our killer been local

[Wickerman]

Are we talking about the same lodging houses that reeked of blood and filth from the many slaughtermen that lived in them?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

We can only generalize Tom until someone suggests which lodging-house he is supposed to have lived in. Only then can we get down to specifics, but that ain't going to happen.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I think it´s a pretty fair bet that he WAS local. He obviously manouvred the East End labyrinth with some skill, and that was not a simple task.

What's a pretty fair bet?! Is there such a thing? I assume you mean good odds.

It really doesn't follow that he probably 'was local'.

In those days you pretty much had to be caught red handed. Providing he wasn't then he wouldn't have needed to have jumped fences and hid in the shadows.

Obviously the police had a vested interest in painting the murderer as a master tactician of the streets.

Think about Eddowes: by the time they started a search of the surrounding area it was around 2:05am, and by that time Jack was long gone from the vicinity of the search. All he had to do was not get caught with his wrists right up to the eyeballs of an hapless victim and then walk away.

[Ben]

PC Long went to Commercial St. to alert his superiors after he made sure another constable was placed 'on watch' at the site.

And yet he did not investigate the Wentworth Model Dwellings himself, for which he received censure at the inquest. His critics might have argued, with considerable justification considering the location of the apron and chalked message, that it would have been better to do so rather than leaving someone on "watch". I see no compelling evidence that he was "supposed" to do that.

I am saying it is this very same crowd which is watching him, as they all watch each other. He would not be hiding among the crowd, but actually the reverse - putting himself on display

But this, as I've explained, is nonsense for obvious reasons. The average working class lodger was concerned for his ongoing struggle to scratch out a meagre living. Don't make the mistake of assuming he was as anorakishly fascinated with the ripper as we armchair hobbyists are. He had a far more immediate and pressing concern - his own survival. As such, we can dispense with the idea that everyone was monitoring everyone else's business at 3.00am in the morning. They had not the incentive. A thousand eyes watching one lodger out of 500, when the vast majority were asleep in bed, wondering even if they had any bed to sleep in the next night? I think we can piss that theory safely off. And why assume he would have been an "unknown"? What if he was a vaguely familiar face in the crowd? Someone who appeared, like everyone else, to keep his nose down and get on with life?

As much as you find it hard to accept, the contrast of 'respectable' killer and disreputable victim, is all too well established.

The vast majority of prostitute killers come from working class backgrounds and work in menial, blue-collar occupations. That is a factual reality that you can waste time challenging if you wish. You obviously favour a "respectable" upper-class ripper, which is fair enough. Controversial, minoroty-endorsed, outdated, and almost certainly wrong, but fair enough. What troubles me is that you allow this preference to pepper your entire thinking of the case.

By what rationale have you already decided that he was not heading for a third victim that night?

Are you serious?

[Tom_Wescott]

Harry.
Any one of us can choose to invent a 'bloodstained' killer, just to suit our argument but none of the doctors thought the killer would be unduly covered in blood.
So you seem to have offered a straw-man argument.

For arguments sake, lets assume he IS covered in blood. The dark streets and alleyways provide suitable cover, but when he arrives at a lodginghouse, and tries to get himself cleaned up at the sink, he is surrounded by nosy dossers, and he can't hide in the dark.

A lodging-house is the last place your bloodstained killer would walk into.

Are we talking about the same lodging houses that reeked of blood and filth from the many slaughtermen that lived in them?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

But you seem to suggest that the humble lodging house deputies had the police in their pockets?

Not deputies...they just ran the place. I'm talking about the owners, who in terms of authority in the East End were over the police.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Wickerman]

Games room? In an East End lodging-house in 1888? A place where one bed would be used by 3 different people in a 24 hour period? A place where there were very likely no sanitary facilities? In which people sometimes slept, or tried to sleep, on rope strung from wall to wall? A games room? Like snooker and table-tennis, or a darts-board? A GAMES ROOM? Do you people actually live in the real world, or do you just, as I suspect, make it up as you go along?????

Graham

Psst Graham.
This Games Room was Ben's conjecture.
I think you are essentially in agreement with Lechmere.

[Ben]

Hi Graham,

The Victoria Home was a Peabody institution, which meant that while it was still, in essence, a grotty East-end lodging house, it at least made a pretense at being a "cut above". To this end, there was no sleeping against a rope. Instead, lodgers could sleep either in one of the mass dormitories or, for a couple of extra pence, a private cubicle. There were certainly "sanitary facilities", along with a reading room that supplied the daily papers, free of charge. In addition, there were various common rooms where lodgers could organise games amongst themselves, and it is far from unreasonable to assume that chalk was used to keep score.

[Ben]

Are we being asked to entertain the idea that Hutchinson killed Eddowes at 1.45 am-ish, went back to the Victoria Home at 2.00 am-ish with the bloody apron, gained entry, picked up some chalk from the games room and went back out, dropped the apron, wrote the graffito and regained entry to the Victoria Home at 2.30 am-ish?

Nobody's "asking" you to do a single thing, Lechmere. So convinced are you of the guilt of Charles Cross that anyone familiar with your contributions would consider it a futile exercise to "ask" you to "entertain" any idea other than one that involves Cross being guilty. I was having a conversation with Abby about a perfectly plausible scenario. You challenge it, as anticipated, but your challenges are based, as ever, on confusion over the way in which lodging houses such as the Victoria Home operated.

As for people keeping tabs on each other, it is you who exaggerates. The larger lodging houses could accommodate as many of 500 lodgers per night, and while this meant that some people might have chosen to keep tabs on some other people, this would not have held true for the vast majority of those 500 lodgers. If the killer belonged to the majority group who kept themselves to themselves, he had nothing to fear from the prying eyes of other lodgers - prying eyes that were probably closed and asleep in anticipation of the next day's hard slog.

You seek to antagonise with sarcastic and inaccurate comments about the likelihood of the Victoria Home having chalk and offering recreational facilities, and yet it was you who spent years of posts going out of your way to demonstrate, very unsuccessfully, that the lodging house was just a rung down from a hotel.

The people who did attract attention in lodging houses were those who appeared conspicuous and out of place, and remember that we're talking here of an ignorant mob who were probably ill-equipped to perceive that the real killer just might be an assuming local dosser like themselves.

Even if he was Toppy - as he probably was

Errrmm...

No...

[Wickerman]

... It would have been extreme folly to waste precious time waiting for "his superiors" to arrive on the scene, hold his hand, and give him the go ahead to do the bleedin' obvious.

Where did you get that from?
PC Long went to Commercial St. to alert his superiors after he made sure another constable was placed 'on watch' at the site.
This is what I said he was supposed to do.

Do you want to try a different reply?

Exactly. Just an opinion. The Star's opinion. Not to be invested with any more worth that it warrants. That's not to say we shouldn't pay attention when they report on matters that obviously originated from police sources...

Obviously?
Only in your mind Ben.

This is where just a bit more insight into the habits and behaviour of known serial offenders would be advantageous to you, I strongly feel.

I'm sure you do.
But you are misunderstanding the scenario.
You seem to think this killer will choose to hide among 'the crowd' so as to be invisible?

I am saying it is this very same crowd which is watching him, as they all watch each other. He would not be hiding among the crowd, but actually the reverse - putting himself on display.
Ordinary people were naturally suspicious of each other, and of someone they did not know, throughout the spate of these murders.

Actually, depending on the lodging house, one could acquire a "private" cubicle for a couple of pence extra.

Yes, I know all about the partitions, there is nothing private about a partition.
- There is nothing private about a thousand eyes watching when you come and go.
- The is nothing private about you cleaning your clothes or hands in front of a hundred men.

Security, peace of mind, privacy, can only be assured by our man renting a room, in a house, for himself.

You lump the victims and all working class dossers into the category of honest-to-goodness, might-have-picked-a-pocket-or-two strugglers, whereas you envisage the ripper as a well-dressed, possibly upper class outsider who slashed his way in and out of Poorsville with a twirl of his moustache. It's an approach to "ripperology" than belongs on the 60s and 70s, if you ask me, and it may explain why we clash a lot. But my sincere apologies if I've misread you.

If your problem is one of credibility, then maybe you can provide an example of a murderous dosser who called the lodging-house his home?
The reasonably well-to-do killers like, Dr Thomas Neal Cream, who sought to murder prostitutes in the London slums, is a scenario that is proven.

As much as you find it hard to accept, the contrast of 'respectable' killer and disreputable victim, is all too well established.

Quite frankly, good luck finding many of those in that part of the East End at that time.

Not at all difficult.

Incidentally, this thread was supposed to addressing the question of whether or not the killer was local, not whether or not he was a doss-house dweller. There are plenty of other threads which tackle the latter debate in great depth.

Then in your anxiety to find fault, you must have missed the part where I agreed he could have been local - just not a dosser.

Where are you getting "different route" from?

It doesn't matter whether or not you accept that the apron was there when Long first passed the spot, the logical reality is that be headed in the direction of home, or at the very least, a bolt-hole, after the murder.

Logic? - why?
By what rationale have you already decided that he was not heading for a third victim that night?
PC Spicer's story has not been forgotten.

Of those who support the contention that Long correctly observed that it wasn't there first time, there seems to be an agreement .....

Would you mind giving a heads-up the next time you conduct these polls that you seem to keep referring to?

[pinkmoon]

Harry.
Any one of us can choose to invent a 'bloodstained' killer, just to suit our argument but none of the doctors thought the killer would be unduly covered in blood.
So you seem to have offered a straw-man argument.

For arguments sake, lets assume he IS covered in blood. The dark streets and alleyways provide suitable cover, but when he arrives at a lodginghouse, and tries to get himself cleaned up at the sink, he is surrounded by nosy dossers, and he can't hide in the dark.

A lodging-house is the last place your bloodstained killer would walk into.

Very good point far to risky also what about the organs he removed surely he must have lived alone and if he could afford to live alone would he not have had more money than the average local man.

[Graham]

Graham
Do you doubt that there was a full sized Billiards Table in the Victoria Home reading room, with numerous sticks of chalk lined up neatly for the use of any passing night stalking slasher?

I'm afraid I do. And why would you want sticks of chalk to play billiards, anyway? The chalk used on cues is in small blocks impossible to write with, and even back then there were wall-mounted scoring boards using moveable pointers. I do, however, concede that snooker in 1888 was a very new game, and probably hadn't quite caught on in the Whitechapel of those days. However, darts is traditionally a 'hands on' game, if indeed darts was actually popularly played in 1888, but if so I would suspect that scores were marked, as they are now, on a small blackboard mounted close to the dart-board itself.

Or are you taking the piss?

G

[Lechmere]

Graham
Do you doubt that there was a full sized Billiards Table in the Victoria Home reading room, with numerous sticks of chalk lined up neatly for the use of any passing night stalking slasher?

[Wickerman]

The problem for the killer was not in getting to the scene of the crime ,but in getting from it.In at least four of the murders there would be the need to pass along narrow streets in a part bloodstained condition.Streets that were patrolled by police officers that would take an interest in any person about in the early hours.The more streets to cover the greater the risk.A local would have fewer streets to contend with.

Harry.
Any one of us can choose to invent a 'bloodstained' killer, just to suit our argument but none of the doctors thought the killer would be unduly covered in blood.
So you seem to have offered a straw-man argument.

For arguments sake, lets assume he IS covered in blood. The dark streets and alleyways provide suitable cover, but when he arrives at a lodginghouse, and tries to get himself cleaned up at the sink, he is surrounded by nosy dossers, and he can't hide in the dark.

A lodging-house is the last place your bloodstained killer would walk into.

[Graham]

Games room? In an East End lodging-house in 1888? A place where one bed would be used by 3 different people in a 24 hour period? A place where there were very likely no sanitary facilities? In which people sometimes slept, or tried to sleep, on rope strung from wall to wall? A games room? Like snooker and table-tennis, or a darts-board? A GAMES ROOM? Do you people actually live in the real world, or do you just, as I suspect, make it up as you go along?????

Graham

[Lechmere]

Tom
I don’t doubt that the police searches were far from fool proof.

But you seem to suggest that the humble lodging house deputies had the police in their pockets?
The beat coppers may have popped in and had a familiar relationship some deputies and a few may have been paid off by criminals who frequented certain lodging houses, so that they turned a blind eye to whatever went on inside.

However I would suggest that this would not have been much use in the face of targeted police attention towards the lodging houses – which is clearly what happened.

Also I have no doubt that the deputies and the criminals wanted the Ripper caught – partly because it was bad for business and partly because such people invariably get all moralistic and indignant about that type of crime.
Accordingly for the purposes of Ripper hunts I am sure they would have been cooperative – just as East Enders were in general to the surprise of the authorities.

Also I think a large degree of over exaggeration goes on with respect to the supposed anonymity of these establishments.
There was clearly an established residential population who knew each other’s business – we see that time and again in this case.
We also see a growing mistrust of strangers and of people acting out of the ordinary, with them regularly being informed on and arrested in lodging houses across London.

Of course we know nothing of Hutchinson's movements - so anything can be inserted as conjecture.
Even if he was Toppy - as he probably was - we know very little about that period.