Topping Hutchinson - looking at his son's account

[Ben]

exclamatory

Explanatory, I meant, of course.

Exclamatory only on special occasions.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"It would be very usual for a recent entrant in the plumbing trade, via an apprenticeship, to list another trade as his occupation."

There you are, then!

As for the inference that the falling-out between George and his father happened when Senior remarried, I think we need to keep in mind that Toppys father would have spend some considerable time getting to know and courting the lady. How long is impossible to say currently, but it offers a useful opening if we want to place the falling out earlier.

The Starīs mentioning of Toppy being a "groom by trade" does really not amont to very much to my mind. It could all owe to the exact same remark that I suggested in my earlier post - if Toppy said that he used to be a groom, then that may have led to the wording in the paper. And it would seem that the police do not have him down as a groom by trade, but instead a "former groom" - maybe because there were differing opinions on whether grooming was a trade at all in the usual sense. As far as I understand, it may have been about brewery horses needing tending to, brushing and feeding. "Groom" is a term that opens up a lot more possible perspectives when it comes to the exact tasks appointed to the one doing the grooming, than, say, plumbing.

You also write:

"I have no idea who Toppy was apprenticed to, but I agree that his father would be a logical candidate, and this too would seem somewhat at odds with an individual who has been consorting with prostitutes in the East End since 1885."

In 1885, Toppy would have been 19 years of age. If this was the time when his father took up with his wife-to-be, then maybe it was also the time of the supposed fallout. In such a case, Toppy would have had a stretch of two years left before he could get his certificate. God knows, the fall-out may have had other reasons from the outset - perhaps it was simply just cemented by the relationship between his father and the new wife.

Where does that bring us? Well, my suggestion is that it may well bring us to a period in Toppys life where he worked as a groom for perhaps a year or two, and thereafter lost his job, resorting to unskilled labour work. He would have changed his residence, opting for the East end if my guesswork is correct, and he would have met Kelly, allowing for that three-year period of aquaintance.

Kelly is killed, Toppy testifies, signs the protocol and gives things a long thought. He has travelled from a promising apprenticeship to an Eastender whose friend has been butchered by the Ripper. He was in other words living in not only a sordid, poverty-stricken part of London - it was also a very dangerous one. And he was sliding down societys ladder quickly, offering his labour to a market that will probably have turned him down often.

Ergo, it is time to make up with Hutchinson senior, and to get those two years of further apprenticeship overwith. That would mean that he would finish somewhere between late 1890 and early 1891, just in time - as fate will have it - to be able to sign himself as a plumber in the 1891 census listings.

Question remaining - if he, in November 1888, was a guy who had had five years of apprenticeship with his father and then broken his education off, aiming not to return to it, and if he had been a groom for most of the time he had been estranged from home - would he give his profession as "plumber" at the police station? Most probably not. Would he give it as "a former apprentice to become a plumber, but lately a groom, however currently out of work and doing ordinary labour?" Not very much more likely in my ears. For at that stage he would have been neither plumber nor apprentice!

I think that much as you are right when you state that the normal and simple solution seems not at hand if Toppy was Hutch, we have a case where "normal and simple" does not apply to the full. And for somebody who recognizes the signatures of Toppy and the witness as being made by the same hand - along with, among others Frank Leander - this is something that goes without saying.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

The chances are that a young, working class male such as Toppy would have taken immediate advantage of his parental connections at the earliest opportunity, and since apprenticeships were available from the age of 14 onwards, as Garry points out, it seems likely that he would have secured one at that age. While I can’t prove for certain that his father did precisely that, it seems a likely explanation from census records, coupled with what we know to be true of Victorian apprenticeships. This would mean that Toppy would have entered the trade at 21 at the very latest, and that his father was unlikely to have been in any position to dampen his plumbing prospects by that stage, even if he wanted to.

I would suggest that a person who supplied the police with information that he was a former groom, now working as a labourer, was not one who had already undertaken an apprenticeship to become a plumber, otherwise he’d have said so. Indeed, the complete absence of any reference to plumbing in both the police and press accounts is most consistent with the conclusion that the real Hutchinson had nothing to do with plumbing in 1888, and inferentially, that any young man with no plumbing connections in 1888 couldn’t possibly be listed as a plumber just three years later in the 1891, especially in light of the post-1886 restrictions.

The press reference to Hutchinson’s being a groom “by trade” is equally troubling. The expression “trade” suggests, at the very least, that a certain amount of training was required before one could be considered a groom good and proper, and it just makes no sense for Toppy to have listed his trade as that of groom if he already belonged to, or was in the process of joining, a far more skilled trade, such as plumbing.

“In 1885, Toppy would have been 19 years of age. If this was the time when his father took up with his wife-to-be, then maybe it was also the time of the supposed fallout. In such a case, Toppy would have had a stretch of two years left before he could get his certificate”

In the absence of additional information, I can’t possibly evaluate David’s sources, but I’d hazard a tentative guess that the pre-marital liaison between Toppy’s father and his second wife to be was unlikely to have commenced three years before their marriage. Even if it did, and the “fall-out” took place at around that time, it’s almost impossible to accept that any protest of “Up yours, dad. I don’t like your new missus. She ain’t my muvva! I’m off to the East End – near the docks to be precise – to consort with common prostitutes for a few years and look for the most menial pooey jobs in the pooiest district in London, and here’s where you can shove your plumbing apprenticeship! I hate you!” was likely to achieve anything other than an abandonment of all plumbing prospects and the eradication of any possibility of becoming a bona fide plumber by 1891.

He’d have missed the boat, and it doesn’t seem likely that several “gap years” were allowed mid-apprenticeship in those days. A few wilderness years between the ages of 18 and 22 consorting with East End prostitutes and odd jobbing in unskilled labouring positions is not an implausible suggestion for any old testosteronally tumultuous post-pubescent male, but it doesn’t work nearly as well if the young male in question hoped to become a pumber – a proper one – by the age 24 or 25. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the gist of your argument, but I doubt very much that apprenticeships were something that a trainee could take an extended three-year pause from before continuing where they left off. Similarly, although I respect your view that the signatures match, I regrettably can’t agree with it. Instead, I find that Sue Iremonger’s views on the subject - to the effect that Toppy was probably not the Dorset Street witness – are in accordance with the plumbing/apprenticeships-related evidence that also militate against such an identification.

All the best,
Ben

[Garry Wroe]

"In earlier times, workers entering crafts or skilled trades usually served a formal apprenticeship....Although some apprentices were still bound or articled during the Victorian period, the system was not as universal or formal as it had been."

So, a boy must serve a 7 year apprenticeship? Apparently it wasn't mandatory (but we thinkers knew that already) and by the LVP, somewhat informal. We also know that apprenticeships didn't have to last 7 years and it was upon the master to decide. If many other craftsmen could play fast and loose with the apprenticeship concept, why not Topping's dad? Why not indeed? Point, set, and match to Toppy.

Point, set, and match to Toppy? No, Mike. Merely an example of the classic non sequitur. If you’d care to do some elementary research, you’ll discover that the apprentice scheme was instigated in an age when the expectation was for a son to follow into his father’s occupation. The problem in the Thirteenth Century was that many boys had no father and therefore no-one to teach them a skill or trade from which they might earn a livelihood. The apprenticeship scheme was introduced in order to provide for such boys.

Unfortunately, whilst providing a future for the boy, the apprenticeship confined the youngster to a period of slavery and he was officially designated a ‘servant’ to his ‘master’. In essence, he became the de facto possession of his teacher.

Come the Industrial Revolution, many of those trades that had previously facilitated apprenticeships began to disappear in the face of mechanisation – especially those occupations aligned to the maritime industries. Because of this and a growing unrest with respect to child exploitation, the Victorians adopted a more ‘enlightened’ approach to child labour. So rather than force orphans and underprivileged children into what was effectively a state of slavery, the Victorians introduced a policy of compulsory repatriation, sending boys to colonial outposts such as Canada and Australia.

Contrary to your assumptions, Mike, it was the combination of mechanisation and forced emigration that was largely responsible for the reduced number of apprentices during the Victorian era. And, just to reiterate, the duration of the apprenticeship was almost always seven years and remained so until the 1960s when the UK school leaving age was changed from fourteen to sixteen.

A few more observations, which hopefully demonstrate that the whole apprenticeship issue is a red herring.

Toppy's uncle John, like Toppy's father George, followed in their father's footsteps and became a plumber. However, on the 1841 census, when he was about 21 years old, he was a painter, not a plumber. By 1851 he was noted as a plumber, and in 1861 a master plumber (his son being noted as a journeyman plumber)

First, David, I can tell you from direct experience that one should exercise extreme caution when dealing with census returns from the Victorian period. Not only were mistakes relating to names, dates and places fairly common, but entries related to a specific point in time. If we take Uncle John as an example, it is perfectly possible that he undertook a plumbing apprenticeship but was laid off on qualification – when his wage should have increased sharply on account of his being fully certified. Now unemployed, he looked about for plumbing work, but to no avail. As a stopgap, he found temporary employment as a painter. A few months later came a knock at the door. It was the census enumerator. When asked about his current employment, Uncle John replied that he was working as a painter and the information was duly recorded. A year or so later, he secured a long-term plumbing job and returned to the trade. Come the next census nine years later, he declared himself to be a plumber. He’d been a plumber all along, of course, but this wasn’t reflected in his census declarations. In short, one cannot take census returns at face value.

I would suggest that, if you’d like to do some meaningful research, the apprentice records might yield something of interest. I know that some apprentice records covering the London area were kept at the Foundling Hospital – a consequence, I should imagine, of the fact that many apprentices were orphans. Some were also kept at the Guildhall. My suspicion, though, is that these will have been transferred to the PRO, Kew. If Toppy qualified as a plumber, his certification should be housed there. If so, and he qualified after November, 1888, his candidacy as Hutchinson the witness might be taken a little more seriously than it is at present by the sceptics. If, on the other hand, he qualified before November, 1888, his candidacy would be effectively blown out of the water.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[Garry Wroe]

As well as the press reports stating that Hutchinson was an unemployed labourer and former groom, at least one newspaper claimed that he was also an ex night-watchman.

Garry Wroe.

[Fisherman]

Garry Wroe writes:

"First, David, I can tell you from direct experience that one should exercise extreme caution when dealing with census returns from the Victorian period. Not only were mistakes relating to names, dates and places fairly common, but entries related to a specific point in time. If we take Uncle John as an example, it is perfectly possible that he undertook a plumbing apprenticeship but was laid off on qualification – when his wage should have increased sharply on account of his being fully certified. Now unemployed, he looked about for plumbing work, but to no avail. As a stopgap, he found temporary employment as a painter. A few months later came a knock at the door. It was the census enumerator. When asked about his current employment, Uncle John replied that he was working as a painter and the information was duly recorded. A year or so later, he secured a long-term plumbing job and returned to the trade. Come the next census nine years later, he declared himself to be a plumber. He’d been a plumber all along, of course, but this wasn’t reflected in his census declarations. In short, one cannot take census returns at face value."

This reasoning makes a lot of sense to me in many a sense. But does it not swear against the assertions that anybody who had gone through an apprenticeship and finished an education would take a lot of pride in that thing, more or less habitually taking great care to point out what they were by trade whenever asked?
Why would anybody be sloppy with such things because the question came from a census taker? Especially if the apprenticeship and the gaining of a plumbers certificate was so near in time as it would have been in this case?

Similarly, if a few months of painting was all it took for a man with a pocketed plumbers certificate to forget all about his true professional strivings when the census takers came knocking - would not a more substantial time of, for example, grooming be enough for a man to call himself a groom when asked by the police? Especially if this man did NOT have a completed plumbers apprenticeship behind him?
I fail to see how anything but an institutionalized method of always asking people for their education together with or instead of their current work on behalf of the police could have precluded such a thing. And even if they did - would they take an active interest in such things as unfulfilled apprenticeships?
I am of course working from the assumption that Toppy did not fulfill that education until at a later stage, for the simple reason that I think that as long as we have no final proof of neither start nor end of that apprenticeship, we must keep all doors open. One very good reason to do so would be if Toppys signature tallied with the police report signature, and I genuinely think it does. And as we can see, the specified time Hutchinson said he had known Kelly, the alledged fall-out and Toppys being registered in the 1891 census as a plumber can all be fit into a working timeframe.

What I see in all of this is a fair objection - that can be overcome with the help of, for example, David Knotts useful and valuable research.

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

The other option is that he merely 'took' the title of plumber in 1891 owing to the fact that his father was one and that he (possibly) had some experience. Again, there are many possibilities, and the objections are somewhat weak. Toppy is Hutch. It really is a done deal.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Hi Mike! Yes, I have also pondered this possibility. Maybe he was close to a certificate when the census was taken, and felt "I may just as well write me down as a plumber, since Iīm very nearly there". There are, just as you say, numerous possibilities at hand.
But I think it is interesting to see that if we allow for five years of education between 1880-1885, a fall-out and a broken-off apprenticeship in 1885-1888, then we get more or less exactly the right window of time 1888-1891 to allow for making up with his father, re-entering the trade and truthfully signing the 1891 census papers as a plumber!

All the best, Mike!
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

I hear you, but that is a lot of supposition. I think it suffices that we know the apprenticeship system was weaker in the LVP and that anything is possible. This makes the probablity of Toppy as Hutch even greater. I think the best we can get from David is hearsay about the family. Not sure it is necessary, though to be sure it is very interesting.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"I think it suffices that we know the apprenticeship system was weaker in the LVP and that anything is possible. This makes the probablity of Toppy as Hutch even greater."

Agreed, Mike - it does. But the bottom line is that we have a whole number of possibilities at hand, one of them even including an embarked-upon apprenticeship!
So the clay is not molded yet - but it is a lot more moldable than those seemingly opposed to the idea of Toppy being Hutch would have it. In fact, much as my suggested version of events - and I am completely open to all other suggestions that allow for Toppy in a police station in mid-November 1888, signing a testimony as a former groom and a labourer - can correctly be pointed out as mere musings, so can ANY OTHER version, including all assertions that Toppy made the rounds the normal way. We simply do not know, and that leaves all opportunities open - which, I believe, is exactly what you are saying!

The best!
Fisherman

[harry]

Fisherman,
I cannot improve on Garry's submissions.I suppose an individual could describe himself any way he wanted to.The trades,as opposed to the professions,were regulated by law to a greater extent.It was,as is now,an offence in law,in certain instances,to gain advantage by pretense,and it was and is, an offence to give false or misleading information to a census.People generally take heed of this.
I am of the opinion that persons are more likely to give their true occupation when communicating with authority.The George Hutchinson who stated to Aberline that he was a labourer,was I have no doubt of that class.If Reg states his father was a plumber,then i think we are talking of two different persons.
Regards.

[Fisherman]

Okay, Harry! And of course, if it applies that all opportunities are open, it also applies that you may be right. But to me, accepting that the police report signer was of the labouring class throughout, born and bred as such, is drawing very much of a final conclusion from a precious scarce material.

If Jack London had used the odd half-hour to walk into a police station while gathering material for his Abyss book, and given his occupation as a labourer, out of work, we may have had just as good reasons to pin HIM down as a labourer, would we not?
And a "labourer" but "former groom" - what "class" would he belong to?
Furthermore, being a labourer does in now way preclude having held a fancier profession some time before, as effectively shown by Joe Fleming - the dock labourer who was a former plasterer or "a plasterer by trade", someting he obviously did not speak of when he was asked later in life, it would seem.

There is always the possibility (and it is a huge one, as portrayed by the fates of millions of people) of a rise or a downfall, Harry. And when you travel downwards, it is always a comfort that you need not have the words "coming from a higher class, recently a loser" stamped into your forehead.
What was once a plasterer became a labourer.
What was perhaps once a plumber or a plumbers apprentice may equally have become a labourer.
And in that sense you are probably spot on: When Toppy (for I think it WAS Toppy) entered the police station, he in all probability DID belong to "the labouring class". Therefore, he would not have been giving false information, since he was probably an out-of work labourer, a former groom and - perhaps - an ex night-watchman. We are speaking in each case of more or less unskilled labour, which was exactly what the witness seemed to offer.

The best,
Fisherman

[Observer]

Hi Fisherman

Regarding George Hutchinsons account of his occupation being that of a groom. I can only say how very selective some posters are when commenting on what Georgie boy said in 1888. They are only too willing to cry Liar when he gives his description of Mr A. He never went to Romford, they say, and if he had wanted to he could have gained entry to the Victoria Home at at any time, so his story of it being shut was a blatant lie. The groom bit could have been another lie, couldn't it? After all he is a liar. His whole story could have been a total lie even down to his claim that he was a groom. I am of course being a bit sarcastic here, but it seems to me certain posters mould the facts to suit their little theories, don't you think.

all the best

Observer

[richardnunweek]

Hi Ben,
In order for GWTH to have been a faud, and identify himself with the real Hutchinson, for whatever motive he may have had, he would have had to have a real knowledge of the millers court murder, he would have had to familiar himself with the statement of the man he was impersonating.
I find that somewhat unlikely.
Lets assume that in 1888 , Topping reads all about it, and takes particular notice of the Astracan incident, and says to himself, the witness has the same name as me, so i have a good idea .... Lets be him for the rest of my life.
Please Ben, you are surely not suggesting that?
Everytime you answer a post of mine, which suggests that Topping was GH, and I suggest that it is improbable that it was anyone else, you say 'Ah But' even when I have offered the Wheeling report as exhibit [1] you reject that with 'Ah But' he may have read that way back in 1888, and calculated the sum of five weeks wages as Five pounds/hundred shillings, even if the article was a rare publication , and very unlikely to have be read by the residents of the east end.
'Anyway' is another answer that was a gossip paper, and Topping was proberly aware of the rumours, [of course he would have 'woudnt he' because he had just adopted the mans identity for future gains?].
I dont wish to sound sarcastic, but I simply find the con aspect somewhat a non starter.
Regards Richard.

[The Good Michael]

Richard,

I pointed that out too, long ago. Everything is refuted with "but" as if GH were some diabolical criminal mastermind who has planned everything that we are discussing today. If that's the case, he also knew that there would be those who would surface whose only purpose in being here was to refute any claims that GH was the murderer. And so, we are (you, I, Fisherman, Observer, Gareth) the unwitting pawns of George Hutchinson who knew we would be born and would be here to connect GH to GWTH and thereby, seal his innocence. What a clever dick!

Mike