Hutch in the 1911 Census?

[Sam Flynn]

I regard the differences to be hugely significant

On what basis, Ben?

certainly no less that the perceived similarities

Actual similarities.

an observation shared by Sue Iremonger who compared the signatures and arrived at the opinion that Toppy wasn't the witness.

Have we confirmed that she ever said that in such bald terms?

[DVV]

You're right (again), Ben,

and btw, non-experts differ also, don't they ?!

Amitiés,
David

[DVV]

Actual similarities.

Actual differences as well, Sam.

Amitiés,
David

[Sam Flynn]

Actual differences as well, Sam.

Indeed, but insignificant ones - and VERY few in number, considering the passage of time. Do you seriously think I'd have risked identity-theft by posting my OWN signatures on a public website to prove that point, if I hadn't had good grounds to do so?

[DVV]

Ok Sam,

You took a great risk, so Toppy is the witness.
What else can I say ?

...except that, imo, some differences are significant.

Amitiés,
David

[Ben]

On what basis, Ben?

On the basis that I outlined very earlier on in the thread, Gareth, as endorsed by some of the experts in the field of document examination, who were inclined to dismiss Toppy as the witness on the grounds that those differences were significant.

Indeed, but insignificant ones - and VERY few in number, considering the passage of time.

Most emphatically not. Sue Iremonger, who examined the documents, clearly didn't believe that the differences were "insignificant". She believed they outweighed the similarities. In fact, I've heard no actual expert in the field dismiss the differences as "insigificant" - quite the contrary. The differences assume greater significance, when we consider that they remained different (from the statement signatures) over a period spanning 13 years.

[Crystal]

OH DEAR! Are we still at it? Gosh, patience, people, patience! I can tell you this much - somebody around here can look forward to a very large slice of humble pie - actually, scrap that, an entire pie....

I'm doing my best - will try to get to Kew this week - between the many other demands on my time - Ben, I'm looking at you! - and will try to start the process for requesting copyright permission.

I must warn you, however, that this material is considered by the staff at Kew to be highly controversial, and I may not get permission because of that. An incident a few years ago in which somebody attempted to add documents to the MEPO files - thus falsifying the record, has meant that they are extremely circumspect with the originals. I think they would take some persuading to publish anything further from the files, because of the controvesy surrounding the material. I will attempt to press the point of public consumption - and we will see how I do.

David - apologies for the delay - been in Devon and had I.T. problems - about to send you some images now.

Cx

[caz]

From #1620 April 28...

And no, the number is not freakishly small, here are the reasons why again:

1) We don't know how many people named "George Hutchinson" left London between the 12th Novemner 1888 and the taking of the 1891 census.

2) We cannot possibly know how many people were living in London in the year 1888, when no census was taken.

3) We have no idea if "George Hutchinson" was the real name of the individual who introduced himself as such to police on 12th November 1888.

The number of potential candidates for the witness in question must therefore be regarded as extremely high.

Hi Ben,

From what I have read it does look like there has only been a handful of real George Hutchinsons identified as possibilities. You can only make the giant leap to include pretty much every male who could have been in the vicinity of Miller's Court on November 9 1888 if you first make the speculative leap that the witness lied from the off by using an alias, because he had something serious to hide when he strode into the cop shop to volunteer his services.

It's a house of cards built on no supporting evidence, and erring on the side of caution would involve acknowledging that the witness was more likely to be using his real name - especially if he was expecting his claim that Mary Kelly knew him as "Hutchinson" to be checked out with her known associates - in which case he would have been among the infinitely smaller group of potential George Hutchinsons.

If you want the witness to have given a false name then you can’t then trust him to have told the truth about being resident in the area, when for all you know he could have spent most of his time somewhere like Romford, where he may have been a familiar face, looking in vain for some kind of regular job, and only coming into Whitechapel on odd occasions, to find a bit of casual work, catch up with an old friend or two, or even murder and mutilate a prossie while he was at it, where few people would even know him by sight, let alone his real name.

What price your 'local' killer theory then, if he lied through his teeth about being a solid and reliable presence in the community, doing his bit for law and order? That would be hilarious.

In post #1652 April 29, you wrote to Fisherman:

If you wish to doubt Iremonger's credentials, you're welcome to do so. I'm not sure what I'm really supposed to do (care, perhaps?), or why you think your doubt should have an impact, but your biggest clue lies in the fact that Messrs Begg, Fido and Hinton were all in communication with her, and Martin Fido in particular was fulsome in praise of her abilities. Of course, if you want to argue that the gentleman in question were duped...?

Seeing you go on in the very next line to accuse Fisherman of using ‘tortured English’ was hilarious. Thanks for the laugh. Did you momentarily lose your grip on your own vastly superior command of the language, or did you really mean to accuse poor old Martin of being sickeningly obsequious; nauseatingly affectionate, admiring or praiseful; loosely, copious or lavish; or excessive* in praise of Sue’s talents?

[*fulsome = sickeningly obsequious; nauseatingly affectionate, admiring or praiseful; loosely, copious or lavish; excessive]

Tough titty, Fisherman. Here I am. I disagree with you, and I will cheerfully reiterate that disagreement whevever you feel like engaging in repetition, and yes, you do care what I think, otherwise you wouldn't keep responding in so venonmous and fulsome a fashion.

And I’d love to know how Fisherman managed to be venomous and fulsome towards you at the same time. Wouldn’t one rather cancel out the other?

How would you explain away your simply atrocious misuse of the English language in these two instances, assuming you will not be insulting everyone’s intelligence by trying to pass them off as ‘obvious typos’? If you can’t explain it, what the hell qualifies you as the resident expert on identifying anyone else’s misuse of language?

Here, for the record, are Bob Hinton's exact words: "The world renowned document examiner, Sue Iremonger, has also investigated whether or not this is the correct George Hutchinson. She compared the marriage certificate signature of George W. T. Hutchinson, with the signature on the statement made by George Hutchinson, and has concluded that they are not made by the same person.

Ooh lordy. Which signature [singular] on the statement, though? We have been told that Sue was only 'definite' about the page one sig being by Badham, and therefore not by the same person who signed pages two and three. That would only rule out Badham as Toppy. Anyone coming relatively fresh to this topic, and stumbling upon the odd oasis in this vast desert of non-information, might be forgiven for wondering if the conclusion implied above might be a mirage.

What I'm saying is that the other elements (the patent bollocks in Melvyn Harris's book aside)...

Now I really don't think you wanted to say that, Sam...

And I don’t think young Ben wanted to say this either:

I'm still in awe of my power to hypnotize people into interminable posting battles with me. That's what I find astonishing. In a good way, of course, but no less astonishing for that. There never seems to be any sense that, "Oh, it's just Ben, that Hutchinson zealot who goes on and on, and isn't worth taking seriously." None of that ever happens. I reckon if I paid someone a million pounds to resist the temptation to ignore me, they'd fail miserably.

To be fair, Ben, one could count the number of people who get drawn into truly epic posting battles with you on the fingers of one badly mangled hand.

How do you know that the vast majority of readers, who rarely if ever challenge your opinions, aren’t all thinking “Oh, it’s just that Hutch zealot again, losing himself yet more credibility without my having to lift a finger… etc etc”?

Oh and yes please, put your money where your mouth is and pay me a million pounds, and I promise to continue resisting the considerable temptation just to ignore you. I was already doing that for nothing.

But I’m thinking maybe you ought to check your small print - you could cost yourself an absolute fortune by having it arse about face. That would be some incentive - a million pounds to resist the urge to carry on ignoring you and start doing ‘battle’ with you instead. I’m sure one or two would overcome even the most powerful feelings of revulsion to do it for a much more modest fee.

And of course, the possibility that you had this arse about face can hardly be excluded given your recent posting history.

And right there is the rather crucial difference between something that is 'hardly possible to exclude' on the available evidence, and something that cannot entirely be ruled out despite the available evidence.

As promised, I asked a Swedish friend of mine to independently translate Leander's initial response to Fisherman. This is her response, which I received today:

[Caz goes snip snip and cuts right to the chase]

...It is hardly possible to exclude that it is the same person that is involved...

Thank you, Crystal, for providing this example. I leave others to interpret it within their own personal grasp of the language, with or without emotional attachments various.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

You are positively fixated with me, aren't you?

From what I have read it does look like there has only been a handful of real George Hutchinsons identified as possibilities.

Well then you haven't been reading very carefully, since there are a great many more than a "handful", including candidates that we know appeared in the 1891/1901 census but whose absence were conspicuous from the 1911 census. As for the possibility of Hutchinson being an alias, there's no "leap" involved there at all. Given the widely accepted belief that the contents of his statement "engenders a feeling of scepticism", there is no leap at all in fathoming that the author of a demonstrably bogus (and contemporaneously discredited) statement could have supplied police with an equally bogus name.

I'm not asserting that it happened that way, necessarily. But you must first exclude that strong possibility before making the unacceptable "leap" of faith that asserts that there are only a handful of possible candidates. That is wrong - factually wrong, and to argue otherwise is to do precisely what you cautioned against: building a "house of cards built on no supporting evidence". To "err on the side of caution" is to avoid excluding possibilities, especially the strong ones, and no, there is nothing that would permit you to conclude that it is "more likely" than he used his real name.

especially if he was expecting his claim that Mary Kelly knew him as "Hutchinson" to be checked out with her known associates

And if they do investigate that claim, and discover that none of Kelly's associates knew of anyone named George Hutchinson, what then? Hutchinson would simply protest that of course Kelly wasn't about to go around divulging the names of her occasional clients willy-nilly, leaving the police powerless to challenge him on that point.

If you want the witness to have given a false name then you can’t then trust him to have told the truth about being resident in the area, when for all you know he could have spent most of his time somewhere like Romford

Oh but I can - easily.

One of them was eminently "checkable" and the other wasn't. It's as simple as that. The coppers could have contacted the Victoria home, presented them with the man known to them (the police) as “George Hutchinson”, and they could have confirmed that the man in question was a regular user of that particular lodging house, even if they didn’t know his name. The question of whether “George Hutchinson” was the man’s real name would have been much harder to verify or contradict for reasons that surely don’t need explaining.

“Thanks for the laugh. Did you momentarily lose your grip on your own vastly superior command of the language, or did you really mean to accuse poor old Martin of being sickeningly obsequious; nauseatingly affectionate, admiring or praiseful; loosely, copious or lavish; or excessive* in praise of Sue’s talents?”

Do you even know how to use a thesaurus or a dictionary?

“Fulsome”, as any idiot will appreciate, can mean “excessively lavish”. It can also mean “comprehensive" or “encompassing all aspects”. I therefore used the word in its correct context when discussing Martin’s views of Iremonger’s contributions. He “encompassed all aspects” of Iremonger’s praiseworthy aspects, and was lavish in his praise of her. When it comes to Fisherman, congratulations for consulting your thesaurus, because it taught you that it can also mean “disgusting; sickening; repulsive”. So in that context, too, it was correctly applied. Back we go to the sentence: “you do care what I think, otherwise you wouldn't keep responding in so venonmous and fulsome a fashion", where you'll see it applies perfectly.

And there we go. The word “fulsome” was used in its correct context both times. If you’re accusing me of misusing the English language, you’re factually incorrect, which only serves to underscore the fact that – and this may sound petty – I’m simply better at this stuff than you, immeasurably so.

I know you’re intellectually insecure.

I know that you think it annoys me more than anything, and that you're only doing it to elicit an angry response that may get me penalised or even banned by the moderators.

I know that you use that intellectual insecurity reveals itself when you follow me around in a desperate attempt to score points over me, but I’m afraid it must join the ranks of the unsuccessful debating strategies against me – strategies that only serve to get burped back in your face when they go wrong, which, let's face it, is all the time.

“Ooh lordy. Which signature [singular] on the statement, though?”

All of them, as we learned subsequently from Jonathan’s posts, as reinforced by Messrs. Fido and Begg.

“How do you know that the vast majority of readers, who rarely if ever challenge your opinions, aren’t all thinking “Oh, it’s just that Hutch zealot again, losing himself yet more credibility without my having to lift a finger… etc etc”?”

Good point. What a stroke of misfortune then that the only people who do insist upon engaging me in prolific and relentless battles are the most clumsy and ineffective debaters around? Of course, you’d delight to posit the existence of hoards of other people quieting acknowledging your brilliance in the wings “Go Caz, tell Ben what a horrible bastard he is!”, but the chances of that fantasy reflecting reality are effectively zero.

“Oh and yes please, put your money where your mouth is and pay me a million pounds, and I promise to continue resisting the considerable temptation just to ignore you. I was already doing that for nothing.”

No, you weren’t.

You’ve been following me around relentlessly for years. You can’t even begin to resist the temptation, and why would I pay you to piss off? I don’t want you to go anywhere, and I’m sustained by the inferiority of the most vocal pocket of opposition. By all means, stick around,

[Sam Flynn]

Sorry, Caz - and well spotted. I meant Melvyn Fairclough, of course.

[DVV]

Ben sings in French for Caz

You are positively fixated with me, aren't you?

Hello both!


"... Je sens comme une ombre sur moi
Un mirage gris
Qui m'enlève les joies que me donne la vie
Pour me laisser seul dans la nuit

Je suis poursuivi par
Ce gros nuage gris
Où que j'aille il me poursuit
Depuis que je suis né je l'ai toujours vu là
Vraiment la chance n'est pas pour moi

Et un de ces jours quand je serai mort
Alors il deviendra plus gris
Il sera là pour juger de mon sort
Et me chasser loin du paradis..."

Johnny Halliday (sorry)

Amitiés,
David

[The Good Michael]

It is hardly possible to exclude that it is the same person that is involved – there is a number of correspondences of general characteristic (style characteristic, the level of writing skill, the extension of the writing, some proportions) and as far as can be judged from the copy also some form correspondences regarding individual letters.

Just to get back to this: Hardly possible to exclude is about what Fisherman was saying. The emphasis is on probability here, just as Fisherman believed and as Caz pointed out (through inference).

Leander sees what many of us see. That's a good thing.

Mike

[Ben]

I'm not sure why you'd want to "get back to this" when it was discussed at length in painful and ill-tempered detail pages back, but I disagree, then as now. If you wish to convey probability, you can say "this is probable" or "this is likely", rather than declaring something "Not impossible" and hoping everyone understands that you secretly mean probable.

I appreciative that others disagree, but I really hoped we'd simply agreed to disagree on this.

Anyone up for some fun repetition of earlier debates?

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Maybe, Babybird, we should not get too entangled in who has called whom what, and instead try and focus on the issue itself. And on that issue, it is of relevance to realize that what Leander said was that he could not provide a full expert opinion, this owing to the fact that he only saw the material twodimensionally and that he would have liked to have more samples to compare with.
That does not mean, however, that his resulting opinion in any fashion lacked in professionalism. He used his training and experience to establish that what could be perceived from his material visually, was that he would be surprised if we did not have a match at hand.

A full examination of the originals may or may not provide insights that may or may not have changed his wiew. The same goes for added signatures.

I propose that Leanders examination is by far the best one we have on the issue. I fully concur with Garrys suggestion that we need to know for sure which samples have been compared, the levels of concordance, probability values, and so forth when it comes to an examination. In Leanders case, we have that knowledge to a significant extent, whereas when it comes to Iremonger, we have nothing like it. And, to go on quoting Garry: "These are the nuts and bolts of empirical evaluation, and in their absence any ‘scientific’ claims in either direction are entirely pointless."

That is what I have been saying all along, and that is what a number of posters have had all sorts of trouble swallowing down. Alongside that, all sorts of strange accusations have been thrown forward, one of them being that I misused a personal trust when I published Leanders contribution, something that was quite wrong from beginning to end.
I feel pretty sure, Babybird, that Garry is able to pick up on what has been going on on the 1911 thread, just as I think he will be able to come up with a verdict of his own about who has been calling whom what, and why. I feel no personal need to point out what I was subjected to myself, since it is totally unrelated to the core issue.
So let´s leave him to it, shall we?

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Have it again, if you're desperate to start a repetetive Leander-war again:

He used his training and experience to establish that what could be perceived from his material visually, was that he would be surprised if we did not have a match at hand.

Which was in incredibly stark contrast to anything he claimed in his first post, as you've just quoted above. He most emphatically never said anything that could be even vaguely construed as synonymous with "I'd be surprised if we did not have a match at hand". There is no convergence of the twain here at all. If he said one, but meant the other, I'm afraid he has a serious problem with conveying his true meaning.

I propose that Leanders examination is by far the best one we have on the issue.

And I reject that as utter nonsense, since we know from several highly reputable sources that Sue Iremonger examined the original documents and came to the conclusion that Toppy was not the witness. This was attested to by, amongst others, Paul Begg and Martin Fido, and it wouldn't have been a case of comparing on-screen images which convey no accurate impression of relative size, pen pressure or anything of that nature. To argue that Leander's comparison is "by far the best" when Leander himself observed that a full expert opinion was not "possible" given the material is completely unaccaptable.

I feel pretty sure, Babybird, that Garry is able to pick up on what has been going on on the 1911 thread, just as I think he will be able to come up with a verdict of his own about who has been calling whom what, and why.

If you're looking for adherents to your cause, that one won't work either, since we know Garry does not share your view that Toppy was the witness. He is also of the opinion that Leander's initial observations conveyed neutrality.

I'm so glad we're going through all this again.