Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Sally]

Quiet?

'Quiet' is a value judgement. There is also the distinction to be made as to what people mean when they use the term. 'Quiet' may refer to a lack of sound. 'Quiet' may refer to an absence of people.

All the murder sites were relatively 'quiet' in the latter sense.We know that there weren't many people out on the streets, but that there were all the same, some people out and about. In the East End, there would always have been people out and about at all times of day and night. This was for several reasons - one being that people really did go to work at all times times of day and night - no, it wasn't really odd in any way, or more unusual, for people to be going to work in the small hours of the morning.

So the level of 'quiet' encountered by the Ripper and his victims was probably about as quiet as it got.

'Quiet' in terms of ambient noise is very difficult to measure objectively - I think there is ample evidence to endorse the view that what one considers 'quiet' depends on what one is accustomed to hearing. 'Quiet' is defined chiefly as below the noise level considered 'normal'

I'm sure there are studies about this sort of thing - I have a vague recollection concerning people living within a defined radius of the Spaghetti Junction.

But anyway - its all a bit vague and difficult to draw hard and fast lines around to be certain of anything, I think. Just my opinion.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"I have never suggested or even heard it suggested that Dorset Street and all other murder sites were anything other than “quiet” at the times of the various eyewitness sightings. I simply stated the obvious – that it could not have been sufficiently “quiet” to enable someone to overhear conversation from 30 metres away in a busy and crowded part of London, especially in bleak weather conditions that included a strong wind."

Dorset Street was not "busy" at the time we are speaking of, judging by the evidence. It´s doss houses would have been "crowded" but the street in itself was emphatically not. I put Hutchinson in the street on the morning of the 8:th, and so much for the wind!
But all of this is not very interesting anyhow, since we are not and have never been discussing whether Hutch actually heard what he said he heard - we discuss whether he COULD have heard it. And since there is no evidence at all establishing one single scrap of sound at the crucial moment in Dorset Street, and since an accoustics expert has told us that yes, normal conversation can easily be made out from that distance (meaning that LOUD conversation can be heard and made out even better), we actually have all we need to say that Hutchinson may well have heard the exact things he said he heard.

If you dispute that without substantiation (and speculations on your behalf about different sound sources that may or may not have been at play is no such substantiation), I´m not interested. You can have that discussion with the alien.

"let us once again avoid the fallacy that the more outlandish the lie, the greater chance it has of being true."

So Hutch wasn´t the killer after all?

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Mr Wroe
I didn’t claim to have discovered the texts I put on the Victoria Home thread. I merely put them, together in one place as they were scattered and not easy to refer to.
I have no doubt there are other sources. I haven’t seen any myself. If you have some that relate to the period concerned then I am sure a lot of people would be interested to read them.

People of the Abyss is downloadable here from a 1907 edition (which is a reprint of a October 1903 edition):

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t2j67924k

Or in a less olde worlde format here:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/chapter20.html

I think both have the original photos.
On the olde worlde version...
On page 244 is one captioned ‘The working-men’s homes, near Middlesex Street’. I have seen it categorically stated that this is not the Victoria Home.
Facing page 245 is one captioned ‘One of the Monster Doss Houses’. Again I am fairly certain that isn’t the Victoria Home.
On page 246 is one captioned ‘Working men’s homes, for men only’. This is the Victoria Home.
(On the modern version the same photos are in Chapter 20)

There is no interior picture. I have seen a kitchen picture with people eating at tables. I have seen this attributed to the Victoria Home but it doesn’t seem to be from People of the Abyss – at least not the early editions.
Jack London took I believe about two thirds of the photos in People of the Abyss himself. Would he have taken his camera into the doss house? He puts great emphasis about not being able to have any possessions in such establishments.
I would suggest from his description, that Jack London stayed at the one on page 244 – near Middlesex Street. The interior description doesn’t seem to match the Victoria Home either although things could well have changed in the 14 years between 1888 and 1902.

[Ben]

Thank you, Ruby, for your kind words.

I too have only just returned from a pleasant day away from the message board to find a whole load of new posts with “Ben” peppered all over them in a negative or disparaging context. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m afraid this sort of thing tends to be par for the course around these particular threads.

Let it be said by no one that I want for attention!

Mike knows this all too well, which his why he has encouraged his allies to abort their attempts to keep battling away. Yes, he’s resorted to yet more insults ("ignoramuses" etc) and offensive accusations, but at least he knows that the longer those pesky "Hutchinsonians" are given an audience and lots of lovely attention, the greater the chance of oh-so-dangerous misconceptions occurring, such as the one about Hutchinson becoming “such a popular suspect”.

Fortunate it is for us, then, that neither Fisherman nor Lechmere have the remotest intention of taking his advice, and that they will instead continue to respond at length, and continue to use such negative or sarcastic adjectives as “stupid”, “daft” and “Moriarty” when discussing me and my views on this subject. So it’s business as usual, more of Hutchinson dominating message board debates, and thus a "purpose to live" after all. Hooray!

Back on topic, I would suggest ignoring Fisherman's:

"No, no, no...! Don´t do it that way - do it the scientific way! Get hold of an accoustics expert and measure the noise! As it stands, you don´t know if we speak of 2 or 20 dB, do you? And guessing won´t do!"

Instead, keep doing precisely what you've done already, to your eternal credit, and take the commonsense approach with regard to the likely extent of background noise that existed late at night on the East End Streets in 1888.

Hi Lechmere,

“Ben - I will dismantle your lats post soon enough”

Uh-oh. Fasten those seat belts, boys and girls, and prepare for the bumpy ride that will constitute Lechmere's “dismantling” of my last post.

I’m sure you’ll dazzle me, as usual.

In the meantime, you’re still confused about lodging houses, as others have pointed out, and my point about night watchmen was that they were active in the small hours of the morning. It was simply an observation to highlight the obvious shortcomings of your unimaginative, black-and-white “day for work, night for sleeping” claim.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

“Ben! How´s the alien doing?”

He’s currently tucked up in bed with Toppy in silent, silent Dorset Street, Fisherman.

Thanks for asking.

All hilarities aside, though, I’m afraid you’ve once again drastically misinterpreted my position on the sound issue, and used that misinterpretation in another attempt to perpetuate the “all sources and experts disagree with Ben” fallacy. Unfortunately for your keyword site-searches, you’ve only wasted your own time, since you’re using these contemporary sources as some mythical form of “contradiction” of a position I never once argued. I have never suggested or even heard it suggested that Dorset Street and all other murder sites were anything other than “quiet” at the times of the various eyewitness sightings. I simply stated the obvious – that it could not have been sufficiently “quiet” to enable someone to overhear conversation from 30 metres away in a busy and crowded part of London, especially in bleak weather conditions that included a strong wind.

You’re brought up Mitre Square again and the fact that the resident policeman and George Morris claimed not to have heard anything, and yet we know that despite their failure to hear anything, there clearly were sounds of some description, unless you think the entire process of inveigling, murdering and mutilating Catherine Eddowes happened in silence. Similarly, in spite of the undoubted quietness of Mitre Square and the surrounding area at the time of the Eddowes murder, neither Levy nor Lawende could even “hear” a man and a woman conversing less than ten feet away. These are witnesses who appeared at the inquest and were demonstrably taken seriously by the police. Indeed, Lawende continued to be used for identification purposes several years after the murders. He wasn’t discredited shortly after he made a three-day late post-inquest statement as Hutchinson did, who claimed to have heard conversation from 30 metres away.

I go with Lawende and Levy, for astoundingly obvious reasons, and it doesn’t take a deductive genius to figure out why they could not hear the couple; because despite the relative quietness of the streets at that particular time, it was still outdoors in a busy part of London, not a silent fjord in Nowheresville, Norway. You accuse me of “over the top exaggeration” for no reason, but it was you who started the ball rolling with your declaration that Dorset Street was both “empty” and “silent”. I merely used appropriately robust terminology in drawing attention to how obviously wrong this is.

It is essential to bear in mind also that “quiet”, unlike “silent”, can be a relative term, and was clearly used as such by most of those sources you quoted. There is no doubt that under ordinary day-time circumstances, Dorset Street is anything but quiet. Obviously it is considerably more so at 2:15 in the morning, a reality that undoubtedly influenced the killer’s decision to strike when he did. I have recently returned from London where I traversed the length of Villiers Street (look it up). It struck me that the street was unusually quiet on account of the fact that it was 11:30am on a Sunday night, and the practically adjacent Charing Cross station was closed. It was “unusually quiet”, and yet the despite this, the chances of me discerning even the vaguest snippets of conversations from people chatting several feet away was effectively zero, despite the fact that I could detect that they were at least conversing.

You would do well to bear these things in mind before decrying the arguments of others as "daft" (after previously avowing to end the argument) or repeating that rather tedious nonsense about me drawing the “short straw” in terms of sources. The sources very obviously support my position in every particular, and when it comes to having my cake and eating it, I’m afraid the cake is beginning to taste rather good.

On the subject of the “sources”, is there any good reason why you’re quoting from the opinions of other Casebook posters and calling them “sources”? In which case, can I quote myself and call that a “source”?

“If he said he had not seen anybody enter the archway, in spite of watching it, the police would have good evidence telling them that he seemingly missed Lewis.”

Or, vastly more probable, the police never cross referenced Hutchinson’s account with that of Sarah Lewis, or if they did, they at least considered it evidence that he simply didn’t mention her, not that he “missed” her. Certainly, this is nothing that comes even vaguely close to an “alibi”.

“If a fellow lodger or doss house door watch swore that Hutchinson had been there on the night of Thursday, they would likewise have good evidence telling them that he seemingly was not in Dorset Street on the night.”

But in such a scenario, Dew would clearly have stated in his memoirs (on which you are currently relying to bolster your theories) that it had been fully established that Hutchinson was mistaken as to date, rather than expressing personal opinion only and appealing to his readership to accept his speculations on the matter. The same objection applies to other fill-in-the-blanks, such as a mythical Romford alibi. Please don’t refer to my theories as “Moriarty”. It’s very irritating, and it’s clear you’ve only borrowed the expression from another poster’s crass condemnations.

Finally, let us once again avoid the fallacy that the more outlandish the lie, the greater chance it has of being true.

Best regards,
Ben

[Garry Wroe]

I posted up all the contemporary sources on the Victoria Home on the relevant thread a few weeks ago.

With respect, Lechmere, no you didn't. You posted several easily available sources such as those carried by Casebook. Believe it or not, some of us have spent years searching through a variety of newspaper archives which provide a great deal more information than the snippets available here on site. Hence your assertion that you 'posted up all the contemporary sources on the Victoria Home' is as fanciful as it is misjudged.

Ben likes to think Jack London gave an acciunt of it about 14 years later. It is very doubtful that he did, but it is one of Ben's facts. Say no more.

Although I've never seen the version of People of the Abyss that contained Jack London's original photographs, I'm given to believe that these plates included the now well known internal and external images of the Victoria Home. If so, it may be stated with virtual certainty that the Victoria Home was indeed the lodging house described by London. If you know any different, however, I stand to be corrected.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[Fisherman]

Lechmere:

"Fisherman - I admire your patience in locating those sound level quotations!"

Thanks a bunch, Lechmere! Let me just say, from one rabid dog to another, that I am a great fan of your calm and systematic fashion of dealing with this issue myself!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Mike:

"Explain to me why the issue of noise has the same people who were mindless in the Leander threads attacking you?"

Oh, come, Mike ...!

"as much as I'm not a cut and run kind of guy, I ask you both (and others) to leave them their only real reason to live; Hutch's guilt. Give it to them and then go smugly away, realizing that you have not only helped the needy, but are right in your beliefs. We all win."

You are a kind soul, Mike. Me and Lechmere, we are rabid dogs - or so we are told.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ruby:

"none of those things are either facts, nor remotely probable."

Why not? Your argumentation is around, improbable though it may seem.

"You have a strong bias against Hutchinson as the murderer"

I am pretty certain that he was not the killer, but instead a totally innocent man; George William Topping Hutchinson to be more exact. But that is not a bias, dearest Ruby - that is a very well underbuilt stance, signed, in fact, by none other than Topping himself.

"...that is why you turn up on Hutch threads arguing against him. You are afraid that Ben's explanations are too convincing "

So far, any such fear has been put to shame, Ruby. I am equally confident that this will hold true in the future too.
The reason I "turned up" on this thread is that I actually wrote the article that is the ground for it. It would look odd if I was not there to defend my theory, don´t you think?
As an aside, I may inform you that Ben and I have had disagreements about lots of things, not only Hutchinson.

"In this particular case, if A Man didn't exist, then all discussion on a fictitious conversation and it's noise levels is worth zero."

Correct; bravo! And if he DID exist, then ...? Yes ...?

"Lot's if it was happening up and down the street in houses with no insulation/double glazing etc."

No, no, no...! Don´t do it that way - do it the scientific way! Get hold of an accoustics expert and measure the noise! As it stands, you don´t know if we speak of 2 or 20 dB, do you? And guessing won´t do!

Of course, if you should take the trouble to do it right, it still stands that you are going to find it difficult in the extreme to prove that the noise you adequately measure was about between, say, 2.14 and 2.18 AM on the morning that Hutch was there. For what happens if your rowdy band of lodgers were silent in them minutes, Ruby?

"We are talking about different incidents in all different buildings, up and down the street all night."

Not in the slightest, Ruby! YOU are the one that talks about such a thing. I don´t believe it for a minute, and I have all the quotations adhering to the murder nights and sites to bolster it.
What do YOU have, Ruby, but a bleeding heart and a burning wish that your suggestion was true? What, exactly?

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

I only said WWII as I know it was bombed then, and that seemed a suitable cut off point!

[Sally]

Lechmere - I'm not actually sure the VH was operating as a lodging house up to that point - it isn't included on a comprehensive list from 1927 that I have. I don't know what happened to it - I think perhaps the only way to find out when it ceased business would be to go through the lodging house lists at the LMA - the jobs yours if you have the time!

But yes, I'm sure a trawl through the papers would be worth the time.

[Lechmere]

Sally - I'm sure a search through local newpapers up to WWII would bring out a lot more information on the Victoria Home. One thing, even if Jack London did mean this Victoria Home, it isn't that good as evidence as it was from 14 years later. The regime could have changed.

[Sally]

Lechmere

There is unpublished stuff on the VH, I'll post it on the VH thread if I ever get round to it. I haven't seen it yet, so I have no idea whether it would agree with your view or not. I agree with you about Jack London's lodging house to an extent. It could have been the VH, but I think there are other candidates which could fit as well.

[Lechmere]

Rubyretro - I am way ahead of you. I posted up all the contemporary sources on the Victoria Home on the relevant thread a few weeks ago. Go take a look. It shows that it wsas different from nearly all other local lodging houses.
Ben likes to think Jack London gave an acciunt of it about 14 years later. It is very doubtful that he did, but it is one of Ben's facts. Say no more.

Fisherman - I admire your patience in locating those sound level quotations!

Ben - I will dismantle your lats post soon enough - for now, nightwatchmen would have gone on duty at about 9 pm at the lastest. Night workers report for duty in the evening, not in the small hours.

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

Explain to me why the issue of noise has the same people who were mindless in the Leander threads attacking you? Why is it that these people follow you around just to have an argument? Does it say something about you? Do they just know that you will argue because... well, I don't know why, but because you just will argue with them?

It is the same crop of ignoramuses who won't give an inch. I think even Crystal/Jane/Insert Name might be still involved though I'm not naming names.

Why do you even deal with it? In fact, this goes out to Lechmere as well. Why do you want to battle people who can only rehash the same nonsense so that they don't lose their precarious holds on a suspect? They can't. They will have no purpose to live if they do. And so, as much as I'm not a cut and run kind of guy, I ask you both (and others) to leave them their only real reason to live; Hutch's guilt. Give it to them and then go smugly away, realizing that you have not only helped the needy, but are right in your beliefs. We all win.

Mike