Henry Smith, Daily Express 5th. Oct. 1910

[Phil Carter]

Hello FM, Colin,

The point here is IF the description isnt ficticious, where did it come from? And if he (Smith) did make up the description- why? Why not go with any KNOWN description?

Best wishes

Phil

[Supe]

The point here is IF the description isnt ficticious, where did it come from? And if he (Smith) did make up the description- why? Why not go with the KNOWN Lawende description?

In my opinion, too many people seem to be accepting there was a description to be followed on that fateful night in the fall of 1888. Smith's claim that he was close on the trail of the Ripper and had a "fair description" did not see the light of day until 1910 -- nearly a quarter century after the event -- and from a man most contemporaries considered a blarney merchant.

Nor, in his memoirs, does Smith even say that the events happened the night of Kate's murder but rather "though within five minutes of the perpetrator one night . . ." [emphasis added]. He adds to the obfuscation by clearly confusing the Mitre Square murder with that in Miller's Court as he details his heroic chase: "In Dorset Street, with extraordinary audacity, he [the Ripper] washed them [his hands] at a sink up a close, not more than six yards from the street. I arrived there in time to see the bloodstained water."

Clearly, he is talking of Miller's Court and after 22 years has managed to conflate the Eddowes murder with that of Kelly.

As I wrote earlier, accept Smith's stories at great peril, but it would seem some are willing to do so.

Don.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Don,

Not me old chap. I dont believe a word of it.

Best wishes

Phil

[Supe]

Phil,

Not me old chap. I dont believe a word of it.

Ah, we agree on something. Just watch your use of the word "old."

Don.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Don,

Righty ho young man. Lol

This thread does throw up a question in my mind.
Just why would Henry Smith tell porkies? That description bothers me. You see, to my mind, it isnt enough to attract loads of sales. But the putting down of the Anderson and MacNagthen almost smells of competition. It's almost as if the word is spread the jam as wide as you can- then nobody is any the wiser.

Best wishes

Phil

[Fisherman]

Phil:

"Not much agreement on how many victims, not much agreement as to who killed these women, the problem of comments made during the years 1888-1896, the comments made after retirement.
Today, some believe that the documentation from Anderson/Swanson/MacNagthen shows the way. Some believer this to be a false trail. Some believe that one of more of these intrepid three be the answer, some believing Littlechild's sole letter be the answer. Some put their faith in Abberline or Reid, the men "on the ground" as it were."

Add to this that the knowledges (for there are a number of them, wildly differing) about the killer´s identity take shape and grow clearer as the years pass, and you may realize why I invest in heavily in what Abberline said in 1903: That the police were none the wiser then, than back in 1888.

A battle of egos is what I see on the subject, conducted over a stretch of time that severely eroded the memories of the participants.

Actually, I am often baffled about how the top-ranking men of the affair get things hopelessly muddled. I mean, us Casebookers are obviously very interested in the details attaching to the case, and so we have a reason not to mix things up too much. But one would think that the responsible police parties had all the reasons in the world to tell the events and details apart, having been professionally involved in the criminal case of the century and arguably having gone over the matter on innumerable occasions. And yet, Kelly is mistaken for Eddowes, Eddowes for Stride, the murder places become interchangable, the number of stabs in Tabram´s body sounds like they are voiced in a bingohall and the wrong witnesses are ascribed to the wrong cases, etcetera, etcetera.

It´s as if the police had mistaken Oswald for Ruby, or as if Crippen had been proposed to be the guy that shot the acid-bath killer Abraham Lincoln. And all the while, we are asked to believe that one or another of these top dogs were strictly factual, precise and clever in their gleanings about who the Ripper was. To boot, we are encouraged to focus on contemporary police suspects only, since such suspicions add an element without which any suspect is rendered useless. Meaning that no matter what we dig up about a man like Lechmere, Ostrog always remains the much better bid for the Ripper´s role, in spite of his absence from the East End at the relevant points of time.

Ripperology is doing itself a great disservice in this context if you ask me. And no better example of the state of affairs can be brought to the table than Smith.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Phil Carter]

Hello Christer,

In many ways, we sing from the same song book.
I have very grave doubts as to the leanings of the police heirarchy and their after the Lord Mayor's show of memories. The variations show clearly that either they didnt have the slightest idea or if they did, the wall of silence was only broken by the unknown (to us) agreement to spread the suspect net in the public eye as wide as possible. Deflection away from their own incompetance? Or deflection for a reason? Ego- the third possibility.

Ostrog tells me much of the MM. For me personally, it smells of inadequate knowledge. And a man in Macnagthen's position would simply NOT have inadequate knowledge.
The same goes for Smith. His position would require that he KNEW.
So when he rebuffs MacNagthen and Anderson, it should send alarm bells ringing.
Reid did exactly the same thing.

So one can ask 'Why' the promotion of the suicidal doctor and the Polish Jew?
Well, the answer may well lie in Anderson's ego of always being right in the case of the Polish Jew, and as for MacNagthen, I have the odd feeling that the MM may not be quite what we have been led to believe it is, and that the discovery in 1959 may need to be scrutinized a little deeper. There is something about it that niggles me. I dont know what, but it just does.
The fact that Lady Aberconway changed her tune before her death and away from the MM at the height of the PAV promotion is for me, disturbing.

Henry Smith may well have told the truth in that nobody had a clue. Because I note that he didnt have a favourite suspect. He may have told the truth denouncing Anderson and MacNagthen. He really didnt have a lot to gain by doing so- so why do it?

Best wishes

Phil

[Fisherman]

Phil:

" a man in Macnagthen's position would simply NOT have inadequate knowledge. "

He surely would have access to adequate knowledge. Which is why I think he - as well as the others - reflect that adequate knowledge; you either admitted that there was nothing at all to go by, or you cooked up a memoranda in which you did NOT bother to do the research. And why? Because, perhaps, you did NOT invest all that much in it - you merely used it to refute the Cutbush suggestion, not by arguing that Ostrog, Druitt and Kosminsky were all the Ripper, but instead by pointing out that much as these guys were nothing much to go by, they had at least alerted police interest at the time of the murders, and were thus better bids that young Thomas.

"Henry Smith may well have told the truth in that nobody had a clue. "

Paradoxically, yes - the swaggering entertainer may have been the most truthful one when it comes to the identification, corroborating Abberline: the police knew not in 1888, they knew not in 1903 and they knew not in 1910.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Okay, I´m bowing out of the boards for a fortnight´s time, going on vacation. I will adress whatever material that has been directed to me when I return!

All the best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Yes the senior policemen were clearly clueless and their later memoirs and remarks were merely self serving pats on their own backs.
Fisherman neatly sums up why following the 'official' police trail is fruitless.

One problem is that people in the 'Ripperological' field read history backwards. So for example because Kosminsky became a police suspect (several years after the murders ended and then just because he was Jewish, mad and probably homosexual - and so 'hated' women), then he 'must have been a suspect at the time of the Stride murder - for example. Well, he was not known to the police at the time Stride was killed and we know for a fact that at the time of the actual murders the police didn't have any clear suspect at all.
The 'Ripperological' field is also still disturbingly dominated by a desire to find weird, complex and obtuse solutions - multi-culprits, hidden plots, conspiracies, corpses that have been made to look like serial killer victims, artists, authors, rampaging lunatics... you name it. Everything but a quite 'bloke next door' serial killer.
How do these cases always pan out in the real world?

[Phil Carter]

Hello Lechmere,

Perhaps some of this has to do with the amount of differing descriptions given of those sighted. Unless of course you mean the all brilliant killer is a master of disguise and can change his height and age and as well as his appearance.

Best wishes

Phil

[Lechmere]

Phil
There was a discussion very recently somewhere on here about how notoriously unreliable eye witness accounts are. People come forward after a murder has happened - maybe a day or two later - with descriptions that are influenced by their imaginations, by urban myth and, by their own prejudices etc.
Trying to fit together these eye witness accounts will never work, just as trying to fit the after the event police memoirs together will not work as they are based on faulty and partial memory and also on attempts to exonerate careers.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

hand washing ?

In Sugden book, he says that the only time there is allusion of JtR washing his bloodstain hands in a water fountain minutes before policemen arrived at said fountains has never been corroborated.

So, did only Henry Smith make that claim?

Thank you.

[Wickerman]

In silhouette would be like this:

Interesting that the Billycock high hat (a hard felt hat, below) in profile is very close to the silhouette of the deerstalker (above).


Cover: Jack the Ripper - Case Solved 1891, J.J. Hainsworth, 2015.

The testimony of PC Smith appears to suggest that one suspect wore a hard felt hat, then elsewhere that the same suspect was described as wearing a deerstalker.