Innocent, By George!

[Malcolm X]

Ho Ho Ho
I haven't had the time or opportunity to tidy up the few loose ends that's all.
I think Toppy was a bit of a chancer - not Mr Prim and Proper, which fits with him being an unreliable witness on the make which is what I think Hutchinson was.

oh you're off again, see what i mean ...... yea' you're half way towards discovering who JTR is, keep going please

unfortunately i dont think Toppy was like this, or his family would have been far more suspicious of him back then; than we are all these years later, because if you have a relative like this, it's likely that you might mention this to others; especially if he's been cruel to you or to others that you love....any stranger who digs deep enough will be able to find this out, Hell; i'd tell you straight away about a relative like this if you asked me !

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

yes because he stopped as soon as i thanked him for the information, he was actually trying to prove that he was innocent, but making him look guilty instead ``keep going and you've caught JTR ``..... but he suddenly stopped, BEN and i laughed our bollocks off

Oh. That's the end of my fantasies then.

I think that Lechmere found out lots of extremely interesting things about Toppy, but since he couldn't make a crucial links which would place Toppy in
the Victoria Home or indeed place Toppy in any concrete way in the shoes of the witness, he still failed to prove that these two men were one and the same. Until he can, then I will remain fascinated by his interesting research -but sceptic as to his personal conclusions ; They remain unproved and only his opinion, and I will continue to associate him with The Missing Link.

[Malcolm X]

[QUOTE=Rubyretro;203129]

[/B]
Oh. That's the end of my fantasies then.

I think that Lechmere found out lots of extremely interesting things about Toppy, but since he couldn't make a crucial links which would place Toppy in
the Victoria Home or indeed place Toppy in any concrete way in the shoes of the witness, he still failed to prove that these two men were one and the same. Until he can, then I will remain fascinated by his interesting research -but sceptic as to his personal conclusions ; They remain unproved and only his opinion, and I will continue to associate him with The Missing Link.

yes Lechmere has found loads of great stuff, i'm only joking with him, unfortunately not being able to directly link Toppy to MJK, is a problem we all have, because it's very easy to pretend you are directly linked, especially if you wait years later before you say so, or someone else sais so... because by then everyone that once knew the truth, is either dead or too old to contradict you.

[caz]

Ain't it the truth?

Hi All,

Looking forward to seeing if Melvyn Fairclough can be contacted and persuaded to comment. I met him back in 2001 at the Bournemouth ripper conference and found him to be a very pleasant chap, around my age I think, and relatively (in the field of ripper folk) normal.

I hope that means he will be willing and able to shed some much needed light on this subject.

I would find it natural enough for a 'star' witness, as GH was initially but all too briefly considered to be, to want to hand down his story through the family, so his role in this infamous case would not be entirely forgotten. That gives the basic Toppy story a ring of truth to my mind, despite the various problems with the finer details. Just like the police memoirs, we can doubt that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told by any of 'em, but it doesn't mean the individuals concerned did not have genuine parts to play at the time.

But the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then deciding to hoodwink his family with unnecessary tales of his experience as a mere witness in the case just doesn't ring true somehow. So I can certainly appreciate why some Hutch-as-ripper fanciers cannot entertain the idea of him emerging again later as Toppy. It wouldn't be cricket, would it?

Love,

Caz
X

[Malcolm X]

these last 3 murders look linked via Dutfields, they're a group of three and the best and by far the strongest suspect is GH, but he's also a million miles off too..so there you go !!!!

[Malcolm X]

Hi All,

.
But the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then deciding to hoodwink his family with unnecessary tales of his experience as a mere witness in the case just doesn't ring true somehow.

Love,

Caz
X

this doesn't apply to me then ( well, not all of it lol) , because i've always said that GH is someone else....

but if anyone wants to blame Toppy instead, then it's fine by me too, just dont go saying that he's 6ft 7'' tall

JTR going to the police, well yes it is crazy for sure, but a few killers have indeed done this..... inserted themselves

[Abby Normal]

Hi All,

Looking forward to seeing if Melvyn Fairclough can be contacted and persuaded to comment. I met him back in 2001 at the Bournemouth ripper conference and found him to be a very pleasant chap, around my age I think, and relatively (in the field of ripper folk) normal.

I hope that means he will be willing and able to shed some much needed light on this subject.

I would find it natural enough for a 'star' witness, as GH was initially but all too briefly considered to be, to want to hand down his story through the family, so his role in this infamous case would not be entirely forgotten. That gives the basic Toppy story a ring of truth to my mind, despite the various problems with the finer details. Just like the police memoirs, we can doubt that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told by any of 'em, but it doesn't mean the individuals concerned did not have genuine parts to play at the time.

But the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then deciding to hoodwink his family with unnecessary tales of his experience as a mere witness in the case just doesn't ring true somehow. So I can certainly appreciate why some Hutch-as-ripper fanciers cannot entertain the idea of him emerging again later as Toppy. It wouldn't be cricket, would it?

Love,

Caz
X

Its a sticky wicket, to be sure

[The Good Michael]

I would find it natural enough for a 'star' witness, as GH was initially but all too briefly considered to be, to want to hand down his story through the family, so his role in this infamous case would not be entirely forgotten. That gives the basic Toppy story a ring of truth to my mind, despite the various problems with the finer details. Just like the police memoirs, we can doubt that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told by any of 'em, but it doesn't mean the individuals concerned did not have genuine parts to play at the time.

But the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then deciding to hoodwink his family with unnecessary tales of his experience as a mere witness in the case just doesn't ring true somehow. So I can certainly appreciate why some Hutch-as-ripper fanciers cannot entertain the idea of him emerging again later as Toppy. It wouldn't be cricket, would it?

Caz,


Re: the last part, it's the baby with the bathwater, isn't it? The logic of what you stated in the first part is summarily dismissed because Hutch has already been convicted in a few minds. That is why I don't argue with them anymore. They are no longer capable of seeing things as a big picture and instead, object to every component of a really reasonable, and absolutely more valid argument, because it doesn't fit in with their condemnation based on gut feeling.

Mike

[Lechmere]

“BEN and i laughed our bollocks off”
That’ll be one each – the others being firmly embedded in the Albert Hall.

I didn’t for a minute expect to find a record directly linking Toppy to the Victoria Home or to conclusively prove that he was one and the same with Kelly’s Hutchinson.
However a lot of false conclusions and assertions had previously been made about what Toppy was or wasn’t likely to have done.
I believe that the investigation carried out so far demolished numerous objections to his candidature, most of which had been proffered by the Hutchinsonites.
Off the top of my head…

For example we know that he lived in humble locations – lodging houses and the very worst streets in London.
We know that he almost certainly moved away from home in late 1887, probably after falling out with his father.
We know that he had Topping relatives in the East End at this time and that his family maintained links with the Toppings.
We know that he must have gravitated towards the East End as he married an East End girl and eventually settled there.
We know that his father and uncle who were plumbers did not take up that trade immediately.

It had been claimed that he was semi-middle class, a violinist scholar who wouldn’t have been seen dead in the Victoria Home. Actually the Victoria Home is just the sort of place he would have ended up temporarily.

If this subject were to be turned on its head and it became ‘Hutchinsonology’ – then by far the best suspect for being Hutchinson would be Toppy – indeed I would hazard a guess that it would be pretty much universally recognised as being ‘case solved’.

"… the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then being apprehended by the police in the street as mad, giving a false name and straight away being discovered as Kelly’s long-lost-but-there-all-the-time ex beastly beau now that is really something that just doesn't ring true somehow."

Anyway, one mystery has been solved – Caz is in her Sixties!

[Rubyretro]

For example we know that he lived in humble locations – lodging houses and the very worst streets in London.
We know that he almost certainly moved away from home in late 1887, probably after falling out with his father.
We know that he had Topping relatives in the East End at this time and that his family maintained links with the Toppings.
We know that he must have gravitated towards the East End as he married an East End girl and eventually settled there.
We know that his father and uncle who were plumbers did not take up that trade immediately.

Put like that, dear Lechmere, it sounds pretty convincing and I won't deny that.
However, without that missing link doubts persist :
Toppy's age, and your own description of him as a 'chancer', and the description of the witness with his military appearance
just don't gel somehow....I'm not saying that one has to exclude the other, but the two images don't fit together easily.

I know that you think that the newspaper portrait of the witness was generic
but all the other portraits of people in the case were pretty good likenesses
(I'm excluding Kelly for obvious reasons). The picture doesn't look generic at all; There is no reason to suspect that it is, since reporters had good access to Hutchinson, and they probably went to interviews with a sketcher, as they would with a photographer today. That picture simply doesn't look like the photo of Toppy (which is obviously genuine), nor does it look like a man of just 22 (I think Toppy's birthday was not long before the Kelly murder), it does look like a groom though..

The groom story is very important. Hutchinson the witness chose to give it as his real occupation, and as you have always maintained, I'm sure that he was checked out on those things that could be checked. So I think that we can take it that he was a groom. Despite you trying to sweep this important
detail aside by imagining that this might be 'casual work' that he had done (in which case why not give his trade as 'labourer', which was more current ?), I know by reading a good deal about the lives of Victorian grooms (the grooms of market traders, the grooms of posh families, and the grooms on stud farms)
that it was a proper job description -which is why Hutchinson gave it. Yet, there is not one jot of evidence to suggest that Toppy had ever been a groom -not even one hint.

Even Reg's 'family tradition' story smells as high as your socks probably do !
[QUOTE]

It had been claimed that he was semi-middle class, a violinist scholar who wouldn’t have been seen dead in the Victoria Home. Actually the Victoria Home is just the sort of place he would have ended up temporarily

.[/QUOTE

I will go in your sense and capitulate to the fact that it was 'the sort of place'
-but there must have been many such 'sorts of places' in London - the question is whether Toppy lodged in this particular place, and there is no proof at all that he did.

If this subject were to be turned on its head and it became ‘Hutchinsonology’ – then by far the best suspect for being Hutchinson would be Toppy

But only because we don't know so much about other Hutchinsons, and because of Reg's story. So best suspect for Hutchinson for want of anything better. However, the list of people involved in the case using aliases is endless, and it might very well be that the witness was also using an alias
(totally explicable if he'd been a soldier), in which case his name wasn't even George Hutchinson.

[I]"… the idea of MJK's killer getting away with murder, getting away with putting himself under the spotlight, taking early retirement from such violent crime, and then being apprehended by the police in the street as mad, giving a false name and straight away being discovered as Kelly’s long-lost-but-there-all-the-time ex beastly beau now that is really something that just doesn't ring true somehow."

It certainly doesn't ring true if you tack on the Fleming bit, no. For the rest -
MJK's killer did get away with her murder, serial killers do put themselves in the spotlight, and JTR did stop at some point (for what reason we don't know).

Anyway, one mystery has been solved – Caz is in her Sixties!

I'm sure that Caz is much younger than that, and looks even younger.
I did not say that the 'Mysterious Britain' Fairclough was definitely the right one, but the name is rare and there aren't many of them in the UK (I found a couple of others). Given the man's interests, the 'Mysterious Britain' one fits the bill pretty well. I think that Caz says that she met the man once in 2001.
The writer of MB refers to a time '50 years before' when he was at school, and I assumed that he mean't between the ages of 10-18...if he were younger he might be in his 50s. Anyway, you can have a conversation online with him at MB, and whilst I won't ruin Greg's pitch, I'll ask him directly if he wrote the Ripper book, and report back if I get an answer.

[Rubyretro]

ps Lechmere...there is an expression " a miss is as good as a mile". Even if you get within a whisker, you've still 'missed' (in proving Toppy is Hutch)
unless you get a concrete fact that proves that they were one and the same.

I don't bet, but if I did then I'd have a terribly hard descision to make (I admit). But if I was forced to lay cash on it, then I'd have to plump for Toppy and Hutch were not the same person (for the reasons given in my previous post).

x

[Lechmere]

Frau Retro
A sharp young man could present a military appearance I would say – he could be spruce and erect.
As for the sketch image – firstly we don’t know for sure it’s even meant to be him.
Secondly the nature of how sketches were done and engraved suggests it was not done from life.

I can’t remember where the picture appeared (anyone?) but for example The Illustrated Police News didn’t have reporters as such, they culled reports from other newspapers and rewrote them. They sent illustrators to major events (eg inquests) but did not send them out with reporters... as they didn’t have reporters. That is essentially how the illustrated magazines worked.
In other words as the picture was in an illustrated magazine the journalist would not have been accompanied by an illustrator to the interview.
The overall image that the picture appears within is quite complex but the way they were composed is that they were divided into squares. The primary illustrator did the main image and his assistants did the rest.
It is fairly clear to me that the man in the background was almost added as scenery and would have been done by one of the juniors.
Note - the man in the background cannot be described as being of military appearance either.

I don’t believe for a second that the journalists who interviewed Hutchinson turned up with an illustrator. However Hutchinson wouldn’t have known that – and if he was going under a false name (eg and was actually Fleming, if we give leg room to that worn out theory) that would have posed a real danger. The life illustrations were usually rather good.

But then if Hutch was JtR it was reckless indeed to follow up his insertion in the police investigation (forced by Lewis’s sighting and testimony we are led to believe by the adherents of that theory) by gratuitously following it up with a press interview. And by the way not just inserting himself but making himself a start witness for a while and walking the streets with coppers in tow. But then we know all this already.

I didn’t know you had a fixed mental image of what a late 19th century urban-groom-currently-working-as-a-labourer-but-not-in-regular-employment actually looked like. But I don’t think that image fits the bill very well.

You are right to point out that there is no evidence that Toppy was a groom – but as I have said it isn’t the most skilled of professions – and he was not working as a groom which suggests he was not the most skilled of professional grooms. Maybe he was simply embarrassed to say he was just a casual labourer and talked up his previous employment opportunities. I don’t think it is a big deal myself.

There weren’t that many Victoria Home sorts of places in London actually. The reason we have several contemporary sources is precisely because it was slightly unusual – it was cheap and basic but run in a strict and orderly manner. It is the sort of place a member of the respectable working class might end up when temporarily down on his luck. Of course there is no proof he stayed there – that sort of proof would be exceptionally unlikely to turn up.

There are no other George Hutchinsons who come even remotely close to filling Kelly’s Hutchinson’s shoes.
It could be an alias....
But we have someone who’s life story as we can reconstruct it, dovetails quite neatly – to expect it to tally in every little detail with the scant records we have of Kelly’s Hutchinson is utterly unrealistic. We have a family tradition, we have some corroboration from the press (e.g. Wheeling Register) and we have the signatures which while arguable, are clearly similar at the very least.

Given the burden of proof you are expecting, few people would ever be convicted of a crime.
Try beyond reasonable doubt.

I reproduce the illustrated page here with due regard to whoever found it (I can't remember I am afraid - possibly Gary?)

[Malcolm X]

yes, it definitely looks as if Toppy is around and about in this area, but then again he would have to be...... if years later he was going to say that he was this very same GH.

BUT, if i remember rightly, from his original statement there are quite a few crossed out words, where he got the pub and the street names wrong, these were corrected by the police................... I THINK, if so then GH is not a local or it looks highly suspicious.

unfortunately, i havent seen this statement for years, and it would need to be the original too.

sorry no, i've just seen the original he's got the pub name wrong only, the rest looks ok.

there are a lot of images on the web just like that, simply Google it

[GregBaron]

Starsky or Hutch?

1. Richard's radio programme. Hopefully, I will have an answer soon. How? BBC "genome project"--this is a digitised listing of all the "Radio Times" programmes. Due out this year.

This is excellent news Lynn. Please keep us posted.

Looking forward to seeing if Melvyn Fairclough can be contacted and persuaded to comment. I met him back in 2001 at the Bournemouth ripper conference and found him to be a very pleasant chap, around my age I think, and relatively (in the field of ripper folk) normal.

Thanks for this Caz. Perhaps a "normal" chap will answer a few simple questions? We'll hold our breath...

I did not say that the 'Mysterious Britain' Fairclough was definitely the right one, but the name is rare and there aren't many of them in the UK (I found a couple of others). Given the man's interests, the 'Mysterious Britain' one fits the bill pretty well. I think that Caz says that she met the man once in 2001.
The writer of MB refers to a time '50 years before' when he was at school, and I assumed that he mean't between the ages of 10-18...if he were younger he might be in his 50s. Anyway, you can have a conversation online with him at MB, and whilst I won't ruin Greg's pitch, I'll ask him directly if he wrote the Ripper book, and report back if I get an answer.

Yes, please keep us informed if you find out anything from this site Ruby. So far I can't compel myself to go to the site myself...

Lechmere makes an interesting point about how illustrations, such as the one offered, are composed. I don't know if he is right but if he is then we can't put much credence on accuracy. With that said, it's hard to reconcile that chubby, uneven featured sketch with the lean, square jawed photo of our Hutch....



Greg

[Malcolm X]

let alone LA DE DA, he looks just like a gothic nightmare from something like the Rocky Horror Show.

do you think JTR looked like that !!!!!!!! carrying a parcel like that in his hand, dont all of you think that he's highly suspicious and MJK took him home, i doubt it. none of this is right is it, it looks like fiction ! that illustration needs taming right down because it's also based on what Sarah Lewis thinks she saw after the 10th nov as well, because JTR is also seen carrying a bag too..... no !

this looks like Tabloid bull, but it is very atmospheric so i quite like it

realising this stereotype, JTR would never have carried a black bag or a parcel, no way..... INSTEAD this is someone else Mimicing JTR before and after MJK died, that both GH and Lewis have decided to describe; simply because it is likely to be believed by other mugs as well.

these Mugs are still around today, because even G.Chapman wouldn't be stupid enough to dress like this.... just use your brains please!