Topping Hutchinson - looking at his son's account

[Ben]

“I believe I am right about a Toper”

No, Lechmere. Apparently not.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/toper

A toper is merely a “chronic drinker”.

“and when that works its way out of their system they seem sober.”

But the alcohol consumed by Kelly would not have worked its way out of her system. The alcohol that she undoubtedly consumed in the company of blotchy companion had yet to take full effect at the time of consumption, so there is no credibility to the suggestion that she sobered up or even appeared to sober up at the time Hutchinson claimed in his discredited account.

“Something tells me you are going to argue until the cows come home that this is impossible.”

Not a bad prediction, Lechmere, although for the sake of argument, we’ll stick with very unlikely.

“So Hutchinson looks through the window and sees a sleeping Blotchy and decides to wait. That was clever of him. How did he know that Blotchy would leave before daylight?”

Did you read the full extract I provided a link to? He didn’t “know” that Blotchy would leave before daylight. Garry’s suggestion is that he waited around in the hope or possibly the expectation of Blotchy doing so. If Blotchy himself wasn’t the killer, he must have left some time before 3:45 or 4.00am when Mms. Prater and Lewis heard the cry of “murder”. Do most prostitutes cuddle up to bed with their clients? Probably not, but nor do they serenade them for an hour with Irish songs, as Kelly appears to have done. If Hutchinson investigated the room in the manner suggested by Garry, it is equally possible that he observed the couple “at it” rather than sleeping.

“I think you mean someone called Joseph Flemming (or Fleming) claimed to have been living somewhere in the Whitechapel registration district for 14 months prior to November 1889”

Don’t tell me what I mean.

The Joseph Fleming known to Mary Jane Kelly lived in Whitechapel at the time of the murders, and when he was admitted to the Whitechapel infirmary, he gave his address at the Victoria Home. There is no indication whatsoever that he lied about this detail, and if we accept your version of the Victoria Home entry guidelines, this is just the sort of thing that could have been “checked”.

“Would he have submitted himself to the degrading harsh and dehumanising realities of a common lodging house if he had somewhere else he could have gone?”

But we know he did.

So whatever argument you want to advance against it, the fact is that you’re flying in the face of the sources. We know he had downgraded significantly from a mason’s plasterer to a dock labourer, and the latter occupation is very commonly associated with the “degrading harsh and dehumanising realities of a common lodging house” (interesting U-turn there from how you previously sought to depict the Victoria Home), it being very low on the list of respectable and well paid jobs. All of this has been readily accepted by the researchers who uncovered these sources, and quite frankly, the only people who challenge them have tended, in the main, to be gainsaying nuisances on message boards or newbies who simply love to argue without first acquainting themselves properly with the source material, not that I'm suggesting you're either of those things.

“The chances of this Joseph Flemming being there continuously from September 1888 to November 1889 must be slim”

No, it’s not slim at all. You have no reason whatsoever to make any such inference.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Whatever I might argue, whether for or against your theory, you’ll be disagreeing with me."

Try "You are perfectly correct in stating that a mistaken day on Hutchinsons behalf is a very viable suggestion, tallying with Lewis´not being mentioned and the weather issues. And the fact that Dew suggests this makes it very, very compelling", and THEN see if I disagree with you.

"As you know full well, the factors you introduced such as the weather, and Hutchinson’s failure to mention Lewis lend themselves far better to the inference that Hutchinson lied than it does to any “wrong day” consideration."

It does no such thing. And Lewis is the key factor here. Abberline and Dew had Hutchinson down as an honest man. He did not mention her. The simplest conclusion is NOT that he lied about it, but instead the very trivial thing that people you don´t see, you don´t remember. So no, the liar scenario argues against both Abberlines and Dew´s respective assessments as well as against logic.

"Ah, good."

Not really. There is nothing "good" about it as such, unless we can prove it correct. If we cannot, and it turns out to be wrong, then it is not good. Then it is bad.

"I fail to see any evidence that Hutchinson was questioned about Kelly’s clothing. "

Everybody does, Ben. It´s because it is not there.

"The parsimonious conclusion, therefore, is that he wasn’t. Were it otherwise, this detail would almost certainly have been included in the statement."

Then let me introduce you to another "parsimonious" conclusion: The police are professionals when it comes to solving crimes. They have developed tools over time to reach as far as possible when it comes to disclosing the truth about things.
Some tools are of very late date, such as DNA and such.
Other tools have been there from the start of the police force. One such thing would be to ask witnesses about the clothing of people they claimed to have seen, in order to avoid mistakes on the witnesses behalf.
This is an unshakeable truth. After it, you are very welcome to claim that the omittment to mention this detail in the police report somehow proves that the question was never asked. But if you take a closer look at the report, you will find that nothing is said about the aquaintance between Kelly and Hutchinson; no comment about having known her for three years on Hutchinson´s behalf, no mentioning of the money he had given her, no elaborations about how he came to know her in the first place. Should that not have been there, or was it "unimportant"? Hm?
I guess that the "parsimonious" explanation to this is that Abberline never asked about it? Oh, wait; he DID ask, we know that from the message sent out later. Well, we cannot be sure that Abberline asked, since Hutchinson may have volunteered it all to an astounded Abberline who never thought about asking himself. And we still don´t know whether he asked about the nature of the aquaintance inbetween Hutchinson and Kelly and how it started. I guess he just forgot to ask.
What do you think, Ben? Did he? Was the police in the habit of forgetting to ask things like these in top priority murder cases where the nations eyes were upon them?

"If you want to revive “wrong day” again, start another thread."

Why? There is one already. And who needs "reviving" it? It is Hutch the liar that´s creeping inch by inch down into the soil, Ben...

The best,
Fisherman

[Garry Wroe]

An alias remains a compelling possibility as far as Hutchinson is concerned, certainly. I've always considered it very unusual that Hutchinson appended three decidedly different signatures to his statement. One had a conspicuously florid capital "H" which was completely absent from the other two, and another had the abbreviated "Geo" as a substitute for the full "George". Clearly this was someone quite unaccustomed to writing "George Hutchinson" as a standardized signature.

Absolutely, Ben. And whereas I believe it likely that Hutchinson was discredited after giving himself away whilst on walkabout with the two detectives on the Monday night, it must remain a considered possibility that he was recognized by a police officer and linked to another identity – a name under which he had previous criminal convictions. Hypothetical though it may be, such a scenario would have been sufficient for Hutchinson to have been deemed untrustworthy and dropped like a stone. Given the individual and collective embarrassment over Abberline having been duped by Hutchinson and his story, moreover, we also have a neat explanation as to why, unlike Packer or Violenia, the circumstances relating to Hutchinson’s fall from grace were never elaborated.

Again, though, this is pure speculation on my part.

[Fisherman]

Garry Wroe:

" it must remain a considered possibility that he was recognized by a police officer and linked to another identity – a name under which he had previous criminal convictions."

...which is why a police who worked the case and would reasonably have been in the know speaks of him fifty years later as a witness of the best of intentions, a man on whose character he´d find no reason to reflect.

"his is pure speculation on my part."

I know that, Garry. And I don´t think it´s a very useful speculation. The police force as a whole (but most probably not the press, due to the element of embarrasment) would have known at the time what was the underlying reason to Hutchinson´s dismissal. And an honest mistake tallies far, far better with what we have.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

“As yet we have no proof that he was being truthful, and no proof that he wasnt, and its because of that, that the term ''benefit of the doubt'' must surely be the order of the day.”

This isn’t the way it works, though, Richard.

If a claim is made, such as the one you’ve referred to, we assess the evidence to determine its veracity or lack thereof. We certainly don’t give it the “benefit of the doubt” in the absence of any evidence. The same applies to the absence of any description of Kelly’s clothes from Hutchinson. We don’t just fill in the blank with a mythical reference report that got lost in the blitz, or whatever. Instead we accept that absence of evidence is rather obviously evidence of absence, in this particular case.

Cheers,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

Try "You are perfectly correct in stating that a mistaken day on Hutchinsons behalf is a very viable suggestion, tallying with Lewis´not being mentioned and the weather issues. And the fact that Dew suggests this makes it very, very compelling".

I could try it, but I would be lying to myself in pretending to consider any of those suggestions to be “viable”, let alone “very, very compelling”, so if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick with the considerably more simple explanation that Hutchinson lied was accordingly discredited.

“It does no such thing. And Lewis is the key factor here. Abberline and Dew had Hutchinson down as an honest man. He did not mention her”

Abberline’s view was clearly revised subsequently, which is why Hutchinson came to be discredited; almost certainly as a Packeresque witness and not as some silly date-befuddler. Given the near certainty that Hutchinson was the man seen by Sarah Lewis, it stands to reason that he must have seen her, and that he deliberately omitted any reference to her to avoid making it appear obvious that his hand was forced by her evidence. It is irritating and outlandish nonsense to claim that it is “illogical” to infer that Hutchinson lied, which is by far the most popular perception at present. Dew’s assessment, by contrast, has been known about but rejected in the main as not worth talking about, let alone considering, for over seven decades. Repetition/stamia war, anyone?

“The police are professionals when it comes to solving crimes.”

But not only was policing in its relative infancy in 1888, they had no knowledge of serial killers. It is folly to ascribe infallibility to a nascent police force, especially when we know that modern investigations are littered with examples of error and oversight. An assumption that the 1888 police force dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” is a rather foolish one.

“But if you take a closer look at the report, you will find that nothing is said about the aquaintance between Kelly and Hutchinson; no comment about having known her for three years on Hutchinson´s behalf, no mentioning of the money he had given her”

What are you talking about?

This is exactly what is contained in Abberline’s report.

All of the details you mentioned appeared in the report.

There is no reference to Kelly’s clothing in either the statement itself or the accompanying report.

“There is one already. And who needs "reviving" it? It is Hutch the liar that´s creeping inch by inch down into the soil, Ben.”

Oh, but of course, we’re all fainting ‘neath the impenetrably logical arguments of Fisherman and Fetchbeer, with support from Mike.

Regards,
Ben

[Ben]

An intriguing possibility, Garry. Such an explanation would certainly tie-up several loose ends. On a semi-related note, are you familiar with a 1930s book which attributed Hutchinson's account and description to a Benjamon Amos Soloman?

http://www.casebook.org/witnesses/bejamin_amos_soloman.html

And an honest mistake tallies far, far better with what we have.

According to you, Walter, and pretty much nobody else, Fisherman.

All the best,
Ben

[DVV]

Lechmere

The FACT is we cannot know for sure that Venturney’s Joe was Flemming.

Funny post, really.
The fact is we cannot be sure you are honest.

The FACT is we cannot be sure that the person called Joseph Flemming was living in the Victoria Home from September 1888.

True. I bet he was dossing in Buckingham Palace.

[Lechmere]

Mr Ben
Habitual alcoholics (as opposed to more occasional binge drinker alcoholics) usually drink little and often. They have large amounts of alcohol in their system and a few drinks can make them seem drunk and this can rapidly wear off. This type of drunk -a steady regular alcoholic - is of the toper variety as against the binge drinker variety.
Kelly seems to fit the toper pattern and that is why she may well have sobered up, comparatively, by 2 or 3 or 4 am.
We do not know that she drank any of Blotchy’s beer.
The average time a prostitute will have spent with a client would have been counted in minutes rather than hours. It is quite likely that Blotchy was gone by midnight and Kelly was singing to herself. Perhaps while getting ready to go back out again.
It is also by no means certain at all that the cries of murder at around 4 am were Kelly. It strikes me as being somewhat unlikely that it was her. Indeed I rather think your average murder victim wouldn’t shout out ‘murder’ just as they saw a knife being wielded in their direction.

We cannot be certain it was the same Flemming who checked into the infirmary. I also do not believe the infirmary would have had the resources to check patient’s bona fides – unlike the police – so no I don’t think they would have checked with the Victoria Home. Do you?

So tell me – you think Flemming was living at the Victoria Home for 14 months solid. Yes? As opposed to staying there for a short period when he had a nice alternative in Bethnal Green available?
Yes we know he did stay in the Victoria Home at that snap shot in time – November 1889.
Makes me think of Toppy – you think he wouldn’t have stayed at the Victoria Home when his father lived much further away in Lee.
This mason’s plasterer becoming a mere dock labourer also makes me think. A bit like a trainee plumber becoming a labourer... perhaps?
I gave you the reason why it is unlikely Flemming stayed in the Victoria Home for 14 months solid – so I do have reason to make the inference.

Incidentally my description of the Victoria Home wasn’t a U-turn, it was a parody.

I notice you neglected to explain this remark: “her behaviour when in the company of the Blotchy man is hardly consistent with any grave concern over imminent rent collection.”

Also can I ask you this? Do you think that all the police record relating to Ripper case are still extant?
If you answer no to this, then tell me why it is illegitimate to raise the question of what the missing reports may or may not cover.
Do you think that it is feasible to speculate on what the police may have reported – based on the extant sources, common sense and reading back from other cases?
Or should we smugly sit back and put our hands in our ears and say ‘I want to hear none of this – it is the lost report syndrome’. Just because it assists the Hutchinson case.

Mr Wroe
If Hutchinson was spotted by someone who knew his real identity on Monday night – why was he taken to see Kelly’s body on Tuesday and went out again with a policeman looking for the A-man.

[DVV]

With all due respect, Lechmere, you have to be out of your mind to dispute the obvious fact that Barnett and Venturney were referring to the same Joe.

That is wholly accepted, for excellent reasons.

Have a look at Chris Scott "Will the real mary Kelly", p 47, in case the Sourcebook isn't reliable enough for your good self.

[The Good Michael]

And he was 6'7" and wasn't Hutchinson.

Mike

[Lechmere]

Joe is and was a common name. It may be that it was Flemming. Maybe not. I am cautioning against making the assumption. I am in line with the A-Z on this.
I don't think this implies a mental disorder on my part. With all due respect.

[DVV]

You're wrong again, Lechmere.

Fleming's address was the VH in 1889, as it was in 1892.

[DVV]

I don't think this implies a mental disorder on my part. With all due respect.

Once again, just compare Barnett and Venturney's testimonies, and tell me, in all likehood, who was this Joe.

[Lechmere]

But Flemming doesn't seem to have been in the Victoria Home in 1891...
Maybe he stayed there occasionally, as I suggested.

Going back to the oft repeated assertion that Dew’s memoirs were particularly unreliable as a source document for Ripper studies.
If Dew was unreliable what are we to make of Robert Sagar?
I would suggest that word for word, Sagar makes more errors than Dew

The thing is, these policeman made their later day reminiscences without the benefit of research, notes and computers. They had to rely on memory which plays tricks. However they should be used as valid sources I would suggest, not least as there is a paucity of official records (the missing document syndrome) and they will almost certainly be accurate in their overall look and feel – although addresses, exact dates, exact ages and names may be confused.