Cutbush press source?

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Stephen,
Thanks for posting these lovely shots of Camden-----I do know the area reasonably well but hadnt connected it with the Cutbush encounter until now.I bet they look much as they did in 1888!
Best
Natalie

[Stephen Thomas]

It appears Cutbush was also suspected of a "Mile End job" because he is reported as saying so,in the Sun reports of 1894,and the incident he recounts dates from a March 1891 during an encounter with a young couple he met in Camden.

Hi Natalie

Some photos I took the other day from the approximate location of the meeting between Cutbush and the young couple in Camden.

This is the junction of Camden Street and Georgiana Street looking north (plus my bike, Robert ). If the story in the paper is true then Cutbush would have pretended to knock on the door of one of these houses.




Just for jolly this a very nice pub on the corner of Georgiana Street and Royal College Street and is the next one down from The Eagle that figured in the Camden Town Murder case.

[Natalie Severn]

Thankyou Jake.I more or less agree with your conclusions.Cutbush could have been JtR but that ofcourse doesnt mean he was.He was certainly viscious enough and bright enough to have avoided capture in the earlier killings of 1888.It does appear to me that he was "suspected" after the death of Frances Coles,in February 1891 by some in the police force, because he seems to have been placed in the loony bin just two weeks later -March 4 1891.That too doesnt mean that he actually had anything to do with this murder ,unless he was actually JtR ofcourse,but its possible Frances Coles was murdered by JtR since the file on the Whitechapel Murders remained open until just after her death.The closure of the JtR police file, coinciding with the placement of Thomas Cutbush in a high security jail,Broadmoor, in Spring 1891,is definitely curious.You could almost say they were under the impression they had got their man.Maybe Race told them they had!

It appears Cutbush was also suspected of a "Mile End job" because he is reported as saying so,in the Sun reports of 1894,and the incident he recounts dates from a March 1891 during an encounter with a young couple he met in Camden.
There was at least one stabbing in Mile End ,but it was early in 1888.It involved a youngish man, posing as a salesman,with a curious complexion----the victim said it was sort of "sunburnt " .
It was not a murder but then serial murderers, as I have learnt here, often begin with more minor "attacks" such as this one.

Cheers
Natalie

but one swallow and all that AP...............thanks for the great picture of the dagger!

[Cap'n Jack]

Jake, thank you, I've been waiting for a summer all my life.

[Jake L]

Hi Nats, AP,

>>>...the very popular pub called the 'Seven Stars'...

...and then there is the Crown & 7 Stars on Royal Mint Street....a pub a short stroll away from a certain cutlery shoppe

Note that TC buys his Chinese dagger just a couple of hundred yards away from the Coles murder site (a couple of weeks after the fact). A simple defensive measure against the White Coat Army after him - and yet another TC coincidence with morbid undertones...
--
Actually whether TC was the real McCoy (or just a like-minded cousin) is a side issue to me.

When pressed, I'll ultimately place my money on that old favourite, "The Unknown Local", simply because I like the odds But as far as People with Names go, TC is a very dark, very overlooked horse indeed.

For such a "harmless" prankster-prodder he seems to have generated quite an extraordinary bit of bad vibes & strange talk...and there's very little info on how the 1891 events unfolded. And the parallels to modern cases drawn by AP are indeed disturbing...

As regards Race:

If the main instigator of TCs candidacy indeed turns out to be not just a gentleman of the press, but an experienced Police officer (*and* the one who was on his case to begin with), it does put a new slant on the Macnaghten memo.

Macnaghten seems to regard most of the things written in the Sun as inaccurate (some undoubtedly were), but it would be nice to know to which extent Insp. Race - a source for some of the information - would have agreed with him. Moreover, I should think that in order to "talk out of school" (to the press, no less) in order to effect an investigation he had to have more than just a hunch. And it may well be, as AP pointed out in "Myth" & what is hinted at in the '98 report, that Race's career took a hit over this debacle.

On the other hand, you can't really blame Macnaghten given that "solving" the case could do little practical good while it would do a great deal of harm to an already ailing colleague & good trooper. This probably was the Cutbush angle Macnaghten was more familar with & concerned about. In other words, they probably didn't even want to look into it.
---

Attached is a 1896 report on Race, after his transfer to Whitechapel.


It seems you can't keep a good man down.

[Cap'n Jack]

Oh, and in Brick Lane, Whitechapel, was the very popular pub called the 'Seven Stars', the meeting place of all the unfortunates.

[Cap'n Jack]

The seven stars on Thomas' Chinese knife - and the seven stars certainly indicate that it was a blade made in Zhejiang province in China, probably in Longquan - of course represent the Pleidas, the Seven Sisters.
In Chinese mythology these seven sisters commited suicide to be with their god. One of them shone dim.
This is a typical example of a Longquan made 7 star dagger.
A toy.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Jake,
Thanks to you and Chris for posting this on Cutbush.

I disagree with the view that Thomas Cutbush doesnt fit JtR.I believe he is a perfect fit-----except for the jobbings!

My own reasons are to do with the illness that affected him and his recorded agility and quick thinking.

The very first record we have has to do with an attack on an elderly man who was taking the p**s . Cutbush was apparently vain to the point of narcisism and spent a lot of time tending the rashes on his face with creams and ointments as well as staring at himself in the mirror.His elderly colleague was ribbing him over this vanity.Cutbush apparently hid and waited for him at the top of some stairs.When the man reached the top he sprung out and pushed him down stairs nearly killing him----and then calmy told colleagues, the poor man had fallen.Total indifference to the consequences of his behaviour accompanied by ice cool detachment.

Then we have the letters to high places-viz one to Lord Grimthorpe, complaining his doctor was trying to poison him.
Classic stuff-------he is showing paranoia and delusions of grandeur.

All this time we are told he studies medical books and spends time cutting and pasting from magazines showing women in stages of undress,which he "rearranges" .He also spends timemaking very careful clinical type drawings of the mutilated bodies of women.

Above all it is his escape from the lunatic asylum,where he completely outwits and frees himself from four male nurses,scans an eight foot wall
drops in amongst a crowd of people wearing only his night shirt and "with tails flying, followed by a crowd in hot pursuit he calmly dives into a house,steals and changes into ,a hat ,a jacket, a pair of trousers ,shoes and grabs an umbrella.He then exits by the back door and proceeds to join the baying crowd waving his stolen umbrella while the crowd completely unaware its him, gallops on like a riderless horse!
He may have been a very sick cookie but he was certainly a smart one.
Natalie

[Jake L]

Thanks AP & Robert,

I can't see the attachments over there, but the dates tell me they're the ones I had in mind.

To those who haven't yet read them, these are reports of the "Cutbush case proper", i.e. the "prodding" incident from three years earlier (i.e. 1891).

I did a bit of slicing in order to fool the attachment size limit so that these can be viewed here as well.
This means that you have to read parts a & b of the 1st article separately, unlike the long columns of the original.

The knife issue is even more complicated it seems.......

The Apr 19th article




A follow up on April 26th:


As to Andy's earlier question about the "significance" (or lack of) of having knives as evidence, I suppose that that would have been the closest to hard evidence they would hope to have got (apart from "caught in the act" - type scenarios).

The ability match a Wound with the Shape of the Blade did exist in those days, I believe.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, TC just may have been the madman who was JtR - or what is even more likely, a madman who thought he was JtR.

We'll never know - but maybe we'll know a *little* more eventually.

[Robert]

Jake, here's a link.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=3772

[Cap'n Jack]

Well done Jake on reviving this highly interesting aspect of Cutbush cutlery.
Although we have discussed the possibility of Thomas being confined in Dartmoor before, your slant here is indeed food for thought, and I'll tell you why.
Some reports mention Thomas's 'toy dagger' as having 'seven stars'.
By my reckoning the Metropolitan Force of London would have regarded a 'Chinese dagger' or sword as a toy, simply because of its strange and foreign nature, but believe it or not the 'Chinese Sword 7 Star Blade Weapon' did, and still does exist, and here are the 7 stars:

[Jake L]

It seems that Western Mail ran with the same story, but on the 14th, also citing the Sun. And again it is stated that Morning Leader has the original/fuller interview.

Chris,
The "Mitre Square" story would, on the surface, seem to be in keeping with the "vicinity of the murder scenes". However, would they draft Met extras into City territory? I fear embellishment......

Nevertheless it would seem that Race (if indeed it was him, given the confusion regarding TC's cutlery) *was* willing to hedge some bets on TC as the Ripper.

Sadly, it seems that after three years in Bedlam, so was Thomas himself.


Robert,
Yep, a "toy dagger" according to his defense attorney, "formidable weapon", bearing the name of a well-known maker" according to Lloyd's News.

Regardless, I was most pleased at pinning down TCs latest place of cutlery purchase at Dickenson's, 2 Union Row, Minories.

Of course, that is just one knife....

I'll repost the Lloyds stories should anyone wants to figure out the cutlery business....

Edit: Due to strict file size limits (too strict, IMHO), it seems I won't post them after all

/jake

[Robert]

Hi Jake

I think this did come up on the boards pre-crash, but thanks for reminding us of it.

We also have reference to Cutbush carrying a toy dagger!

Robert

[aspallek]

I am wondering why so much evidentiary importance is place on possession of a knife. So what if the police actually did have the murder weapon in their possession (and I do not believe they did)? Fingerprint evidence was not yet admissible, so what good would it do? Even if ownership of the knife could be traced to a certain suspect that really wouldn't prove anything. I'm sure such property was routinely lost, stolen, and sold.

[m_w_r]

This knife, Dons knife?

Who can say?...

From the A-Z: "Today it is known that Rumbelow's knife is a surgeon's amputating knife of continental manufacture..." (p.201)

From Robin Odell's Ripperology: "The blade, which is hollow-ground and nine inches long with a four-inch-long handle, was made by Weiss of London." (p.121)

But "of Chinese manufacture"?...

Regards,

Mark