Sir John Williams - A Response From Tony Williams and Humphrey Price (recovered)

[Ash]

jdpegg cont...

Point 13.
“John’s birth was registered nearly a month after his birth …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 27-8).

JP: It was baptisms not birth registrations which were hastened if a child was considered sickly. Therefore the fact that John Williams’ birth was not registered until a month after he was born does not indicate he was a healthy child. It is the date of his baptism which is important. Even then just because someone is a healthy child this does not mean they will not be susceptible to disease as an adult.

We concede the last point – it is not a definitive indicator of well-being. But it’s not a bad one, either. And in the small area of the country where John Williams spent his first few weeks of life, baptisms and registrations would have been undertaken almost simultaneously.

Point 14.
“John Williams returned to Swansea to seek work …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 43).

JP: It could be argued that in returning to Wales between 1867 and 1872 to work with Dr Davies to whom he had been apprenticed to Sir John was paying back for the missed years because he felt he ought to.

It can be argued this way; although in John Williams’s absence in London Dr Davies’s practice had changed, with a new partner and with new duties of his own; it could be argued that John Williams was not expected to return After all, it can be shown that Dr Williams was not following the path prescribed for Victorian doctors; why?

Point 15.
“Items 4122 and 4091 were removed but not by John Williams” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 79).

JP: Dr Spencer could have removed them under Sir John’s supervision, for instance.

It might well mean that Dr Williams supervised Dr Spencer, but he does not say so, so we should not assume that he did do so. The fact that he didn’t mention himself in the notes is not a reflection of his arrogance (which stands unchallenged; see the impartial view of the Gentlewoman magazine) but simply an accurate record in a document that would have been an important one for UCH. If he wasn’t there, then where was he?


Point 16.
“Herbert R. Spencer wrote about the doctor” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 201).

JP: Anyone familiar with the text of Hutchinson’s statement made to the police on 12 November 1888 will know that he made no such reference.

Anyone familiar with the statement made by Hutchinson to the Times and the Star on 14th November 1888 will know that he did indeed mention a red stone.

Point 17.
Mary Kelly

JP: She could not have been the Mary Kelly killed by Jack the Ripper in 1888.

After a long search for Mary Kelly, we discovered that John Williams, with no known connection to the district himself, had denigrated the area around Denbigh. Our search there turned up Mary Kelly, probably the closest anybody will find that fits the description she gave about her past. Whether or not that description is true – and therefore whether or not one can take every fact she gave to Barnett as gospel truth – is another matter. After all, a contemporary journalist sought out Mary Kelly’s past and family at the time of the inquest into her death, and found nothing. Coupled with this is the fact that we are reliant on Barnett’s recollection of this conversation, as noted down in court, and the opportunity for error creeps in still further. We remain confident of our identification of the woman.

The above is the authors’ response in full to my October article.
We only included in the article certain of these answers, mainly because the version they saw turned into a substantially earlier draft since it was sent prior to certain key findings most importantly in relation to the notebook. The final draft included information which may have made some of Mr Williams and Mr Price's answers look strange or even foolish. As well as this, as our readers are aware, Octobers RN was our biggest yet and editorially it was decided we could lose some comments without it affecting the flow of the article. It was my original intention to include all answers as people I spoke to in Brighton will no doubt realise. Now or at any point in time I am quite happy to share this or any other correspondence with the authors, their publisher (Mr Edwards) or agent which I have in my possession, with anyone who so wishesto see it.

My upcoming RN article will now also take on board the comments made.

I will seek to address all the points raised by the authors in that article.

Jenni
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needler
24th January 2006, 07:06 PM
While I hate diving in here, you all know me well enough to understand that sometimes I CANNOT keep my big mouth shut! This is one of those times.

Two points, and in this argument, I'm not certain they even are a ripple:

OOPHORECTOMY is the word, NOT "ovariotomy"; it's possible that ovariotomy was used at the time, so OK, color me a nit-picker!

Why is it "...highly likely, though, that a man who kept a diary as full and well-used as the 1888 diary, would have had similar ones for every year in which he worked in London......... We feel this is a reasonable assumption and that it is on this basis we have argued that he kept his diary so as to have a semblance of normality in his collection at home."

Myra Hindley kept a diary detailing her love for Ian Brady right up to the point they got together...after that, nothing. Finding the one might imply there were others, but this doesn't fall into the "reasonable assumption" range used here as a proof. I'd rather have a stronger hook onto which I would hang this argument.

Yup, I am a nit-picker, but when something as serious as this comes along, each brick in the wall must be examined for strength and accuracy; if one brick is defective, the rest of the wall is perilously close to collapse.

Judy

[Ash]

jdpegg
24th January 2006, 05:53 PM
e would like to respond to each of these points in turn, but should start by saying that we have already corresponded with Jennifer Pegg on these issues, and that she indicated our responses would be included in her article; sadly this was not the case. We would like to make it clear that we do not now, nor have in the past, nor will in the future, hide anything, so these responses include material already made available to Jennifer Pegg..

“Mary Ann Nichols, on whom my Uncle Jack had performed an abortion …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 16).

JP: The 1881 Census that there were over 100 people of that name just four years previously.

Just who are these hundreds of Mary Ann Nichols? Are they M. A. Nichols, or Mary A. Nichols? And are they all of the right age? And why would we imagine anything other than ‘Abortion’ since that is what was written at the top of the page in the book that John Williams used? And just what does she suggest about the handwriting in the book, held by the National Library of Wales? That it was altered, although it has been in the library’s possession since it was left to the library?

Point 2.
“We came across two records of payments to J. Williams” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 128).

JP: There is no evidence to link Sir John Williams to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary as he is not mentioned in the records of that institution.

Theophilus Westhorp, Oakum Manufacturer, died in early 1885; William Westhorp, his brother, was the oakum manufactory manager, he lived in Bromley. He had a son, Joseph Westhorp, aged 34, who also lived in Bromley. Does this not mean the note in the book could be J Westhorp, as it was clearly a family business? The top of the page shows A M Champneys, not given his title of ‘doctor’, as could be the case with John Williams. We had John Williams’s own word for the fact he was in Whitechapel then; we were always looking for a record of John Williams’s involvement at the Workhouse Infirmary but knew, as we demonstrated, that it was not legal for him to be employed there.


Point 3.
“His 1888 diary, for instance, …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 15).

JP: The catalogue of the National Library of Wales shows that Sir John Williams did not have a diary for every year and furthermore that the diaries he had were scarcely written in and some were not used for the conventional purpose.

The National Library of Wales’s on-line entry regarding the diaries is incomplete. But if you take that thought further, and bearing in mind that the blotting pages in the 1888 diary indicate it was used extensively, what possible explanation does she give for the systematic removal of the diary’s pages, and for the retention of an otherwise useless diary?

Point 4.
“At the end of the following year, in the meeting of 17 December 1890, …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 120).

JP: However, the claim that an ovariotomy is exactly the operation performed by the Ripper on Chapman and Eddowes is false.

Ovariotomy involved the same exterior cuts to the abdomen as the surgeon opened the body to allow access. Given the conditions that the Ripper worked in, we felt this was clear enough to the reader.

Point 5.
“I had another letter to show him …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 24-5).

JP: No mention of this letter can be found on the National Library of Wales online catalogue.

It may not appear in the online catalogue, but it exists in the National Library’s archives and we have a copy of the letter.

Point 6.
Letter to Morgan dated 23rd Aug. 1888

JP: The authors claim this letter links Sir John to Whitechapel on the day of the Chapman murder. There is no established provenance for this letter.

Yes there is; it was left to the family. Within the family, it’s owned by Tony Williams’s brother, as we stated in the book. Incidentally, Tony’s brother is not happy about John Williams’s association with John the Ripper.

Point 7.
“We know from his own hand that John Williams was working in Whitechapel” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 142).

JP: The letter states Sir John was attending not running a clinic.

We can assume he was attending the clinic to work there rather than present some medical problem of his own.

Point 8.
“If he should by chance meet Dr Davies …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 142).

JP: This implies that Sir John must have planned the murder of the 8th of September on the 23rd of August and before the first murder on the 31st of August.

No; it implies that Dr Williams had some reason to be prepared with an excuse should he encounter Dr Davies. We cannot impute any reason as to why this should be so.

Point 9.
“Dr Davies must have been the Morgan to whom John Williams wrote about his ‘clinic’ … ” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 178).

JP: This is an assumption. We have no idea what his brother would and would not have known about in relation to any clinics Sir John Williams may or may not have been attending.

Indeed. Would/would not, may/ may not - but we would be wrong not to put forward any suggestion of our own, wouldn’t we?

Point 10.
“If he should by chance meet Dr Davies in Whitechapel on that evening …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 142)

JP: Annie Chapman was not murdered in the evening, but was in fact already dead by approx. 5.30 am. Any chance meeting in the evening would not suggest the murder of that morning. The Dear Morgan letter does not appear to read correctly.

Perhaps we should have written that he was prepared for an excuse whatever time of day he might bump into Dr Davies, who would be well aware that John Williams would run his clinic at a time to suit himself and his other commitments.

Point 11.
“His private practice had grown during his career …” (Williams and Price, 2005, pp 119).

JP: He did not increase his hours; he simply changed the days on which he ran clinics.

These hours are added to his workload; he would not have cut down on his private practice hours to allow for the extra hours he would have been working on a Saturday. This is someone who sought additional working time at a point in his life when he would have been expected to work less at the hospital and shortly before he retired from the hospital claiming ill-health.

[Ash]

supe
24th January 2006, 03:29 PM
Stephen is absolutely right -- what is important is that Williams, Price and ultimately Orion Publishing issued a book with a fradulent document and refuse to explain how and why they did so.

This is not an instance of simply publishing the "wrong" document. There is only one ducument, that which is in the possession of the National Library of Wales, a copy of which Jennifer obtained and which was subsequently printed in Ripper Notes. The last line of that document does not correspond at all with the last line of the document printed in Uncle Jack.

The inescapable conclusion must be that the document Williams and Price used in their book was a forgery -- there are no alternate documents for that page at the NLW. This is, certainly, a serious charge to level but the evidence is overwhelming that a fraud was committed.

Until Williams, Price and Orion explain how a forged document was created and inserted in their book there is no point in even considering the rest of their quibbles with Jennifer's critique.

Explain the forgery gentlemen and then your other comments may be worthy of debate.

Don.
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monty
24th January 2006, 03:43 PM
.......the above response does nothing to address it.

Sums it all up pretty well to me.

Monty

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jdpegg
24th January 2006, 04:52 PM
I would like to acknowledge that I have read the above post but will not be responding more fully at present.

the nature of my research is ongoing and there will be an update in the next issue of Ripper Notes .

At present i have no further comments to add about the above statement except to say that Orion Books have been promising one on these boards since my article was first published and i cannot understand why it has taken so long for them to produce such a response. Especially considering the seriousness of what was found.

Jenni
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dannorder
24th January 2006, 05:06 PM
Stephen, Don and Monty,

You are, of course, right that the central question of just how does an incorrect document (as is apparently admitted here) with altered handwriting apppear in a book is completely unanswered...

...worse than that though, I understand that the authors wrote to Ripperologist and swore up and down that the version they printed in their book was the correct version and that they were both there at the Library and saw it and can vouge for it, and that they had no idea where the "other version", i.e. the one actually at the National Library of Wales, came from.

So which official statement by the authors are we supposed to believe? They appear to directly contradict each other. I note this one came directly from the publishers, and I was led to believe the one in Ripperologist came direct from the authors without being approved by the publisher first. Makes me wonder...

Regarding the rest, Well, the "J" they think stands for "John" very clearly is not a "J" but a "T" unless the day of the week in the same records is a "Juesday" and so forth and so on... and... well, to be honest, I didn't read the rest of it yet because, frankly, I am in shock. We waited all this time -- nearly four months since the discrepancy was first brought to their attention -- only to get a statement that raises even more troubling questions than we had originally.
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spryder
24th January 2006, 05:31 PM
The following is an extract from the letter published in Ripperologist #62, from Tony Williams and Humphrey Price, dated November 2 2005.



Dear Rip,

Thank you for sending through the press release from Ripper Notes.

It won’t come as any surprise to you to learn that we are both shocked and dismayed by this discrepancy. How it came about is as baffling to us as it must be to your readers.

I [Tony Williams] first visited the National Library of Wales in January 2001 and ordered a photocopy of the page in the medical notebook that carries Mary Ann Nichols’ name, and it is this copy that has been reproduced in Uncle Jack. Humphrey [Price] came to the library with me in August 2002 to see the archive there for the first time, and neither of us noticed anything about the page in the notebook that appeared in any way different to the photocopy I held.

Since then we have only on occasion looked again at the page but without noticing the changes apparent in the document obtained by Jennifer Pegg. Naturally we are as keen as your readers will be to learn how this came about and we will be looking further into it.
________________________________________
George Hutchinson
24th January 2006, 05:31 PM
Am I alone here in thinking of Christie, who only admitted to each of his crimes when confronted with overwhelming evidence?

Jenni - you KNOW what we think!

PHILIP

[Ash]

cont...

3.
We are of course only able to rely on what remains in Sir John’s archive at the National Library to consult his diaries. It is highly likely, though, that a man who kept a diary as full and well-used as the 1888 diary, would have had similar ones for every year in which he worked in London. His working practices – at private homes as well as institutions throughout London – would have made this essential. We feel this is a reasonable assumption and that it is on this basis we have argued that he kept his diary so as to have a semblance of normality in his collection at home. Why did this particular diary survive his death? For exactly the same reason as the slides, and the knife.


4.
Ovariotomy involved the same exterior cuts to the abdomen, as the surgeon opened the body to allow access, as the attacks carried out on some of the victims. Given the conditions that the Ripper worked in, we felt this was clear enough to the reader.

5.
The letter referred to is probably not in the online catalogue that Ms Pegg has consulted, but it exists in the National Library’s archives and we have a copy of the letter. The reference number on our copy is 448.


6.
It is clearly stated in the book that the letter is in the possession of Tony’s family and that it is in fact held by Tony’s brother. It is because the letter is not on public view that it has been reproduced in the book.

We state in the book that we at first thought that the letter had been addressed to his brother Morgan – who did indeed know much about John Williams’s working life, as he was also a contributor to the funds for University College Hospital – but realised that it was very unlikely to have been him as he was living in Connecticut. Once we had established that John Williams and Morgan Davies knew each other, it seemed reasonable to suggest that he and ‘Morgan’ were one and the same.

As to the matter of timing, perhaps we should have written that he was prepared for an excuse whatever time of day he might bump into Dr Davies, who would be well aware that John Williams would ‘attend’ clinic at a time to suit himself.


7.
A Victorian doctor made his living – in John Williams’s case, a good living – from his extensive private work. He would not have cut into his private hours in order to work longer at UCH, particularly as he was shortly to seek retirement from hospital work. Working on a Saturday would have cut into his private work, so he would have arranged that instead for weekdays. Simply gauging the extent of his hospital attendance from his clinic hours is not enough; ward duties, committee meetings and teaching commitments have to be considered as well.


8.
It is not that strange an argument, surely, to suggest that as a healthy baby – and as a boy who valued his health highly, and wrote and talked about it years later – John Williams was a healthy adult. We have recorded what evidence we have here so as to show the basis on which we have made out judgement. In indicating the baptism dates were important, Jennifer Pegg is agreeing with the point we have made.

9.
It can indeed be argued this way; although in John Williams’s absence in London Dr Davies’s practice had changed, with a new partner and with new duties of his own. The practice had changed so much, that it could be argued that John Williams was not expected to return After all, it can be shown that Dr Williams was not following the path prescribed for Victorian doctors; why?

10.
It might well mean that Dr Williams supervised Dr Spencer, but he does not say so, so we should not assume that he did do so. The fact that he didn’t mention himself in the notes is not a reflection of his arrogance (which stands unchallenged; see the impartial view of the Gentlewoman magazine) but simply an accurate record in a document that would have been an important one for UCH. If he wasn’t there, then where was he?

11.
The red stone – whether on a pin, or a seal – seemed to us an important point, worth mentioning. We note that as to the matter of the seal’s placing, Ms Pegg is very reliant on George Hutchinson’s evidence – evidence she then goes on to dispute in her next paragraph. In his testimony to the police, Hutchinson did make reference to a ‘horse shoe pin’ in his statement to the police.

12.
Mary Kelly’s identification remains something of a Holy Grail for writers on the Ripper story, and we are no different. The family we have described comes probably closer than any so far identified to fit the description Mary Kelly gave about her past. Whether or not that description is true – and therefore whether or not one can take every fact she gave to Barnett as gospel truth – is another matter. After all, a contemporary journalist sought out Mary Kelly’s past and family at the time of the inquest into her death, and found nothing. Coupled with this is the fact that we are reliant on Barnett’s recollection of this conversation, as noted down in court, and the opportunity for error creeps in still further. Similarly this casts doubt on what can and can’t be said about Jonathan Davies; we do not know whether or not Mary Kelly had a brief affair with her neighbour, Jonathan Davies, and then found it more expedient to tell everyone that he’d died rather than admit the truth. We have simply outlined for readers what we came across in the course of our researches, and drawn our conclusions from that evidence.




Finally, we would like to say that we welcome comment and criticism of our work and we hope that readers will continue to explore the relationship between Sir John Williams and Jack the Ripper for some time to come. We do, however, object to any suggestion or hint that documents on which we have based our deductions have in any way been deliberately altered by ourselves, and will take very seriously indeed any allegation of the same. We realise that the nature of the theory proposed in Uncle Jack meant that our book would come in for robust questioning, but we have only sought to place before readers interested in this most famous of true crimes evidence that we believe has never before been considered. As to Sir John’s place in history, Tony has publicly stated that no-one would be more pleased than he should he be proved to be wrong, as then the reputation of his illustrious ancestor be restored. As yet, we have no reason to doubt the case we’ve put forward.
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spryder
24th January 2006, 02:44 PM
The first point we would like to make is an apology; an apology to our readers for the fact that a wrong copy of a document found its way into Uncle Jack.

What exactly was the "wrong copy of a document" which was published in Uncle Jack? How was it procured and why is it so substantially different when overlayed with the version currently held at the Nat'l Library of Wales?

That's the central question here, and unfortunately the above response does nothing to address it.

[Ash]

spryder
24th January 2006, 02:11 PM
Following is a response from Tony Williams and Humphrey Price to comments made in Ripper Notes concerning various possible discrepancies within the text of their book, Uncle Jack. It was sent to me by Malcolm Edwards of Orion Books and it is reprinted here with no edits.

__________________________________________________ ______________


We have recently received a copy of an article written by Jennifer Pegg for Ripper Notes. In her article, she makes a number of points about the evidence in Uncle Jack and we would like to take the opportunity here of responding to her comments.

The criticisms made of Uncle Jack in Ms Pegg’s article can be summarised into the following points:


Mary Anne NicholsMs Pegg has found that the copy of the page with Mary Anne Nichols’ name on it, in Sir John Williams’s notebook in the National Library of Wales, does not correspond to that printed in Uncle Jack.


The Whitechapel Workhouse InfirmaryMs Pegg suggests that we have mistakenly identified Sir John Williams in the Infirmary accounts; and that we have wrongly stated that he could not legally work there.


The 1888 diaryMs Pegg suggests that the fact the pages have been removed is not in itself a revealing detail.


Ovariotomies and the Ripper mutilationsMs Pegg says that the operation often carried out by Sir John Williams was not exactly as that carried out by the Ripper.


A secret in a letterIt is suggested that the letter addressed to his best friend’s wife is not to be found in the National Library.


The Morgan letterMs Pegg wonders about the provenance of this letter; about the assumption that it is addressed to Dr Morgan Davies; and that the timing implied in it rules him out of suspicion for the murder of Annie Chapman.


Changing work hoursMs Pegg suggests that Sir John did not increase his hours of work shortly after the Ripper killings ceased.


Retiring due to ill-healthIt is suggested that we have found an unlikely reason as to Sir John’s early retirement.


Unliked in LondonMs Pegg writes that Sir John returned to Wales because he was under contract to do so.


Away from work It is alleged that the catalogue of museum exhibits compiled by Sir John does not demonstrate he was not in the hospital at the time.


The red stoneDoubt is cast on the testimony of George Hutchinson.


Mary Kelly identification Doubt is cast on our identification of Mary Kelly.

We would like to respond to each of these points in turn, but should start by saying that we have already corresponded with Jennifer Pegg on these issues, and that she indicated our responses would be included in her article; sadly this was not the case. We would like to make it clear that we do not now, nor have in the past, nor will in the future, hide anything, so these responses include material already made available to Jennifer Pegg.

1.
The first point we would like to make is an apology; an apology to our readers for the fact that a wrong copy of a document found its way into Uncle Jack. We are both shocked and dismayed by this error. Clearly we shall ensure that the correct version of the document is reproduced in the paperback edition of our book; equally clearly, this is the only correction on this matter required. No textual alterations of any kind are necessary, as we have never made the style of John Williams’s handwriting an issue in our book.

John Williams’s handwriting was never a part of our argument because we never felt that the sources could be entirely trusted. Most of the letters supposedly written by Jack the Ripper have been discounted as hoax letters, so which of the letters would we have to compare his handwriting to? Whichever one(s) we chose would be an issue of some controversy. And we cannot be certain that John Williams himself wrote in his notebooks; he would have had an assistant (at UCH, he had a number of them), and perhaps some patient interviews required an assistant to take notes. So to have based a large part of our argument on comparing the styles of handwriting, which we felt could not be entirely trusted, seemed to us to be a weak route to go down.

2.
There is a flaw in Ms Pegg’s argument, which is that she has ignored the fact that Theophilus Westhorp, the oakum manufacturer she refers to, was dead by the time this record was made; he died in early 1885. William Westhorp, his brother, became the oakum manufactory manager, and we know that he lived in Bromley. He had a son, Joseph Westhorp, aged 34, who also lived in Bromley. Does this not mean the note in the book could be J Westhorp, as it was clearly a family business?

The article in Ripper Notes goes on to say that we are wrong in our claim to say that it was not possible for John Williams to have worked there, legally. As we said in Uncle Jack, John Williams – like most doctors of the period – worked in a number of institutions, not only to fulfil obligations of service towards the communities in which the institutions were based but also to increase the range of his experience. As Ms Pegg acknowledges, it was not legal for a doctor to carry out research at the Infirmaries – and as this is what we have alleged about John Williams, it is therefore clear that he was not legally free to carry out research at the institution. Given the fact stated in the source that is referred to in both Uncle Jack and Ripper Notes, M A Crowther’s book on the workhouse system, that working in a workhouse infirmary would not enhance a doctor’s status and earning potential, it is clear to us that John Williams would not wish to give up working elsewhere in order to be able to work at the Infirmary.