How do Suspects compare?

[mklhawley]

Trevor, do you ever sleep?

[PaulB]

Come on get real look at all the people who confessed to being the ripper in 1888that part of your argument about Tumblety sinks without trace. Isnt it funnny that with regards to these type of press related issues, the reporters never seem to ask questions which are relevant of the person they are interviewing. i.e "What made them suspect you" "How did you prove you innocence Mr Tumblety" "Why did they let you go if they thought you were the ripper"

Maybe they did ask and the answers he gave had they been included in the article wouldnt have made much of a story. BUt hey ho we know the power of the press it was still the same then as it is today.

Littlechild did not have any direct involvment in the investigation so anything he relates to at a later date could be no more than hearsay and thus waters down his credibily as a prime source.

You are right much of this has been answered before but I am questioning what has been said and relied upon now in the present.

Come on get real look at all the people who confessed to being the ripper in 1888that part of your argument about Tumblety sinks without trace.

And your point is? What comparison is there between people who confessed to being Jack the Ripper and Tumblety who admitted to having been a suspect?

Isnt it funnny that with regards to these type of press related issues, the reporters never seem to ask questions which are relevant of the person they are interviewing. i.e "What made them suspect you" "How did you prove you innocence Mr Tumblety" "Why did they let you go if they thought you were the ripper"

Maybe they did ask and the answers he gave had they been included in the article wouldnt have made much of a story. BUt hey ho we know the power of the press it was still the same then as it is today.

On the other hand maybe they asked, he told them, and they printed in the newspaper. Go and check. But your argument is irrelevant anyway. What the journalists’ asked or didn’t ask doesn’t alter the fact that Tumblety acknowledged he had been suspected of being the Ripper.

Littlechild did not have any direct involvment in the investigation so anything he relates to at a later date could be no more than hearsay and thus waters down his credibily as a prime source.

Or Littlechild could be talking from direct personal experience. You don’t know, and dreaming up suggestions like this without a scintilla of evidence to back them up, doesn’t get you anywhere. And it doesn’t actually matter whether Littlechild was repeating hearsay or not; it’s what he believed. Unless you are suggesting he made it up.

You are right much of this has been answered before but I am questioning what has been said and relied upon now in the present.

Trevor, you are just tilting at windmills, pretending that you are challenging received thinking when the reality is that you have no grounds for doing so, just so you can play at being Jack the Giant Killer. The reality is that Littlechild stated what he believed to Sims and there is no reason to suppose that he lied. Without evidence to suggest otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time.

[PaulB]

I give up with you people that research is not from official sources so it must be hearsay.

Why would Anderson want a sample of his handwriting in connection with the ripper anyway. They had him in custody he would have signed papers in custody there would have been samples of his handwriting available. it all doesnt make sense in connection with the murders.

Ah, suddenly the sun is shining and everything has become clear: it's hearsay when Littlechild says it, it's hearsay when Smith says it, and its hearsay when the newspapers say it, and self-seeking publicity when Tumblety himself says it, and the reports of Anderson requesting samples of Tumblety's handwriting is a journalistic invention because you think he would already have them.

What you cite above is nothing more than hearsay accept it and stop using it to prop up Tumblety as a prime police suspect

Mike Hawley isn't using hearsay to prop up a suspect, Trevor. You are saying it's hearsay, but you have offered no evidence in support of that opinion, and even if it is hearsay why would it be wrong? But keep digging. Tha's hole is huge.

[Supe]

Mike,

Trevor, do you ever sleep?

Oh, the wondrous and manifold answers that query suggests -- and the difficulties that would ensue from posting most of them. Satan, get thee behind me.

Don.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

If a policeman/police report/witness/suspect or newspaper article supports a particular argument, it is gold. If it doesn't support a particular argument, it is worthless.

Thus beats the heart of Ripperology.

What a fool's errand the SY5 have handed down to us. I can almost hear them laughing up their celestial sleeves.

Regards,

Simon

[mklhawley]

Hi Simon, the problem is confirmation bias. Some of us are slaves to it, while others accept it as our weakness.
Hi Don.

[Phil Carter]

Hi Simon, the problem is confirmation bias. Some of us are slaves to it, while others accept it as our weakness.
Hi Don.

Hello Mike,

I have no favourite suspect, so I honestly say that my reasoning lies NOT with who the source material comes from, nor any title of person within the police- but I have to ask this point..

If Anderson was after Tumbelty's handwriting on suspicion of being the WM, and some place their belief in Anderson's actions as part of the confirmation that Tumbelty was a strong suspect, then how does one explain:-

a) all other comments by Anderson 1888-1896?

b) Anderson not only disregarding Tumbelty in Blackwood's and his memoirs, but telling us as a fact that the killer was a Polish Jew?

you see Mike- if one is a Tumbeltyite or a Druittist or a Kosminskiite, all use THEIR reasons for Andersons comments to fit their favourite theory.

Some, myself included, see all these official comments for what they are alone, and see unreliability and no sure line. How can we call Andersons words reliable when he chopped and changed his mind so often? How can Swanson's annotations be reliable when there are so many holes in his sparse scribble? How can Macnagthen's writings be reliable when that too shows falsities?
And how can we believe any of it when so manx others contradict all of the above?

Simon Wood is bang on. The most deliberate deny and confuse operation was carried out, and s6me even today cant see the real writing on the wall, due to inability to see the wood for the trees, or loss of face having nailed colours to the mast or need to keep the eternal whodunnit going, forever and ever and ever and ever ad nauseum.

Its common sense. X amount of policemen make Y amount of conflicting comment that causes Z Amount of people to ignore the root of the plant. And yes, this list of names have presented us a plant like nothing else- a rose to cover up the weeds.

And people still smell the rose and keep watering it.
The truth lies in the weeds not the root of the rose bush.

Kindly

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi Mike,

Confirmation bias. Yes indeed.

Based upon the information at our disposal all we will ever do is spin our wheels and pile opinion upon contradictory opinion.

Time, perhaps, to put aside our differences and ask ourselves a key question.

Have we been lied to by the cops?

It's a fertile area for research, but one which, unfortunately, appears to have been placed strictly off-limits.

Regards,

Simon

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

…and then comes the discovery of another private letter from Canada. Recovered by Canadian historian Gerard Keith was a private letter from Marine Deputy Minister Smith to a government official named James Barber in St. John dated December 1, 1888, only days after Assistant Commissioner Anderson contacted US law enforcement officials about Francis Tumblety. Smith had worked with Barber in St. John years earlier. In it, it states:

"My dear Barber.... Do you recollect Dr. Tumblety who came to St. John about 1860 and who used to ride on a beautiful white horse with a long tail, and a couple of grey hounds following after him? Do you recollect how he used to canter along like a circus man? And do you recollect that it was asserted that he killed old Portmore, the Carpenter who built the extension to my house and fleeced me to a large extent? Do you recollect how he suddenly left St. John, circus horse, hounds and all, and afterwards turned up at different places in the States and Canada? He was considered by Dr. Bayard and others an adventurer and Quack Doctor. He is the man who was arrested in London three weeks ago as the Whitechapel murderer… He now spells his name Twomblety [suggests that his source originated in England, since Tumblety purposely used ‘Twomblety’ in England] …."

Odd how you have edited out the most important part of this letter Mike. Here’s the part you didn’t want Trevor to see –

“…He had been living in Birmingham and used to come up to London on Saturday nights. The police have always had their eyes on him every place he went, and finally the Birmingham Police telegraphed to the London Police that he had left for London, and on his arrival he was nabbed accordingly…I do not think he could be the Whitechapel fiend….”

This, as has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions, is describing, not Tumblety, but the Euston Station Suspect. The physical description of this suspect did not match Tumblety; the description of his working background did not match Tumblety; this man was in Birmingham and under the constant surveillance of the Birmingham Police while Tumblety was in London and part of the time under remand and in jail; Tumblety didn’t receive bail until Friday, the 16th of November while the Euston Station Suspect didn’t leave Birmingham, according to the Birmingham Police who were watching his every move, until Saturday, the 17th of November.

Smith was obviously dead wrong in what he wrote and he obviously didn’t get his information from a “source in England” or from some Canadian Government official, unless that supposed source was greatly misinformed and confused. As has been pointed out to you, again on numerous occasions, the likely source for Smith’s “information” was the Ottawa newspapers since stores of Tumblety’s arrest and the arrest of the Euston Station Suspect hit the papers in North America at about the same time.

Wolf.

[Wickerman]

Yes, precisely. The great mistake is in thinking of this as a crime investigation and treating the source materials accordingly and applying the rules and terminology of the detective to it. That was okay several decades ago when the Ripper was an acknowledged game like pin the tail on the donkey, but as it has been taken more seriously it's had to be treated as a historical event, just like any and every other historical event.

Thankyou Paul, & Don.
Historical analysis is in an inferior position precisely due to the fact that researchers & historians are compelled to rely on personal documents, inscriptions, and to some degree, what we might call heresay.

Historians would envy being able to deal with the same class of evidence as might be found in a modern criminal investigation. Which is why they make every effort to use C-14 dating, dendrochronology and stratification dating.
In order to raise the credibility of their theory & the accuracy of their study.

What I am suggesting to you is that we should not "lower the bar" by arguing that a century old murder case should be relegated to purely historical analysis when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal.

With respect to Littlechild's opinions, in 1913, that Tumblety was a likely Ripper suspect, in 1888, (25 years previous!). I was meaning that Littlechild had been in Special Branch and not involved in the Whitechapel murder investigation we might be allowed to assume that any information that came his way with respect to suspects was given to him by others, ie; his sources were second-hand or worse. Which is what I meant by heresay. Had Littlechild been in Swanson's position it would be a different matter.

Newspaper articles as we all know are both a blessing and a curse. Some stories are testable, many are not. Some of the most intriguing points in the case are contained in a singular paragraph and not repeated elsewhere. Because some of these comments cannot be tested their acceptance becomes more based on what the article says, and its truthfulness judged on whether it conforms with accepted paradigms, or contests them.
We tend to put our own credibility on the line when we use a little known press report in support of an argument.

If I recall correctly, there was not one mention in any of those wired communications between Britain & America that Tumblety was a murder suspect. Where the American press got their information is not clear, but reliable information does exist on the reason Tumblety was arrested, and it was not as a Ripper suspect.

We know what Tumblety was suspected for, and what he was arrested for.
Reliable information does exist on both the arrest & the charge, we do not need to disregard reliable police documentation in favour of the words of a charlatan or unsourced American newspaper stories.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

We have another factor to consider linked in. What amount of historocal personal opinion from an individual do we accept when we know that the individual opining in memoirs expresses known false facts? Do we just put this down to faulty memory? Age? Inflated ego to put the writer in a favourable light perhaps? Into a catagory each piece must be placed by present day enthusiasts. The writer may have bias and agendae which cloud the opinion too. These things must be considered. Anderson is the prime example of this.

Hi Phil.
I quite agree, any number of the flawed statements in Anderson's memoirs could be due to your "all of the above". Which is why I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument.

We do know what Anderson truely thought about suspects, in Oct. 1888, "we have no clue".

Done!

Regards, Jon S.

[Supe]

Jon,

Much of what you wrote above about historical analysis simply does not make sense.

You say that we ought not "lower the bar" by limiting ourselves to historical analysis "when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal." What, pray tell, are those contemporary sources and why are they "reliable"? Indeed, part of a historian's burden is sifting all contemporary sources for reliability.

You also suggest that any information about suspects possessed by anyone outside the investigation is hearsay. But by your definition any information about a suspect other than that by the person who first says "Here now, I do believe Smith is the guilty cahp." is second-hand or worse. And, not having been there, you have no idea when Littlechild was first apprised (and by whom) of suspicions about Tumblety.

You also wrote, in another post, I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument. This is sheer nonsense. Memoirs must be looked at with an especially skeptical eye, but I daresay even those of Baron Munchausen could well provide incontestable nuggets of fact.

Historians gather all the information they can, make note of what is said (and often what is not said), make judgements about the various sources and then try to theorize based on their findings. It is not an exact science; indeed, most of it is simply interpretation and some fields of historical study are constantly rewritten as new generations of scholars, with new interpretations, come along. One rather amusing example is the many reasons advanced for the Salem witch trials that seem attuned to the cultural problems facing society at the time of the theory's creation. Thus, there was the pyschoanalytical explanation, the hallucinatory drug explanation; the conflict of generations explanation and at the height of the Iraq War, the post-traumatic stress disorder explanation keyed by Indian wars in what is now Maine.

Whether you are happy with it or not, until such time as we have time-travel historical analysis is the best tool we have to investifate those 1888 murders.

Yours,

Don.

[Jonathan H]

To Wickerman

You are confusing Tumblety's arrest as a Ripper suspect with what he was eventually charged with; as a sexual 'deviant'.

When a source goes against its expected bias it is deemed potentially more reliable than sources which make claims that are self-aggrandizing, or collectively so.

Hence the arguable reliability of 'Days of My Years' as a primary source, which claim that there was no mystery, and had not been since 'some years after' the Kelly murder -- which turned out to be the last murder but was not known as such at the time.

Anderson, Swanson, Littlechild, and Abberline, as sources, all fall for the 'autumn of terror' trap, though not Reid.

That is an interpretation of surviving sources, and its merits and demerits have to be judged, against the same, of competing interpretations.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,
Actually, it would be hearsay if it was something of which Littlechild had little or no direct experience, but if he knew that Tumblety was a Ripper suspect and knew that a large file existed on him, then he would be stating fact as he knew and understood it to be. And if he knew the evidence on which the suspicions were based then his conclusion that Tumblety was ‘a very likely’ suspect, whist his assessment and opinion, was informed and therefore reliable.

Paul.
As you know, Littlechilds letter was written 20 years after he left the force.
Therefore, when Littlechild suggests "among the suspects" we might question, if he is talking about contemporary suspects, Aug-Nov, 1888, or near-contemporary suspects, Dec 1888-1893? (the year he resigned).

If Littlechild knew there was a list of suspects, and that Tumblety was among them, it is strange that he did not clue in on Druitt being mistakenly referred to as a doctor (Dr. D).
While it is true that Druitt was not a doctor, it does appear there was a common misunderstanding that the suicide case had been a doctor, even Macnaughten identified Druitt as a doctor.
It was only the next year after Littlechild resigned that Macnaughten, in the memorandum, referred to Druitt as a suspect, so it is difficult to see any high placed police official not being aware of any suspicions about Druitt.

And yet, the very fact that Littlechild confused the suicide story, associated with Druitt, with Tumblety tends to suggest Littlechild was not so well informed about Tumblety even during his time on the force.
It is even possible that Littlechild has mistakenly merged two people. One true police suspect (Druitt), with one true Special Branch suspect (Tumblety), and thought they were the same person, an American 'Doctor' as a Ripper suspect who committed suicide.

I think, like all these after-the-fact writings, the Littlechild letter has too many unexplainable inconsistencies to be regarded as a reliable source in claiming Tumblety was a contemporary police suspect in the Ripper murders.
He may have been Littlechild's private suspect, but this letter does not add support to the claim that he was an official police suspect.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Jon,

Much of what you wrote above about historical analysis simply does not make sense.

You say that we ought not "lower the bar" by limiting ourselves to historical analysis "when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal." What, pray tell, are those contemporary sources and why are they "reliable"?

Don.
We know that Tumblety was not arrested as a Ripper suspect because we have legitimate documentation that he was arrested for "unnatural offences".
The police are not about to arrest him twice and let him out on bail for the lesser charge, that is sheer nonsense.
So, he was never arrested in connection with the Whitechapel murders.

You also wrote, in another post, I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument. This is sheer nonsense. Memoirs must be looked at with an especially skeptical eye,

Thankyou, and a sceptical eye is not about to allow the use of such material as support in an academic argument. Until the claims can be verified, those claims within the memoirs will be left out from serious scholarly debates.

One example, Josephus is our only source for the siege at Masada.
Does he speak the truth?
1) Josephus was not present.
2) He was a Romanized Jew, not trying to create sympathy for the Jewish cause.
3) Josephus was principally writing for the Roman Emperor, to put the Romans in a favourable light.

Does this mean that when ostraca was found in the ruins painted with Jewish names that the Josephus story of the last survivors drawing lots for the genocide/suicide pact must be fact?

No academic will claim the words of Josephus are proof that lots were drawn.
No scholar would be so rash.

Regards, Jon S.