The 'Suckered!' Trilogy

[David Orsam]

I am not going to hi Jack this thread but I am simply going to say that you argument that the likelihood of Tumblety being bailed on Nov 7th was blown out of the water by the case of OscarWilde
Case which silenced you, but it seems you still won't accept it I look forward to reading the article

It didn't silence me Trevor. Perhaps you are unaware that the relevant thread was locked by Admin on the day I was going to post a response. Then, as I made very clear at the time, I left my response for the article in Ripperologist which Paul Begg invited me to submit. The case of Oscar Wilde doesn't assist you at all for the reasons I have already included in my article.

[David Orsam]

Hi David,

Not at all.

It's because I find your sneering, goading tone offensive.

Please do not bother me again.

Wow! Going from "send me a PM" to "do not bother me again" within 15 minutes. A poor excuse for a refusal to answer questions about your work on a public forum in my opinion. I suspect that what you don't like is that I have demolished all your main arguments in my trilogy. Should I refer to this as a heavy fog of silence? Or is it the heavy fog of denial?

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

There you go again.

I rest my case.

Regards,

Simon

[David Orsam]

Hi David,

There you go again.

I rest my case.

Your case is about my "sneering, goading tone"??? I thought your case was about Scotland Yard officers committing illegal acts in America and the Commissioner of Police resigning as a result. But perhaps you have now abandoned that case after reading my trilogy?

And one would have thought that you would want to wipe that "sneering, goading tone" off my face (and, yes, I know a tone isn't on a face!) by answering my questions in full, in public, and rebutting the arguments in my trilogy. Was that not why you decided to post in this thread? Instead, you have raised one relatively minor point which I had already dealt with in the trilogy (and then accused me of being patronising when I asked you if you had actually read my trilogy!!!).

As far as I am concerned, Simon, you have no case. You once demonstrated that Stephen Knight's book was elaborate balderdash and I have now demonstrated that your main arguments are elaborate balderdash. Do you remember telling me (on this forum, 26 November 2014) "You're obviously not too attuned to irony."? Well I think that is quite ironic, no?

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Well, I for one greatly enjoyed David's second article, I only skimmed the first and, having just returned from vacation, haven't had time to read the third. Some amazing research which builds on his earlier amazing efforts here on the Casebook.

I do have some problems, however. A couple of people have e-mailed me about David's tone towards me, so more than just Tom wonders about that. The idea that David is being "dickish," as one person said to me, is out there.

I also wondered about this: "Those who oppose the notion that Tumblety was even considered by Scotland Yard as being a Jack the Ripper suspect, such as Simon D. Wood and Wolf Vanderlinden,..."

This is something that gets thrown at me from time to time usually by Tumblety supporters. The idea seems to be that if you can label someone so closed minded on the subject of Tumblety that they can't even acknowledge that Tumblety was an actual suspect then anything they say about the good doctor must be taken with a grain of salt. I, however, am not one of those, despite what David claims. I would have thought this obvious from my Tumblety posts and articles:

"Francis Tumblety was a suspect in the Whitechapel murders. In the opinion of Chief Inspector John George Littlechild he was even “a likely suspect.” There are two other items which show an interest in the American quack by Scotland Yard. The first is the fact that the British authorities contacted Chief Inspector Byrnes of the New York City Detective Bureau and asked him to keep an eye on the doctor while in the city. There was even reports of an English detective doing the same thing. The second is that when San Francisco Chief of Police Crowley sent a telegram to Scotland Yard stating that he could supply examples of Tumblety’s handwriting, the London police didn’t respond by cabling back the response “Who?” Instead Assistant Commissioner Dr. Robert Anderson, the head of the overall Ripper investigation, himself asked Crowley to send the samples along with any details about Tumblety. It is therefore impossible to refute the fact that Dr. Francis Tumblety was suspected of being Jack the Ripper but what kind of suspect was he?"
On The Trail Of Tumblety? Part 2, Ripper Notes #24, October, 2005.

I have some other thoughts but let me read the last of David's articles, when I can get around to it, before I comment. However, let me reiterate here how impressive I thought David's work has been. This is truly ground breaking stuff.

Wolf.

[David Orsam]

Hi Wolf,

An interesting post.

Firstly, let me say in respect of the comment "David's tone towards me" that, as I sit here, I am genuinely not aware of any tone that I adopted towards you in the articles, regardless of how many people have emailed you. If you have any specific examples that you object to please post and I will consider if I have been unfair. It is true that I come down hard on what I believe to be bad arguments but that is all part of my debating technique which could, of course, alienate some readers but it's a risk I take. I would expect my own bad arguments (in the unlikely event I ever put forward any!) to be dismissed in similar fashion if desired. I am not someone who can dish out but not take it. As far as I am concerned, arguments do not have feelings so we should be able to say what we like about them! I also hope that you noted my comments about you to Tom earlier in this thread.

As for my statement about you not being prepared to accept Tumblety as a JTR suspect, your criticism is a fair one and I do apologise for misrepresenting your views in an unthinking manner. I wasn't trying to make any point from this, or even to label you, it was simply a way of writing the introduction to my Third Man article to try and clarify the sides of the argument but you are of course quite right to raise the objection. I have now changed the sentence to read:

"Those who oppose the notion that Tumblety was even considered by Scotland Yard as being a Jack the Ripper suspect, such as Simon D. Wood, and others such as Wolf Vanderlinden, have claimed that the visit of Andrews to Canada was part of the illegal work on behalf of the Times being carried out by Scotland Yard detectives in North America".

I hope that is satisfactory to you but would be happy to amend further if you don't think that quite captures it.

The rest of your comments are very generous and fair but, from our previous discussions on this forum, I expected nothing else from you.

[Mayerling]

Good find Robert! I've had a go with an upload.

Looking at the woodcut drawing of Inspector Jarvis, I'm struck at how unlike one's image of a detective from Scotland Yard he looks. With his spectacles and moustace and prominent girth he looks either like a professor or a successful middle class businessman.

Jeff

[Trevor Marriott]

It didn't silence me Trevor. Perhaps you are unaware that the relevant thread was locked by Admin on the day I was going to post a response. Then, as I made very clear at the time, I left my response for the article in Ripperologist which Paul Begg invited me to submit. The case of Oscar Wilde doesn't assist you at all for the reasons I have already included in my article.

Au contraire mon ami. The thread was re opened and the silence was deafening. It vindicates my earlier stuff and as stated blows your negating argument out of the water. Its a shame it looks as if I will have to do it all over again

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[mklhawley]

I also wondered about this: "Those who oppose the notion that Tumblety was even considered by Scotland Yard as being a Jack the Ripper suspect, such as Simon D. Wood and Wolf Vanderlinden,..."

This is something that gets thrown at me from time to time usually by Tumblety supporters. The idea seems to be that if you can label someone so closed minded on the subject of Tumblety that they can't even acknowledge that Tumblety was an actual suspect then anything they say about the good doctor must be taken with a grain of salt. I, however, am not one of those, despite what David claims.

I hope you don't mean me, Wolf. I know darn well you reject Simon's and Trevor's assertion that Tumblety wasn't even a minor suspect. I suspect you and David agree quite closely on this subject.

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

Looking at the woodcut drawing of Inspector Jarvis, I'm struck at how unlike one's image of a detective from Scotland Yard he looks. With his spectacles and moustace and prominent girth he looks either like a professor or a successful middle class businessman.

Jeff

...and Abberline was said to look more like an accountant (or banker?) than a detective.

[mklhawley]

Au contraire mon ami. The thread was re opened and the silence was deafening. It vindicates my earlier stuff and as stated blows your negating argument out of the water. Its a shame it looks as if I will have to do it all over again

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Really? Wow

[David Orsam]

Au contraire mon ami. The thread was re opened and the silence was deafening. It vindicates my earlier stuff and as stated blows your negating argument out of the water. Its a shame it looks as if I will have to do it all over again

The silence was not deafening Trevor. The Holloway prison thread, in which you made your off-topic posting about Oscar Wilde (because the Tumblety thread had already been locked) was locked on 17 April. I could not then make a response in any thread because it was against the rules to continue to post on the subject of a locked thread. On 19 April, I posted (in the rather more correct 'Cracking the Calendar Code' thread) the following:

"Now, I did have a lot more to say on the topic of Oscar Wilde - and indeed was planning to start a new thread entitled "Tumblety Goes Wilde" - but, on reflection, and given recent events in this forum, it might be best to let this subject (which seems to be quite inflammatory) die. And we are going round in circles on it in any event. I now need some time to re-write these posts into an article (and I have another long article on a Tumbelty related subject to write up) - posting on these boards takes up a huge amount of one's time - so to the extent I have more to say on the Wilde example, or anything else on Tumblety's bail, I will include it in that article.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to this topic, for reading and understanding my long posts, and I hope that if my article ever does get published you will enjoy it."

Chris then said to me:

"Yes, I think that will be the best thing to do, all things considered.

What puzzles me about the Wilde case is how the magistrate could refuse him bail even at committal. But I'll be happy to wait for the answer in your article (unless anyone else here would like to explain it before then)."

I then replied to him as follows:

"I can fully answer this Chris - and it would have formed the subject of a thread on its own - but the one point that has never been made against me is that the 1848 Act (as well as all textbooks from the period, including Douglas) does not mean what it says about bail being automatic upon committal. While I fully understand your puzzlement in this case, and was looking forward to explaining it in my intended "Tumblety Goes Wilde" thread, I thought it might be better in the article. However, if the puzzlement is so great that there is pressure from members of this forum to deal with the point I will certainly do so."

Chris then replied:

"Well, when I did a bit of searching for information about Wilde I came across some references that suggested the act wasn't treated as saying what it did say. But that puzzled me even more."

My response was:

"Without actually posting the answer on here, I don't know what to say. I can only guarantee that you will not be puzzled when I explain it."

Chris then posted to say that he agreed with my decision.

So I don't know how you can possibly refer to my 'silence' on the matter when I was not silent at all.

[Mayerling]

As for the topic of this thread, when you publish an argument in support of an allegation that the Home Secretary, Commissioner of Police and Assistant Commissioner in charge of the C.I.D. all made false statements, and that there was a conspiracy involving Scotland Yard officers to commit illegal acts in a foreign country, you do really need some sort of evidence to back up that argument don't you? My point is that there is absolutely no evidence at all to support it and all you have done is repeat the Labouchere allegations which never had any evidential support in the first place and which even he accepted were false and withdrew.

Are you now going to do the honourable thing and withdraw your own argument?

Just like my previous comments on Labouchere, this one has made me consider a curious point about history - we tend to forget certain incidents which occupied our attention for a few weeks or months, but just eventually blew over. In this case, the comment (although specifically relating to "Scotland Yard") should be shown in some type of broader context.

Recently there has been a serious strain in U.S. - German relations when the Merkle government learned that spying on German citizens by U.S. agencies was going on without getting any permission or even explaining the situation to a trusted ally. Well, it is one of those unfortunate side effects (i.e. "bullying") that superpowers show to countries they should not misbehave towards. The U.S. in the last half century or so certainly has this unfortunate habit.

It should be (however) no surprise that in the 19th Century the reverse was true. A weaker U.S., at best a leading secondary state, was fair game if a superpower in Europe felt it was to their advantage to do a number on us. In the American Civil War the French Second Empire under Napoleon III took advantage of out national nightmare to invade Mexico and set up a puppet regime (that lasted until 1867) under the Austrian Archduke Maximillian and his wife Carlotta (as Emperor and Empress).

France was not alone in this kind of behavior. In the 1850s Great Britain pulled a fast one on us - though to be honest it was done so subtly that it almost passed unnoticed.

During the Crimean War enlistments in Great Britain began to decline with news of the military disasters near Sebastopol. The British Government tried to find new sources for men. At the time there was no Canada, but an amalgram of colonies known as "British North America". The Premier of Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe, came up with a curiously daring scheme. He suggested to the British authorities to set up recruitment centers in the United States Midwest and Eastern states, and offer benefits for Americans who'd sign up to fight the Russians. Keep in mind this is not a set of Americans who feel appalled by the Russians and decide to volunteer by going to Toronto or Halifax to enlist. They are enlisting in Cincinatti and New York City.

Why the British okayed this crack-brained scheme I have never figured out (I actually researched this story for a book I was trying to write about twenty five years ago). Never-the-less, okay it they did, and the centers were opened by the British counsels in three cities (Philadelphia was the third). The British did not realize that the Russians had an unexpected ally too. The Irish, slowly recovering in 1856 from the nightmare years of the "Potato Famine" in the 1840s, and the escape by emigration to the British Empire and the United States, deeply resented what they felt was not done for them (and more to the point what they felt was done to them). British activities were already being monitored by Irish immigrants in the U.S., and soon the three recruitment centers were discovered by them. Gleefully they revealed this to the Federal Government in Washington, D.C.

1856 was not a great year for the U.S. The increasingly acrimonious debate over slavery was leading to the Civil War. Presidential leadership under Franklin Pierce was non-existent. Yet like many weak chief executives, Pierce found that he could have some successes in foreign policy matters. He and his Secretary of State William Marcy resented the idea that the British Government treated us like we were a colony, even though we had been independent from them since 1783, and had fought a second war with them from 1812-1815. Hell, we had even peacefully settled the Oregon Territory dispute with them in 1846 by a sensible compromise. This activity was uncalled for. Pierce (for a change with popular support) demanded that the three consuls in Cincinatti, Philadelphia, and New York City leave the country, and also demanded the recall of Sir John Crampton, the Minister from Great Britain. Crampton was also recalled.

Two points struck me remembering the incident: the direct activities of British agents on U.S. soil (although these were diplomats, not police officers) affecting or in contravention to our laws, and the involvement of pre-Fenian Irish Americans keeping tabs on the British. It sort of sets up the situation (in terms of a mind set) for Americans at the time of the 1888-89 situation, by showing what they had come to expect from a past event with Britain.

Jeff

[Trevor Marriott]

The silence was not deafening Trevor. The Holloway prison thread, in which you made your off-topic posting about Oscar Wilde (because the Tumblety thread had already been locked) was locked on 17 April. I could not then make a response in any thread because it was against the rules to continue to post on the subject of a locked thread. On 19 April, I posted (in the rather more correct 'Cracking the Calendar Code' thread) the following:

"Now, I did have a lot more to say on the topic of Oscar Wilde - and indeed was planning to start a new thread entitled "Tumblety Goes Wilde" - but, on reflection, and given recent events in this forum, it might be best to let this subject (which seems to be quite inflammatory) die. And we are going round in circles on it in any event. I now need some time to re-write these posts into an article (and I have another long article on a Tumbelty related subject to write up) - posting on these boards takes up a huge amount of one's time - so to the extent I have more to say on the Wilde example, or anything else on Tumblety's bail, I will include it in that article.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to this topic, for reading and understanding my long posts, and I hope that if my article ever does get published you will enjoy it."

Chris then said to me:

"Yes, I think that will be the best thing to do, all things considered.

What puzzles me about the Wilde case is how the magistrate could refuse him bail even at committal. But I'll be happy to wait for the answer in your article (unless anyone else here would like to explain it before then)."

I then replied to him as follows:

"I can fully answer this Chris - and it would have formed the subject of a thread on its own - but the one point that has never been made against me is that the 1848 Act (as well as all textbooks from the period, including Douglas) does not mean what it says about bail being automatic upon committal. While I fully understand your puzzlement in this case, and was looking forward to explaining it in my intended "Tumblety Goes Wilde" thread, I thought it might be better in the article. However, if the puzzlement is so great that there is pressure from members of this forum to deal with the point I will certainly do so."

Chris then replied:

"Well, when I did a bit of searching for information about Wilde I came across some references that suggested the act wasn't treated as saying what it did say. But that puzzled me even more."

My response was:

"Without actually posting the answer on here, I don't know what to say. I can only guarantee that you will not be puzzled when I explain it."

Chris then posted to say that he agreed with my decision.

So I don't know how you can possibly refer to my 'silence' on the matter when I was not silent at all.

Your silence on the material matters in hand could have been broken by replying by saying "Yes Trevor you are right, Tumblety could not have got bail on Nov 7th, and that it was not automatic that bail was granted following committal, as the Oscar Wilde case clearly shows"

[Mayerling]

...and Abberline was said to look more like an accountant (or banker?) than a detective.

Maybe that was why they became so successful as a detective force - they didn't look like detectives!

Jeff