Why did Abberline believe Hutch ?

[DVV]

I donīt think that the police excluded the possibility to find a maniac of foreing extraction among the lodgers in a doss-house, David.

Of course, as the investigation was stretched into a good many months, and since no madman surfaced to clinch the ideas of the police, sooner or later it was inevitable that other ideas would surface. But the impression that people like Lechmere had very little to fear is inescapable.

Bondīs description of a possible low-key culprit is certainly interesting and insightful to a very large extent, but Bond was a medico and not a policeman.

The best,
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

[harry]

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.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.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.

[Wickerman]

Hi Boris.
The laws required all the registered Common Lodging Houses to shut down to enable the Kitchens and common areas to be cleaned.

Somehow, I find it hard to imagine anyone who knows about the rules pertaining to the V.H. not being familiar with this line which explicitly tells us that other lodging-houses closed, when and why.

"There are establishments which comply with every requisition of the police, where the beds are made regularly at a certain hour, and the kitchen closed from two a.m. to four a.m., and where uncleanliness is not tolerated, but which, nevertheless, perpetuate the old system of the doss-house, with many of its most glaring evils."

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_telegraph/dt880921.html?printer=true

The Kitchen being the common meeting area where lodgers cook, eat, chat, play games, gamble, and generally communicate with each other.
This is the area that must be shut down for cleaning.

The rooms upstairs where lodgers sleep are cleaned during the day when the beds are empty (Mrs Tanner mentions Stride cleaning for her during the day).
The Kitchen & common meeting areas are cleaned over night.

[Wickerman]

Hi all,

there is an interesting piece of info in the transcript of the Eddowes inquest where the deputy of the Flower & Dean-street lodginghouse Frederick William Wilkinson was interviewed. During his second testimony, the following was mentioned by a juryman (taken from Sourcebook, p. 246):

"It was usual for the place to be open at 2 o'clock in the morning. They generally closed at 2:30 or 3."

To me, this seems like the Victoria Home was not the only lodginghouse that closed down for the night.

Maybe they all did (or at least pretended to do so) in light of laws that prohibited to keep a common lodginghouse open 24/7?

Best wishes,

Boris

Hi Boris.
The laws required all the registered Common Lodging Houses to shut down to enable the Kitchens and common areas to be cleaned.

Whether a lodging house could stay open to admit lodgers while being cleaned would all depend on the layout or floor plan.
They would not want lodgers walking through areas where they were trying to wash, mop & generally clean down.

The assumption that the V.H. was the only one to shut down is very wrong.

[Wickerman]

....
There were no other lodging houses in the district that closed early, and which denied entry even to those with money to pay, .....

If true, and I can't imagine for one minute you have exhausted all possibilities, you are now resigned to conclude Hutchinson was telling the truth.

All of a sudden, the great liar is now the great truther, because your theory NOW depends on him telling the truth!


Oh, how we like to change horses every time the wind changes...
Somehow, I find it hard to imagine Ben as the new defender of Hutchinson's veracity, but welcome aboard anyhow.

Badham recorded him as being "of" the Victoria Home, and it would have been an act of extraordinary incompetence of the part of police and press to have failed to record the name of Hutchinson's residence on the night of his alleged experience, if different form the Victoria Home.

Wrong!
Hutchinson never told Badham what happened after he left Dorset St. the subject never came up.

[Sam Flynn]

In reality "Carry on up the Carman" was a rather silly selection wasn't it?

You really should have chosen "Carry on Carman".

What about "Carry on, follow that goose"?

[Monty]

Go on then Monty.
(are you going to say the police were responsible for checking that lodging houses abided by their statutory requirements - if so that is a little different to the regular shake downs of the local lodging houses that we read about during this case).

(DVV - check again, I said 'character')

Nope.

Monty

[Lechmere]

Go on then Monty.
(are you going to say the police were responsible for checking that lodging houses abided by their statutory requirements - if so that is a little different to the regular shake downs of the local lodging houses that we read about during this case).

(DVV - check again, I said 'character')

[Monty]

"...he police tended to focus on sweeping the lodging houses, and we have ample records to back this up. As Abberline was effectively running the investigation on the ground, and as his experience of East End crime almost certainly would have led him to see the lodging houses as the resorts"

Actually, there is another reason for this.

Monty

[Scott Nelson]

...the vexed issue of the Victoria Home opening hours?

It's important to have Hutch there at the right time so he could read a free newspaper about the murder, firmly planting the notion in his head that he better contact the police giving his witness account.

[Fisherman]

"He and his colleagues" ? No...he and some others, at best. It's quite significant that he was replaced by Moore, who held completely different views (ie : the killer was to be found in the VH, or some other large dossing house).
Cheers

I donīt think that the police excluded the possibility to find a maniac of foreing extraction among the lodgers in a doss-house, David.

Of course, as the investigation was stretched into a good many months, and since no madman surfaced to clinch the ideas of the police, sooner or later it was inevitable that other ideas would surface. But the impression that people like Lechmere had very little to fear is inescapable.

Bondīs description of a possible low-key culprit is certainly interesting and insightful to a very large extent, but Bond was a medico and not a policeman.

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

It's not a word. Shoot again.

[Lechmere]

The only word that matters is this sentence is "relatively".

The only character that is worth recording in this sentence is ".".

[DVV]

Piggott was a relatively normal man in some respects but he drew attention to himself by his behaviour.

The only word that matters is this sentence is "relatively".

[DVV]

I agree that Abberline - or the police on the whole - were disinterested in local nobodys. At least so longs as they were British and had steady jobs.

I donīt think that Abberline was dreaming of any well-dressed men as suspects. I am much more inclined to think that he and his colleagues sought after a maniac, preferably a foreign one.

... and nobody could know all people in a transient crowd of thousands and thousands.

Fisherman

Of course, nobody could know all people, but you know human nature. Abberline failed to catch any petty criminal that he was supposed to know so well as Jack the Ripper. So Jack had to be something else.

"He and his colleagues" ? No...he and some others, at best. It's quite significant that he was replaced by Moore, who held completely different views (ie : the killer was to be found in the VH, or some other large dossing house). Same is true with Bond : somebody called him, and I bet he wasn't Abberline's best friend.

Cheers