Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Ben]

Lechmere’s still here, everyone.

That’s reassuring.

Glad he decided not to make good his suggestion to make a “last observation” about 100 pages ago.

“Otherwise he would have to have asked for a special pass (and drawn attention to himself)”

No, this is simply erroneous, Lechmere. Asking for a special pass – and I still think you’re getting carried away with the word “special” - would not have drawn any attention to any member of the Victoria Home. It happened all the time. The dwelling could accommodate 450 lodgers per night, many of whom would have kept irregular and decidedly nocturnal working hours. Hundreds of such passes would have been issued, and the issuing of one of them would not have elicited any “attention” at all.

“However I would suggest that if the police could not establish any bona fides for him then that would increase their suspicion and follow him etc. He would probably have turned into a major suspect.”

What suspicion?

Where is the evidence that Hutchinson was ever considered a potential suspect in the murders? If they suspected him but couldn’t establish any “bona fides”, it doesn’t follow that he would turn into a major suspect. If the police preference was for outwardly and visibly “mad” people, foreigners, and those with connections to the medical and butchering professions, it is unlikely that Hutchinson would receive “major suspect” status. He would remain a “possible” at best.

“Anyway it seems that he didn’t undertake the transition from witness to suspect, which implies that the police didn’t consider him a suspect, because I would presume that they would have done some sort of check to satisfy themselves there was nothing dodgy about him.”

Again, this is both irritating and baseless – filling in the blanks with “must haves”. In order to dismiss somebody as a suspect, you have to consider him as one first, but there’s no evidence to suggest that Hutchinson was ever even considered in the capacity of a suspect. What we can’t then do is back up one zero-evidence piece of speculation with another. We can’t use our assumption that Hutchinson “must have” been suspected to then conclude that he was dismissed as a suspect. One “must have” being used to support another “must have” is to be avoided at all costs.

Even worse, you then assume that this mythical “dismissal” must have come about as a result of "checking", as though the police had enormous checking powers for determining guilt or innocence. I really don’t know what sort of magic wand you’re expecting the contemporary police to have been in possession of, but it is very unlikely that they were able to convert mere suspicions into proof of guilt or innocence. For crying out loud, even sophisticated modern police forces are very often confined to mere suspicion without being able to progress, but according to you, all they had to do was “check” to determine the guilt or innocence of any suspect.

I’m afraid this is a long way off reality, both in terms of today's policing, and certainly back then.

“The checks I suggested they could have made were deliberately of a limited nature that were compatible with their abilities at the time.”

Exactly, so not the sort of checks that could realistically have resulted in Hutchinson being “exonerated”.

“If you want a reason why Hutchinson appeared at the police station after the inquest you need look no further.”

This is getting a little warmer, as it al least avoids the clearly erroneous conclusion that Hutchinson’s appearance at the police station so soon after the inquest amounted to mere coincidence. Unfortunately, it fails to account for the even more significant “coincidence” of Hutchinson’s claims just happening to be almost identical with the behaviour and movements noted by Sarah Lewis of her loitering man. It must have been clear to Hutchinson, if he statement was accepted, that his interviews would eat into his work or work-seeking opportunities.

“Yes but it was an easy lead for the police to potentially catch him out on wasn’t it?”

No, Lechmere.

Why would it have been “easy” to check out Hutchinson’s claim to have been prompted into coming forward with a fellow lodger?

What is the man’s name?

Don’t know, sir. He was just a passing acquaintance at the Home.

Have you seen him since?

No.

Then what would they have done?

The fact that the Victoria Home had better facilities does not mean they were especially used by the vast majority of lodgers who would have spent most of their time working, and only returning to sleep.

“After all the streets were crowded weren’t they? Maybe ten people where outside Crossinghams and Lewis only noticed one with her fleeting glance. But didn’t you argue against me on that point a short while ago?”

No.

I said the streets were crowded, yes, because “street” encompassed the buildings on them, and Dorset Street was reportedly very crowded. Obviously there weren’t “ten people” outside Crossinghams at the time Lewis made her observation, or else she would hardly have singled out one.

[Ben]

But Mikey’s also still here, and that’s less reassuring, because ever since he’s given up attempting to argue his points rationally, he is shown himself capable only of unsophisticated insults and ridicule.

“Hutchinson was checked out.”

As far as normal procedure for investigating witness claims went, then yes, they probably did. But not as a suspect – no evidence for that at all.

“His lodgings were corroborated.”

So they confirmed that he did frequent the Victoria Home, you’re saying? I agree.

“3. The Lord Mayor's holiday camp and pageantry meant nothing to the killer or anyone else except for the Lord Mayor and the people who sold rat on a stick and Mayor effigies.”

No, this is not borne out by any contemporary source. Your “guarantees” in this regard are therefore to be considered worthless.

“The police thought Lewis' man may have been Hutchinson”

Any evidence for this?

No. Another worthless “guarantee”.

“Hutchinson grew up, became a plumber, had a son, and signed some documents that match his signature from the Badham papers.”

No, not according to the people whose opinions and findings are worth taking seriously, they’re not.

“You and Fish battle stalwartly against the density that only Huchinsonian skulls have while I have lost the will to deal with it.”

Have you? That’s a shame. Well off you trot then to make a nuisance of yourself elsewhere, but make sure you keep up those clarion calls to your perceived allies to keep “battling stalwartly” away. We’re aiming for 10000 posts in the Hutchinson forums.

[babybird67]

can someone enlighten me...

as to what a Hutchinsonian is?

[Lechmere]

Ben – welcome back. That is if you’ve been gone somewhere - ah – maybe a wrong presumption! There have been a few on this thread. I am barely in this thread now to be honest – but I do believe I have answered your points already.

It is something of a myth that the police were only arresting wild eyed Jewish butchers. They were talking all sorts in on the say so of virtually everyone. Read the press reports. Several people were being arrested (and quite quickly released) every day after the Kelly murder.

I did not invent the phrase ‘special pass’, so do not blame me for it. Blame those bloody idiots who printed them out those inconvenient rules and hung them up in the kitchen of the Victoria Home. Drat and damn them.
You like to presume that lots of residents availed themselves of these not so special passes. I would strongly suspect that there would only be a few each night and the doorkeeper would probably remember them. Each to his own.

The suspicion thing was based on the presumption that he had been dismissed as a credible witness for reasons that naturally would have made him look suspicious. After all he placed himself at the crime scene at the time of the murder. I was merely making the commonplace assumption that unless the police were satisfied as to his bon fides when they dismissed him, then it is natural to assume they would have checked him out in some way and I suggested a few mundane ways in which they could have checked him out.
I personally find it exceptionally unlikely that the police will have made no effort to check him out given the circumstances.

If you prefer to think the police didn’t check him out in any way, then I would suggest that this implies that they had good reason not to look further. Perhaps they sussed out that he was a day out. Maybe Lewis didn’t identify him. I am not really going to propose potential reason after potential reason as to why they may have dismissed him with no more ado. I accept they could have done. I find it very hard to accept that they would have done without good reason.

In other words, one way or another I am fairly sure the police would have been satisfied that he was not a potential culprit. I am sorry of you find this irritating.
I think it is exceptionally unlikely that the police would just wave Hutchinson good bye.

I would suggest that any ‘checking’ would have cleared Hutchinson (perhaps erroneously if you prefer) which meant he didn’t become a proper suspect. That would be why he is never mentioned as a suspect. It doesn’t take that much working out.
I do not suggest that the police’s ability to ‘check out’ was fantastic. However I would suggest that if they were not satisfied by their rudimentary checks, then the person who they were checking would likely become a more high profile suspect.

In other words if every answer drew a blank in this manner:
Where did you last work? – can’t remember
What was the name of the inmate who told you to report? – can’t remember
Where are your parents living? – they died when I was a child
Where were they from? – can’t remember

Then I rather think it would have caused more suspicion. That is merely exercising common sense. Or am I just the suspicious type?

If you wish to avoid must haves, then strike these out of your case:
Hutchinson must have made up seeing Kelly with the A-man;
Hutchinson must have been the only person that Lewis could have seen;
Hutchinson must have taken due note of the Lord Mayor's Show;
The Victoria Home must have let inmates unrestricted access to come and go like all the other lodging houses;
Lewis must have been the sort of person who could recognise someone but not describe them;
Hutchinson must have heard Lewis’s testimony or seen her enter the court;
Hutchinson must have changed his MO and decided to insert himself in the case;
Hutchinson must have changed his MO and decided to target someone he knew;
Hutchinson must have changed his MO and decided to be a stalker killer.

I have to admit that compared to nearly all 'rival' claimants for the title, Hutchinson has more plus points (if that is the right way to put it). I was going through them all the other day. But it is still exceptionally improbable.

[Ben]

“They amount to you once again sticking your nose in my way of posting.”

That wasn’t a criticism of your way of posting, Fisherman. I was just confused by what your posts actually meant. You first said that you were happy to leave it there, but then when I responded, it turned out that you were only happy to “leave it” if everybody agreed with your post, which is slightly unimaginative.

“You are not exactly a specialist in EITHER accoustics OR articulation, are you?”

Of course not. I never claimed to be. You're not exactly a specialist either. Your contact is purportedly an expert in acoustics. Terrific. In which case, I’m very happy to listen to what he has to say regarding acoustics (which I didn’t disagree with anyway). He does not, conversely, appear to be an expert in articulation and speech, which is why I’m not inclined to accept any verdict from him on that subject.

“No. A quiet library produces no sound.”

No. A silent library produces no sound. A quiet library produces some sound, but veru little. If you look at a one of the sound charts that are easily available online, you’ll discover that 40 decibels is considered to be equivalent to a sound sample taken in a quiet library.

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/TableOfSoundPressureLevels.htm

Yes, of course I can hear low-key conversation, perhaps even from 32 metres away on a night with very inclement weather and other background noises in what was a very crowded area of London, but what I wouldn’t be able to do is distinguish actual words from that distance in those conditions, and I don’t think you could either. Again, this sort of thing is immediately obvious to anyone with a sufficient familiarity with the crime scenes.

“Blowing the sound away, you mean? Doesn´t work like that, I´m afraid. Sound wawes do not drift with the wind, Ben.”

I think you’ll find that wind affects the discernment of sound.

If you’ve been a-googling again and finding lots of juicy information, you might have stumbled upon the following article:

http://www.getanswer.org/why-does-sound-travel-better-with-the-wind/

The author points out that while wind is very unlikely to propel sound along at a greater speed, “sound moves in waves that can be affected by more significant turbulence in the air. In addition, our ability to hear sounds will be affected by the turbulence around our ears.” In Hutchinson’s case, that strong eastern-wind would have created “turbulence” around his ears that would have affected his ability to hear the conversation in question. You appear not to have introduced this factor when communicating with your man, but all hastily conceived pet theories aside, the likelihood of course is that Hutchinson was there on the 9th and would have been exposed to such a wind.

Another interesting piece of information is that colder air temperatures also affect sound travel.

The “loud voice” did not appear in Hutchinson’s police statement, but only cropped up in the press versions of his account, which contained other embellishments and claims that were suspiciously absent from the statement. As others have pointed out, a raised voice makes little sense when speaking to somebody in such close proximity to the other person. As I strongly suspect, Hutchinson probably wanted to incorporate an element from a previous eyewitness description, so he took advantage of the red neckerchief, turned it into a handkerchief and put it on a wealthy-looking surly Jew rather than a shabby local. In so doing, he neglected to consider certain practical elements when giving his statement to the police, and recognised the need to tidy this up when subsequently speaking to the press.

“Boom? BOOM? So you think that these 1200 men were all out and about in the street at 2.15?”

Oh, it was a boom, Fish. In fact, it was bordering on a ka-boom. Dorset Street encompassed the housing on either side of it – and the housing on Dorset Street was documented as being very crowded. The chances of every Dorset Street occupant being asleep at 2:15 would obviously have been very remote. There would certainly have been noises from Dorset Street, which combined with the weather could create an obvious impediment to specific words being heard in a conversation 30 metres away,

“That he could, quite comfortably, in a low key conversation mode EVEN IF THEY NEVER WENT ABOVE NORMAL SPEAKING VOLUME!!”

They wouldn’t have been completely inaudible, BUT IT’S VERY UNLIKELY THAT HE COULD HAVE DISCERNED ACTUAL WORDS FROM THAT DISTANCE!!!

“It points, in other words, to a true story on Hutchinson´s behalf.”

Oh dear, no, whoops, you’ve just fallen into the same trap that claimed Richard a few posts ago. Even if we assumed for one eccentric moment that you were right about all this acoustics nincompoopery – and I am of the opinion that you are not – Hutchinson’s story doesn’t become “true” on account of it not being physically impossible. Hutchinson could still have lied about it, and it is not as though we don’t have plentiful and compelling indications that he lied about other aspects of his account.

“And you know, the place looked nothing like it used to in 1888 when I was there”

You were there in 1888?

Not “everything” has changed about the geography of the district since 1888, as expects well versed in such matters will attest to. Whatever the background sounds that existed at the time of the murders, the streets of that part of the East End were neither "empty" nor “silent".

[Ben]

Thanks for the welcome back, Lechmere.

“It is something of a myth that the police were only arresting wild eyed Jewish butchers.”

I agree. The search wasn’t exclusively limited to "wild eyed Jewish butchers", and I acknowledged this when I outlined the type of suspects they clearly were in pursuit of at the time. They included Jews and butchers, certainly, but there were also suspects with mental impairments, doctors and foreigners. The generic local gentile man, on the other hand, clearly did not feature quite so highly on the police priority list.

I wasn’t accusing you of inventing the phrase “special pass”. I was suggesting that you might be getting bit a carried away with the term “special” as though it referred to something rare and unusual, as opposed to the delayed bed ticket (i.e. a proof of prior purchase) that it almost certainly was. Certain lodgers just wouldn’t have wanted to pay for their bed there and then and make immediate use of it, rather like a cinema or theatre ticket. You can either pay on the door for immediate entry, or pay in advance. If you chose the latter option, all you had to do was wait for the right day and time, flash the ticket on the door and it would be considered a pass for entry. Otherwise, what need was there for bed tickets?

Given the nocturnal and irregular hours of many of the lodgers, it seems only reasonable to conclude that many of them would have required such a pass, which took the form of metal generic cheques, and would have been entirely useless as an alibi-provider.

“The suspicion thing was based on the presumption that he had been dismissed as a credible witness for reasons that naturally would have made him look suspicious.”

I wouldn’t make that presumption. More likely, he was dismissed, like Packer and Violenia, as a publicity-seeker or time-waster and the possibility of his involvement in the crimes was never considered. A nascent police force was, after all, very unlikely to consider the possibility of the real offender coming forward and pretending to be a witness. I am not opposed to the principle of “checking out” in general – I’m sure this was done to a certain, if limited, extent – as long as it does not extend to assumption that the results of this checking somehow led to the exoneration of Hutchinson as a suspect, as this almost certainly did not happen.

Packer and Violenia were discredited witnesses, clearly assumed to have been lying for reasons that had nothing to do with their being Jack the Ripper. They clearly weren’t considered suspects, so they equally clearly were not exonerated as such. We needn’t assume that anything different happened in Hutchinson’s case.

“In other words, one way or another I am fairly sure the police would have been satisfied that he was not a potential culprit. I am sorry of you find this irritating.”

Well, it is slightly irritating.

It’s irritating because you don’t seem to understand the distinction between suspecting somebody of foul play and having the goods to demonstrate conclusively whether they engaged in foul play or not. You first conclude that he was considered a suspect without a shred of evidence, and then use that to make the two-fold assumption that he must have been exonerated as one. The reality is that if he was suspected (a big "if", because he probably wasn’t), the police were never in any real position to convert those suspicions into concrete results.

“In other words if every answer drew a blank in this manner:
Where did you last work? – can’t remember
What was the name of the inmate who told you to report? – can’t remember
Where are your parents living? – they died when I was a child
Where were they from? – can’t remember”

But who suggested any of this?

Not me. I’m sure he gave very plausible answers to those questions. He could easily have given an honest answer to the first, third, and fourth questions, blagged the second, and remained secure in the knowledge that none of these answers – true or false – could possibly have had any real incriminating value.

“If you wish to avoid must haves, then strike these out of your case”

No. The things you listed aren’t “must haves”. They are inferential probabilities based on the existing evidence. “Must haves” are conjured up in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, usually by those who would endorse any explanation for Hutchinson’s behaviour as long as it avoids like the very devil any consideration that Hutchinson either lied or murdered anyone. The “wrong day” hypothesis, which most serious students of the case have known about for a long time, is simply the latest example of this phenomenon. The reaction amounts to “Yeah! Well..no, probably not actually, but hey, at least it’s an alternative to the ideas touted by the naughty, nasty Hutchinsonians/onites”.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Just catching up with an earlier post:

“The difference between Hutchinson and many of the other witnesses from a police perespective is that he put himself at the crime scene at the time of the crime. How many other discredited witnesses did this? Not Packer, not Violenia and they were both extensively checked out.”

Again with the “checking out”.

As witnesses? Yes.

As suspects? Very obviously not.

I suggest very strongly that similar treatment was meted out to Hutchinson.

Both Packer and Violenia placed themselves at or near a crime scene at a time critical to a ripper-attributed murder, just as Hutchinson did. Both were discredited because they were assumed – not proven! – to have been lying, and yet despite the fact that both men met the “assumed to be lying” and “proximity to crime scene” criteria, neither of them were considered as suspects. Not dismissed as suspects, but not even considered as such.

We have no good reason for assuming that anything different happened in Hutchinson’s case.

“Incidentally if the police had no reason to suspect him at the time, precisely what new information about this man has materialised since then that makes him seem more guilty to any one today?”

Because of all the “unknown local nobodies” from the East End that most discerning commentators would agree comprises the most likely group to which the real killer belonged, a reasonable case can be levelled against only one of them that he lied about his reasons for monitoring a crime scene shortly before the commission of that crime. The “stuff about serial killers inserting themselves in crimes and often being nobodies” is merely additional considerations in support of that case.

“Hutchinson has more plus points (if that is the right way to put it). I was going through them all the other day.”

Yes, exactly, so don’t ruin this observation by then dismissing it as “exceptionally improbable”, but it’s nothing of the sort, and it is nonsense to state that it is.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Your contact is purportedly an expert in acoustics. Terrific. In which case, I’m very happy to listen to what he has to say regarding acoustics (which I didn’t disagree with anyway). He does not, conversely, appear to be an expert in articulation and speech, which is why I’m not inclined to accept any verdict from him on that subject."

Unless you are of the meaning that there were any shortcomings articulationwise on behalf of either Kelly or Astrakhan man, you should not let this deprive you of any sleep, Ben. As the dB level is lowered, it does not follow that the articulation is changed. What you hear is the exact SAME articulation but in a lower volume. So, unless you have an even more desperate objection, we may leave this.

"40 decibels is considered to be equivalent to a sound sample taken in a quiet library."

And THAT is not because the library itself is making any sound. It is because low key conversation is held at 40-45 dB. That too can be found in the sound charts. But you didn´t look at that specific parameter, did you?

"Yes, of course I can hear low-key conversation, perhaps even from 32 metres away on a night with very inclement weather and other background noises in what was a very crowded area of London, but what I wouldn’t be able to do is distinguish actual words from that distance in those conditions, and I don’t think you could either."

No, Ben, in very inclement weather and with much background noise, you could NOT hear a low key conversation from 32 meters away. It would have sunk to the volume of a whisper before it reached your ears, and that would have drowned in bad hearing conditions. Let´s be realistic.

Also, if there was a Dixieland orchestra in Dorset Street, you would not be able to hear it. If there was a live transmittance from a Cape Canaveral takeoff, it would screw things up.

But, you know Ben, by now I am very, very tired of over and over again answering all suggestions about ambient noise levels and such. I am at a complete loss to find any alternative wordings for the simple fact that we do not KNOW the exact levels of such noise. We know it was a time before cars and such, we know it was in the deep night, we know that only the fewest of peole were reported in that street, and so we may without making fools of ourselves suggest that it would have been a quiet street. If we do feel a need to make fools of ourselves, we could suggest that the street was absolutely crowded by loud people between 2 and 2.15, whereas it would seem they all scuttled off after that hour. We may also - once again! - ponder the fact that I do not believe for a second that Hutchinson was there on a stormy, rainy night. I believe he was there on a quiet, dry, overcast night.
But I take it there will be more said about the detrimental noise levels, tormenting the eardrums of the poor Dorset Street dwellers, instead of just accepting that conversation can easily be made out from 32 meters away in good hearing conditions, and realizing that good hearing conditions of course may very well have been about at that time and place.
We can´t have that, can we?

"If you’ve been a-googling again..."

Or if YOU have been a-googling again, Ben.

Ridiculous, is it not?

"Another interesting piece of information is that colder air temperatures also affect sound travel."

Which is why it has been recorded that conversation can travel up to 1,8 miles over ice in the Arctic, I presume?

"The “loud voice” did not appear in Hutchinson’s police statement, but only cropped up in the press versions of his account, which contained other embellishments and claims that were suspiciously absent from the statement."

Oooh, how SUSPICIOUS! Hutch said that Kelly raised her voice! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

"As others have pointed out, a raised voice makes little sense when speaking to somebody in such close proximity to the other person."

This is interesting. According to you, it would be odd in the extreme and touch on the totally improbable if a man standing on one side of the street did not cross it to the other side of it (!). People just cannot stand in a limited area for more that 30 minutes or something to that effect. It would be very, very strange if the did. "Suspicious" even, perhaps?

But when it comes to voice levels, it is the other way around! It would be very, very strange if a person did not use the EXACT same volume of speech throughout a conversation. In that context, nothing may change, or it would be terribly strange.

How did you come up with THAT idea? Whoops - I emphasized the word "that". That would amount to something like raising my voice, and people do not DO that, do they? Oh crap - now it happened to the "do" too...!

This is a daft argument, Ben. It does not work. Pepole use their voices in all sorts of manners all the time. That is what communication is about. We change wordings, we speak slowly at times, we raise our voices, we make theatrical pauses.
Hang on, you are an actor, are you not? Then you should know about these things! Maybe, Ben, you have come across a script in which two people speaking close together actually use different levels of voice volume? Or not? How does it work?

"Oh, Juliet, i love you so, why don´t we just leave this silly, silly Capulet and Montague business behind us and have a go at things ourselves?"

...or...

"Oh Juliet, I love you SO, why don´t we leave this SILLY, SILLY Capulet and Montague business behind us and have a go at things OURSELVES?"

How do you do it in the acting business nowadays? The even way?

One more thing. What was it she said, Ben? What did Hutch make out? Two things: the one about the hanky and the "Come along, dear, you will be comfortable" part. And when do we say "come along"? Exactly: sometimes we say that when we want people to follow us on a path we have started walking ourselves. Like dogs, more or less - we walk a step or two, the dog remains standing, and we turn and say "come along, Fido!".

So maybe the distance inbetween the two was not an even one at all times, Ben. Maybe she raised her voice after she had set off towards the court? No matter what, the suggestion that it would be strange to raise your voice during a conversation is, hmmmm, well: wrong.

"it was a boom, Fish."

Gosh. I have to have my ears fixed. To me, it was 27 dB at most.

"the housing on Dorset Street was documented as being very crowded."

My bedroom is slightly crowded at night too. There are two of us in a limited area. Both sleep.

"The chances of every Dorset Street occupant being asleep at 2:15 would obviously have been very remote."

Maybe - and we don´t know! - some were awake. Behind closed windows. In their rooms. Obliged to keep their voices down in order not to awake the ones who were sleeping, and that would be the most of them by far. It would have brought no sounds to the street outsie, I´m afraid, if this holds true.
What are YOU envisaging? People opening the windows onto the cold November night, yelling at the people hanging out their windows on the other side of the street? Have you ever walked home through a sleeping town lat at night, Ben? I know I have - and it is almost eerily quiet, a total change from the hustle and bustle a few hours later.

"There would certainly have been noises from Dorset Street"

And this we know how? Because we WANT it to be like this, just like we may hope that there is a natural law ruling that we cannot stand on one side of a street for more than half an hour? Is it the same thinking that surfaces here? This must be so because this must be so?

It was nighttime. We know that the descriptions we have of the street minutes after the conversation took place, are descriptions of a seemingly more or less totally empty street.
People sleep at night, Ben. It may have been incredibly quiet. Not a car or bus roamed the streets, no radios spewed out music, no tv-shows, nothing like that.

And, of course, this is once again suggesting things (sounds, noise) that MAY have been there, and that is only applicable in a theoretical sense relating to the test I presented. If there was noise, then it would have diminished the audibility. If there was not, it would not. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn´t. It still stands that what we have allows perfectly for hearing the conversation and making it out. It is effectively end of story. We cannot take it a step further without the crucial information about ambient sound in Dorset Street that we will never have. You will have to settle for the possibility that there MAY have been too much sound to pick the conversation up, and I will always be able to point out that if there was NOT too much disturbance around, Hutch could quite easily have done what he said he did.
Boom? Okay?

"you’ve just fallen into the same trap that claimed Richard a few posts ago."

Not at all, Ben.

"Even if we assumed for one eccentric moment that you were right about all this acoustics nincompoopery"

It is not nincompoopery , it is empirically proven - but since it does not suit you, it becomes nincompoopery. THAT´S nincompoopery. THAT is where it enters the picture.

"and I am of the opinion that you are not"

Well, it´s not me. It´s an accoustics specialist and a proven sound charter.

"Hutchinson’s story doesn’t become “true” on account of it not being physically impossible."

Of course not. Nor does he become a liar on account of THAT being physically possible. If that was true, I could call you a liar. And I don´t, do I?
So there is no trap here at all, I´m afraid. I just point to the fact that if the conversation on the whole was held in a low key, and if Kelly raised her voice, as Hutch says, then 30 meters would tally well with a scenario where he cannot make out more than what was spoken in a louder voice. And looking at things like that, we seemingly have a situation where Hutchinsons accoustic related testimony tallies totally with the sound charter the accoustics expert described.
If the couple had been 50-60 meters away, I would have said "That was strange - how could he have heard that?" and if they had been five meters away, I would have said "That was strange - why did he not pick it all up?"
As it stands, though, I simply say "Wow - it tallies." And when it does, it does not weaken the argument that Hutch may have been correct - it strengthens it. And if Richard fell into THAT particular "trap", good on him!

"Hutchinson could still have lied about it, and it is not as though we don’t have plentiful and compelling indications that he lied about other aspects of his account."

Yes. And no. Yes, he could have lied. But no, there are not any compelling indications about that he did so.

"Not “everything” has changed about the geography of the district since 1888, as expects well versed in such matters will attest to."

Any "expert" will realize that Dorset Street was torn down in the 1920:s and the 1960:s, respectively. They tore down one side of the street first, and the other a number of decades later. Strange, is it not, considering that the two sides were so close that they were practically one and the same? But there you are.
After that, new architecture was built, leaving the street with totally different facades at a different distance from each other than back in 1888. That ensured that the acooustics were totally altered.
Ehrm, can I have another "boom" here? A loud one?

"Whatever the background sounds that existed at the time of the murders, the streets of that part of the East End were neither "empty" nor “silent"."

You´d wish, Ben! You´d wish ...

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

If a drunken lout of a woman heard a man's footsteps as he left the Court (yeah, she knew he was leaving), then I can hear someone talking in low terms, on a quiet evening, from pretty far away, while wearing a wideawake hat, and spotting wool on a coat.

Mike

[Rubyretro]

“Incidentally if the police had no reason to suspect him at the time, precisely what new information about this man has materialised since then that makes him seem more guilty to any one today?”

In addition to Ben's earlier answer, is that other 'coincidence', that the murders
stopped after Kelly -something that the police could not have known was going to happen when Hutchinson came forward in 1888.

One reason that the FBI give for Serial killers stopping, is that they become
known to the case and risk being unmasked.

It is certain that if Hutch got his 15 minutes of fame in Whitechapel, he would have had a hard job explaining his presence near another crime scene !

[Ben]

“What you hear is the exact SAME articulation but in a lower volume.”

Articulation isn’t measured in “volume”, Fisherman.

I’m not suggesting anything was wrong with Kelly or Astrakhan’s ability to articulate anything. They were both only human – well, Kelly was at any rate. I’m only pointing out that actual words were very unlikely to have been distinguished over a distance of 30 metres. Hutchinson would only have been aware of a murmur of conversation. It doesn’t follow that conversation is just as easy to detect at lower volume, since it is more likely to become drowned out by other noises. The general background sounds from that crowded pocket of the East End coupled with the bad weather that existed on the night in question would most assuredly qualify as “other noises” that could prevent actual words being discerned “at low volume”, especially from that distance.

Oh, and it’s up to you if you want to “leave it”. If you do, I’ll join you. If not, I guess it’s a case of going round and round in circles.

“And THAT is not because the library itself is making any sound.”

Of course not. But a sound sample in a quiet library is considered to be the equivalent of 40 decibels. Obviously this sound would have encompassed hushed voices, footsteps, the moving of newspapers, books etc. And your contact tells us that conversation heard from 32 metres away in equivalent to just 5 decibels higher than this. Interesting.

“I am at a complete loss to find any alternative wordings for the simple fact that we do not KNOW the exact levels of such noise.”

Exactly, which is why I slightly question the wisdom of contacting an “acoustics” based on a lack of adequate knowledge as to the existing weather conditions. I’m glad to see you acknowledge that the street would have been “quiet” in the small hours of the night, as distinct from your earlier “silent”, which is obviously wrong.

It is obviously only reasonable to conclude that the crowded lodging houses that lined Dorset Street must have generated some degree of noise in addition to the wind and possibly rain. Remember that both Lewis and Prater observed that cries were not uncommon in the district. The idea of every lodger in every lodging house being tucked up in bed and asleep at the time is ludicrously unrealistic. I’ve just been explaining to Lechmere that many lodgers kept decidedly irregular and nocturnal work hours, and would have been coming and going at all hours of the night. Carmen like Cross and Paul would have been up and at ‘em in the very small hours, as we learn from their evidence at the Nichols inquest.

Clearly, there would have been some generalized noise on Dorset Street in addition to the rain. I know you believe in Dew’s befuddled time and date hypothesis, and that you “don’t believe for a second” that any other explanation can be true. In which case, the weather will not be a problem for you. For most of us though, it was a night of very miserable weather and this ought to be considered when reflecting on Hutchinson’s implausible and oft-challenged claims with regard to what he saw, when, and how.

“Which is why it has been recorded that conversation can travel up to 1,8 miles over ice in the Arctic, I presume?”

I’m simply stating a fact, Fisherman; that colder temperatures affect sound travel, and therefore sound detection.

“Hutch said that Kelly raised her voice! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”

Well, this is just the point. He clearly didn’t say anything of the sort when speaking to the police. This “loud voice” (not just “raised”) appeared only in press versions of his account, along with various other embellishments.

“According to you, it would be odd in the extreme and touch on the totally improbable if a man standing on one side of the street did not cross it to the other side of it”

The “other side” being a Vauxhall Corsa’s length away. I’ve said that I consider it implausible that anyone waiting for 45 minutes is less likely to root himself like a statue in one specific location as opposed to moving about a bit within a very small area. Gosh, fancy bringing this up again. It has no relation whatsoever to my other observation regarding the necessity for using a loud voice when speaking to somebody right next to you, which other contributors also find problematic.

“Maybe, Ben, you have come across a script in which two people speaking close together actually use different levels of voice volume? Or not? How does it work?

"Oh, Juliet, i love you so, why don´t we just leave this silly, silly Capulet and Montague business behind us and have a go at things ourselves?"

...or...

"Oh Juliet, I love you SO, why don´t we leave this SILLY, SILLY Capulet and Montague business behind us and have a go at things OURSELVES?"

You’re confusing emphasis with volume, Fisherman.

I don’t know of any self-respecting actor who consistently relies on volume to emphasise certain lines, and it would be considered something of a cop-out, and not unhammy, if anyone resorted to it. Certainly, there are occasions in which actors are required or expected to use volume for certain scenes of heightened emotion, frivolity, danger, imminent destruction, or whatever, but not to bemoan the loss of a handkerchief! “Come along, my dear, you will be comfortable” was not reported anywhere to have been spoken in a loud voice either in the press or police versions of his account. In fact, this line had been completely “forgotten” about by the time Hutchinson came to speak to the press. Another instance of fiddling with earlier grey areas in his police account, I would strongly suspect.

No matter what, the suggestion that it would be strange to raise your voice during a conversation is, hmmmm, well: wrong.

No, given the circumstances of the alleged overhearing, the suggestion is, hmmmm, well: right as I’ve just hmmmm, well: demonstrated.

“My bedroom is slightly crowded at night too. There are two of us in a limited area.”

As opposed to tens of you and more in one room in a limited area.

Fisherman’s bedroom versus a crowded lodging house bedroom in 1888 Dorset Street.

I wonder which one was more crowded?

“It was nighttime.”

Again, this is when you occasionally arm those who would disagree with you with fuel for their suspicions that you’re just not as informed as you should be on certain obvious realities in existence at the time. You say it’s "night time" as though the entire population of rough, tough, crowded Dorset Street in the busy East End all went to beddy-byes just because it went dark. This is unimaginative in the extreme. People were heading out to and returning home from work at “night time”. People were coming and going from lodging houses at all hours at “night time”. People were drinking and/or seeking out prostitutes at “night time”, policeman and vigilance committee members were on the streets etc etc. This was a very active nocturnal community, and there would have been background noises very obviously in evidence, undeniably and irrefutably so.

“It still stands that what we have allows perfectly for hearing the conversation and making it out. It is effectively end of story.”

And I utterly dispute this as complete nonsense, and I’m prepared to reiterate until - gosh! – forever if necessary. As usual, it just depends who’s up for a repetitive stamina war I guess. You can choose to end whatever story you want at any time, but it doesn’t mean that anyone else has to buy it. I’ll settle for the commonsense conclusion that conversation, whilst just about audible, could not be discerned in terms of the actual words spoken from 32 metres on a night of bad windy weather, and background noise that was definitely there.

“It is not nincompoopery , it is empirically proven”

Haha.

No.

The “trap” I referred to was the assumption that a claim must be true because it hasn’t been disproved as physically impossible. Everyone else understands that this is nonsense. I can think of any number of false claims which can’t be discounted as physically impossible, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t just dream them up. The trouble here is that this particular claim of Hutchinson's is physically very improbable, and has been considered so for many years by authors who have no investment in the idea that Hutchinson was criminally responsible. You say “wow, it tallies” quite a lot and rarely for good reason, and this is just another case in point

“Yes, he could have lied. But no, there are not any compelling indications about that he did so.”

Oh, of course, I’ve just remembered you even accept the description of Astrakhan man with his dark eyelashes, linen collar, horseshoe tie-pins and gaiters. Well, again, I cannot extort commonsense out of people. I can only urge it.

“After that, new architecture was built, leaving the street with totally different facades at a different distance from each other than back in 1888.”

So different that they don’t bounce sound off walls?

Wow.

The distance that has not changed, of course, is the distance between the corner of Dorset Street (as was) and the entrance to Miller’s Court (as was). Nothing has changed about this distance, and this is the contentions distance at present. So all booms fully sustained, I’m afraid.

But let’s keep getting really bogged down in this issue, and see if we can make 20 more fun-packed pages out of it.

[Sally]

Dorset Street

A better version of the 1902 picture of Dorset Street:-



It looks just like Booth's description. I don't know if that was intentional, or not - or whether it always looked like this, with women standing on corners and sitting on the pavements.

[Hunter]

Oh, of course, I’ve just remembered you even accept the description of Astrakhan man with his dark eyelashes, linen collar, horseshoe tie-pins and gaiters. Well, again, I cannot extort commonsense out of people. I can only urge it.

Hi Ben,

Does this imply that several renown authors, including Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow have no common sense?

[Ben]

Hi Sally,

Thanks for that. I've just noticed that the Crossingham's building opposite Miller's Court (or possibly the building directly adjacent to it) had a sort of overhung porch. An ideal location, one would have thought, for anyone who wanted both shelter from any rain and a means of monitoring the court without blocking its entrance.

Hi Hunter,

As far as I know, neither of those authors have expressed any firm opinion to the effect that Hutchinson reported the unembellished truth about every particular of the Astrakhan description.

All the best,
Ben

[Sally]

Actually, looking at it, its quite a lot clearer (either that or its my eyes). There are a couple of women (I presume) sitting in doorways on the right - and what's that object in the street?

You can see that the three figures about half way down on the left aren't actually standing side by side, but in more of a circle.

I love old photographs. I wish I had an illustrated 'People of the Abyss'