Topping Hutchinson - looking at his son's account

[Lechmere]

Oh dear Mr Ben - the contemporary records show that the apprenticeship system for plumbers had almost totally broken down by the mid 1880s.
Also we have no idea whether any misfoprtune may have befallen poor Toppy.
I do not have to fill in any blanlks or copme up with any must have's. All I have to do is who that there is no reason for him not ending up in the East End - which I have.

[DVV]

If Toppy worked with his father for a period and then moved to the East End, and was not fully trained as a plumber at that stage, then why would he call himself a plumber – when he wasn’t?

The son of a plumber, trained as a plumber, would more likely introduce himself as a plumber than as a groom.
Quite simple.

[Ben]

Exactly, David.

Fisherman,

“...or took another route altogether to his plumbership, as suggested by Lechmere.”

…Which took him into a crowded lodging house in the worst part of the East End, where his “other” route (which he embarked upon after snubbing his nose at his father’s plumbing profession) quickly went tits-up, and he started forming three-year friendships with prostitutes. But then it was a quick “reconciliation” with daddy, even quicker entry into the plumbing profession.

That is the complicated, purely hypothetical, zero evidence explanation required to cast Toppy in the mould of the real George Hutchinson.

The more rational explanation, of course, is that Toppy became a plumber at the earliest opportunity, like his father and probably grandfather before him, and never looked back since, making sense of both the 1891 entry listing him as a plumber and Reg’s reference to his father as having been “rarely, if ever, out of work” (Reg being a source you trust and use as evidence to support Toppy’s candidacy, remember?).

I have always been more than prepared to accept that plumbing apprenticeships weren’t always seven years long, and that Toppy’s own tuition might have been carried out by his father, but all this talk about “intermittent fall outs” and subsequent "reconciliations” is resulting in some rather outlandish conclusions. Many people fall out with their parents, but these fall-outs rarely result in lives of enforced (but quickly reversible!) destitution in some of the worst places imaginable.

Your reference to David Knott’s information contains a crucial and obvious flaw. Toppy’s father remarried in 1888, and it was suggested that son and stepmother did not get on. Hence, if any sort of fall-out occurred that prompted Hutchinson to get the ‘ump and move into the East End, it must have happened in 1888.

But we’re all spotting the problem here, of course.

Yep! The real George Hutchinson informed the police that he had known Kelly for three years, i.e. from 1885 when she was living off Pennington Street in the East End near the docks. This implies that the real George Hutchinson had lived in the East End for three years before Toppy’s father re-married, when Toppy was supposed to have fallen-out with his father. David Knott himself wrote:

“It has also been suggested that Toppy did not get on with his father's new partner, which may be a reason for him leaving the family home.”

Which meant he would have left the family home in 1888 (which wasn’t in the East End), whereas the real Hutchinson had clearly been in the East End since at least 1885.

“the whole argument about this was initiated because it was stated (by you, for example) that the rules and regulations meant that we could be sure that Toppy got his education during an unbroken stretch of seven years, and that there was seemingly no other way that any young man could become a plumber.”

Really?

Let’s go back through this thread and discover what I really said:

“Plumbing apprenticeships usually lasted seven years (between the ages of 14 and 21) meaning that if Hutchinson had been bumming round the East End as an unemployed labouring former groom at age 22, he had most assuredly missed the boat, and was very unlikely to be a working plumber by 1891 (as Toppy was)” – 13th June 2009

“It has emerged that it was easier to become a plumber prior to 1886, which meant that Toppy had even lessincentive to resort to the slums of Whitechapel. Why would he endure such degradations and squalor if he could gain entry into the profession? I say easily, for two reasons: A) Because his father was already in the plumbing trade, and B) Because the restrictions were clearly very lax prior to 1886.

After 1886 the regulations were tightened, and yet it is only after the tightening of these regulations that you want Toppy to have suddenly entered the plumbing profession. Thanks to Gareth's article, we learn that it became even more difficult to become a plumber after 1886, with little or no apprenticeship to speak of, and at an age when apprenticeships weren't generally offered” - also 13th June 2009.

When I stated that, “it has emerged…” I was referring to the articles Gareth provided ages ago, all of which were reproduced by Lechmere on the “wrong night” thread (not in full, though, significantly). What you describe as “Lechmeres eminent work” and “Lechmeres finds” were actually sources that had already been provided by Gareth on this thread. In future, Lechmere might consider telling us where he obtains the sources he provides and avoid creating the erroneous impression that he is telling us something new when he isn't.

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=90278&postcount=228

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=90283&postcount=231

[The Good Michael]

The son of a plumber, trained as a plumber, would more likely introduce himself as a plumber than as a groom.
Quite simple.

Unless he wasn't yet a plumber and liked the sound of groom better than laborer.
It doesn't matter, however, because we know Toppy is Hutch. The doubt is gone.

Mike

[DVV]

It doesn't matter, however, because we know Toppy is Hutch. The doubt is gone.

Mike

Lol....

[babybird67]

Which meant he would have left the family home in 1888 (which wasn’t in the East End), whereas the real Hutchinson had clearly been in the East End since at least 1885.

Absolutely spot on Benz! None of the timings support the contention that Toppy was in the East End at the relevant times. Combine that with the fact that Hutchinson was a groom/labourer not a plumber and that the signatures do not match according to the only professional examination of the documents that has been performed and there is clear evidence that Toppy was not the same person as the Hutchinson of the Ripper case.

Jen x

[Ben]

Beautifully summed-up, Beebs.

And spot on.

X

[DVV]

Just wonder how the big thread could have been so big, in retrospect...

[The Good Michael]

Just wonder how the big thread could have been so big, in retrospect...

Because the needle was enormous.

Mike

PS. Could be a metaphor

[DVV]

You could reply to Jen's post, though.

PS: could be a hard task.

[Fisherman]

All of these incredibly long posts to try and hold on to a picture of Toppy as an apprenticed seven-year educated plumber are pathetic! It´s no longer an issue. We used to discuss it when there was a need, but there is no such need any further. Haven´t you noticed?

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

DVV
If Toppy was Hutchinson (and I will suspect there will never be absolute proof – there is however a more than plausible connection) then why would he call himself a plumber in 1888 if he had been working as a groom or labourer in the immediate past and if he at that time did not intend to go back to being a plumber?
The obvious answer is that he wouldn’t.

Mr Ben
There is nothing to say Hutchinson was destitute just because he lived in the Victoria Home.

There is nothing to say that Toppy’s father’s re-marriage in 1888 was the cause of a fall out. However Toppy’s father’s relationship with the woman who became his second wife may have been the catalyst. But I presume that his father met his second wife prior to marrying her in 1888... plausibly a year or two before. We don’t know how long Hutchinson (whether it is Toppy or not) lived in the East End.
Then again perhaps it was a whirlwind romance. Just like in a Disney film.
Anyway Toppy (or a non Toppy Hutchinson) could have moved to the East End in the beginning of 1888 for all we know. Or his father could have met his future wife and began courting her in 1885.
I have previously stated that it is implausible that he knew Kelly for three years.
Why did Toppy leave the bosom of his family and move the central London – which he undoubtedly did? We have no way of knowing. It may have nothing to do with his father’s re-marriage.

I would be interested to see you reproduce some bits of text that I ‘significantly’ did not reproduce. I am sure I reproduced all the relevant bits. Come on – which bits are missing?

And what exactly do you mean by this ridiculous and precious statement...
“In future, Lechmere might consider telling us where he obtains the sources he provides and avoid creating the erroneous impression that he is telling us something new when he isn't.”
I made it abundantly clear that I had gone through this thread for my information. Were you unable to work that one out?

Mr Ben – this statement of yours (yes just to confirm, I am quoting you) was frankly worthless as hardly any plumbers in the late 1880s and early 1890s bothered with apprenticeships.
“Plumbing apprenticeships usually lasted seven years (between the ages of 14 and 21) meaning that if Hutchinson had been bumming round the East End as an unemployed labouring former groom at age 22, he had most assuredly missed the boat, and was very unlikely to be a working plumber by 1891 (as Toppy was)” – 13th June 2009

The Worshipful Company of Plumbers introduced a test that they wished to encourage plumbers to undertake and to encourage potential employers to insist upon their plumbers being suitably qualified. The test clearly did not require anything like seven years training.
Also it isn’t correct to say he could easily have gained entry to the profession before 1886. All that can be said is that he could more easily have found work as an unqualified and potentially bodging plumber before then. Clearly the situation did not right itself overnight and the ‘problem’ of there being a large number of bodgers persisted. Whether Toppy worked as a plumber continuously from when he was 14 until 1891 (when he would have been 25) or whether he had a break in between for some reason, it seems likely that he will have taken the test at some point. Then again maybe he didn’t and just got by with the skill he learnt and on recommendations – as many tradesmen do to this day.

The simple fact is we don’t know the answers to any of these questions.

The fact remains that Toppy had ample time between 1880 (when he was 14) and 1891 (when he was 25) to become a qualified plumber and have a break in between. I don’t think anyone will ever be able to prove that he did but it is quite possible.

Similarly he could have moved to the East End and been living there in 1888. The fact is he moved away from the rest of his family to central London by 1891, and then married an East End girl and moved there and raised a family there. And of course his parents were married in Shoreditch. Again I don’t think anyone will ever be able to prove that he lived there in 1888, but it is quite possible.

To argue against either of these possibilities as if they are totally improbable seems to me to be ludicrous.

[Ben]

“If Toppy was Hutchinson (and I will suspect there will never be absolute proof – there is however a more than plausible connection”

Not really, Lechmere. Not with biographical data that doesn’t match, signatures that a professional document examiner has adjudged to be a mismatch with the statement signatures, and a discredited royal conspiracy theory attached to his name. What you really should say is that while there may never be absolute proof that Toppy was not Hutchinson, they were very unlikely to have been the same person. If he had been apprenticed as a plumber before 1888, as you are suggesting, that would make him a plumber by trade or a plumbing trainee by trade, not a groom by trade now working as a labourer like the real person who introduced himself to the police as George Hutchinson.

I do wish you would stop trying to assert that the only obstacle to the very absurd Toppy-the-witness premise is the absence of “absolute proof”. Try the absence of any indication to suppose that they were the same, and the compelling indications against such a suggestion instead.

“There is nothing to say that Toppy’s father’s re-marriage in 1888 was the cause of a fall out.”

I know.

I wish to make a small but crucial correction to my last post, incidentally. It appears that that George Sr’s marriage to his second wife, Emma Gin, occurred in June of 1890 and not in early-to mid 1888 as previously stated. So I’m afraid that’s an even bigger piss on the bonfire for those who have argued that Toppy’s highly speculative, no-evidence “fall out” with his father was the reason for his move from the family home to the East End and subsequent mutation into the George Hutchinson who gave his statement in November of 1888. This marriage occurred two years after the real Hutchinson gave his statement - two years after Toppy was supposed to have stormed off to seek his fortune in the East End to escape poor old Miss Gin (in this Utoppia that lacks any supporting evidence).

I’ve always wondered why you were prepared to defend Hutchinson in almost all other details apart from the claim to have known Kelly for three years, and now it seems obvious. The detail is clearly very inconvenient to the attempted Toppy identification.

If you weren’t attempting to pass Gareth’s press-related finds off as your own (which I’ll cheerfully believe on your say so), then at least give your Toppiological ally Fisherman a helping hand as he is clearly under the impression that “there is no such need any further” to discuss the plumbing issue purely on account of your purported “finds”. If it was abundantly clear that you had extracted those sources from this thread, it certainly wasn’t so to him.

“Why did Toppy leave the bosom of his family and move the central London – which he undoubtedly did”

Because he’d completed his training as a plumber, and was then in a position to work as one. I can’t think of anything less unusual or complicated.

“The Worshipful Company of Plumbers introduced a test that they wished to encourage plumbers to undertake and to encourage potential employers to insist upon their plumbers being suitably qualified.”

But he wouldn’t have been “suitably qualified” if he had been bumming around the East End as a labouring former groom, would he? That’s the whole point. It was precisely because of the decline of apprenticeships that the rules for entry into the profession were tightened up. These exams were very obviously intended for plumbing aspirants who had undertaken extensive training already, which is why it was considered a viable substitute in the very late 1880s for the apprenticeship process. The idea that Toppy could have emerged from the East End life of a labourer or groom to become chummy again with his dad, re-learn the entire plumbing trade more or less overnight and march straight into the examination room is very obviously incorrect.

“The fact is he moved away from the rest of his family to central London by 1891, and then married an East End girl and moved there and raised a family there.”

Exactly, and there’s no evidence that he had any personal connection to the East End until he met his East End wife.

[DVV]

DVV
If Toppy was Hutchinson (and I will suspect there will never be absolute proof – there is however a more than plausible connection) then why would he call himself a plumber in 1888 if he had been working as a groom or labourer in the immediate past and if he at that time did not intend to go back to being a plumber?
The obvious answer is that he wouldn’t.

That is far from obvious, I'm afraid, since the police statement and the press reports have been more eloquent regarding his trade than, for example, his age or physical appearance.
I'm even of opinion that a man who would have been apprenticed as a plumber would have been a bit proud of it, especially in Whitechapel where many people had to work here and there without qualifications nor skills.

Then why would Hutch had said "I was a groom", if he had been a qualified plumber ?

[The Good Michael]

David,

Of course he wasn't a plumber in 1888. You must be correct on that. That he became a plumber through training or simply by taking the trade name, is irrefutable at this point. In a bit of a convoluted way, Lechmere was saying exactly this, that it's obvious he didn't call himself a plumber because he was a groom or laborer.

Mike

PS. I have a few months free time this summer. Ethiopia, Sicily, the Faroes, or Chile. I can't decide.