Joran Van der Hutchinson?

[Fisherman]

Ben writes:

"I believe the original police report initially had the Wideawake man "talking to a female", but this was crossed out, and all subsequent recountings of Lewis' evidence include the detail that "there was no-one talking to him". This is probably what Simon is referring to. The confusion may have stemmed from the fact that Lewis mentioned another couple at the corner of Dorset Street, outside "Ringers'" whom she passed very shortly before noticing the solitary be-wideawaked figure."

U-huh. Thanks for that, Ben! I knew about the couple, but if I have ever read about the woman, it has since slipped my mind...

The best,
Fisherman

[Simon Wood]

Hi Fisherman,

Ben's absolutely right in spotting the source of this evidential conundrum.

Sarah Lewis was wearing her Mrs Kennedy hat when she reported seeing people outside the Britannia at the corner of Dorset Street.

We are spoiled for choice as to whom she saw, and when. There are three variations amongst Mrs Kennedy's 11 newspaper appearances–

1. Untimed: 1 man and 2 women [all unidentified]
2. 3.00 am: 1 man (who had earlier accosted her) and Kelly [man recognised, woman identified].
3. 3.30 am: 1 woman and 2 men [all unidentified].

Interesting that at 3.00 am Kelly was in Room 13 with Mr Astrakahn.

Also that it was Abberline who interviewed Sarah Lewis, Mrs Kennedy and George Hutchinson.

Regards,

Simon

[Ben]

Hi Fisherman,

I believe the original police report initially had the Wideawake man "talking to a female", but this was crossed out, and all subsequent recountings of Lewis' evidence include the detail that "there was no-one talking to him". This is probably what Simon is referring to. The confusion may have stemmed from the fact that Lewis mentioned another couple at the corner of Dorset Street, outside "Ringers'" whom she passed very shortly before noticing the solitary be-wideawaked figure.

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

You do ask some tricky questions, Simon. Am I correct in anticipating that you have a bid for her identity yourself...?
By the way, where do we find her? I can´t see her in either police report or inquest material?

The best,
Fisherman

[Simon Wood]

Hi Fisherman,

Regarding Sarah Lewis's testimony, who was the female Mr Wideawake was talking to whilst standing alone outside the lodging house opposite Millers Court?

Regards,

Simon

[Fisherman]

Monty:

"The debate of who was wearing what, who saw who wearing whatever then there just really holds no interest for me.
I find it extremely hard to believe that when someone said Billycock they meant Wideawake.
It is simple, there is no need to over complicate."

Hi Monty!

I realize what you are saying. But I think that if we do NOT "complicate" things here to some extent, we miss out on a number of details that may have very much of a bearing on the issue.

To begin with, we know that Sarah Lewis said in the initial police report that she could not describe the man she had seen in Dorset Street.
She would have supplied the police with the information that she had indeed seen a man outside the court, as if keeping a watch on it.
When this information was offered by Lewis, I think we can easily realize what the police must have done. Here they were, with a witness who may possibly have spotted Jack in the waiting to kill his (purportedly) fifth victim. I say that this ensures that questions must have been posed to Lewis about the looks and possible identity of the man.
Was he tall or short?
Thin or sturdy?
Dark or fair?
I cannot possibly see the police forgetting to ask these things! Yet, they came up with absolutely nothing. They drew a total blank; Lewis could not describe the man.

To me, this makes her efforts at the inquest very, very questionable. She may well have believed that what she now stated was what she remembered, but the mind plays curious tricks on us is situations like these, when we feel we need to remember somebody to help the proceedings. And indeed, what she offers is very thin: the man was "not tall - but stout" she said. She could not say what kind of clothes he had been wearing, but she was able to say that his hat was a black wideawake.
These are all things that had dawned on her somewhere inbetween the police report and the inquest. From not having been able to point out one single thing about her man, she suddenly can pinpoint not only the model of his hat, but also the colour.

My own conviction is that this all is something that has taken shape and form inside Lewis´mind. And just how correct it would have been is quite impossible to tell, but research into witness psychology urges us very strongly not to attach to much weight to testimony like this. The inescapable conclusion is that the wideawake you mean she must have meant, may well have been nothing more than a figment of Lewis´imagination.

If we thereafter add the inference that there was some sort of interchangeability inbetween billycock and wideawake, and the very clear fact that at the very least the material (hard or soft felt) changed from wideawake to wideawake, then I think a very fair case can be made for the necessity of challenging Lewis testimony from the inquest.

I would like to offer something for comparison here: In a Swedish experiment, a number of students were attending a lesson in a classroom, held by two lecturers. By their side, a third man was standing for a few minutes, after which he left the classroom. The students were then asked to describe him. There were a good many bids for the trousers, the jacket, the shirt, but the most interesting thing came about when the students were asked about what colour of tie the man had worn.
-Blue, some said.
-No, red! others stated.
-Yellow.
-Brownish!

All kinds of bids were placed. Of course, the man had worn no tie at all. But when the students were asked to comply by offering the colour they had "seen", they readily did so.
And I think that black wideawake may just go very well together with them ties ...

I hope I´m not annoying you too much with this, Monty. I just think that these are important things to keep in mind.

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

Fisherman,

The debate of who was wearing what, who saw who wearing whatever then there just really holds no interest for me.

I find it extremely hard to believe that when someone said Billycock they meant Wideawake.

It is simple, there is no need to over complicate.

Monty

[Fisherman]

Ben!

"That really doesn’t make any difference, Fish.
Buildings are also a “completely static phenomenon”, but if I were to state as fact that a particular building was ugly when you considered it a thing of architectural beauty, you would surely question my right to mutate what is so obviously an opinion into a fact?"

I do not judge the beauty of the "building" we are speaking of, Ben. I count the windows and the doors, I measure the height, I take a look at the type of bricks and the shape of the roof, and I establish how many chimneys it has.

Static. Will be the same next day. Will enable me to tell it apart from any other building that does not correspond exactly to these parametres.

Have a nice weekend, Ben.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Yes, Monty, the width of that particular hart was large - and that goes hand in hand with your assesment.
But the felt in it was hard - and that goes against your statement.

All I am suggesting is that there may have been OTHER varieties too, mixed into the mould. And at the extreme ends of the scale would have been a stiff, smallish billycock hat with a small brim, and a soft-felted wideawake with a brim that would put the Sombrero of the singer in a 1950:s Mexican danceband in the shade.

Furthermore, I am suggesting that Lewis did not come up with ANY hat at all as she met with the police. It was not until the inquest that man or hat took some sort of shape.

"The bottom line is that the Billycock was referred to as the Billycock and the Wideawake as the Wideawake."

...and the Webster´s dictionary spoke of the billycock, or, as it was also known, the wideawake. That was THEIR bottom line back in 1913.

Therefore, I am ever so politely and humbly suggesting that the man Lewis saw opposite the court on that night, may not have worn what we today perceive as a wideawake hat. Then again he may have done so.

... but if this is going to deny me a good start to the weekend, I´d gladly settle for any hat that you suggest: !

...and I have no difficulty to accept that

A/ If we need to decide on just the one type, the classical wideawake is the better choice. After all, that is the only one we have on record, albeit a wobbly ditto, and

B/ It IS nice to simplyfy matters once in a while!

Have yourself a nice weekend, Monty!

The very best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

Fisherman !!

"In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, top hats were required in cities and were sometimes worn by workers with their work clothes. During this period, the "wide-awake", a black felt hat with a broad stiff brim, was very popular in the western states."

And the width of the brim??

Seems to me it was broad.

The bottom line is that the Billycock was referred to as the Billycock and the Wideawake as the Wideawake.

The two were not questioned, which is an indication the witness and statement taker knew exactly which hat was being referred to.

Monty

[Ben]

“The F-word, Ben, applies in many a respect in this discussion, and as I said before, that owes to the fact (!) that we are dealing with a completely static phenomenon.”

That really doesn’t make any difference, Fish.

Buildings are also a “completely static phenomenon”, but if I were to state as fact that a particular building was ugly when you considered it a thing of architectural beauty, you would surely question my right to mutate what is so obviously an opinion into a fact? From my inexpert analysis of the handwriting samples, I’m of the opinion that the differences are either more plentiful or more significant than the similarities, and an expert in the field of document examination – who also examined the Maybrick diary, and whose views on that subject are accepted and endorsed by the majority – is also of that persuasion. I appreciate that you made contact with another source, but would reiterate that the nature of the material supplied to him was not acceptable for the purposes of an expert analysis – something he keen to point out, much to his credit. I say all this not to ignite another exchange of opinion, but merely to explain how I arrived at a conclusion on this issue, as opposed to recognition of an ironclad fact.

I didn’t make any “statement about Victorians writing in a very similar fashion”. I spoke of “Victorians whose penmanship was influenced by the era in which they both lived” which I thought was a reasonable observation, borne out by evidence of certain habits – the flourished capital letter of a first name or surname being an obvious example. For a quick example of how even static phenomena such as handwriting samples lend themselves to opinions rather than fact, I would dispute the suggestion that the capital H’s resemble each other very strongly since they connect to the adjoining letter u very differently, besides which the first page signature H looks bears no resemblance at all to any of Toppy’s. But that’s strictly by way of illustration, and not an invitation to embark on more repetitive scrutiny of the material!

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Monty!

This is from "History of Felt hats & Straw hats - Felt dress hats", found on the web. In it, in a chapter concerning itself with American fashion, http://www.hathistory.org/dress/felt.html, it says:

"In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, top hats were required in cities and were sometimes worn by workers with their work clothes. During this period, the "wide-awake", a black felt hat with a broad stiff brim, was very popular in the western states."

Maybe this has some sort of bearing on the issue we are dealing with - here it seems that brim was made of stiff felt, and not soft ditto, they way we today perceive a wideawake. In that case, we would have a hat that would fit in between the billycock and the wideawake as we know them today.

Fashion is a strange thing.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Monty:

"Im merely pointing out that the two hats are indeed different, both in construction and style."

Indeed they are, Monty! You know that and I know that. But this knowledge of ours is dated September 10, 2010, a date where no confusion is about any longer in this issue. A century ago, however, we know that dictionaries and papers wrote about "the billycock or the wideawake" as one and the same headgear, quite obviously believing they were interchangeable.

There could be three explanations to this:

1. Our editors could have held a billyckock in one hand and a wideawake in the other, and accepted that both types of hat belonged to the same family of headgear, or ...

2. They could have held ONE of these hats in just the one hand, exclaiming that "This is a billycock, or, as it is also known, a wideawake", or ...

3. They could have foreseen that two Ripperologists would wrestle over it if given the chance, and so they provided that chance, just for jolly.

...and I´ll be damned if I can tell just how it went down. But one thing I DO know, is that one of these alternatives applied, both in the case of Webster´s and the Te Aroha. The interchangeability - that is not around today - was there!

"Are you saying that people today would know the difference between a Wideawake and Billycock? I have to disagree. These hats are most certainly not prevalent in this age, whereas back in 1888 they were fairly common and recognisable."

"People today", Monty, include both the lad skating past your bedroom window in the morning, and the elderly man who used to play piano in a jazz quartet in the 1940:s, sporting a billycock hat on his head. It´s a wide spectre. In the broad sense you would be correct - these hats are not in style today. But what I chiefly meant, was that as they went out of style, they did so as two types of hats that were told apart. Apparently that did not apply in the same degree - if in any degree at all - back in 1888.

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

Fisherman,

Im merely pointing out that the two hats are indeed different, both in construction and style.

Are you saying that people today would know the difference between a Wideawake and Billycock? I have to disagree. These hats are most certainly not prevalent in this age, whereas back in 1888 they were fairly common and recognisable.

Monty

[Rubyretro]

Wanted to rephrase that: Once you choose a suspect, it becomes easy to refute anything because your mind is set. It isn't just a Hutchinson thing.
I'm talking about having a solid belief that someone is the killer.

Mike...I just one thing clear here : I am somebody who is very willing to admit
that I'm wrong,when I accept that I'm wrong, and change my mind. If you need proof of this, I was once a Toppy-ite but changed my mind when considering all the evidence that shows, on balance, that Hutch and Toppy could not be the same person. I have changed my mind on lots of other detail too, and have always said so straight up, when that is the case.

I almost only reply at length to Hutch Posts, but I read with interest all the 'New Posts' everyday, as well as lots of older Posts (as you will know if you ever click on 'Quick Links') but I have yet to read a Post on another
Suspect that has ever convinced me -but my mind is open.

If I was forced to give a second favourite Suspect, then it would be 'unknown'...yet, for me, the buck stops at the Kelly killing as it is the Crescendo -then 'nothing'. Hutchinson appears to me to be the man in the guilty spot, at the guilty time, who fits the profile for the killer...'unknown'
finally forced from the shadows..