Hutch in the 1911 Census?

[Ben]

Hi Gareth,

I think David Knott mentioned having/seeing a copy of the marriage signature, and I believe it included his middle initials. David mentioned that the marriage signature was very similar to the 1911 one, which is of great interest to us considering that Iremonger gave Toppy the thumbs down on the basis of the former. I'd be very surprised if the census signature bore more of a similarity to the witness scribblings than the marriage one (if GH really was Toppy, which I doubt), which was penned in 1895 as opposed to 1911.

Best regards,
Ben

[David Knott]

Hi Ben,

Yes the signature on the marriage entry includes the middle names (not just the initials, but the whole names). The 'George' and the 'Hutchinson' are very similar to the 1911 census signature, as you would probably expect.


Regards
David

[Crystal]

I can't agree that these this lower signature is likely to be the same as the three witness statement signatures. It is certainly true that a person's handwriting develops over time, and also that there are likely to be slight variations in any given time period - over the course of a day, for example. However, there are many fundamental differences here which suggest to me that the lower signature was not written by the individual responsible for the first three. The only real point of similarity is the trail on the lower case 'n' in 'Hutchinson'.

Generalities in handwriting at the time are to be expected - everybody taught to write was taught in a prescribed 'style' - the general shape of these signatures - e.g. forward slant, general proportions in terms of size of capital and lower case letters. Nonetheless, there are significant differences here. The shape of the capital 'G' is dissimilar and the lower signature is looped; The lower case 'e' is compressed - it is not in the witness signatures; the general shape of the lower case 'o' is compressed and of a different shape in the witness signatures than in the lower signature; the bar of the lower case 't' does not pass through the next letter in the lower signature - this could be a progression over time; the lower case 'h' is not only looped in the witness signatures, it is wholly different - the stem is much shorter in proportion to the bowl in the lower signature, and note also that the bowl of the witness signatures is very low, almost flat. I would say also that the lower case 'c' and 'o' were written differently - the witness from left to right, the author of the lower signature from right to left.

You may disagree, of course.

[Mike Covell]

Just a quick one.

I was in the local Maritime Museum here in Hull and noticed this,

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1282007&l=8517f&id=586989665

It was quite far behind glass but bears the signature of George Hutchinson, of London, but I couldn't make out a date. I took several snaps, this was the clearest!

[Ben]

Thanks for sharing, Mike!

Any idea of the date?

Cheers,
Ben

[Mike Covell]

I have a friend who works for the Museums, so I will be chatting to him when he finishes work. I was also interested in a pitcure they had at another museum, that simply said "Church Street Oil Mill" and looks like The Union Mill!

I will let you know, when I know.

[Sam Flynn]

It was quite far behind glass but bears the signature of George Hutchinson, of London, but I couldn't make out a date.

The pre-printed text refers to "The King", and it looks like there are words like "affirm'd" and "fhip" (instead of "ship") in it. Unless they were using old pro-formas, this suggests to me that the document predates the Victorian era.

[John Savage]

Hi Mike,

Although it is somewhat difficult to read, what you have found looks to be a Bill of Lading. This is a document confirming that freight for shipment has been loaded aboard a ship, and were and to whom the freight is bound. It contains details of the goods being carried and is an important document used worldwide by the shipping industry to this day [although in a much updated form].

The Bill of Lading would always have been signed by either the Captain or the Mate, so this fits in with the idea that JTR was a seaman and obviously Georeg Hutchinson must have been the culprit!

Only snag is the date, as far as I can make out it looks like 1811-1812.
Oh well I thought I'd cracked it there for a moment.

Rgds
John

[Mike Covell]

Thanks John, my eyesight is terrible, and this was the clearest image I was able to obtain. If you get the chance to pop into the Maritime Museum, it's on the first floor, opposite the mock cabin featuring man and dog!

I wrote to Hull CC Museums yesterday, but also have a friend who works for Hull Museums, and have contacted him, to see if he can shed any light on this, or get us a copy.

[The Good Michael]

My opinion: All those signatures are similar enough to belong to the same man.
There is the possibility that someone was trying to copy another's signature, but that seems remote to me. There are differences, to be sure, but my own signature differs from day to day and depending upon such things as haste and tiredness. This being said, there are certain characteristics that are always detectable. That's what I see in Hutch's signature.

Mike

[Crystal]

The first three signatures are the same, being the witness statement signatures of George Hutchinson, as I understood it. The last signature is not the same, and even allowing for time and 'normal' routine variation, is unlikely to have been written by the same person. There are fundamental differences in my view.

[Ben]

Totally agree, Crystal.

A major objection to the Toppy signature is that it contains elements that are effectively polar opposite to the witness signatures. At least with the original "George William Hutchinson" from Lambeth that Gareth helpfully provided, we can discern the same tall, double-stem and unusually small base of the lower case "h". With Toppy, I can only describe his "h" as antithesis.

Best regards,
Ben

[Crystal]

Yes, the lower case 'h' is fundamentally different, and there is also the near certainty that the authors of these signatures did not even write in the same way - by which I mean that they completed the letters of the signatures differently. I am going on a bit, its true, about a matter which is really very small in the scale of things, but I see this sort of stuff on a routine basis, so I have some grounds for knowing what I'm talking about. I appreciate that others see similarities - but I bet if you lined up 6 different signatures from different George Hutchinsons, you could find similarities between them all. The same would probably not be true today. So if anyone fancies giving it a go.....

Best wishes

Crystal

[DVV]

Hi all,
Ben and Crystal, I'd be almost with you, except that similarities and differences can't prove anything in my opinion.
If I see my name written in 2009 almost as I used to write it 23 years ago, be sure I haven't penned it.
So, all in all, graphology seems rather useless here (and it's even not about what we call now "signatures", it's just about two names written as people used to write at the time), and can't make Toppy our "Hutch".
22 years old and he knew Mary for 3 years? And he sometimes gave her money? And she calls him "Mr Hutchinson"?
Humm...
My favorite theory will instead makes me focus on "Geo Hutchinson" (page 2).
Saucy Joe?
...
Amitiés,
David

[caz]

Of course, it would have been a dead giveaway that Hutch the witness was being very naughty indeed and using a false name when he went to the police, had he not been expecting to have to sign a statement and been caught out misspelling his adopted name:

Gorge Huchingson

At least he knew enough to get the basics right and also knew that Geo was short for George.

If his name was really Fleming, it's a pity he wasn't using an alias that he had to ask how to spell!

Hi Sam,

For what it's worth, I thought all four signatures looked remarkably similar in their general appearance, angle and shape, considering how many ways in which number 4 could have looked totally and very obviously different from the others, if it was written by a different individual, a quarter of a century after our Hutch, and a quarter of a century older too.

I would love someone to look into possible similarities in handwriting between family members, who were not schooled at the same time, not brought up together, and never lived together - and that could lead on to people sharing the same surname - just to see if genetics could play any part. Whenever I get anything in the post from my daughter (21) or my brothers (in their fifties), I find it remarkably tough to distinguish between the writing on the envelope, while hubby finds it practically impossible. Yet my daughter was obviously schooled in a different generation, and has only had glimpses of my brothers' writing on greetings cards, so the only other possible influence I can think of would be their blood relationship. My own writing doesn't resemble my daughter's, but changes like the weather.

I certainly don't think science has all, if any, definitive answers yet when it comes to handwriting analysis.

Love,

Caz
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