Mister Astrakhan's Moustache

[Fisherman]

Ben writes:

"The fact that his account appeared in the press so soon after his initial appearance at the police station speaks even more favourably for the notion that he was tracked down by a reporter."

I donīt think, Ben, that George Hutchinson was ever ”tracked down” by any reporter. The material instead speaks in favour of the information on Hutchinson being distributed to the press by a centrally placed news agency.
I very much doubt that any of the representatives of the different newspapers who put the description of Hutch as being of a military appearance, actually did so because they had seen/met him. I think they were fed this description by the news agency in question. I think we can agree that it would be utterly strange if a bunch of reporters independently came up with the notion that Hutch was of military appearance, and no particular paper seems to have made the scoop.
So it would seem that there was some sort of press conference or centrally distributed communiqué which broke the news of Hutch, without himself participating.

That having been cleared up, the only thing that remains to establish is how the news agency who informed the journalists got THEIR information in turn. One thing that we can probably agree on is that what you want to do if you need to break news fast and reach far, is to use a news agency. That was why the so called Bulling letters were sent to the Central News Agency, instead of to the police or a single newspaper, it would seem.

Now, news agencys are places that collect news hunted down by people, mainly journalists, and thereafter distribute them. They donīt do the actual hunting themselves, meaning, as I said, that Hutch would never have been ”tracked down”. Given the short time that passed between his turning to the police and the publications in the papers, the only reasonable interpretation is that the police USED a news agency to circulate their story. And that, in itīs turn, means that we can not actually say with any certainty whether the agency ever got to see the illusive George Hutchinson, since the meagre details we know about his appearance may well have been passed from the police to the agency.

Why the police would choose this method of doing it is anybodys guess. But the fact remains that we are left with a guy who made no tracks at all as he moved on in history, although the entire press of London would have had an interest in tailing him. And that evokes my interest.

Fisherman

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
I again am in the huge minority here, I simply believe George Hutchinson, I also one hundred percent believe Reg Hutchinson when he repeatedly stated that it was his father who was the witness.
Naturally I can not prove that is the case, putting foreward only a rare press report of 1888 which would give some credence to Reg stating on radio in the 1970s 'He[Gh] was paid five pounds for his assistance'.
The Wheelers directory, stated that the informant was paid for his help.
Reg claimed his father mentioned that when the subject was brought up.
That being the case as no report of any payment was made in the regular press, how would Gwt know that, if he was not that very man..
Did he guess?
I believe most strongly that we are doing an injustice to a man who was honest, and accurate, and certainly not a oddball.
Regards Richard.

[Fisherman]

Richard writes:
"I simply believe George Hutchinson"

From the outset, that would be the soundest road to choose, Richard. And you may of course be right, but the circumstances surrounding George H beg for a number of questions while we wait for the verdict!

The best, Richard!
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

I donīt think, Ben, that George Hutchinson was ever ”tracked down” by any reporter. The material instead speaks in favour of the information on Hutchinson being distributed to the press by a centrally placed news agency.

...Which was my suggestion, as you'll note a few posts ago. However, since various newspapers made specific reference to Hutchinson delivering his statement to a reporter, that is obviously what occured. How it arrived at a central news agency for distribution is anyone's guess, but it can only have gone through a reporter first for the observations in the Pall Mall Gazzette and the Echo to have made any sense. A central press agency cannot circulate a report if nobody's reported anything, and it certainly wouldn't introduce numerous glaring embellishments themselves if the report came directly from the police.

I very much doubt that any of the representatives of the different newspapers who put the description of Hutch as being of a military appearance, actually did so because they had seen/met him. I think they were fed this description by the news agency in question

Yes, by the reporter who supplied the information to the news agency it order for it to be circulated in the first place. No police force was likely to introduce the random detail that Hutchinson was "apparently of the labouring class but with a military appearance", and yet that's precisely the sort of detail that a journalist meeting with Hutchinson directly comment upon. It's similar to the press observation that Mary Cox was a "wretched looking specemin of East End womanhood".

So it would seem that there was some sort of press conference or centrally distributed communiqué which broke the news of Hutch...

Yes!

...without himself participating.

No!

That was why the so called Bulling letters were sent to the Central News Agency, instead of to the police or a single newspaper, it would seem.

Indeed, and that assumes a strange resonance here. The Dear Boss author wanted as much publicity for his "work" as possible, so rather than contacting individual reporters of newspapers, he went straight to the big boys. I don't believe for a moment that this missive was penned by the real killer, but the fact he went straight for a news agency for maximum exposure is certainly interesting.

Given the short time that passed between his turning to the police and the publications in the papers, the only reasonable interpretation is that the police USED a news agency to circulate their story.

Well, no, because we have it on record that Hutchinson delivered his story directly to a reporter or journalist, and we also have numerous fanciful embellishments that cannot be explained away very plausibly on the assumption that Abberline made them all up and fed them to an agency, or on the assumption that a press agency made them all up and the police sanctioned it.

From the outset, that would be the soundest road to choose, Richard.

Well, yes, until we examine the evidence,

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Richard,

I hope you won't think me rude, but since we've discussed this numerous times, the following will mostly consist of copy and paste, I'm afraid:

I also one hundred percent believe Reg Hutchinson when he repeatedly stated that it was his father who was the witness.

But he also thinks his father saw Lord Randolph Churchill.

...As related in The Ripper and the Royals.

...Which was later disavowed as nonsense by its own author.

That being the case as no report of any payment was made in the regular press, how would Gwt know that, if he was not that very man..

Yes, but it's almost certainly nonsense. Of course the police wouldn't have paid witnesses for assistance. If they did that, they'd be bombarded with hoards of "witnesses" all coming forward en masse with dubious accounts and all hoping to be paid off in the same manner. If the police wanted their witness to accompany them round the district, the witness would be compelled to jump to it. It wasn't as though they had a choice in the matter.

You refer to the Wheeling Register, which also stated in no uncertain terms that the witness account had been "invented" Why don't you take this claim as gospel, as you do with the "five times the normal salary assertion"? The lesson here, surely, is that two zero-provenance sources do not equal good provenance?

Best regards,
Ben

[perrymason]

It occurs to me that Central News, although the distribution source for collected new stories like Associated Press, is an agency, it also employed reporters.

Why couldnt a story have been given to a Central News reporter then distributed through the existing channels there? Thereby making both comments legitimate...that it was given to a reporter, but many then gained access to the details.

Best regards.

[Ben]

A very good and reasonable point there, Mike.

Best regards,
Ben

[perrymason]

A very good and reasonable point there, Mike.

Best regards,
Ben

Thanks Ben, I suppose based on my history here, that will be my agreement statement for January........now to work on getting one in February.

All the best Ben, cheers.

[Fisherman]

Ben writes:

"since various newspapers made specific reference to Hutchinson delivering his statement to a reporter, that is obviously what occured."

Ben, you are normally not one to accept things at face value. The only thing that seems obvious here is that the journalists HAD BEEN TOLD about Hutch, and not met him. The source given as "reporter" may well have been an employee at a news agency. Both occupations - newspaper journalist and news agency employees - would have felt related to each other, now as then. They are both, at least here in Sweden, journalist by definition.
The salient point here is that there is no need whatsoever to believe that a reporter tracked Hutch down, since the evidence points the other way - to a news agency fed by the police.

"No police force was likely to introduce the random detail that Hutchinson was "apparently of the labouring class but with a military appearance", and yet that's precisely the sort of detail that a journalist meeting with Hutchinson directly comment upon."

That would depend on the circumstances. If we imagine that the police contaced the agency in order to get the word out, and without presenting Hutch in the flesh, then the agency would want to get some flesh on the bones, and I have no trouble at all accepting that the police can have provided the military appearance thing then:
-Right, gov, so we donīt get to see this mr Hutchinson of yours..?
-Thatīs right. He is fearing for his safety, and does not want to go public.
-Right! What sort of bloke is he then?
-He tells us heīs a groom by trade, but heīs working as an ordinary labourer right now.
-Suspicious character, would you say?
-Not at all, no; he seems a very reliable and trustworthy person. In fact, if he had not told us he was a labourer, I would have thought he was a military or something, cause heīs got that kind of air about him. Straight back and all that, if you know what I mean?
-Absolutely. And what has he been telling you...?

It could quite easily have gone down this way, especially if we theorize that the news agency man the police used was someone well known to them from previous press releases. He would have done some fishing in an informal tone, to be able to supply the readers with at least a superficial character. If you read todays newspapers, you will see that the behaviour and shape of people confined to jail for serious crimes, are often described superficially by their tenants and fed to a hungry press. There is nothing strange about it at all.

And therefore, when you write:
"we have it on record that Hutchinson delivered his story directly to a reporter or journalist", I must further press the point that the only thing we have on record is that the journalists that functioned as messengers between the only instance we know for sure that Hutch made himself useful to - the police - and their readers, were of the meaning that the information the relayed had been fed to them by a "reporter". We have since learnt that a "reporter" may have been exactly that, just as he may have been a news agency employee - or something else. We do not have any substantiation at all that Hutch ever spoke to the "reporter", though. We only know that it seems that this "reporter" himself had gained information about Hutch. And gaining information about somebody is NOT by any means equal to meeting that somebody in the flesh.

Until we get that substantiation, we are faced with the possibility that Hutch himself never met the press in any form or shape. If we feel inclined to travel beyond that fact, we can only do so on the wings of imagination.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

Ben, you are normally not the one to accept things at face value. The only thing that seems obvious here is that the journalists HAD BEEN TOLD about Hutch, and not met him. The source given as "reporter" may well have been an employee at a news agency.

Yes, but the newspapers in question both mentioned specifically that Hutchinson had communicated directly with a reporter; well, one saying so in those words, and the other mentioning that Hutchinson had been interviewed by a "particularly sanguine journalist". The unambiguity of the language tends to eradicate any doubt as to the manner in which the account came to the attention of the press - from the witness himself. The only alternatives are that the press agency lied about it to a group of unsuspecting newspapers, or that the press agency encouraged the individual newspapers to lie about it, and all the behest of the police for some reason. All a bit "conspiracy theory" for my taste.

The salient point here is that there is no need whatsoever to believe that a reporter tracked Hutch down

Whether a reporter tracked him down or Hutchinson approached the press directly is a matter for debate. I'm inclined to consder the latter a very reasonable possibility. I don't believe that the police fed the press, though, because we have it on record that Hutchinson spoke to a journalist, just as we also have press versions of Hutchinson's account that clearly didn't originate from a press agency. As I mentioned, it's also very unlikely that the police either encouraged or sanctioned the total invention of details that didn't appear in his initial police statement.

-Right, gov, so we donīt get to see this mr Hutchinson of yours..?
-Thatīs right. He is fearing for his safety, and does not want to go public.

But here I'd be saying something like, "Hang on, he's fearing for his safety and doesn't want to go public but you want us to publish his name and details of his appearance"?

-Suspicious character, would you say?
-Not at all, no; he seems a very reliable and trustworthy person.

But here I'd be saying something like, "Hang on, you say he's a trustworthy person, but you want us - with your help - to embroider his account by inventing a load of stuff this "trustworthy witness" never actually said?"

It just doesn't ring true to me at all, and besides which it contradicts the known statements that appeared in the press to the effect that Hutchinson made his statement directly to a reporter. I can quite easily accept the possibility that the police may have been responsible for the press releasing his details on 13th November (see Simon's black central column), but not the hugely embellished account that appeared the next day (see Simon's red column). By that stage, it's clear that Hutchinson had come into direct communication with the press, which explains the numerous discrepencies between the account as reported on 13th, and his account as reported from the 14th onwards (see discrepencies between black and red columns).

I must further press the point that the only thing we have on record is that the journalists...were of the meaning that the information the relayed had been fed to them by a "reporter".

But that's not what we have on record.

What we have on record is a clear and unambiguous statement that Hutchinson had given his statement "to a reporter". It doesn't just "seem" that the journalist has got the story from Hutchinson - it's expressly stated. Such is the clarity of the statement that no "meaning" need be inferred beyond what the remark actually says. Same with the Echo; it's specifically stated that he was interviewed by a journalist, not "I heard this account from the journalist who got it from somewhere else".

Until we get that substantiation, we are faced with the possibility that Hutch himself never met the press in any form or shape. If we feel inclined to travel beyond that fact, we can only do so on the wings of imagination.

That isn't true, because we don't need to "imagine" that it was stated that Hutchinson delivered his story to a reporter. It's unambiguously stated, and as such, I'd say the possibility of Hutchinson remaining untouched by the press is slim to non-existent.

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ben writes:

"here I'd be saying something like, "Hang on, he's fearing for his safety and doesn't want to go public but you want us to publish his name and details of his appearance"?"

It could have been simpler than that. The agency could simply have been told that Hutchinson was at the policesīdisposal, accompanying them in search of the man he had seen. And we know it was stated that he was
doing just that.

"By that stage, it's clear that Hutchinson had come into direct communication with the press"

To you, perhaps. Not to me. Where are the descriptions on Hutchs appearance, if such a load of journalists got to speak to him? Where are the details that give him a face? I donīt have to tell you, since you know the answer already - they are not there.

Finally, since it is obvious that there is no much use in prolonging this agony, I will once more and for the last time tell you that when you speak of "a clear and unambiguous statement that Hutchinson had given his statement "to a reporter", I have not challenged that at any time. I am merely trying to point out to you that you lack a link in the chain, Ben!

If you have not noticed, we have been discussing this at length for some time now, and all the information I have furnished on the topic, I have furnished to you. That, though, does not mean that a third party can be sure that we have met, does it? But it DOES entitle anybody to say that you got your information from me! The tricky thing, though, is that they have seen me around just as little as you have, and they would therefore be relying on your word when they stated such a thing.
See what I mean?
I gave the information to you. I never met you, but you still know that Iīm a Swedish journalist who enjoys fishing. The moment I tell you that Iīm 193 centimetres and weigh 220 pounds, you will know that too. If I tell you that my hair is dark with grey in it, that I have green eyes and a moustache, you will be able to give a superficial description of me too. And you know what? It STILL does not mean that you have met me in the flesh.

If we had had a DIRECT report from any one journalist, stating "this evening I met George Hutchinson, a labourer of a military appearance", I would agree with you. But we donīt, and THAT is the missing link of the chain I have pointed out to you umpteen times by now, Ben.

Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Just to clarify: I am not pushing any special theory or scenario here. Maybe there WAS a real Hutch, maybe there was a Flemchinson, or maybe somebody told the press the he was Hutch for some reason we have not found out or understood, or maybe he was just something the police fed the press. But as long as we cannot even prove his very existence, we need to find out more before we buy ANY of these stories - or dismiss them out of hand.

Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

The agency could simply have been told that Hutchinson was at the policesīdisposal, accompanying them in search of the man he had seen.

But we'd still have the oddity here of the police on the one hand withholding Hutchinson from the press because they knew he was concerned for his safety, and attempting to get his name effectively spread throughout the country on the other. The two don't compute so well for me.

Where are the descriptions on Hutchs appearance, if such a load of journalists got to speak to him?

I don't think there were a "load of journalists" who spoke to him, Fish. I suggested earlier that the account was probably distributed by a press agency, which explains why it appears almost identically in some newspapers, and you seemed to like that suggestion. I don't believe that all press versions of his account originated from a press agency, though.

I have not challenged that at any time. I am merely trying to point out to you that you lack a link in the chain, Ben!

But again, respectfully, I don't think you need any more links in the chain when we're confronted with a statement that informs us that Hutchinson gave his account to a reporter. I don't see any room for any other inference beyond...what it says; Hutchinson spoke to a reporter. The statement "Fisherman told Ben about his height, weight, profession and hobby" is equally unambiguous, the clarity of which equally eradicates any need to infer the presence of a "middle-man" or go-between. I didn't just hear these things about you from some other source - you told me them directly.

But as long as we cannot even prove his very existence, we need to find out more before we buy ANY of these stories - or dismiss them out of hand.

I'll cheerfully endorse that observation, Fish!

All the best,
Ben

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

This might help put things in perspective.

The Mrs. Kennedy story appeared in eleven newspapers. Apart from some editorial niceties the accounts were word-for-word, suggesting it was an agency story.

Nine newspapers printed the story with no accreditation. One credited it to the Press Association, and the Echo wrote, "Our representative has interviewed a woman named Kennedy . . ."

Regards,

Simon

[Fisherman]

Yep, Simon, these things WILL occur, and when they DO, there is no safe telling how much can be read into "our" representative. Itīs a swamp, more or less, and very little can be relied upon as certainties from it.
Iīve been a newspaper man and journalist for more than twenty years now, and I have seen a thing or two...!

The best!
Fisherman