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Let´s throw another stick into the fire. It´s something that I´ve been pondering for some while, and I´d like (I hope) to hear what others think about it.
Here it is:
We are being told that it is obvious that Hutchinson copied his story from the Daily News of the 10:th.
I do not agree wholeheartedly with the suggestion, but I concede that there are many similarities inbetween the two stories. As I have stated before, I myself used to think they were perhaps too many to be a coincidence, but on consideration I found that the details involved all were very commonplace matters for a prostiutution encounter, and so I think it is completely plausible that the stories were not one original story and one copycat.
What has been bugging me somewhat all along is the question why Hutchinson would lend a story that was in the papers and go to the police with it. I believe that the police followed what the papers wrote quite closely, and so Abberline et al would very possibly (and to my mind, quite probably) have been aware of the story served in the Daily Mail.
Hutchinson could easily have outlined another Jewish character than the rich one with all the gadgets and fancy clothes; he could have created a Fagin, a hairdresser etcetera.
He could also have said that he saw Kelly making contact in White´s Row, instead of at a corner of Dorset Street. For example.
He could have masked every detail of that Daily News story so as to make it impossible for the police to be able to make any sort of match.
Or he could have told another story altogether.
But he didn´t.
Why would he risk such a thing? The question nags me.
Okay, next step: Which of the two stories would we dub a copycat if we had them side by side, and with no previous knowledge about the context?
I would say that Hutchinson´s story seems the original one, with all the details to it.
The Daily Mail story seems to be a recollection where the details have gone lost. Astrakhan man is reduced to a "well-clad" man, what corner of Dorset Street it happened on disappears, and - perhaps more interestingly, even - the inferred sex affair is spelt out as an offering of money. The conversation parts are lost, though. The little boy could be just a flight of fancy.
Confusing?
Not necessarily.
Here´s the deal:
Hutchinson comes to town on Thursday, and sees he encounter between Kelly and Astrakhan man.
He then walks the streets all night, and slips into the Victoria Home in the morning. Somewhere during Friday, he speaks with somebody about what he has seen, and that kindles the fire.
Now, in this scenario, the woman who spoke to the Daily News could be the person Hutch spoke to.
But she could also have been somebody who overheard the conversation between Hutch and somebody else, speaking about what had happened.
Or she could have been somewhere further down the information line, having the story told to her by somebody else who had heard it - in which case she would not know at what stage the story originated!
The core point being that maybe Hutchinson himself was the one who originated the story.
This has been a tight scenario before, since if Hutch was in Dorset Street on Friday morning, then the Daily news would perhaps not have been able to get the story printed the following day.
But if there was a day inbetween, then the paper would have had the time! And the story could have travelled far.
The scenario offers an interesting proposition: If Hutch told the story to somebody on Thursday evening, then it could have travelled down many persons during that evening, the following night and the next morning, up til the time Kelly was found. Then, on Friday evening, as all the papers were vacuum-cleaning Dorset Street for information, somebody who had had Hutchinsons story passed down to her, could pounce on the chance to become the talk of the town and put herself in Hutchinson´s role and sell the story to the papers: "I met the murdered woman Kelly on that night, and there was this wealthy looking geezer, who ..."
I don´t know if I am overlooking something here, but I don´t think so. Otherwise, I´m sure I will have it pointed out to me!
One of the advantages with this scenario is that it would allow for Abberline et al to have read the story in the Daily Mail and still believe Hutchinson, if he was able to confirm that he had spoken about it all on the town.
Of course, it says that he told a fellow lodger about it late in the process, and that he told a policeman on Sunday - but that would not preclude that he had spoken of the encounter before, the way I see it. And he would not have had any reason to keep silent about it - it was an eyecatching story, and so an interesting one to relate.
It would put another twist altogether on the similaritites between the two stories. And it would offer an explanation that has not been looked into before.
Let me know what you think!
The best,
Fisherman
Here it is:
We are being told that it is obvious that Hutchinson copied his story from the Daily News of the 10:th.
I do not agree wholeheartedly with the suggestion, but I concede that there are many similarities inbetween the two stories. As I have stated before, I myself used to think they were perhaps too many to be a coincidence, but on consideration I found that the details involved all were very commonplace matters for a prostiutution encounter, and so I think it is completely plausible that the stories were not one original story and one copycat.
What has been bugging me somewhat all along is the question why Hutchinson would lend a story that was in the papers and go to the police with it. I believe that the police followed what the papers wrote quite closely, and so Abberline et al would very possibly (and to my mind, quite probably) have been aware of the story served in the Daily Mail.
Hutchinson could easily have outlined another Jewish character than the rich one with all the gadgets and fancy clothes; he could have created a Fagin, a hairdresser etcetera.
He could also have said that he saw Kelly making contact in White´s Row, instead of at a corner of Dorset Street. For example.
He could have masked every detail of that Daily News story so as to make it impossible for the police to be able to make any sort of match.
Or he could have told another story altogether.
But he didn´t.
Why would he risk such a thing? The question nags me.
Okay, next step: Which of the two stories would we dub a copycat if we had them side by side, and with no previous knowledge about the context?
I would say that Hutchinson´s story seems the original one, with all the details to it.
The Daily Mail story seems to be a recollection where the details have gone lost. Astrakhan man is reduced to a "well-clad" man, what corner of Dorset Street it happened on disappears, and - perhaps more interestingly, even - the inferred sex affair is spelt out as an offering of money. The conversation parts are lost, though. The little boy could be just a flight of fancy.
Confusing?
Not necessarily.
Here´s the deal:
Hutchinson comes to town on Thursday, and sees he encounter between Kelly and Astrakhan man.
He then walks the streets all night, and slips into the Victoria Home in the morning. Somewhere during Friday, he speaks with somebody about what he has seen, and that kindles the fire.
Now, in this scenario, the woman who spoke to the Daily News could be the person Hutch spoke to.
But she could also have been somebody who overheard the conversation between Hutch and somebody else, speaking about what had happened.
Or she could have been somewhere further down the information line, having the story told to her by somebody else who had heard it - in which case she would not know at what stage the story originated!
The core point being that maybe Hutchinson himself was the one who originated the story.
This has been a tight scenario before, since if Hutch was in Dorset Street on Friday morning, then the Daily news would perhaps not have been able to get the story printed the following day.
But if there was a day inbetween, then the paper would have had the time! And the story could have travelled far.
The scenario offers an interesting proposition: If Hutch told the story to somebody on Thursday evening, then it could have travelled down many persons during that evening, the following night and the next morning, up til the time Kelly was found. Then, on Friday evening, as all the papers were vacuum-cleaning Dorset Street for information, somebody who had had Hutchinsons story passed down to her, could pounce on the chance to become the talk of the town and put herself in Hutchinson´s role and sell the story to the papers: "I met the murdered woman Kelly on that night, and there was this wealthy looking geezer, who ..."
I don´t know if I am overlooking something here, but I don´t think so. Otherwise, I´m sure I will have it pointed out to me!
One of the advantages with this scenario is that it would allow for Abberline et al to have read the story in the Daily Mail and still believe Hutchinson, if he was able to confirm that he had spoken about it all on the town.
Of course, it says that he told a fellow lodger about it late in the process, and that he told a policeman on Sunday - but that would not preclude that he had spoken of the encounter before, the way I see it. And he would not have had any reason to keep silent about it - it was an eyecatching story, and so an interesting one to relate.
It would put another twist altogether on the similaritites between the two stories. And it would offer an explanation that has not been looked into before.
Let me know what you think!
The best,
Fisherman
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