Any updates, or opinions on this witness.

[Wickerman]

Returning to the issue of the Lawende identification(s), it’s worth pointing out that the bearded over-fifty Sadler did not resemble Lawende’s man in the slightest. He was no better a fit in that regard than he was for Hutchinson’s Astrakhan man, but the police went ahead with the attempted identification anyway, if only to follow proper police procedure and tick another official box.

Yet some use this pointless? attempt at identifying the Ripper as evidence Hutchinson was not believed.
Sadler didn't fit either suspect description in possession of the police.

It wasn’t just the aforementioned identify parades that provide additional evidence of Hutchinson’s reported discrediting; it was the actual remarks on the subject from senior police officials that hammer home the final nails in that particular coffin. Unless they all suffered from very selective amnesia on the subject, the collective observations of Anderson, Swanson, Macnaghten and Abberline, when remarking on the subject of eyewitness evidence, all make very clear that the early press reports of Hutchinson’s “considerable discounting” were perfectly accurate.

All those points have been addressed before, nothing stands up to scrutiny.
Most officials chose their own type of suspect formed years after the case, none of which fit any suspect description that has survived.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Wickerman. Here is how I look at it. When Macnaghten states that no one ever saw the Ripper, he is simply making a statement of fact.

He means that no one ever saw the murderer in flagrante delicto, standing over his victim with a blood-stained knife, and thus none of the eyewitnesses, in themselves, could prove a suspect's guilt. He then qualifies this by acknowledging that the 'City PC' near Mitre Square was the best bet; which most take to be a garbled reference to Lawende, who is thus given the honor of being the 'super witness' we see in the Swanson marginalia. [Anderson and Swanson seem to be insisting that this man COULD prove guilt. As such, it is really no mystery why they would rely on Lawende, but I would just as not as soon "go there" in this discussion].


It would be foolish in the extreme to take Mac's statement, as some do, and try to use it as evidence that Hutchinson (and Long and Packer and Schwartz) were all discredited and proven to be liars, or that their accounts were otherwise considered without value. That's not what he is saying or implying.

What Macnaghten is actually admitting is that the police were just as much in the dark as we are as to which witness saw what, and he and his colleagues were quite willing to concede the murderer might have looked like Monty Druitt or even Michael Ostrog, because there was no witness, including Hutchinson, who saw the man in flagrante delicto .

Obviously this does not mean that we shouldn't consider Hutchinson, Long, Schwartz, etc. to be valuable from an investigative point of view.

[Simon Wood]

It would be helpful to first discover for whom Macnaghten wrote his 1894 memorandum.

[Trevor Marriott]

Corroboration is done by the police. They have already investigated their stories and have provided a reliable (as best as can be ascertained) list of witness statements to the coroner.
It isn't the coroner's place to corroborate testimony, merely ensure that reliable testimony is produced to the jury.

But much of what was obtained by the police, and produced as witness testimony at the various inquests was conflicting, and much of which should in my opinion have been clarified, it was not, and so we are left to deduce as best we can, as to who was telling the truth, and what accounts to believe.

If the police lied in some of their statements, which clearly some did, what chance do we have of believing civilian testimony.

Walter Dew in his book states ;

"As always happens in such cases, so many people were eager to give information. The majority were well-meaning enough, but some notoriety seekers made statements which were patently untrue, with no other object than to get their names into the newspapers.

I have never been able to understand the mentality of such people. Our job was big enough in all conscience without having to waste time exploring false clues."

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Varqm]

Fame/notoriety seekers or like the people charging for a view into the backyard of 29 Hanbury St.,locals trying to make a bit of money off the interest in the case/murders.

--

[Ben]

And so the hole is dug ever deeper, with Jon continuing to pronounce weightily but worthlessly on matters he doesn’t understand or know a single thing about; dismissing “evidence” presented in a book which, by his own admission, he can’t even be bothered to read; whether through laziness, tight-fistedness, or out of concern that actually taking the time to read something for once might interfere with his relentless posting, it becomes increasingly difficult to decipher.

You don't suggest I buy every Jack the Ripper book just because I have an interest in Jack the Ripper, surely?

The moment you discovered Hutchinson, you abandoned all pretence at having a general “interest in Jack the Ripper” in favour of bogging yourself down in the esoteric nitty-gritty of all things Hutchinson, thus rendering all the more inexplicable your refusal - with all the weak excuses that accompany it - to part with the most paltry of sums in order acquire a book on that very subject.

Great, so why pay for an hypothesis when there is no evidence behind it?

You don’t know what evidence there is for the hypothesis, because you haven’t read the book. And then when you feigned knowledge in a pathetic attempt to justify your refusal to obtain yourself a copy, you exposed your total ignorance on the subject by confusing a 2018 book with a 2015 article.

Given your parsimonious approach to the parting of such small amounts of money to enrich your knowledge, I guess I’ll be buying when we eventually go for that beer!

I would normally excuse your faux pas on the word 'hypothesis', Senise provides nothing more than speculation.

I’ll thank you not to criticise my use of the word “hypothesis”, which is precisely what Senise provided, and which you know absolutely nothing about. You can’t even be arsed to familiarise yourself with his most recent theory; instead choosing to attack the author for claiming “Shadwell GH” was the Ormuz crew member - something that he emphatically did not argue in “False Flag”.

...Which you would know if you had read the book.

If you wish to retain any semblance of credibility and avoid inviting any further ridicule, your options are very straightforward; either read the book and put the money where your ever-running mouth is, or have the good grace and humility to shut up about it until you have.

If Abberline had been interested in Bowyer's overnight activities it would have formed part of the witness statement on the 9th

This is embarrassing, hypocritical nonsense.

You’re the one forever gassing on about proper police procedure, reminding everyone that detectives would typically ask “interrogating” questions of their witnesses after listening to their initial narratives. According to your oft-repeated dogma, therefore, it is clear that Abberline did ask Bowyer if he had seen any suspicious strangers that night, but because the latter clearly responded in the negative, there was absolutely no need to mention it in the police report.

Had Bowyer seen Mary Kelly at that early hour, then just like Cox, we might expect an account to that end from Bowyer.

Your point being...?

The fact that there is no mention, anywhere, of Bowyer seeing Kelly at 11.45pm obviously means he didn’t see her around the time of the Mary Cox sighting; ditto 3.00am. It is abundantly clear that Bowyer did not see Kelly or a stranger at any stage relevant to any of the posited times of death.

That's what you say, I asked for what the doctors said, and the 'cry of murder' is already defunct as I explained previously.

The doctors said that the murder most likely occurred hours before Maxwell’s reported sighting, and the cry of “murder” is not in the slightest bit “defunct”.

Yes, and the word used was "murder", but no murder had taken place.

And what about those exceptionally rare instances in which a cry of “murder” is very shortly thereafter followed by an actual murder? Or more to the point, what policeman worthy of his rank (or sane human being worthy of his skin) would instinctively dismiss the two events as unrelated coincidence?

You’re quite sure that this press release was authorised by the police? Interesting. The 19th October report in the Police Gazette, in which the Smith, Schwartz and Lawende sightings appeared, was intended as their first official release, nearly three weeks after the “double event”; meaning that any prior publication of those sightings in a newspaper not officially endorsed by the police amounted to a wholly unsanctioned “leak”.

No, Lewis also saw a loiterer, and a suspicious looking gent outside the Britannia.
Whereas Prater also gave evidence that Kelly's room was in darkness, raising the important question as to whether Kelly was already dead, or out on the streets.
So no, those two witnesses are not duplicates.

Quite right, they’re not, but they provide mutual corroboration of a cry of “murder”. Maxwell and Maurice Lewis were not “duplicates” either, but they provide mutual corroboration for a later morning time of death. It was therefore essential to provide both witnesses at the inquest in order to demonstrate this corroborative element to the coroner, unless of course one of those witnesses was considered unworthy of inclusion at the inquest for whatever reason.

It isn't the coroner's place to corroborate testimony, merely ensure that reliable testimony is produced to the jury.

Yes, and if “reliable testimony” can be demonstrated to corroborate other “reliable testimony”, it was imperative to reveal as much to a jury. The idea that crucial corroborative testimony is withheld from the coroner and the jury because corroboration is somehow superfluous (in your wacky world) is the second worst piece of nonsense I’ve ever heard touted about the Kelly murder.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

You just wrote the same comment in two different ways. The meaning is the same

No, it isn’t.

No, it definitely and most emphatically isn’t.

In the actual quoted section of the article, Bowyer gave no indication whatsoever that he had seen anyone - instead he expressed regret that he hadn’t. If he had known that a killer was lurking in the court, concealed from view inside Kelly’s room, he would have prevented his escape.

But in the suspiciously unquoted portion of the article - the hearsay bit - we’re suddenly being told about a man inside the court at that time; a man you bafflingly want to have been Astrakhan, despite the fact that he should have been indoors in a dark room with Kelly at that time.

Yet some use this pointless? attempt at identifying the Ripper as evidence Hutchinson was not believed.

It is one of the many crucial pieces of evidence indicating that Hutchinson was not believed, which, while not insignificant in isolation, becomes considerably weightier when viewed in conjunction with the treatment of Hutchinson from mid-November 1888 onwards coupled with the subsequent reports and memoirs of senior police officials.

All those points have been addressed before

Good. So no point in addressing them again then. How are the Lechmere threads going? They look interesting. I’d check them out.

[Ben]

He means that no one ever saw the murderer in flagrante delicto, standing over his victim with a blood-stained knife

Nah.

Sorry RJ, but Macnaghten most assuredly did not mean anything of the sort. He meant it in the obvious sense, as understood and accepted for generations; that nobody saw the ripper in connection with any of the crimes, whether inveigling the victims, making his escape, or in the act itself.

Macnaghten stated that nobody ever saw the ripper “unless possibly it was the City PC who was (on) a beat near Mitre Square”. Now, unless you’re arguing the there was a “City PC” out there somewhere who saw the ripper in flagrante delicto, I think we may rather comfortably assume that Macnaghten was not restricting his observation purely to sightings of the ripper in the act of ripping.

For what it’s worth, I agree entirely that Macnaghten’s “City PC” was “a garbled reference to Lawende”, but since this witness didn’t describe a suspect in flagrante delicto either, we are even more safe in the assumption that Macnaghten was referring to general sightings of the ripper in the context of his crimes.

What he didn’t say, very tellingly, was that “nobody ever saw the Whitechapel murderer (unless possibly it was the famed star witness Hutchinson, who vividly and painstakingly described the last person ever to be seen entering Mary Kelly’s room before she was butchered very horribly inside it).”

That’s the type of comment we might reasonably have expected from Macnaghten if Hutchinson’s statement hadn’t been discredited shortly after its first public airing. Indeed, given Macnaghten’s support for Druitt’s candidacy, there was obvious potential for parallels to be drawn between the well-dressed, dark-haired Druitt and Astrakhan man, but it seems for whatever reason that this option was unavailable to him; and that, as with Abberline and Klosowski, he had to make do with Lawende.

I (really don’t) wonder why?

All the best,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

Indeed, given Macnaghten’s support for Druitt’s candidacy, there was obvious potential for parallels to be drawn between the well-dressed, dark-haired Druitt and Astrakhan man, but it seems for whatever reason that this option was unavailable to him

Given Macnaghten's support for Druitt (or Ostrog for that matter), one wonders how much he really knew about the case.

[Abby Normal]

Given Macnaghten's support for Druitt (or Ostrog for that matter), one wonders how much he really knew about the case.

And he came on much later after the murders. No wonder he went with a suspect on nothing more than rumor and innuendo, and names another suspect who it was physically impossible to have been the ripper.

[Michael W Richards]

Honestly Ben, I don't know what you are talking about.

This is more of the article - he saw the man in question, he just wasn't aware at the time that this man would be viewed as the killer.

"Bowyer vistited that spot as late-or, rather, as early-as three o'clock on the morning of the murder. This early visit to the water-tap is by no means an unfrequent thing, as Mr. Mccarthy's shop, which supplies the wants of a very poor and wretched locality, whose denziens are out at all hours, late and early, does not at times close until three o'clock in the morning,while occassionally it is open all night. Early on Friday morning Bowyer saw a man, whose description tallies with that of the supposed murderer. Bowyer has, he says, described this man to Inspector Abberline and Inspector Reid." Bowyer, who is known as "Indian Harry" has travelled a great deal, and formerly lived in India. He said to an Echo reporter this morning. "The murderer couldn't have come to a worse place (for escaping) than this court. There is only this narrow entrance, and If I had known he was there when I went to the water tap at three o'clock, I reckon he wouldn't have got off."

"if I had known he was there" - meaning if he had known the killer was "there", in this court...

This was a very poor venue for an opportunity killer.

[Sam Flynn]

This was a very poor venue for an opportunity killer.

At least Kelly's room had opaque walls and wasn't overlooked by the windows of residential buildings on either side, unlike 29 Hanbury Street at "waking-up time". An open public thoroughfare like Bucks Row wasn't exactly safe, and neither was the gateway of a busy Berner Street club at "going-home time". Whilst Mitre Square was hardly teeming with life, it was nonetheless a public space.

In short, none of the venues was ideal, and a case could be argued that Miller's Court was the safest of the lot.

[Michael W Richards]

At least Kelly's room had opaque walls and wasn't overlooked by the windows of residential buildings on either side, unlike 29 Hanbury Street at "waking-up time". An open public thoroughfare like Bucks Row wasn't exactly safe, and neither was the gateway of a busy Berner Street club at "going-home time". Whilst Mitre Square was hardly teeming with life, it was nonetheless a public space.

In short, none of the venues was ideal, and a case could be argued that Miller's Court was the safest of the lot.

Bucks Row had at least 2 exits Sam, if he was surprised in Hanbury all he need do is hop a fence, and Mitre Square obviously allowed for someone to leave unseen and had 3 exits. In Miller court he was in a bottle, with a single opening.

You mention Public Spaces, something which Marys room was not.

[Abby Normal]

Bucks Row had at least 2 exits Sam, if he was surprised in Hanbury all he need do is hop a fence, and Mitre Square obviously allowed for someone to leave unseen and had 3 exits. In Miller court he was in a bottle, with a single opening.

You mention Public Spaces, something which Marys room was not.

this was a private room with a door that could be locked.
It was by far the safest spot to commit a murder-which is evidenced by the damage done to Mary.

unless someone was going to beat down her door, or climb through the window, entering her room illegally-the killer really had no fear of getting caught. he could even clean up a bit and leave when he wanted to.

[Sam Flynn]

Bucks Row had at least 2 exits Sam, if he was surprised in Hanbury all he need do is hop a fence, and Mitre Square obviously allowed for someone to leave unseen and had 3 exits.

One murderer's exit is another entrance for umpteen pedestrians, Michael.

Re Hanbury Street: "All he'd need do was hop a fence"... and then what? Another fence? And another? And another? With the whole neighbourhood getting up for work, and the alarm raised, too?

You mention Public Spaces, something which Marys room was not.

Indeed - Mary's room was a private space, and the murder most likely took place in the middle of what appears to have been a quiet night, with few people out and about, or even awake. If I were so inclined, I know where and when I'd prefer to cut up a body.