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Manchester Canal: Corpse Repository?

escargot said:
That DOES sound suspicious and worthy of further investigation.
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Yes. But I think the important point is that although some of these incidents will almost certainly be crime related, we do not need to join them all together with yet another mythical serial killer. If anything, this meme is only going to muddy the waters (no pun intended) when it comes to investigating actual individual crimes.
 
The canal has claimed another life. The poor man's sister is surprised at where his body was found:
Police were called to an area of the canal near Redhill Road in Ancoats shortly after 9am after a report of a body in the water. Lawless usually slept rough in Harpurhey, north Manchester, and his sister said she was surprised to learn he was found 2.5 miles (4km) away in the city centre.
“That’s what we don’t understand; how did he make it from north Manchester to there, when he had no money?” said Brennan.
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RIP Mr Lawless.
 
“That’s what we don’t understand; how did he make it from north Manchester to there, when he had no money?"

A healthy person would walk it in an hour or so; Mr Lawless may have taken longer. Ancoats is directly down Rochdale Road from his territory at Harpurhey. From NMGH back onto Rochdale Road, his most-likely route would have been either via Market St, Blackley or via Crescent Road and the meandering, wooded Harpurhey Road. There used to be at least one hostel on Rochdale Road for alcoholics and there are a number of church missions in the area.

During the Christmas season, almost certainly there would have been some initiatives to feed rough-sleepers, so his drift down there is not so puzzling, I think. The Harpurhey Precinct would have nothing for him, when closed and deserted. I must have seen him there many times, though his photograph could fit a number of the men you see. Recently, women have been among the beggars; it is a very sorry state of affairs. RIP. :(

The Evening News account has photographs of the part of the canal, where Mr Lawless was found.

It is next to the Central Park retail area, just a few hundred yards down the inner ring-road from Rochdale Road. There are benches by the canal where vagrants and alcoholics are known to gather. It is a fairly open spot, visible from the major road. Misadventure would seem the likeliest verdict.
 
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Yes, all of the above; in fact a healthy person could walk it in about 50 minutes - but, of course, there's a strong possibility that Mr Lawless would not have fit this description.

That said, in Manchester many rough sleepers - of varying degrees of mobility - crash away from the city centre, where the often very aggressive competition for sleeping pitches is reduced, and return during the day for the solicitation of pedestrian beneficence. It is not an unusual process in urban environments.

I think it's a pretty poor hook to attach a mystery too - but then I think the whole thing is. Kelpies and selkies and sirens and all manner of water spirits once helped us to explain a ubiquitous lethality - now it's imaginary serial killers of a less otherworldly type.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I think, if this situation arises, the least offensive way of sorting out the issue would be for the person doing the rescuing to ask of the drownee, prior to taking any action...
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I'm visualising the drownee tragically encountering a grammar pedant as he thrashes about:

Drownee: "I will drown! I will drown!"

Grammar pedant: "Oh. I was going to help, but if you're determined to die I'll leave you alone to get on with it."

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
I'm visualising the drownee tragically encountering a grammar pedant as he thrashes about:
Drownee: "I will drown! I will drown!"
Grammar pedant: "Oh. I was going to help, but if you're determined to die I'll leave you alone to get on with it."
maximus otter
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An amusing scenario — except for the drownee — but only if it is the sort of grammar pedant who parrots a rule they once heard and accepted at face value, without looking into it more deeply, or considering how they hear the language used on a daily basis.

Here is one source among many.

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/09/25/will-versus-shall/

The "will = intention, shall = despair" interpretation comes from the fact that "will" has more than one meaning. It's a bit like the less/fewer thing: the more you look into it, the more you realise that it is an arbitrary attempt to impose a rule on language that is naturally used in a more flexible way.

"Will" derives from an old word meaning "wish". "Shall" derives from an old word meaning "owe". Meanings and usage change in the normal course of the development of language, and "shall" is declining as "will" is in the ascendancy.

That aside, this thread is interesting, and an object lesson for Fortean discussion. The initial idea was that a large number of unidentified bodies found in the canals may point to a serial killer. This was followed by careful analysis of population densities and demographics. Individual cases were cited for comparison. Several competing explanations have been considered rationally. I enjoyed reading it. :)

To my mind, the fact that most of the bodies were unidentified suggested immediately they were not part of the mainstream settled community. That immediately suggested homeless people, many (but certainly not all) of whom are vulnerable through having suffered abuse, mental health issues, alcohol or drug abuse. A combination of misadventure, unrelated isolated murders or manslaughter, and suicide is the likely explanation. In order to hypothesise a serial killer, you would need more of a pattern than "they were all found in the canal".
 
Five in one month, in April, in York.

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/17677397.note-left-by-river-ouse-drowning-victim-inquest-told/

We sometimes drop our son by Blue Bridge and he walks from there to work in town. The rivers Foss and Ouse are there. One morning, the place was crawling with police - I think they found the body an hour or two after we saw them there. But 5 in a month is unusally high and not all can be explained as suicides.

The lad from the Wirral may have died under suspicious circumstances.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-48503372
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
Five in one month, in April, in York.

But 5 in a month is unusally high and not all can be explained as suicides.
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University of York postgraduate exam period: 15th to 18th April.

Resits in August.

https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/assessment-and-examination/

York, being a university city, has a high number of young people away from home, stressed and with ready access to cheap booze and drugs.

Almost exactly 1:10,000 young men commit suicide in the UK annually. (The rate for women is three times lower). Statistically, you’d expect spikes, and a university city is a prime place I’d expect them.

Edited to add: York currently has 18,550 students.

maximus otter
 
It's over 30 years since I had to set foot in Manchester so things may have changed
for better or worse, but later in the day and just off the main st's you would come
across people absolutely wrecked by substance abuse often drinking methylated
spirit or anything they could get their hands on, they were ignored by most people
and I doubt anyone would miss them, some recognising they had gone too far and as
a last act would expose themselves in the hope they would be reported and be carted
away to be dried out, but I bet a few ended up in't cut.
 
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