Did Hutchinson get the night wrong?

[Sally]

Speaking of tickets and passes:

These passes were simply metallic tickets, entirely non-specific to any one individual, that could be purchased by lodgers on either a daily or weekly basis and then returned to the doormen for re-sale to other lodgers. This ensured minimised wastage of the type one would expect much of if each of these passes was personalised.

This from Mayhew:

Strangers who arrive in the course of the day must procure a tin ticket, by paying 2 d. at the wicket in the office, previously to being allowed to enter the kitchen

(my emphasis)

London Labour and the London Poor Vol 3 (1851)

The practices of issuing metal, or wooden tickets and passes was long-standing by the 1880's. They were durable, could be re-sold, as Ben rightly points out, and were of no useful monetary value in themselves; so carried little risk of theft. Tickets were sometimes numbered - this more usually for larger and later lodging houses - but that's about as personal as they got.

Regarding Hutchinson - if he had been in posession of a pass on the 8th November, it probably would have been a metal ticket - as it was the Victoria Home, possibly numbered.

As to the Sunday, on which he claimed to have been at the Victoria Home - Sunday was the free day for lodgers who paid for the other 6. This practice was also long-standing by 1888 - it had been usual for at least 50 years, and undoubtedly longer than that. The practice may have originated out of moral concern - Sunday being a day of rest in Christian religion on which commerce was frowned upon, at least. By the time we get into the legislation of the 1850's regarding common lodging houses, the 6 day rule had become the standard definition of the establishment and was subsequently enshrined in law.

Since lodging houses could not offer beds for longer than 6 days at a time, most, if not virtually all, common lodging houses would have offered beds on 'free Sunday' terms in order to secure long-standing tenants.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"What’s worse is that you then have him heading straight out again to do yet more walking, this time to some far-flung location where he mysteriously didn’t have access to news of the Kelly murder."

I have him NOWHERE, Ben. Nor have you. There lies the rub. I have offered the thought that he may have been headed some place where it was not easy to gain knowledge about Kelly, but I am in no way pushing any special suggestion. My chief goal is to ensure that we do not lock ourselves to a position that may prove terribly wrong at the end of the day.

"It just doesn’t seem remotely likely that Hutchinson would walk about the district “all night” on top of the walking he had already endured all the way back from Romford in the small hours of the morning. I’m very bemused that you should both spot these oddities and yet resist the “lying” explanation with such unreasonable and unfathomable staunchness."

Offer it a little imagination, Ben! See the possibilities. Why would we be sure that the travel to Romford was a hard one? Maybe he got a hike, who can say? That would halve the walking distance. Maybe he had a good day in Romford, some light work or no work at all, a good meal, a long rest ... we do not know. Maybe he had been promised a hike back too, but the man who had promised it did not turn up late in the evening, as he had promised. Such a thing would make the fact that he walked home at a very late hour a lot less suspicious, would it not? Let´s assume that it was Wednesday night, a night of relatively good weather, dry and fine. So he walks fourteen miles to London at a lesiurely speed, and arrives home in the early morning hours. He sees Kelly and the man, gives up on the hope to crash at Miller´s Court, and realizes that it would be cold to spend the night in a doorway. Thus he takes to walking, hands in pockets, at a comfortable speed, waiting for the Victoria Home to open.
With this (totally unsubstantiated) scenario, we would not have a Hutchinson on the brink of a collapse, would we? He would be quit fine, physically. Sleepy in all probability, but skipping a night´s sleep is not that big an affair when you are young.

It does not have to be a gruelling, tough journey in the roughest of weather conditions, taking a fearful toll, Ben. It does not have to be a night´s walk in gale force winds and rain showers and a biting chill. It could be something quite, quite different. The evidence allows for it.

"It’s ludicrously out-of-the-ordinary, Fisherman, and your assertion that “thousands of people do things like” the sequence of events outlined in my first paragraph "every day" is both impossible to prove and almost certainly false."

If it cannot be proven that my assumption is false, then how can we know that it is " ludicrously out-of-the-ordinary"? And there are some seven billion people on earth, Ben, or something like that. I think it is very reasonable to suggest that a tiny fraction of a promille of all these people do spend a night awake every day of the year. I do wish that you would refrain from your vocabulary of superlatives. I know that there are only a few meagre points to make that challenge Dew´s suggestion, and I can understand if you need to try and make them stand out. But really ...!

"There’s just no sense in spoiling your intriguing wrong-day hypothesis with these ornamental “outside possibilities” because all they do is draw attention to compelling reasons for suspecting that Hutchinson fabricated key aspects of his account."

They may make YOU think of fabrication on Hutchinsons behalf, Ben. But then again - what does not ...? To me, they widen the perspective, and I think that is a healthy thing.

"Dew’s comments strongly suggest that there existed “uncertainty” in the sense that no proof had been procured."

They do provide a very good reason to believe that no consensus was reached. But the failing part here may well be Hutchinson himself only. You may point to the fact that no other policeman endorses Dew on this matter, but that matters little when we realize that no other policeman denies it either. As it stands, it will be hard to take it any further than that.

"I tend to put this down to people disregarding the theory as unlikely, rather than the theory itself passing unnoticed."

That´s fine by me. But I would like to point to what Tom wrote - as he read it, his jaw dropped, and he asked himself: Why have I not thought of this before? The same applies to me: I was totally baffled when I put the pieces together. Decades of reading the statement and the literature had not opened that door before.
And you, Ben - have YOU seen this opening before, but disregarded it because you thought Dew unreliable or the theory itself useless?

"I strongly disagree, and would note that I’m not the only one responsible for hyperbolic language. I did not, for example, claim to “know” what I cannot prove"

I am a journalist, Ben. I write, in a sense, to hook people. I added that I could not prove my theory, though.
And please note that I am in no way opposed to the suggestion that it may not have rained at 2 o clock - I am not saying that the whole affair makes it vastly, vastly improbale that it did not rain, or that Dew´s background makes anybody who argues that he may have been wrong on Hutchinson a complete idiot since it is beyond reasonable doubt that he must have conveyed the wiews of his colleagues - or something like that. I think my suggestion is a good one, but I am listening to any critic that may surface, since that is the best way to test it. But when you say, for instance, that it is very, very nearly impossible for a man to pick up belongings at a boarding house after a sleepless night, and move on to go somewhere else, I simply do not think that this is a useful argument. Out of the ordinary it would have been, like sleepless nights are, of course. But after that, no problems.
But that may just be me.

"I’m glad you’ve changed your mind about not speaking to me."

I speak to anybody who has rational suggestions and questions to offer. And if these people combine it with deep knowledge, then so much the better. Speaking of that, I am pleased to say that I have established contact with a renowned memory researcher, to whom I will probably be speaking about Hutch next week. What I want an answer to is how credible it would have been for him to loose out on a day under the circumstances that prevailed. Keeping in mind what was said concerning Frank Leander, I would very much like you to tell me how you would go about things, and what questions you would ask. That would diminish the risk of anybody of us ending up disappointed about questions of procedure, I hope.

So please, let me know!

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

“I have offered the thought that he may have been headed some place where it was not easy to gain knowledge about Kelly”

As long as you’re not still suggesting that he did this immediately after hours of walking from Romford, and then more hours aimlessly walking about the district, Fisherman. In which case you’re suggestion is still very implausible, if not disastrously so.

“Why would we be sure that the travel to Romford was a hard one?”

I’m not talking about what happened on the way TO Romford. I’m talking about his alleged walk all the way back from Romford in the small hours of the morning, followed by hours of walking about until the Victoria Home opened again in the morning, followed by yet more walking all the way to somewhere far enough away from London that it was “not easy to gain knowledge about Kelly” there. This is the big no-no as far as the plausibility stakes go, in my opinion, and no amount of “maybe this happened?” is succeeding in enhancing this plausibility.

The weather conditions are largely irrelevant. If you’ve walked 14 miles in the small hours of a November morning, the chances of you doing yet more walking on top of that for the remainder of the night are to be considered very slim indeed, especially if his intention was to walk out of the district immediately after retrieving some belongings. As for the suggestion that Hutchinson eschewed a night’s sleep in an enclosed stairwell in favour of walking about all night, I think Bob Hinton had it about right; “If you are going to spend a night on the streets all your energy is spent finding somewhere to sleep, you certainly don’t waste any precious energy or body heat by taking part in a route march if you don’t have to” (“From Hell” 1998).

It’s not just a question of “skipping a night’s sleep”, but one of “route marching” back from Romford, followed by more pointless walking about, then more walking all the way out of London to get to some mysterious destination (somewhere that involved horses only and no human contact, as per your previous claim?) where he was unlikely to have heard of the Kelly murder. I’m opposed to the principle of the Thought Police in general terms, but I would make a very strong exception here, and would be tempted to request their urgent and ruthless intervention.

“But I would like to point to what Tom wrote - as he read it, his jaw dropped, and he asked himself: Why have I not thought of this before?”

Before concluding that fabrication was, ultimately, a more likely explanation.

“And you, Ben - have YOU seen this opening before, but disregarded it because you thought Dew unreliable or the theory itself useless?”

Yes, that is precisely what happened, for proof of which please revisit the “Van der Hutchinson” thread where I first mentioned Dew’s memoirs and the “different day” hypothesis to those who frequent the Hutchinson threads – a mention you claim not to have been influenced by, despite writing an article about it very shortly thereafter. I had seen it before, of course, and yes, I did disregard it for the reasons you’ve mentioned.

“I speak to anybody who has rational suggestions and questions to offer.”

Kind of you to say so, Fisherman.

“Speaking of that, I am pleased to say that I have established contact with a renowned memory researcher, to whom I will probably be speaking about Hutch next week…Keeping in mind what was said concerning Frank Leander”

While you’re at it, do you know of any renowned lying researchers in order that I might demonstrate to the satisfaction of sceptics that sometimes people tell lies?

Best regards,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Despite Sally’s post quoting from Mayhew about an establishment some 37 years before the period we are discussing, or Ben’s lodging house found in ‘People of the Abyss’ from fourteen years later, we do not know how they regulated or registered casual or longer term lodgers. Victoria Home may or may not have operated a similar system to Sally and Ben’s examples. From the brief description in ‘People of the Abyss’, and the even briefer Mayhew quotation, we cannot even really say how they used the discs or whether they were individually numbered.

We know that the Victoria Home issued: ‘Tickets for beds are issued from five p.m. until 12.30 midnight, and after that hour if a man wants to get in he must have a pass.’
Do you see the wording ‘AND AFTER THAT HOUR IF A MAN WANTS TO GET IN HE MUST HAVE A PASS’. That little word ‘and’. It means in addition to the ticket. If a lodger stays out late he has to have obtained something additional – a pass - in order to obtain re-entry. This is referred to in another contemporary article as follows: ‘No person will be admitted after one o’clock a.m. without a special pass.’
Do you notice something about that sentence?
It doesn’t say an ordinary pass, or a normal pass, or a normal ordinary pass, the kind that was issued to everyone else (actually as we have seen it is a ‘ticket’).
It was a SPECIAL pass. A late night pass. If you were not going to be out late then you did not need this SPECIAL pass. If you didn’t have this SPECIAL late night pass and you were late (eg you stayed too long in Romford) then it was tough. Oh I dare say if you were on extra friendly terms with the gatekeeper then maybe you may be able to blag your way in, but the rule is as I have described it. That is probably why Hutchinson had to walk the streets that night. It seems likely doesn’t it?
I do not presume to know what form this SPECIAL pass took – a metal disc, a wooden token, a slip of paper or whatever. I just know what the rules say very clearly. Unambiguously. Please notice that this is not the same as a normal entry ‘ticket’. It is a late night SPECIAL pass to gain access to the Victoria Home as the Victoria Home had SPECIAL rules of its own about late night entry.
Have I given this enough emphasis?

They had SPECIAL passes at the Victoria Home because they wanted to discourage late nighters. People who stayed out boozing, doing bad and immoral things. I will not illustrate this from the well worn passages about the Victoria Home again. It is blindingly obvious. It is simple to understand. Very simple.
It also makes the Victoria Home an implausible domestic base for a night stalker to live. That should also be obvious. Also when you read about most other lodging houses (they crop up again and again in the newspaper reports) you can see that they were no-where near as strict on that point and would offer more realistic accommodation for someone who wants to be an anonymous killer in the night.

The relevant legislation that covered Lodging Houses was the Common Lodging Houses Acts 1851 and 1853, with the Sanitary Act 1866 and the Sanitary Law Amendment Act 1874. All these pieces of legislation post date Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’.
Incidentally I can find no reference that states that any of this legislation required the proprietor of the Lodging House to keep a register of lodgers.
The 1851 Act can be found here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W5MBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA368&dq=%22common+lodging+house+act%22&lr=&as_brr=3&cd=20#v=onepage&q=%22common%20lodging%20house%20act%22&f=false

We know the Victoria Home had stricter rules than required by the legislation, as I have repeatedly said. Again I direct anyone who doubts this to ‘The Sunday Magazine’ in 1889: ‘Registers are kept of lodgers. Every man's name and occupation is entered in the books and these records against the names are filled up and make brief histories.’
I would suggest that the most appropriate interpretation of this sentence is that the Victoria Home did keep a register of who was booked into it at any given time. That is not to say that someone could book in and not turn up one night. But I would also suggested that such a ‘stop out’ would quite likely be noticed by other inmates.
We know that the Victoria Home took particular care to exclude certain people and vetted its lodgers. Accordingly they must have had a system to ensure tickets were not swapped and passed on. They may for example have issued numbered tickets that tallied with the name in the register. This is because it is breathtakingly obvious from reading the rules, as I said before: ‘It was deliberately set up to be strict from the day it opened.’ That is why it makes logical sense that the Victoria Home did indeed update their records every time a registered and vetted potential lodger actually stayed there. Otherwise the vetting process would have been a waste of time. Three people could have booked in each claiming to be George Hutchinson if his personal record was not updated in the manner indicated by the ‘Sunday Magazine’.

It might be of interest that the cases Langdon v. Broadbent, 1877 and Booth v. Ferrett, 1890 had this to say:
"COMMON LODGING-HOUSE a house, or part of a house, where persons of the poorer classes are received for gain, and in which they use one or more rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one family, whether for eating or sleeping".
Did I just read the word... INMATE!

By the way, Hutchinson says that on the Sunday he was told by another lodger to go to the police. Hutchinson is thought to have been a regular. This implies he did know other lodgers – at the very least the one he allegedly confided in. If he was a regular sleeping amongst other regulars, then he will have had a regular bed and regular bed neighbours (for want of a better expression). They would have noticed any unusual absences (e.g. that coincided with murders). Failure to accept this simple point is baffling. Or am I proposing something very controversial?

I will also draw this to your attention.
The Inquest was held in a small room in Shoreditch Town Hall about ¾ mile from the Victoria Home. There was a big crowd outside, and hardly any members of the public inside as the room was so small. The Inquest opened at midday. There were, I think, twelve witnesses who had to be sworn and heard. I have not seen a time for when the Inquest ended. At a guess I would estimate at 5pm. It is said that Hutchinson presented himself at 6pm at Commercial Street Police Station. I haven’t seen that time in a contemporary document, maybe it is an estimation based on the likely end of the Inquest.

Sarah Lewis’s testimony included the following:
“When I went into the court, opposite the lodging-house I saw a man with a wideawake. There was no one talking to him. He was a stout-looking man, and not very tall. The hat was black. I did not take any notice of his clothes. The man was looking up the court; he seemed to be waiting or looking for some one.”
This is a very short reference. How likely is it that this short snippet of evidence went out on the bush telegraph and reached Hutchinson’s ears? Maybe he was part of the crowd outside Shoreditch Town Hall? If so he risked being spotted by a policeman and remembered. But how likely is it that this snippet would filter out, penetrate the crowd and reach Hutchinson’s ears. Remember this snippet had to compete with all the other lurid evidence given at the Inquest. In my opinion it is exceptionally unlikely that Hutchinson would have heard that little snippet, no matter how alert he was to hear such a detail. It is hardly credible to suggest it could have happened. It is even less likely that he would have heard it if he was further away. Then we have to have Hutchinson think up his story (or did he prepare it on Saturday and Sunday) and hot foot it down to Commercial Street Police Station.

Then when Hutchinson is ‘interrogated’ after he has given his initial statement, we have to believe that Detective Inspector Abberline does not think to ask why Hutchinson hadn’t come forward before, or ask any of the other supplementary questions that any novice could think up in ten seconds, or check him out in any way (or what according to the Washington DC Evening Star ‘ought not to take a competent detective two hours to settle’). We have to believe that Abberline is totally fooled and believes in Hutchinson so much that he never checks his story out, for example with this other lodger who Hutchinson says he confided in. Even after Hutchinson is dismissed.

After the Abberline interrogation Hutchinson went out with policemen searching to try and find the man he allegedly saw with Kelly. That is a busy evening.
He fitted all this in. From the close of the inquest he is supposed to have heard rumour of the Lewis evidence, concocted his story, gone to Commercial Street Police Station, given his statement, been interrogated by Abbeline and then gone out for several hours ‘on the beat’.
He must have heard the Lewis rumour with immediate effect – there is no margin for error in only hearing that juicy Lewis snippet later in the evening!

We have a wealth of evidence about lodging houses as far away as Holborn being on their guard against possible suspects. We know that the papers are full of random suspects being grilled in a sensible and rigorous manner. In the week after Kelly’s murder they did not tend to be Jewish looking people either! The police were not just looking for Jews! These suspects had far less ground for suspicion being cast upon them than a rejected prime witness would have had. It is scarcely credible that Hutchinson would have just walked away after putting himself in the line of fire, if the police did not have good grounds for believing that he was not involved in the murder. They may have believed him a liar, a Walter Mitty or someone after some reward money or some wedge from the press.
The most probable explanation is that the police discovered details which exonerated Hutchinson while at the same time destroying his usefulness as a witness. The inconsistencies and holes in his story were evident to sections of the press November 1888. It is highly improbable that these things would not have occurred to someone whose profession was the detection of crime.

Then we have to believe that for the Kelly murder (unlike the previous ones) the Ripper changes his MO, by becoming a stalker, a killer of an acquaintance (rather than a stranger, unless of course he lied and he didn’t know Kelly) and also a serial killer of the variety who inserts himself in the investigation.

One improbability upon another upon another upon another upon another.

[Ben]

Thanks for that information, Sally.

Much appreciated.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

So much for Lechmere’s “last observation”…!

So much for his claim that being the last man standing in an Internet discussion forum is little to “crow” about.

“Despite Sally’s post quoting from Mayhew about an establishment some 38 years before the period we are discussing, or Ben’s lodging house found in ‘People of the Abyss’ from a fourteen years later”

Yes, “despite” these sources, you’re going to insist that your version of the Victoria Home entry must be the correct one instead?

Please. At least some of us have provided relevant sources for the period with regard to the larger lodging houses.

What is this based on, anyway? Your assumption that the phrase “special pass” must refer to something of loftier value that than big brass bed tickets mentioned by the actual users of these lodging houses? It should be absurdly obvious that the term “special pass” was another extension of the all-too-journalistic attempt to extol the virtues of the lodging house in question, and certainly not an attempt to distinguish these passes from the standard bed tickets that served all the other lodging houses that adopted such a policy. The idea that tickets should be distinguished from passes is a mammoth misunderstanding that its adherents should be disabused of, or else be condemned to accusations of addle-mindedness for being enticed by the word “special”.

Your assertion that a distinction should be made between a ticket and a pass is based on another misunderstanding of the Victoria Home guidelines, and yet you extend a plea to an imaginary audience to share in this misunderstanding. The reality, however, was that that if a lodger had purchased a ticket before closing time, he could then revisit the lodging house at any time after closing time and use that as a pass – even a “special” one! – for entry to the bedrooms. The Victoria Home stipulated that pass-holders only could gain entry after 12:30 or 1.00am, so what does this entail for your suggestion that “tickets” were different from “passes”? That lodgers who had purchased mere tickets were denied entry, despite being in possession of a brass cheque that proved they had already paid for a bed?

It really doesn’t matter how much “emphasis” you give a suggestion that is still very obviously wrong. Even if passes differed from tickets, which militates heavily against proven sources and common sense, they still wouldn’t have been personalized, and therefore could not have been used to establish Hutchinson’s whereabouts for the nights of previous murders. Incidentally, where did you get the idea that a failure to gain entry to a lodging house necessitated “walking the streets”? Not just finding shelter in a stairwell or entry, but enforced walking as a “likely” explanation?

“They had SPECIAL passes at the Victoria Home because they wanted to discourage late nighters. People who stayed out boozing, doing bad and immoral things.”

What the…?

No. Okay. Just no. You’re confused again. Gosh, this is becoming tiresome. Just exactly what sort of special passes could ensure adequate preventative measures against any of these things? One that said “I promise not to stay out boozing or do bad and immoral things when I get back very late”? This is a very outlandish and difficult to comprehend misunderstanding of simple evidence. 12:30 or 1.00am was simply the last opportunity for lodgers to purchase daily or weekly tickets that could enable them access to the beds. The logical explanation for this, in light of Jack London’s account, is that the Home itself closed around that time, and whereas before that time is was possible for any lodger to pay for either a bed or a ticket within the home, it was only possible after that time for pre-paid pass-holders to gain entry to the building, let alone the home. Think of it like a bad hotel room – you’ve paid in advance, but your only means of gaining late entry is via a key-card.

I’m afraid I beat you to the observation that the Victoria Home was stricter in some respects:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=41399&postcount=43

“An important thing to bear in mind is that the Victoria Home was a cut above the likes of Crossingham's and all the other dodgy dossers in and around Dorset Street. It adhered to a much stricter entrance policy”

In no way does this “strictness” argue against the suggestion that the building could have harboured the killer.

“Again I direct anyone who doubts this to ‘The Sunday Magazine’ in 1889: ‘Registers are kept of lodgers. Every man's name and occupation is entered in the books and these records against the names are filled up and make brief histories.’ I would suggest that the most appropriate interpretation of this sentence is that the Victoria Home did keep a register of who was booked into it at any given time”

“Suggest” all you want, but a simple study of the source exposes the absurdity of the suggestion. Names were clearly taken of new lodgers, appended to which was a “brief history” of them. Clearly, therefore, that was the beginning and the end of the registration process, unless anyone seriously wants to argue that some poor beleaguered doorman took the name of every already-registered lodger every time they entered or exited the building, despite it housing 400 or so lodgers per night, recounting their “brief histories” each time. No, I would “suggest” that you’ve misunderstood the guidelines again.

“Accordingly they must have had a system to ensure tickets were not swapped and passed on.”

What difference would any swapping or passing on have made to the income of the Victoria Home? If lodger A gives lodger B his pass, lodger B gets in but lodger A doesn’t. It still amounts to the equivalent of one lodger paying for one bed. Same with swapping tickets – one generic metal cheque for another generic metal cheque, what’s the difference? No, this wouldn’t have made the vetting process a “waste of time” since the vetting process was designed for new lodgers only.

“If he was a regular sleeping amongst other regulars, then he will have had a regular bed and regular bed neighbours (for want of a better expression)”

No.

There is no evidence for this whatsoever. The Victoria Home catered for a largely transient population of roughly 450. There would have been no question of a “regular bed”, and certainly not “regular bed neighbours”. He would have been assigned a different bed whenever he attempted to gain entry, especially as there were different types of accommodation to be purchased. For a couple of extra pence, Hutchinson could have procured for himself a private cabin or cubicle, in which case the issue of bed neighbours would have been completely nullified. No, you’re not proposing anything controversial, but you are pronouncing weightily on matters about which you are grossly ignorant and then using it to bolster your seemingly recently cultivated but fiercely thrusted agenda that Hutchinson couldn’t possibly be responsible for the murders.

“How likely is it that this short snippet of evidence went out on the bush telegraph and reached Hutchinson’s ears?”

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.

“Then when Hutchinson is ‘interrogated’ after he has given his initial statement, we have to believe that Detective Inspector Abberline does….check him out in any way”

Hutchinson had only made his appearance to the police at 6.00pm that evening, Lechmere. Abberline penned his missive of temporary approval that evening. Not nearly enough time had elapsed for any sufficient “checking out” time. This clearly happened later, and Hutchinson was subsequently discredited, after which time it is clear that Abberline was not "totally fooled and believes in Hutchinson". Glad to have introduced you to further source material in the form of the Washington Evening Star though.

“The most probable explanation is that the police discovered details which exonerated Hutchinson while at the same time destroying his usefulness as a witness. The inconsistencies and holes in his story were evident to sections of the press November 1888.”

This is irritating and baseless nonsense. These same inconsistencies and holes that were evident to the press were clearly sufficient to cast doubt on his usefulness as a witness, but how could this possibly have “exonerated Hutchinson”? How could the police have proven Hutchinson innocent whilst only “suspecting” him of lying?

“It is scarcely credible that Hutchinson would have just walked away after putting himself in the line of fire, if the police did not have good grounds for believing that he was not involved in the murder.”

I’ve just dealt with this. Here you go: We can’t argue that the circumstances that make Hutchinson suspicious can be used in an attempt to rule him out a suspect. This only perpetuates the misconception that the police always have some handy barometer for determining the guilt or innocence or anyone they happen to suspect. Decades of experience from other high profile (including serial) cases should have told us that the exact opposite is more often the case. If the Green River Task Force in the 1980s couldn’t prove their suspect’s guilt despite having found the correct man, I don’t see how or why we should expect any better of their investigative counterparts 100 years previously.

“Then we have to believe that for the Kelly murder (unlike the previous ones) the Ripper changes his MO, by becoming a stalker”

But I thought I disabused you of this piece of ignorance only recently by pointing out that a) we have no idea of the extent of “stalking” that went on at earlier ripper-attributed murders, and b) we have examples of serial killers who starting off inveigling victims under false guises but who then “upgraded” to stalking them outside their homes before breaking in. Here's what I said about that: Take Ted Bundy, for example. He was formerly in the habit of approaching his victims under a false guise, just as Jack the Ripper had done with his earlier victims. When it came to the Tallahassee murders, however, he monitored his indoor crime scene from a discreet vantage point and before attacking his victims as they slept. If Bundy was capable of moving from outdoors inwards, and from changing from his pre-crime strategy from phoney inveigling to “intruding” on premises he had kept under surveillance, it is only reasonable to make the same allowances for alteration on the ripper’s part.

Robert Napper is another example. In Rachel Nickel’s case the attack was a surprise one perpetrated outdoors, and in Samantha Bissett’s it involved pre-crime stalking and peeping Tommery outside the victim’s home.

The very evidence of an individual observed standing outside what would later become a crime scene an hour or so thereafter, apparently “watching and waiting” for someone, may be considered an indication in favour of the suggestion that the killer may have used “Lurking and surveillance” at the Kelly murder at least, and would certainly be considered so to a modern investigative force with more experience of serial killers than their 1888 counterparts. It would be recklessly irresponsible even for the contemporary police force to have dismissed the possibility of surveillance in Kelly’s case purely on the assumption that a similar thing had nit happened at earlier murders (which it so obviously could have).

[Lechmere]

What I expected - never mind

[Roy Corduroy]

It is clear from Abberline's comments in the same article that he considered Lawende a viable witness. I'm thinking specifically of his suggested comparison between Severin Klosowski and and a suspect seen wearing a "P&O" cap - an obvious reference to Lawende's description of a man in a cap with a "sailor-like" peak.

From 1908. someone recently asked what P & O stands for - the Peninsular and Oriental line.

Permission to carry on granted Roy

[Sally]

Ben..

Thanks for that information, Sally.

Much appreciated.

Best regards,
Ben

You're Welcome Ben. Conjecture is great fun, but I think where evidence exists, we may as well use it, eh?

Best.

Sally

[Sally]

Lechmere

Despite Sally’s post quoting from Mayhew about an establishment some 37 years before the period we are discussing, or Ben’s lodging house found in ‘People of the Abyss’ from fourteen years later, we do not know how they regulated or registered casual or longer term lodgers. Victoria Home may or may not have operated a similar system to Sally and Ben’s examples. From the brief description in ‘People of the Abyss’, and the even briefer Mayhew quotation, we cannot even really say how they used the discs or whether they were individually numbered.

Oh I think we have a pretty good idea how these places operated Lechmere - it appears to be you who needs to catch up.

Now then, my using Mayhew, and come to that, Ben citing London; is perfectly valid in terms of evidence for lodging house tickets. Its known as evidence - its what historians use. You should try it sometime.

The Fact that metal tickets were in use in 1850, and were still in use by 1902 supports the idea that metal tickets were in use throughout that period far better than it supports the idea that two random lodging houses in the same locale (there are reasons to think that Mayhew's lodging house was on Dorset Street, or very close to it - that's from my research, incidentally, so don't bother Googling it - you won't find it) were using metal tickets some 50 years apart. Always adopt the most logical conclusion, it's the best way.

The use of metal tickets is entirely logical, for reasons already stated above. How else do you think the proprietors of common lodging houses a} knew who they had let beds to; or b) knew how many beds they had let? Numbering the tickets was probably a later innovation (perhaps not by the 1850's - but perhaps by the late 1880's)

By the 1920's, a different system appears to have been in place whereby paper tickets were issued. However, the lodging house system had become a good deal more organised and networked by then; and the issuing of paper tickets reflects the operating system of the time. As this is not a thread about lodging houses, I won't go into detail about the operating systems of lodging houses at this time. If you wish to discuss the common lodging house, and how you are still woefully misunderstanding the phenomenom; start a thread for it.

If you wish to discuss exactly why Hutchinson could very easily have lived in a lodging house and still have been a murderer - yes, even the beacon of goodness that was the Victoria Home, then the same applies.

Now, if that's all? This is a thread to discuss Fisherman's theory of a missed day; and whilst threads do take new directions, I think you are the one leading this thread astray - apparently in the interests of scoring points. As a result, this thread seems to have become a Hutchinson free-for-all. Personally, I think that's a bit disrespectful to Fisherman.

Best regards, Lechmere.

[Sally]

Weather

For anybody interested, the weather conditions in Whitechapel on the nights of the murders are actually here on Casebook:

http://http://www.casebook.org/victo...n/weather.html

[Sally]

One more thing..

Before we move on, this from London:

While 300,000 people of London live in one-room tenements, and 900,000 are illegally and viciously housed, 38,000 more are registered as living in common lodging-houses--known in the vernacular as `doss-houses.' There are many kinds of doss-houses, but in one thing they are all alike, from the filthy little ones to the monster big ones paying five per cent and blatantly lauded by smug middle-class men who know nothing about them, and that one thing is their uninhabitableness

The People of the Abyss (1903) (my emphasis)

In 1894, the year that supervision of the common lodging houses was transferred to the London City Council, there were 654 registered common lodging houses in London with 30,115 licenced beds. The figures do not include the Rowton Houses, Salvation Army Hostels, or casual wards. London did include Rowton Houses in his account, which accounts for most of the difference. It is unlikely that the figures had altered appreciably between 1894 and 1902. The lodging houses operated under a set of guidelines which had changed very little since 1851. Amongst these were the guidelines for cubic space per lodger, which was 250ft (cubic feet).

Lodging houses, all of them, took the maximum number of lodgers that they could. This includes establishments such as the Victoria Home, even though they were amongst the better of the lodging houses. I don't think we can begin to imagine how lodgers in common lodging houses - even the better ones - lived. We have toilets that are bigger, and certainly cleaner, than the space in which they were forced to live.

Ultimately the difference between an establishment such as the Victoria Home and other less salubrious lodging houses was that the Victoria Home at least attempted to abide by rules which, in fact, were already set out by the supervising authority (which had the right to do this under law - 1851).

Let's not lose sight of reality. Lodging houses were the refuge of the desperate poor. Nothing grander than that.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"As long as you’re not still suggesting that he did this immediately after hours of walking from Romford, and then more hours aimlessly walking about the district, Fisherman. In which case you’re suggestion is still very implausible, if not disastrously so."

There you go again, Ben, trying to establish that any suggestion that Hutchinson may have stopped by in the morning at the Victoria Home to pick something up, and then moved on, is "disastrous". Can we please refrain from all these efforts aimed at closing doors that MUST be left open?

"I’m not talking about what happened on the way TO Romford. I’m talking about his alleged walk all the way back from Romford in the small hours of the morning"

You should talk of both, Ben. For if he spent energy walking there, then that would affect what reserves he had for the return journey. It is all intertwined, and it all needs to be considered. And if he spent very little effort on his way down, he may have taken the return trip quite easily.

"This is the big no-no "

No. Your effort to establish it, though, THAT is the big no-no.

"The weather conditions are largely irrelevant."

They are nothing of the sort. If it did rain, was cold and a very strong wind prevailed, then that would empty his batteries very much more. In such a case, a lot of the energy would be used up for warming purposes only. The difference can be enormous. Try walking five kilometres on a pleasant summer evening, wearing a summer suit. Then use the same suit for walking the same stretch in the Antarctic at -50 degrees Celsius and a strong wind. You will be dead withing a kilometre or two, since all your energy was spent trying to keep warm - and it would not take long.
An extreme example, yes - but a point that must be made when you state that the weather conditions are "irrelevant"!

"If you’ve walked 14 miles in the small hours of a November morning, the chances of you doing yet more walking on top of that for the remainder of the night are to be considered very slim indeed, especially if his intention was to walk out of the district immediately after retrieving some belongings."

But what were the options, if the weather was too cold to keep still? If he had to warm himself, what was he to do? I think walking was the one option he had at hand, if this was the case. But I would be happy to listen to any other suggestion.

"as per your previous claim"

??? I made a CLAIM? I could have sworn that was a suggestion, and I also seem to remember that I pointed out that there would have been an unknown host of possibilities that may also have applied. But now it would seem that I actually claimed that this was what he must have done. I find that strange.

"Before concluding that fabrication was, ultimately, a more likely explanation."

Yes, but that was not the point, was it? The point was that Tom had not pondered the suggestion I made earlier.

"Yes, that is precisely what happened, for proof of which please revisit the “Van der Hutchinson” thread where I first mentioned Dew’s memoirs and the “different day” hypothesis to those who frequent the Hutchinson threads – a mention you claim not to have been influenced by, despite writing an article about it very shortly thereafter. I had seen it before, of course, and yes, I did disregard it for the reasons you’ve mentioned."

I keep forgetting that you lay behind my article, Ben. Sorry about that! Anyways, I think that you may need to consider one point here: If, as you say, you did go through this material, and decided that there was nothing at all to it, and that Dew´s suggestion was ridiculous from the outset - why is it that other posters thought that it all fit together suddenly when THEY heard the suggestion? Like Lynn Cates, for example. Why did Tom Wescott think it such a useful theory?
Could it be that they read it from another angle than the one you used? Could there be some sort of bias involved here, on behalf of some of the parties involved?
I think that is a very interesting question. And I am in no way certain that you would be the best choice when looking for an answer to it.

"While you’re at it, do you know of any renowned lying researchers in order that I might demonstrate to the satisfaction of sceptics that sometimes people tell lies?"

Yes I do. Maria Hartwig is a top authority on those matters over here. Google her name and you will see that her line of work is finding out the mechanisms behind lying witnesses - what they do, how they do it and how to detect it. I think it would make for very interesting reading if you were to contact her and see what you can make of Hutchinson. Her e-mail address is readily available on the net, and if you are interested, I can forward it to you.
But that was not the point here. The point here was that I would like you to have your say before I speak to the expert I have contacted. Would you like me to go about things in a certain way when speaking to him? Is there something I should avoid, to your mind? Or is it okay if I just tell him roughly what we know about Hutchinson, and then ask him if the Lord Mayor´s show and the trek to Romford would have meant something to the possibility that Hutchinson got the day wrong? it has been suggested that these very factors make it vastly improbable that he mistook the day.
I am quite anxious that whatever my contact says is taken aboard in a sensible manner and accepted as the verdict of an expert in memory science. And I will of course supply the name and credentials attaching to my contact as I post what he had to say!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Sally:

"Personally, I think that's a bit disrespectful to Fisherman."

Not at all, Sally. I am much more annoyed by statements like for example Bens "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." Making that suggestion equals saying that it would be impossible for two different men to stand outside a lodging house at the same time on two consecutive nights. Not improbable - which it in no way is - but actually impossible.
Could never have happened, so we can effectively nullify any idea that Hutchinson did not hear about the inquest before he went to the police.
This, therefore, is now established as a fact.
And that is useful to know, since we will now move on to the real issue here, the issue of establishing whether Hutchinson was a liar.
Well, we KNOW for certain that he was not truthful as he approached the police, since he did not tell them that he actually came forward only as the result of having heard about Lewis´testimony, blah, blah blah ...

And from there, the snowball keeps rolling, picking up one "certainty" after another as it grows bigger and bigger on it´s downway path.

Such things, Sally, make me a lot more annoyed than the quite viable suggestion that the Victoria Home may have been run in a different manner than ordinary lodging houses, and that this in it´s turn may have affected details very much involved in the question about whether Hutchinson was one day off or not. You exemplify that other lodging houses used the plate system at that is all good and well - such a thing is of very much relevance and should be regarded in the discussion. But when you move on to say that the evidence tells us that this would have been the case for the Victoria Home too, I do not think that it is enough to close that door. There ARE implications that the Victoria Home differed in many aspects, and therefore it may have differed in this aspect too.
So even if you are trying to keep me happy by steering the discussion in any certain direction, I think you may need to live with the risk that we make different calls in that respect.

Carry on!

The best,
Fisherman

[Sally]

Fisherman

Hi Fish

It isn't my job to keep people happy - you should know that by now!

I can demonstrate how the Victoria Home differed, and did not differ from other lodging houses. I am confident that I have enough evidence. However, since this requires posting of dense, albeit interesting material; I still feel that this thread is not the place for it.

My suggestion still stands - if any should wish to discuss further - then we can start a new thread for discussion. I am not going to derail this thread any further with interminable lodging house information.

I look forward to hearing what your memory expert has to say, in the meantime.

Best regards

Sally