Why did Abberline believe Hutch ?

[Wickerman]

...To begin with, East End doss houses were not referred to as low lodgings without reason. Many first-hand accounts describe filthy kitchens and unwashed bedding, thus dispelling the notion of a scrupulous cleaning regimen commencing at two in the morning as per ‘regulations’.

Have you taken note of whether you are reading about Registered, or Unregistered Lodging-houses?

That aside, this is not an issue of enumerating personal complaints, what offends any given person is not what we are discussing.

This concerns The Lodging-House Act 1851, and section 343 of the Public Health Act of 1875.
H Division had their own Lodging-house inspector. The 127 Registered lodging-Houses were inspected on average once a week (Reynolds News, 14 Oct. 1888). Other accounts quote deputies of these places complaining how picky the police were on their visits.

Were these lodging-houses in compliance with the codes or not?, that is the question, not how many complaints you can list. That is irrelevant.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

Believe me, it's time to chill out.

At the end of the day, your over-interpretation of an ill-written article doesn't stand scrutiny.

It's called, 'paying attention to detail'.

The article published by Central News is not 'ill-written', it is very clear. What has caused confusion among the Hutchinson theorists is the apparently intended omission of the names of public premises, which led them to assume the article referred to the same location.

[Wickerman]

Jon,
You are taking closed to mean one could not get in or out.

I can't believe I am reading this!
Didn't I just write:
"I don't think we are supposed to believe that no-one could get out. Just that after 12:30 am, no-one could get in, without the all important pass."

How on earth does that sound like a prison?

As Hutchinson's statement has it's beginning around Thrawl street,w e can rightly assume he had by then passed his usual place of lodging for that night,.....

It began for us when he passed the Whitechapel Church, Whitechapel High Street, which is before he passed the V.H.
Regardless, this matters little. We do not know at what time he arrived at his lodgings to find them closed.
We don't know if he arrived there before he met Kelly at 2:00am, or after he left Dorset St., at 3:00am

.....as the Victoria home is given, and not contradicted by Hutchinson when signing the statement,that is the lodging house in question.

The statement was not written on the night of the murder.
It was written three days later, three days later he was living at the V.H.
This debate centers on the question, "where was he living up until the night of the murder, three days previous.?"

....w hat is important is the address given when appearing at the police station that Monday evening,and if any place other than the Victoria home was mentioned,that would have been noted.

He can't live at two places at once!
The police record his present address, not his previous addresses, however many they may be.

As far as previous addresses are concerned, this was not Badham's duty. If this issue was important it falls to Abberline to gather this information at the interrogation.
What you are referring to is the voluntary statement where his place of residence on the night of the murder was not even mentioned by Hutchinson.

[DVV]

Hi Jon,

Believe me, it's time to chill out.

At the end of the day, your over-interpretation of an ill-written article doesn't stand scrutiny.

To begin with, its wording does not suggest Hutch had moved, since the article doesn't begin by : "We had the chance to meet today Mr Hutchinson at the Victoria Home..."

And to put an end to it, since the witness' statement is that of one "George Hutchinson of the Victoria Home", without any mention of any other lodging house on the mrder night, it simply and clearly means that the only lodging house worth to mention in relation with such an important witness was the Victoria Home.

Cheers

[DVV]

Perhaps so - but could a poor local nobody not be of foreign extraction and mad?
That is what I am asking.

The best,
Fisherman

Hi Fish,

Of course he could.
But in his interview, although Moore walked the French guy through the Jewish area, he didn't seem particularly hot on the Jewish scent, if I remember well.

Cheers

[Garry Wroe]

Who is this Garry that you now take orders from on the vexed issue of the Victoria Home opening hours?

The same Garry to whom you posted this little gem some time ago, Lechmere:-

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=6802&page=21

‘As for Coles I would have to say that there is a good chance that she was kiled by the same person and I would say it should be kept on the file. On balance I think Saddler probably did it - he was very much in the frame, which makes this one quite unlike the other murders. Also to be brutally honest the Coles murder doesn't fit to my mind with being committed by my favoured suspect and so I would have to strike it out for that reason!’

Enough said.

As for some of the lodging house-related nonsense that has begun to appear courtesy of the Victoria Home discussion, I would suggest that the pedlars of such undertake some basic research into the subject before presenting further misleading posts. To begin with, East End doss houses were not referred to as low lodgings without reason. Many first-hand accounts describe filthy kitchens and unwashed bedding, thus dispelling the notion of a scrupulous cleaning regimen commencing at two in the morning as per ‘regulations’. It was a common complaint, in fact, that lodgers were forced out of the doss house during the daytime, often into cold and wet conditions, for the purpose of facilitating cleaning that seldom took place. On top of this the lifestyles and working patterns of many lodgers meant that people came and went throughout the night. There are accounts of those who would routinely rise, take a meal or drink in the communal kitchen, then head out for the docks at three o’clock in the morning in the hope of securing casual work. This was the reality of life as part of the East End underclass. Thus the vast majority of East End doss houses placed no restrictions on the comings and goings of their patrons, which explains why Crossingham’s gaslamp was not extinguished until four o’clock in the morning. But then historical reality is meaningless to those who disregard it whenever it suits the purpose of their argument: the Coles murder doesn't fit to my mind with being committed by my favoured suspect and so I would have to strike it out for that reason.

[harry]

Jon,
You are taking closed to mean one could not get in or out.Not so.I doubt any lodging place the size of the Victoria home was so restricted.As Hutchinson's statement has it's beginning around Thrawl street,w e can rightly assume he had by then passed his usual place of lodging for that night,and as the Victoria home is given, and not contradicted by Hutchinson when signing the statement,that is the lodging house in question.By all means,if you can determine a better address,be free to do so.It isn't a case of HUtchinson having a need to state his usual place,more so the police needing it in case of further contact.They would have asked him.
No one is assuming anything about the various places Hutchinson may have resided,w hat is important is the address given when appearing at the police station that Monday evening,and if any place other than the Victoria home was mentioned,that would have been noted.

[Wickerman]

Lodging houses of the size of the Victoria home,would be nigh impossible to lock down.There would always be movement of individuals for various reasons.Pretty much the same as large hotels today.They are not prisons,nor are the residents prisoners.

I don't think we are supposed to believe that no-one could get out. Just that after 12:30 am, no-one could get in, without the all important pass.

The idea that we have been sold, and without question, is that the V.H. was the only lodging-house that did close.
All the other Common Lodging Houses across the East End were open 24/7.
Hutchinson is therefore a liar.

In actual fact, as shown in the associated press article, it was the opposite that was true.

It was all the other Common Lodging Houses which closed, between 2:00 - 4:00 am, as per requirements of the Lodging House Act of 1851. Between 2:00-4:00am is precisely when Hutchinson's story unfolded.

The V.H. did not close, entry was restricted yes, but it was still open.
Admittance by pre-purchased pass only.

Again,it is only Hutchinson's word,that he could not gain admittance,and to be fair to Aberline,it was a claim that was not easy to dismiss given the time interval.

Agreed, but there is also nothing to contest Hutchinson's word either.
In the voluntary statement to Badham, Hutchinson had no need to mention his "usual place" where he slept up until the night in question.
Only his current address is given.

That the sergeant and Aberline would have conferred at some length on what was told them,seems logical,and as seems likely they may have needed to contact Hutchinson again,an address was needed,and that address was given as the Victoria Home.

Right, so it is natural that anyone looking at this in later years would assume Hutchinson was always at the V.H.
That is where the error crept in.

To complicate matters, the subsequent press interview conducted by the Central News, when published, omitted the name of the place of the interview. They also omitted the name of the "public house", and likewise omitted the name of the place where "I usually sleep".
What ever their reason's were we do not know, but at least they show consistency. Unfortunately, it only exasperated the situation for modern theorists, and allowed the error to go unnoticed.
The sad thing is, as the theory was being created almost two decades ago, no-one ever spotted this.

It is by no means certain that the interview was conducted at the Victoria Home, but that is the most reasonable assumption.
So, when Hutchinson talks about speaking to a lodger "here", we can quite reasonably conclude that "here" is also the V.H.

Which then makes his next reference inconsistent.
In reply to a question he offers, "the place where I usual sleep was closed", which clearly implies another address entirely, away from the V.H., not "here", not "this place", therefore, not the V.H.

As the majority of Common Lodging Houses did close between 2:00 and 4:00 am, then his claim that "the place where I usually sleep was closed", is verified.
His claim no longer points to the V.H.

As a consequence, accusations of lying against Hutchinson based on the assumption his regular domicile was the V.H. and it being closed; also based on him not having a pass which, they suggest, he clearly should have had; and subsequently, that he must have been a regular resident of the area, so have known the names of the two pubs on his doorstep, all turn out to be spurious accusations.

[Fisherman]

Fish, who do you think he was expecting to find in such lodging houses of the East End where people were mere numbers ?
More significantly (in the current discussion), in that rather extensive interview, Moore said nothing about a possible Dr Jack.

So yes, he seemed to favour at that time a poor local nobody in 1889.

Cheers

Perhaps so - but could a poor local nobody not be of foreign extraction and mad?
That is what I am asking.

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

Fish, who do you think he was expecting to find in such lodging houses of the East End where people were mere numbers ?
More significantly (in the current discussion), in that rather extensive interview, Moore said nothing about a possible Dr Jack.

So yes, he seemed to favour at that time a poor local nobody in 1889.

Cheers

[Fisherman]

DVV:

No Fish, I'm referring to his long interview published in Le Gaulois in which he makes it clear that, in his opinion, the killer was lying low in a large common lodging house - "where people are just numbers".

And some of them foreign, mad numbers, I´d expect. Maybe Moore meant that a low-key person could hide out in a lodging-house, but I think it also applies that a less than sane person of a foreign extraction could do so.

Here´s the relevant part of that Gaulois article:

"The most extraordinary feature of these murders, according to Mr. Moore, is that the perpetrator leaves not the slightest trace of his presence and no explanation is forthcoming as to how he carries his grim burdens.
"We cannot," Mr. Moore told us, "get more than the slightest of information from the managers of these common lodging houses in front of which you are now standing; their residents are to them just numbers that they don't even want to know."
Some of these lodging houses accommodate up to 500 person per night, paying 8 pence (80 centimes) in advance. The first couple to arrive find themselves a quiet haven for the night. Anyway, it is in these lodging houses that Mr. Moore expects to find the elusive criminal.
"Nothing new?" he asks the managers who greet him.
"Nothing new," they reply and we leave.
"100 police constables went," he tells us, "for three months, searching night and day - especially at night - in the Whitechapel district and, to quote an English expression, we left no stone unturned. But, we must not forget, we are looking for a needle in a haystack."
At this point we left Mr. Moore, who suggested that we return in the evening. We thanked him for his offer but declined. We were shattered; we had walked for three hours and we had not covered three kilometres as the crow files."


So there is nothing much at all to reveal what type of person Moore would have liked to look for in the lodging-houses.
And earlier in the article, Moore acknowledges that the police used to have their mind set on a Jewish killer.
There is the odd fault built into the article also, like for example the George Yard murder being placed in Brick Lane, but overall it is a good and well informed article, I think.

Have you got more on Moore (excuse the pun!) that you think points to him holding a view that the killer was some sort of low-key man, perhaps hiding out in a lodging-house?

Some must have followed Phillips, some must have agreed with Bond (still in broad outline). The fact that Bond has been called as soon as another murder occurred (and that was quite a snub for the experienced police surgeon) indicates that his views must have been hotly debated since the double event.

Well, Bond was Andersons favoured man! And he did play a role in the torso investigations, so it would have been unavoidable that he was called in. And I think BOTH men´s views were debated; Phillips and the TOD in the Chapman case is something we should not forget.

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

Are you referring to the Moore piece where he claimed that Mary Kellys flesh had been hung on nails throughout the room in Miller´s Court? If so, I think that article has it´s flaws.

No Fish, I'm referring to his long interview published in Le Gaulois in which he makes it clear that, in his opinion, the killer was lying low in a large common lodging house - "where people are just numbers".

Personally, I don´t identify two markedly polar opposite clans amongst the police, least of all during the autumn of terror.

Some must have followed Phillips, some must have agreed with Bond (still in broad outline). The fact that Bond has been called as soon as another murder occurred (and that was quite a snub for the experienced police surgeon) indicates that his views must have been hotly debated since the double event.

Cheers

[Observer]

What about "Carry on, follow that goose"?

Haha. Moreover,whose goose is cooked as a Jack The Ripper suspect Sam?

[Observer]

Yeah, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

True Sally, very true.

[Fisherman]

I agree, Fish, except that we can't take the police as a whole in this respect.
In broad outline, I'd distinguish two clans : Abberline/Phillips on the one hand, Moore/Bond on the other.
And I interpret Moore's words in 1889 as a straightforward criticism of his predecessor.

Cheers

As I said, I have no doubt that different officials had different ideas about the killer - that is very apparent, is it not?
Are you referring to the Moore piece where he claimed that Mary Kellys flesh had been hung on nails throughout the room in Miller´s Court? If so, I think that article has it´s flaws.
Personally, I don´t identify two markedly polar opposite clans amongst the police, least of all during the autumn of terror. I note that you say "in broad outline", though.
Kosminski and Druitt bear witness, I think, to the fact that the police always bought into a little insanity ...

The best,
Fisherman