Did Astrakhan Man exist?

[Wickerman]

In the circumstances, I'm not surprised that Hutchinson's account of Astrokhan Man went down so well - it certainly must have had a ring of familiarity to it.

Well that's creative :-)
So if you think Hutchinson spent the weekend browsing the newspapers and clipping out statements from pre-selected witnesses so he can then go to the police with his own 'compiled' version, you must have some complicated reason why he would do this.

Interesting, amusing even, but darn!, a single gent might have something better to do with his time - what would have been his payoff?

Thanks for that :-) Jon S.

[Wickerman]

But the man described by Lawende was also a "nameless" individual, Jon, and yet for whatever reason the police used him to compare suspects to,...

Certainly, but his description was more generic to the local populace and the police preference was generally to look for a low-class local man, so yes they obtained more mileage out of Lawende's offering than that of Hutchinson. However, even Lawende's offering did not fuel a great deal of police activity for any great length of time.

But how much activity do we see after Chapmans murder following Mrs Long's description, or after Stride looking for Schwartz 'man', or P C Smith's 'man'? Then, following up on Cox's "Blotchy" there was not a great deal of activity looking for this 'type' either. None of these 'seen-on-site' suspects made it to the suspect list,....especially among the memoirs.

So may I ask, is it also your opinion that because these past descriptions did not make it to the "memoirs" then are we to take it that they were also "discredited"?

Regards, Jon S.

[Sally]

Derivative...

I think I doubt the reality of Astroman because the whole thing's just a bit too derivative. It's not just the abundance of smartly dressed, knife-shaped-parcel-carrying 'foreign' looking chaps who immediately prefigured him in the press - more of them in a minute - but also those little details in Hutchinson's account that make me wonder if he wasn't just a little 'inspired' by things he read or heard.

The account of the 'neighbour', for instance - here quoted from the Echo but present in several other papers at the time -

Kelly informed her that she had no money…Soon after they parted, and a man, who is described as respectably dressed, then - so it is said - came up and spoke to the murdered woman Kelly and offered her some money. The man accompanied the woman to her lodgings

The Echo, 10th November 1888

And Hutchinson, two days later:

She said Good morning I must go and find some money. She went away toward Thrawl Street. A man coming in the opposite direction to Kelly tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her…They both then went up the court together

No similarity there, then.

Then there's this - a reported accound of a 'Dorset Street Doss House':

‘I knowed her. I guv her the money for her doss three weeks ago cos she hadn't none. Yes, matey, and that at two in the morning’

The Echo, 10th November 1888 (reported account of a Dorest Street Lodger)

Hutchinson, two days later stated:

About 2 am 9th I was coming by Thrawl Street, Commercial Street, and saw just before I got to Flower and Dean Street I saw the murdered woman Kelly

And that he had

occasionally given the deceased a few shillings, and that he had known her about 3 years

(report of Inspector Abberline, 12th November 1888)

Co-incidence? You decide.

But back to the sudden plethora of Astrocan-Man-Like suspects - most likely they all came from the same source, or closely related sources, and aren't so many as they might seem - although The Observer, at least, observed how many there suddenly appeared to be:

there are so many men in this monster metropolis going about respectably dressed, wearing dark moustaches, and carrying black bags that the chances of the police discovering the right man are very slight

The Obversver 11th November 1888

In the circumstances, I'm not surprised that Hutchinson's account of Astrokhan Man went down so well - it certainly must have had a ring of familiarity to it.

[Ben]

But the man described by Lawende was also a "nameless" individual, Jon, and yet for whatever reason the police used him to compare suspects to, instead of the equally nameless Mr. Astrakhan, despite the latter being described in far greater detail, and despite the person who "saw" him stating that he could identify the suspect again (unlike Lawende). I'm not just talking about police "memories" that reinforce the contemporary suspicion that Hutchinson was discredited, but actual action taken with eyewitness evidence.

All the best,
Ben

[Wickerman]

My strong suspicion would be “not much” considering that none of the senior police officials, such as Abberline, Anderson and Swanson, appeared to place "most reliance” upon Hutchinson's description.

All the best,
Ben

Well Ben, thats no evidence at all. Memoirs are not evidence of anything, except perhaps defective memories.

No high-ranking police official is about to admit that their chief suspect was a nameless individual.

"oh, we may ask, how come he was your chief suspect, did you investigate him?"

"Well actually no, we didn't know his name, nor where he lived, his friends or associates, his place of work, nothing."

Thats some professional opinion then, isn't it?

We can rest assured no nameless suspect would ever be offered by a responsible Police official. And I am not in any way suggesting that Astrachan was their chief suspect, simply that Astrachan being nameless had no chance of even making the short suspect list - so it's a moot question.

Regards, Jon S.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello Chris. Indeed. The human mind cannot rest without an answer.

Cheers.
LC

Thanks, Lynn. We have a couple of other early examples, in Forbes Winslow's constant claims that he knew who the Ripper was and the persistent claims by Customs House official Edward Larkins that the Ripper had to be a sailor aboard one of the cattle ships sailing between London and Portugal.

Chris

[lynn cates]

the human mind

Hello Chris. Indeed. The human mind cannot rest without an answer.

Cheers.
LC

[ChrisGeorge]

And as presented earlier in this thread, the Echo made this statement on the 19th of November which explains that some authorities did, still rely on Hutchinson's testimony:

from the Nov. 19th edition of the Echo, page 3:

"...Some of the authorities are inclined to place most reliance upon the statement made by Hutchinson as to his having seen the latest victim with a gentlemanly man of dark complexion and with a dark moustache. Others are dispersed to think that the shabby man with a blotchy face and a carrotty moustache, described by the witness Mary Ann Cox, is more likely to be the murderer..."

Are we to presume that we now know this statement to be true, also?

It would appear to me that all suspect theories are kind of crutch for whomever believed in them, whether it be belief in Astrakhan man, the belief of Anderson/Swanson in Kosminski's candidacy, or Macnaghten's belief in Druitt as the killer, etc, etc. It enables the believer to think they have the solution to the case, whether they really do or not.

Chris

[Ben]

I don't think there's any reason to doubt it, Hunter.

All this means is that "some" of the authorities continued to place “most reliance” on the Astrakhan description supplied by Hutchinson, evidently in spite of the fact that the statement had been “considerably discounted”. What isn’t specified is just who amongst the authorities towed this line, and more importantly, how much influence their beliefs had on the direction of the investigation. My strong suspicion would be “not much” considering that none of the senior police officials, such as Abberline, Anderson and Swanson, appeared to place "most reliance” upon Hutchinson's description.

All the best,
Ben

[Hunter]

And as presented earlier in this thread, the Echo made this statement on the 19th of November which explains that some authorities did, still rely on Hutchinson's testimony:

from the Nov. 19th edition of the Echo, page 3:

"...Some of the authorities are inclined to place most reliance upon the statement made by Hutchinson as to his having seen the latest victim with a gentlemanly man of dark complexion and with a dark moustache. Others are dispersed to think that the shabby man with a blotchy face and a carrotty moustache, described by the witness Mary Ann Cox, is more likely to be the murderer..."

Are we to presume that we now know this statement to be true, also?

[Ben]

That the police were prone to finding ‘after the event’ suspects goes to corroborate the view, which I would suggest is widely shared, that the police has few unresolved suspects.

I would be very surprised if this view is "widely shared", Lechmere. It was beyond the capabilities of the police at the time to "resolve" the question of possible complicity in the vast majority of cases. The few suspects we hear about in later police accounts were simply the ones that the police considered the most plausible. There would have been many more "unresolved" suspects who, for what ever reason, were not considered as plausible as Kosminski, Druitt and the others. I've suggested already that this might have been due to the types of suspect preferred by the police, i.e. those with a history of mental illness or criminal behaviour.

Claims that a newspaper had sourced a story out of any particular police station can be reasonably taken as an attempt at 'one-upmanship' over its competition to impress it's readers.

Not in the Echo's case it can't, since we know that they extracted information that we now know to be true, and which would only have been obtained from a police source. Hence, it can be stated with certainty that the Echo were in direct communication with the police. Rare though this practice may have been, it happened in this case.

Best regards,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Ben
That the police were prone to finding ‘after the event’ suspects goes to corroborate the view, which I would suggest is widely shared, that the police has few unresolved suspects.
I don’t know why you introduced the matter of how long the police could hold someone without charging them. That is an entirely separate issue. They could continue to suspect someone and name him in later years as a major suspect, without charging them.
I have also been at pains to state that exoneration need not necessarily equal innocence.

[Ben]

My intention in bringing up Barnett, Bury et al was to demonstrate examples of the phenomenon I described, wherein an individual is suspected of the crimes without the proof emerging to "exonerate" them of any involvement. I have no doubt that many suspects were dismissed after they were "checked out", but as with modern day investigations, a suspect may be dismissed in spite of the question of their potential guilt remaining unresolved. A suspect can only be held for so long, and in the absence of any compelling reason to detain him for any appreciable length of time, the police are obliged to set him at liberty. Many hundreds of individuals would have been suspected at some stage during the course of the investigation into the Whitechapel murders, and it is inconceivable that the vast majority of these were exonerated.

The police just didn't have the "exonerating" capabilities you appear to imagine.

[Wickerman]

What, the Publican's Friend?

Not typically known for its accuracy - it tended to adopt a somewhat sensationalist approach, I think, with accounts that were quite often all its own. Went down well in the pubs I expect, though.

The Morning Advertiser was discussed on another thread - sorry, can't remember which at the moment.

Might I suggest you read, Jack the Ripper and the London Press, Curtis, 2001.
Assuming you are interested in turning your "I think" & "I expect" into something more substantial.

Very few of the papers were known for their accuracy but The Daily Telegraph became among the most popular. Most of the papers were very politically aligned so tended to promote the party line even in issues of the Whitechapel murders.
For controversial reading the worst being Pall Mall Gazette followed by the Star.
The Star managed to dodge a libel suit for what they 'invented/lied' about John Piser. Luckily for them they enticed him to settle out of court for a paltry sum by our standards.

Generally speaking the police were 'not' allowed to talk to the press, to which we have several instances which support this fact. Most communications between the police and the press were one-way, the police would send a wire to the Central News Agency, or Liberal News Agency, or any of the six agencies in business at the time. Newspapers would source their story from an agency for a fee. This is why you read so many duplicate stories, even to the last word.

Claims that a newspaper had sourced a story out of any particular police station can be reasonably taken as an attempt at 'one-upmanship' over its competition to impress it's readers.
Not that it could never have happened but knowing the strict rules which were in place against such communications, and any lack of confirming stories from the police side, we should err on the side of caution and assume it rare to unlikely.

Regards, Jon S.

[Lechmere]

Ben
Bury only came under suspicion when he murdered his wife in Dundee. He wasn’t strictly a contemporary suspect. He is in the category of suspect where their subsequent behaviour brought them to the police’s attention – like Druitt or Chapman (for very different reasons).

Cutbush was one of those few mentioned as a suspect and ended up incarcerated, but also exonerated.
It is pretty clear that so far as the police were concerned in 1888, Barnett was exonerated. They did not maintain any interest in him as a suspect.

You are second guessing the police for incorrectly exonerating. However that is irrelevant as my point is there were precious few unexonerated suspects.
This tends to imply (to me anyway) that a good suspect (eg a witness who was proven to be a liar and who placed himself at a crime scene) would not be readily discarded.