The Madness of Joseph Fleming

[Observer]

Hi Fisher and Ben

The man who had cohabited and ill used Mary Kelly needed to be traced, surely that would have been clear in police minds. They knew he was known as Joe, I don't think it would have taken long for them to have found out his surname. As you say Ben Fleming was known to have used aliases, thus tracing Fleming would have been difficult, but this was no ordinary murder, I would be surprised if Fleming was not identified.

all the best

Observer

[Sam Flynn]

As you say Ben Fleming was known to have used aliases, thus tracing Fleming would have been difficult, but this was no ordinary murder, I would be surprised if Fleming was not identified.

You perhaps overestimate the effectiveness of the contemporary police, Observer. There's not a hint that Fleming was sought, let alone found and eliminated from their enquiries.

As I pointed out in a recent podcast, it's worth reflecting on the fact that despite such geographically and temporally distant acquaintances as Mrs Phoenix and Carthy coming forward with information about Kelly, Fleming is conspicuous by his absence from not only police, but also press, records.

[Roy Corduroy]

We have no idea if he was traced. Observer, the "other Joe" in Julia's statement would have been (if it was done) surmised to be Joseph Flemming, who was named by Barnett in both his police statement and inquest testimony as having previously cohabitated with her and having visited her. He had knowledge of this and told of it. So first the police would have had to put that together, then a light bulb would go off- aha Joe Fleming ill used her, let's go find him.

As to the alias, to be very specific, I don't see where it is known he used an alias until 1892.

And as to him living at Victoria Home in 1888, we have his admission to the infirmary in 1889 where he said he lived at the Vic and had lived in the district for 15 months. I don't know if that means he lived at the Vic all that time.

There are a lot of things about what the police did we don't know. We didn't find until the 1990's that shortly after the Kelly murder the police ran over to Mrs. Brider's house on Cottage Lane to inquire about James Kelly. We only found about that from a letter her lawyer wrote to the asylum superintendent, later discovered by James Tully.

Roy

[perrymason]

Hi all,

As has been said, we have no proof that Fleming was found and interviewed...(not that he wasnt)....nor do we have proof that Huthinson was seen by any of the people that testified at the Inquest, particularly Sarah Lewis... who saw a man where Hutchinson later says he was...(not that he wasnt paraded for them or just her).....nor do we have any indication that Marys death was investigated soley on its own merit....rather than as another victim of the unknown serial killer...(not that she for sure wasnt one)...nor do we have any records that state exactly what the specific contents of the room were...(not that one wasnt made)...

I think in this murder case, we have all the right in the world to question what is asserted, as its clear, what is known, adds up to just about nothing.

Best regards all.

[Observer]

Hi Sam

You perhaps overestimate the effectiveness of the contemporary police, Observer. There's not a hint that Fleming was sought, let alone found and eliminated from their enquiries.

As I pointed out in a recent podcast, it's worth reflecting on the fact that despite such geographically and temporally distant acquaintances as Mrs Phoenix and Carthy coming forward with information about Kelly, Fleming is conspicuous by his absence from not only police, but also press, records.

Pehaps I do overestimate the effectiveness of the contemporary police, but we are not talking procedures that require advanced police techniques here. A brutally murdered woman a boyfreind who had abused her, even if the police were of the opinion that it was unlikely that the abuser was Jack the Ripper, surely they would of realised that Fleming had to be checked out. Whether they found him is a different matter, the fact that he does not appear in any of the available contempory police record could point to the fact that they had found and eliminated him from their enquiriers at an early stage, and the very meagre record of this fact, has been lost to posterity.

all the best

Observer

[Ben]

Hi Observer,

A brutally murdered woman a boyfreind who had abused her, even if the police were of the opinion that it was unlikely that the abuser was Jack the Ripper, surely they would of realised that Fleming had to be checked out.

It wouldn't have mattered if the police use advanced or primative techniques. There was still no way of tracking down Joseph Fleming short of some miracle. If he wasn't known as Joseph Fleming when he moved into the murder district, the chances of tracking him down were next to impossible. We shouldn't really be surprised about that, considering that we're dealing with 1888 and the East End transient masses that made up the population. The indefatigable efforts of Chris Scott haven't yielded a placement for Fleming in the 1891 Census, so it's more than reasonable to assume he was using one by that stage.

You're quite right to highlight the fact that this was an unusually serious crime, but that still didn't bestow upon the police powers to track down and identify (let alone eliminate) someone who was, in all likelihood, using an alias in a populated lodging house in which he had been living for two of three months, tops.

Best regards,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

Pehaps I do overestimate the effectiveness of the contemporary police

It's not so much their effectiveness, Obs, as the challenge they faced when lodging-houses kept sloppy registers, if any at all, in tracking down one man among tens of thousands. Pretty tricky in an area where lodging-houses kept inconsistent records, if any at all, and where vast chunks of the population moved back and forth like bladder-wrack in a rough sea.

I suspect also that police filing systems weren't even as sophisticated as the card indices used some 90 years later by the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry, which in itself wasn't an ideal way of tracking leads. Indeed, most of the surviving records strike me as being of the Civil Service "minute" variety - memos passed through several pairs of hands, with an ad hoc index in the form of a handwritten fronting-sheet; although whether this style was representative of the everyday filing system I don't know.

Either way, the police may well have tried their damnedest, but against such a backdrop I shouldn't wonder that a number of potential leads never bore fruit. Given the vastly improved capability to organise and search information conveyed by online databases, digitised newspaper archives and the like, the modern researcher arguably has at least some significant advantages over those who were there at the time.

[Roy Corduroy]

If he wasn't known as Joseph Fleming when he moved into the murder district, the chances of tracking him down were next to impossible. ... ... The indefatigable efforts of Chris Scott haven't yielded a placement for Fleming in the 1891 Census, so it's more than reasonable to assume he was using one by that stage. ... ...that still didn't bestow upon the police powers to track down and identify (let alone eliminate) someone who was, in all likelihood, using an alias in a populated lodging house in which he had been living for two of three months, tops.

Hi Ben,

I sense alias creep.

Fact: Fleming went to infirmary under his own name in 1889.

Fact: Fleming used his own name and the name Evans when commited in 1892. The sole instance of it.

End of Facts

Roy

[Ben]

Hi Roy,

Fact: Fleming went to infirmary under his own name in 1889

That doesn't mean he was registered at the Victoria Home by that name. If he was a known user of an alias, it's entirely reasonable to surmise that he could have been using one in 1888. Not that he needed to, mind you, considering that lodging houses were hardly meticulous in recording the names of its occupants, and that Fleming had only been in the parish of Whitechapel for a couple of months. I don't know what you mean by "alias creep", but anyone capable of resorting to an alias in 1892 was hardly physically prevented from using one in 1888.

Best regards,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

I sense alias creep.

Wasn't "Alias Creep" one of Ebenezer Scrooge's debt-collectors?

[DVV]

If Fleming came to the VH with devilish intentions (and I believe it was the case, since all witnesses at the inquest talked of a man from Bethnal Green), he most certainly used an alias.
Some posters insist that the police have undoubtedly tried to trace Fleming. I personally am far from sure they did, but what I'm sure of, is that they certainly checked the lodging-houses. Such as the VH. If a Joseph Fleming was registered there, they could have remembered Venturney and Barnett's testimonies.
Therefore (apparently and on balance, since we don't know how meticulously they worked), tit's quite likely that no Joe Fleming was known in the VH.

Whatever people think, they have to be logical: if you think the police was badly after Fleming, don't say he was registered or known as Fleming in the VH.

Amitiés, et joyeux noël à tous,
David

[Roy Corduroy]

Hi Ben,

By alias creep I mean that knowing Fleming used two names in 1892, we project it back in 1888, four years before. An assumption sort of creeps into our thinking.

By the way, when Fleming went to infirmary in 1889 and gave his address as the Vic, did he say he had lived for fifteen months, that is beginning August 1888 at

(a) that address, or
(b) the district

?

Hope you had a nice Christmas. We did although a little under the weather.

Roy

[Ben]

Hi Roy,

Glad you enjoyed the day. I did too, although I'm not feeling 100% either!

In this case, we're addressing the evidence and arriving at the most parsimonious assumptions that the evidence allows. For example, since we know that other users of lodging houses (a group that included many of the victims) remained at one establishment for prolonged periods of time (rather than flitting between several at a time), it seems unlikely that Fleming was any different, and had done a great deal of bed-hopping in the two of three months since he moved to the district. It seems likely that he was resident at the Victoria Home from August of 1888. He can't have bothered with any of the doss houses in Flower and Dean or Thrawl Street (etc), since they were all registered in Spitalfields, not Whitechapel.

With regard to aliases, the salient point is that he was known to use one, which meant he was also capable of using one at other times when it suited him. Tracking him down in the 1891 census has proved difficult, introducing the possibility that he was using one at that stage too.

Best wishes,
Ben

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Exactly, Ben.
Although assumptions, I think they are highly relevant and logical.
Besides, it was very common for people in those days and among such classes to use aliases, for all sorts of reasons.

I reckon that, this is why the police never tracked him down (if they ever tried to). We must remember that the name Fleming came from people who knew him through Mary Kelly - Kelly knew his original name was Fleming, but that doesn't mean he registred under that name in lodging houses or in other situations. And since we know he used a different name some years later on, it is certainly not far-fetched to draw the conclusion that he also might have registred under other names in 1888. I also
seriously question how reliable the lodging house registers actually were at the time, with unemployed people coming and going and no one actualoly bothering to check out who they really were or if they used their real name. After all, all the landlords or owners of such places was interested in, was cashing in - as long as people payed they couldn't have cared less.

All the best

[perrymason]

Hello folks,

Hope everyone had a great Christmas...and a mild hangover.

This issue with the authorities being able to actually locate a man by his legal name is as Ben and Glenn suggest I think, a very difficult proposal. Particularly if the man in question has already been using aliases to that point. We still dont know if a woman named Mary Kelly was actually "Mary Kelly" legally, according to Birth registrations.

I think the combination of a known mental condition that was likely in the final stages of becoming beyond his control, and his using of aliases at that same time, is quite an interesting package.

Ive often wondered whether this killer was truly a split personality kind of killer, the kind that may not even know what he has done...perhaps done in a fugue like state, an onset of some mania that his conscious mind supresses later....so he could kill, and still be suprised to find blood on his cuffs in the morning.

A man living by a name not his own, with its own "identity" formed in the constructors mind, seems similar I think.

As Fleming he might despise Mary for staying at arms length from him, as Hutchinson, he might be a protector of sorts. Hutchinson might the one who gives her money, yet Fleming might resent supporting her to live on her own without him. I hope that sort of illustrates what I mean intelligibly.

What would happen if he couldnt control which emotions were flowing through him at any given time..his personnas, or his own,.. conflict.......and a killer who does what is done to Mary Kelly while in her good graces and in her room while she is only partially dressed in the middle of the night, in intimate surroundings, seem like the acts of a man very conflicted.

Best regards all.