What SHOULD the police have done?

[Monty]

As reluctant as I am to wade into matters Hutch on the wrong thread, it's worth pointing out that the reasons for Hutchinson's lateness had by no means been established by Abberline at the time of the interview. Indeed, we know that "the authorities" were still pondering that very question the next day, when they were already attaching a "reduced importance" to his statement.

Best regards,
Ben

Do we Ben?

Where?

Monty

[Ben]

Hi Monty,

This is from the Echo of 13th November 1888:

From latest inquiries it appears that a very reduced importance seems to be now - in the light of later investigation - attached to a statement made by a person last night that he saw a man with the deceased on the night of the murder. Of course, such a statement should have been made at the inquest, where the evidence, taken on oath, could have been compared with the supposed description of the murderer given by the witnesses. Why, ask the authorities, did not the informant come forward before? As many as fifty-three persons have, in all, made statements as to "suspicious men," each of whom was thought to be Mary Janet Kelly's assassin. The most remarkable thing in regard to the latest statement is, that no one else can be found to say that a man of that description given was seen with the deceased, while, of course, there is the direct testimony of the witnesses at the inquest, that the person seen with the deceased at midnight was of quite a different appearance.

This was followed by the Star's revelation two days later that the account was "now discredited" and both articles make sense of Hutchinson's conspicuous absence from subsequent interviews, memos and reports which address the subject of eyewitnesses, most notably the observations of Robert Anderson.

But here we're drifting into another "Was Hutchinson discredited?" thread, and the danger of duplicating numerous other (and very recent) threads is imminent!

All the best,
Ben

[Monty]

Apologies Ben,

I thought you had found something in the Police File.

Monty

[Errata]

Errata, exactly as Supe said in his earlier post: And just precisely what might photographs of the crime scenes have told the police? Such photos are more favored by prosecutors than investigators, as they provide a hedge against defense charges of site contamination.
Also, it was too early at the time for the police to have realized the usefulness of fingerprints. And what might fingerprints have accomplished decades later, when there were no suspects available for fingerprinting?
The mistakes in the Whitechapel investigation happened 1) in the questioning of the witnesses/suspects (for which it's true that significant contemporary files are lost to us, so we don't have a fully precise idea of the investigation) and
2) in their failure to secure the neighborhood (which was not an easy task at hand, must be admitted).

Crime scene photos would have done nothing for the investigators at the time. But they would have been valuable to anyone working on it as a cold case. My point is they did what they could, as well as they could. The only thing more they could have done would have been to preserve as much as possible with an eye towards solving it at a later date. And even that may not have worked. But it's what else they could have done.

[Barnaby]

Barnaby, I'm not saying this in a condenscending fashion in any way whatsoever, but you should have authored Utopia (in a perfect world)! Sigh.

Hi Maria,

I wish I had authored Utopia!

But seriously, similar strategies are used. For example, in the TV show "To Catch a Predator" they lure sex predators on the internet to a house where supposedly they will have sex with an underage girl. Of course, it is a setup and the men are arrested. Could not something similar have been tried?

[mariab]

Barnaby,
Yeah, Utopia is an amazing, well, utopian phantasy!
Come on, Barnaby, you're talking about a TV show here, not reality.

[tnb]

With all due respect to all concerned, there seem to be two 'traps' that people fall into when discussing this kind of question:

Firstly, while claiming to be looking at the question in terms of, to borrow Neil's excelllent point, '1888 reality', people are still actually looking with their 21st century heads on, in terms of the usefulness of their suggestions. In other words, people suggest things which could have been done at the time, but would have been pretty useless then, such as profiling without any way of searching records; or worse, they suggest things that would be done nowadays as a matter of course but with seemingly no thought as to why it would be any use. This is the trap for instance that I recently discussed on a GSG thread where a recent author had claimed the erasing of that was considered 'the biggest blunder in the whole case'. Why?

The second trap is that people engage in - excuse the phrase- 'backward thinking'. This is most apparent, and again with the greatest of respect, when people make suggestions relating to the Kelly murder. It is all well and good (if debatable) to say that, looking back, the police should have spent more time interviewing Hutchinson, Barnett etc etc, or tracing and/or speaking to Fleming, because of all the various reasons that Kelly's death has taken on an increased importance over the years. However, bear in mind that at the time the police didn't know that there would be a Kelly murder, that it would be the last (arguably) etc etc - and they certainly didn't know that someone would turn up the Fleming/ James Evans connection years down the line. There is a question of resources here, then as now, and it is all too easy to say 'well don't waste time on Pizer, spend it all tracing LeGrand's background' (just for example) with what we now know. The problem is that at the time the police had NO way of knowing that one person or angle would prove more valuable than another, and to put all the effort that would have been needed to interrogate Hutchinson to the level some people seem to want them to have into everyone they spoke to would have meant they would probably have still been working on Chapman witnesses in 1890!

The only way to theorise on this is to take yourself back to the start (Smith, Tabram, MAN, wherever) and try to think what you would have put in place then, pre-emptively, that may have proved useful in the end. As Neil says, with what they had and what they knew, the police at the time did about as good a job as they could. Personally, the only thing I would suggest is a slightly larger house-to-house area, and perhaps consider some 'special rules' for lodging houses, perhaps from October 1888. Even those are debatable as to whether they would have been any use.

[mariab]

Trevor Bond wrote:
However, bear in mind that at the time the police didn't know that there would be a Kelly murder, that it would be the last (arguably) etc etc - and they certainly didn't know that someone would turn up the Fleming/ James Evans connection years down the line. There is a question of resources here,
Hello Trevor, I hope you're fine. How's the Coles gravestone situation going? I hope fine.
Trevor, the Joseph Fleming connection was already known to the Whitechapel Police during the interviews with Mary Kelly's girlfriends. The reason why the police didn't insist on Mary Kelly's boyfriends was that they “profiled“ the assailant wrong, as they firmly believed that a “civilized Englishman“ would be incapable of such “bestiality“. Which is a bit naive historically, since so many Victiorian men abused their girfriends/wives at the time, if not Ripper-like. Were I a Victorian policeman, I would have insisted more on the boyfriends. But then again, I'm extremely paranoid by nature!

[tnb]

Maria,

I was not doubting that the Fleming-Mary Kelly link was known in 1888, the connection of which I was speaking was the Fleming-aka-James Evans one, which palpably wasn't.

There are great holes in the records (as we all know) and to an extent what you read into them is a matter of faith, in the Victorian police that is. I completely agree that the partners of the victims should have been strongly looked at; to my mind, being inclined to give the LVP police the benefit of the doubt (a rare position, I know) that actually tends to steer me against a lot of the speculation about Kidney, or John Kelly, for example - as I tend to believe that somewhere in those missing files they must have looked into them pretty early on, and been convinced that the real culprit(s) lay elsewhere. That said, I do think John Kelly was a bit of a 'character', shall we say!

Coles situation going well, I don't want to derail this thread but suffice to say keep your eyes peeled fairly soon...thanks for the ongoing interest!

[mariab]

Hello Trevor,
great for Coles. I'm so teribly sorry, as a feeble newbie I'm afraid I have no idea about the Fleming-aka-James Evans connection!! And I need to read up more on the details on John Kelly. I'm better acquainted with the details on Michael Kidney (what an unfortunate name!) as it happens, due to the fact that a lot is published currently on the Stride case.
I'm just back from being out (shoppping, dinner at an Aussie Cafè where I had crocodile steak, and we saw Salt again, which for me must have been the 5th time or so...!)

[Hunter]

An ecellent post, Trevor (Bond).

We seem to fail to realize ( because we have all the time in the world to speculate) just how rapid these murders took place and the necessary response afforded the police at the time.

By the Kelly murder they had caught on well, but their actions following that even, are looked on as incomplete or incompetent or even conspiratorial. Its damned if you do and damned if you don't. For the first time they gained effective control of the crime scene and completely shut down the access of the press. They, no doubt witheld information because they were trying to catch a killer! The media was left to interview whoever they could find with the result that much spurious information was printed. Yet we have Ripperologist that hang their hat on this stuff. Look at the supposed Hutch discrediting which was only proposed by 2 unscrupulous tabloids with no corraboration. And yet, such as this is used to help implicate people for murder, for heavens sake.

[Barnaby]

Barnaby,
Yeah, Utopia is an amazing, well, utopian phantasy!
Come on, Barnaby, you're talking about a TV show here, not reality.

OK, Maria. You win. But I'm going back to watching Dexter and Criminal Minds now to get some ideas of how to solve this damn case.

[Ben]

Look at the supposed Hutch discrediting which was only proposed by 2 unscrupulous tabloids with no corraboration.

...And which mysteriously tally not only with eachother but with with all subsequent police memoirs, reports and interviews that address the subject of witness descriptions.

And it wasn't the newspapers themselves that proposed it.

And the Echo had no widespread reputation for being "unscrupulous".

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

I've read the Star, 15th November 1888, account of Hutchinson's story being discredited, but not the Echo version.

Could someone oblige?

Many thanks.

Regards,

Simon

[Ben]

Here you go, Simon:

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/echo/18881113.html

And the relevant extract:

From latest inquiries it appears that a very reduced importance seems to be now - in the light of later investigation - attached to a statement made by a person last night that he saw a man with the deceased on the night of the murder. Of course, such a statement should have been made at the inquest, where the evidence, taken on oath, could have been compared with the supposed description of the murderer given by the witnesses. Why, ask the authorities, did not the informant come forward before? As many as fifty-three persons have, in all, made statements as to "suspicious men," each of whom was thought to be Mary Janet Kelly's assassin. The most remarkable thing in regard to the latest statement is, that no one else can be found to say that a man of that description given was seen with the deceased, while, of course, there is the direct testimony of the witnesses at the inquest, that the person seen with the deceased at midnight was of quite a different appearance.

All the best,
Ben