Any updates, or opinions on this witness.

[Ben]

Not sure what you mean by "all mentioning witnesses". It would help if you could throw in a few quotes with sources to support your argument.

I’ve provided them so many times it is starting to become tedious. For what I hope may be the last time, I am referring to comments made over the years subsequent to the murders on the subject of witnesses by serving and former senior police officials associated with the ripper investigation.

Purely by coincidence then, he managed to place the man & Stride at the same spot on the street, at the same time (12:30), as PC Smith saw a man with Stride.

He didn’t.

He informed both Sergeant White and Assistant Commissioner Bruce that he had seen the couple at 11pm, an hour and a half prior to PC Smith’s sighting, whereas previously he had told the police he hadn’t seen anything at all.

That was the time we are talking about - he shut up shop at 12:30, but for some reason Ass. Comm. Bruce made notes indicating different times

So it’s all Bruce’s fault that Packer provided wildly different times and wildly different stories? Yes, the report probably was the basis - or part of it - for Swanson’s negative opinion of Packer, and it’s a bloody good “basis”.

Packer was a witness, there never was a concern that he invented the grape-man

Don’t be ridiculous.

There have always been very grave suspicions that he invented the grape man, and a very strong likelihood of same.

But yes, best to leave Packer for the relevant threads.

There are more respectably dressed suspects in this case than shabby dossers.

Nothing could be more remote from the truth. The above only holds true if you want to revive every morsel of press dreck that did the rounds at the time.

[Sam Flynn]

I am mixing up some things. The experiment is real. Pinkertons was the agency Anderson joined. Was it Dr. Baxter who did early Ripper tours and some American detective was there and then had the people to do the experiment?

Not sure, but Baxter wasn't a doctor and I think it was Abberline who joined Pinkertons.

[Wickerman]

and those are the incorrect facts in a nut shell.

Abberline had already-as I have pointed out repeatedly-written down pages of his thoughts about it before the reporter ever showed up.

One page, and a half. That is all he wrote.
The folder he had with him contained documents and newspaper cuttings.
Documents is what the police use, it doesn't mean he wrote pages and pages of details.
As is often the case you are exaggerating the facts, he only wrote one and a half pages, and we have no idea whether he named witnesses. Likely not if anything.

And all the major witnesses, either directly named or indirecty alluded to, were commented on/written about by police officials after 1888-including Long, lawende, schwartz, even minor one like maxwell.
And when the witnesses are spoken of generally we get statements like-they only saw his back.

At some point I have read all those memoirs by retired officials. I don't recall any names of witnesses, there may be some. If you are so sure maybe you can provide some quotes.

...the ONLY mention of Hutch was from Dew-who thinks he was mistaken-glowing review that.

If Hutchinson had been discredited, wouldn't Dew have made that clear?
Being discredited means they 'know' you lied, Dew only thinks he was mistaken as to the day.
How does that support your argument?

.....the silence on Hutch, who should have been witness extrordinaire-is deafening and you know it.

Tell us which witnesses, aside from Lawende, were mentioned by police officials long after the murders?

[Wickerman]

I am mixing up some things. The experiment is real. Pinkertons was the agency Anderson joined. Was it Dr. Baxter who did early Ripper tours and some American detective was there and then had the people to do the experiment?

I thought something didn't sound right.
It was Abberline who joined the Pinkertons, and I never heard of Baxter's Ripper Tours.

[Wickerman]

I couldn’t agree more.

But he knew “the killer was there” because the mutilated corpse in room #13 attested unambiguously to it.

Good grief Ben, Bowyer didn't know the man he saw at 3:00 was the killer because no-one had reported a murder at 3:00.

I’m asking why the quote itself doesn’t mention seeing any man, or more importantly, any description. If there was an opportunity to quote Bowyer personally, why not capture the most important words; the ones actually involving the appearance of the 3.00am stranger?

Who are you going to ask, seeing as everyone is dead who might know?

But there were “new revelations”; they took the form of “later investigations”, conducted by the police and alluded to by the Echo, which evidently cast doubt on Hutchinson’s credibility.

The Echo wrote, "it appears", which shows they were guessing.
Where is the direct quote from a police source?

You are looking for a direct quote from Bowyer, but, in your typical double-standard approach you ignore the fact your preferred source - the Echo, does not provide direct quotes for their stories.
Yet you try promote them as facts.

The “treatment” I refer to was one of discrediting, and much the same was meted out to Packer and Violenia when their stories were ultimately deemed wanting.

Show us all where the police state Hutchinson was discredited.

[Wickerman]

......Yes, but they were all mentioning witnesses, regardless of what unofficial rule they may or may not have been breaking. It wasn’t as though they were using the witnesses’ names.

Not sure what you mean by "all mentioning witnesses". It would help if you could throw in a few quotes with sources to support your argument. As comments like this look more like you just relying on memory which may or may not be accurate.
Abberline didn't choose to mention the witness, thats all.

It can never be “purely” an issue of time. If Packer offered various different times, that inevitably invited suspicion that he was lying,....

Poor memory is not lying.

......which in turn invited equally inevitable suspicion that he didn’t see any man with Stride in his shop that night.

Purely by coincidence then, he managed to place the man & Stride at the same spot on the street, at the same time (12:30), as PC Smith saw a man with Stride.

It wasn’t merely his times that were at variance; he initially reported that he had shut up shop for the night, without any man and women entering it. It was because his entire stories were contradictory that he came to be discarded.

That was the time we are talking about - he shut up shop at 12:30, but for some reason Ass. Comm. Bruce made notes indicating different times (11:30), which may be the basis for Swanson's negative opinion of Packer.

You try to revive him as a genuine witness now for the same reason you try to revive Hutchinson’s - he described a well-dressed man, and you’re desperate for that sort of man to have been the ripper. We’ll figure out why one day, I’m sure.

Packer was a witness, there never was a concern that he invented the grape-man. The first mention of grapes was by Diemschutz & Kozebrodsky, not Packer, but anyway this is a Hutchinson thread so we can leave Packer for another day.

There are more respectably dressed suspects in this case than shabby dossers.

[Batman]

Found it.

https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/pall_mall_gazette/18891104.html

Inspector Moore led the journalist through the network of narrow passageways as dark and loathsome as the great network of sewers that stretches underneath them a few feet below. "The chief of police from Austin, Texas, came to see me," said the inspector, "and offered me a great deal of advice. But when I showed him this place (Castle-alley) and the courts around it he took off his hat and said: `I apologise. I never saw anything like it before. We've nothing like it in all America.' He said that at home an officer could stand on a street corner and look down four different streets and see all that went on in them for a quarter of a mile off. Now, you know, I might put two regiments of police in this half-mile of district and half of them would be as completely out of sight and hearing of the others as though they were in separate cells of a prison. To give you an idea of it, my men formed a circle around the spot where one of the murders took place, guarding they thought, every entrance and approach, and within a few minutes they found fifty people inside the lines. They had come in through two passageways which my men could not find. And then, you know these people never lock their doors, and the murderer has only to lift the latch of the nearest house and walk through it and out the back way." In the course of their perambulations, the inspector tells the correspondent that they call Whitechapel the "three F's district, fried fish and fights. " After they had passed through a well-known lodging house, the correspondent asked the inspector if he did not feel nervous and he handed him his cane for an answer. It was a trivial-looking thing, painted to represent maple, but Mr. Davis found it was made of iron. "And then they wouldn't attack me," Mr. Moore said, "It's only those who don't know me that I carry the cane for."

That goes to show how easy it would be for someone knowledgeable about the area to make an escape without anyone seeing them.

[barnflatwyngarde]

I am mixing up some things. The experiment is real. Pinkertons was the agency Anderson joined. Was it Dr. Baxter who did early Ripper tours and some American detective was there and then had the people to do the experiment?

Thanks for this Batman.

As per my earlier post, I do remember reading something similar somewhere.

Anyway, I think that it's highly probable that locals in Whitechapel had a whole series of shortcuts and rat runs all through the area.

[Batman]

I am mixing up some things. The experiment is real. Pinkertons was the agency Anderson joined. Was it Dr. Baxter who did early Ripper tours and some American detective was there and then had the people to do the experiment?

[barnflatwyngarde]

Yep, I've read them both

Ifbi wasn't sitting here with a cold beer in my hand watching "Killing Eve", I would be seriously tempted to go check them out and try and trace the reference.

Maybe tomorrow

[Batman]

I think I remember this reference.

I think I read it in a JTR book (sorry I can't remember which one) and that it refers to a police operation at the time of the murders when police tried to seal off an area of Whitechapel hoping to catch the murderer in the act.

Yeah it's from a book I think.

Have you read "Scotland Yard Investigates" by Rumbelow & Evans?
Paul Begg's JtR:The Facts?

[barnflatwyngarde]

Fascinating, Batman. I don't recall reading that story; where did it come from?

I think I remember this reference.

I think I read it in a JTR book (sorry I can't remember which one) and that it refers to a police operation at the time of the murders when police tried to seal off an area of Whitechapel hoping to catch the murderer in the act.

[Sam Flynn]

There was an experiment done after the JtR murders I think by the American detective agency Pickerton in Whitechapel.

Fascinating, Batman. I don't recall reading that story; where did it come from?

[Batman]

There was an experiment done after the JtR murders I think by the American detective agency Pickerton in Whitechapel. I believe they hooked up with the police and selected an area of Whitechapel and had people stand guard at every known entrance and exit to the area to block it off. Within a few minutes, people were showing up in the blocked off zone. There were using back gardens and private pathways as short-cuts. Cutting through buildings, etc. It went to prove that no matter how contained they thought an area of Whitechapel was... it simply wasn't. Basically, the old maps of Whitechapel we look at are really not telling us what routes people can take from A-Z at all.

[Joshua Rogan]

All fair points Sam.

My main thrust is that if indeed it was a fairly common occurrance for local residents to clamber over back yard fences/walls as a means to taking a shortcut, the regular incidence of such events happening would become part and parcel of everyday living.

And as such would probably rarely be commented on, even in the midst of a murder spree.

What is commonplace is easily overlooked.

As an aside, does anyone know if it was common for the front and back doors of houses in Whitechapel to be locked.

I would suspect that they were in fact probably unlocked.

That would make sense if the back yards of this part of Hanbury Street led anywhere. But as far as I know, there was nowhere to go from the neighbouring gardens except back onto the street. So not a plausible short-cut to anywhere as far as I can see.