The 'Suckered!' Trilogy

[Tom_Wescott]

No problem Tom. I do love the way you write. One of my favourite passages of yours comes from your Amazon review of "Deconstructing Jack" by Simon Daryl Wood - you know, that book you haven't finished reading yet - in which you say:

"But if something in the book resonates with you and sparks your curiosity, go investigate it for yourself. Double-check the facts."

And hey, that's exactly what I did. Great advice Tom.

Simon's been known to be a little selective with his facts, so I too consider that sound advice. But then I believe it applies to any work that is speculative in nature.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Pcdunn]

Buffs, whether of assassinations or serial murders

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/The_criti...--Trillin.html

I wanted to thank you for sharing this great find. I was especially surprised to see the publication date. I was about eight when JFK died, but I recall my parents' strong reactions to the news. Years later, in high school, I first saw the Zapgruder film-- wow, unforgettable.

My Dad was a mild "buff", I think. He collected and read many books about the assassination, the Warren Report, and so forth.

I liked the comment by the subject of Trillin's article that this research is scholarly, and "there are good scholars and bad ones" but "there's no degree in assassination." The same could well be said of Ripperology, I think.

[David Orsam]

Hi Jonathan,

I dissent from it, nevertheless, because of an other sources suggests to me that Andrews was doing a background check on Tumblety, with plausible deniability that he was doing any such thing (in fact he may have denied it directly to a reporter).

That goes back to my question about "data". What are the sources which suggest to you that Andrews was doing a background check on Tumblety? I'm suggesting there aren't any!

You write that Andrews was not known by the press and public to be hunting the Ripper.

Well, it was not classified.

Anderson could not be sure that it would not be learned.

Despite that, I just don't see any scandal arising from a Scotland Yard detective being sent on an important mission while other Scotland Yard detectives were busy hunting Jack the Ripper.

Plus arguably, the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic that claimed he was searching for the Ripper abroad had learned of his involvement in the Whitechapel murders and put two and two together.

I'm not sure that even is arguable. They would surely have said something if it was the case. Basically, any Scotland Yard detective in America simply had to be either hunting Irish Nationalists or Jack the Ripper. That was the story!

Walter Dew confirmed this in his memoirs. Can memoirs be mistaken?

All he "confirmed", or rather recollected, were that the Scotland Yard officers engaged (at some point) on the JTR investigation were Abberline, Andrews and Moore (but not in that order and he omitted to included Chief Insp. Swanson which is a bit odd). The fact is that Inspector Abberline was in charge of the investigation. That Andrews might have assisted does not preclude him from doing other things during late 1888.

I counter that textual evidence suggests that Logan's source was actually George Sims, and his source was Melville Macnaghten.

Macnaghten was not, of course, working in Scotland Yard at the time of Andrews' trip to Canada - and it seems odd to me that what he has told Sims is inaccurate information (because he evidently did not say that Andrews went to America to research a suspect which I understand you to be saying is what Andrews actually did) which matches exactly what some of the newspapers in both America and England were saying (i.e. that he was chasing a suspect). My conclusion, therefore, is that Sims derived the information directly or indirectly from the newspapers and if his source was Macnaghten then Macnaghten had been so influenced.

I still think it is a too big a coincidence that one of the top detectives on Whitechapel was sent to Canada , one of the known and recent haunts of the leading police suspect to be the fiend, at least until the McKenzie murder.

Coincidences happen all the time and this one doesn't even strike me as a big one, especially as we have so much information from internal Home Office and Scotland Yard documents about the reason behind Andrews' trip to Toronto.

[Jonathan H]

To Pcdunn

No worries, glad you enjoyed it.

To David

We will have to agree to disagree.

The comment in Logan about the murderer fleeing abroad brought closure to the Whitechapel case Macnaghten's meme. It does not come from contemporaneous newspaper accounts from 1888/9--quite the opposite.

When Dew mentioned Andrews as a one of the three key Whitechapel detectives (Swanson was not a field detective) he meant the trip abroad, but did not want to say so for obvious reasons.

The source you found quoting Andrews about Tumblety proves to me he was investigating this Ripper suspect.

[David Orsam]

When Dew mentioned Andrews as a one of the three key Whitechapel detectives (Swanson was not a field detective) he meant the trip abroad, but did not want to say so for obvious reasons.

Hi Jonathan,

Here is what Dew said in his book:

"Let us take a quick look at the men upon whom the responsibilities of the great man-hunt chiefly fell. The officers sent from Scotland Yard were Chief-Inspector Moore, Inspector Abberline and Inspector Andrews, assisted, of course, by a large number of officers of subordinate rank… These three men did everything humanly possible to free Whitechapel of its Terror. They failed because they were up against a problem the like of which the world had never known, and I fervently hope, will never know again."

The natural reading of that passage is that Abberline, Moore and Andrews were sent from Scotland Yard to Whitechapel. I have always understood that the great attraction of Walter Dew's memoirs to the Andrews/Tumblety case was that he was speaking from his own personal knowledge so that, as a constable in H Division, he must have seen Andrews in Whitechapel actually conducting enquiries with his own eyes.

However, if you are right – and, as it happens, I think you may well be – in saying that Dew's reference to Andrews being involved in the "great man-hunt" was solely in respect of him being sent to America, then your argument hits a serious, if not fatal, problem. For Dew can no more have known the reason for Andrews' mission in American than anyone who read the newspapers in 1888/89. As far as I am aware, Scotland Yard did not share their operational secrets or details with constables so Dew could not have known from his own personal knowledge in 1888 or 1889 what Andrews had been doing in Toronto. His belief that Andrews was part of the team hunting JTR could easily have come from the newspaper reports of the time and, indeed, those reports might have misled hundreds of constables and officers of other ranks, as well as members of the public, into thinking that one of their detectives had been chasing the Ripper in America.

[David Orsam]

The source you found quoting Andrews about Tumblety proves to me he was investigating this Ripper suspect.

I think what you are saying is that because Andrews said that Tumblety was not Jack the Ripper this must mean Andrews thought Tumblety was Jack the Ripper. It doesn't convince me I'm afraid and I suspect is not going to convince anyone else.

[David Orsam]

We will have to agree to disagree.

Because I would prefer us to agree to agree, I'm going to have one more attempt at persuading you on the "coincidence" point.

Roland Barnett was arrested on 30 August 1888 and appeared in the police court on 31 August which was, of course, the same day that Mary Ann Nichols was murdered. Is there a sinister connection between these two events or was it pure coincidence?

I'm sure you will agree this was a coincidence. But let's just look at that coincidence. Before the first of the canonical murders had even occurred, Inspector Andrews arrested a man who, it would turn out, was wanted for serious offences in Toronto, a city which is said to be connected with a subsequent JTR suspect. Even the most ardent Tumblety-as-JTR-suspect advocate cannot claim that Andrews or Scotland Yard was plotting to carry out research into a murder suspect for a series of murders that had not yet occurred.

In fact, as I understand his thesis, Palmer is saying that at some point in November, Anderson noted the coincidence of the Toronto police requesting the extradition of a prisoner from the UK to Toronto at just the same time as (by coincidence) a Ripper suspect was being investigated who had some links with Toronto. In other words, the coincidence was already there. An officer was required to go to Toronto and a JTR suspect could be linked with Toronto. So it's not the coincidence itself that is of any significance here. It is the fact that Anderson is said to have recognised the existence of this coincidence and taken the opportunity afforded by the coincidence to send Andrews to Toronto.

But the coincidence of a Scotland Yard officer having to go to Toronto on 29 November 1888 would have existed whether Anderson wanted an officer to conduct research into Tumblety or not. I appreciate that it is said "oh why Andrews?" but you simply cannot get away from the fact that it was Andrews who arrested Barnett before the first murder had even happened.

As I have already mentioned, I don't see that Toronto was such a big part of Tumblety's life (or that there is any good reason for Anderson to have made a connection between Tumblety and Toronto in November 1888) that we can even say that there was a coincidence here at all! But to the extent that Tumblety and Toronto go hand in hand then yes it clearly was a coincidence that a British officer needed to go to Toronto.

[Phil Carter]

err. ...

Hello David,

*you invite comment on your trilogy et Al. .


When did Dew write his book and at what rank?

He wasn't a constable to be shared sny supposed secret operations with at the time of writing his book...I believe.
You have no idea when he was..if he was..privy to any work previously accomplished. Therefore...One cannot conclude he knew nothing. That is supposition based on previous rank.


Phil

[Jonathan H]

To David

That is a very clever inversion re: Dew's memoirs. I don't mean that in a loaded way. I mean that that is a clever way to turn the telescope around and look at it from the other end, in your argument the correct end.

Dew had read, say, "The Pall Mall Gazette" on Dec 31st 1888 which mentioned Andrews hunting a suspect in North America, and it lodged in his memory and, subsequently, he produced it in his memoirs. In the sense that he mentioned Adnrews as a Whitechapel investigator, but was sincerely mistaken and misled by the tabloids of years before.

That's possible. Most anything is possible. But is it really probable? I don't think so. In fact, I think it pretty close to travesty.

I think you are in danger of embracing an intellectual sterility because you are requiring your revisnionist argument to defy both human nature and common sense. It withers in an arid, alien landscape, one in which real people do not confer, do not gossip, do not break the rules, do not form factions, at for example Scotland Yard, an organization that--like most organizations under daily pressure from internal and external factors--leak like sieves.

I think this is the overarching flaw in your entire revisionist take about Andrews and Tumblety. It assumes that official documents are the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That if people testify under oath or speak to the press that must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and so on.

Trying to use historical methodology means trying to figure out why people and events occured in certain ways at certain times. This means you have to use speculation and conjecture--these tools of analyses are much misunderstood here and often treated pejoratively and derisively--to fill in the gaps. This of course means that people interpreting sources, especially when they are incomplete and ambiguous, will disagree. Others, assessing these opinions, can make judgments based on their perception of the strength and merits, or lack of, of said arguments and counter-arguments.

For example, it is a matter of public and private record (e.g. the majority of surviving sources) that JFK was going to keep LBJ on the ticket for '64. RFK and LBJ detested each other, yet on this aspect they were in lock-step agreement, publicly and privately. Nonetheless masterful biographer Robert Caro has taken the stand that Johnson was indeed going to be dumped, his career saved only by tragedy. Caro interprets the critical primary sources as being deceitful, for complimentary motives of their own. Is Caro right? He might be right. He sure makes a compelling case. Personally I think the alternative view is probably correct after all, but, then again, those advocates might be wrong too.

Let me ask you a question, David.

Do you consider your trilogy to be a provisional case, or a straight-forward replication of the facts and thus one blessedly free from any bias, from any or preconceptions and/or misconceptions?

[David Orsam]

When did Dew write his book and at what rank?

Phil,

His rank at the time he wrote his book in the 1930s is irrelevant. What is relevant is his rank in 1888. If he was not writing in the 1930s from his own personal knowledge of events in 1888 his account loses all its significance as a record of what happened in 1888. Walter Andrews had died over thirty years before Dew wrote his book so he certainly didn't speak to him about it at the time his book was written.

As far as I am concerned, if what Dew was saying in his book was not that he ever saw Andrews in Whitechapel investigating the murders but that he understood that Andrews was sent to America to chase a JTR suspect then Dew's book as a source for saying that Andrews was one of three officers investigating the JTR murders loses all credibility and can be discounted.

[David Orsam]

That's possible. Most anything is possible. But is it really probable?

Yes, absolutely it is probable Jonathan. I know you don't like it because it destroys one of the key shaky pillars of your faith but it is entirely probable - and in my view 100% certainly the case - that if Dew's only knowledge of Andrews being involved in the JTR investigation was of him going to America then he simply must have picked this up from the newspapers.

[David Orsam]

Let me ask you a question, David.

Do you consider your trilogy to be a provisional case, or a straight-forward replication of the facts and thus one blessedly free from any bias, from any or preconceptions and/or misconceptions?

I don't think in those terms Jonathan. I have done the research, certainly without any bias and actually, at the start, looking for any evidence at all to justify the Andrews/Tumblety thesis - because I quite like the Tumblety-as-suspect idea - but not finding any and coming to the very firm conclusion that, actually, the whole idea is complete nonsense.

I mean, you've never even responded to the big timing point. Scotland Yard was not a collection of historians doing research in foreign countries. With Tumblety having fled the jurisdiction and not likely to be extradited, doing any research into his background had no possible practical benefit or purpose for Scotland Yard did it? By the time Andrews arrived in Toronto, Tumblety was long gone and Andrews knew it.

To ask you a question: Are you sure you are not attracted to the Andrews-researching-Tumblety-in-Canada claim because you find it a beautiful theory which fits in perfectly with your view of what Scotland Yard believed and thus accept it wholeheartedly? Further, are you sure that your belief in the theory is not a religious one which does not require any evidence to support it?

Because I rather fear you are looking at it the wrong way round. The theory needs to start with the evidence rather than the conclusion.

[Phil Carter]

David,

Nobody..least of all you.. can say with unequivocal certainty WHEN Dew learned....or not..of anything.

When he wrote his book is of import. He wrote of his experiences. Now whatever you say as to when he experienced knowledge or not cannot either be discovered nor proven. But the one thing that is certain It that it came from his own recollections. .true or false..at a time he was no longer a constable.

He may well have learned of things after Andrews had died for all you know. Nobody knows. You simply cannot dismiss because you assume it to be a truism or a falsity. That David, is distorting history. For the saving of your own argument. So disprove Dews words or accept that he had..at some of time or another..possible or no possible access to knowledge or information.

Your argument on this point is..unprovable. and therefore you must accept possibility of the man having knowledge.

Now I for one have read Dew's work. I don't believe much of what he writes. But..I can't disprove much if it either. I suggest that if you can..produce a compelling thesis that totally demolishes yet another author ...as seems to be your current bent....???


Phil

[David Orsam]

David,

Nobody..least of all you.. can say with unequivocal certainty WHEN Dew learned....or not..of anything.

When he wrote his book is of import. He wrote of his experiences. Now whatever you say as to when he experienced knowledge or not cannot either be discovered nor proven. But the one thing that is certain It that it came from his own recollections. .true or false..at a time he was no longer a constable.

He may well have learned of things after Andrews had died for all you know. Nobody knows. You simply cannot dismiss because you assume it to be a truism or a falsity. That David, is distorting history. For the saving of your own argument. So disprove Dews words or accept that he had..at some of time or another..possible or no possible access to knowledge or information.

Your argument on this point is..unprovable. and therefore you must accept possibility of the man having knowledge.

Now I for one have read Dew's work. I don't believe much of what he writes. But..I can't disprove much if it either. I suggest that if you can..produce a compelling thesis that totally demolishes yet another author ...as seems to be your current bent....???


Phil

I think you've actually missed the point here Phil. I'm saying that if Dew understood in 1888, when he was a constable, that Andrews' visit to Toronto was JTR related, it is not something that he would have learnt directly from any official or reliable source. By which I mean that none of Robert Anderson, Walter Andrews, Sir Charles Warren or James Monro are likely to have imparted that information to him, a lowly constable, in 1888. Thus, it would not have been a fact within his own personal knowledge in the way that actually seeing Andrews in Whitechapel would have been (which is what I had always previously understood Dew to be saying).

Jonathan earlier mentioned "gossip" or police officers conferring but that is hardly a reliable method of transmission of information. But he may be right. Lots of police officers must have read the story in the newspapers (and it wasn't only the Pall Mall Gazette) about Andrews going to America to chase JTR. It is natural that THIS became part of the police gossip and chat among the lower ranks and it would not surprise me if it was a common belief amongst officers that Andrews really did go to America for this reason. It was certainly never contradicted by an official statement from Scotland Yard in the press or in police orders.

So Dew need not have directly read the newspaper stories but might have heard of the story from others and when, as a former Chief Inspector he published his book in 1938, he was thinking about what he understood Andrews' mission to be and had wrongly always assumed it was connected with Jack the Ripper. (The same is true in my opinion of Logan's book.)

Dew's memoir was just that. A personal account. Not a fully researched official history of Scotland Yard. He just drew on his recollection of events and, if Jonathan's interpretation of his book his correct, due to the misleading newspaper stories his recollection of events happened to wrong.

The short point is that (if Jonathan is right) Dew's supposed "evidence" about the trio of officers who were supposed to be investigating Jack the Ripper in 1888 is not evidence at all and can longer be relied upon to support the notion that Andrews had anything to do with investigating Jack the Ripper.

[Monty]

Dew's memoir was just that. A personal account. Not a fully researched official history of Scotland Yard.

Sums Dews work up well.

Yes, policemen talk amongst themselves, be that in the mess, recreation room, down the pub or whilst in the reserve room, however not sure press reports would be of interest to them mind.

One must not forget Andrews correspondence traffic, which would have been handled by the Mets telegraph operators. The updates would not have been entirely restricted to sender and receiver.

Monty