Hutch in the 1911 Census?

[jmenges]

It should be noted that it appears that Hutchinson's signature on page one is cut-off abruptly. It's an incomplete scan.



JM

[Ben]

Well observed, Jon!

I hadn't noticed that before. In which case, the left stem of the small "n" could in fact be a very small and squashed "o".

Not sure how that would explain that 227, though.

Best regards,
Ben

[jmenges]

Hi Ben,

Re: the 227. This has got to be how it appears (cut-off) in the PRO files.

Hutchinson's statement is PRO,MEPO 3/140 ff. 227-9

JM

[Sam Flynn]

Well observed, Jon!

I hadn't noticed that before. In which case, the left stem of the small "n" could in fact be a very small and squashed "o".

More than "could", I think, Ben. All the characters in the scan are "chopped-off" down that corner of the page, and the lines on the paper consistently don't continue to the edge.

Well spotted, Jon! Your suggestion that the "227" was a later PRO index number (rather than having been on the page when signed) is almost certainly correct. Note how the "7" is offset upwards slightly from the "22" - suggesting a rubber stamp might have been used to print the number.

One would expect pre-printed numbering on official stationery to have been much neater in appearance, and to carry on to subsequent pages in the original pro-forma. As it is, only the first page seems to have been numbered - further evidence pointing to the probability that we're not looking at contemporary numbering. I can't imagine there was much of a point to have stationery whose pages were only marked on a "prime-number" basis

[caz]

The frequency with which you appear incredibly willing to do battle with me on any Hutchinson thread going would suggest to me that my position on the subject is no more entrenched than yours, which is why I somehow guessed where your opinion would fall when I first noticed your name as a contributor to this thread.

Hi Ben,

My 'position' is that I have seen no evidence yet to become as entrenched as you are in the 'Hutch looks as guilty as hell in every way possible' stakes. My position is as flexible - or not - as the evidence allows it to be I'm afraid.

What is my 'opinion' on this thread? I haven't been able to make up my mind on the evidence presented (no change there then). But I did make it clear to you from the start that, despite seeing similarities that you don't, between Hutch's witness sigs and Toppy's 1911 example, I wasn't trying to make a case for Hutch being Toppy. I'm still not. Hutch remains Hutch-the-Not-Positively-Identified (and not Toppy or Fleming or Jack the Ripper or anyone else) as far as I'm concerned until someone proves otherwise. If that's what you see as an entrenched position, we are always going to be planets apart, are we not?

A teeny tiny acknowledgement that I was right about the o being present and correct, despite all your emphatic statements to the contrary, would have been nice, while you're 'honestly' saying what you see.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

My 'position' is that I have seen no evidence yet to become as entrenched as you are in the 'Hutch looks as guilty as hell in every way possible' stakes.

The brand of entrenchment I'm talking about is one that would welcome all manner of implausible speculation with regard to the Hutchinson saga (like police officials inventing red stone seals and American cloth-wrapped parcels, and feeding them to the press) providing it avoids at all costs any speculation that Hutchinson might have been the murderer. That's all I meant.

A teeny tiny acknowledgement that I was right about the o being present and correct, despite all your emphatic statements to the contrary, would have been nice, while you're 'honestly' saying what you see.

But I was doing precisely that. There was no room for an "o" in the first page signature as it appears on the truncated scan, and since we both believed at that stage that we were looking at the full signature, you would have been wrong to argue otherwise. Jonathan pointed out that the end of the signature was cut off, allowing us to "make" room for an extra letter.

All the best,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

Toppy's marriage certificate

I've acquired (at great personal expense!) a copy of GWT Hutchinson's marriage certificate of 1898, and I can confirm that the way his name is signed does NOT correspond to the witness statement of a decade earlier:

1. Marriage Certificate Signature


2. 1888 Statement


Unfortunately, it doesn't match the 1911 Census signature either!

3. 1911 Census


When one compares the marriage certificate "Name and Surname" section, we see that the "signature" at the bottom is in the same handwriting:

4. Marriage Cert: Name and Surname


The same handwriting appears in the "Father's Name and Surname" section - which, he also being named "George Hutchinson", is quite handy:

5. Marriage Cert: Father's Name


Going further, we note that the instances of Florence Jervis' name appears in precisely the same hand. Note again that, as with the groom's name, the bride's "signature" is rendered in the same manner as it appears in the "Name and Surname" section:

6. Marriage Cert: Florence Jervis


Either GWT Hutchinson filled in every section of the certificate himself - including signing on behalf of his wife - or someone did it for him. Given that the former is extremely unlikely, the latter looks to be the more probable conclusion. When one looks at the Curate's signature on the same certificate, it appears that it might have been he, rather than George and Florence, who completed the form in its entirety, and "signed" it on behalf of the happy couple:

6. Marriage Cert: Curate's writing


Taking all the above into account, I'm pretty certain that Hutchinson did not append his signature to the marriage certificate - or, at least, that major doubt must adhere to its being his John Hancock. That being the case, the marriage certificate unfortunately can't be used to verify the 1888 signature.

[caz]

Hi Sam,

Well done! The curate's H does it for me.

One wonders what exactly Sue Iremonger was given and what, if anything, she was told about it, when asked to compare the two Hutch sigs. Someone has inadvertently made a fool of her, methinks.

Love,

Caz
X

[Debra A]

Hi Sam,
Well done for getting a copy of the marriage certificate. Just one query, is the certificate a photocopy or photograph of the original entry or did you just send away for a copy from the Reigister Office? If the latter, what you are seeing is the detail from the original entry copied onto a certificate by a modern day registrar, which might explain the discrepancies.

[caz]

The brand of entrenchment I'm talking about is one that would welcome all manner of implausible speculation with regard to the Hutchinson saga (like police officials inventing red stone seals and American cloth-wrapped parcels, and feeding them to the press) providing it avoids at all costs any speculation that Hutchinson might have been the murderer. That's all I meant.

Unfair, Ben. You single out what you see as the least plausible speculation (which I believe another poster initiated in any case) to explain the discrepancies between Hutch's police and press statements, while I am open to all speculative avenues - yes, even yours, which is just the one avenue lined with creepy looking trees all whispering to you as you trudge relentlessly on: "Hutch dunnit".

Don't you have a duty to history, if not your own credibility, to work on completely cutting off each and every 'innocent' avenue before concluding there is only the one where Hutch belongs: Letsby Avenue?

And no, Ben. For your information, I did not 'believe' I was looking at the full signature. I didn't know either way, but I did notice that the n appeared incomplete, hence my observation that many signatures trail off into vague squiggles or a wavy line for the final letter or letters. I was pretty confident I could see exactly where the o was and where the n began (but failed to finish like the other two) and I seem to have been proved right on both counts. Where do you think I saw the blasted o that you missed, if it wasn't the one that you can now see, thanks to Jonathan's confirmation of why the n appears unfinished?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Do you know, Ben, I still think you are getting this o and n business wrong. The left stem of the n is completely separate from the o in each witness signature and roughly the same distance to the right of it in all three examples. The only differences are the squashed o that looks more like an undotted i (before you get the horizontal line at the top, forming the link between the o and the n) and the fact that the n is artificially cut off in its prime.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Here's the respective bits from each document, tilt removed, with Toppy's 1911 "son" at the top and the "sons" from the statement below it:

[ATTACH]4720[/ATTACH]

Have another look. The right stem of the n is what's missing from the witness sig in question. (The first sig appears last here, which is a tad confusing.)

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Good job, Gareth!

One wonders what exactly Sue Iremonger was given and what, if anything, she was told about it, when asked to compare the two Hutch sigs

Caz, as Debs has explained, the contents of the marriage register you're looking at is almost certainly not the original, but a modern registrar filling in the salient details. In fact, I remember Debs mentioning this frustrating aspect when she sought to obtain a copy of George Thomas Hutchison's signature. If it really is the original, I take that back of course, but it's almost impossible to accept that the newlyweds themselves didn't sign it, and totally impossible to accept that Iremonger didn't pick up on the fact that the handwriting is the same on the whole form.

Bear in mind David Knott's important observation that the marital signature and the one from 1911 WERE similar: "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"

Don't you have a duty to history, if not your own credibility, to work on completely cutting off each and every 'innocent' avenue before concluding there is only the one where Hutch belongs

Of course, which is why I haven't cut off "each an every innocent avenue", just as I haven't "concluded" that Hutchinson murdered anyone. It simply remains a strong possibility that has yet to be successfully argued against, to my mind.

I did not 'believe' I was looking at the full signature.

Really?

Odd that you didn't say so at the time. Or were you just secretly noticing it, and hoping that I'd continue to miss it until Jonathan arrived to put me out of my misery. Sorry, I don't believe you entertained any more consideration that the scan may not have been complete than I did. I don't believe you were looking at anything other than what you believed to be a complete signature, or else you'd have said so at the time. If that was a complete signature, there'd be no room for an "o".

The left stem of the n is completely separate from the o in each witness signature and roughly the same distance to the right of it in all three examples.

Yes, I know. Thanks. That wasn't immediately apparent until it was observed that the scan was incomplete.

Best regards,
Ben

[Debra A]

Caz, as Debs has explained, the contents of the marriage register you're looking at is almost certainly not the original, but a modern registrar filling in the salient details. In fact, I remember Debs mentioning this frustrating aspect when she sought to obtain a copy of George Thomas Hutchison's signature. If it really is the original, I take that back of course, but it's almost impossible to accept that the newlyweds themselves didn't sign it, and totally impossible to accept that Iremonger didn't pick up on the fact that the handwriting is the same on the whole form.

Either way, you're conclusion is as premature as it is likely to be incorrect.

Bear in mind David Knott's important observation that the marital signature and the one from 1911 WERE similar.

Hi Ben,
To be fair to Caz I didn't post querying whether the certificate was a photocopy of the orignal entry in the marriage register or a register office copy made from the entry until after Caz had posted her comments about what Iremonger may have been looking it. I don't think it is common knowledge that BMD copies are not actual photocopies of entries in original marriage registers.
Until we hear back from Sam we don't know what we are looking at, but I do agree with you that it would be extremely rare for the bride and groom not to have signed the registers themselves, or put an x if they were unable to write their names. I also agree that Iremonger, as a proffessional document examiner would know exactly what she was looking at.

Just going back to something mentioned pages ago on this thread, I've read that it was a convention of the Church of England that full names were used when signing the marriage registers in church rather than just a straight forward signature. I wonder what the protocol was for police statements, was only a straight forward ordinary everday signature required?

[Ben]

To be fair to Caz I didn't post querying whether the certificate was a photocopy of the orignal entry in the marriage register or a register office copy made from the entry until after Caz had posted her comments about what Iremonger may have been looking it. I don't think it is common knowledge that BMD copies are not actual photocopies of entries in original marriage registers.

Hi Debs,

You're quite right. I've edited and "tempered" my above response accordingly!

As for police protocol, I must 'fess up to ignorance on the subject, but according to Bob Hinton, it was/is customary to include all names on a witness signature for the purposes of correct identification.

I might pop up to the church itself...

All the best,
Ben