Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Lechmere]

A Brave New World!
I don’t know ‘Jack’ so I’ll make him Hutch
Loud I will shout
When wrong I’ll pout
Special Pass? I don’t know much.

[Ben]

And then things get even worse for Toppy:

A whole new world!
I can’t get home. I need some rest.
Go shove your “special pass”
Right up your arse.
I think I might just take that plumber’s test.

Hi Lechmere,

“The Toppynaysayers try to make out that it is virtually impossible for Toppy to be Kelly's Hutch based on his known movements and his later profession.”

No, it’s more the case that the Toppyites are making unsuccessful attempts to reconcile incompatible evidence.

But meanwhile, back on topic:

Hi Fisherman,

“When it was first suggested that the world was round, the ones speaking for the up-til-then mainstream thinking that it was flat ALSO said something about things that were never going to happen.”

Ah I see, so you would be the clever “round-earther” in this equation, and will one day be championed and lauded as the originator and instigator of a new revolutionary way of thinking that will be accepted as the correct explanation for generations?

“Maybe I shall have to settle for my view being regarded as a more viable than yours”

But this is nonsense. It’s pretty much only you who thinks date-confusion as the most likely explanation, whereas at least it can be said that “my view” has a number of adherents. I’d try to steer clear of antagonistic claims as to whose view is considered more viable, as a general rule.

“after all, people muddling up days are a lot more common that serial killers...”

But can it be said of people who loiter outside crime scenes shortly before the murder of a victim attributed to the work of a serial killer, that they were more likely to have confused an entire day than be responsible for the murder in question? Of course not. It is always essential to bear in mind the context before making crass generalizations.

“And it would seem others are of the same mind. In fact, I can only see you and Ruby stating that body language would easily produce a certainty on Lewis´behalf that the loiterer was waiting for somebody to come out.”

With pretty much everyone else accepting this as totally normal and therefore not even worth quibbling with, a number that included every contemporary police official and every jury member who heard and didn’t object to Lewis’ statement, given under oath, that the man in the street was seemingly “waiting for someone to come out”, just like Hutchinson. Look, I’m prepared to go about this for an absolutely eternity if necessary. If you want to do the slightly more mature thing and agree to disagree, go ahead, but all you’re doing now is encouraging silly, annoying repetition.

The chances of Lewis’ impression being the wrong one are incredibly remote given the coincidence of Hutchinson’s later claim to have stood where the loiterer was at the same time on the same night, also “watching and waiting for someone to come out”. They are identical, pretty much. As Jane astutely observed, this was obviously not a random coincidence. Nor was the loitering man merely “taking a look” up Miller’s Court. He was standing in the street as though watching and waiting for someone to emerge from Miller’s Court.

Now, this is my position on this subject, Fisherman.

You must have figured this out now.

I’m not revising my opinion because you’ve given me no reason to do.

“Police procedure puts it beyond doubt that we do not need that evidence to know that we will with 99,999 per cent probability be correct when we draw this conclusion.”

Please don’t so silly invented numbers, I don’t have the patience for that sort of nonsense, and “police procedure” as a concept is essentially meaningless as long as it continues to be overlooked that the police was in its infancy in 1888; that they had no experience of serial killers or serial killer investigations; and that even today, crucial but seemingly trivial details are apt to be overlooked.

“What I am saying is that when we can find no parallels in history to a suggested behaviour in a criminal case”

And I say:

A) You don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the entire annuls of true crime, and cannot therefore assert with the remotest degree of confidence that we don’t have such an example.

B) Even if we didn’t, it’s irrelevant because the evidence suggests it happened in this case.

C) We have no parallel cases of eviscerating serial killers in London’s East End. Does that mean this one probably didn’t exist?

All the best,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Oh dear Sally, and there was me thinking you were so looking forward to me posting on this subject.

[Rubyretro]

A whole new world!
A new degrading point of view.
No chance of plumbing here.
It's crystal clear
That now I'm in a whole new world of poo.

Toppy could sing it for his 4 friends, who had waited up in the dormitory
especially...

[Ben]

Did you have one in mind?

Oh no, I love 'em all, Sally!

But I think if some of these Toppy proposals were given the Disney treatment, I fear it would do ol' Walt a considerable disservice. Can you imagine the soundtrack?

A whole new world!
A new degrading point of view.
No chance of plumbing here.
It's crystal clear
That now I'm in a whole new world of poo.

[Sally]

Ben..

Sensible Post.

It’s very bad Disney film unlikely, in my opinion.

Did you have one in mind?

[Sally]

No Lechmere

I'm afraid not.

A quick glance at the poverty map to see what colour Warren Street was back then ain't gonna cut it. Nope.

Don't make me get my superior Warren Street knowledge out, now. Otherwise this thread will be well and truly trucked*

You can talk about Toppy somewhere else, I expect. I'm sure others will join you. Now...

Did Hutchinson get the Night Wrong?


* Spectacularly Off Track

[Lechmere]

True it was a bit off thread - although probably three quarters of the discussion on this thread has strictly speaking been off thread!
The issues I addressed had been raised on this thread however at least.
Mr Ben's response exactly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing to stop Toppy from having passed through the East End in 1888 (I never suggested there was any proof he had).
The Toppynaysayers try to make out that it is virtually impossible for Toppy to be Kelly's Hutch based on his known movements and his later profession. I just demonstrated that this absolute claim hold zero water.

[Ben]

Sound advice, Hatchett.

I will address Lechmere's plumbing-related concerns on a more Toppy-centric thread.

Incidentally, I agree entirely with your thoughts on page #151.

(Gosh, how we're whizzing through these pages!)

All the best,
Ben

[Hatchett]

Hi Everyone,

I am not too sure where this thread is going.

It seems to be extending to a Toppy argument which really belongs to another thread and, to my mind, it nothing at all to do with whether Hutchinson got or didnt get the night right.

If we are not careful we could be in danger of muddling up the arguments as Hutchinson is accused, by some, of muddling up the dates.

Let us all beware, and get back on track.

Best wishes.

Hatchett.

[Ben]

Evening, Lechmere.

With respect, it might have been an idea to confine the Toppy material to its relevant threads, although most of the arguments you’ve advanced here have already been addressed in considerable detail on the relevant threads in question.

“From outer Essex, to Surrey, to Kent, often in the suburbs of London and back to Essex, with Toppy ending up in the East End.”

“Ending up” in the East End being the buzz phrase here. There is no evidence that Toppy had any East End connections until he met his East End wife in 1895. Contrary to your post, the couple were not married that year, but three years later, in 1898. Before that time, Toppy had lived in Norwood, Eltham and Warren Street in the West End of London, but no evidence that he ever lived in the East End until after his marriage to an East Ender. Parental connections to an area relatively close to the 1888 murder district mean next to nothing. My father was born in Wigan. I have never been to Wigan, and know next to nothing about the place. Similarly, there is nothing remotely compelling in the suggestion that Toppy spurned the opportunity to make inroads into his father’s profession at the earliest opportunity in favour of venturing into that comparatively abyssal pocket of the East End purely because his parents got married there.

As for the West End address, nobody ever claimed that he lived in “posh” surroundings, but in 1891 he was living with just a handful of other lodgers that included several policeman. A very far cry from the “chronic want” that characterized the 1888 crowded Victoria Home. Why would Toppy disavow the opportunity of a head start in life, courtesy of his father’s plumbing connection, in favour of the life of an East End dosser? The idea that this sort of existence had any sort of “magnetism”, as you infer, is clearly preposterous.

“Why would Toppy have moved? We have no idea but we know he did.”

Where? To Warren Street in the West End? Almost certainly because he was by then in his mid-twenties, had finished his apprenticeship by then (or perhaps more likely his father’s personal tuition), was now a fully-fledged plumber, and wanted to leave the parental home. I can’t think of anything more ordinary, and it would have followed his father’s pattern almost precisely. As you noted, George Sr was a labourer when he was 14, and thus at an age when he was not quite or only just eligible for a plumber’s apprenticeship. It is clear, however, that he embarked upon one at the earliest opportunity and became a plumber upon its completion. The overwhelming likelihood of course is that his son did precisely the same thing, and that he was listed in the 1891 census as a plumber because he was one – a bonafide journeyman plumber who didn’t cut corners to acquire a toe-hold in the profession because he didn't need to.

“Is it unlikely that a young man might strike out away from home, try and make an independent go of it, struggle to find his way and end up in a poor sort of hostel before returning to his roots after this less than sanguine lesson in life?”

It’s very unlikely, Lechmere.

It’s very bad Disney film unlikely, in my opinion.

A hedonistic spoiled son of an oil magnate might attempt to “strike out away from home”, but for a young man in working class Victorian London, it would have been churlish in the extreme. The chances are that he took full advantage of his father’s plumbing trade, and thanked his lucky stars that he could be at least reasonably assured of a legitimate entry into a competitive profession.

“He certainly must have developed East End connections at some time as he married a girl there a few years later and settled down in the East End.”

No. He developed the East End connections after he met his wife, who happened to hail from the East End, unlike Toppy himself. The couple met when she tripped over Toppy’s cane after descending the stage steps of a music hall, where he had watched her performance as a yodeller and skipping rope artist from the front row. The location of the music hall isn’t specified, but somewhere nearer Toppy’s part of town (West End) seems the most likely. I can’t imagine an out-of-work dosshouse dweller in that filthy quarter of the East End waltzing into a music hall performance, all dapper with his “cane” somehow, unless we buy into the “riches to rags and back to riches again” theory occasionally touted by those who want Toppy to have signed the 1888 statement.

All the best,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Frau Retro, I gave possible and unremarkable explanations for all those points

[Rubyretro]

Lechmere -I will let Garry answer your long post on plumbing.

I have always thought that Toppy could have been in the East End in 1888
but if he had been the witness, none of this would explain why he didn't work as a plumber but instead was reduced to fighting for casual labouring jobs next to illiterate immigrants, and living in a common lodging house.

Nor why he would describe himself as a groom, which is a real job description,
and not a plumber.

If he turned up 3 years later as a plumber, but he was infact labouring and living away from home in 1888, then he wouldn't be 'just picking up' plumbing from his father in between times.

[Lechmere]

We know that Toppy’s father George was listed as a plumber throughout his life apart from in the 1841 census when he is listed as being a labourer – but he would have only been 14 years old.
Toppy was listed as a plumber in the 1891 census (when he was living in Warren Street).
Hutchinson in 1888 said he had been a groom but was currently a labourer, not in regular employment.
Can this be reconciled?

How did you become a plumber?

There were essentially three methods.
1) Via an apprenticeship which could last seven years
2) Just by taking up the trade and calling yourself a plumber and bodging your way through it (or perhaps doing a decent job if taught by someone else who was experienced)
3) By doing a lesser qualification than a full blown apprenticeship, probably after a period of ‘on the job training’.

What evidence is there?

A report in the Times of 30th November 1886 said that the apprenticeship system had been in decline and the trade was dominated by totally untrained bodgers. That accounts for the first two categories I listed above.

The Chairman said it was satisfactory to find that the plumbers and the public were virtually of one mind as to the urgent need for some check to the present evils associated with what was called "scamped" plumbing; and the Company was supported on one side by plumbers of all grades and located in almost all parts of the kingdom; while, on the other side, it was upheld by public sanitary authorities, the medical profession, the architects, and others concerned in maintaining public health and comfort.
The summarized results of the investigations of the Company might be said to establish chiefly these things:-
1. That the trade already contained a large number, and was subject to a continual influx, of unqualified men;
2. That the deterioration of the trade was due in part to the falling off of the apprenticeship system, and in part to competition [between] builders obscuring the real lines of distinction between the crafts and allowing labourers rather than plumbers to carry out plumbers' work;
3. That the execution of defective and dishonest plumbers' work was rendered easy by the laxity or entire absence of official supervision and control.

Victorian Britain was a largely unregulated laissez faire society. The ‘self trained man’ was eulogised. It was through the ‘self-trained man’ that Britain’s pioneering advances in engineering had come about. This was in marked contrast to the situation in for example Germany, where there was much more emphasis on regulation and academic qualification, which (as a side issue) is one reason why eventually Britain fell behind. The important point to remember is that Britain was not fanatical about regulations and enforcing paperwork.
This was also at a time when there was intense mobility of labour. People were flooding in to London which expanded at a rate of knots. Houses were being thrown up all over. There was also an increased awareness about the need for sanitation. After the Great Stink of 1858 emphasis was placed on the need for the proper treatment of sewage and drains. This increased the demand for plumbers.
Why did the apprentice system break down at this period? Because of the mobility of labour (people were less likely to sit in one area learning for seven years) and because the demand for plumbers greatly outstripped the outmoded form of training which reduced the supply of trained plumbers. Competition from untrained plumbers will have been a major disincentive to train seven years as an apprentice, given the harsh conditions under which an apprenticeships were conducted.
Once the population movements stabilised, apprenticeships will have naturally gained a new relevance.

The Times report of 1886 said that the Worshipful Company of Plumbers wished to encourage regulation of the trade. They wished to encourage the public sector in particular only to employ registered plumbers. There was nothing compulsory about the regulations they proposed. In order to become registered the plumber concerned had to show the examining committee that he had the necessary experience or would have to be tested.
This is in effect the third category which I outlined above and is a long way short of a requirement to serve a seven year apprenticeship.

“The registration was conducted by special committee [and] plumbers who could satisfy the registering committee of sufficient practical experience in the trade were registered at once. Those who could not were required to undergo an examination. He felt he might promise that the Company would continue to do its part, but the movement must have the extended support of the sanitary authorities, architects and the public at large to render it really successful...”

A Times report of 11th August 1887 illustrated that somewhat predictably, the scheme for registration was not progressing very well.

THE CITY & GUILDS OF LONDON INSTITUTE
The system of practical examinations, which is necessarily of the greatest importance in testing the skill of handicraftsmen, appears from this year's report to have been further extended by the Council of the institute. Practical examinations are now held in weaving and pattern-designing, carpentry and joinery, metal-plate work, printing, plumbers' work, and mine surveying. The results of the examinations in plumbers' work seem to have been far from satisfactory, and fully justify the action of the Plumbers' Company in requiring all competent plumbers, as certified by the examination, to be registered, so as to enable the public to distinguish between efficient and inefficient craftsmen.

The City and Guilds test it must be emphasised is not the end result of an apprenticeship. Please also note that although the Worshipful Company of Plumbers may have wanted to encourage registration, they had absolutely no means by which to enforce it. Building contractors, then as now, will take on the cheapest workforce possible.

The Times then reported on 2nd December 1887 that the old apprentice system had died out and was replaced by these tests which were held in central London.

up to the present the Company had been able to grant certificates to 1,185 efficient craftsmen. Many of these had come a very long distance at considerable personal expense to pass the examination...
...The system of apprenticeship, by which the city companies formerly worked, had died out, and had come to a natural end. It was now being gradually replaced by a system of technical education.

There was still clearly a problem with unlicenced jobbing plumbers as The Duke of Westminster (one of London’s biggest property owners) insisted that only plumbers certified by the Worshipful Company would be employed on his estates. This is from a letter to the Times dated 4th March 1889.

...the Duke of Westminster, feeling the very great importance, from a sanitary point of view, of good plumbers' work in houses, and appreciating the exertions of the Plumbers' Company in that direction, had decided that none but certificated plumbers were to be employed in new buildings on his estate. You will be interested to know that every building contract on this estate provides as follows:-- 'No plumber is to be employed upon the works unless he has the certificate of his efficiency from the Worshipful Company of Plumbers'.

It will be seen from this that there would have been no requirement whatsoever for Toppy to have served a seven year apprenticeship in order to describe himself as a plumber in 1891. The regulations inspired by the Worshipful Company of Plumbers will have encouraged greater registration and better standards but it is naive to think that it will have resulted in the elimination of untrained bodgers, still less good but uncertified plumbers.

Toppy will have been in an ideal position to obtain on the job training at his father’s side and so pass the Worshipful Company of Plumbers test.
If he did indeed move to the East End and find work as a groom and a labourer, he may well have worked as a plumber with his father in his earlier years.
It seems that Toppy’s grandfather was also a plumber, hand he presumably trained his son (Toppy’s father).
We know that Reg (Toppy’s son) also worked with his father for a while before becoming a costermonger.
Without his father’s patronage, as a young man, if Toppy did move to the East End he probably would have found it difficult to continue as a plumber. He may have not wanted to as an act of rebelliousness. That is an easy explanation as to why he may have tried his hand as a groom or a labourer.
It is quite within the realms of possibility that after the events of 1888 Toppy would have gone back to work with his father for a couple of years and then passed the examination and become a certified plumber for the rest of his life.

In short there is absolutely nothing within the nature of the plumbing trade to disqualify Toppy from being the George Hutchinson of 1888.
This obviously does not constitute any sort of proof that Toppy was Kelly’s Hutchinson. However some commentators have mistakenly believed that to be a plumber in 1891 Toppy must have served a seven year apprenticeship (which would tend to discount the possibility that he could have been the Kelly Hutchinson) which is clearly very far from being the case.

[Lechmere]

A number of posters have suggested that it is implausible that Toppy moved to the East End in the late 1880s.

This is pretty much what we know of his and his close families movements:

George Hutchinson (Toppy’s father) was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1827
He married Jane Topping (who was from Cambridge) in 1858 in St Leonard’s Church Shoreditch.
In the 1861 census the George and Jane were living in Hornchurch in Essex (near Romford).
Toppy’s sister Emily was born in Hornchurch n 1861
Toppy was born in 1st October 1866, in Norwood, which is near Croydon in what was then Surrey (but now is in South London).
In 1871 the family was living in Lambeth (which also formed part of Surrey then).
We know that his mother died in 1880 in Eltham, Kent (near Lewisham in what was Kent, but is now is in South London)
The family was living in Eltham in 1881. Toppy was aged about 15.
Emily married James Knott in 1886 and moved to Lee (also near Lewisham).
In the early part of 1888 Toppy’s father George remarried Emma Blackall who was twenty years his junior.
In the 1891 census, Emily and James Knott and George and Emma were all living in Lee.
Toppy however was living at Warren Street, just off Tottenham Court Road in the West End.
George died in 1895 in Lee.
In 1895 Toppy married Florence Jervis in Mile End, who as eight years his junior and was from Poplar.
In 1911 Toppy was living with Florence and their six children at 14 Tuscan Street, Bethnal Green.
Emily had moved to Basildon in Essex.
Toppy’s son Reg was born in Bethnal Green in 1916.
Emily died in Hadleigh, Essex 1932.
Toppy died in 1938 in Hornchurch (when Reg was 22).

It will be noted that the family moved about quite a lot. From outer Essex, to Surrey, to Kent, often in the suburbs of London and back to Essex, with Toppy ending up in the East End.
Toppy’s parents married in Shoreditch parish church. Interestingly enough this is about one minute’s walk from Shoreditch Town Hall which is where Mary Kelly’s inquest took place.

We know that Toppy for some reason moved away from the bosom of his family to Warren Street by 1891. Warren Street is indeterminately marked on Booth’s poverty map. It is a mistake to think that a West End address equalled posh. One minutes walk away across Euston Road were some dire areas of the lowest ranking. This district, around Drummond Street, is still very poor. There were pockets of squalor all over the West End.

We know that vast numbers of people from all over England (including the outer London suburbs) moved to central London for work or to strike out to establish a life for themselves. The East End was a magnet for such people. Motivations varied as much as the individuals concerned.
Why would Toppy have moved? We have no idea but we know he did. We know his father re-married a much younger woman in 1888, and presumably had been seeing her for a while before that. This provides a plausible explanation, but it could be entirely unconnected with this.

How unlikely is it that Toppy moved to the East End before moving to Warren Street? While we have no proof that he did, I would suggest that there is nothing at all to discount the possibility. We know his parents got married in the East End – maybe a ten minutes stroll from the Victoria Home.

Is it unlikely that a young man might strike out away from home, try and make an independent go of it, struggle to find his way and end up in a poor sort of hostel before returning to his roots after this less than sanguine lesson in life?

We do not know that this happened, all we know is that he moved away to Warren Street. However there is nothing implausible about Toppy moving to the East End before moving to Warren Street. He certainly must have developed East End connections at some time as he married a girl there a few years later and settled down in the East End.

Hutchinson made a statement that he knew Kelly for three years. That would be from 1885. It is conceivable that Toppy could have moved to the East End in 1885, but I think unlikely. I also find it unlikely that Hutchinson did know Kelly for that length of time, irrespective of whether or not Toppy is the man. This is because Kelly moved around a awful lot from one side of the East End to the other. I think Hutchinson, whether he was Toppy or not, told a lot of porkies.