Hutchinsons statement....

[Fisherman]

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

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

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: I'm not guessing. I'm suggesting...

Ha! Say no more!

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

Have you read about the difference between sequential memory and detail memory? Are you aware that they are not the same thing?

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

I listed them. They are there to read for anyone, you included. Did you miss them?

[Fisherman]

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.

That is oversimplifying in the extreme. You should not resort to such things, Gareth.

I could say that since he didn´t come forward before the 112:th, that practically proves that he only heard about the murder at a very late stage.

It would be just as "true" as your suggestion.

Today, we have the interenet, we have television and cell phones, and people still miss out on things. Trying to convince me that all of the people in London knew all about the Kelly murder the same day it happened is not going to work.

In a sense, it is like the suggestion that people do not miss out on the days - it is generally true, but individually, it is another story altogether. It respresents part of a worl that has all sorts of shades of grey inbetween the white and the black that you prefer to use.

[Sam Flynn]

That is oversimplifying in the extreme

No, it isn't. Nobody, but nobody in Spitalfields could have failed to have heard of the Miller's Court murder almost immediately it was discovered, and the news would have quickly spread further afield.

[Sam Flynn]

Have you read about the difference between sequential memory and detail memory? Are you aware that they are not the same thing?

I have a degree in psychology, Fish.

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

I listed them. They are there to read for anyone, you included. Did you miss them?

Can't say they ring a bell. Care to enumerate them again, or at least point me to the relevant post.

[andy1867]

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

Just done that, but buggered if I can remember why..................

[Wickerman]

She did indeed tell that to the court but not to the police so if she told the newspaper reporter the same thing as she told the police, namely that she arrived in Dorset Street between, or around, 2 and 3, it might easily have been included as 3am in the press report.

Lewis also told the police she did not know the deceased.
Yet, Kennedy's is reported to have said Kelly was with her in two different press accounts.
Lewis did not know Kelly, Mrs Kennedy did, and so she should if she lived opposite her in rm 2.

David, as yet apart from admitting you do not believe Kennedy & Lewis were different women, and suggesting "she said this, but she really meant that", and Gareth bringing semantics into it now - 'home' might not mean 'her home', and 'staying' could mean 'visiting' (if I understood correctly), etc., you have not as yet presented a viable argument.
Disbelief is not an argument.

If you have something tangible with which to contest what we read about Kennedy then please share it.
True, there are any number of potential errors in the story, but the fact it is possible, does not make it so. They have to be shown to be errors to make the argument.
What is written (the historical record), suggests on a number of fronts, that these women were not the same.

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: I have a degree in psychology, Fish.

Congratulations. But that was not what I asked. I asked if you are aware that detail memory and sequential memory are totally different matters. Do you? You seem not to.

Can't say they ring a bell. Care to enumerate them again, or at least point me to the relevant post.

Posts 762 and 774 should be helpful.

[Fisherman]

Just done that, but buggered if I can remember why..................

That´s the detail memory playing a prank on you - does not mean that the sequential memory is off, though, so you will probably be correct in saying "just".

[Sam Flynn]

Sam Flynn: I have a degree in psychology, Fish.

Congratulations. But that was not what I asked. I asked if you are aware that detail memory and sequential memory are totally different matters. Do you? You seem not to.

Sarcastic and insulting.

You never learn, do you?

Bye.

[Fisherman]

Sarcastic and insulting.

You never learn, do you?

Bye.

You seem rather unwilling to learn too, Gareth - I simply pointed out to you that I did not ask for whatever degrees you may have or not have - I asked you a question about sequential memory and detail memory, and it seems now that I am not going to get an answer from you.
However, you made it clear that you agree with other posters that a man with a very good detail memory should not miss out on the days, so I can only conclude that you - in spite of your degree - are either ignorant about the difference between the two types of memory, or you are setting your knowledge about it aside for some reason.

How it can be an insult on my behalf to point this out is a riddle to me. It is a crucial factor in the Hutchinson issue, and it has to be brought up in the discussion.

My impression is that you are not willing to discuss the issue from this angle, and so you prefer to make me out as the villain in order to be able to flee the matter by claiming that I am misbehaving.

Incidentally, I regard that as a major insult.

[Flower and Dean]

Can you explain where you see this mix-up?

Wickerman, by this point I'm not sure if you're being deliberately circular or if you simply don't read what you reply to. I already gave my reasons for thinking that there could have been a mix-up. Lewis and Kennedy offer very similar stories with minor differences (including one sensational difference in Kennedy seeing Kelly, specifically) that could well have been the result of some confusion or misreporting.

The line you hi-lited in the quote took place "at the court", not outside the Britannia. This "woman talking to two men" may have had nothing to do with the crime - we simply do not know.

I didn't say that line took place outside the Britannia. I said that Kennedy was brought up in this thread (and the larger reason why her testimony might be important) because of her claimed sighting of Kelly at the Britannia at 3 AM.

This means that:

First: like you said yourself, if Lewis saw Kelly she wouldn't know the value of what she saw because they didn't know each other.

Second: that Kennedy saw a woman talking to two men would only be relevant if there was a possibility that the woman was Kelly and/or that the two men were suspicious. Nothing in your quote indicates the latter. And if the woman was Kelly, then you'd think this would be mentioned because...

Third: the Kennedy story has her seeing Kelly outside the Britannia at 3 AM. This means that (with all the caveats about Kennedy's story) Kennedy knew Kelly. This is the whole reason why Kennedy's testimony was brought up to begin with.

So, which is it? Were the men and the woman in the court totally unrelated? Why would they get brought up as significant, then? Or, could the woman be Kelly? In that case, why wouldn't Kennedy identify her as such?

It could be anybody. Though, if it isn't Lewis, then we have another as yet unknown witness who saw a "funny-looking" man in the vicinity of the murder.

What makes you think it's another witness? Like you said yourself: it could be anybody, like Lewis, Prater (who claims she visited the shop that night), Cox (on her way in and out), etc. or someone we don't know about.

I guess if she saw a couple walk up the court, then when she gets there she see's no-one in the court, we are left with an impossible situation. With no way out of the court, what did they do, spread wings and fly?

No. Like I said before... she could have meant that there was nobody else in the court other than the people she described, or simply that the couple wasn't in the court to begin with.

[Wickerman]

Because they quite possibly didn't walk up the passage. I believe you've only found one newspaper report that says they entered Miller's Court? Most, if not all, reports seem to say that Lewis/Kennedy saw the couple in Dorset Street.

There's only one press account that suggests Hutchinson was discredited, so the number of accounts is not an issue.

It doesn't make sense to use the term "further on" to refer to the couple's being in the short passageway that connected Dorset Street to Kelly's room. If they were there, Lewis/Kennedy would surely have said "just down the passage" or "in front of me", but she doesn't.

Yes, I'm aware of that, but as I said earlier, "further on" can just as easily mean just ahead of her, as presumably, Lewis is following some distance behind. This couple can still be in Dorset street but just before they turn into the passage.

Apart from the one newspaper report, which could well have been in error, there is no reason to believe that Lewis/Kennedy saw the couple enter Miller's Court. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the couple were seen in Dorset Street, and were still in Dorset Street, when Lewis/Kennedy entered the Court itself.

Errors in inquest testimony are never so elaborate. A word may drop out of a sentence - the Wideawake-man was described as "not tall", yet in one account we only read "tall", the "not" having dropped out.
Spelling personal names wrong is another common error in inquest testimony.
You are suggesting a complete sentence describing an activity that never happened just appeared in isolation for some unknown reason.

Well there is a reason, the reason is a fabricated 'error' in order to justify a modern argument that is otherwise indefensible.

Besides.... if Lewis/Kennedy had seen Kelly and this man actually enter Miller's Court, you'd think that it would have been stated explicitly and unanimously in the press and in her police testimony, and that she'd have been asked about it at the inquest. But it isn't, and she wasn't.

Why?, the coroner was interested in the man standing opposite the court - Lewis was asked to describe him, so this was the detail which attracted the coroners attention.

Setting up a straw-man argument, suggesting this couple would be highly important, to only shoot it down because clearly they were not, isn't going to work.

[Sam Flynn]

Setting up a straw-man argument, suggesting this couple would be highly important, to only shoot it down because clearly they were not, isn't going to work.

I'm not setting up a strawman. If a couple had actually been seen going into Miller's Court, it would have been a highly significant piece of evidence. The fact that it's mentioned in only one newspaper, and was not brought out at the inquest, suggests that the report was erroneous.

[David Orsam]

Lewis also told the police she did not know the deceased.
Yet, Kennedy's is reported to have said Kelly was with her in two different press accounts.
Lewis did not know Kelly, Mrs Kennedy did, and so she should if she lived opposite her in rm 2.

Well, Jon, saying that you don't know someone isn't the same as saying that you don't know what someone looks like.

Nevertheless, you might have a point were it not for what we find in the earliest account of the story of Mrs Kennedy in the Evening Post of 9 November 1888:

"She noticed three persons at the corner of the street, near the Britannia public-house. There was a man - a young man, respectably dressed, and with a dark moustache – talking to a woman whom she did not know, and also a female, poorly clad and without any head-gear. The man and woman appeared to be the worse for liquor, and she heard the man ask, “Are you coming?” whereupon the woman, who appeared to be obstinate, turned in an opposite direction to which the man apparently wished her to go....Mrs. Kennedy asserts that the man whom she saw on Friday morning with the woman at the corner of Dorset-street resembled very closely the individual who causes such alarm on the night in question, and that she would recognise him again if confronted with him."

Not a squeak or a hint that the woman she saw was the deceased, Mary Jane Kelly. Yet how could it be possible for her to have left this crucial fact out of her story?

Which leads me to conclude that it was a later assumption by an editor who simply thought that, in the context of the story, the woman who was spoken to by the man must have been Kelly to make sense of it.