Sergeant Stephen White

[Johnr]

Believing Only Black and (not) White

Phew!

My luridly illogical supposition that there is some substance in the Steve White story has drawn the Big Guns.

Now I know the Steve White "The People's Journal" article was in a weekly newspaper specialising in highly-coloured, exaggerated, and possibly invented crime stories ( "The People's Journal", Dundee).

But, having said that, every time I read that account of how White almost....
I have the feeling this was written by a capable writer.To my mind, it contains more, and more unexpected, detail than the usual newspaper reports.The author must have done his homework.

I know: lots of people are suspicious of the described location.The position of the street lamp.
The fact no murder reports in official files claim detectives were engaged in any stake-out near a JTR murder scene. Nor saw the Ripper.

Steve White was definitely involved in one JTR case: the Stride murder case.
So, he was in the general locale on the night of the Mitre Square murder. He was working for "H' Division around the time of the Eddowes murder.

Reading the several accounts of White's police career, it is obvious he was experienced in "stake-out" type work. Witness his alleged involvement in visiting Anarchist clubs in plain clothes/disguise. So, this experience and his rank, could have involved him in receiving progress reports from police teams watching a specific site.

True, it is a telling point that Steve White was not called to give testimony to any JTR Inquest.

But my main problem is that despite my admiration for the solid work of the three posters who have doubted my belief, and despite the fact there are no clearly identifiable police or press reports saying that a policeman actually saw the possible JTR...

I say, police reports are incomplete, confused and even, in some cases..missing.

Newspaper accounts are selectively used by all Ripper researchers.

And like Donald McCormick's very exciting writings/books, it would be foolish to write-off all his claims completely- because he has employed invention on a number of occasions.

After all, his main sources of information for his JTR book, were the clipping files at Harmsworth House. A tool used extensively by many journalist/authors.

Those who believe "The People's Journal" article to be fake, might care to look at the back copies of that papers articles in 1888. If the Steve White article was based upon their clipping files, it will show under a harsh spotlight. JOHN RUFFELS.

[John Bennett]

The article suggests that Stephen White found a JTR victim bleeding away and had just passed her killer. Apart from the fact that the geography doesn't ring true, White never gave evidence at any inquest. Those who discovered the Whitechapel Murders victims were:

Tabram - John Saunders Reeves.
Nichols - Cross/Paul/PC Neil
Chapman - John Davis
Stride - Louis Deimschutz
Eddowes - PC Watkins
Kelly - Thomas Bowyer
McKenzie - PC Andrews
Pinchin St Torso - PC Pennett
Coles - PC Thompson

And they all appeared at the individual inquests. Interestingly, they're all male!

Just to give my two penneth's worth, it all smacks of the usual dubious journalistic 'scoop' or attempts to pompously impart some bogus esoteric knowledge upon the public. Ripperology was full of that sort of thing in the early 20th century; witness Matters, McCormick, Cremers, anything to do with Dr Dutton and other 'well-connected' folk who mentioned stuff that cannot be henceforth corroborated or traced.

It's possible White was party to the discovery of some stabbing or whatever, but I think as far as a Whitechapel/Ripper murder is concerned, this is a no-no.

[Monty]

John,

The detail is in the report....or rather it isnt.

The evidence given in the Obituary does not match any of the known facts.

The location description does not match the murder scene.

The course of events described matches nothing in any news or police report.

Plus no one else mentions this event.

Surely alarm bells should be ringing, no?

Monty

[Johnr]

Doesn't Add Up

Yes, Monty,

You are strictly correct in your first observation, and - more ironically - most certainly in your second.

Whilst I can be justifiably accused of emotional illogic in my belief there is substance in the Steve White Obit.; I am not so sanguine as you Monty, or Stewart , that the absence of a coinciding description of a possible Druitt sighting in the Official Police records can be so categorically a reason to dismiss room for the opposite logic.

I can think of (a) purloined records from Kew. Some of which were not
fortuitously photocopied;
(b) Bombed out repositories. Like the City of London Police
records;
(c) Misunderstanding and misremembering by other police
Officers. (See the several references to the “P.C. in Mitre Square”).


In short, I believe the whole picture is not so cut and dried. JOHN RUFFELS.

[Monty]

The fact that no detail in this report matches any official report surely is an indicator as the reliability of this story.

The whole thing just doesnt add up.

Monty

[tnb]

Just a thought here, and likely [I]way[I] off-piste - but playing devil's advocate, is it possible that the man White described seeing (minus glowing eyeballs and associated rubbish) was seen by a police officer, perhaps on an earlier night, but for some reason the sighting was not passed on immediately?

I am in no way a conspiracy theorist but I think a lot of people would accept that one tactic likely used by the police at the time (and accounting for some of the glaring gaps in info passed down, ie through press reports) was the 'holding back' of certain information in an attempt to stay 'one step ahead' of the murderer (witness descriptions being one such, as has already been established on at least one occasion); could it be that a police officer (possibly White, more likely not) had seen such a man but the description had been kept quiet, partly so as not to alert the murderer to a potentially close description, partly perhaps because to publicise it might reveal that they had been staking out a particular address, as White's story suggests (?) Perhaps after the Stride and Eddowes killings there was a change of tact, and the police realised they needed to release the description, and so White - as the man on the ground in Mitre Square, and an officer who could feasibly have seen the 'ripper that night, was chosen to be the 'witness' and the sighting was distributed amongst the officers as if it had come from him, on that night, as opposed to say 2 or 3 nights previous?



Stewart - I must admit I have not read your refutations anywhere, but I am willing to defer to your experience; obviously I am not going to ask you to rehash stuff you seem to have already written about several times, but am I right in assuming that your opinion is based mainly on the same foundations as John's - ie that it was not mentioned anywhere at the time?

Would you accept this as a possible explanation of what must surely be a very odd apocryphal story if that is what it is - I expect a lot of officers exaggerated or invented their involvement in the Whitechapel investigation in subsequent years, but to the extent of getting into an obituary? Your opinion as an ex police officer of whether such 'bending' of information is a viable explanation would be very instructive.

[Mascara & Paranoia]

Having read all of this stuff, it does seem to be that White (or someone either writing on his behalf or pretending to be him) was fabricating things. Though I guessed as such by the fantastical over-exaggerating of the supposed suspect's appearance (glow in the dark eyeballs! tapering fingers made of snow!).

Though it does seem to be a fabrication concocted with themes of the Eddowes murder and that of, more specifically, Francis Cole's[?]. The inspiration for the character seems to have been a mixture of Thomas Cutbush, Aaron Kosminski and the man seen by Lawende.

[Johnr]

Steve White May Be Nonesense But Something Happened At Mitre Square

Yes Stewart,

I agree with you, there exists in writing ( on the Press Reports? Well definitely in the Dissertations and on countless threads), an assertion that Steve White did NOT sight a possible Jack close to a murder site on the night of an actual murder.

BUT: and as D.H.Lawrence said, there is always an anticlimax of buts.
Some people have alleged senior SY officers and bureaucrats have jumbled up eye-witness reports to mistakenly give the impression there was a police sighting of JTR on a vital night.

This mistake has been perpetuated and keeps bobbing up.

The other clincher for the No-Sightings-At-Mitre-Square school is that the
official police files contain no mention of such. And whilst other things might be expected to be omitted, such an important piece of information would not.

I will retire to my corner and wait patiently for more information to emerge from digitised documents.

And great podcast by the way, Stewart. I love the way you are able to laugh at things.

Am I the only one who thinks the Fido/Evans exchanges on that Anderson thread should be preserved in aspic? For all time?
They represent to me, a marvellous example of two classic approaches to Ripper studies. One, almost Wildean at times; the other dogged, patient, accurate, and suitably unemotional. Mostly.

My only solace Stewart, is that Druitt appears to be making a bit of a come-back.And just think, on the podcast you rate him as a viabl;e prospect/suspect and he is not even mentioned officially in the MEPOL files. Weren't the files on JTR closed in 1892?
JOHN RUFFELS.

[Stewart P Evans]

Nonsense

I thought I put the 'Stephen White saw a suspect' nonsense to bed years ago. Evidently not.

[Johnr]

Excellent analysis folks, well done!

But, isn't it intriguing how the assertion a beat P.C. saw "the man with the Glow-worm eyes" in Mitre Square and recorded one of the few reliable descriptions, seems to crop up in several places and yet, not specifically amongst Swanston's reports?

I have always suspected if the Ripper murders are ever solved it will be because of something seen - (or not seen!)- on the night of the Double event.
The Ripper was forced to change his normal modus.....
And because his "sexual mania", was unsated after the Stride killing.
needing to strike again....and thus risk capture a second time in one night.


Also, official reports - even press accounts - assure us, that by the time of the Double event, the back lanes off Commercial Road, were literally crawling with plain-clothes coppers. (See the Reynolds News account by that American reporter).

Yet, and yet....Working gals still had no qualms guiding thier customers to places like Mitre Square.A mixture of desperation and better knowledge of beat policemenb's habits.(Hiding in urinals drinking, et cetera).

Yes, there is still more to be uncovered about the night of the Double Event.

JOHN RUFFELS.

[Sam Flynn]

Natalie - I'm not prepared to discuss the matter further on this thread.

[Natalie Severn]

You can work it out from the COMBINED witness testimony, Nats, i.e. don't just rely on Levisohn. I can imagine why it's tempting to do the latter, as Levisohn is the ONLY witness who supports the "Klosowski was in Whitechapel at the time of Tabram's murder" argument. Sadly (for those who want to believe that), the combined testimonies - PLURAL - of Klosowski's nearest and dearest (viz., his landlady his in-laws and his day-to-day colleagues) do not support Levisohn, the salesman-who-occasionally-saw-Klosowski, at all.

No more about this on a Stephen White thread, for pity's sake.

Which landlady?The only one for 1888 quoted is Mrs Radin who stated at the trial that Chapman only stayed with her for 5 months some 15 years before.She didnt say"he stayed with me in 1888".

Relatives:
Mrs Stanislaus Rauch,sister of Chapman"s wife,didnt even arrive in the UK until August 1889 -when she said she first met Chapman who was in a public house on the Whitechapel Road so how on earth could she have known what Chapman was doing in 1888? This the sister of Lucy Baderski,got several dates WRONG in fact.
1]She stated the marriage of her sister to Chapman was in August 1889 when it was October 1889.
2]She stated Chapman RETURNED from America in May 1891 when he RETURNED the following year,1892,having only just LEFT England in the spring or early Summer of 1891.

Likewise,Stanislaus Baderski[brother]---stated 16 March 1903,-"I have known the accused 13 years"-he did not say 15 years.ie from either 1890 or the latter part of 1889,so he neither would have known what Chapman was doing in 1888.
So clearly and evidently, these combined statements do not contradict the statement of Levisohn.
Moreover Abberline also stated to the reporter of the Pall Mall Gazette 24 March 1903,"When Klosowski[Chapman]came to Whitechapel , he occupied a lodging in George Yard,Whitechapel Road ,where the FIRST MURDER was committed.

[Sam Flynn]

Moreover Sam,please be SPECIFIC with the detail of your contradictions.

You can work it out from the COMBINED witness testimony, Nats, i.e. don't just rely on Levisohn. I can imagine why it's tempting to do the latter, as Levisohn is the ONLY witness who supports the "Klosowski was in Whitechapel at the time of Tabram's murder" argument. Sadly (for those who want to believe that), the combined testimonies - PLURAL - of Klosowski's nearest and dearest (viz., his landlady his in-laws and his day-to-day colleagues) do not support Levisohn, the salesman-who-occasionally-saw-Klosowski, at all.

The specific detail of your objections please so I can answer each precisely.

No more about this on a Stephen White thread, for pity's sake.

[Ben]

No, not a chance.

We know for certain he did, Scott, since his report included descriptions from both City and Met witnesses.

Hi Norma,

The White description was almost certainly fictitious. Even setting aside the glow-worm eyes and the long tapering fingers, it's clear from Swanson's report that there were no potential police ripper-spotters from the double event other than PC Smith. Besides which, the People's Journal account was written after White's death, and it's clear from his original commentary that there was never any suspect sighting. Even if we try to surmount the problem by arguing that the account pertained to the McKenzie murder, the theatrical nature of the description compells us to treat it with extreme caution.

As for the 2nd October 1888 press account, I'd agree with the "confusion" scenario. The description is very clearly Smith's, and was erroneously attributed to the Mitre Square murder.

All the best,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

Moreover Sam,please be SPECIFIC with the detail of your contradictions.
eg WHO said WHAT and WHEN and WHERE--- EXACTLY--- is this recorded? The specific detail of your objections please so I can answer each precisely.Thankyou.