The Madness of Joseph Fleming

[chrismasonic]

seems to me that the police would gather information on all ex boyfriends of a murder victim...and then go and question them on there whereabouts that night...if they couldn't track down someone they needed to talk to they'd track down they're familys...an alias wouldn't prevent investigation for ever

they would interview the victims neighbours,friends and anyone else that came forward...how else could they establish a timeline?

the next door neighbours surely wouldn't be the only ones that knew who marys male friends were...

[Ben]

Hi Chris,

seems to me that the police would gather information on all ex boyfriends of a murder victim

That depends on the amount of information they had available to gather, and in the case of Joseph Fleming it was next to nothing beyond the comments made about him by a couple of the inquest attendees. Not much tracking or tracing potential there, especially if the individual in question was using an alias. As far as interviewing neighbours and friends went, we know the police did precisely that, and only two of them made reference to Fleming - Barnett and Venturney, and it's clear that neither of them were especially enlightened on the subject.

With such little material to go on, how could they possibly have gone about tracking down Fleming's family?

[chrismasonic]

i think it would be fair to say the that the police began investigating as soon after the murder as possible...
they'd interview anyone who knew the victim or might have seen her that night...
they'd establish a timeline and talk to anyone who's name came up...the people thye'd found up to then who had relevant information would be asked to appear at the inquest the following monday...
the investigation doesn't stop there...
the notes on the inquest survive but they've only got a couple of days information by this time...
the inquest says willful murder...
the investigation starts then...
no way do they dismiss the costemonger joe lead without eliminating him from they're inquiries...
they pursue any avenue they can to catch the killer

[Ben]

Really not too sure what you're getting at here, Chris.

Nobody has disputed that the police would have explored all investigative avenues available, but there's a difference between "pursuing an avenue" and that particular avenue leading to a hard and fast conclusion. They might have been interested in tracing "costermonger joe" but that doesn't mean they actually did, let alone eliminated him as a consequence.

And for reasons discussed throughout this thread, it's practically certain that they did neither, but none of those reasons have anything to do with the issue of whether or not the police investigations were thorough.

Best regards,
Ben

[chrismasonic]

i don't think that is a hard and fast conclusion...
and i don't think that the police back then were as hapless as people are making out...
i don't think an alias would hamper the police for very long at all...
i think as soon as costemonger joes name came up over the course of the weekend he'd be underlined as someone they definatly need to talk to...
suspicion would fall on him...
they'd be pulling out all the stops to find this guy...
he'd be the chief suspect...or amongst them
do you know joe would be in the papers...
and people would come forward that knew a joe...
mary would have been seen with joe,in a bar,walking down the street,at marys house,anywhere,these people could describe joe,offer little bits of information about joe until they had an idea about this guy...
until they found joe

the inquest transcipts i have read are just a short summary of what got said between the coronor and the witness...
they wern't grilled by the cornor

when the police originally gathered the information the answers would have been far more detailed surely,
the police would have grilled them then,
nowadays they record everything you say during interviews,
but back then they would have to write that down,
costemonger joes name would have went into a report and someone would have been ordered to find this guy...

i think that some people just read these inquest reports and think thats all that was said...and it was the first time it was said...thats wrong...how would these witnesses end up at the inquest in the first place?...they'd have been interviewed previously and then asked to appear and recount what they told the police...and if what they told the police didn't correspond with what they told the cornoner the police would talk to them again...

i don't think that those summarys from the inquest are the only mention is police records of joe at all...

[Ben]

and i don't think that the police back then were as hapless as people are making out...

Nobody has ever stated or insinuated that the police were "hapless". They could have been the most astute police force in the world in 1888, but if there were circumstances utterly beyond their immediate control, there were certain leads that couldn't result in success, irrespective of how indefatigable their efforts may have been. This really must be digested and understood. By the logic you're currently applying, the fact the police were anxious, eager, and professionally obliged to capture Jack the Ripper must mean that they actually did.

But this wasn't the case.

You can have a desire and intention to acheive a particular goal - be it trace Joe the costermonger or capture a serial killer - but still fail to achieve it, and that failure needn't be reflective in the slightest of any incompetence on the part of the person trying to acheive it.

I'd disagree very strongly that one single mention of a costermonger named Joe would elevate him to the status of "chief suspect", especially when they had already attributed the murder to Jack the Ripper, an individual believed by many to be a mad foreigner with medical knowledge. But even if it did assign him "chief suspect" status, that didn't increase the likelihood of the man in question being traced let alone "eliminated", and how can you possibly eliminate a lodger from the 400-strong, busy Victoria Home where the chances of any doorman or deputy remembering which residents were or weren't there six weeks ago was effectively zero?

do you know joe would be in the papers...

Have you come across any newspaper article in which the question was asked of the public "Do you know, Joe?". Then you say people would come forward claiming to have known someone called Joe. And? What could that possible acheive in a district populated by many thousands, including a great many people with the first name, Joe? I'm sure the name "Joseph Fleming" would ring a bell, but if the informers in question had last seen him several years ago in a pub near Homerton, what good would that do if the informers couldn't possibly answer the question "Where is Joe Fleming now?"

Joseph Fleming moved into the murder district in August of 1888. He was known user of an alias. If he was using an alias from the outset, there is no reason to suppose that anybody knew him as Joseph Fleming from the moment he entered the Victoria Home, nor is there any evidence than anyone from Bethnal Green ever knew of his whereabouts at the time of the murders. You can't just decide with no evidence that someone saw Mary with a man they knew as "Joe", and then use that to argue that the correct "Joe" must have been traced. I'm sure people did see Mary in the company of strange men (consider Blotchy, for example), but nobody knew his name, so why should it be assumed that her neighbours were able to pick out a particular individual as "Joe"?

Positing the existence of imaginary evidence on the grounds that "Lots of police files are lost" is very often resorted to by theorists touting implausible suspects, but to conjur up the existence of "lost report", deciding with no evidence what must have been included therein, and then using that to rule out a suspect is just wrong.

The East End of 1888 was chock full of the homeless transient masses, which markedly reduced the chances of tracing any one individual, unless the individual was a particularly conspicuous or notorious character.

they'd have been interviewed previously and then asked to appear and recount what they told the police

Yes, I know, and if you consult the excellent Jack the Ripper: Sourcebook, you'll discover that we have copies of their original police statements too. Unfortunately, there isn't much elaboration on the Fleming issue to be found therein either.

Best regards,
Ben

[chrismasonic]

of course i am only trying to imagine how the investigation would go...
and maybe the newspapers didn't print "do you know the mysterious joe" but i think they tried to track down joe...after all they did track down barnett to get a statement...so i think is a fair bet they would have at least tried to find joe too...i don't know how how that went...but the police and the press would have wanted to get a statement from him

the witnesses mentioned joe to the police

then later they mentioned him at the inquest in front of the press

i say the press latched on to that...and they tried to find him...maybe they did,maybe they didn't..i don't know...but it seems to me highly likely they would be very interested in talking with him

i don't agree with you playing it down as one single mention of joe the costemonger...i think that the mention of a male friend who might have visited mary that night would be high up on the list of things to check out...and that would have led the police to attempt to gather more information from Julia Vanturney regarding her mention of costemonger joe

[Ben]

I still fear we may be talking at cross purposes here.

I don't have any problem at all with the supposition that both police and press may have been interested in tracing a man mentioned very briefly by a couple of witnesses at the inquest.

The difficulty was translating that "interest" into a successful result.

Police and press were also very "interested" in capturing Jack the Ripper, but they didn't actually achieve it for this and various other reasons. As anyone who has ever investigated anything will tell you, there are various obstacles that get in the way of converting an "interest" into an actual "solution", and in this particular instance, there were many obstacles that prevented an "interest" in tracing Joe from being converted into a tangile result wherein they actually do trace him, with most of them being discussed in this thread.

You say that Julia Venturney would have been asked for more information about Joseph Fleming, but if she didn't know any more than what she stated at the inquest and in her police statement...?

Best regards,
Ben

[chrismasonic]

i just find it very hard to believe that Julia Venturney could only offer "marys quite taken with some other bloke called joe...i think he's a costemonger..."
she's obviously relaying information from part of a conversation between her and mary...

and whoever marys best friend was might know more about marys lovers...she'd have been interviewed too

any idea where the first mention of joe fleming as joe the costemonger of mary first appears?

[Ben]

i just find it very hard to believe that Julia Venturney could only offer "marys quite taken with some other bloke called joe...i think he's a costemonger..."

I don't find that too problematic, to be honest.

She was simply relaying what scant details Kelly had told her about a man she knew.

Many female friends and acquaintances were interviewed, but very few of them mentioned Fleming. The nearest to a "best" friend to have emerged from the investigation was either Maria Harvey and Lizzie Allbrook and neither of them mentioned any other "Joe" besdies Barnett

any idea where the first mention of joe fleming as joe the costemonger of mary first appears?

Almost certainly Julia Venturney's police statement, Chris. To confuse matters further, Barnett had described him as a mason's plasterer, which we know he wasn't by 1888.

All the best,
Ben

[chrismasonic]

found it in the Joseph Barnett inquest statement and had another look at it...masons plasterer,pennington street...

[chrismasonic]

strange job change...how do you know for sure who was write about his job?

i think details in womans conversations are rarely scant...

[Sam Flynn]

i think details in womans conversations are rarely scant...

The detail that survives is - and that's all we have to work with.

[perrymason]

Isnt there some corroboration for the Fleming story by an account of a former landlady? Maybe my memory is going on me, but I thought Julia only hints that Mary was seeing two "Joe's" while she lived in Millers Court...but didnt a friend or landlady mention the fact that Fleming had wanted to marry her when they lived together?

I believe thats correct anyway...Ill check it in a bit though.

On how they might locate a man that calls himself George Hutchinson, it seems they looked enough to verify where he was registered...but lets not forget that this particular story has within it a seemingly wondrous description of the man that most likely kills Mary... the last man seen with her after Blotchy Face...(the real last man seen in her company). Would they focus on investigating Hutchinson first for his credibility rating, or his vital clue?

Abberline backed him immediately. My guess is in that neck of the woods, when someone like Abberline vouches for you, you can considered yourself "vetted". Once they found out enough to discount his viability...do you waste time trying to find him and charge him with Mischief, Making False statements...or do you forget him like the many, many witnesses that we discover had little or no value forensically...like Mathew Packer. But great impact emotionally...like Fanny's "Gladstone Goldstein", or George Hutchinson's "Bird Man of Astrakan."

Best regards.

[Sam Flynn]

Isnt there some corroboration for the Fleming story by an account of a former landlady?

Mrs Carthy, Kelly's former landlady in Pennington Street, said that Mary left to live with a man "in the building trade", of whom Carthy thought Kelly so fond that she might have gone on to marry him. She doesn't name him as "Joseph Fleming", however - although the other details (Kelly's fondness for him, the connections with Pennington Street and the building trade) seem to tally with Barnett's version of the story.