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
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
In fact, he need only have read the papers (actually I think just one would do), which he could probably have done without buying said paper. That I think is most likely. But the same information could have reached him verballly - people talk, you know? Especially in the kitchen of the Victoria Home, which could accommodate over 200 people at a time. What do you think the lodgers were talking about that weekend? Oh wait, we know what Hutchinson was talking about, don't we, because he tells us himself.
The means of attainment are less important than the obvious fact that his account is derivative - or so it appears. Now either all that correspondence with other, very slightly earlier accounts was happy coincidence, or he made it up. If his account was fabricated, the reason for its initial success was that his description of Astrakhan Man was similar to others circulating at the time. There are other examples in addition to the ones I posted yesterday.
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?
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