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

[Wickerman]

Hi fish
I would have to disagree with the whole recognition argument you make. You either recognize someone or you don't. I can't remember any single time I told (or thought about)someone hey I thought that was you but I wasn't sure.

Maybe you need to get out more

Seriously, everybody, at one time or another thinks they recognize someone from a brief glimpse in a crowd. Or the driver in a passing car, or a passenger on a bus as it passed, and don't tell me you haven't.

These markets were busy places, seeing a man disappear through the crowds wearing an Astrachan coat, same hat?, and possibly spats, maybe it was him, maybe not, he's not sure. Why?
Because he did not get a full view of him face-on, it can be as simple as that.

Why make more of it than it was?

[Sally]

Hi Jon,

Let me help you out here. Fortunately, we can provide all the 'Trade and Commercial' listings from the period.

Not at all surprising that the Morning Advertiser is not listed as a Trade paper, but, WE know this don't we Ben.

I hope this comes out large enough to settle the matter for you.

Right. But what you provide here does not constitute 'all' of anything, does it? It's a list of publications produced by an advertising company.

That is what constitutes 'proof'

'Proof' of what, do you think? Proof that the Morning Advertiser wasn't a trade paper? I'm afraid not. For a start, the list above is not definitive, so it cannot 'prove' any absolutes. Then there's the fact that the Morning Advertiser is and has always been a trade paper. That's a matter of record.

Why doesn't the Morning Advertiser appear in White's list? Without knowing what they published the list for, it's difficult to say - but it could be, for example that the MA didn't take adverts from Whites - there were other agencies in London. It could be that there was a fee for inclusion on the list and the MA didn't pay that fee. If the list belongs to a promotional publication, the MA may not have required that promotion, having a very large circulation at the time - second only to the Times, I believe - boy those Victorians liked to drink.

Then there's the fact that F R Whites and the Morning Advertiser were neighbours on Fleet Street. Maybe they just didn't get on

No proof here Jon. Sorry.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

Anything particularly disagreeable about my polite request to avoid dredging up old Hutchinson debates on an unrelated thread?

You may not have realized it, but each word I wrote was in response to what YOU wrote - on this exact thread. So the obvious question is: why did you not write it on a Hutchinson thread yourself if that was of such importance to you?


If you didn't, that's very commendable...

I didn´t, no. The question therefore remains: Why did you mispresent it as a quotation?


But he had the opportunity to make it good. That's my point.

Yes, and it will have to remain your point only. The rest of us (with a few memorable exceptions) will, I suspect, readily admit that we cannot possibly know that.

And does any of this remotely apply [I][B]to a man who lived a coupe of hundred yards down the road from the scene of the crime?
Saying "we don't know what he did or where he went" fails to take into account the fact that he must have woken up and left the Victoria Home at some point on Friday.

You are trying to establish the unestablishable as a fact. To begin with, you are treating it as a fact that Hutchinson made his sighting on Friday morning, whereas you know very well that it may have been on THURSDAY morning, as per Walter Dew.
But since this does not apply to your logic, you habitually choose to call what Dew said "spew". And that´s coming from a man who sits on his chamber 125 years after the murders, commenting on a detective that worked the case, everything else unconsidered.
So you see, what you call impossible attaches to the wrong item here. The only thing that is seemingly impossible is for you to include material that does not suit your thinking on this score.

He wasn't "pennyless". He can't have been, as a regular user of the fourpence per night Victoria Home. I only brought up the Manchester Guardian to illustrate the shortcomings of the suggestion that disappearing out of London would have ensured that he heard nothing of the Kelly murder.

Oh, come on - we both know that he would by and large have been a man of very small peculiar means, whereas the Manchester Guardian was a financially well off paper. There is no way you can compare the economic muscles inbetween the two, so let´s not pretend that this was ever so. Let´s just admit that saying that if the Manchester Guardian - a wired-up newspaper actively hunting for news and making a living from it - knew, then Hutchinson should have known too, has a comical element to it. That was what you said, and I am having serious trouble finding a less laughable comparison. It is a preposterous thing to suggest, end of.

So it's back on topic time.

A change of mind, then? Fine by me.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Hi fish
I would have to disagree with the whole recognition argument you make. You either recognize someone or you don't. I can't remember any single time I told (or thought about)someone hey I thought that was you but I wasn't sure. You either pin it in your brain that that's the person but if your not sure you don't . You disregard it as not being who you thought it was and forget about it. Yes your argument seems reasonable in a logical way but I don't think that's what happens in reality. It's just not how the brain works.

Are you actually saying, Abby, that no matter how brief a look you get of a person you know well, and no matter which angle and distance you get it from, you will always recognize this person? The circumstances will not play any role in disallowing a 100 per cent safe identification?

Is that what you are telling me? If so, I urge you to rethink the matter. It would mean that nobody in history who ever got some sort of glance at a person they knew well would ever have failed to make a safe identification.
Any such person who have said "I THINK it was my friend, but I cannot be certain, since I did not get a good enough look at him" would in fact be a liar. Is that what you are suggesting?

All the best,
Fisherman

PS. I notice that Jon was equally baffled by your post. Or at least I THINK it was Jon - it all went down so appropriately quickly that I cannot be sure that it WAS him ...

[Wickerman]

Why doesn't the Morning Advertiser appear in White's list?

It does.
As a recognised daily newspaper listed among its peers.




Once again my dear, you back the wrong horse.
The Morning Advertiser was not, a trade paper, it was a Daily Newspaper like the Times, Daily Telegraph, Morning Post, Standard, etc.

[Sally]

Jon - what part of 'a matter of record' don't you undertand here?

I'm not the one backing 'the wrong horse' here - I'm not backiing any 'horse'. Facts is facts - and the facts in this matter tell us that the MA was (and is, right now, today) a trade paper. The fact that it contained general new items as well does not invalidate that reality, I'm afraid.

The chief interest of the MA is, and always was, the pub trade.

I don't really see what the issue is here - it' not really up for debate.

[Wickerman]

Sally.
Its the source for this 'matter of record' that is in question.

I have shown 'you' an article from the period (circa 1890), which shows what category the Morning Advertiser had established itself in, and what it was known to be at the time.

Now, the challenge for you is to locate an equal source from the period which places the Morning Advertiser in a different category.

I don't give a hoot for Wiki, they can be written by anyone and are never a recognised source for academic research.

* * * * * * * * *

The other aspect to this distraction is, that neither you nor anyone else have ever attempted to explain why a Trade paper would have been any less reliable than a main stream paper.
Do you know how they were structured?, what qualifications their reporters had?
I mean apart promoting a smear campaign, under what rationale do you claim any Trade paper could not publish an accurate article from any telegraph provider, or via their own reporters?
You do know what a prejudicial argument is I suppose, one of detriment but without foundation.

Where is the foundation which enables 'you' to claim a Trade paper was not as reliable as any other mainstream newspaper?

Go ahead, please refrain from dancing around the issue and establish your case with tangible reason's, once and for all.

[DVV]

Hi Dave,

I agree entirely with your thoughts on Hutchinson's press account, with its dubious "second sighting" of Astrakhan on Sunday. If Hutchinson's man truly existed and appeared as Hutchinson described, he stood out like a sore thumb and was readily identifiable anywhere. That's just obvious. Moreover, if he existed, it meant Hutchinson must have acquired one heck of a good look at him in order to have recorded the minutest details of the man's face, lower body and upper body. To allege all this, and then claim that a man he saw on Sunday might have been the same person is quite clearly ridiculous.

Equally ridiculous is the idea that Hutchinson should have been satisfied with only a brief glance in Petticoat Lane, if indeed that's all he gained. So great was his curiosity in the small hours of the 9th that he followed this same man from Flower & Dean Street to Miller's Court and then waited outside in miserable conditions for 45 minutes just to see if he would come out again. Why would he warp into "disinterested" mode when confronted with a possible second sighting of the same man?

With regard to the suggestion that Hutchinson hadn't heard of the murder by Sunday, I regard that as fantastically outlandish and, frankly, borderline impossible. Here's what I wrote on the subject on the "Innocent, By George!" thread a couple of years ago:

Even if he ventured miles out of London, it is not plausible that he managed to find a mysterious location where he didn’t learn of the murder until Saturday or when he found himself on Petticoat Lane on the Sunday after the murder, unless he ventured out into the countryside after allegedly aborting his Miller's Court vigil and shoved his head down a rabbit hole for two days. Even the Manchester Guardian had got wind of the murder and reported on the subject in time for the morning of the 10th, and it wasn't just rumours of another ‘orrible murder either, it referred specifically to Mary Jane Kelly of Dorset Street, Spitalfields.

Even if we accept that he returned to the Victoria Home after "walking about all night" on the morning of the alleged Miller’s Court episode, he must have emerged from it at some point, and when he did, it is inconceivable that he did not hear the gossip in the nearby streets and in the building itself at some point relatively early on Friday. There’s the rest of that day, the whole of Saturday and the early part of Sunday in which to discover news of the murder. The murder happened in Dorset Street, virtually on his doorstep.

And no, Jon...

There is no realistic possibility of Hutchinson being swayed by a significant minority of newspapers claiming that Mary Kelly was killed later in the morning. Unless Hutchinson was extremely selective in his newspaper reading, he would have picked up on the vast majority coverage of the murder which suggested Kelly had been killed in the small hours, i.e. during the night. Even if, for some unfathomable reason, he had been influenced by the reports pointing towards a later time of death, his Astrakhan sighting was still of pivotal value had it been true, and yet he failed to raise any sort of alarm in the wake of this alleged "second sighting".

And no, Jon...

Hutchinson's discrediting had absolutely sod all 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. Do you believe the murder was committed at 1.00am? My guess is that you don’t. My guess is that you’ve reasoned out that the best evidence supports a later time of death. What, then, is so unusual about the contemporary police arriving at precisely the same conclusion that the vast majority of “ripperologists” have arrived at since, and the Star simply finding out about this and commenting on it at the time?

If anyone really wishes to contend any of the above, can I ask that they do so on the Hutchinson threads? Or better still, check there to see if these very discussions haven't been agonized over billions of times already in painful, wordy detail, and then if they have, ask yourself if it's really worth the bother. If you decide it is, great! Let's have at it all over again! But don't be surprised if you see me simply dip into the archives and go "here's what I said before when that one came up".

Regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,

except praying, there's nothing I can do for the Sunday Sighting Believers.

Lord Have Mercy

[Sally]

Hi Jon

Its the source for this 'matter of record' that is in question.

Erm, The Cambridge History of English Literature Vol. 13 (1967)?

It's no good Jon, cast aspersions on Wikipedia all you want, it'll make no diffeence. The Morning Advertiser is, and has always been, a trade paper.

I struggle to see why you would dispute this. It's a fact. There it is.

I have shown 'you' an article from the period (circa 1890), which shows what category the Morning Advertiser had established itself in, and what it was known to be at the time.

No, you haven't. What you have done is to reproduce a page from an unreferenced publication. And you think Wiki is guilty of bad scholarship...

Lucky for me then, that I know who R F White were, eh?

It's a page from a publication produced by an advertising company. It is not definitive. It does not show 'what category the Morning Advertiser had established itself in' Without knowing where it came from - information which you appear reluctant to supply - it's difficult to say what it shows. As it contains only publication information and no address details, I imagine it isn't from a trade directory.

Now, the challenge for you is to locate an equal source from the period which places the Morning Advertiser in a different category.

But I don't need to do that Jon. As I say, what you have reproduced here is unidentified - and not definitive in any case, for a multitude of reasons. And besides, the Morning Advertiser was and is a trade paper. There it is. No challenge to answer.

The other aspect to this distraction is, that neither you nor anyone else have ever attempted to explain why a Trade paper would have been any less reliable than a main stream paper.
Do you know how they were structured?, what qualifications their reporters had?

What distraction? You claim that the Morning Advertiser was not a trade paper. It was. I'm answering your erroneous claim.

I haven't said that a trade paper would have been less reliable than a main stream paper. I don't think that is necessarily the case. I think a trade paper perhaps has greater priorities than ensuring that its general news reporting is 100% accurate - in the 1880's at least. General news was not the chief focus of a trade paper, MA included.

So far as the Morning Advertiser is concerned, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say - it was simply wrong on a regular basis.

Because I can read, and can compare with reliable, trustworthy publications like The Times, I don't need any 'source' to tell me that.

[Cogidubnus]

The Morning Advertiser was first started in 1794 as the Publican's Morning Advertiser...Following a recent (2011) merger, it is now again trading under that name...It has always been unashamedly a trade publication.

RF White is the publisher of the document Jon is quoting...RF White are probably the longest established of the UKs advertising agencies, so the document is unlikely to be a commercially unbiased one.

All the best

Dave

[Sally]

Yep Dave. The MA had one of the largest circulations in London during the latter half of the 19th century - which might perhaps lead to the misapprehension that it was a 'mainstream' paper.

Do people realise just how many pubs there were in London at that time? It was in the days before telly, after all...

It obviously enjoyed some popularity in the 19th century - but the Morning Advertiser was always (and is) a trade publication, as you say.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon
Erm, The Cambridge History of English Literature Vol. 13 (1967)?

Sally.
You will notice The Morning Advertiser, had a section entirely devoted to itself. What portion is available confirms what I informed you about previously concerning the status the newspaper enjoyed among its peers, The Morning Post and The Times.

The article also confirms The Morning Advertiser was a newspaper and not "an over the counter 'rag' of the pub trade", as Ben, in his usual condescending tones, prefers to describe the paper.

What you have read confirms The Morning Advertiser was a newspaper, it was also, as I stated only financed by the Licensed Victualers.
Whether the advertisements it carried were primarily focused towards publicans is irrelevant, I knew about the advertisements.

Both you and Ben have claimed The Morning Advertiser was an unreliable source for news, more so than any other newspaper of the time, whereas I claimed it was no less reliable than any of its peers.

This article from Cambridge Ancient History does nothing to support your bogus contentions, and, it is these bogus claims by the both of you that is behind this whole distraction.

What you claim is false, it is misleading, it is unsupported by any evidence, and what is worse, the reasoning behind these claims is to caste aspersions on a good newspaper for just publishing an opinion which speaks against the crumbling theory espoused by a minority on these boards.

Anyhow, I have written to The Morning Advertiser to request their input to this ridiculous claim that it was not a newspaper but only an "over the counter 'rag', for the pub trade".

I haven't said that a trade paper would have been less reliable than a main stream paper. I don't think that is necessarily the case.

I'm glad you have finally made that clear.

Because I can read, and can compare with reliable, trustworthy publications like The Times, I don't need any 'source' to tell me that.

Then your comparisons will also enlighten you that all the principal newspapers carried erroneous information, none were markedly worse than others, with the exception of the evening papers which we continuously write about.
In descending order, The Echo, The Pall Mall Gazette, and at the bottom of the barrel, The Star - interestingly, acknowledged at the time as "half a crusade and half a joke", due to the political leanings on the one hand and its inaccurate opinions expressed on a wide range of issues, on the other.

And that, my dear Sally, IS a matter of historical fact.

[Garry Wroe]

What you claim is false, it is misleading, it is unsupported by any evidence, and what is worse, the reasoning behind these claims is to caste aspersions on a good newspaper for just publishing an opinion which speaks against the crumbling theory espoused by a minority on these boards.

Sorry for my confusion, Jon, but would this 'crumbling theory' be a reference to Hutchinson's ultimate rejection as a viable witness? If so, are Anderson, Dew and Macnaghten to be numbered in the 'minority' to which you refer?

[harry]

what

Accepting that the press did come to the conclusion that Hutchinson was not to be trusted, what might have been their reason/s for doing so. W as it a doubt as to his claim of having gone to Romford? Of having continued to walk the streets of Whitechapel after 3AM? Of being unable to use his lodgings? Or for any of the other reasons which some of us years after find unusual.That he was outside Crossingham's
,is not contested,but is there anything that was printed that can be construed as having shown reasonable doubt.

[Abby Normal]

Accepting that the press did come to the conclusion that Hutchinson was not to be trusted, what might have been their reason/s for doing so. W as it a doubt as to his claim of having gone to Romford? Of having continued to walk the streets of Whitechapel after 3AM? Of being unable to use his lodgings? Or for any of the other reasons which some of us years after find unusual.That he was outside Crossingham's
,is not contested,but is there anything that was printed that can be construed as having shown reasonable doubt.

Hi Harry
It probably had to do with a combination of things. Hutch going to the press after he was probably told by the police not to and then telling them a different story about going into the court and standing by her door along with what he may have told the police on his walk about and subsequently not finding the man probably led police to eventually conclude that he was probably just another attention seeker and was leading them on a wild goose chase.