Hutchinsons statement....

[Robert]

Sarah Lewis gave birth to a son John Walter Gotheimer on 8th August 1888. I have the birth cert.

[Phil Carter]

Sarah Lewis gave birth to a son John Walter Gotheimer on 8th August 1888. I have the birth cert.

Thank you Robert. So where does her being "5 months pregnant" in November come from?


Best regards


Phil

[Robert]

Hi Phil

I think the pregnancy (can't remember how many months) was what a living family member told Chris when he was writing his Lewis article.

[Observer]

Sarah Lewis gave birth to a son John Walter Gotheimer on 8th August 1888. I have the birth cert.

That's an interesting fact Robert. So, in effect Sarah Lewis left her abode in the early hours of the 9th November and left behind her three month old baby.

[Robert]

Hi Observer

This is a bit complicated, and you must remember that Chris was working at a time when a couple of very important sources weren't yet online. The results he came up with were quite reasonable, given the situation. Also, the main thrust of his article - that he had traced the family of Sarah Lewis - isn't affected by one or two minor genealogical quirks. It will basically depend on whether we believe that this Sarah Lewis was reliable when she told her family that she was THE Sarah Lewis.

I'll give my interpretation, which of course might be wrong.

When I emailed her, Debs at once made the same point as yourself - rather odd to go out in the night leaving a baby. However, I also have the birth cert of Emily Alexandra Lewis, born March 5th 1888, father Thomas Studley Lewis who I think was Sarah's brother. So it's possible to imagine Thomas's wife Caroline minding the baby, and even feeding it.

As I wrote to Debs :

I think they told Emily Alexandra that Sarah was her mother. If the family then told that to Chris, and Chris saw the marriage on Ancestry where she gives her father as Joseph, and the 1911 where Ann is her 'sister' then all would have seemed OK.

I think Caroline was in an asylum in 1891.

It's complicated I know, and I've only mentioned a couple of the ramifications. I have five birth certs altogether. I can't seem to post anything on here - it's always too big or something - but if anyone wants to PM me their email I'll send them.

Chris's article is available here :

http://www.ripperologist.biz/pdf/ripperologist133.pdf

[Michael W Richards]

"I think" is of course a powerful argument, but I tend to be a bit careful about it whenever it surfaces just the same.

Mary Kelly was killed on the 9:th of November. George Hutchinson sought out the police on the evening of the 12:th of November. He claimed to have seen Kelly with a man in the early morning hours of the 9:th, meaning that it was on the night of the 8:th of November.
Putting it in weekday chronology, Hutchinson basically returned to London after having left Romford in the late evening of Thursday, arriving in the East End at around 2 AM on Friday. That was when he withessed the meeting between Kelly and Astrakhan man.
He then went to see the police on Monday. So we are dealing with a spectrum involving five days, Thursday-Monday.
We do not know when Hutchinson found out about Kelly having been killed.

Now, imagine that Hutchinson mistook Wednesday for Thursday - he lived a vagrant´s life, and will have taken whatever working opportunities that came along, sleeping whereever the work placed him, and being willing to travel by night between different places. If he made this very simple mistake (compare by asking yourself when you had that cod for dinner last week, was it on Tuesday or Wednedsay? When was it Trump twittered "cofefe", was it on Monday or Tuesday?), he would have been inclined to think that it must have been Friday morning he saw Kelly instead of Thursday morning.

It is a very trivial thing to do, and I have never seen it questioned with such heat until it was mentioned out here. Out here, we get "He could not have forgotten".

Believe me - he could well have.

The part in bold above is what I'm addressing Fisherman, the murder was published in a handful of local papers on Fri, no less than 14 papers that had London distribution on Saturday, and the coverage continued Sun through Monday. Even if he was still in Romford, or Hartford Connecticut for that matter, he could not have avoided hearing about the murder in Millers Court. Its this fact that puts substantial doubt upon his whole story....why would someone who claimed to be a friend of someone who was horribly mutilated on Friday not come forward until 4 days later? If he was afraid too...then why did he come forward at all?

[Sam Flynn]

Therefore it is VERY much a question if it CAN happen, and not at all just a question of how likely it is to happen.

I must disagree, Fish. The likelihood of something happening is pretty fundamental. Merely positing "possibilities" without also taking into account the associated probabilities is not a sensible way to proceed.

Of course it's possible that Hutchinson mixed up the date, but how likely is it that he did, given the remarkable experiences he purports to have gone through that night?

[Fisherman]

The part in bold above is what I'm addressing Fisherman, the murder was published in a handful of local papers on Fri, no less than 14 papers that had London distribution on Saturday, and the coverage continued Sun through Monday. Even if he was still in Romford, or Hartford Connecticut for that matter, he could not have avoided hearing about the murder in Millers Court. Its this fact that puts substantial doubt upon his whole story....why would someone who claimed to be a friend of someone who was horribly mutilated on Friday not come forward until 4 days later? If he was afraid too...then why did he come forward at all?

It is not for us to decide for Huchinson what he read and heard during the days leading up to his visit to the police - we cannot tell, it´s that simple. What I will say, though, is that his coming forward only as late as on the evening of the 12:th opens up for the possibility that he was not informed until late. In the Daily News, Hutchinson states "I told one policeman on Sunday morning what I had seen, but did not go to the police station. I told one of the lodgers here about it yesterday, and he advised me to go to the police station, which I did last night."
So all we can say is that it seems that he was aware of the murder on Sunday. Before that, there´s no knowing, only suggestions that cannot be substantiated.

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: I must disagree, Fish. The likelihood of something happening is pretty fundamental.

Indeed - I could not agree more. Se how do we establish the likelihood? By listening to your convictions? You see, there is no way we can assess the likelihood other than by way of guessing, and whatever guess we make, we may be way off the mark.
I trust you realize this?

Merely positing "possibilities" without also taking into account the associated probabilities is not a sensible way to proceed.

Once again, I agree - so if you can establish the likelihood, we can move on. Can you?
If we cannot establish the likelihood, we are left with accepting the "possibility" (what´s with the quotation marks...?) that he got it wrong, in combination with the many factors that seem to point in that direction.

Of course it's possible that Hutchinson mixed up the date, but how likely is it that he did...

That is what I am asking you. Weigh in his personality, his psychologica health at the time, the time span, the involved factors about what he did on the adjoining days and you may have something to work from.

...given the remarkable experiences he purports to have gone through that night?

Did you not see the article I posted? It involved a young woman who was raped - and who got the dates wrong in the same kind of time span that we are speaking about when it comes to Hutchinson.

Does this mean that the woman will mix the days up again if she is raped again? Most probably not - we normally do not make this kind of a mistake. But that is all we can say, we cannot establish some sort of percentage figure that is relevant in her specific case. We can say that people normally don´t do it. And we can also say that the one thing that can govern us in this respect is to look at the circumstances involved, and see if they are in favour of a mixing up of the days. Clearly, in Hutchinsons case, they are.
He missed out on Lewis.
He walked the streets all night, meaning that the weather would have allowed for it.
Kelly and Astrakhan stood outside the court for a number of minutes, and Hutchinson could hear them from far away.
Would they stand there in gale force winds and pouring rain?
Would Hutchinson be able to hear them in that sort of weather?

This is what we have to work from, these are the facts. Whatever ideas you have about Hutchinsons risk of getting it wrong is secondary to that evidence. You can say that we should not expect him to err in this respect, and you will be right. And I can say that we must accept that many people do anyway, and I will be right.

After that, it´s up to the facts.

[andy1867]

I can see all the arguments, but if you argue the fact that Hutchinsons statement was so precise, so detailed, albeit after a couple of days thinking about it....
Would he really get the date wrong?

[Sam Flynn]

I can see all the arguments, but if you argue the fact that Hutchinsons statement was so precise, so detailed, albeit after a couple of days thinking about it....
Would he really get the date wrong?

That's precisely the point, and that's what makes it very unlikely that he was mistaken about the date.

[Sam Flynn]

Sam Flynn: I must disagree, Fish. The likelihood of something happening is pretty fundamental.

Indeed - I could not agree more. Se how do we establish the likelihood? By listening to your convictions? You see, there is no way we can assess the likelihood other than by way of guessing, and whatever guess we make, we may be way off the mark.

I'm not guessing. I'm suggesting that, given the extreme detail reported by Hutchinson, and the remarkable nature of his encounter with a friend on the very morning of her murder, it would be highly unlikely he'd make an error about the day on which those events occurred, especially given that only a comparatively small amount of time had elapsed in the interim

If we cannot establish the likelihood, we are left with accepting the "possibility" that he got it wrong, in combination with the many factors that seem to point in that direction.

We might recognise the possibility, but we don't have to accept it.

What are the "many factors that seem to point in that direction", by the way?

[Sam Flynn]

So all we can say is that it seems that he was aware of the murder on Sunday. Before that, there´s no knowing, only suggestions that cannot be substantiated.

As Michael suggests, it would have been practically impossible for anyone in Britain not to have heard of the Miller's Court murder, never mind someone who lived barely a three-minute walk away.

Hutchinson would had to have been in a coma not to have learned of it immediately.

[andy1867]

That's precisely the point, and that's what makes it very unlikely that he was mistaken about the date.

excellent..thats one hymn sheet less i have to give out lol

[Fisherman]

I can see all the arguments, but if you argue the fact that Hutchinsons statement was so precise, so detailed, albeit after a couple of days thinking about it....
Would he really get the date wrong?

Go through my earlier posts, and stop when you see the expression "sequential memory"!