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Rubyretro, it’s virtually impossible for this George Hutchinson to be the witness who says he saw Kelly.
In 1888 this George Hutchinson was married to someone called Mary and had children. It is not very plausible that he managed to sneak out and stay at the Victoria Home.
It really doesn’t matter whether this George Hutchinson spent his entire time in Yorkshire learning the mysterious arts of grooming via his Uncle Benjamin. The marriage alone virtually destroys his candidacy.
Incidentally Benjamin Mallinson is listed as a Servant (Groom). This implies to me that the ‘groom’ bit was added as an afterthought. There were over 500,000 working horses in London in the mid Victorian period. You do not come across many grooms in any of the census returns. This tells me that many horse users – Carmen and the like – must have looked after their own horses. This in turn implies that a groom wasn’t a specialist job that required particular long term training.
With respect to grooming opportunities at The Coach and Horses, the Hutchinsons were in Shadwell only from about 1859 to 1865. George Hutchinson left the area when he was only six years old and I doubt he could have learnt much about grooming horses at this stage in his life.
This is actually the only connection this Hutchinson family had to the East End that I have been able to establish.
(I mistakenly gave the date 1875 instead of 1865 in post 10, but the birth of James Hutchinson in Islington in 1865 suggests that they had let Shadwell by then).
The Page family pub, The Coach and Horses may conceivably have had its origins as a coaching inn in the dim and distant past – perhaps in the mid 18th century when Shadwell was the residence of choice for many prosperous seafaring men.
The actual address was 199 Shadwell High Street – this was on the west corner of King David Lane
We have a plan of this property from the 1790s.
I have highlighted The Coach and Horses in red and The Crooked Billet in green.
It was more built up by the 1860s – particularly the eastern side of King David Lane. Going by this map, this property certainly wasn’t a coaching inn in the 1790s.
I have the 1894 Ordnance Survey map which shows that both buildings had the same footprint 100 years later, when the Pages were still running The Coach and Horses. You can also see Shadwell parish church on these maps.
We don’t know when the younger Page went to Islington. It could have been around 1865, at the same time that the Hutchinsons quit The Crooked Billet. However as Joseph Hutchinson went to stay with his nephew, there is no reason to suppose that the Pages facilitated the move.
There is still less reason to think that the Pages assisted the Hutchinsons moving to Shadwell in 1859. The Pages were originally from the Isle of Wight whereas the Hutchinsons were from Yorkshire via Islington.
I will however make a few more enquiries.
In 1888 this George Hutchinson was married to someone called Mary and had children. It is not very plausible that he managed to sneak out and stay at the Victoria Home.
It really doesn’t matter whether this George Hutchinson spent his entire time in Yorkshire learning the mysterious arts of grooming via his Uncle Benjamin. The marriage alone virtually destroys his candidacy.
Incidentally Benjamin Mallinson is listed as a Servant (Groom). This implies to me that the ‘groom’ bit was added as an afterthought. There were over 500,000 working horses in London in the mid Victorian period. You do not come across many grooms in any of the census returns. This tells me that many horse users – Carmen and the like – must have looked after their own horses. This in turn implies that a groom wasn’t a specialist job that required particular long term training.
With respect to grooming opportunities at The Coach and Horses, the Hutchinsons were in Shadwell only from about 1859 to 1865. George Hutchinson left the area when he was only six years old and I doubt he could have learnt much about grooming horses at this stage in his life.
This is actually the only connection this Hutchinson family had to the East End that I have been able to establish.
(I mistakenly gave the date 1875 instead of 1865 in post 10, but the birth of James Hutchinson in Islington in 1865 suggests that they had let Shadwell by then).
The Page family pub, The Coach and Horses may conceivably have had its origins as a coaching inn in the dim and distant past – perhaps in the mid 18th century when Shadwell was the residence of choice for many prosperous seafaring men.
The actual address was 199 Shadwell High Street – this was on the west corner of King David Lane
We have a plan of this property from the 1790s.
I have highlighted The Coach and Horses in red and The Crooked Billet in green.
It was more built up by the 1860s – particularly the eastern side of King David Lane. Going by this map, this property certainly wasn’t a coaching inn in the 1790s.
I have the 1894 Ordnance Survey map which shows that both buildings had the same footprint 100 years later, when the Pages were still running The Coach and Horses. You can also see Shadwell parish church on these maps.
We don’t know when the younger Page went to Islington. It could have been around 1865, at the same time that the Hutchinsons quit The Crooked Billet. However as Joseph Hutchinson went to stay with his nephew, there is no reason to suppose that the Pages facilitated the move.
There is still less reason to think that the Pages assisted the Hutchinsons moving to Shadwell in 1859. The Pages were originally from the Isle of Wight whereas the Hutchinsons were from Yorkshire via Islington.
I will however make a few more enquiries.
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