Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Fisherman]

Lechmere:

"Fisherman – don’t you realise that exact contemporary evidence is not required in the Hutchinson –Ripper. It is only required if you argue Hutchinson was innocent."

Oh-oh. My bad.

"So Lewis’s wide-awake man IS Hutchinson."

I don´t think he was. But I see now that he had to be.

"Hutchinson DEFINITELY HEARD Lewis’s testimony outside Shoreditch Town Hall"

I don´t think he did. But I see now that he had to have heard it.

"If you are alluding to the day out theory (which I presume you must be!), if that was the case then I would presume it would have come to light as a result of routine ‘checks’ and so form part of the notional ‘checking out process’."

In a sense, yes. I was just speculating that the door may have opened behind Abberline before he had the time to tell Badham to have Hutch checked out, and a little old lady stepped in, saying "Jesus, how it rained between 2 and 3 Am last Friday morning!" In that case, it could perhaps be argued that the police itself never even had the time to run any checkout ...

"I do believe Hutchinson said he hadn’t been drinking that day, so he wouldn’t have been in a pub in Romford (as an alibi) nor in ‘The Romford'."

But you can have a bite to EAT both in Romford and in ´The Romford´, can you not? But I digress - the point is a good one, Lechmere. I should have chosen some other business establishment that did not rely on drink to provide an income!

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Fisherman – don’t you realise that exact contemporary evidence is not required in the Hutchinson –Ripper. It is only required if you argue Hutchinson was innocent.
So Lewis’s wide-awake man IS Hutchinson.
Hutchinson DEFINITELY HEARD Lewis’s testimony outside Shoreditch Town Hall
Etc etc

“The only thing that could have stopped such a check would be if information reached them that completely exconerated Hutch even BEFORE they had started their own checkout.”
If you are alluding to the day out theory (which I presume you must be!), if that was the case then I would presume it would have come to light as a result of routine ‘checks’ and so form part of the notional ‘checking out process’.

Also, I do believe Hutchinson said he hadn’t been drinking that day, so he wouldn’t have been in a pub in Romford (as an alibi) nor in ‘The Romford'.

[The Good Michael]

Why do fools fall in love?

Mike

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"...they could not have “satisfied” themselves of any such thing for the simple reason that the 1888 police did not have the “checking” facilities that could have enabled them to come to any hard and fast conclusion with regard to his guilt or innocence".

Wrong. If Hutchinson said to the police that he kept watch over the archway entrance all the time, and if the police asked him whether anybody entered that archway during his vigil, and he subsequently swore that nobody had even been close to that entrance for the 45 minutes he stood there, then the police would have had proof that he was not there on the night.

If the police knew that it was raining hard between 2.15 and 3 AM, something they could have found out by interviewing people like Lewis and others who were up and about in Dorset Street and it´s surroundings, it would have been quite enough to dismiss Hutchinson´s proposal that he was there.

If Hutch said that he was there on the night of the 8:th, whereas the Victoria Home had him recorded as sleeping at their premises at that stage, they would have proof that he was wrong.

If he had been in to a pub in Romford, for example, then the proprietor of that pub may have been able to tell that he was off on the days.

If he had lef the Victoria Home on the morning of the Wednesday, telling one of his fellow lodgers that he was off to Romford, then that lodger would have been able to help the police secure that Hutch was wrong on the days.

All of these are examples of hard and fast evidence that the police could easily have obtained with very little effort. Why claim that such a thing could not be done, when it´s perfectly simple to show that it may well have been done. Moreover, the hasty dismissal of Hutchinson very clearly tells us that he was let go, not because the police had realized that they were never going to be able to nail him for timewasting, but for the much more credible reason that they knew he was in the clear. This conclusion would have been reached after one thing such as the ones above dawned on the police. After that, they would have run checks to have their suspicions confirmed, and that would have been it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Ben! You do make me chuckle. Now you have argued yourself into believing that night is the same as day.
I can quite see that you have to make a dramatic leap of faith in order to try and make a case for your version of Hutchinson. But this is the best so far.
How many testimonies do you want me to produce from various witnesses at the various murder scenes to demonstrate that the streets were quiet and fairly empty – if not totally empty in the small hours of the morning? I could fill pages with it but I won’t. If you want to believe these things then be my guest.
Why would the streets be empty I wonder? It is because at night time Ben, and as I said, nearly everyone goes to sleep.
Night workers are the exception not the rule. It was the exception not the rule in 1888. It was the exception not the rule for residents of the Victoria Home, just as much as it was for residents in other lodging houses.
As you adopt absolutist positions and clearly assume I do also, I will emphasise that this does not mean that absolutely everyone was asleep at night. Clearly not. Some people did work at night, then just as now.

Another example of your projected absolutism is how you characterise my suggestion that someone may have noticed Hutchinson’s absence on the night of the murders (which undoubtedly were the major topic of conversation) as the various inmates “being in a position to scrutinize and monitor everyone else’s movements.”

Actually I take that back, this is an example of your ‘over exaggeration’ technique.

I have no doubt the residents of the Victoria Home were poor. Dark blue meant – very poor casual work, chronic want.
It did not mean – mind own business and don’t speak to anyone.
In modern day ‘doss houses’ such as Booth House, you often see groups of ‘residents’ animatedly talking to each other outside.
I don’t think we have to believe the inmates of the Victoria Home behaved as if they were extras in Oliver Twist to understand that these fellows we able to communicate with each other and even form friendships. Has anyone suggested that it was like the ‘Consider Yourself’ sequence? Has anyone come anywhere near to suggesting it? I don’t recall reading anything even approaching this.

I am left having to draw the conclusion that this is an example of your ‘over exaggeration’ technique – yet again.

I like this new notion of yours ‘alibi-disposal’. You are a first in criminology Ben, that’s for sure. Who needs to bother with an alibi, when you can just have an ‘alibi-disposal’ instead?

Having said that, I personally don’t think any new terms need be invented for what is an obvious distinction – between someone who has an alibi (and so is in the clear), and someone who doesn’t (and so isn’t in the clear). I don’t think ‘alibi-disposal’ will get the second class off the hook somehow. Particularly when the police force was in its infancy and hadn’t heard of Ben’s new concept.
Hutchinson didn’t have an alibi. Apparently until Ben came up with 'alibi-disposal' apparently no one, least of all me, realised Hutchinson didn’t have an alibi. We certainly didn’t realise Hutchinson had employed ‘alibi-disposal’. Now I’m beginning to think Hutchinson was Moriarty, what with all these fiendish schemes of his.

Yes I make ‘zero-evidence assumptions’, just as you do, just as everyone does in this case. I try to base mine on common sense and as I have spelt out to you from extrapolating from how we know the police behaved in this case.

“if their checking abilities were not nearly so extensive as to enable them to rule a suspect in or out with even the remotest degree of confidence, how can you possibly argue that any meagre checking that they could have conducted has any effect on the probability of Hutchinson being the murderer?... they were unlikely to have been in a position to progress with those suspicions?”
I would suggest that any police force at any given time uses the means at its disposal to check people to the extent of their, then, abilities. If they pass their checks, as then constituted, then the person is likely to be in the clear. It is clear that Hutchinson must have passed the tests as they were then constituted.
It is exceptionally unlikely that he failed to pass the test and the police let him walk regardless.
Just because DNA testing and CCTV hadn’t been invented, that would not have inhibited the police. It is pointless mentioning any future advances. Utterly, utterly pointless.
If someone failed to pass whatever tests were then in place, then the police would not have just thought: ‘oh well our tests are primitive, we better let him go, as we can't progress our suspicions'.
No they would have kept their eye on him in some way. They would have progressed matters that way.

You will claim that they will not have looked seriously at him – as you must.
I will contend that it is obvious that they will have checked him out with whatever level of tests they deemed appropriate and he will have passed those tests. Lack of an alibi would not be a ‘pass’. Nor would they have thought ‘hold on, he voluntarily came to us, and therefore can’t be a suspect.’

Now of course Hutchinson could have slipped through their net and it is true the net in those days had bigger holes than the net used today.
Nevertheless it still makes him a less likely suspect as he did pass the tests circa 1988 after coming under the maw of the police - unlike virtually all his 100,000 male neighbours.

As I said, your wriggling on this obvious point (as your night = day argument) merely demonstrates the weakness of Hutchinson as a suspect.

[Fisherman]

Lechmere:

"Hutchinson put himself at the crime scene at the time of the crime. He was subsequently dismissed.
There are several problematic aspects to his story that are likely to have raised eyebrows. I think it is virtually inconceivable that the police would have let him go once they decided his testimony was not reliable, without first satisfying themselves that he was not involved.
This does not mean that he had to have become a formal suspect.
This implies that it is likely that the police were satisfied that Hutchinson was not involved. We can speculate how they may have come to this conclusion, but I believe it is an almost certain that this is the case.
Building a case against Hutchinson that denies this is in my opinion slightly ridiculous and lacking in credibility. You can go on and on about there being no absolute proof in the remaining records that he was checked out but common sense and the way the police treated other people involved in the case tell a different story.

Given that the police would almost certainly have checked him out, I find it unlikely that Hutchinson was the culprit."

Exactly so, Lechmere. That´s as good a condensation of things as I have ever seen. I would only add that there is no need to be as cautious as to write that the police would "almost certainly" have checked him out - it is not almost certain to my mind, it is certain. The only thing that could have stopped such a check would be if information reached them that completely exconerated Hutch even BEFORE they had started their own checkout.

Otherwise, you are probably as spot on as anybody could be. Well done!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Not the “lost report” syndrome, Lechmere, this is precisely what we want to avoid: arriving at conclusions based on what he want to have been contained in some conveniently lost to history “report”. "

Excuse me, but have you not expressed the view that you thought that there was a very good possibility that Hutchinson had told the police that he had seen Lewis, but, unfortunately, the report is lost to us...?

Just asking.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Interesting stuff, Raould, and I agree wholeheartedly"

Is this what you agree with, Ben:

"If the suspect spoke reasonably softly (and I think this is likely given the time, place and intent) and there was some low ambient noise (general street noise from commercial street, residents or wind for instance) then I would say it is very unlikely but possible that Hutch could hear it at that distance.

Given a normal voice (for a daytime chat with a friend 56db) and the above prevailing conditions I would say its possible for sure, maybe even likely."

That´s Raouls initial post.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ben"

"I just have, Fisherman.
I’ve outlined them already in very extensive detail."

You have mentioned a few sources of noise that may or may not have been about, end of story.

"Overwhelming commonsense informs us that there would have been background noise from the crowded dwellings on the streets and that the inclement weather would have affected Hutchinson’s ability to hear conversation. So obvious and inescapable is this reality that I am no more required to prove their existence than I am required to prove that there isn’t an alien from outer space hiding somewhere in my house. It’s just ridiculous to even contemplate arguing otherwise."

You do it the way you always do: with over the-top exaggeration. And your substantiation is the usual one: your "common sense".
My stance, Ben, is that your argumentation is, in all it´s flamboyancy, very flawed and extremely biased. That is why I advice you to find yourself some substantiation. Until you do that, you need to realize that one accoustics expert and one psycholinguist have BOTH told you that there is very good reason to believe that the conversation could have been made out by Hutchinson. So why is it that you recommend me to opt for your "common sense" instead? Why would I - especially since I think it represents the very opposite of such sense?

"I’m not doing anything at your behest, Fisherman, irrespective of how much you try to “lay it on” me."

That´s all very independent of you, Ben, I´m sure. But I´m afraid it´s main effect will be that I simply point out that you are offering guesswork and loose speculations of a seemingly very biased character, whereas there are experts on these matters that have offered a view that goes totally contrary to yours. The choice, Ben, is simple, which you will apprecciate.

The thing that of course springs to mind in all of this, is that IF it was really so very obvious and commonsensical that you had the best and most reasonable view on the issue, it would be very, very simple to bring an expert or historian in that could confirm that the noise levels of the dosshouses would travel through the walls and windows and still hold a dB level high enough to nullify Hutchinson´s possibilities to overhear and make out the conversation. I´m sure there must be lots of such people about, being able to establish this 123 years after the noise in question was created. Likewise, there will probably be other accoustic´s experts around than Erling Nilsson, who may establish that the wind in the street would have howled at a certain volume at the exact minute you dearly WANT it to have done so.
Or not.
Maybe the time has come to point out that it is completely and totally impossible to prove EITHER of these things. And maybe I should add that the resiliance you show in not admitting this, makes for a useless argument and an untenable position. For everybody KNOWS, Ben, that the doss-houses may well have been very quiet at 2.15. Indeed, my hunch is that they WERE. And we likewise all KNOW that there is not a chance in hell that anybody can prove anything about the sound made by the wind at the exact minute Kelly raised her voice. Just as it may have been windy in that very minute, it may likewise NOT have been windy. End ot THAT story. And this really is something that is glaringly obvious, contrary to what YOU think is obvious.
I can prove that winds are not constant at all times. I can prove that a doss house can be quiet at 2.15 today, and it could likewise have been quiet at 2.15 123 years ago. There endeth the argument. You lost it. Unless, that is, you can PROVE me wrong on this. But you can´t, can you? You can just ramble on about how OBVIOUS it is that I am so. Which is useless.

But by all mans, go ahead and believe that your argument is a good as the expert´s argument, and go ahead and tell us that if you are not correct about the volumes of the doss houses and the wind, you have an alien from outer space living in your house. I won´t come to visit anyway, so what do I care?

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

Rubyretro – as interesting as those extracts were, they tell us very little about the Victoria Home.
The Victoria Home didn’t have an open door policy. We know that for sure.
I was interested to read about how sociable the inmates were towards each other. That is just how I pictured it.
Also interesting that many left for work at 4 am. But not surprising. It was more of a dawn till dusk society.

[Rubyretro]

Lechmere -
here are a few things on Spitalfield's men's lodging houses that I found :
the first one is from Casebook, and the other two from 'Spitalfield's Life'.

Hoare summed up the "charm" of a lodging house as follows: "A regular frequenter of a lodging-house would be often allowed to sit by the kitchen fire till one o'clock, even if he had not the fourpence to pay for his lodging, and at four he would begin again the heart-breaking business of looking for work. The complete freedom of the lodging-house has many charms which go far to compensate for its hardships. The lodging-house man is absolutely his own master, and has absolutely not ties. He has no property except what he has on his back; and when he goes out in the morning, there is no reason why he should come back to his old house rather than to any other in some different part of London. He can go to look for work, or not, just as he likes; he can go where he likes, and leave off when he chooses. If he is tired he can stop in bed; if it is wet he can stop indoors. In the evening he hears and tells the fortunes of the day, eats his tea, and has his pipe in the kitchen by the side of the fire, visits the public houses with his friend, or goes to a music-hall or a sparring match."

[

B]There is no need to knock, the door is open.[/B] At 4am, it swings back to let out the market porters and a whole posse of lodgers who carry under their arm the mark of their calling – a roll of newspapers, yesterday’s returns

.

The door at the foot of the stairs is locked but at intervals the deputy opens it and takes from each lodger as he passes the numbered metal check given to him earlier in the evening as a voucher for fourpence

As you can see, there is no book with ticks, the men come and go as they please, because the front door is open. They might sit in the kitchen until 1am
even without paying, and they only had to show a 'metal check' to get into
bedrooms. If they weren't there the next day nobody would know or care.
The working day started at 4am for casual workers looking for work.

One very interesting thing that I noticed while reading up on lodging houses :
they were nearly all full in the winter, but emptied in the summer when casual workers were looking for seasonal work in the country.

Has anyone ever researched all the seasonal work available in country areas
in the Spring/early Summer of 1888, and looked to see if there were any
murderous attacks on women ?

Incidentally Lechemere, how can you think that all carts only went at walking pace ?(only very rare overladen ones on dirt tracks, I should think).

[harry]

Thank you Raoul.

[Rubyretro]

Fish -

your village comparison is very, very questionable, I´m afraid. The street I live in is small, but I could not name a third of the people living in it, and I would not know many of them by sight, except for my closest neighbours. And in Dorset Street alone, hundreds and hundreds of people lived. Did she know all of them by sight, and party with them? Hm?

First of all we can't compare a row of detached middle class houses in a pleasant road in Sweden (with everyone communicating by 'phone, computer and getting into their cars to go to work) with the East End in1888.

In the absence of all the myriad things that we have to amuse ourselves at home, the pub would be a very important place for social interaction as well as drinking. There were a string of pubs virtually in sight of each other a stone's throw from both Miller's Court and the Victoria Home. Not only that, but the Prostitutes in the Ripper case all lived nearby, all liked drinking, and the pubs were the means of solliciting -the women would walk from pub to pub, popping their heads into the bars looking for punters.

Next we have men's lodging houses, filled with single men who had no other outlet for their sexuality other than prostitutes, and besides which were starved of the simple feminine presence in their all male environment. Of course they would go to the same pubs as these prostitutes and drink with them !

It is almost inconceivable that Mary would not have found herself in the same pub as other prostitute girlfriends, at the same time as Hutch -and on more than one occasion. If he was such a 'good friend' who would slip her a shilling (a large sum, as you say) and was close enough to her to think himself able to sleep in her single room, for free, then it is ludicrous to even suggest that she wouldn't have boasted about him to her girlfriends, pointed him out, talked to him or tried to get him to buy them all drinks.

If Hutch was the innocent man that you suggest, simply waiting for Mary's last punter to leave so that he could knock on her door 'as a friend', then why didn't he say so ? Surely this 'close friendship' could easily be confirmed by all those girlfriends ?

Hutch met Mary in the street (according to himself) before she met A Man. Why didn't he offer her another shilling-to be paid later-if he was such a close and trustworthy friend, who had given her money before ?

Saying that Abberline would have confirmed these things 'off record' will just not do. It didn't go in the statement, and Hutch didn't mention it to the Press (which he surely would have done, had he been grilled over it by the Police).
By evoking the friendly/given her money thing, Hutch was simply suggesting in a prissy way that he had been a punter(which may or may not have been true).

I think that you hve to go back to the drawing board !!

[Ben]

“I am sure nearly everyone slept at night and worked during the day.”

Well then I’m afraid you’re seriously ill-informed and need to do a lot more research on the subject if you really wish to embroil yourself any further in back and forth debates on internet message boards. It is very well known, or should be, that many lodgers kept nocturnal hours – carmen, night-watchmen, lodging house deputies etc – and many of them would have been domiciled in lodging houses such as the Victoria Home. Cross and Paul were on the streets in the very early hours of the morning when they discovered the body of Mary Ann Nichols, and these were hardly exceptional cases. If you think early morning or nightly workers were conspicuous exceptions that would alert some indefatigable night-porter, you are just pronouncing on matters that you don’t understand. Everyone knows that lodging houses catered for all types of work hours and were well accustomed to people coming and going at irregular hours of the night.

All this stuff about people talking to each other and therefore being in a position to scrutinize and monitor everyone else’s movements is another misconception. This was a crowded area of ill-repute that catered for an often transient population of men and women trying to survive in extremely tough conditions. For 500 working men in particular, it would have been a case of minding one’s own business, not having the remotest inclination to pay particular attention to the six-weeks-old movements of one particular lodger, and of simply getting on with their own lives. Sometimes I get the impression that some people are using the lyrics and musical sequence from the Artful Dodger’s “Consider Yourself” as a basis for forming an impression of what social life in a grotty, crowded area of London was like. Remember that Charles Booth had the Victoria Home in dark blue on his map, second from the very worst according to Sally's findings.

“Yes Ben I sussed that one out right at the start that not providing himself with an alibi, meant that Hutchinson didn’t have an alibi. You seem to think this was a shrewd move on his part”

Not necessarily, but if he did kill Kelly, this was effectively the only “alibi-disposal” excuse available to him. You didn’t seem to have picked up on this at all until I mentioned the potential significance of his “walking about all night" claim, but now you’re doing a sort of “Oh yes, terribly suspicious, the police must have considered it so, then suspected him of murder and then ruled him out”, which is leaps and bounds away from an acceptable interpretation of the evidence because it relies on a whole succession of zero-evidence assumptions to be true.

“Packer didn’t place himself near the crime scene Ben. He lived near the crime scene. Can you not see the difference?”

Doesn’t make a difference.

His witness statement still “placed” him there.

My allusion to CCTV was purely to provide an example of the limitations the police had in terms of the feasibility of confirming suspicions against certain individuals.

“The only claim I have ever made with respect to the checks is that if you have to find a good ripper suspect, it is unlikely to be someone who in all probability was checked out by the police at the time to the extent of their then abilities.”

But if their checking abilities were not nearly so extensive as to enable them to rule a suspect in or out with even the remotest degree of confidence, how can you possibly argue that any meagre checking that they could have conducted has any effect on the probability of Hutchinson being the murderer? Why not just concede the obvious; that if he was suspected – and we still have no evidence that he was at any stage – they were unlikely to have been in a position to progress with those suspicions? Just accept that whatever checking they might have carried out was almost guaranteed not to have produced the goods either way.

Best regards,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Ben...
No doubt some poor carmen did start work at 1 or 2 am – but poor Cross and Paul started at 4 am. And had their own houses. As did most Carmen I suspect as it was a half decent job.

I feel sure there was a difference between night and day in all establishments. Not just the Victoria Home. I am sure nearly everyone slept at night and worked during the day.
Perhaps you disagree?
The ones who didn’t would have been a small minority and would be ‘exceptions’.
The sort of people who would tend to stick in the mind of the night porter. Particularly regular night workers.
You have to remember that this was 1888. There was no TV, no organised sporting events, no computer games, no telephones, no radios. People used to talk to each other and interact more. The lived in communal areas – kitchens and recreation rooms (when not actually working or sleeping). It was quite unlike a suburban street in.... Sweden today (dare I say it).

Yes Ben I sussed that one out right at the start - that not providing himself with an alibi, meant that Hutchinson didn’t have an alibi. You seem to think this was a shrewd move on his part. A novel approach indeed...
“a means of disposing of the issue of an alibi by claiming to have been engaged in an activity that could neither be verified nor contradicted.”
I rather doubt it disposed of anything but instead made him look suspicious. However as no official papers exist to prove it, then it must be the case that the police missed this obvious interpretation. No?

Packer didn’t place himself near the crime scene Ben. He lived near the crime scene. Can you not see the difference?
You have this hang up around the word suspect. It really matters not whether they were grilled as a suspect – to test their story – or as a witness.

The police in 1888 obviously did not have the means at their disposal to ‘check’ people that their successors did. Nevertheless they did have some means and these are the means which they would have judged witnesses/suspects/leads against.

I have no doubt that there will be future breakthroughs in criminal detection. Does that mean that today the police cannot check anyone? Does that mean that the police today cannot satisfy themselves as much as they are currently able that someone may be innocent?
Obviously not. And obviously not in 1888 either.

I have no idea why you and Rubyretro are always going on about CCTV. Prior to CCTV were no criminals ever captured?

Again you vastly overstate my claims to prove your weak argument – it rather proves that you habe a weak argument.
I have repeatedly highlighted the primitive nature of the checks the police would have carried out. Just as I have suggested quite simple ways and means of regulating late night entry to the Victoria Home. The only claim I have ever made with respect to the checks is that if you have to find a good ripper suspect, it is unlikely to be someone who in all probability was checked out by the police at the time to the extent of their then abilities.
Your extreme and illogical reluctance to accept that he would have been checked out rather proves my point I think.