Hutch in the 1911 Census?

[richardnunweek]

Hi Guys,
Not many people may know this, but you know something... I believe also Topping is the real mcCoy..
Richard.

[DVV]

a short tribute to Richard's spirit

Topping?
The plumber who saw Churchill ?
No doubt, he was there.

Amitiés,
David

[Fisherman]

You could have fooled me, Richard! A warm welcome to the club, though - but you are already more familiar with the premises than I am, I believe...?

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

It can´t, I´m afraid - we were two thousand children in my old school, and each and everybody of them developed personal traits and styles. Fisherman

Hi Fish,
all of them being grooms after school, then out of work - which would have given them leisure to develop personal traits and styles, I suppose.
And all of them were strong enough to shape again childish flourished capital letters in their 30's.
Welcome-back to the future.

Amitiés mon cher,
David

[Sam Flynn]

Topping?
The plumber who saw Churchill ?

GWTH's son, Reg, may or may not have mentioned Churchill during his alleged interview with Melvin Fairclough and (yikes!) Joseph Gorman (non-)Sickert, but that depends on how one rates The Ripper and the Royals as an objective piece of journalism. Reg allegedly said this:

"Whenever the subject of Jack the Ripper came up, as it often did in the 1920s and 1930s, because many people who were there when it happened were still alive [note the pleading tone - why this totally unnecessary "verisimilitude" at this point, I ask myself], he used to say: 'It was more to do with the Royal Family than ordinary people'. And when asked who he thought it was, he always said: 'It was someone like Lord Randolph Churchill'..."

"Always" said? Reg was only 19 or 20 years old when his father died - where did this "always" come from? It's also worth pointing out that Lord Randolph Churchill died in the 1890s, and had been a shadow of his former self for some time - quite how he came to the attention of a gormless labourer in his early 20s, still less for the latter to know what he looked like to the point of regarding him as an archetype (viz., "someone like Randolph Churchill"), is beyond me.

The only "royal" connection I can see here comes from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard: "Tell a tale of c0ck and bull". And I honestly don't think that it was Reg telling it.

[DVV]

Fully agreed, Sam,
nothing in what you've quoted from Reg's story makes me thing that he's Hutch's son.
And the problem is that everything in his story tells me that he can't be Hutch's son.
And if he were, I must say he was awfully disrespectful to his father's memory. He was even mocking him, saying his father was unable to tell a crazy lie ("down-to-earth"...).
Finally, we can hardly say that the "incredible" part of Reg's story comes from Mc Fairclough.
Because everything is incredible.
Unless you find something credible and post it.

Amitiés Sam,
David

[Sam Flynn]

Unless you find something credible and post it.

I just did - the fact that you chose to respond with a sarcastic non-sequitur of a post is disappointing.

[DVV]

I just did - the fact that you chose to respond with a sarcastic non-sequitur of a post is disappointing.

No Sam,
I wasn't sarcastic at all - and I have no reason to be sarcastic with you.
When I said: "unless you find something credible and post it", I meant, and mean, "something credible IN REG'S STORY".
My thought is simple: I know Reg's story is valueless. We agree, don't we ? Certainly because of Fairclough.
But if Reg had heard something credible from his father - his father being the witness - Fairclough would have mentioned it, no ?
So why nothing credible ? That was and is my point.
Though my main concern would be for the time being about my being sarcastic, ie, unfair and disdainful.

I wasn't, I'm not, and I hope I'll never be.
Hope you trust me.

Amitiés,
David

[Sam Flynn]

I wasn't sarcastic at all - and I have no reason to be sarcastic with you.
When I said: "unless you find something credible and post it", I meant, and mean, "something credible IN REG'S STORY".

Ah, I'm with you now - sorry, Dave.

My thought is simple: I know Reg's story is valueless. We agree, don't we ? Certainly because of Fairclough.

The bit about Randolph Churchill is certainly tainted by association with that book of Fairclough's, I'd agree. As to the rest, it sounds reasonable enough - even if it weren't, then it's fairly innocuous. Firstly, all that stuff about ice-skating, meeting his wife in the music-hall, playing the violin etc. is of no relevance to the Dorset Street story. Secondly, I don't have any problem with the idea that Hutchinson got recompensed for helping the police - although the "100 shillings" (or whatever) sounds like an exaggeration. Finally, I don't honestly see that Reg's claim of his father's good memory is particularly controversial - except inasmuch as it smacks of Fairclough making a case for the "infallibility" of his "star witness" in his (alleged, and almost certainly bogus) identification of Randolph Churchill.

All the above casts doubt on several areas... except on the identification of George William Topping Hutchinson as the Miller's Court witness - for it was he, of that I'm convinced.

[DVV]

Secondly, I don't have any problem with the idea that Hutchinson got recompensed for helping the police - although the "100 shillings" (or whatever) sounds like an exaggeration.

Sam, that's exactly the problem with this story. The ONLY detail that could be true (related to the murder, I mean) turns out to be an exaggeration, and even, an "exaggerated exaggeration" (I know, that's ugly...).

And why no "true" detail at all ?
One day, when young, my father spent a whole night in a restaurant with Jacques Brel.
Since he was a fan, it was a great memory to him (that was about 10 years before I was born - I'm only 66). He was often speaking of this night.
And frankly, I do know he wasn't lying. He told me what Brel said, what he drank, ate, that they smoke all Brel's cigarettes, etc, and he also told me that Brel was somehow boring sometimes, talking too much etc.
There's nothing like this in Reg's story.
Did Badham stank garlic? What about Mary? What about Hutch's feeling on Monday? etc etc.
And well, at last, I'm definitely sure that Reg's story, Fairclough or not, family tradition or not, is rather an evidence that Toppy wasn't the witness.

And then, we have only the signatures.
The matching letters.
The mismatching ones...
The Benjamin Button's capital G.

Tender is the night.

Amitiés mon cher,
David

[halomanuk]

A recompense from the police force of 100 shillings wouldn't happen even today,it doesn't happen with the police and never has..they didn't even have the power to do that let alone condone and authorise it..

[DVV]

A recompense from the police force of 100 shillings wouldn't happen even today,it doesn't happen with the police and never has.

"The French Police would have given 500 to Hutch.
They'd soon have caught Jacob Ben Churchill.
The brute.
Then I'd have retired peacefully in a nice cottage, and Alice Mc Kenzie would have lighted my pipe every sweet evening, while I would have read my Bible."

Sir Robert Anderson

[Ben]

I agree, Barry. Good observation.

Reg was milking the cow to a certain extent. Various quotations were attributed to Reg directly, such as the observation that it had more to do with the Royal family than ordinary people, and the "realization" that his father actually saw Churchill. That wasn't Fairclough, that was Reg himself adding fuel to that particular fire.

Hi Fish,

But I really don´t award it all that much interest, since I have seen with my own eyes that it is a very good match

So, you really don't "award" differing opinions that much if they disagree with your own view, even if they're being voiced by those with demonstrably more expertise than you? Wow. Leander never once stated that the signatures were a very good match. He stated that the possibility of a match couldn't be "ruled out", which basically echos my view on the subject.

let me assure you that only very close likeness gets to be treated as a possible match

No offense, but I'm not remotely "assured" by your comment.

You cannot be serious, Fish. Are you saying that any comparison that isn't judged impossible must be regarded as a "very close match"? There's no way that can be correct. I don't dismiss the suggestion of the match as impossible but neither do I feel they constitute a match, let alone a good one. Please be advised that there are an awful lot of shades of grey between "impossible" and "a very close match".

Given the opposition it is up against - the general fact that people more often than not give their true identities

I reject that as an opposition, since the propensity to give a false name is entirely dependant on individual circumstances. If he gave a false statement, he could just as easily have given a false name. And yes, aliases are often a well-known trait amongst sociopaths and psychopaths, and since a great many serial killers fall into this catergory...Oh wait! We aren't even discussing Hutchinson as a suspect, but please derail this thread into another generic Hutch-as-suspect-fest, and please give me any excuse to follow suit.

Yes - and taken together with the surrounding circumstances, Leanders words easily add up to a very, very probable one.

That wasn't what he said. At no point did he assert that there was a "probable" match here.

Just like Sam, I am of the wiew that the chance that Toppy was not the witness is so microscopical that it ends up like nothing more than a courteous bow to those who have not yet abandoned the sinking ship of dys-Toppy

You're welcome to that view, of course. I don't invest much stock in it, personally, since you're overburdoning it with far too much unnecessary and eccentric rhetoric, and I find the overconfidence in your position to be in contrast to the far more moderate views of those with demonstrable expertise on the topic.

In other words, it was so good that he deemed it a possible match.

What are you talking about?

I, Ben, think the match is "possible".

It is not beyond the realms of possibility.

That DOES NOT mean I think we have a probable match.

I'll pay you all my worldly goods if you can just understand that distinction.

Not impossible does not equal very close match

[Ben]

The above is just a desperate slur on a very nice person. Pathetic stuff on your part if I may say so.

You may say so, Stephen, of course. However, if Caz was as nice a person as you claim she is, I doubt very much that she'd resort to the sort of measly cheap shots she felt necessary to include in her post #1195. I'm a do-as-you-would-be-done-by, be-done-by-as-you-did sort of bloke. If people are nice to me, I'll be nice back. If people are unpleasant....

[Fisherman]

David writes:

"all of them being grooms after school, then out of work - which would have given them leisure to develop personal traits and styles, I suppose.
And all of them were strong enough to shape again childish flourished capital letters in their 30's.
Welcome-back to the future."

No, David - we all went our separate ways, and with our separate handstyles. I can remember that I had a girl in my class when I was about eleven or twelwe years old. Her name was Maj-Lis Tengelin. There were not many special things about Maj-Lis; she was not a very beautiful girl, nor was she outstandlingly clever or witty or something like that. But she had a fantastic handstyle - it leant backwards (so she may have been left-handed, I can´t remember), and it was a work of art, more or less - perfectly shaped, boldly looped and something most of us looked at in awe and admiration. My own handstyle has never been beautiful - no fancy goods there, I´m afraid. It differed in every aspect from Maj-Lis´handstyle.

Now - and this is my point - we both grew up in the same neighborhood, under similar social and economical circumstances, we had attended to the same school since school started, and we had the same teachers. Still, our handstyles were wildly different.
How does that tally with your suppostitions? It does not tally at all. And the same applies where I can remember other co-pupils handwriting. In most cases I can´t, but I do recollect how a few of them wrote. And none of them wrote in a style that even remotely reminded me of my own.
Plus - as I have said before - I used the type of capital C I learnt in school up til my twenties, and then I had a short love affair with a much bolder C of another type altogether, only to return to the school type again when I realized I was never gonna become a rock star or such. And I still use that capital C.

The best,
Fisherman