The Red Handkerchief...

[caz]

Hi All,

It mustn't be forgotten that while Hutch came forward late, other potentially important male witnesses didn't come forward at all.

If Hutch was the ripper, every other person of interest who failed to come forward to clear himself must have been innocent - including Blotchy for instance. But it's not really all that surprising that men would not want to be associated with these prostitute murders if they could avoid it.

If Hutch did recognise himself as the man Lewis saw (and I still don't know how he is meant to have tracked her and her story down at the Town Hall - it seems a very loose theoretical possibility to me) he seems to have been the only one on the planet at the time. If the police missed the connection, so did Lewis herself, and Kennedy, and all those other women she apparently shared her story with. Unaccountably, none of them read in their newspaper that this man Hutchinson was watching the court, waiting for someone to come out, and remembered the man Lewis had seen doing exactly the same thing? Lewis had done her duty at the inquest. If she later read Hutchinson's account I find it hard to believe she would not have gone back to the police to tell them this must be her loitering man, so they could cross him off their list of people to identify. Not only that, but the police would then have had confirmation of Hutch's presence, and couldn't have dismissed him as having no connection.

I'm now wondering if the police were furious when Hutch's story appeared in the papers, and sought to repair the damage by feeding them the line about a 'reduced importance' (and possibly the idea that it had actually been discredited), to give the ripper a false sense of security in the event that he was indeed the man Hutch had described in so much detail.

Love,

Caz
X

[Michael W Richards]

It seems that some folks believe that Abberlines belief is something of a stamp of approval on the statement made by Hutchinson Monday night. Its his stamp of approval, thats a given, but he could have been backing a fraud or a liar without knowing it quite easily. A convincing story containing elements Abberline knows could be true...like this astrakan trimming for one....might have been enough to sell him on it. How do we know Hutchinson wasnt one of Abberlines old contacts when he worked the streets of the area....tracking and arresting Fenians? How do we know Hutchinson was indeed who he said he was? How do we know Hutchinson was actually there....because he said he was and someone saw someone wearing a wideawake hat where he said he stood?

Belief in a statement doesnt make it truthful, nor does it make it worthy of continuing investigation...as is evidenced in the case of Hutchinson. mentioning it in later correspondences doesnt validate it either....as seen in the case of Israel Schwartz, whose "believed" evidence is completely absent from the Inquest transcripts.

Carrie Maxwells statement doesnt make her a liar either....but the medical evidence does. Rigor, in a warm room, would not begin in 2 hours.

Cheers

[Bridewell]

Hutchinson's statement was dismissed

Was it? By whom?

[Bridewell]

Rigor Mortis

Rigor, in a warm room, would not begin in 2 hours.

Michael,

We don't know when the fire went out. We only know that it was November and that MJK had no money. What reason is there to suppose that, following the murder, Kelly's body was lying in a warm room?

From:

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/biochemistry/a/aa061903a.htm

"Rigor mortis can be used to help estimate time of death. The onset of rigor mortis may range from 10 minutes to several hours, depending on factors including temperature (rapid cooling of a body can inhibit rigor mortis, but it occurs upon thawing)."

I think there are too many variables to rule out Maxwell's evidence on the basis of speculation about the likely onset time of rigor mortis.

[Abby Normal]

Hi All,

It mustn't be forgotten that while Hutch came forward late, other potentially important male witnesses didn't come forward at all.

If Hutch was the ripper, every other person of interest who failed to come forward to clear himself must have been innocent - including Blotchy for instance. But it's not really all that surprising that men would not want to be associated with these prostitute murders if they could avoid it.

If Hutch did recognise himself as the man Lewis saw (and I still don't know how he is meant to have tracked her and her story down at the Town Hall - it seems a very loose theoretical possibility to me) he seems to have been the only one on the planet at the time. If the police missed the connection, so did Lewis herself, and Kennedy, and all those other women she apparently shared her story with. Unaccountably, none of them read in their newspaper that this man Hutchinson was watching the court, waiting for someone to come out, and remembered the man Lewis had seen doing exactly the same thing? Lewis had done her duty at the inquest. If she later read Hutchinson's account I find it hard to believe she would not have gone back to the police to tell them this must be her loitering man, so they could cross him off their list of people to identify. Not only that, but the police would then have had confirmation of Hutch's presence, and couldn't have dismissed him as having no connection.

I'm now wondering if the police were furious when Hutch's story appeared in the papers, and sought to repair the damage by feeding them the line about a 'reduced importance' (and possibly the idea that it had actually been discredited), to give the ripper a false sense of security in the event that he was indeed the man Hutch had described in so much detail.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz
Not sure what you are getting at here? Hutch said he was there, police beleived him, and Lewis confirms it. Maybe they made the specific connection, maybe not-what difference does it make?

Its actually the one thing that we can be pretty certain about hutch's story - he was standing outside the court at that time.

[Abby Normal]

Along with the odd inclusion of the red hanky in hutch's story how about this:

Hutch says that mary kelly started there conversation by saying-"Hutchinson, can you lend......".
Now who descibes a conversation like that? wouldn't 99% of people who were describing this say something like-she said to me,"Can you lend...".

Why did he feel the need to describe her saying his name specifically? seems rather odd...?

[Patrick S]

It seems that some folks believe that Abberlines belief is something of a stamp of approval on the statement made by Hutchinson Monday night. Its his stamp of approval, thats a given, but he could have been backing a fraud or a liar without knowing it quite easily.

I think the point is a simple one. Abberline's judgement is all we have to rely upon at this point. We don't know Abberline, as man. We only know his record, reputation, accolades, etc. Relying upon the judgement of such an individual is somewhat safter than relying upon the judgment of, say, an incompetent boob who never made an arrest in his life. From the vantage point of a century on, you take what you can, I suppose.

[Tecs]

Along with the odd inclusion of the red hanky in hutch's story how about this:

Hutch says that mary kelly started there conversation by saying-"Hutchinson, can you lend......".
Now who descibes a conversation like that? wouldn't 99% of people who were describing this say something like-she said to me,"Can you lend...".

Why did he feel the need to describe her saying his name specifically? seems rather odd...?

Hi Abby,

I know I've made the point before but I wonder if people really did speak the way they are quoted as doing?

It's like the post war films about the battle of Britain for example, where the pilots are played by "posh" actors. As a result we have the idea that that is how WW2 pilots spoke. In reality most were middle class chaps who spoke perfectly normally in a way that we would easily recognise today.

So, because when written, Victorian era writers used that slightly dramatic, theatrical prose, we have the idea that that is how people really did speak.

It still happens today. Think about real life. My kids went to see a film this week and when discussing between themselves, one said:-

"Good that film, wasn't it?"

When you say it it sounds perfectly normal, but written down it looks odd. If writing about the conversation somebody would probably quote it as "That was a good film, wasn't it?" or "Wasn't that a good film?" But neither was what he actually said and weirdly, when you say them, they sound a bit strange even though they are grammatically correct!

So, I reckon that the LV's spoke just like we do now, not like in Ripper Street! But when quoted, people put that dramatic spin on it.

regards,

[Michael W Richards]

Michael,

We don't know when the fire went out. We only know that it was November and that MJK had no money. What reason is there to suppose that, following the murder, Kelly's body was lying in a warm room?

From:

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/biochemistry/a/aa061903a.htm

"Rigor mortis can be used to help estimate time of death. The onset of rigor mortis may range from 10 minutes to several hours, depending on factors including temperature (rapid cooling of a body can inhibit rigor mortis, but it occurs upon thawing)."

I think there are too many variables to rule out Maxwell's evidence on the basis of speculation about the likely onset time of rigor mortis.

Warm ash found in the fireplace. Its what supports the blazing fire for light and the melted spout theorizing. What it is actually is evidence that a substantial fire had been made in that fireplace during the night. That could have been Mary throwing some fuel on a dying fire when she got home, and some more when she lay down to rest. Or whatever.

Cheers BW

[Ben]

The amusing inability to gracefully concede the incorrect usage of ‘churlish’ is of a piece with the way obtuse issues are defended to these hilt on these Hutchinson threads.

Ooh, a split infinitive, Lechmere!

"to gracefully concede" - ouch.

See me after class where you will learn, amongst other things, that my use of the word "churlish" was entirely and provably correct in the context I used it. And since I've proven my detractors wrong in declaring it "incorrect", any further dwelling on the point will only make those detractors look silly.

But at least he admits to having an 'unusual' turn of phrase. I'd call it unique myself.

And this is a bad thing because...?

You were simply ignorant as to the alternative definitions of the word "churlish", and I was glad of the opportunity to steer you in the right direction. Churlish can definitely mean miserly, as I've personally known for ages, and one can easily be miserly to one's own predicament. I'm afraid I charge Equity minimum for any further English lessons.

while waiting for Ben to finally address my inquest question

Another split inifinitive...

It just won't do.

[Ben]

Hi Tecs,

“The fact that Hutchinson appears nowhere in Police files or memoirs as a suspect suggests that nobody in the Police thought that he was a likely Ripper. We cannot rule out the possibility that he was an attention seeker but we don't have any real reason to consider that he was.

So that only leaves the first option and everything we know about the situation suggests that he was simply an ordinary man who happened to get dragged into the story.”

“The fact that Hutchinson appears nowhere in Police files or memoirs as a suspect” is only an indication that he was never considered a suspect, and if he wasn’t even considered a suspect, it can hardly be argued that he was dismissed as an unlikely one. An 1888 police force with no experience of serial killers was unlikely to countenance the possibility of the real killer coming forward with a self-preserving lie. He was, in the event, dismissed as an “attention-seeker”, but that only means that in recognising the implausible nature of his account, the police failed to consider that he too was suspect, and not just to the extent that a two-a-penny time-waster might be considered so. The “ordinary man who happened to get dragged into the story” explanation is actually the weakest of the three suggestions you posit, and certainly not in accordance with the lasting police view of Hutchinson’s credibility.

“The fact that Abberline spent time with him, looked him in the eye, quizzed him and came away believing him is a massive point for me.”

With respect, it really oughtn’t to be.

“Looking him in the eye” is completely worthless as a barometer for assessing honesty (or lack thereof), as is any type of conclusion based on body language. Many a wrongun – liars and serial killers – have been “looked in the eye” by police officials without creating suspicion. Peter Sutcliffe was “looked in the eye” nine times by police interviewing him in connection with the Yorkshire ripper crimes, and on each occasion he betrayed not a hint of suspicion or menace, presumably being dismissed on each occasion as an “ordinary man who happened to get dragged into the story”. Or you might consider Kenneth Bianchi, who never elicited suspicion when he was “looked in the eye” by the policeman he convinced to give him a tour of his own crime scenes.

In a recent documentary entitled “Crocodile Tears”, which explored cases of killers “helping the investigation” by going on organized search parties with police and giving tearful interviews to camera, David Canter observed that it was “nonsense” to argue that body language and presentation can tell a liar from a honest person. The best way to ascertain this, he argues, is by listening to what they actually say – the content rather than the presentation, in other words. Since we have the former at our disposal, we’re at no disadvantage when compared to Abberline. We’re working with the same material, albeit with a little more criminal and psychological insight than Abberline had at his disposal in 1888; the same material that could not possibly have been looked into and verified when he penned his initial report of approval just hours after first hearing of Hutchinson.

Author James Tully, who had no vested interest in promoting Hutchinson either as a liar or a killer, conceded that Abberline’s opinion that “his statement is true” is not particularly significant considering that the police were ready to “clutch at any straw” at that stage. It might be remembered that Abberline also believed that Severin Klosowski was an “expert surgeon” who harvested organs from Whitechapel prostitutes on behalf of an “American agent”, and who then went to America to commit more mutilation murders when he realised he hadn’t collected enough innards for his boss. Given the rather baffling insistence I’ve seen here that whatever Abberline says goes, it’s a wonder that more people haven’t advanced his Klosowski theory as accurate, unless of course they’re just not applying their reasoning very consistently.

But perhaps more to the point, it is extremely clear that Abberline’s early impression of Hutchinson was revised. The Echo newspaper obtained a direct communication with the police at Commercial Street station on the 13th November, and discovered that “later investigations” had caused the police to attach a “very reduced importance” to his account, and this owed in part to Hutchinson’s failure to appear at the inquest under oath, where his evidence would have been compared to that provided by other witnesses. In other words, his account suffered credibility issues, despite Abberline’s initial face-value thumbs-up. This was underscored the next day by the same paper who recorded that Hutchinson’s statement had been “considerably discounted”, and the Star reported a day later that it was “now discredited”, with the more damning terminology in the latter case being explained by the press versions of his account, which drastically undermined his original police statement.

The reality of Hutchinson’s discrediting is borne out by the later reports, memoirs and interviews of police officials who were active at the time, including Abberline, who stated that the witnesses only saw the suspect’s back. Even allowing for a fading memory having forgotten that Lawende, for instance, had seen the alleged victim’s back and not the suspect’s, it is impossible accept that he’d neglect to mention star witness Hutchinson, who alleged a face-to-face encounter with the suspect, and with whom he had a personal interview. That is, unless Hutchinson had been discredited years ago, as reported at the time. Here was an opportunity to establish parallels between surly-looking, dark-haired foreign Klosowski and surly-looking, dark-haired foreign Astrakhan man, and yet we hear nothing.

Would Abberline have really been that ungenerous and stringy (i.e. churlish) to his own case against Klosowski, i.e. by failing to mention a crucial Astrkhan-Klosowski comparison? Anderson famously claimed that the only person to have had a “good view” of the murderer was Jewish, despite Hutchinson alleging a far better “view” than any of the Jewish witnesses, and Macnaghten claimed that nobody saw the Whitechapel murderer, unless it was the City PC. Even if we allow for hazy memories, Hutchinson is conspicuous in his absence from these reminiscences.

“Assuming he wasn't completely stupid and/or naiive, he must have known what could happen to him if he comes forward. Considering that, I propose that he was actually extremely brave.”

That’s until you note the correlation between Lewis’s revelation that a man was loitering opposite Miller’s Court shortly before the murder, and Hutchinson’s claim to have loitered in that very location and at that very time – a claim that emerged just after the publication of Lewis’ evidence. Unless we’re prepared to accept striking coincidence as a viable explanation, the obvious reality is that Hutchinson came forward after realising he’d been seen at the crime scene, which somewhat weakens the suggestion that he showed “bravery” in coming forward.

Regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Of course I chose my words carefully ( for me) so as not to offend, but it seems Ben took it to heart, and for this I apologise.

And I extend the same, Observer. No worries.

It is, of course, possible that the police considered Hutchinson a suspect at some stage, but we have no evidence that this was the case. Had it been otherwise, Abberline would have made reference to these suspicions in his private, internal police report penned just a few hours after first meeting Hutchinson. When “later investigations” prompted the police to revise that initial face-value impression of Abberline’s, resulting in Hutchinson’s eventual discrediting, it is clear that he was regarded as a bogus witness only. But publicity-seeking bogus witnesses – then and now – are infinitely more common than serial killers pretending to be witnesses, even though the latter are by no means uncommon amongst serial killers, a very rare breed in themselves.

You can surely understand that a police force, unaccustomed to serial killers and probably looking for a completely different type of offender (foreign, mad, and with medical/butchery knowledge), could easily and plausibly overlook the possibility of the Jack the Ripper entering a police station and requesting an audience with the police, with the intention of pulling the wool over their eyes? Some people can’t even get their heads around the idea today, despite proven examples of serial killers injecting themselves into their own police investigations.

It surprises me sometimes when I see people write things like “He admitted to being the last person to see her alive”. It is only an “admission” if it’s true. If it isn’t true, or cannot be determined to be true, it is merely a “claim”. Hutchinson was one discredited witness amongst many, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of these discredited witnesses were considered to have lied about their very presence at a crime scene. Why would the police have chucked out the bulk of Hutchinson’s account as false, whilst insisting that the detail about him loitering opposite Miller’s Court was true? Not because of Sarah Lewis. Had any connection been made at the time between Hutchinson and Lewis’ wideawake man, it would have been noted in the press, and yet not a peep, either from the press or the police.

And with the complete lack of evidence for any Hutchinson-Lewis connection being registered by the police, bang goes any rationale for insisting the police must have had a “good” reason for believing that he really was at the scene as he claimed, and bang goes any rationale for insisting the police considered him any differently from Violenia and Packer, both of whom were discredited witnesses, and both of whom claimed to have been at a ripper crime scene when a ripper crime was committed.

I don’t agree that the police considered Violenia a “nut” and there is no evidence to support such a contention. He was simply considered a lying witness – lying in the sense that he lied about everything, including his self-alleged presence at the crime scene. Packer only has an alibi insofar as it was provided by other members of his family, which, for obvious reasons, hardly makes it “unshakable”.

“LVP” stands for “Late Victorian Period”. It doesn’t refer to the police.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Patrick,

“If one believes Abberline, then Hutchinson was telling the truth. Taking a quick detour back to Mitre Square - if we believe Levy about the red handkerchief worn about the man's neck, then the red handkerchief is a regular part of this person's attire. When it's chilly, he puts on his red hanky. Red hankys are useful for, say, wiping away blood.”

I’m interested to hear this view, especially in light of Caz’s recent suggestion that Hutchinson would never have been so foolish as to invent the red handkerchief in order to establish a link with Lawende’s suspect from Church Passage. The reason being (apparently) that such a ploy would never work, because nobody would ever accept that two people with such strikingly different clothing would use the same red hanky in different ways. And yet here you are, suggesting that this is precisely what happened, thus reassuring me that Hutchinson could well have been motivated into inventing the hanky for the reason I suggest.

A close look at Hutchinson’s impossibly detailed description reveals that certain physical characteristics (and accessories and items and clothing) appeared previously in the press. Whether this was due to the real ripper being silly enough and imprudent enough to attire himself in the manner that encompassed every “scary” attribute ever applied to him in the press – surly-looking, foreign, well-dressed (as befitting a medical man), and carrying the obligatory black package of knifey dimensions, - or Hutchinson inventing a not-so-subtle suspect for some reason, is anyone’s guess, but I know where I’m placing my bet.

It wasn’t possible to register small coloured objects from the corner of Dorset Street all the way to the Miller’s Court entrance, especially not in poor weather conditions in the small hours of the morning in Victorian London, and it would not have been visible beneath two overcoats either.

“Red hankys are useful for, say, wiping away blood. Blood is red after all and doesn't show up quite as well on a red hanky! Also, it keeps him warm, and it looks sharp.”

In light of the forgoing, it seems likely that yours was precisely the sort of reaction Hutchinson was hoping for from the police. It might also have aided the cause of a working class ripper to have everyone believe that Lawende’s suspect was secretly a wealthy Jewish dandy who “dressed down” for the Eddowes murder, and used his nice, posh hanky as a neckerchief to look a bit rough and shabby.

We should remember that Lawende’s description had been public knowledge for some considerable time before Hutchinson contacted the police. The latter could easily have used elements from both legitimate witnesses and sensational press claims in order to construct a suspect – a fictional bogeyman whose conjured-up presence would both “explain” Hutchinson’s own loitering presence opposite a crime scene as clocked by Sarah Lewis, and deflect suspicion in a false direction. It certainly cannot be argued that his description corroborates previous descriptions, as that would only apply if he had no means of accessing (and "borrowing" from) those previous descriptions.

Finally, if your favoured approach is to endorse whatever the contemporary police said, it is important to acknowledge that the police did not endorse the suggestion that Lawende and Hutchinson saw the same man. On the contrary, if Lawende was Anderson’s witness (as appears likely, in my view), you’re left having to explain why they did not use a better description of the same man – the one supposedly provided by Hutchinson. Lawende doubted that he would recognise the man again, whereas Hutchinson could swear to the man anywhere, so why not use Hutchinson? The answer is that Hutchinson was discredited, and his Astrakhan description not considered a legitimate sighting of Jack the Ripper.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

“I was merely using these examples to demonstrate that when Hutch came forward he would not have needed to be remotely psychic to fear that anyone could have been awake and heard noises that brought them to their window”

But if we’re to credit him with any sort of ability for proper risk assessment, he would have realised that the chances of anyone peering out of their bedroom window at nothing were extremely remote at 3:30am, and that a swift and quiet entry into room #13 wouldn’t have enabled any window-gazing insomniac to see anything beyond the back of a man in dark clothes and a hat. Contrast that with the full and clear realisation that a woman had definitely seen him, and not just from the back, and we have a rational fear, unlike the proposed scenario involving him getting the willies over windows.

“If he did, he presumably heard the same cries of murder that others heard, and he'd have been hard pressed to break into that room and launch into the attack without making the slightest sound”

Well no, because in the scenario we’re currently exploring, Hutchinson would himself have been responsible for the “cries of murder that others heard”, and he’d have been buggered anyway if Lewis and/or Prater had taken their curiosity further. There is no reason to think that he made “the slightest sound” before he entered the room, away from prying eyes, if not ears.

“But an outside lamp wouldn't have helped Hutch see inside a darkened room, where someone could have peeped out from behind a dark curtain to investigate any nocturnal comings and goings.”

But the chances of that happening were so astonishingly slim that any fear of that outcome would have been highly irrational, unlike the fear that would have resulted from the knowledge that someone had seen him at relatively close quarters. And the same applies here too:

“It's not that anyone did see the ripper breaking into or leaving the room afterwards. It's the fact that anyone could have done, and he would not have known about it either way - even after the inquest, as any such witness testimony could have been held back to give the murderer a false sense of security.”

We have to distinguish between rational fears and highly irrational paranoia. It doesn’t follow that a serial killer who injects himself in the investigation out of self-preservation must also be terrified of every other potential negative outcome, however unlikely. He would doubtless have assessed the likelihood of him being spotted entering the room, or leaving it during the market hustle and bustle, and rightly considered it to be slim. Not so in the case of Lewis’ sighting.

“I notice you still haven't explained how Hutch would have registered the fact that Lewis was among the large crowd of people at the Town Hall, and would be giving evidence at the inquest.”

Lewis would probably have been ushered into the courtroom by the police or other officials. It would, at the very least, have been extremely obvious to the crowds that gathered around Shoreditch Town Hall which individuals were to be used as witnesses at the inquest. And while the crowd would have scrutinised those witnesses, they were very unlikely to have been scrutinised back. Think of it like a high profile trial today – the principle witnesses would be ushered into the building, often with the press being snap-happy all around them, and while the focus of the crowd would be very much on those witnesses, the witnesses themselves are very unlikely to be in the frame of mind to return fire and pay particular attention to individuals immersed in that crowd. If Hutchinson was one such crowd member, the chances of him being clocked again by Lewis were equally slim.

“I was thinking the same thing, that if Hutch believed he had seen the ripper and followed him and Kelly back to Miller's Court, he'd be taking a considerable risk by giving the police an accurate and highly detailed description of this very dangerous man.”

So, Hutchinson conveniently arrives back in the area at around the time the ripper was active, and despite being fully aware that stories abounded of sinister Jewish types murdering prostitutes, he never so much as contemplates the idea that the surly-looking man in the flashy clothes might just be the sinister prostitute-murdering Jew in question? And yet he still manages to find the spectacle of Kelly hanging around with such a person so intensely fascinating that he spends 45 minutes loitering outside her home, but not before following this man and stooping to look into his face? Here we have a surly sinister stranger, and yet Hutchinson never once considered the possibility that he might be the surly sinister stranger that everyone is after.

If this doesn’t whiff mightily at the moment, it gets worse.

Then, after learning of Kelly’s murder, he only then contemplates the possibility that the man in question was the murderer – Jack the Ripper, no less – and then his bollocks disappear entirely. Gone is the aggressively inquisitive Hutchinson who stuck to the man like a limpet on the night in question, even the point of rudely staring right into his mug and stalking him for three quarters of an hour, and behold, a sissy emerges. Suddenly, this man from the labouring classes (and with a military appearance) is scared of a poncy, flashily-dressed, swaggering peacock dodging all the nocturnal police and vigilante activity, avoiding the muggers who might like his gold chain, breaking into the Victoria Home and unwrapping his American cloth parcel to Hutchinson’s detriment?

I really, really don’t think so, somehow.

“The story may have reached the papers with the blessing of the police because the details had not come out at the inquest.”

No.

The police-sanctioned release of Hutchinson’s description appeared on the 13th November, and deliberately did not include a name. However, this was undermined by a second account appearing in the press the next day, which Hutchinson gave to reporters which did include his name, and was not sanctioned by the police. You can forget the idea of Abberline “arranging” for details to be altered deliberately in order to “protect” Hutchinson (it's all getting a bit far-fetched and conspiratorial for me, this!). If he wanted to do that, he could have supplied a completely different name, and yet we know that didn’t happen, because Abberline’s private, internal report gave the name “George Hutchinson”.

“Unaccountably, none of them read in their newspaper that this man Hutchinson was watching the court, waiting for someone to come out, and remembered the man Lewis had seen doing exactly the same thing”

No, this doesn’t follow at all.

I’m sure many of them read it, and some of them may have made the connection, but if it had been published on the 14th that Hutchinson was an important witness, any connection would simply serve as corroboration for his claims, in their minds. They would only start having problems if it was published far and wide that Hutchinson was discredited as an attention-seeker, as this would probably prompt them to wonder why this should have occurred, when there was such an “obvious” element of corroboration in place. It all really depends if these people were as super-attentive and anxious to chew over the nitty-gritty as we are. Another point often missed is the reality that the wideawake man received such little interest at the time, not because he was investigated and determined not to have been Hutchinson (as per some very poor suggestions), but because he was eclipsed in terms of significance by the more obviously “scary” Bethnal Green botherer, who was the obvious bogeyman in her account.

“If she later read Hutchinson's account I find it hard to believe she would not have gone back to the police to tell them this must be her loitering man, so they could cross him off their list of people to identify.”

Why is that hard to believe? I find it next to impossible that she’d engage in such weird supererogation. If she recognised that Hutchinson’s account placed him in the spot where she saw her wideawake man, why wouldn’t she have assumed that the police must have made the same connection? The police didn’t require Lewis to hold their hands, and she would have realised that. She was quite the “doleful little body” at the inquest, evidently traumatised by her experience, and not the sort to have any more involvement as an amateur sleuth than the police required of her. She only became a witness after being forced to remain inside the court, remember.

“I'm now wondering if the police were furious when Hutch's story appeared in the papers, and sought to repair the damage by feeding them the line about a 'reduced importance' (and possibly the idea that it had actually been discredited), to give the ripper a false sense of security in the event that he was indeed the man Hutch had described in so much detail.”

In which case, they would have made an official release from either the Police Gazette or one of the news agencies, as opposed to what really happened, which was that certain trusted members of the press were informed only when specific inquiries were made about it. This was done to ensure that minimal embarrassment was caused to the police, who were understandably anxious to avoid censure for having the wool pulled over their eyes yet again by another dud witness. The hunt for Astrakhan was quietly abandoned.

Regards,
Ben

[c.d.]

I think that we are getting all hung up on the meaning of "suspect" when we are discussing Hutchinson. I think it has different meanings to different people. Is there a legal definition? Is it used differently by the police? So let's try a different word. I think that we can all agree that Hutchinson's behavior was suspicious. Does that automatically make him a suspect? I don't know. Here in the U.S.,the police use the term "person of interest." It describes someone who the police WANT TO QUESTION because they think they may have information that may help them solve the crime. It also carries the unspoken implication that the police believe that that person might have somehow been involved or might actually be the perpetrator. If the person of interest is questioned and his answers don't seem to jive then he can become a suspect and might eventually be charged with the crime.

But if the person of interest is questioned and can provide a verifiable alibi then he NEVER becomes a suspect. I think this is what happened in Hutchinson's case. I simply refuse to accept the possibility that the police couldn't figure out that his story made him a person of interest. Therefore, I think he was questioned and Abberline and others concluded that he was not involved in Mary's murder. Now, as Ben has pointed out, that doesn't clear him but that is all we have.

As for him coming forward, it might have initially deflected any suspicion but that deflection had to have some sort of limits, i.e., I don't think it would have been been sufficient if some organs or a bloody knife dropped out of his pocket. Now that is extreme but the point is it could have only taken him so far.

c.d.