The press, what they knew and how they knew it.

[Wickerman]

Ergo, Jon, it can be stated beyond doubt that senior investigators came to view Hutchinson’s narrative as unreliable. And if Hutchinson’s story was considered unreliable, Hutchinson must by definition have been considered an unreliable witness.

Garry.
These are your conclusions, and might I say, tainted by the fact you continue to believe in a false claim by the Star newspaper.
An unsubstantiated claim, I might add.

Please double-check the dates, your conjecture does not hold up.

12th Nov. - Hutchinson was deemed credible by Abberline.

13th Nov. - Daily Telegraph & The Echo, report on a division of opinion between the City police who do not favor the Cox suspect, and the Met. who do.

14th Nov. - The Echo, also add that although the story given by Hutchinson is not as strong as first thought, it is still deemed significant to pursue inquiries.

16th Nov. The Evening News report an exchange between a Constable and Mr Gallowey, where the Constable clearly stated:
".... that he was looking for a man of a very different appearance."
(i.e. different than to the Cox suspect.)

Also, by way of confirming the above, we have this:

16th Nov. - The Sheffield Independent reports:
"The police are now to a great extent concentrating their efforts upon an endeavour to find a man so vividly described by George Hutchinson.."

19th Nov. - The Echo, report:
"Some of the authorities are inclined to place most reliance upon the statement made by Hutchinson as to his having seen the latest victim with a gentlemanly man of dark complexion, with a dark moustache. Others are disposed to think that the shabby man with a blotchy face and a carrotty moustache described by the witness Mary Ann Cox, is more likely to be the murderer."


Garry, it is abundantly clear that the police had not rejected the story given by Hutchinson, even up to the 19th, a full week after he sat down with Abberline.

The false opinion published by The Star (re: Hutchinson discredited) is dated 15th Nov. - so clearly inaccurate.

... The fact remains, however, that Hutchinson would not and could not have continued to be regarded as a reliable witness once his Astrakhan-related narrative was rejected.

As demonstrated above, no such rejection exists, or ever existed, before the 19th November.

Why you persist in this sadly inaccurate and misleading interpretation is the real mystery here.
I think you are capable of better.

[The Good Michael]

Jon,

If I may: While I agree with you that there was no initial rejection of Hutchinson's story by Abberline, and that any discrediting of his story seems to have been not widely spoken of by the police afterwards, they definitely gave up the chase on the given suspect at some point. This does correspond with rejection whether admitted or not. But adding to this idea, I believe if they (the police) spent time and money (ala 5 pounds to Hutchinson as the story goes), they wouldn't have wanted to state in public that it was a false lead. I do believe that money was given and I do believe it was that sum because the police wanted him to stick around for suspect ID and he finagled such things as a nice hotel room and meals if he was going to have to stay around. If so, and if this lead was openly discredited, the public would have been outraged.

Mike

[Wickerman]

Hello Mike.

There is of course more to this than what I write above.

On the 13th Nov. we should acknowledge that the initial surge of interest in the story given by Hutchinson faded slightly, but not so serious a setback as to have the police reject him altogether, as was evident to the reporters of the press.

This perceptible devaluation of the importance of his story, I believe, was the impact of Dr Bond's medical estimate upon the time of death of Mary Kelly.
Scotland Yard could not accept Bond's estimation without reservation because they would know that there were many variables which could affect such an estimation (recall Dr Phillips's caution over the Chapman ToD), but neither could they ignore it.
Likewise, although Bond's estimate conflicts with Hutchinson's evidence, they cannot simply reject such a strong witness like Hutchinson, so the conclusion quite rightly arrived at would be to adopt two separate lines of inquiry.

This is what the press reported as actually occurring, two separate lines of inquiry, one for the Cox suspect, and one for the Hutchinson suspect.

The search for "Astrakhan" likely continued throughout November until, coincidentally, Isaac's was reported to have been found (the MET had been looking for him), he was arrested and brought before Abberline.

We do know that Isaacs was held by Abberline while intensive inquiries were made concerning his whereabouts on the night of November 8th. Why would they need to know this?

The press somehow learned about Isaacs being connected with a coat trimmed with Astrakhan, that he fit the description of the man described by Hutchinson. This would explain the interest by Abberline concerning his movements on the night of the 8th.

The police, must have been able to establish that Isaacs was both the elusive Astrachan (Isaacs had been in prison from 12th Nov - 3rd Dec.) and, innocent of suspicion, hence the Hutchinson story fades into history.

The important point, Mike, which destroys this "Hutchinson Discredited" myth is that the myth was claimed by The Star on the 15th Nov., so as we know Astrachan was still being looked for as late as the 19th, then the myth is exploded.
The fact the Hutchinson story faded for other reasons, much later, is irrelevant to this particular argument.

If Hutchinson's suspect was cleared of culpability, then equally Hutchinson was not discredited. It is merely that the man he saw was not her killer.

[Garry Wroe]

The old stance of the Hutchinsonians was - rather ridiculously - that the witnesses´signatures and Toppys ditto were not even remotely alike. And when I, Mike, sam Flynn etcetera said that they WERE extremely similar, we were met by the odd scornful "says who - YOU?" with added remarks that we were certainly not experts, and thus not fit to judge.

First of all, Fish, my response to your previous post was tendered as a consequence of your dogmatic and somewhat belligerent assertions with regard to Toppy. If you wish to persist in your belief that Toppy and the witness Hutchinson were one and the same, fine by me. It’s an entirely different matter, however, when you misrepresent this said belief as a statement of fact and then attempt to ram it down the throats of other posters.

So the discussion should be over, gentlemen. The only thing that could change that was if you had the credentials to override Leanders verdict, and to be Frank (and he is!), once you told me that I was no expert, you simultaneously also ditched your own chances to contribute an informed opinion. Frank Leander therefore rules!

Put bluntly, Fish, you disregarded two Hutchinson statement signatures which bore not the slightest resemblance to the Toppy handstyle and instead presented Frank Leander with the one specimen that does share certain similarities with the Toppy signatures. Not content with this thoroughly unscientific approach, you then ignored any note of caution that Frank introduced into his analysis and further dismissed those elements which mediated against Toppy being the man who signed the Hutchinson police statement.

Sorry, Fish, but science doesn’t work like that. In fact it is to the detriment of Ripper studies that such an approach could be considered an appropriate method of research. It isn’t, and hopefully never will be.

I am leaving this discussion for now, and I fully expect to see another expert mentioned, an expert of whom we don´t even know what material she looked at (how is that for professionalism and protocol, Garry?) as some sort of counterweight. Obviously, it is not until we know what she saw that we can tell the value of her stance.

As I have made clear on previous occasions, Fish, I will continue to regard the Iremonger conclusions as lacking in any scientific validity until such time as they are formally published and subjected to peer review analysis. This is standard scientific procedure – something you might care to bear in mind before next repeating the assertion that Frank Leander provided scientific proof that Hutchinson and Toppy were one and the same.

[Ben]

Right then...

Here's my final post on the Toppy/signature issue, and it will be final, on this thread at least. We don't want any "Oh, I did say I was going to leave this discussion, but Ben then posted the following, and I simply must address it" type of posts. If I see any of those, I will simply respond, at considerably greater length, using precisely the same arguments that worked a treat last last time.

I take it you gentlemen know the normal reason why people do anything they can to avoid a subject ...?

I wouldn't know about any "normal reason", Fisherman, but the reason we're shutting down this particular discussion is because we've done it all before on a thread that spawned 240 bloody pages of posts on the subject, and many other threads besides. I don't know about you, but I reckon those 3,000 or so posts just about covered all angles. You'll notice that I strategically provided a link to one of those discussions in order that any interested parties might peruse that, as opposed to writing all the arguments out again on an unrelated thread.

The only document examiner to have compared Toppy's marriage signatures with those of the original "witness" statement signatures (and there are three of them) was Sue Iremonger. This was a professional examination on the original documents, conducted by an expert practitioner, who gave a presentation on her findings at the World Association of Document Examiners (WADE) conference in 1993 (where she also proved herself a leading expert voice in dismissing the suggestion that the "diary" was written in James Maybrick's hand). And yes, she compared the original documents - the three signatures appended to Hutchinson's statement with Toppy's original marriage certificate - as attested to by Bob Hinton, Martin Fido and others.

According to Iremonger, the signatures did not match.

According to the only expert in the field to have conducted a proper examination of the signatures, Toppy was not the "witness" George Hutchinson.

But, as was to be expected, this wasn't good enough for a very select few with long history of engaging me in protracted, long-winded debate on the subject of Hutchinson, and whose claim that Hutchinson was an innocent, truthful witness would, to their minds, be strengthened by Toppy being the real Hutchinson. Thus, in an exercise of staggering pointlessness, you supplied Frank Leander of the Swedish Handwriting Investigation Team (or whatever it is!) and showed him some scanned, emailed copies of Toppy's signatures along with a scanned, emailed copy of JUST ONE of the Hutchinson statement signatures - the one that you thought was the most Toppy-ish - and didn't bother with the other two which looked nothing remotely like any of Toppy's efforts.

Leander then responded with the emphatic assertion that he could not offer an expert opinion in the absence of the original documents. On the basis of the weak material with which he was supplied, he could only the neutral stance that there some differences as well as similarities. This, however, was hideously misinterpreted by those who had already nailed their colours to the Toppy mast as a declaration of a match. You then contacted him eight more times for additional and wholly unnecessary "clarification", pursuant to our then ongoing debate, but did not appear to realise how obvious you were making it with every new email that you were extremely keen for there to be a match. It certainly didn't help that you supplied him with erroneous information (i.e. regarding the number of George Hutchinsons in the East End at the time) which, to be fair, he ought to have disregarded.

I bet you silly sums that if he'd seen the originals, he'd scoff at the suggestion that Toppy was a match for the witness.

The Leander "analysis" is therefore nothing of the sort, as Leander himself acknowledged. Iremonger's is the only extant valid examination of the signatures, and she says they're a mismatch. If you're unhappy with this, I'm afraid further repetitive "discussion" will achieve nothing except all round aggravation and ill-feeling. You'll need to be proactive instead, and this means arranging for another valid analysis to take place, using the original documents. Inevitably, this might involve spending a bit of dosh.

All the best in advance if you can really be arsed, but Iremonger's verdict is more than good enough for me.

Regards,
Ben

[Garry Wroe]

But how could they believe Hutch and disbelieve his story, Garry ?

Witnesses make honest mistakes, Dave. They confuse people, places, times and dates. With this in mind it is possible that investigators concluded that Hutchinson was an honest but mistaken witness. It happens.

[Garry Wroe]

These are your conclusions, and might I say, tainted by the fact you continue to believe in a false claim by the Star newspaper.
An unsubstantiated claim, I might add.

Are you suggesting, Jon, that Hutchinson was thus Anderson's stellar Jewish witness? You know, the only person who ever got a good view of the Whitechapel Murderer. If not then The Star and Echo got it right. Right?

[Ben]

Good grief, are we really back on this Isaacs nonsense?

Isaacs, as Sally correctly points out, was in prison at the time of the Kelly murder. This was reported in Lloyds in late December, and neatly and perfectly accounts for the police ditching him as a credible suspect. Evidently therefore, the early press reports on interviews with Ms Cusins with regard to Isaacs supposedly "pacing his room" on the night of the murder were revealed to be false. So me may dispense with the idea that he was Kelly's murderer, and we may certainly dispense with the idea that he was Mr. feckin Astrakhan, whose ostentatious and opulent-looking clothing and accessories were so obviously beyond the means of a homeless cigar-maker and petty thief. And that's even if we entertain the already snort-worthy concept that Astrakhan man was anything other than a fabrication of Hutchinson's creation.

Isaacs lasted five minutes as a suspect, more or less, and all because a few nosey neighbours slagged him off to the police. When he came out of prison AFTER the Kelly murder, he returned immediately to his thieving ways and was arrested again, briefly held as a ripper suspect and then swiftly released when they discovered his prison alibi.

It is the worst sort of nonsense to suggest that Hutchinson's story was only ditched when Astrakhan man was identified (in the form of Isaacs!) and cleared of murder.

What..?!!

How can he possibly have been "cleared"?

Let's think about this more carefully, please. If there was the vaguest consideration that Hutchinson wasn't talking utter bollocks and that Astrakhan did exist, he's a permanent suspect in the killings. That is unavoidable. The man was last reported as being in Kelly's room at 3:00am. What are the realistic chances of him procuring a water-tight alibi 45 minutes mater? Essentially nil, that's what. Isaacs? Busting out of the clink on 9th November, finding a load of expensive-looking clothes and accessories, bumping into Kelly, staying with her until after 3.00am before departing and miraculously finding an alibi for the accepted time of the murder just half an hour or so later? The type of alibi that puts his innocence beyond question?

It's offensively ludicrous nonsense.

Hutchinson's discrediting had absolutely nothing to do with Bond's time of death. The police did not endorse Bond's time of death, and nor were they duty-bound to. Here is an extract from the Star, 13th November:

"As to the time of the murder, it is now generally admitted that Kelly could not, as some have stated, have been alive on Friday morning. The police have come to the conclusion that the woman who made the most positive statement to this effect must have been mistaken as to the day. Dr. Phillips's evidence, together with that of Mary Ann Cox, Elizabeth Prater, and others, proves that the murder was committed SHORTLY AFTER THREE O'CLOCK- a fact which brings into startling relief the murderer's coolness, caution, and tenacity of purpose."

There is nothing remotely wrong with the Star’s reporting. They didn’t lie for the sheer, deeply illogical thrill of it. They obtained their information from the police, who clearly believed – as the vast majority of modern commentators believe (including you, ironically!) – that Kelly was murdered later than Bond’s estimate.

13th Nov. - Daily Telegraph & The Echo, report on a division of opinion between the City police who do not favor the Cox suspect, and the Met. who do.

No.

They reported that the authorities had attached a very reduced importance to Hutchinson's account because he had not come forward earlier or appeared at the inquest - because of question marks over his credibility, in other words.

14th Nov. - The Echo, also add that although the story given by Hutchinson is not as strong as first thought, it is still deemed significant to pursue inquiries.

They also add that Hutchinson's statement had been considerably discounted because his evidence had not been presented earlier, at the inquest, and in a "proper manner".

16th Nov. The Evening News report an exchange between a Constable and Mr Gallowey, where the Constable clearly stated:
".... that he was looking for a man of a very different appearance."
(i.e. different than to the Cox suspect.)

This is nothing remotely to do with Astrakhan.

Galloway became suspicious of a carrotty-moustachioed man on the street who was, in fact, an undercover detective. Not being aware of this, Galloway alerted a PC who simply fobbed him off with a false excuse for not pursuing this man. Evidently, the PC was aware of the carroty man's identity and understandably didn't want to blow his cover.

19th Nov. - The Echo, report:
"Some of the authorities are inclined to place most reliance upon the statement made by Hutchinson as to his having seen the latest victim with a gentlemanly man of dark complexion, with a dark moustache. Others are disposed to think that the shabby man with a blotchy face and a carrotty moustache described by the witness Mary Ann Cox, is more likely to be the murderer."

All this means is that "some" of the authorities continued to place “most reliance” on the Astrakhan description supplied by Hutchinson, evidently in spite of the fact that the statement had been “considerably discounted”. What isn’t specified is just who amongst the authorities towed this line, and more importantly, how much influence their beliefs had on the direction of the investigation. My strong suspicion would be “not much” considering that none of the senior police officials, such as Abberline, Anderson and Swanson, appeared to place "most reliance” upon Hutchinson's description.

[DVV]

Witnesses make honest mistakes, Dave. They confuse people, places, times and dates. With this in mind it is possible that investigators concluded that Hutchinson was an honest but mistaken witness. It happens.

I know, Garry, it happens.
But is it likely to be the case with Hutch ?
He could hardly confuse people, ie MJK.
Place ? certainly not.
Date ? - memorable trip to Romford, a whole night wandering the streets, Lord Mayor's day...

[harry]

continuity

Hutchinson's statement encompasses an almost 24 hour continuity of activity, each unit of which is suggested by the event precedeing it.W e have the going and returning from Romford,the arrival in Commercial Street,the closure of the Victoria Home,thecontinuing along Commercial Street,the appearance Of Kelly and A man,the following them to Dorset Street and loitering there,then the further w alking the streets.All without witness,except for the brief appe arance of Lewis.Take any single Item from the above and the whole tale collapses.Now which of the above are we expected to believe was not experienced on that Thursday through Friday,and which was proven?

[Garry Wroe]

I know, Garry, it happens. But is it likely to be the case with Hutch ?

Not in my opinion, Dave. But then Hutchinson's story was clearly rejected, and the reality that no-one appears to have made the link between Wideawake and the allegedly loitering Hutchinson is certainly suggestive that investigators came to believe that he was not where he claimed to have been at the times specified within his police statement. Had this connection been recognized Hutchinson would surely have come under suspicion. With this in mind there remain two obvious possibilities: investigators either came to regard him as a sincere but mistaken witness or a profiteer endeavouring to make capital from a wholly fictitious concatenation involving Kelly and Astrakhan. Whereas my money is on the latter, I don’t entirely rule out the former. Just about all we can say at this remove is that Hutchinson’s narrative was re-evaluated and then rejected within hours of the Abberline interview, whereupon, like Violenia before him, Hutchinson was given not so much as a backward glance by investigators.

[Ben]

investigators either came to regard him as a sincere but mistaken witness or a profiteer endeavouring to make capital from a wholly fictitious concatenation involving Kelly and Astrakhan. Whereas my money is on the latter, I don’t entirely rule out the former.

My money's on the latter too, Garry, not least because it corresponds so well with what certain newspapers were able to extract from police sources and publish at the time. Had there been any police consensus that honest confusion lay behind Hutchinson's discrediting, Dew would have acknowledged this in his memoirs. He'd have wrote something like: "it was generally believed at the time that...", as opposed to expressing what was clearly a personal speculation only. Moreover, had date/time confusion been a generally accepted explanation, there would still have been considerable interest in tracing the Astrakhan man, who would - under those circumstances - still have been a hot suspect, albeit one who couldn't be tied to the crime scene at the pivotal time. Significantly, this didn't happen.

Hi Jon,

Any response from the Morning Advertiser yet?

They must have been a bit non-plussed to receive a message that read, in essence: "There's a bloke who says your paper is a rag - are you a rag?". I'm not sure quite what sort answer you're expecting to receive: "Yes, we can confirm that we are a rag". If ever you are to receive a response, I'd be prepared for just a tinsy winsy bit of bias if I were you.

The fact that the Morning Advertiser was a publication for the pub trade (yes, yes, it definitely was) has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that they published misleading and inaccurate information on successive days' reporting in the aftermath of the Kelly murder, and that they were worse than their press contemporaries in this respect (yes, yes, they definitely were).

As for your insinuation that these facts have only been alluded to in an effort to sustain a "crumbling" theory involving Hutchinson (actually, the weaknesses inherent in your counters to this "theory" serve to make it even stronger), you ought to remind yourself that they were not themselves responsible for conjuring up the nonsense they published about Hutchinson on the 14th November. The culprit, as we've already established, was the Press Association. The Morning Advertiser simply printed it.

As for your claim that the Echo, Pall Mall Gazette and Star represented the "bottom of the barrel", this is ludicrous, outdated nonsense that only you subscribe to. Yes, the last two mentioned were considered radical (sue 'em), but there was nothing to suggest they were any less accurate than most other newspapers with regard to reporting on the ripper murders. The Star were able to track down sources that no other paper accessed, and the Echo were provably in communication with the police.

[Wickerman]

Are you suggesting, Jon, that Hutchinson was thus Anderson's stellar Jewish witness? You know, the only person who ever got a good view of the Whitechapel Murderer. If not then The Star and Echo got it right. Right?

Anyone who is shackled to the idea that Astrachan/Isaacs was the Whitechapel murderer might, but as you know, that does not include me.

Therefore what Anderson said has no relevance to the Hutchinson debate, from my perspective, Hutchinson did not see Mary's killer.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

Any response from the Morning Advertiser yet?

Yes, Sue Selby politely suggested I contact the previous owners as their records do not go back so far.

[Fisherman]

Garry!

I have made a serious effort to leave this thread, and I would have stayed away from it - had I not been misrepresented.

The interesting thing is that you seem to think that I do the misrepresenting myself:

"If you wish to persist in your belief that Toppy and the witness Hutchinson were one and the same, fine by me. It’s an entirely different matter, however, when you misrepresent this said belief as a statement of fact..."

Now, I absolutely stand by my BELIEF that Toppy was the witness - of course - but I have never said that it is a fact that this so!

Let´s move on to your last passage:

"As I have made clear on previous occasions, Fish, I will continue to regard the Iremonger conclusions as lacking in any scientific validity until such time as they are formally published and subjected to peer review analysis. This is standard scientific procedure – something you might care to bear in mind before next repeating the assertion that Frank Leander provided scientific proof that Hutchinson and Toppy were one and the same."

There it is again!

I know EXACTLY what Leander said, I know the EXACT limitations to it and I have NEVER said that his verdict constitutes "scientific proof" that the two men were one and the same.

I would therefore be very grateful if you refrained from claiming the opposite. Please?

Here it is, once more:

Frank Leander worked with just one example of the witnesses´signature. Leander very clearly stated that before any certainty could be reached, he would need ten (10) examples of the signature.

Ten examples of Toppys signature can be found. But only three examples of the witnesses signature can be found.

It therefore applies that even if the existing witness signatures and Toppys signatures were carbon copies of each other, it STILL would not be enough to reach anything but a pointer in the direction of a match. As it stands, no document specialist would say that it can be decided that the witness and Toppy were the same man, no matter how convinced that document specialist is that the likenesses are extremely good (if that´s what the specialist thinks) - three signatures can never be basis enough for a conclusive verdict!

This I thought we all knew, Garry? I know that I have at least said it hundreds of times, just as I have said hundreds of times that Leander thought that the similarities were so large and fundamental that he ASSUMED that any forthcoming material in the issue would confirm his SUSPICION that the signatures were by the same man. He said that he would be surprised if this was not the case, and that´s a very, very strong pointer as to what Leander thought.

But a strong pointer is all it is - it is NOT proof of a match.

Can we leave this issue now, and allow me to stay away from the thread without having things said that are not correct about my stance? I am very, very, very convinced that Toppy was the witness, and that surely must be my prerogative? I do NOT, however, say that it is a proven thing. I say that a renowned document specialist said that he would be surprised if this was not so, and that he assumed that any forthcoming evidence would strenghten that thesis, adding that he had not been given material enough to be conclusively sure - for, once again, the routines and rules of the genre disenables anything less than ten examples of a signature to be conclusive. Full stop.

I very much applaud your sensible stance on Iremonger - there is no other position to take than the one you obviously join me in: the lack of documentation means that we must await this documentation before we can say anything at all about the value of her investigation into the matter, simple as. That´s how it works and not to recognize this is to prove oneself unable to make a correct assessment.

I fully expect you to be the rational spokesman for what I call the Hutchinsonians in matters like these. You always are. Which is why I wonder why you lead on that I have claimed that there is scientific proof for Toppy being the witness.

Now if you will allow me, I will leave the thread once more, hopefully to stay away from the present discussion for some significant time!

All the best,
Fisherman