How Much Credit to Police?

[Tani]

When you read the police's thoughts on the case, whether in memoranda, letters, casefiles etc. how much stock do you put into these?

How reliable do you find certain pieces of information, opinions, and rumours?

How much stock ought we put into these writings when reviewing the case?

For ex. Kosminsky as suspect; the police putting faith in DB letter; Met vs CoL Police on graffito etc.



IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

[The Rookie Detective]

I think the MacNagthen Memorandum, that was written to counter the idea of Cutbush having been Ripper, is the main reason why Curbush is today often overlooked as a potential Ripper suspect.

Macnagthen essentially gets Cutbush off the hook.

[John Wheat]

When you read the police's thoughts on the case, whether in memoranda, letters, casefiles etc. how much stock do you put into these?

How reliable do you find certain pieces of information, opinions, and rumours?

How much stock ought we put into these writings when reviewing the case?

For ex. Kosminsky as suspect; the police putting faith in DB letter; Met vs CoL Police on graffito etc.



IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

The info is unreliable. At the end of the day if the Police at the time were that good they would have caught Jack.

[Doctored Whatsit]

IOW how much weight on a given topic do the words of police carry in your opinion?

Whereas we cannot ignore the facts various relevant police officers reported at the time, we can only accept their opinions with caution. There is very little agreement when it comes to their opinions, for example on how many were victims of JtR, or who were their favoured suspects. Memoirs require extra caution because they are trying to provide interesting material for their readers, amplifying any success, concealing their failures, suggesting that they knew much more than people realised, and evidently often writing without reference to exact details of names and dates etc.

Their memories were fallible, and cannot be relied upon. Inspector Reid, for example, at Alice McKenzie's inquest, reported that coins found under her body were similar to events in Annie Chapman's murder. But Reid wasn't involved at the Chapman death, and the coins there only existed in newspaper stories, and not police reports.

Caution!