tested because they were red (hence tested for blood) as opposed to because they were wet or looked fresh?

The few days around the 30th September was a week of the year that fruit and vegetables would have been distributed among the poor for free. Churches had fruit, vegetables and even flowers in abundance to dispose of... sometimes displays were even plundered.

[Edward Stow]

How

I’ve never seen that report before – a lot of interesting details, not least about Hutchinson. It contains an explanation for those reports that said the police placed a reduced importance on his statement – to quieten press interest in it in other words.

Tom

Your assured statement that we know that Le Grand placed the grape stalk is precisely the sort of unsubstantiated claim that you will not be challenged about by the usual suspects!

[Tom_Wescott]

Your assured statement that we know that Le Grand placed the grape stalk is precisely the sort of unsubstantiated claim that you will not be challenged about by the usual suspects!

Hi Ed. With all due respect, you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about when it comes to this stuff. So don't be a hater. I've already substantiated these claims and will do so again in my book. As for this notion that my claims go unchallenged by Monty and Rob, I can assure you that's not the case. However, I think the difference might be that I haven't created 20 threads to tell the world that Charles Le Grand or anyone else was the Ripper. I also haven't polluted, disrupted, or taken over someone else's thread to do the same. If and when I behave this way, I can promise you that Rob and Monty would not take it any easier on me than they have you. And to be honest, I don't think your boy Christer does you any favors. Take him out of the mix and you have a lot less ruined and pointless threads and virtually no provocation of Monty. I think you catch the brunt of some of that, but overall you and Mr. Lucky have been model posters, in my opinion, even when we've disagreed. So before putting all the blame on Monty and Rob, have a talk with Home Grown.

I only brought Le Grand up to challenge the claim that Lech is the best Ripper suspect in regards to the torso murders. I presented a few facts that prove beyond doubt that Le Grand is better for it than Lech, but at no time did I actually argue for his guilt. I could probably take a number of random suspects and created a better case than you have for Lech, but Le Grand's the one I know best.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Edward Stow]

Tom
With all due respect t to your due respect - that is just bluster.
I have followed the published le grand stuff fairly closely and the grape stalk thing is supposition. There are other plausible explanations. I think that he made something of it by the way in order to 'sell' his usefulness as a top notch sleuth and didn't care if it misled.

I have hardly ever created any threads about anything and most Lechmere threads weren't started by Christer either (I think).
I think it is a positive thing for theories to be discussed openly and regret that the silly reflexive knee jerk contrariness shown To the most commonplace conjectures associated with the Lechmere case have inhibited others from making suggestions with other suspects - yourself included I suspect.
I could go on but I don't want to derail this thread!

[Tom_Wescott]

Tom
With all due respect t to your due respect - that is just bluster.
I have followed the published le grand stuff fairly closely and the grape stalk thing is supposition. There are other plausible explanations. I think that he made something of it by the way in order to 'sell' his usefulness as a top notch sleuth and didn't care if it misled.

I have hardly ever created any threads about anything and most Lechmere threads weren't started by Christer either (I think).
I think it is a positive thing for theories to be discussed openly and regret that the silly reflexive knee jerk contrariness shown To the most commonplace conjectures associated with the Lechmere case have inhibited others from making suggestions with other suspects - yourself included I suspect.
I could go on but I don't want to derail this thread!

Hi Ed. Let me get this straight. Le Grand, a known convict and inveterate liar, with a track record of paying people to make false statements, shows up at Packer's door, and what follows is a complete about face on Packer's behalf and a suddenly discovered grapestalk where there had not been one a day before. The police determined Packer was lying and the whole group was described by Anderson as 'unprincipled persons', but you see some other 'plausible explanation' besides the one that was determined at the time? And in spite of Stride's dry clothes and Dr. Phillip's post mortem findings? There is absolutely no supposition on my part when I say that Packer and therefore Le Grand were lying through their teeth. Packer's subsequent actions with Le Grand in Batty Street and on his own later are further proof of this.

In spite of this vast mountain of evidence collected at the time and presented to us, you call it mere supposition with other 'plausible explanations'. But in the case of Charles Cross, where the most plausible explanation is that he stumbled across a body, you see the only explanation as he was the most infamous murderer of all time.

And here you're lecturing me on overstatement and supposition.

I'm looking forward to my lecture on grammar and punctuation from Jeff Feahy.

Or how to win friends and influence people by Spiro Dimoblahblah

Or the virtue of brevity by Christer Holmgren and Phil Carter.

Or the art of subtlety by Trevor Marriott

Or...

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. Didn't I make it very clear that you're not to blame for all the Lech backlash, but that you've let it affect you and you take it personally nonetheless?