Any updates, or opinions on this witness.

[harry]

As regards memory,an article I came across on the web detailing experiments carried out by experienced persons,on an average only seven items can be later recalled exactly,in what they term short memory.

Hutchinson's tally,and anyone can check and count,according to the observation I made ,total over twenty.That is individual items.Puts him(Hutchinson) in the genius bracket.Even allowing Hutchinson the luxury of short term(three days in his case),it was an extraordinary feat.


Ben mentions Bob Hinton.Bob set a challenge to anyone to duplicate Hutchinson's feat, where he(Bob) would set the test.No one,especially those that declare it can be done,to my knowledge,have accepted

[DJA]

Miller's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

[Wickerman]

Finally, and I really do beseech you on this one, you’ve got to stop with the Sarah Lewis seeing a couple “pass up” the court nonsense. It absolutely, emphatically, and factually did not happen, as all police, press and inquest sources confirm bar ONE instance of simple, editorial error on the part of ONE newspaper - the same newspaper that got other stuff totally wrong about the Kelly murder.

I had hoped over the years we have been exchanging views that you would eventually learn to appreciate what constitutes evidence.
All written accounts, especially press coverage of the inquests constitutes evidence for the historian, or for historical analysis.
The theorist who chooses to dismiss accounts not consistent with their personal view will inevitably produce a defective theory.
There is only one theory which takes into account ALL the recorded evidence. That theory is the correct one.
We do not edit, dismiss or reword anything just because it does not conform to our beliefs.
Remember Ben, it is the evidence which produces the theory, not speculation.

Were it otherwise, Lewis would have been called upon to attempt an identification with Kelly’s body, if only to see if the basics correlated with her “hatless” woman, such as hair colour/length, age and height.

At the inquest it was not realized that the "hatless, tipsy woman" was Kelly. As Lewis only approached her from behind, and at a distance, then identification of a body laying face up in the coffin was impossible.
The same problem was had with Lawende, who only saw the woman (Eddowes?), from behind. He was not called to identify her body either.

You’re making things even worse now by trying to fiddle with the reported times of arrival at the court for Lewis and Hutchinson....

Care to tell us all what this "reported time" was, and from whom it came?

..... to the extent that “about 2.00am” and “about 2.30” are probably “about” right, give or take a minute.

The very fact someone uses "about" signifies they are not sure. At a time when church clocks typically chimed on the quarter-hour, then an "about" only means nearer to one quarter than the other. In our view, looking for precision, we might estimate 1:53 to 2:07 as "about" 2:00. Any earlier, or later would be "about 1:45", or "about 2:15".

As I’ve said, nobody but you argues - or to my knowledge, has ever argued - that Lewis and Hutchinson observed the same couple enters the court. It quite simply did not happen; fact.

Don't let emotions get the better of you.
No-one noticed it before, the wide range of newspapers have never been so readily available. Many new details have been unearthed buried in previously out of reach newspaper columns.

[Sam Flynn]

"Further on" from Mr Wideawake meant "further west in Dorset Street". Lewis didnt see the couple enter the Court, nor was anybody in the Court either - indeed, on the latter point, she explicitly said so.

[Wickerman]

But your self-congratulatory boasting would only be warranted if your “taking apart” crusade hasn’t been so thoroughly “taken apart” itself, as it has, “piece by piece”.

Ben, the measure of an argument is not determined by how many other posters 'pat you on the back'. It doesn't matter how many like-minded posters congratulate each other. All can just as easily be as wrong as the one whom they agree with.
It is the argument that best suits the facts which wins out.
The points I raised are sound, the theory was not.

I still find it fascinating that you dismiss Lawende’s sighting, despite clear indications that it was considered by the police the most likely sighting of the ripper in the company of the victim.

By "clear indications" you must mean this, by Insp. McWilliams on 27 Oct.?

"The enquiry is still being actively followed up, but the police are at a great disadvantage in this case in consequence of the want of identity ........
except three gentlemen who were leaving the Imperial Club in Duke Street at 1:35 a.m. and who state that to the best of their belief they saw her with a man in Church Passage at that time, but took no particular notice of them. One of the gentlemen, Mr Lawende of 79 Fenchurch Street who was nearest to the man & woman & saw most of them, says he does not think he should know the man again and he did not see the woman's face".

Swanson wrote much the same...
"Mr Lawende states that he could not identify the man, but also the woman stood with her back to him.........he could not identify the body mutilated as it was, as that of the woman whose back he had seen, but to the best of his belief the clothing of the deceased, which was black was similar to that worn by the woman whom he had seen, and that was the full extent of his identity."

So lets not exaggerate this sighting into something it was not ("similar", is not "the same" as you put it). The majority of women out at night wore black or very dark clothing.
The officials in charge of the case were not impressed or sufficiently convinced that they had a sound case the woman in Duke Street was Eddowes.

[Wickerman]

"Further on" from Mr Wideawake meant "further west in Dorset Street". Lewis didnt see the couple enter the Court, nor was anybody in the Court either - indeed, on the latter point, she explicitly said so.

"Further on" merely means "ahead of me" no distance is implied.
This couple being between Lewis and Millers Court is just as viable, and it is consistent with the rest of her testimony. Whereas, beyond Millers Court is not.
You introduce conjecture where it is not warranted.

[Wickerman]

...... the fact remains that the picture was not as clear-cut as you make out, and the inquest was a few days away. The time of death had by no means been established as definitely after 9AM,....

I never said it was clear cut, neither did I say it was established. Those are your words not mine.
Kelly being seen alive late on Friday morning was widely published, more so than any other story.

.....or any other time for that matter, and Hutchinson's alleged sighting of his pretty friend

Where does he say they were friends?

with a suspicious looking guy who accompanied her to her room in the early morning of her death was assuredly something that could have been of interest to the police - it's not as if the sightings of "Kennedy/Lewis" Prater or Cox were suppressed

"Assuredly", by whom?
The police did tell the witnesses to say nothing about what they knew. For some reason only Kennedy broke her silence.
Maybe that is another reason she was not selected for the inquest. Macdonald was more of a stickler than Baxter.

[Wickerman]

Ben mentions Bob Hinton.Bob set a challenge to anyone to duplicate Hutchinson's feat, where he(Bob) would set the test.No one,especially those that declare it can be done,to my knowledge,have accepted

I couldn't walk a tight-rope either, and I don't know anyone who can. So, I guess nobody can?

My wife, now there's another story.
She can remember every hotel we stayed in, in Florida, over the years.
She can tell me what I ate in a hotel restaurant 15+ years ago. The layout of the rooms we stayed in, the curtains. The bed, whether too soft or hard (a particular peeve of hers), and so on.
Yet, this is the same woman who cannot find her keys, looses her purse, and I've lost count how many hair brushes she has had to buy.
This is the difference between Long-term memory, and Short-term memory.

So, because I live with this every day, I see nothing wrong with what Hutchinson claimed to see.

[Sam Flynn]

"Further on" merely means "ahead of me" no distance is implied.

Wrong. Mr Wideawake, stationed opposite the entrance to Miller's Court, gives us a clear point of triangulation, and the couple were "further on" than him. That means further west along Dorset Street.

Plus, Lewis saw nobody in Miller's Court, and said so explicitly.

[Abby Normal]

Quite right, Abby.

I think however much some of us dismiss the idea of a guilty Hutchinson coming forward on the grounds that it would be imprudent to do so, at least according to their (presumably non-sociopathic) logic, it remains a reality that serial killers have been noted to inject themselves into their own investigations, and in circumstances very similar to what has been proposed of Hutchinson.

Experts in laws enforcement are so familiar with this strategy that they even lay traps to “flush out” their serialist quarry in anticipation of them resorting to it, in some form. Expert opinion and historical precedent must always supersede the layman’s rationale as to what X or Y killer “ought” to have done in a such or such a predicament.

Cheers,
Ben

Hey Ben
Long time no see! Welcome back!

[caz]

He was there, he engaged in stalking behavior...

One instance is not evidence of stalking behaviour, Abby, especially as Hutch's interest seems to have been entirely focused on the flashy Jewish looking man picked up by Kelly, and not on Kelly herself.

...he has an unbeleivable suspect/story, he waits till the inquest is over to come forward. he has no alibi. His jewish suspect is the only jewish implication/evidence other than the night of the double event-hes the only witness to dirctly implicate a jew.

Abberline believed in his suspect/story.

He may not have come forward before because he had assumed Kelly was killed much later in the morning and her encounter with Flash Harry was unconnected.

Of course he had no alibi - making it crazy for him to come forward if he was the killer or thought the police could make a case for it.

If Flash Harry looked Jewish, what was Hutch supposed to say - that he didn't?

Is it really so crazy a theory that hutch as the ripper, knows mary,even casually as someone who lives in the immediate area and knows prostitutes, maybe even has heard she is recently single (hes staying a stones throw away in the victoria house) and is keeping an eye out for her. maybe goes by her place? shes occupied, so he waits a while. leaves, comes back to find her guest is gone-you know the rest.

We don't know he was staying at the Victoria Home before he went down to Romford, or even if he spent most of his time in Whitechapel, but he could have worked out for himself that Kelly was probably single at the time if she was asking him for money and then took Flash Harry back to her room!

later worries he may have been spotted-so comes forward as a witness-better than being sought out as a suspect. And runs with the jewish suspect angle?

That's the bit I can't accept. If he has already offed several women without mishap, he'd have been all too aware of his surroundings when 'stalking' Kelly, and made sure he kept his head well down, so he could spot who was around without anyone getting a good look at him. When exactly would it have dawned on him that he may have been careless enough to let someone spot him - to the extent that they would know him again and tell a policeman? Do you honestly think he'd have hung around outside the inquest, to find out if anyone mentioned seeing someone who looked just like him?? Did he take precautions and go in disguise, so that when he learned that a woman called Sarah Lewis had indeed spotted him, she wouldn't immediately recognise him on her way out?

It all ties together logically for me.

Really?

Love,

Caz
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[Ben]

Hi Jon,

Many thanks for the kind welcome back - good to be corresponding again.

On the subject of lighting and Widewake man’s vantage point in relation to Lewis, I can firstly assure you that the distance between the two was nowhere near as great as “25 feet”.

Secondly, I suggested that Hutchinson may have been able simply to recognise Lewis again, not memorise each and every minute detail of her appearance and clothing, as he claimed to have done with Astrakhan man. It was the latter feat of observational genius that the inadequate lighting obviously could not have allowed for.

If he had referenced the colour of her eyelashes, the material of her dress, and the number of buttons on her boots, then we’d have a problem.

Even more tellingly regarding the timing of his appearance at Commercial Street police station, it corresponded exactly with the moment the opportunity for him to be questioned in a public setting disappeared forever. The idea of that being a mere coincidence is borderline impossible, as far as I’m concerned.

As for the “Sunday policeman”, you resort to the same excuse for his total inaction that you use for Hutchinson; that they were so transfixed on the reports of a later morning time of death that they both opted for mysterious silence on the matter, instead of imparting what could be crucial evidence.

I’m with Gareth here in failing to see the slightest bit of sense in this, I’m afraid.

First you claim that Hutchinson’s inertia in coming forward following the Kelly murder was due to his faith in some sort of prevailing belief that Kelly was murdered after 9.00am, and now you suggest that the mystery Sunday policeman didn’t even bother to make a note of Hutchinson’s account for the same reason.

Problem is, there was no such “prevailing belief”, and there was no way - absolutely no way - that Hutchinson or anyone else reading the media coverage of the Kelly murder on the 9th and 10th November would come away with the impression that Kelly was probably killed in the later morning. The early morning time of death was covered far, far more extensively that the late morning version suggested by Maurice Lewis and Maxwell. Even the Lewis-plagiariser "Mrs. Kennedy” was covered in a great many newspapers on the 10th November, and the chances of Hutchinson missing this - if indeed he was reading any newspapers at all - were slim to non-existent.

In addition, he lived in the Victoria Home, which was a few hundred yards from the crime scene. He wouldn't have been able to take more than about ten footsteps out of the front door without being alerted to the fact that another mutilation murder had occurred in Miller's Court where'd he'd been just a few hours earlier, and that's assuming he didn't hear about it in the lodging house itself before he even had a chance to leave it.

But despite this reality, you remain oddly insistent that Hutchinson withheld his potentially vital evidence for good reason, choosing instead to wait for the press coverage to see if his sighting of the victim with a strange man on the morning of her death was "relevant"? And that after reading Maurice Lewis' account and somehow managing to miss the enormous wealth of media coverage indicating an earlier time of death, he decided it wasn't?!?

Not a chance. Not even a vague whiff of one.

All the best,
Ben

[caz]

To me, the very existance of this thread amply demonstrates why a person would hesitate before coming forward and contacting the police.

Wish I'd said that.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

I had hoped over the years we have been exchanging views that you would eventually learn to appreciate what constitutes evidence.”

I would have hoped, after all these years of exchanging views, that you would finally have seen sense and abandoned ship with the “couple-up-the-court” impossibility, but it appears you’re as stubborn as ever. And I wasn’t being “emotional” with my allusion to the total and utter absence of any support for for your contention that Lewis and Hutchinson saw the sample couple; I’m just genuinely alarmed that the solo-nature of what you espouse has never caused you once to consider a reassessment.

Yes, I agree that “all written accounts...constitute evidence”, but our task is to assess it, not uncritically accept it all as true and accurate even when one source contradicts another. In the case of Lewis’s evidence, the overwhelmingly vast majority of sources agree that the couple Lewis observed did not enter the court. Only one said otherwise - one single, solitary, erroneous newspaper.

Everyone, without a single exception, has been able to figure this out.

You’re right; it was never “realised” at the inquest that the hapless, tipsy woman was Kelly - it was patently obvious to all at the time that she was not, as evinced by the total absence of any allusion (by press or police) to a potential connection. Again, had it been otherwise, Lewis would have been asked at the very least if the hatless woman’s hair matched that on the slab at Shoreditch mortuary.

If Hutchinson passed Whitechapel church at 1.50 or 1.55, it would have taken between five and ten minutes to reach Flower and Dean Street’s western entrance. Hutchinson himself claimed that he was able to “fix the time”, not have a wild stab in the dark (that was later). Your plucked-from-nowhere times of 2.07 and 2.15 are thus too late, and require you to “stall” him, for no good reason, en route between the church and Thrawl Street.

“The points I raised are sound, the theory was not.”

Ben is a clever and sexy bastard, whereas Jon is not.

You see how easy it is?

As I said, we’d all like to write our own reviews. I’m not interested in hearing what a good job YOU think YOU’VE done of “taking apart” every author’s theory with regard to Hutchinson.

You miss my point regarding Lawende - I’m not suggesting he was the perfect witness or acquired a perfect sighting. I’m saying he was considered more like to have seen the killer than other witnesses, including discredited Hutchinson.

I appreciate that “same” and “similar” mean different things, but guess what Lawende actually said at the inquest? That’s right; that he believed the clothes were “the same”. Not being “convinced” that the couple concerned were Eddowes and her killer does not mean they didn’t consider it more likely than not.

The only reason you dismiss the sighting is because the man described was “rough and shabby” whereas you belong in the now extreme minority who lobby for a well-dressed, outwardly creepy ghoul of outdated ripper lore.

Regards,
Ben

[caz]

I just cant get over the idea of hutch, after getting snubbed by Mary, lurking outside her place in the middle of the night near possible time of death.

and apparently so obsessed by her, that even his body language, as if waiting, watching for someone up the court was even so obvious to a passerby.

I mean dosnt that strike you? made the hair stand up the moment i heard of it.

But this is all highly subjective, Abby.

'Snubbed' by Mary? If anything, Mary was snubbed by Hutch, who couldn't [or wouldn't] lend/give/spare her sixpence. What was she going to do? "Oh well, the rent man can wait, Hutchy Boy. You can come back with me for free." They would have had to be very good friends in that case, wouldn't they?

Hutch said he was waiting to see if the man came out again. No evidence that he was 'obsessed' with the woman at all. So obsessed that he had been down in Romford only the day before looking for work?

Love,

Caz
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