Conspiracy theories

[etenguy]

I respectfully disagree, they can and archival generally often will be.Obviously I don't know the legislation where your archive operates.

but as an everyday example, in my archive we discard all paper files on individual citizens or employees after 2007 since the digital databases we archive will more than make up for the paper files.

So while the individual casefile will be kept confidential while active, once archived they are destroyed.

Hi Kattrup

That makes complete sense to me - however, these files were kept confidential long past being archived and then destroyed way past their review date and not long after the defense of their confidentiality. It may all have been a coincidence of timing and the review process simply following its normal course, as you suggest, but in the context of files being kept for over 120 years and then after a request to see them (that was refused) being destroyed - the conclusion that people might draw is clear.

[Kattrup]

I would normally agree with you on this point, Kattrup - that is certainly the type of exercise we go through at the archive where I have oversight responsibility. But such destruction on that basis is undermined by the actions of the police in defending them from view. They cannot be both of such significance no-one should be allowed to see them and then so insignificant they can be destroyed.

I respectfully disagree, they can and archival materials generally often will be.Obviously I don't know the legislation where your archive operates.

but as an everyday example, in my archive we discard all paper files on individual citizens or employees after 2007 since the digital databases we archive will more than make up for the paper files.

So while the individual casefile will be kept confidential while active, once archived they are destroyed.

[etenguy]

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after they leave use in the administration appraises the documents and determines if they have long-lasting value as historical documents.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 would normally agree with you on this point, Kattrup - that is certainly the type of exercise we go through at the archive where I have oversight responsibility. But such destruction on that basis is undermined by the actions of the police in defending them from view. They cannot be both of such significance no-one should be allowed to see them and then so insignificant they can be destroyed.

[Losmandris]

I think that because there is so much hype around the case, so many unanswered questions and gaps in the evidence that conspiracy theories are bound to develop. I realise that cover ups have occurred but in this case I don't believe so. The truth is I suspect all too mundane.

[Varqm]

Very likely,
however my point being that some people cant believe that our Police and Government are capable of such things, and that Conspiracies do happen at higher levels.

Yes conspiracies could have occurred,many we do not know of unless one had private info about decisions in the highest level of gov't. JTR was in 1888,then a country like England,with lots of colonies,many people died/suffered there,any conspiracy involving JTR was mosquito bite.

[spyglass]

all conspiracy theories involving the ripper are bullshit.

Very likely,
however my point being that some people cant believe that our Police and Government are capable of such things, and that Conspiracies do happen at higher levels.

[Varqm]

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.

Got your point.Yes Warren only visited this time and it seems he was aware of a possible bigger catastrophe for the MET and the East End because of anti-Semitism and hatred for JTR. Wentworth Model Dwellings was mostly occupied by Jews.He partly miscalculated this time,that the text would cause a riot, but the meaning of the graffito itself was vague and even believed as as a deflection,something written to put the blame on the Jews,although it could also have been written by a Jew.I believe in Warren's version of the text which corresponded to PC Long's.1888 London was a different time and all this has to be understood in that context.

[Abby Normal]

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.

all conspiracy theories involving the ripper are bullshit.

[The Baron]

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.

Was there anything at all in the Macnaughten Memorandum that is not wrong?!

I even believe Cutbush is a better suspect than the other three suspects mentioned there.




The Baron

[Herlock Sholmes]

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.

Fair point Astatine

[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

[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.

[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

[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 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....