Proof of identity

[Observer]

Hi

Why did Hutchinson name Romford as his place of destination on the 8th Nov 1888?


You don't need me to tell you this but Romford holds the key. Look to Romford.

Also, he told Kelly that he had spent all his money going down to Romford, If he had money on the morning of 8th Nov then surely he would have taken public transport to Romford, I doubt whether he would have walked all the way to Romford if he had money in his pocket. What were his options? Omnibus, train?

Observer

[Fisherman]

"That's nothing to do with witness psychology."

Yes it has, Ben. Everything a witness perceives or believes he or she perceives belongs to witness psychology.

"it isn't true to say that Abberline wouldn't have been challeneged on any opinion he offered"

Of course he could have been. But the point I am trying to press is that he was a policeman whose experience came not from what happens at a desk but from real life. He would have taken heaps of witness statements, and if he was not surprised by what Hutch offered, there is every reason to believe that other officers on the field would have been of the same opinion - that the testimony could well have been right.

"No, I don't think my "option 2)" is an "obvious possibility".
I do.

Since you point me to some reading, I will do you the same service: Read Derek Osbornes dissertation on Hutch, and you will be provided with A/ an author that says the same thing that I do about Lewis´man and Hutch - they don´t seem to tally, and B/ a possible explanation to who the "not so tall" but stout man may have been, why his was there, and what role Hutch could have played. It all boils down to a nice and simple explanation. Of course with the usual lack of proof, but still with one explanation to the alledged sightings and testimony given - right or wrong.

"Who on earth is going to be so strategically placed as to provide him with a conveinent alibi at that ungodly hour?"
Someone who was up and about and who knew Hutch, in person or by sight. Really, Ben, it is not a scrap harder than that. With hundreds of thousands of people living in the East End and no Sandman putting them to sleep, we can safely assume that there were people in the streets at all times. And as you yourself say that you are swayed by what can be gleaned from the past, let me assure you that more than one nocturnal criminal HAVE been spotted and put away.

Those were the bad news. Here´s the good parts:

"Without knowing Hutchinson's specific height, I can't quibble with your: there may very well have been a marked discrepance in height between the man Lewis saw and the man we probably both agree that Hutch did not see..."

YES! I´ll have that one framed! And yes - I left out the latter part of the quote. Nothing I would like to have hanging on my walls, see.

and

"I think "Cross versus Hutchinson" is a somewhat less than productive avenue of debate"

I tend to agree - it´s just that I am slightly worried by the schizophrenic discrepance of believing a chosen selection of statements from a man you agree was not to be trusted, and who was very obviously discredited by the police as the investigation proceeded. I think some scepticism is healthy here.

The best!
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Observer,

If he lied about it, it wouldn't have been plucked completely at random since Whitechapel High Street ultimately terminated there if you kept going and going. If he told the truth, then it may have been in the capacity of a hawker that he went there. It was fairly well-known at the time that hawkers living in West London would often sell their wares in Maidenhead and towns nearby while Eastenders went to Romford and other places to hawk, sometimes with a barrow, sometimes with a bag.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

He would have taken heaps of wotness statements, and if he was not surprised by what Hutch offered, there is every reason to believe that other officers on the field would have been of the same opinion - that the testimony could well have been right.

Clearly not, Fish, because they ultimately discarded his evidence as a viable ripper-sighting. There's nothing to support the opinion that if Abberline believed something, his colleagues and superiors would unthinkingly follow suit. What matters is that Hutchinson's evidence was not "used" in the long run. In order to discredit a witness, it isn't necessary to uncover an alibi proving that witness to have been elsewhere. Didn't happen with Packer. Didn't happen with Maxwell. Didn't happen with Violenia. Didn't happen with Mrs. Kennedy. No reason to think it would happen with Hutchinson.

Since you point me to some reaading, I will do you the same servie: Read Derek Osbornes dissertation on Hutch, and you will be provided with A/ an author that says the same thing that I do about Lewis´man and Hutch

And?

Osbourne's wrong.

There's nothing to suggest they "don't tally" at all. If you think Osbourne's conclusion was "nice and simple", it's clear that you either haven't read the full article or we have redically different notions of clarity and simplicity.

Someone who was up and about and who knew Hutch, in person or by sight.

Fabulous, and we just pluck his imaginary existence from frickin' nowhere, stick him in Hutchinson's company at 3:45am in the morning of 9th November in Banbury or wherever you want him to have been and suddenly Hutchinson's got an alibi? Oh, and a report detailing that alibi that also got lost or blitzed?

No evidence. Almost certainly didn't happen. Even if Hutchinson wasn't where he said he was that night, the chances of his 3:30am presence being recorded and verified by anyone is incredibly slim. Same with all the other thousands of solitary transient doss house inhabitants.

[Observer]

Hi

Speaking of alibi's surely the police checked Hutchinson's story of going to Romford.

Observer

[Ben]

Depends if there was anything to check, Observer. Even if they did check it and discover it to be true, it wouldn't verify his later actions and movements.

[Observer]

Hi

And what of his time spent at the Victoria Home? Surely someone in authority there could shed some light on Hutchinson's movements during the period of the murders.

Observer

[Fisherman]

"Clearly not, Fish, because they ultimately discarded his evidence as a viable ripper-sighting"

...and that need NOT owe to anybody saying "nobody could be that exact and detailed". You yourself usually point out how completely unbelievable it would be for Hutch to remember all the parts he claimed to have seen - that should make it so much more obvious to you that Abberline did NOT have an inner warning bell saying "this can´t be true".
Abberline originally believed Hutch, and what finally proved to be the thing that sent him on his way is something that neither you or I know. But Abberline probably stayed convinced that Hutch´s description was a credible one - as proved by the "null hypothesis" (ehrm)...

Osbournes wrong? Or Osbournes PROVEN wrong?

"Fabulous, and we just pluck his imaginary existence from frickin' nowhere, stick him in Hutchinson's company at 3:45am in the morning of 9th November in Banbury or wherever you want him to have been and suddenly Hutchinson's got an alibi? Oh, and a report detailing that alibi that also got lost or blitzed?"

I never knew that we hade filled the measure of how many reports that can go missing, Ben. I am much more of the mind to say that IF a number of reports obviously have gone missing, guess what it proves?
And please do not boil my thoughts on the matter down to a situation where I have staked my life that there WAS an alibi. I have suggested that something rather radical MAY very well have been what caused the uninterest from the police´s side, and that may have been a number of things. Imagine, for example, if one of the police officers involved knew from earlier experience that Hutch was a publicity seeker, or that he was just released from Colney Hatch, or something along some such lines - that would probably not go down in any report, it would just ensure him a quiet goodbye from the police investigation, no more.

The possibilities are plenty. But I still say that we may have to look for something much more conclusive than newspaper reports here.

The best, Ben!
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Observer,

If he was following his assumed "normal" routine of going to bed at the Victoria Home every night, then verifiying his movements was practically impossible. No lodging house deputy or doorman could have a hope in hell of recalling if Hutchinson was one of the 500 or so dossers that passed through the door six weeks previously.

Ben

[Observer]

Hi Ben

Depends if there was anything to check, Observer. Even if they did check it and discover it to be true, it wouldn't verify his later actions and movements.

That's true, But it would mean that he had no time earlier in the evening of the 8th in which to reconoitre Kelly's movements

Observer

[Ben]

But Abberline probably stayed convinced that Hutch´s description was a credible one - as proved by the "null hypothesis" (ehrm)...

On the contray, Fisherman, Abberline had clearly revised his opinion in accordance with all the other senior policeman who had discredied his account by 1903. In reference to earlier witness sightings, he stated that the witnesses who had described a man with a foreign appearance had only acquired a rear view of the suspect. Either that or its peaked caps. Thus leaving "room" only for Schwartz, Lawende and Long, all of whom were (not so coincidentally) appended to a list of witnesses drawn up by Donald Swanson.

I respect your opinion that something "mega" and decisive needed to have occured in order for Hutchinson's evidence to have been discarded, but when we consider the other dubious witnesses who were discarded without anything "mega" being need to rule them out, it seems pretty clear to me that nothing of that nature was required. If there was any turning point in relation to Hutchinson's favour with the police, it probably coincided with the dodgy press versions of his testimony, and the numerous additional disclosures that compromised his initial version of events.

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Hi Ben!

1903, Ben - that was fifteen years down the line, and LOTS of water under the bridge. I really don´t think that we have to accept that long a time to have passed. In all probability Abberline was as ready to discard Hutch as he had been ready to accept him very soon after he left his description. And that is why I say that a hunch on his (Abberlines) behalf would not have done the trick. Something happened that opened his eyes, and Hutch was discarded as a result of that, if my guess is right.

Violenia, Maxwell, Packer... no offense, Ben, but their cases were quite different to that of Hutch. To accept Maxwell, for instance, we have to discredit Phillips or more or less buy into a theory where Kelly was not the woman on the bed. And Violenias morbid interests gave him away effectively. There was never the initial this-is-the-real-thing-feeling on behalf of the police as far as these witnessses is concerned.
With Hutch, there was. The whole police machinery was put into action, searching the streets for Astrakhan man. There would have been great hope that they finally had a terrific description of their man, knife-sized parcel and all, and exactly right in the time schedule.
The decision was made, but something overruled it. It could not possibly have been a smallish thing. That just does not make any sense.

Osbournes view, that the man seen by Lewis may have been Blotchy, sounds feasible to me; stout, on the short side - only the hat differs, and that may perhaps be understandable. Osbourne theorizes that Blotchy was the killer as well as the loiterer, and that Hutch was called in to cover for him, filling out the loiterers role when Lewis´testimony surfaced. To me, it sounds at least as credible as any other theory I have heard on who the loiterer was, and what he was doing there. Plus it answers to Lewis description in a striking manner.
You may of course be right, Osbourne may be wrong. But I fail to see what evidence you can use to discharge him.

The best,
Fisherman

[Marlowe]

Hi Fisherman,

I've been arguing on the other Hutchinson thread that the hat discrepancy might be explained simply by Mary Ann Cox using the word "billycock" when she might just as easily have said "wideawake". It appears if you search the WEB, that some people considered them to be the same.

I've been trying to find other statements made by Cox to she if she ever used the description of "wideawake" to describe the hat she saw. If she did, then it seems very likely that both Lewis and Cox saw the same man.

Marlowe

[Ben]

Violenia, Maxwell, Packer... no offense, Ben, but their cases were quite different to that of Hutch. To accept Maxwell, for instance, we have to discredit Phillips

None taken, Fisherman, but I disagree most profoundly.

Those cases aren't different at all. They were all witnesses whose evidence was subsequently discarded for whatever reason. Nothing big or scary about disagreeing with Phillips either. We have to do precisely that if we wish to attribute Eddowes and Chapman to the same killer, or believe that the latter died around 5:30am, or believe that the killer didn't have any great surgical skill and so on and so forth. Phillips was probably wrong about a few things, and so was Abberline.

And Violenias morbid interests gave him away effectively.

And Hutchinson's impossibe description gave him away effectively.

There was never the initial this-is-the-real-thing-feeling on behalf of the police as far as these witnessses is concerned.

Yes, but there was a "this-is-the-real-thing" belief that Mrs. Kennedy had told the truth. There was a "this-is-the-real-thing" belief that Isenschmidt was the probable killer, then later Joseph Isaacs, and it is usually Abberline at the forefront of the "this-is-the-real-thing" brand of optimism. Doesn't mean it can't fizzle out after a while as it did in those cases. I don't know if it was a "smallish" thing or not that utimately led to Hutchinson's discrediting, but a series of press disclosures that seriously contradiced his first story and an impossible claim about a disappearing policeman certainly doesn't count as "smallish" in my book and it certainly isn't a hunch. Or it may have been something else. It certainly wasn't a 3:30 "alibi".

Osbourne theorizes that Blotchy was the killer as well as the loiterer, and that Hutch was called in to cover for him

For what possible reason? What a bizarre, inexplicable and totall implausible act of self-sacrifice on Hutchinson's part. It's quite possible that wideawake and billycock were one and the same - I can't rule that out - but it's equally possible that both descriptions referred to Hutchinson himself. Better than any silliness involving accomplices, especially if we're being asked to believe that Blotchy went there not expecting to kill Kelly but eventually did so over a financial dispute!

[Fisherman]

Hi Marlowe!

Thanks for updating me! And yes, there is a possibility that Cox and Lewis were speaking of the same man, the way I see it. It is hard to be too sure about such a thing, though. Anyhow, I think that there is at least a very good chance that Lewis´ man and Hutch were not one and the same.

The best, Marlowe!
Fisherman