Hutchinson and antisemitism ?? A possibility?

[Rubyretro]

Hi Rubyretro,

I'm currently working on an article that explores the very possibility you outline. Suffice to say I agree entirely with your post, and extend a warm welcome to Casebook.

All the best,
Ben

Thanks Ben -I very much look forward to reading that article !I found a few things today that interested me -what do you think ?

First of all, I was thinking about Hutchinson having been a groom and it suddenly came to me that those marks on Catherine Eddowes' face were made by a 'hoof pick' -a hooked instrument that could also be used for harvesting organs in a confined space. Infact grooms would carry a long straight knife & a hoof pick (sometimes combined like a swiss army knife)
and the designs vary. It's probably possible to find what firms were manufacturing equestrian knives for sale at that time in a certain radius, and match them to the marks.

Mooremaker.com Working Knife #3208 - HOOF PICK and
meNEW Schrade Knives Equestrian Bowie Knife SCH1850
(those are both new, but I don't think the design has changed much).

Next, I was just idly speculating on where exactly Hutchinson had worked as a groom I was thinking along the lines of somewhere with lots of horses
(where he might have had to/ have seen horses 'put down' by throat cutting,
and seen dead horses butchered) -so Essex came to mind with Great Leighs
and New Market not far away, and lots of stud farms between them, and I was wondering what sort of job he had been looking for in Romford exactly?

So I googled ' Horse fair Romford Essex' (where would you have looked for a job as a groom ?) and this answer came back 3rd down : "Revolution and Evolution 1848 German-Jewish History" books.google.fr/books?isbn=3167437529... Given the title of this thread, you have to admit it's a strange coincidence, and a reply totally unexpected for Romford !

Here are a couple of extracts from page 108 :

"In Western Germany, jewish horse dealers imported horses from Belgium and England. In Zulpich, a small town west of Bonn, the horse-trading firm Schwarz imported stud horses from Ghent, Thourout, Romford (Essex) and London...." "......From details like these we can see that horse dealers often were the wealthiest members of a rural community. Horse trading required much Capital, and it was often conducted as an international business over long distances. It was of great advantage for jewish horse dealers that many of the horse dealers in the foreign countries from which the imports came were also jews"

OK this is dealing with a period 40 years earlier than the period that we're interested in (don't forget that Hutchinson would have started as a groom
almost a child) -but would things have radically changed ?

If by coincidence we found our Hutchinson had worked for a rich jewish international horse dealer in Romford -what would that signify ?

I should love to know under what circumstances Hutchinson stopped working as a groom and came to Whitechapel, because obviously if we want a reason WHY he was antisemite then any grievences that he had against a rich and powerful jewish ex-employer might give us a motive.

I should also be curious to see whether his jewish horse breeder (pure speculation on my part that he ever worked for one) boss, resembled the
'suspect' that he invented (maybe photos of these horse owners still exist ?).

What do you think of that Ben ?

[Ben]

Hi Rubyretro,

I'm currently working on an article that explores the very possibility you outline. Suffice to say I agree entirely with your post, and extend a warm welcome to Casebook.

All the best,
Ben

[The Good Michael]

The Topping relatives aren't speaking.

As for Hutch, you should read the threads dedicated to him, but try not to get any of red stuff on you.

Of course it's possible the murderer was targeting women in areas that would make it look as if a Jew was the murderer. The graffiti appears to me to be a Jewish solidarity message which would fit in well with your theory.

Hutchinson as murderer is discussed ad nauseum in his threads. One side things he did at least the Kelly murder, another thinks he did them all, and yet another thinks his story may be true. I think he was looking to make a buck from his testimony because he was a young, sharp man with no means. The police believed him and even took him on a tour about town. Presumably, he earned some money for being in custody and working with the police.

Please get to the Hutchinson threads read all that is there, including the signatures and the battles.

Cheers,

Mike

[Rubyretro]

Hi, I'm a newbie -so forgive me if this territory has all been well covered before. I've been reading around the site the last few days and a few striking 'coincidences' leapt out at me :

Starting with the 'Double Event' - Liz Stride was soliciting outside the jewish socialist club in Berner Street when she was killed (would the man seen pulling her AWAY from the yard have been trying to discourage her from soliciting there for antisemite reasons ?). At the same time, a passing jewish man, Israel Schwartz, was insulted with the name of a jewish criminel and chased. The Berner street club was sited in the same road as St George's Settlement Synagogue.

A short while later three jewish men coming from a club near Mitre Square saw Catherine Eddowes soliciting and one of the men felt 'threatened' by Eddowes' customer,
although he doesn't specify why. I have not seen the name of the club used by Lawende, Levy and Harris, but the fact that the three witnesses were jewish and the club was in proximity to the Great Synagogue, suggests that this was another jewish club. The fact that Eddowes chose to go to this specific location (away from the lodging house and not outside a pub or around the church) might suggest that she was soliciting there for jewish men leaving this club. The fact that Levy was scared of this man strongly suggests to me that the man did not look jewish -and indeed either flashed a look of hatred at Levy or had a look of an antisemite (a sort of forerunner fascist thug ), and which made Levy scared to testify later, probably for fear of attracting violence to his family. Eddowes is found murdered 10 minutes afterwards.

Later that evening part of Eddowes' apron is found under an inflammatory graffiti accusing the jews of the crime by inference. If Jtl didn't write the graffiti either that night or at an earlier date, he knew it was there and left the apron there on purpose -although this was an act guaranteed to stir up racial hatred and cause trouble for jewish people (a fact recocognised by Sir Charles Warren).

On balance it does not look as if Jtl was jewish himself -it even looks as if he specifically targeted prostitutes soliciting for jewish customers near to jewish club meetings.

With this theory in mind, it is worth looking at the other canonical murders. Jim Leen has described the locations thus :-
Buck's Row - opposite Brady Street Ashkenazi Cemetery.
Hanbury Street - Glory of Israel and Sons of Klatsk Synagogue situated
at no. 50a. Synagogues at 19 Princelet St. and 17 Wilkes St.
Berner Street - St. George's Settlement Synagogue.
Mitre Square - beside the Great Synagogue.
Miller's Court - beside Spitalfields Great Synagogue, Church St. ( Fournier St.)
Leen seemed to think that the locations were chosen so that a jewish Jtl could find refuge in a synagogue, but given the time of day that seems very unlikely to me !

Isn't it more likely that, as in the case of Berner Street and Mitre Square, there were jewish clubs meeting in proximity to these sacred jewish sites ? Certainly Rumbelow mentions that the "Bolshevik delegation headquarters in 1907 was less than five minutes from Buck’s Row". what was this building used for in 1888 ?
Henry Mann ("Petticoat Lane Sunday Morning") talks about "Jew pubs" -were rooms in pubs near the murder sites used for jewish meetings ? and if so on what dates?
Club meetings around the weekend, once a month or near the beginning of the month sound pretty logical to me. Maybe there is still research to do on this through the jewish community?

I also think that if Jtl WAS targeting certain prostitutes seen with jewish customers, then this would explain why he sometimes took a long time to choose
a victim -not just "any old" prostitute would do. It would also explain why he did not appear to have sexual relations with the women he killed (he thought that they were dirty), although he may have used other prostitutes (and have been known amongst them as being harmless -a reason why the women weren't scared of him)..

All this inevitably leads us to Millers Court and George Hutchinson. He described in detail the supposed killer of Mary Jane Kelly as a caricature of a jew
-the sort of portrait that could have come from a racist newspaper cartoonist: the showy hat, the ostentatious watch, the twirly moustache, the astrakan, the "toff"
attitude. Hutchinson even describes his reaction to this caricature : he stopped to bend down to stare the man in the face, he eavesdropped, he followed him,
he loitered outside whilst the man was supposedly with a woman within. There is nothing benign about his description of his attitude towards this "jew".

In the end -in the absence of forensic proof - we either believe Hutchinson's statement or we don't; He lied or he didn't. If he lied, what reason could he have except that he was the murderer ? I don't accept that he would cover for someone else, because these are sexual crimes by one warped mind.

I won't list all the objections to Hutchinson's story -they've all been well documented on this site. I will just add that I think that there are bits of truth woven in -
liers do add in truth, to make their lies more believable. So I think that Hutchinson HAD seen Kelly with a jewish client at one point -he may even have warned her about it in the past (is that who she was scared of ?) I think that it was the reason that she was chosen to die. I think that Hutchinson accompanied her back to her room and it was he who stood chatting a few moments and showed her the red scarf (the one he had on when picking up Eddowes); I think that he waited a long time watching her room, to make sure that she'd really gone to bed and was asleep so that he could reach through the window and unlock the door as he'd just seen her do, because she'd already refused to let him come in with her (could it be that's what they chatted about ?) I think that he relocked the door the same way that he unlocked it.

All that is necessarily surmising about Hutchinson, but once we've decided that he WAS lying and WAS Jtl then there are obvious questions to which we need to
find logical answers -and they can only be supposition now.

Why would Hutchinson come forward after the inquest and draw attention to himself ? For the same reason that we see people giving tearful 'news conferences'
begging for help to find a killer -only for us to find that they did it themselves ? . Hutchinson would have followed the inquest, if he'd done it, and may have been horrified to see that witnesses had got a good look at him -so this could have been partly 'damage limitation'. Another part could have been a 'controlling'
(wouldn't Jtl have been 'controlling' ?) desire to get close to the enquiry, to keep an eye on what direction it was taking and try and influence it from the inside ?
Influence it by pointing to a jewish culprit (hatred of the jews being his own justification to himself for the crimes). Then again Hutchinson might also have liked
the 15 minutes fame concerning the press and public (Jtl was a little bit 'theatrical' in his displays of the murder victims, and his placing of the apron piece under the graffiti), not to mention getting paid by both the police and the press for his trouble (Jtl stole those brass rings, and always took back the money that he'd paid the prostitutes, even if he was in a hurry). I think that it figures.

The next question would be (and the main reason that people reject him as a candidate) why Abberline met him as a witness and believed him, and did not
retain him as a suspect. I believe that there are three good reasons:
a) Abberline saw the 'jewish' thread (which I've already discussed) and Hutchinson was proposing an archytypal jewish suspect.
b) Abberline had actually seen the bodies of Chapman, Eddowes, and especially Kelly and I think that it must have been quite traumatic for him -I had nightmares for days after just glimpsing those old photos of Kelly's remains -and Abberline saw & smelt the reality, in their grim surroundings. I'm sure that he must have looked at, & weighed up, the witness across the table from him (and without forensics or an arrest 'in flagrante', his intuition was all he had to go on), and he decided that
Hutchinson was too normal' to be Jtl. He also showed Hutchinson Kelly's body, I'm sure to see his reaction.

It has to be said here that we have so much more experience of killers and atrocities than Abberline : who can forget all those nazi concentration camp guards ?
(you can read the statement by the camp commandant of Auschwitz), perpetrators of horrendous deeds in Japan, Vietnam, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chile ?(sadly Icould go on for a very long time), capable of going home and being perfectly loving with their friends and families -even sentimental. Then there are those serial killers such as Denis Nielson -he was capable of holding down work in a job centre, and presumably discussing last night's telly around the coffee machine with his collegues,
whilst boiling up heads and flushing bits of his victims down the loo. There are also all those seemingly 'normal' family men who get caught living double lives or viewing the most revolting violence, porn & paedophilia on the net, as part of their secret fantasy life. In short people can compartmentalise. -and Hutchinson might not have needed to act when viewing Kelly's body, some days after the murder.

c) Abberline didn't think that a serial killer with escalating violence, could stop in his trajectory -but we know that serial killers CAN stop sometimes. The FBI
profile of the likely killer says that one reason for the Jtl stopping could have been the feeling that the police were closing in. Of course, if Hutchinson were Jtl, then the fact that he had been circulating around town with policeman, giving interviews to the press, and no doubt regaling an audience in the pubs thereabouts of every detail, would make it impossible for him to sneak around as Jtl.

I will just finish by saying that it would be very interesting to see if there are descendents of George Topping Hutchinson (I see that there was a son living in the '70s), and what information they would be able to give about him.

I am really new to all this, so I would welcome comments and any discussion on the topic...