Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Sally]

I will carry on insisting that I have a useful theory that so far has stood up to all the tests presented.

What tests would those be then? You haven't got a theory. You have an idea, which has nothing to support it. As for any tests presented - many very reasonable counterarguments have been presented - by several people - which you have either dimissed with ever more elaborate excuses; or simply ignored.

And no, it's not that I can't answer your points, Fish, its that I no longer want to in terms of this discussion. I've got more interesting things to do.

[The Good Michael]

Anyone who comes to the conclusion that Hutchinson was the Ripper is insane.
If someone suggests that it is a possibility, I will grant them that, but a conclusion? That's bananas.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Sally:

"And no, it's not that I can't answer your points, Fish, its that I no longer want to in terms of this discussion."

It should be an easy matter to take care of otherwise, one would have thought. And saying "I have the answers, and I am right, I just don´t want to tell you about it", well frankly, that is something I have not seen used as an argument since my kids left kindergarten. And even at that stage, the kids who were faced with such argumentation found it difficult to take seriously.

Which I why I remain assured that you have nothing at all to bolster the claims you have made in this issue.

"As for any tests presented - many very reasonable counterarguments have been presented - by several people - which you have either dimissed with ever more elaborate excuses; or simply ignored."

Is that so? What questions is it that I have ignored, Sally? Or do you know them, but choose not to share? For if you DO, you shall have your answer immediately!

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Sally – your contributions have been very insightful, and I’d be saddened to see you deterred from posting out of understandable exasperation. I just can’t get over the sheer omnipresence of certain posters on this thread, who seem never to take even the most fleeting of breaks from it.

Hi Fisherman,

“In all fairness, no. I do not make any final call here, Ben. I point out that if you want to complete a picture of a man standing on the northern side throughout, then the elements are at hand”

No, I don’t think they are. “To the court” refers to the general area in front of the court entrance on narrow Dorset Street, which could mean the northern of southern pavements, not that it makes any noteworthy difference because the distance between the two was so very small, and the likelihood is that he moved about a bit, as suggested in the Manchester Guardian article that you found. So as far as I’m concerned, the elements are most assuredly at hand to infer that he moved about within the general “to the court” vicinity rather than confining himself to one very specific location for 45 minutes. There is nothing in the written evidence to confirm that he breathed and blinked during that time, despite the obvious reality that he did, and the same may be said of his moving about.

“In what way would that be rather obvious in any paper?”

Because it makes no sense whatsoever for him to have ventured into the court, waited outside Kelly’s room, noticed a complete absence of light and noise, but still thought there was a reasonable chance of the couple emerging from the entrance.

“I am of the meaning that Hutchinson´s telling us that he went to the court can not be used as evidence for him having gone to Crossinghams.”

It’s a logical inference that he was outside Crossingham's during his alleged 45 minute wait, and this is lent further credence by Lewis’ evidence of a man standing outside Crossingham’s – a man who, short of ludicrous coincidence, must be George Hutchinson. It certainly wasn’t seven metres between the area outside Crossginaham’s and the area outside the Miller’s Court archway. As far as I’m concerned, he could easily have gone straight to his Crossingham’s vantage point from the corner of Dorset Street. Don't forget that the area outside of Crossingham's was ALSO the area in front of Miller's Court.

“The point is that no sane judge would ever come up with an assertion that a man could not have stood on one side and one side only of a narrow street for 45 minutes.”

No, but he would probably consider it rather implausible and self-confining.

Problems arise when you make statements to the effect that nobody has argued convincingly against your suggestion and insist that it stands on “strong legs”. We can all congratulate and compliment ourselves, but it is an exercise in futility. Wisdom instead lies in acknowledging that others have disagreed with you, and will continue to disagree with you. As far as several contributors are concerned, there are plentiful and compelling factors militating against your theory, and they have been utterly sustained as far as I’m concerned.

Whatever was previously considered problematic is still considered to those who have argued against you – and this needs bearing in mind. Lewis’ loiterer is still almost certainly Hutchinson, to my mind. In fact, this opinion is reinforced with every post I make. It still seems deeply implausible that Hutchinson mistook the date of Kelly’s murder, his mammoth Romford trek, and the Lord Mayor’s show. Fabrication still seems vastly more probable that an honest colossal mistake. These objections have been fully sustained, in my view.

All the best,
Ben

[Sally]

Ben..

Sally – your contributions have been very insightful, and I’d be saddened to see you deterred from posting out of understandable exasperation. I just can’t get over the sheer omnipresence of certain posters on this thread, who seem never to take even the most fleeting of breaks from it.

Thank you Ben, for your kind words. I find that your last post encapsulated what I think the issues and problems are in this debate. I will, of course, continue to post if I think I have anything useful to contribute.

Good to see you back.

Sally

[Sally]

No...

Sally:

"And no, it's not that I can't answer your points, Fish, its that I no longer want to in terms of this discussion."

It should be an easy matter to take care of otherwise, one would have thought. And saying "I have the answers, and I am right, I just don´t want to tell you about it", well frankly, that is something I have not seen used as an argument since my kids left kindergarten. And even at that stage, the kids who were faced with such argumentation found it difficult to take seriously.

Which I why I remain assured that you have nothing at all to bolster the claims you have made in this issue.

"As for any tests presented - many very reasonable counterarguments have been presented - by several people - which you have either dimissed with ever more elaborate excuses; or simply ignored."

Is that so? What questions is it that I have ignored, Sally? Or do you know them, but choose not to share? For if you DO, you shall have your answer immediately!

The best,
Fisherman

No, Fish. I haven't claimed to know more than anybody, or to have secret knowledge, although obviously if I did I wouldn't be telling you, would I, because it would be secret?

What I meant was, I don't want to talk about this any longer. According to my secret knowledge, its pointless. But, hey, have fun with it. Will it last? Well, time will tell, won't it?

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE=The Good Michael;163241]

Anyone who comes to the conclusion that Hutchinson was the Ripper is insane.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

[Ben]

As for the threats levelled at Harry to retract his statement, he has absolutely no reason to do any such thing. He merely observed that Fisherman was using falsehoods to bolster a theory. Falsehoods are things that aren't true, but Harry offered no indication that he thought Fisherman was deliberately using data he knows to be false to bolster his theory, and was certainly not accusing him of lying. I regard these continued threats to inform and involve the administrators as a form of intimidation.

“Who to believe? Did the ‘Echo’ have inside information that the other papers refused to pick up? Or was the ‘Echo’ merely trying to adopt a different line from the rest to get an edge in the readership stakes?”

No, Lechmere.

There would have been no advantage whatsoever to the Echo in making claims about a reduced importance being attached to Hutchinson’s account that they knew be untrue, and the same may be said of the entirely separate Star who observed on the 15th November that the account had been “discredited”. This appeared in an article that carried the headlines “Worthless Stories Lead Police Astray” and lumped Matthew Packer into the same category. Since Packer was clearly assumed to have been lying by the police, it shouldn’t take a deductive genius to infer that the Star were observing the same about Hutchinson.

These observations are of course vindicated by later reports, interviews and memoirs from the senior police officials, including Abberline, none of whom mention the conspicuously absent Hutchinson, and who clearly did not regard the Astrakhan man as a possible ripper sighting.

“If Dew regarded the medical opinion as to Kelly’s death as insurmountable, then would he discount Hutchinson on that basis?”

Well, yes, it makes sense that he would have done if he had already committed himself to the opinion that the blotchy man was the only likely suspect, and that the victim herself was murdered before 2.00am. Since we know he subscribed to both these views, it must therefore follow that Hutchinson could not have been right, according to his determinations, because Kelly was already dead by then. Dew simply dismissed both Maxwell and Hutchinson on the basis of his adherence to the medical evidence. Hutchinson claimed to have registered the time of 2.00am by glancing at the clock of St. Mary’s, Whitechapel. By the time he arrived at his point of surveillance outside Miller’s Court, it would have been more like 2:15am, which is obvious outside Dew’s medically-based acceptance of Kelly’s time of death.

“the ‘young’ bit ties in with Toppy – just thought I’d throw that in for good measure”

Nope, because Dew also claimed that Thomas Bowyer was “young”, when it is clear that he wasn’t.

“In my opinion it is absolutely obvious that Dew thought Maxwell confused the person and that Hutchinson was out by a day”

No, this isn’t obvious at all, and there is nothing in Dew’s words that lend weight to this inference:

But I know from my experience that many people, with the best of intentions, are often mistaken, not necessarily as to a person, but as to date and time. And I can see no other explanation in this case than that Mrs. Maxwell and George Hutchison were wrong.

“Lastly I’ll give you a parsimonious explanation for Hutchinson reporting to the police in the late afternoon or early evening of the 12th November.
He wanted to get warm by the fire in Commercial Street Police Station.

Here’s a gregarious explanation: he realised it was his civic duty to do so.
Here’s a pecuniary explanation: he wanted to try and get some reward money as he was skint.
Here’s an egotistical explanation: he wanted five minutes of fame.”

And now for the logical explanation:

He realised he’d been seen at the crime scene by another witness and game forward with a fabricated account designed to both legitimise his presence and deflect suspicion in a spurious direction.

Boom.

“It’s not difficult thinking up explanations none of which rely on him magically hearing a couple of lines from the Lewis testimony.”

If you think it “magical”, you’re either spectacularly ill informed or failing to use common sense. Unless we’re prepared to accept that it really was just random coincidence that Hutchinson came forward very soon after Lewis’ account became public knowledge (despite there being ample opportunity to come forward at any between learning of the murder and the inquest and any time afterwards), he clearly must have learned of Lewis’ evidence through some channel.

He wouldn’t have needed to absorb Lewis’ testimony in any great detail. It could have resulted from word of mouth – the type that allowed details of Leather Apron and John Pizer to spread like wildfire. In addition, there were reportedly crowds in Shoreditch that threatened to overwhelm the coroner’s office, and it could simply have been a case of somebody noting that Sarah Lewis was one of the witnesses about to give evidence. But the sheer implausibility of the “random coincidence” explanation should be sufficient to nullify the suggestion that he did not learn of her evidence before he contacted the police.

The idea that he didn’t hear about Lewis’ evidence is so ridiculously unlikely as to be barely worth considering. Both Lewis’ loiterer and Hutchinson were alleged to have been “looking up the court” as though watching and “waiting for someone to come out” at the same location at the same time on the same night. To dismiss this as a “minor” coincidence and therefore unrelated is just ludicrous.

“Or she saw someone else entirely and Hutchinson was there the day before. Again not exactly unlikely.”

Utterly preposterous.

Whatever a special pass was, it is very obvious what it wasn’t – a slip of paper with the name of the lodger on it. This is ridiculous, and not in alignment with the evidence from several sources that tickets and passes took the form of generic metal checks that could be re-used. The only reason you want them to have been lodger-specific is because you’re trying to conjure up the existence of something that gives Hutchinson a mythical “alibi” for the previous murders, which is very obviously nonsense. Similarly, you use your misinterpretation of the Victoria Home’s known-about-for-ages guidelines to argue that it would have made a poor base for a “stalking serial killer”. Again with these recently cultivated, never-before-advanced and decidedly unpopular theories. It has never before been suggested that the VH guidelines rule Hutchinson out as the killer, for very good reason.

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"I just can’t get over the sheer omnipresence of certain posters on this thread, who seem never to take even the most fleeting of breaks from it."

It was my understanding, Ben, that you and me were not supposed to comment on how the other party took care of his posting. Therefore I must ask if you are referring to me in this passage?

Mine: "I point out that if you want to complete a picture of a man standing on the northern side throughout, then the elements are at hand”

Yours: "No, I don’t think they are."

It is said that he went to the court, it is said that he stood tehre for three quarters of an hour and it is said that as he left, he left from the corner of the court. So the elements ARE at hand.

Mine:

“In what way would that be rather obvious in any paper?”

Yours:

"Because it makes no sense whatsoever for him to have ventured into the court, waited outside Kelly’s room, noticed a complete absence of light and noise, but still thought there was a reasonable chance of the couple emerging from the entrance."

But that is YOUR conclusion, Ben, and NOTHING AT ALL the papers say. In them, there is only one passage speaking about the timeline, and that is in the Manchester Guardian. And lo and behold - what you think makes "no sense whatsoever" was exactly what happened, if they are spot on.

"It’s a logical inference that he was outside Crossingham's during his alleged 45 minute wait"

If he never entered, he was outside Crossingham´s all his life. But no "logical inference" tells us that he stood BY THE DOOR there at any stage. To get him there, a vivid imagination is requested.

Mine:

"“The point is that no sane judge would ever come up with an assertion that a man could not have stood on one side and one side only of a narrow street for 45 minutes.”

Yours:

"No, but he would probably consider it rather implausible and self-confining."

Why? Why would he do that? Why would it be in any way more implausible for a man to stand on the north side of a street than to stand on the south side? And why on earth would anybody seeing a man standing on one side of the street surmise that he would pass it before 45 minutes had passed? There is absolutely no logic whatsoever in such a suggestion. It is made up of thin ai ... no, HELIUM! It is a totallly unviable suggestion - not that he MAY have crossed, for that he may; but that he WOULD have done so. Nothing in the world can be produced to bolster such a claim, and you know it, Ben.

"Problems arise when you make statements to the effect that nobody has argued convincingly against your suggestion and insist that it stands on “strong legs”."

And still it holds true. It has been argued vehemently, glowingly, angrily and in an upset manner against it. It has been suggested lately that I bolster my claims with falsehoods. Obviously, nerves are chewed on by my suggestion, Ben!

"Wisdom instead lies in acknowledging that others have disagreed with you"

It does not take much wisdom to realize that. But what "wisdom" manifests itself in suggesting that a judge would probably have been very suspicious about anybody claiming that they had spent three quarters of an hour in a street without passing it? Is that the kind of "wisdom" you wish to convey?

I am not in any way saying that I am correct. I am saying that the suggestion I have made tallies very well with the details involved, and I stand by that. And that stance gets firmer for each and every detail that surfaces and shows the compatibility inbetween the recorded events and a scenario of a mixed up day. And the contributions to that area keep streaming in.
This does not mean that I take some sort of pride in things - I instead often rebuke myself for not having caught on until now, after having read all the passages myriads of times. That was logheaded. Apart from that, what happened happened, and it did not happen because of me to any extent. I merely pick up on the details and make my case. And although I cannot rule out that I may have grown dumber, more shortsighted, grumpier or fatter since I put together my article, I am having a very hard time to see that anything HAS come up that produces a real challenge. If anybody chooses to think that saying so makes me look arrogant, so be it. But it would seem that there are others who are just as uninterested in moving from their own convictions, so I do not feel alone.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Sally:

"What I meant was, I don't want to talk about this any longer."

I see, Sally. And I understand, believe me!

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

“It was my understanding, Ben, that you and me were not supposed to comment on how the other party took care of his posting.”

And it was my understanding, Fisherman, that we were also discouraged from sarcastic ridiculing of other peoples’ published articles, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped you from observing the following:

"Yes, but why let sense get in the way of the Hutchinson-the-liar-and-possible killer saga, Lechmere?"

“It is said that he went to the court, it is said that he stood tehre for three quarters of an hour and it is said that as he left, he left from the corner of the court. So the elements ARE at hand.”

“The elements are at hand” to conclude that Hutchinson was intending his readers/listeners to form the conclusion that he waited outside the court for 45 minutes. The area in front of Crossingham’s irrefutably meets this criterion, as does anywhere else in the vicinity of the Miller’s Court entrance. It is improbable in the extreme that he confined himself to one spot on one side of the street for the duration of that 45-minute vigil.

“But that is YOUR conclusion, Ben, and NOTHING AT ALL the papers say. In them, there is only one passage speaking about the timeline, and that is in the Manchester Guardian.”

But this is cherry-picking again, because the Manchester Guardian says nothing about the corner of Miller’s Court or the northern pavement. It only says that he returned to Dorset Street, and that he waited “about the place” before departing. You’re accepting the snippet from the article that you think supports your contention whilst discarding the inconvenient bit about waiting “about the place” as opposed to being confined to one spot, which is what you need to be true in order to dislocate Hutchinson from the wideawake man.

It should be very obvious that Hutchinson was not intending his readers to conclude that he continued waiting around even after registering the total absence of light and noise in Kelly’s room.

“Why? Why would he do that? Why would it be in any way more implausible for a man to stand on the north side of a street than to stand on the south side?”

They’re both implausible, because they both consist of confining yourself eccentrically to a very specific location rather than moving about like normal people. Given the incredibly small size of the region we’re discussing, and the very strong likelihood that he moved around, I consider it a very viable suggestion that he found himself at most locations – either stationary or transitory – within that region before the 45 minutes was up, yes. As I’ve said though, there’s no evidence that he went anywhere near the “northern” pavement first.

“I am saying that the suggestion I have made tallies very well with the details involved, and I stand by that.”

But your simply saying as much doesn’t make it so, and that’s where I think you’re having problems. Your theory has “strong legs” to support it because you say it does. Nobody has offered an adequate counterpoint because you say they haven’t. Your stance gets “firmer” because you say it does etc etc. That’s not argumentation at all. It’s simply narration of how convincing you think your theory is.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t cut it, because other people disagree. They don’t think your theory has strong legs; they think it looks weaker with every piece of emerging evidence, not stronger, and perhaps most crucially, they hold the conviction – or at least I do - that the original objections to your argument are both sustained and strengthened.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Ruby,

You are, of course, quite right to highlight the sheer implausibility of Hutchinson’s claim to have heard conversation travelling from the Miller’s Court entrance to the corner of Dorset Street. He would have been required to stand very close to the couple in order to discern individual words. This had been observed by other researchs and authors over the years, even those critical of the Hutchinson-ripper theory such as Ivor Edwards, whose suspect of preference is Robert Donston Stephenson. Interestingly, Hutchinson's reference to Kelly speaking in a loud voice only crept into his press accounts. Did he perhaps realise at some point after giving his police statement that his claim to have recorded conversation from that distance didn't add up?

The claim to have discerned a red handkerchief in darkness from that distance is similarly ludicrous, as other authors have argued very persuasively. Colours are replaced by shades in the darkness, and when this knowledge is superadded to the small surface area of the object and the distance in question, Hutchinson’s claim cannot reasonably be considered accurate.

I rather agree that people who seriously challenge any of this do tend to give off a tell-tale whiff of ignorance with regard to the geography involved. I find it particularly nonsensical when people argue that the hanky was spotted earlier, i.e. at the same time that he was memorizing and noticing all that clothing and accessorial detail that he almost certainly could not have noticed, let alone memorized. The hanky couldn’t possibly have been visible between two layers of coats, even if he had a bizarrely protruding chest.

There have been a number of interesting discussions about this, and I believe one thread even carried the title “The Red Handkerchief”. My own suspicion is that Hutchinson was attempting to incorporate a detail from an earlier witness account to make his appear more plausible.

As we’ve discussed before, there are equally valid objections to Hutchinson’s claim to have overheard conversation that travelled the distance from Thrawl Street to Hutchinson’s alleged earlier vantage point which he described as “just before I got to Flower and Dean Street”. Anyone who considers this remotely feasible is particularly in need of a visit to the district, preferably before they get entrenched in message board debates.

It is likely that Hutchinson deliberately avoided any mention of Lewis in order to avoid making it too obvious that it was her evidence that prompted him to come forward. In which case, any failure to mention Lewis is most assuredly not a indication that her loiterer was someone other than Hutchinson, as others have tried to argue.

All the best,
Ben

[Sally]

Light

Reading the above - I expect this has been covered before, but how could Hutchinson have seen what he claimed to have done in such detail unless he was really invading Mr.A's personal space?

If, as has recently been stated on the Channel 5 documentary thread, the street lighting provided for only pools of light, between which all was pretty much darkness - then surely his account is implausible?

No?

I wonder how much light exactly there would have been in the street, and how far it would have extended. There are lots of (obvious) problems with his actions and account - that just seems like a particularly obvious one. And if Kelly and A just flitted past, even in the light, would he have had enough time to see all that? Doubtful.

[Ben]

Right you are, Sally.

The only opportunity Hutchinson had to scrutinize the man in any sort of light was when the couple passed fleetingly in from of the Queen's Head pub. That wasn't remotely enough time and light to have noticed all that he alleged, less still committed it to memory.

All the best,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Ben – let me tell you that newspaper editors do deliberately take different lines on stories just to be different.
Yes, as I said, some papers reported that Hutchinson was of reduced importance, others did not. That is my point. The evidence is ambiguous.
The fact that Abberline didn’t mention Hutchinson at a later date means what exactly? How many of the hundreds – nay thousands – of witnesses did he mention? Dew of course did mention him, but you choose to disregard Dew.
Hutchinson is not conspicuously absent from the memoirs of the various police officers. He is only conspicuously absent if you are obsessed with him. Otherwise he is commonplace absent.
In the course of the Whitechapel Murders, witnesses were eagerly listen to and dismissed all the time.

Also Ben, you seem to be slightly ill-informed as Dew did not claim that Thomas Bowyer was ‘young’, he didn’t mention Thomas Bowyer by name at all. The why’s and wherefores of who told Dew of what had transpired at Miller’s Court is a topic that could be discussed, fairly unprofitably I would suggest, but has no bearing on Dew’s statement that Hutchinson was young.

I would suggest that 2.15 isn’t materially outside the range of Dew’s estimation of time of death being before 2.00 am. That really is a trivial difference. Much more trivial than the width of Dorset Street.

By the way Ben – you seem to be slightly ill-informed as to Hutchinson’s timings. He didn’t say that he passed St Mary’s at 2 am. He explicitly said he saw Kelly at 2 am –when he was at the Thrawl Street – Commercial Street junction. He told a newspaper that he passed St Mary’s between 1.50 and 1.55 am which is about how long it takes to walk that distance. That is why I estimated the time when Kelly opened the door to her room as being 2.05 am, if Hutchinson did indeed see her (of which I am personally not entirely convinced). To make it 2.15 am suggests a lot more loitering around by all concerned. Possible, but I think my time of 2.05 am fits better. Not that it matters much.

Ben there is something in Dew’s words that lend weight to the inference that Maxwell misidentified Kelly. I pointed it out in bold text. Not once but twice. Here it is again:
“She claimed to know Marie Kelly”. The inference is that she claimed to, but in fact didn’t. You may of course chose to interpret this differently, but it simply isn’t true to make such a bold claim that Dew didn’t say anything that could be inferred to suggest that Maxwell misidentified her. You have to put Dew’s whole discussion about Maxwell and Hutchinson together to get the full inference. To avoid pointless denials of this I quoted biggish chunks from Dew!

Ben, you give this as the ‘logical’ reason for Hutchinson’s appearance at Commercial Street Police station:
“He realised he’d been seen at the crime scene by another witness and came forward with a fabricated account designed to both legitimise his presence and deflect suspicion in a spurious direction.”

I will quite readily accept that is a possibility. An unlikely possibility though. It also fits if he was innocent but worried he would be blamed. But if he was concerned that he had been seen, and his appearance at the police station wasn’t caused specifically by Lewis’s testimony, then he would have surely come forward sooner.
If his appearance was tied to the testimony then it would be much more plausible had he appeared at Commercial Street Police Station the next day. That would allow a realistic amount of time to elapse for him to hear of her testimony – on the old grape vine. The promptness of his appearance at Commercial Street Police Station actually makes it immeasurably less likely that his appearance and her testimony are linked in any way at all.

What was the other thing I’m poorly informed on? Ah yes that I don’t think it likely that Hutchinson could have heard the nature of Lewis’s testimony. Why am I ill informed? I am disputing the likelihood that of all the very lurid testimony made at court, her rather routine and boring statement would have been repeated through the crowd. It was not highly regarded evidence as is shown by the police seemingly failing to tie wide-awake man to Hutchinson.

You offer the explanation that the crowd may have said ‘Lewis is about to testify’, and this was enough of a prompt for Hutchinson. I would like to ‘inform’ you that Lewis lived ordinarily at Great Pearl Street (a bit of a trek away from the Victoria Home). Do you think that Hutchinson knew her at all? The name Lewis would have meant nothing to him.
Or am I ill-informed because I think it is quite possible that his decision to present himself at Commercial Street Police Station had absolutely nothing to do with Lewis’s testimony and it is nothing more than a tiny and unremarkable coincidence?

As an aside, I rather think the Leather Apron rumours were a tad more sensational that the wide-awake hat man, and that might go some small way to explain how they spread like wildfire. Just a fraction mind, just a mere hair’s breadth of a difference. Or is it?

My-oh-my I see you actually wrote this...
“The idea that he didn’t hear about Lewis’ evidence is so ridiculously unlikely as to be barely worth considering.... To dismiss this as a “minor” coincidence and therefore unrelated is just ludicrous.”
And when I made this perfectly possible suggestion...
“Or she saw someone else entirely and Hutchinson was there the day before. Again not exactly unlikely.”
Your reasoned response is: “Utterly preposterous.”

To be ill-informed or even similarly ill-informed, I must have been informed by someone. Who? That’s what I want to know.

I am glad you have again chosen to re-iterate your non-belief in special passes at the Victoria Home. As to what form they took, I don’t presume to know as the sources are silent on the matter. Most other lodging houses didn’t have a curfew and so didn’t issue them. Maybe they didn’t take a physical form and a list of names was left with a doorkeeper. Maybe they were slips of paper with a name on. Maybe they were a special metal token. This is actually completely, totally and utterly irrelevant.
It does not matter one iota what form they took.
The only relevance is that the Victoria Home required a special pass in order to gain entry after 12.30/1.00 am. It says this explicitly in the source documents. There must have been some personal aspect to the pass or anyone could have come in late.... errrr and they wouldn’t be special anymore.

That’s what the ever-so-long known about Victoria Home rules say. I worked that out by employing a newly cultivated skill called ‘reading’. Of course if you insist, against what is written quite plainly in good old fashioned black and white script, that the Victoria Home rules say different, then who am I to dissuade you?

Again, it is my opinion that as it was not straight forward to gain access to the Victoria Home after 12.30/1.00 am it is an implausible location for a night murderer, when there were many other lodging houses near-by that let people come and go at any time. I really am unconcerned whether this point has been made by no one before or a million people before.

I would humbly suggest that if you need to progress your theory that Hutchinson did it, then to gain credibility you must move him out of the Victoria Home. Also work out a better explanation as to why he appeared at Commercial Street nick after the inquest – one that doesn’t rely on him hearing Lewis’s testimony.
(I hope I haven't broken any guidelines here by attacking a written theory - my apologies if I have.).