Conspiracy theories

[spyglass]

Hi,
we now know about Police cover ups concerning Hillsborough, the Minors strike and now this week the Shrewsbury 24, which seems now also to involve the Government of that day right up to the PM Edward Heath.
surely its unwise to suggest Conspiracy at a high level is not likely or even possible....that includes the JTR case.

Regards.

[erobitha]

I prefer the language use of "cover-up" as opposed to "conspiracy theory". Less tin foil hats. Cover-ups are often based on exactly that. Covering up a chain or sequence of events where someone, or a group, were at fault in some way. The cover-up is an exercise of minimalising the damage that such a thing being known public at the time would bring. You can apply this to events like Hillsborough, Catholic Church Abuse, Miners Strike and so on and so forth.

The question is, if there was a cover-up in the JTR case, then two big questions have to be asked and answered - by who and for what purpose? Civil unrest was happening at the time. Old Charlie Warren himself was involved in the Bloody Sunday events that unfolded in the previous November in Trafalgar Square. A sense of pushing against the establishment was palpable. The influx of Eastern Europeans brought new and "radical ideas" of how workers should be treated and paid. Church, temperance, charities - all were doing their bit and more for the poor. Communist ideas were bubbling away, it was a rocky time for the government of the day.

With all that in context, why would the police prefer a Jewish immigrant as being their preferred suspects? Who knows. Maybe it was Kosminski. Or Cohen. Or Leather Apron. Or Levy. Imagine if it was a policeman? Or a member of the middle classes? What would happen then? I think a cover-up is plausible.

[Varqm]

A Jewish guy would never have stood trial,especially if the evidence was strong.There were anti-Jewish sentiments after the Chapman case.Warren personally came down to Goulston St to see the graffito and in his report:

Warren's Report to the Home Secretary
6 November 1888

"A discussion took place whether the writing could be left covered up or otherwise or whether any portion of it
could be left for an hour until it could be photographed; but after taking into consideration the excited state
of the population in London generally at the time, the strong feeling which had been excited against the Jews,
and the fact that in a short time there would be a large concourse of the people in the streets, and having
before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked (in which from my own
observation I entirely concurred) I considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once, having taken a
copy of which I enclose a duplicate."

So this just a graffito,how much more if a Jewish guy stand trial and found guilty? The chances of a riot,a pogrom,a mini-pogrom was high and it could have spread across the country as this case was followed all over.People hated JTR.
The East End might have "exploded".This would never have been allowed.The solution to the case was going to be far more destructive and violent than the C5 deaths.So it was more a responsibilty rather than just plain conspiracy,I believe.

[Astatine211]

Well the police did refuse to release the ledgers a few years ago, spending millions of tax payer money to stop Trevor Marriott and everyone on here being able to see what was in them. These are the same ledgers which supposedly mention Winston Churchills father and were the origins of the royal conspiracy.

They even got a very senior officer to anonymously testify on a supposed reason why the ledgers shouldn't be released in the following high court trial. Then a year later the ledgers get incinerated and the fraction Trevor Marriott was given access to during the trial was heavily redacted.

In my opinion the whole operation to keep the ledgers from seeing the light of day then subsequently destroying them for no reason is a police cover up.

One line of thought which could explain the reason behind this is that one of the victims was actually a police informant. There was discussion about this being the case for Catherine Eddowes and if she was a police informant it might stop people even today from being recruited out of fear (at the high court trial the police said hindering the recruitment of informants was the reason the ledgers couldn't be released).

Alternatively the ledgers were kept secret and destroyed in order to protect someone, maybe someone with links to the royal family, maybe someone with links the police force.

In the end we'll never know because millions of pounds were spent keeping the ledgers secret and then they were destroyed. What could've been the missing key to the entire case gone up in smoke, literally.

Aside from the ledgers, IMO if there was a police cover up at the time it would most likely be due to two potential suspects. Thomas Cutbush or James Kelly. Thomas Hayne Cutbush was the nephew of a high ranking police superintendent and the famous Macnaghten Memoranda was written in response to a newspaper expose on THC. AP Wolf wrote a brilliant book on THC, called Jack the Myth which was available to read online on casebook. The book has a few chapters dedicated to a supposed police cover-up. The link now takes you to an error but I used wayback machine to find an archived version and have put the link which takes you to the chapter focusing most on possible police cover ups. Likewise James Kelly could've been covered up to avoid police embarrassment due to the fact he successfully escaped Broadmoor and evaded police capture many times.

This link takes you to the chapter which discusses a potential police cover up linked to Thomas Hayne Cutbush regardless of whether he was Jack the Ripper:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100620052005/http://casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/jackmyth.fulltext9.html

As for James Kelly, James Tully's book The Secret of Prisoner 1167 discuss a potential police cover up in regards to him.

[erobitha]

A Jewish guy would never have stood trial,especially if the evidence was strong.There were anti-Jewish sentiments after the Chapman case.Warren personally came down to Goulston St to see the graffito and in his report:

Warren's Report to the Home Secretary
6 November 1888

"A discussion took place whether the writing could be left covered up or otherwise or whether any portion of it
could be left for an hour until it could be photographed; but after taking into consideration the excited state
of the population in London generally at the time, the strong feeling which had been excited against the Jews,
and the fact that in a short time there would be a large concourse of the people in the streets, and having
before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked (in which from my own
observation I entirely concurred) I considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once, having taken a
copy of which I enclose a duplicate."

So this just a graffito,how much more if a Jewish guy stand trial and found guilty? The chances of a riot,a pogrom,a mini-pogrom was high and it could have spread across the country as this case was followed all over.People hated JTR.
The East End might have "exploded".This would never have been allowed.The solution to the case was going to be far more destructive and violent than the C5 deaths.So it was more a responsibilty rather than just plain conspiracy,I believe.

Really? The same graffito that appeared in written form across pretty much every London newspaper the next day? Yet, no riots. The message was not clear (based on what we believe the words to be, and it differs from other reports than the official Warren-approved one). Maybe the late Vicorian period was actually ahead of it's time for ethnic minority injustices and Charles Warren was such an advocate of the cause. That no-one rioted over.

The graffiti was a message to the likes of Warren that the killer was not Jewish and they knew it. Prior to the double event, the community were angry about Leather Apron and the anti-Jewish sentiment was rising - this is true, but those fires were being stoked by the police and the were not being put out. Then, a 360 u-turn because of some garbled message in chalk on a wall might spark riots as the Jewish community rise up due to "anti-semite" nonsense on a wall? None of it makes sense.

[erobitha]

Well the police did refuse to release the ledgers a few years ago, spending millions of tax payer money to stop Trevor Marriott and everyone on here being able to see what was in them. These are the same ledgers which supposedly mention Winston Churchills father and were the origins of the royal conspiracy.

They even got a very senior officer to anonymously testify on a supposed reason why the ledgers shouldn't be released in the following high court trial. Then a year later the ledgers get incinerated and the fraction Trevor Marriott was given access to during the trial was heavily redacted.

In my opinion the whole operation to keep the ledgers from seeing the light of day then subsequently destroying them for no reason is a police cover up.

One line of thought which could explain the reason behind this is that one of the victims was actually a police informant. There was discussion about this being the case for Catherine Eddowes and if she was a police informant it might stop people even today from being recruited out of fear (at the high court trial the police said hindering the recruitment of informants was the reason the ledgers couldn't be released).

Alternatively the ledgers were kept secret and destroyed in order to protect someone, maybe someone with links to the royal family, maybe someone with links the police force.

In the end we'll never know because millions of pounds were spent keeping the ledgers secret and then they were destroyed. What could've been the missing key to the entire case gone up in smoke, literally.

Aside from the ledgers, IMO if there was a police cover up at the time it would most likely be due to two potential suspects. Thomas Cutbush or James Kelly. Thomas Hayne Cutbush was the nephew of a high ranking police superintendent and the famous Macnaghten Memoranda was written in response to a newspaper expose on THC. AP Wolf wrote a brilliant book on THC, called Jack the Myth which was available to read online on casebook. The book has a few chapters dedicated to a supposed police cover-up. The link now takes you to an error but I used wayback machine to find an archived version and have put the link which takes you to the chapter focusing most on possible police cover ups. Likewise James Kelly could've been covered up to avoid police embarrassment due to the fact he successfully escaped Broadmoor and evaded police capture many times.

This link takes you to the chapter which discusses a potential police cover up linked to Thomas Hayne Cutbush regardless of whether he was Jack the Ripper:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100620052005/http://casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/jackmyth.fulltext9.html

As for James Kelly, James Tully's book The Secret of Prisoner 1167 discuss a potential police cover up in regards to him.

I think Trev will give greater insight than I could, but the ledgers apparently were being treated as nothing significant, yet someone within the home office / scotland yard made that call without any public involvement. That will always leave elememts of suspicion. The argument of informer identity is one of which should have a satute of limitations. Especially after 130 years. I honestly do not think a police informant will worry about a distant relative in a 100 years time maybe getting attacked or abused for something they are doing then. If it can shed some light on history then it always has value.

[Kattrup]

I think Trev will give greater insight than I could, but the ledgers apparently were being treated as nothing significant, yet someone within the home office / scotland yard made that call without any public involvement. That will always leave elememts of suspicion. The argument of informer identity is one of which should have a satute of limitations. Especially after 130 years. I honestly do not think a police informant will worry about a distant relative in a 100 years time maybe getting attacked or abused for something they are doing then. If it can shed some light on history then it always has value.

The ledgers being discarded was not significant and is not indicative of a cover-up.

A proces like that has two separate components:
1. the administration producing the documents decides whether the documents are still in use/relevant according to their internal policies and whether access can be given.

2. The archive receiving the documents after they leave use in the administration appraises the documents and determines if they have long-lasting value as historical documents. If not, they are discarded.

The two processes are independant and not reliant on each other, i.e. materials that are heavily used or sought after while in administrative use can be determined to be historically worthless - and vice versa.

[Varqm]

Really? The same graffito that appeared in written form across pretty much every London newspaper the next day? Yet, no riots. The message was not clear (based on what we believe the words to be, and it differs from other reports than the official Warren-approved one). Maybe the late Vicorian period was actually ahead of it's time for ethnic minority injustices and Charles Warren was such an advocate of the cause. That no-one rioted over.

The graffiti was a message to the likes of Warren that the killer was not Jewish and they knew it. Prior to the double event, the community were angry about Leather Apron and the anti-Jewish sentiment was rising - this is true, but those fires were being stoked by the police and the were not being put out. Then, a 360 u-turn because of some garbled message in chalk on a wall might spark riots as the Jewish community rise up due to "anti-semite" nonsense on a wall? None of it makes sense.

His report was clear.that's what Warren thought and the report before him (made by the police) said.The report was clear "and having before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked".And the people hated JTR.

John Piser:
I had never left the house from the time I entered it until I was
apprehended.
Why did you remain indoors? - Because my brother advised me to do so.
You were the subject of suspicion, were you not? - I was the object of false suspicion.
You stayed in on the advice of your friends? That was not the best advice that could be given you. - I will tell you the reason why. I should have been torn to pieces.

[erobitha]

His report was clear.that's what Warren thought and the report before him (made by the police) said.The report was clear "and having before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked".And the people hated JTR.

John Piser:
I had never left the house from the time I entered it until I was
apprehended.
Why did you remain indoors? - Because my brother advised me to do so.
You were the subject of suspicion, were you not? - I was the object of false suspicion.
You stayed in on the advice of your friends? That was not the best advice that could be given you. - I will tell you the reason why. I should have been torn to pieces.

I’m not debating with you that is what is written on the Warren-approved report from the Met (which was filed 5 weeks later). Does it tally with some newspaper reports or even the City of London police? There are variations of the text. That is a fact. As there are no photos we will never know what was actually written and in what way. Or even if there were other markings for example. Warren called the shots on this one from top the bottom. It was also the first site related to JTR he even bothered to visit. And it was not a murder scene. His passion for Anglo-Jewish relations should be rewarded and heralded. A man ahead of his time. So much so it was even he who sponged the chalk off the wall himself.

[erobitha]

The ledgers being discarded was not significant and is not indicative of a cover-up.

A proces like that has two separate components:
1. the administration producing the documents decides whether the documents are still in use/relevant according to their internal policies and whether access can be given.

2. The archive receiving the documents after they leave use in the administration appraises the documents and determines if they have long-lasting value as historical documents. If not, they are discarded.

The two processes are independant and not reliant on each other, i.e. materials that are heavily used or sought after while in administrative use can be determined to be historically worthless - and vice versa.

I said it raises suspicion of one and does not outright defines it. Your examples are correct when dealing with general ledgers from non-conspicuous sources. But unveiling of informants and possibly along with what was said does have historical value. How could you argue it doesn’t?

[Kattrup]

I said it raises suspicion of one and does not outright defines it. Your examples are correct when dealing with general ledgers from non-conspicuous sources. But unveiling of informants and possibly along with what was said does have historical value. How could you argue it doesn’t?

Well, I think you should look into what was generally contained in the ledgers. As I recall, it was something like four ledgers mostly detailing accounting of minor cash transfers indexed to case files which no longer exist, with only a small section mentioning some names of who received money. There were no actual reports. I don't recall all the details but the ledgers were rather messy and not really possible to understand, since the files they were indexing or referring to have been lost long ago.

My point was simply that the decision to discard them seems a perfectly ordinary administrative decision by the receiving archive, and is not indicative of a cover-up, or, as you prefer, it does not raise suspicion of one.

The NA has literally thousands of metres of shelves filled with LVP documents. Four random mostly illegible accounting ledgers would hardly constitute valuable historical documents.

For what it's worth, I disagree with the decision; once archival material has survived 120 years, it's by definition historically valuable. Particularly in an archive whose series have sustained massive damage from the Blitz; one would seek to compensate for the lost materials by retaining other, secondary materials that would normally be discarded. So I think the NA made the wrong call on this one. But there are tons of 120-year old documents that are completely uninteresting - road construction, accounting audits etc. Obviously the leders were just considered more of that. (road construction and accounting audits can both make extremely interesting history; I think a lot of people just don't realise how much mundane correspondance case files contain. Letters of thanks, arranging meetings, inviting participants, ordering coffee, paying bills etc. It all leaves extremely dull paper trails even or especially in the 19th century).

It's only when one desperately needs the information contained in that one particular casefile that the decision to retain or discard the materials comes under scrutiny....

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well the police did refuse to release the ledgers a few years ago, spending millions of tax payer money to stop Trevor Marriott and everyone on here being able to see what was in them. These are the same ledgers which supposedly mention Winston Churchills father and were the origins of the royal conspiracy.

They even got a very senior officer to anonymously testify on a supposed reason why the ledgers shouldn't be released in the following high court trial. Then a year later the ledgers get incinerated and the fraction Trevor Marriott was given access to during the trial was heavily redacted.

In my opinion the whole operation to keep the ledgers from seeing the light of day then subsequently destroying them for no reason is a police cover up.

One line of thought which could explain the reason behind this is that one of the victims was actually a police informant. There was discussion about this being the case for Catherine Eddowes and if she was a police informant it might stop people even today from being recruited out of fear (at the high court trial the police said hindering the recruitment of informants was the reason the ledgers couldn't be released).

Alternatively the ledgers were kept secret and destroyed in order to protect someone, maybe someone with links to the royal family, maybe someone with links the police force.

In the end we'll never know because millions of pounds were spent keeping the ledgers secret and then they were destroyed. What could've been the missing key to the entire case gone up in smoke, literally.

Aside from the ledgers, IMO if there was a police cover up at the time it would most likely be due to two potential suspects. Thomas Cutbush or James Kelly. Thomas Hayne Cutbush was the nephew of a high ranking police superintendent and the famous Macnaghten Memoranda was written in response to a newspaper expose on THC. AP Wolf wrote a brilliant book on THC, called Jack the Myth which was available to read online on casebook. The book has a few chapters dedicated to a supposed police cover-up. The link now takes you to an error but I used wayback machine to find an archived version and have put the link which takes you to the chapter focusing most on possible police cover ups. Likewise James Kelly could've been covered up to avoid police embarrassment due to the fact he successfully escaped Broadmoor and evaded police capture many times.

This link takes you to the chapter which discusses a potential police cover up linked to Thomas Hayne Cutbush regardless of whether he was Jack the Ripper:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100620052005/http://casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/jackmyth.fulltext9.html

As for James Kelly, James Tully's book The Secret of Prisoner 1167 discuss a potential police cover up in regards to him.

I could be wrong here Astatine (and I’m only going on my very fallible memory) but wasn’t Cutbush shown not to have been related to the senior police officer?

[Kattrup]

I could be wrong here Astatine (and I’m only going on my very fallible memory) but wasn’t Cutbush shown not to have been related to the senior police officer?

You are not wrong, they were not related. Debra A and Robert I think? sorted it out at one point.

Edit to include Chris Scott as one who researched this also. Possibly others, most of the threads about it seem to be ten years old or more

[Astatine211]

I could be wrong here Astatine (and I’m only going on my very fallible memory) but wasn’t Cutbush shown not to have been related to the senior police officer?

In the Macnaughten Memorandum it refers to Thomas Cutbush as Superintendent Charles Cutbush's nephew. Modern day researchers on the forums think this wasn't actually the case as no hard evidence outside of the MM has proven this.

However for me if police mistakenly believed they were very close relatives at the time of the murders it would still give them the motive for a cover-up to avoid embarrassment. What probably added to this was the fact that Charles was practically insane and was obsessed with the idea someone was trying to poison him. Likewise I believe contemporary newspapers were already leveling accusations of relations and even a role of an accomplice against the Superintendent that he was helping Thomas with the murders, providing information and escape routes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You are not wrong, they were not related. Debra A and Robert I think? sorted it out at one point.

Edit to include Chris Scott as one who researched this also. Possibly others, most of the threads about it seem to be ten years old or more

Thanks Kattrup