Topping Hutchinson - looking at his son's account

[lynn cates]

suggestion

Hello Garry. But isn't it also possible that he was able to "hold it in" for extended periods and that such "holding in" is what caused the violent "ripping" episodes?

The best.
LC

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn writes:

"Here we have one of the very, very rare occasions in this case where we might actually have a promising lead - and concrete evidence to boot - only for it to be dismissed at all costs by those for whom a meek, mild, "normal" George Hutchinson jars with their internal image of the Ripper. Well, that's their loss, not mine."

Exactly, Sam, and very well put. The signature comparison must NOT be left out of the equation "since we are never going to agree anyway". Instead it must be realized, just like Sam says, that what we have here is something quite rare - we have a signature comparison that would quite likely hold up as proof in a court of law! We know that a top ranking forensic document examiner is of the opinion that the signatures tally, and that means we are for once not left with guesswork, perhapse´s, maybe´s and but-what-if´s.

This, no matter how much the idea is disliked on some hands IS TANGIBLE, HARD-CORE EVIDENCE!! Furthermore, the argument I know will be raised, that another document examiner (Iremonger) seemingly was of another opinion, is something that would be thrown out of that self-same court of law, for the very obvious reason that it is an unsubstantiated claim to a very large extent! I have e-mailed Iremonger myself, just as I have written a very courteous letter to her - but I get no response whatsoever. There is every chance that others have done the same before me, but no matter how true that is or is not, the fact of the matter remains: Iremonger quite obviously will not respond to any question put to her.
And so we know very little about what prompted her conclusions, we have no full proof for what she examined and it seems this knowledge is forever gone.

But the likeness of the signatures remain there, as does the examination made by Frank Leander, and that prompts us to realize that we for once have extremely good evidence, fully credible to be at least suggested and perhaps even admitted as conclusive proof in a court of law!

Therefore I second Sam - let´s NOT forget about the signatures, as if they never existed. It would be the stupidest thing we could do!

Right, now I will read up on the last two pages, and see if I am only reiterating what has already been said. That won´t matter, if it should be the case. This has to be said!

The best,
Fisherman

[Dorian Gray]

Dorian Gray asks:

"A) Has the expert examined the original documents containing the signatures?"

No.

"B) Where I can read the expert's published analysis of the signatures in question?"

Frank Leander was not hired as such to do an analysis. I asked if he would volunteer a wiew, and he offered to do so in a very informal way. All he said, more or less, was published on the thread, both in Swedish (his and my native tongue) and in my translation. It can be added that there were efforts made to point me out as purposefully trying to change Leanders wording in my translations, just as there were those who were of the meaning that I fed wrongful and/or incomplete material and information to him in order to try and influence him in an unfair manner, something that was not a very nice thing to be subjected to - but something that tallies very well with the overall hostile tone that came to dominate the thread on the whole. All I can say is that I had the best of intentions and that Frank Leander proved to be a very discerning and thoroughly amiable and helpful man.

I hope that you are able to see through the gunsmoke and identify the important pieces of information that are there!

The best,
Fisherman

Fisherman,

First, please forgive my question where I transposed " Where I can read…." The question should have read: "Where can I read the expert's published analysis of the signatures in question?"

Second, thank you for the clarification. Noting your use of the word tally, I thought there had been further analysis and perhaps a published article.

As for the haze of gun smoke, without a peer reviewed article on the issue I must, at this point in time, relegate his analysis to an informal opinion.

Regards,

Dorian

[Fisherman]

Garry Wroe asks:

"Then why, Sam, if the evidence is so utterly compelling, have neither of the two handwriting experts who have examined the signatures echoed your certainty over the issue?"

If one of these examiners, Garry, is Leander, I think a few words have to be added:
Let´s to begin with not try and instigate any myth about Leander at any stage being unenthusiastic about the match. He gave his wiew, guided by his professional tools, as a match on the lower positive end of the scale. Now - and I have said this a hundred times before - that fact that Leander used this exact verdict was guided by TWO things; the likeness inbetween the signatures AND the surrounding information around the signatures!!

It is only too easy, if one wants to see Leander as "unenthusiastic" to look away from the fact that BOTH these parametres governed his wiew, and instead try and paint things out as if his verdict was something that ONLY was guided by the likeness - or lack of it - between the signatures. For that would seem to imply that he thought "Well, it may well be a match, but I have certainly seen many better matches in my time!".

Let´s just understand that this may not be the case at all - in fact, EVEN IF THE SIGNATURES HAD BEEN MIRROR IMAGES, the verdict would have been the EXACT same; A hit on the lower end on the positive scale. This owes to factor two; the surrounding details. A comparison with fewer than ten samples of each signature, and made from photo copies, CAN NOT be placed higher on the scale than Leander employed!!

So what do we know about what he thought of factor one - the likenesses inbetween the signatures? Well, reserving myself against an inexact wording, we know that he listed all elements that are important to assess, and said that the overall likess was there throughout! Style elements, degree of writing skills, placing of the text - everything bore that likeness! After having stated this he added that against these likenesses, the differences must be posed - but none of the differences involved was of a character that would be hard to explain, according to Leander!

He said that he expected all fortcoming evidence to confirm his wiew that we had a match, and he said that if this would not be the case, he would be surprised.

And how, Garry, you can say that this points to a verdict where Sams enthusiasm is not shared, is beyond me. It is simply not true. We may of course speak levels of enthusiasm here, but let´s not try and turn things into what they are not and have never been.

There were many a time when I thought that Leander had been very conclusive in his verdicts on different details. But there just as many times when Ben told me that he did not share this sentiment, and then he pointed out that things could perhaps be interpreted in another fashion than the one I used. On more than one occsion, I reacted with great frustration as I was of the opinion that Ben was not being honest, but instead using semantically twisted constructions to try and dismiss my wiew. At one such occasion, I asked Leander whether my wiew or Bens wiew was the correct one, and he answered by stating that Bens interpretation of the issue was a malicious one. Bens reaction was to imply that I had pestered Leander so much that he would say anything to get rid of me. This I found very sad, and I thought - and still think - that it was an absolutely disgraceful way to argue, just as it was extremely discourtuous towards Frank Leander.

All of this Ben knows, just as I know it. I am not saying here that I must be right, and I do not wish to wake the dragon again! The door must be fully open to the suggestion that Ben actually felt that he had better arguments than me. But in order to try and give you a better understanding of Leanders sentiments about the signatures, this must sadly enough be reiterated.

I am ready to discuss everything, detail for detail, when it comes to the signatures, Garry. But I am NOT ready to accept any suggestion that Frank Leander was "unenthustiastic" or anything along those lines, for that he was emphatically not!

the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Dorian writes:

"As for the haze of gun smoke, without a peer reviewed article on the issue I must, at this point in time, relegate his analysis to an informal opinion."

That was exactly what it was, Dorian! An informal opinion - from a man who is a renowned expert in the field, nevertheless. And what it mainly did was to confirm what I had already seen by myself and felt sure of. But my own handwriting insights count for nothing out here to a number of people, whenever challenging the wiew that Toppy could not have been the witness. That´s why it was useful to get a second opinion from a man of Leanders stature and experience.

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

What gets lost in the BS of agenda, and is absolutely irrefutable, is that there are two signatures of the same period and of the same name, in the same vicinity, with a similar birth date being involved, with family anecdotal evidence, and being similar enough that there is a war over them being waged, and a few folks believe they belong to two different people. It is intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind. The thing that really killed me was when a published author, who should try and be objective, couldn't even see the forest for a couple of stunted trees.

Dishonesty is what it is. Really tiresome and just this side of evil.

Mike

[harry]

Mike,
A person is called home because his mother is dangerously ill.At the top of the street he hears a person say that a woman of her name,about the same age,and living in that street had died that morning.Coincidence,they were different women.True the christian name was not mentioned,but you get my meaning.The signature apart,two persons about the same age, living in the same locality,would not have been a rareity.In villages all over Britain the same thing would be happening.Sometime,if you have a minute to spare,study the deaths of soldiers in the first world war.Other posters have shown that although some similarity may show in the writing of the signatures,it is by no means conclusive that they have been scientifically proven to be exact.

[Dorian Gray]

Dorian writes:

"As for the haze of gun smoke, without a peer reviewed article on the issue I must, at this point in time, relegate his analysis to an informal opinion."

That was exactly what it was, Dorian! An informal opinion - from a man who is a renowned expert in the field, nevertheless. And what it mainly did was to confirm what I had already seen by myself and felt sure of. But my own handwriting insights count for nothing out here to a number of people, whenever challenging the wiew that Toppy could not have been the witness. That´s why it was useful to get a second opinion from a man of Leanders stature and experience.

The best,
Fisherman

Fisherman,

Thank you for your reply.

I should clarify my sentence you quoted above: Without Leander's formal opinion, his expertise is reduced to laymens' speculation.
Despite Leander's stature and experience, this type of analysis is insufficient for proper scientific review. Moreover, without Leander's formal analysis, it is unfair and reckless to utilize his informal opinion, either for or against the signatures authenticity, as factual. To this end, I must disregard Leander's informal analysis of the signatures. I hope, in time, this issue can be rectified.

My apologies to all for taking this thread off topic.

Regards,

Dorian

[Fisherman]

Dorian writes:

"Without Leander's formal opinion, his expertise is reduced to laymens' speculation. "

...and Leander reduced to a layman, you mean? So that his trained eye, his years of experience his methodic way of breaking a signature into the correct elelements, his insights into what matters and what can be discarded - that counts for nothing more than, say, my long dead grandmothers wiew?

I am sorry, Dorian, but I do not agree for a minute with this. Informal as the evaluation was, it was nevertheless an informal examination made by a top authority and a man who knows these things like the inside of his own pocket. That amounts to a lot, whichever way we look upon things.

The chances that he would have been of another mindset altogether if he had published his wiew are non-existing, Dorian. Much as there are posters who dislike it, it still stands that he was of the meaning that the signatures were very close and a probable hit.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

“Instead it must be realized, just like Sam says, that what we have here is something quite rare - we have a signature comparison that would quite likely hold up as proof in a court of law!”

No.

There is nothing that could even vaguely lend weight to such a conclusion. The only expert to have analyzed the original signatures was Sue Iremonger, and she was of the opinion that the handwriting did not match. Leander was supplied with fiddled with emailed statement signatures that conveyed the erroneous and misleading impression that they were of the same size and angle to the Toppy entries, and worse, only one signature was provided despite their being ample opportunity to provide all three statement signatures as they had been provided to Sue Iremonger in the early 1990s when she carried out her irrefutably more professional analysis. Even Leander was eager to remind us, on several occasions, that the material was insufficient for him to offer a full expert opinion, so I’m baffled how you can possibly argue – or even suppose for one moment – that if would stand up in a court of law.

It really isn’t surprising that posters like Dorian are compelled to reject the “Leander analysis” as a factual analysis since Leander himself was the very first to caution against considering his views a “full expert opnion. You can consider it “tangible hard-core” evidence and repeat it as often as you like. It is utterly trumped by a far more thorough analysis, conducting in the early 1990s by a British document examiner, as recounted by more than one leading authority on the Whitechapel murders. I would respectfully submit that your ideas as to what would and wouldn’t be accepted by a “court of law” has very little basis in reality.

There are several reasons why Iremonger may not have responded. The fact that you contacted her immediately after I did might have daunted her somewhat, and considering that she is now of an advanced age, I’m certainly not about to take a dim view of her for it. As Jonathan Menges suggested some months back, it is more than possible that she outlined her Hutchinson findings in a lecture, during which she discussed other aspects of the case, such as the Maybrick diary, which she also analyzed.

[Ben]

On more than one occsion, I reacted with great frustration as I was of the opinion that Ben was not being honest, but instead using semantically twisted constructions to try and dismiss my wiew.

What the...?!

Did you not receive a certain PM a few days ago?

Fisherman takes the extraordinary decision to provide a wholly unnecessary summary of the previous Leander threads, but since he had decided accuse me of lying yet again, it seems only fair that I defend myself.

It was illustrated, by quoting Fisherman's translation verbatim, that Leander conveyed no impression that he thought the match to be a "probable" one. He mentioned that the similarities weighed "against" the similarities, but that the latter were insufficient to "rule out" or "exclude" Toppy as the witness. If you argue that something cannot be ruled out, you're not declaring it to be "probable". If he secretly thought the match was probable, he certainly didn't convey any such thinking in his initial post.

Clearly dissatisfied with this, in my view, Fisherman started to put words in Leander's mouth that didn't appear in his first letter. For example, Fisherman referred to there being "numerous" or "many" explanations for the differences between the statement signatures and those of Toppy. After reminding anyone who needed reminding that the explanations for the differences were only “possible” ones (and not necessarily explanations that he felt actually DID come into play in this case), I was quick to draw attention to the fact that Leander used no such adjective. Nothing about "many", and nothing about "numerous". Back he went to Leander, who "clarified" with the following:

"It was just one of many possible explanations to the differences".

How odd that the very word that Fisherman wrongly claimed appeared in Leander's first post suddenly appeared in Leander's rather timely "second" post? That's not an accusation of lying, such as the one Fisherman just levelled at me, but I'm more than entitled to find it odd. It that wasn't the only example of this unsettling phenomenon either. Shortly after publishing Leander's first letter, Fisherman argued that the letter spoke of an "overall likeness". I quickly pointed out that, as with the words "numerous and "many", Leander had said no such thing in his initial letter, so Fisherman re-established contact with Leander for a THIRD time, with the following result:

”The overall and general impression is one of an obvious likeness, and it offers far too much of a handstyle resemblance to offer any reason to discard it".

By some bizarre coincidence, "Leander" had now elaborated on his initial comments using the very expression, "overall likeness", that Fisherman erroneously attributed to him in his first letter.

Now, by post #4, one forms the very distinct impression that Leander is starting to tire of being asked to "clarify" continually by Fisherman, hence the observation: "I do not wish to embark on any further elaboration on the issue since I have only commented on a few pictures via mail". If people are incapable of detecting a certain "Please leave me alone, I've already told you what I think a billion times already" subtext into Leander's words, I'm incredibly surprised. True to form, Fisherman was not deterred, and so he allegedly asked Leander to "clarify" again. Unfortunately, the gist of his purported observations in post #5 (yes, that's how many times Fisherman asked Leander to clarify a message that was abundantly clear the first time) were radically different to anything he said in his initial post, effectively cancelling out any worth in any of his posts.

By pestering the poor man incessantly, and with demonstrably misleading and erroneous information, Fisherman has succeeded in eradicating the value of Leader's first letter, which everyone will agree was the very picture of circumspection when it first appeared. If he was truly responsible for all the posts Fisherman claims Leander was responsible for, we are obliged to take a dim view of an "expert" who succumbs to pressure and bias, of an "expert" who becomes progressively more Toppy-endorsing with each bombardment.

I note with disdain that Fisherman is still trying to mutate “cannot be ruled out” or “hardly possible to exclude” into synonyms of “probable”, and he does so on the unacceptable basis that some institutions bizarrely misinterpret and misuse such basic phrases, and that Leader must belong to one such institution. Unfortunately for this argument, you cannot change written communication and dictionary definitions. If anyone uses either of those phrases to mean "probable", they are misappropriating a phrase to a drastic extent, ill-becoming of an expert. He or she is simply not saying what s/he means. “Cannot be ruled out” means the same thing to the man on the street as it does to the expert analyst or any other functioning human being with a basic understanding of written communication.

Both phrases could be classed as “positive” observations, and indeed, I agree with Leander that it would constitute the lowest form of positive commentary, but neither could be used for conveying a belief that a given hypothesis is “probable”.

I certainly never claimed that Leander felt the match to be a poor one, but neither did his initial letter insinuate, even vaguely that he came down in favour of there being a match. It was inconclusive. He couldn’t rule it out. He couldn’t exclude the possibility. That’s it. If he later came down in favour of a match, then I’m afraid he wouldn’t have been “clarifying” a stance. He would have been contradicting it.

I think it would have been better if Fisherman had simply left Leander’s initial observations stand.

At one such occasion, I asked Leander whether my wiew or Bens wiew was the correct one, and he answered by stating that Bens interpretation of the issue was a malicious one.

That was because you portrayed me in the worst possible light. You can't expect anything different when you contacted him with "Hey, Leander, Ben thinks you're a liar. What do you think of him?". He wasn't exactly about to give me a cup of tea.

Here's how it's going to work in future. If people dredge up acrimonious debates from the past, I'm just going to repeat the very same objections that I raised before. That's always what I've done, and I consider this latest attempt at Leandering to be the very worst sort of cyber-goading.

But I am NOT ready to accept any suggestion that Frank Leander was "unenthustiastic" or anything along those lines

Tough. You're forced to accept that this is what other people think. You can do nothing about it, except perhaps dredge up the topic on unrelated threads, and even then I'd still go on thinking it. Forever.

[Ben]

Dishonesty is what it is. Really tiresome and just this side of evil.

So anyone who happens to share forensic document examiner Sue Iremonger's view that the signatures don't much must be evil liars? I suppose Ms. Iremonger fits this description too?

Give me an excuse to take you seriously, Mike.

Dazzle us.

[Garry Wroe]

Hello Garry. But isn't it also possible that he was able to "hold it in" for extended periods and that such "holding in" is what caused the violent "ripping" episodes?

The problem, though, Lynn, is that Toppy managed to ‘hold it in’ over many decades without betraying a hint that he was any more than a decent, hard-working family man.

Best wishes.

Garry Wroe.

[Garry Wroe]

Hi Fish.

Given that tensions are yet again ramping up on a Toppy thread, please accept that what I'm about to say is meant in a friendly rather than adversarial spirit. But if you wish to address a viewpoint to me personally, could you please (a) do it in the form of a post rather than a dissertation; and (b) present it on the appropriate thread.

Thanks in advance.

Garry Wroe.

[lynn cates]

analogy

Hello Garry. Your dictum:

"The problem, though, Lynn, is that Toppy managed to ‘hold it in’ over many decades without betraying a hint that he was any more than a decent, hard-working family man."

is quite true. But, by analogy, similar reasoning does not completely preclude Kosminski as a candidate. Although not a hard working (anything but!) family man, he did manage to get described as a "harmless lunatic." Still, he is a candidate.

The best.
LC