Why did Abberline believe Hutch ?

[DVV]

But Jon, your reply is... irrelevant.

Cheers

[Ben]

Hi Jon,

I’m back.

I was under so much “pressure” from you that I was forced to flee northwards for a whole week just to recuperate, but now I’ve girded my loins, and feel ready stare into the face of adversity once more and brave whatever scary new arguments you might have in store for me.

Now, where was I? Ah yes…

“All of a sudden, the great liar is now the great truther”

No.

In my opinion, Hutchinson invented the Romford ramble to legitimise his presence on the streets at that time, and lied about his mysterious failure to procure lodgings once he supposedly “arrived” there. We’re not discussing his possible motives for lying, however; we’re discussing the inconsistencies in his account which, in the minds of the reasonable, may indicate fabrication. If Hutchinson had no money - as he claimed he told Kelly - he had no possibility of securing lodgings for the remainder of the night, unless he was in possession of a daily/weekly pass for the Victoria Home or any establishment that operated a similar policy (I don’t know of any). This, of course, renders the closure of any home completely irrelevant, and yet he offered this explanation – the closure of the place where he “usually” slept – for his alleged homelessness that night, and not his lack of money. If anyone can suggest a plausible explanation for this beyond the obvious (i.e. that he lied about it), I’d be interested to hear it.

You suggest that Hutchinson had money, and simply concealed it from Kelly, but this explanation has problems of its own. Why, if he had money to pay for his doss, did he fail to gain entry to one of the many lodging houses that would have been open by the time he arrived, according to his account, back in Whitechapel? Who cares about the kitchens being cleaned for a couple of hours? That would only have been an impediment to him making himself a bacon sarnie. It would NOT have prevented him from gaining access to the bedrooms. The laws most assuredly did not require the entire building to close down for the kitchens to be cleaned, and lodgers could certainly gain access to the bedrooms during that short time. I defy you to provide a single source to the contrary.

You are also quite wrong to state that the kitchens were always used as “common rooms” for playing games etc. That certainly wasn’t the case in the Victoria Home, for instance, where the common room was on a different floor to the kitchen. But I'll come back to this point later.

Boris mentioned the case of Cooney’s, which would certainly have been open to paying customers when Hutchinson allegedly arrived back in the area, and for a long time afterwards.

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

There’s that bizarre contradiction again with your previous insistence that the police doggedly pursued all aspects of Hutchinson’s statement. You can’t make them hop back and forth between anally meticulous professionals and slap-dash numpties when it suits your argument. If the witness’s place of residence played an important part in his evidence, it would most certainly have been recorded by the police – as it was in all other cases where it did. If you wish to persist with the unpopular and forever-to-be-rejected notion that Hutchinson stayed somewhere other than the Victoria Home after his alleged walkabout (“all night”), you would need to accept that the police were neglectful in their duties. This would, of course, undermine your previous insistence that the police dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”.

Name me a single witness of note whose place of residence on the night of his/her eyewitness sighting went permanently unrecorded. You won’t find one, and yet your revisionist opinion insists that Hutchinson was the odd, odd exception.

Don’t keep repeating the same argument against the Victoria Home being Hutchinson’s “usual” sleeping place, because then I’ll have to counter-repeat the same counter-arguments against it. As we’ve discussed, the location of the press interview could have been anywhere in which two men who slept in the same lodging house - Hutchinson and his alleged confidante - could meet. This could be the lodging house itself, another lodging house, a pub in the neighbourhood – many places. We don’t know where the interview occurred, but it just had to meet that single basic criterion. How, then, have you narrowed down the numerous and viable options to the Victoria Home only?

You now suggest, very bizarrely, that Hutchinson left it until 3.00am to investigate whether or not his usual sleeping place was still open. This is silly on two levels – why didn’t he know when the place where he “usually” slept “usually” closed, and why did he waste crucial, precious time loitering on Dorset Street when other lodging houses may have been closing?

I notice you are still insisting, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever and in spite of experienced insight to the contrary from a policeman, that Hutchinson delivered his statement as a lengthy monologue, with some poor sod having to either write it down at furious speed as Hutchinson held court, or hastily invent a tape-recorder for the purpose (I do wish you’d just stop, once in a while, and consider these obvious and insurmountable impracticalities). Meanwhile, back on our planet, where information is (and was) extracted from witnesses through a question and answer session, Badham had an obvious opportunity to question Hutchinson about his residence on the night in question, and clearly would have extracted that information if that residence was somewhere other than the Victoria Home, which it clearly wasn’t.

You assume that Hutchinson's claim to have recorded the time from the clock of the St. Mary’s (and other additional press-only details) was something he intended to tell the police (if only the silly buggers had just asked?), as opposed to an embellishment he added later once he registered the fact that certain grey areas in his evidence might generate suspicion. You can’t accuse Badham (or Abberline for that matter) of failing to elicit these details from Hutchinson if he had no intention of divulging them, or perhaps hadn’t even thought to invent them at that stage. Badham was asking for information, whereas Abberline was questioning that extracted information. The reason Badham didn’t ask Hutchinson how he was able to gauge the time was because it wasn’t his look-out to look for holes in the story. His place of residence, however, was a basic piece of information a witness was obliged to provide (as all other witnesses were), and good old Badham dutifully recorded it.

It annoys me a lot that you specifically sought the guidance of a policeman with experience, and when he provided it, and it didn’t accord with your pre-decided conclusion, you just ignored it and insisted that this entirely non-expert conclusion of yours must be right. Your insistence that Badham didn’t ask Hutchinson any questions except for “clarification” is wrong, definitely and irrefutably wrong. His entire statement was recorded as a result of questions and answers.

No nonsense please about a mysterious mythical report on Hutchinson that has “now been lost” (terribly conveniently for your conclusions). Blitzed by Goering was it? The report on Hutchinson has survived – it was written by Abberline and it accompanied the statement. Any expectation that there must be a super-special mega-exciting extra report in addition to this is hopelessly unrealistic.

On the subject of other entrances and exists to the Victoria Home (and the likelihood is that they existed), it wasn’t necessary to have a doorman standing at each of these. The role of the deputy was to allow only ticket-holders to the upper floors, not to bar people entry to the building itself. There was no need to batten down the hatches to the extent you’re envisaging if a couple of burly bastards were stationed at the foot of the indoor staircase receiving metal tickets. A ticketless lodger coming in from Old Castle Street, for instance, would have faced precisely the same problem as a ticketless lodger entering from Commercial Street.

If you read Jack London’s account of his night at the Victoria Home, you’ll note that the main entrance involved heading down a flight of steps to the subterranean kitchen and “dining room”. In other words, you had to enter the building before you could even encounter the ticket-checking doorman. A “successful” entrant could then proceed past the doorman up the stairs to the smoking room or games room (at street level) and thence to the bedrooms on the floors above. Any other entrance to the building would obviously have led down to the same cellar rooms where the same doormen would have been checking tickets, thus dispensing of the need to station “bouncers” outside in the cold at each entrance to the building.

I’m afraid you’ve uncovered nothing new, and far from correcting a long-standing “error” (actually nothing of the sort), you have merely formulated a brand new, highly controversial theory that will never garner anything resembling popular support, or rather any support at all beyond that provided by one or two hobbyists who share your unique hostility towards “Hutchinsonians”. This is not a belittlement. I’m not saying you lack the ability to offer compelling new insight; it just hasn’t happened here, and nor will it – if you’ll forgive the pessimistic prediction – until you broaden your horizons beyond circular Hutchinson debates.

If you think Jack the ripper was a well-dressed, educated man with a funny walk and a black bag (and you clearly do), try to find a way of selling it without always having to rely on Hutchinson as a linchpin for that theory.

“The Hutchinsononian has struck an iceberg, all hands on deck, buckets at the ready!”

And the infidels will run burning and screaming from our holy lands; yes, that’s another hilarious Baghdad Bob impression from you, Jon, but I think I’ll stick to reality if you don’t mind.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

Hutchinson may well have been interrogated? Yes or Abberline may have been making it up to please his guvnor – that’s the kind of theorising I appreciate!

It isn't "theorizing" though, Lechmere.

It's an exploration of the available options in the interests of keeping an open mind. Hutchinson may well have been "interrogated", but on the other hand, he may simply have been "interviewed", with Abberline using a more important-sounding word when writing to his bosses in order to appear thorough - human nature being what it is. The only explanation we must laugh straight out of town is the one that asserts that detectives were loosey-goosey when questioning a witness who you want to have been the ripper, such as Cross, but suddenly warped into ultra-stringent "by-the-book" mode when it came to Hutchinson.

“The rules that state that a special pass was required…”

….Often get misconstrued by people who erroneously conclude that the “pass” referred to anything other than a metal ticket, which was issued to represent proof or purchase for daily or weekly doss. Yep, ‘fraid so. Your insistence that late-comers were turned away is obviously nonsense, and impractical nonsense at that. If that was the policy, they could have locked the doors at 12:30am and dispensed of the need to employ night deputies at all. You keep being led astray by the word “special”, and wrongly conclude that this meant the “passes” in question were personalized written or typed messages; forgetting, of course, that printed and photocopied material could not have been so easily and casually distributed in 1888. The reality was far simpler – you buy a bed ticket, you get given a chunk of metal, you present and surrender that chunk of metal when you want to go to bed. That was your evidence of prior purchase in the absence of printed receipts and PayPal.

There was probably more than one entrance/exit to the Victoria Home - bit silly to expect otherwise, as Harry astutely observes, considering how large the building was. Specifically, there appears to have been a rear entrance that opened directly onto Castle Court (sometimes called “Chess Court”), which fed into Old Castle Street, site of the McKenzie murder. There was a wall or fence halfway down the court, and this undoubtedly included a gate, or else that entire area between the fence and the Home was blocked off and wasted. It was probably from this location that the Victoria Home’s rubbish was collected.

There is no “vexed issue” over the Victoria Home opening hours. The issue is quite clear to those who have read and understood the source material properly.

Yes, the police investigated common lodging houses, and they were prudent to do so. Criminals frequented them, and the police were looking for a criminal. Unfortunately, the nature of these not-so-esteemed establishments was such that if the real killer was a resident of one of them, there was very little chance of him being detected there. They were largely vacated during the day, and most lodgers did not leave their possessions at home, especially not incriminating items. The police would have been looking for a needle in a filthy haystack, and this extended to the reportedly foul-smelling kitchens, where offal was cooked and consumed on a daily basis.

As David has already pointed out, Abberline was not himself swayed by the notion of the ripper as a lodging house dweller, in contrast to Reid who considered the Victoria Home a viable ripper’s lair. Unfortunately, it is apparent that Abberline’s only reason for dismissing “dosser” suspects was because he had made “friendly relations” with some of the “shady folk” who inhabit common lodging houses, and who had been eager to “assist the police”.

All the best,
Ben

[Wickerman]

Attempting a spot of Resurrection, are you Ben?

[Lechmere]

Ben

When is theorising not theorising?
When it's an exploration of the available options in the interests of keeping an open mind.
Open mind? Ben? Not together.

So now you are back to believing that the Victoria Home did not have a policy of excluding late night entrants. You think a weekly bed ticket was the same as a special late night entry pass, even though they are described in contemporary documents as being two separate entities.
I would like to see your guvnor – Garry – comment on that one.

What do you suppose the late night porters were for?
Try this one.
Making sure no one got in after the appointed hour if they did not have one of these special passes.

Yes there may have been other doors allowing access to the Victoria Home. But it is ludicrous to think they would have been left unlocked for all and sundry to breeze through at all hours of the day and night.

If we look at Hutchinson’s statement he says his usual lodgings were locked. If he had a weekly ticket he would not need to pay for his lodgings (or need money to pay for them) but in the absence if the quite separate and distinct special late night pass he would not have been allowed in even if he had paid for a weekly bed ticket in advance.
It is that simple.
The Victoria Home had a strict late night entry policy to exclude drunks.
You seem to think that they would have allowed these drunks to roam around the lower floors unchecked. Quite laughable.

[Ben]

Hi Lechmere,

When is theorising not theorising?

When it becomes an irrational certainty that your suspect was Jack the Ripper, and when it becomes necessary to shout down all the better-established and more popular suspects in order to pave the way for your candidate. I'm afraid that is what you're doing, and I'm afraid you're quite the wrong pot to accuse this kettle of being black when it comes to "open-mindedness".

even though they are described in contemporary documents as being two separate entities

No.

They weren't described anywhere "as being two separate entities", because they weren't. That would be silly and pointless. All that was required was for the lodgers to purchase their tickets before the cut-off point at 12:30, after which time it was only possible to gain access to the bedrooms if you were one of these pre-purchasers. 12:30 was when they stopped selling tickets, which took the form of metal chunks with no individual names of lodgers on them. That's how complicated it was.

Did I ever suggest that it was not possible to exclude drunks? No. I'm quite sure there were many incidents in which men stumbled in pissed as newts after 12:30 and in possession of a bed ticket, only to be turfed out on account of their behaviour. In your baffling scenario, in which a special important extra pass was required in addition to the proof-of-purchase bed ticket, what happens if the pass-holders were drunk? "Oh dear, fellow doorman, this man's weeing against the wall and chundering in my hair, but we have to let him in because he's got a Special Pass...for Special People...who never, ever get drunk".

What do you suppose the late night porters were for?
Try this one.
Making sure no one got in after the appointed hour if they did not have one of these special passes.

No. Try again.

Making sure no one got in after the appointed hour if they did not have a bed ticket, which were available for purchase at any time prior to that "appointed hour". You've just got carried away by the word "special" (again) and misconstrued it to mean something unique to the individual lodger, when such a thing would have been pointless, supererogatory and hugely expensive to enforce in those days. Why do you suppose lodging houses used metal chunks for tickets and not paper?

I never said anything about lodgers "roaming around". Consider Annie Chapman's predicament as a parallel. She was allowed access to the kitchen, but was asked to move on when it transpired that she lacked ether a ticket for her doss or money for same. I'm quite sure a similar practice was enforced at the Victoria Home. 12:30 may also have been the time at which all other entrances to the Victoria Home were locked; the approximate time of Alice McKenzie's murder, which was committed mere yards away from a back alley leading to the building.

Regards,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Oh dear, back to denying the special passes for late night entry, that were specifically mentioned in contemporary documents, in favour of your own personal unsupported hypothesis.
There goes the way of every week suspect - denying the existence or truthfulness of the historical record.

[DVV]

When it becomes an irrational certainty that your suspect was Jack the Ripper, and when it becomes necessary to shout down all the better-established and more popular suspects in order to pave the way for your candidate. I'm afraid that is what you're doing, and I'm afraid you're quite the wrong pot to accuse this kettle of being black when it comes to "open-mindedness".
Ben

That's obviously how Lechmere-the-poster has tried to advertise Lechmere-the-ripper from the onset.

[Lechmere]

Cry - Foul!

[DVV]

Semoule !

[SirJohnFalstaff]

I have a question.

I'm guessing this must have been discussed several time among you good people, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate.

How thorough was the vetting on Hutchinson at the time? Not only about his testimony but also about who the man was?

I'm not saying that Abberline was sloppy, the man must have been under a lot of pressure and overworked, but I can't help thinking this is the same police officer who said Issenschmid was probably the man Mrs Fiddymont saw at the pub after the Chapman murder, without any proof that a proper identification was made after Issenschmid arrest.

[Defective Detective]

Easy: I've always thought Hutchinson was a police spy in the area, though potentially one hired just for the express purpose of Ripper-watching. He probably saw nobody on 9 November and invented the story to retain Abberline's confidence.

Or it's possible Abberline didn't actually believe him, but allowed his testimony to go public anyway, for fear that to do otherwise would be to jeporadize Hutchinson's role as a spy.

Either way, he needn't be the murderer to have a good reason to be loitering around like a creep in the neighborhood.

[caz]

Catching up after a looooong absence...

Still no evidence that Hutchinson was ever asked about Kelly's clothing, which would have been pointless considering that he was due to attend the mortuary the next day to conduct an identification. As with the above two mythical "questions", a lying Hutchinson could have evaded it with ease: I didn't notice sir, I was preoccupied with Mr. Hastrakhan".

What we have then is:

a) No evidence that these questions were ever asked.

b) No good reason to think they were.

c) Easy ways for a guilty Hutchinson to get round them even if they were.

d) Idiot detectives if they were stooopid enough to ask such questions, knowing how easy there were to bluff around without fear of inviting censure or suspicion.

Regards,
Ben

Circular reasoning, Ben. You start from the presumption of a guilty Hutch giving deliberately evasive answers (or not even being asked the questions) so his statement could not be shown to be the catalogue of lies you believe it was. Your position is that Abberline was somehow obliged to believe his story because there was no way to prove it false.

But this totally ignores the alternative possibility, that Abberline believed him because he was able to confirm certain elements of the story under interrogation, either from information already in his possession or a minimum of enquiry.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

He wasn't asked to attend the mortuary to identify clothes. He went there to identify a person. The only reason to ask a witness about the victim's clothes was to establish that victim's identity, but in Hutchinson's case, he claimed to have known her for three years AND was due to identify the body the next day. The police would not – unless they were dumbarses – have asked about clothes in order to determine if Hutchinson was telling the truth, as all the latter needed to say (if he wasn't) was that he didn't notice.

Wrong again, Ben, because of your total inability to grasp that Abberline would be trying to confirm Hutch was being truthful at the same time as looking out for signs that he was full of it. Your thinking is stuck on him being a liar and having ready excuses, like he was too busy gawping at Kelly's flashy companion and taking in every last detail to notice a damned thing about what she was wearing. "Come on George, your powers of observation are better than that. You claimed you knew the woman and had a conversation with her before she met her companion." Of course, he had no real need to invent a private conversation with her if he was playing the evasive card. She was dead. He could have said anything or nothing at all. Yet he made it tougher on himself in the event he was asked to describe her appearance and couldn't.

But what if he could perfectly describe the victim's appearance and clothing, in accordance with Abberline's own information? He'd have been satisfied they were talking about the same woman and the next day's formal identification would nail it on instead of being a potential waste of precious time and resources.

If Hutchinson was there that night, as I believe he was, he'd have known precisely what she was wearing, and would have related the details upon request, but as I've explained above, there is no evidence that he was asked.

What? I thought your belief was that he hung around the court until the coast was clear, then entered her room and launched his ferocious attack when she was already undressed, if not yet fast asleep. Are you suggesting he did see her out and about earlier, but perhaps with Blotchy? Or that he stopped in full murderous flow to make a mental note of all the clothes in the room and guessed 'precisely' which ones she had been wearing earlier, in case he was later asked to describe them to the police?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If Hutchinson was “proved” a liar, he would not have been “considerably discounted”; he would have been conclusively eliminated.

Or suspected of murder. He could only have been eliminated if he had provably lied about being there at all that night.

…Hutchinson's account received a “very reduced importance” in the absence of proof of his dishonesty, otherwise it would have received a "totally eradicated importance". The police merely had strong suspicions in that regard…

But a very reduced importance is very far from no importance at all, so unless this was merely the press making it up as they went along (surely they never resort to that? ), the police must have continued to consider the possibility, however slight, that Hutch really had seen the killer with his victim.

Love,

Caz
X