Why did Abberline believe Hutch ?

[Garry Wroe]

As you rightly point out, Caz's argument, that they may simply have lost contact with him, is persuasive. I mean, wasn't it couple of years before the police's prime witness, Joseph Lawende, was effectively utilized, i.e in the identification of Kosminski? By such time, Hutchinson may have long disappeared into the ether.

The problem with the disappearing Hutchinson, though, John, is that it does not explain why the Echo dismissed his story the day after the Abberline interview. Nor does it fit with Walter Dew's recollections of events. More importantly yet, it is completely at odds with Anderson's assertion (with the implied confirmation of Swanson) of a Jewish witness being the only person ever to have had a clear view of the killer. Since this individual was almost certainly Schwartz or Lawende we can safely conclude that Hutchinson's gold star sighting of Astrakhan had gone the way of Violenia's and Hutchinson had been demoted to the status of worthless witness.

[harry]

Hutchinson first gave his account to someone at the police station.Aberline was informed and came to the station himself.It seems reasonable then, that Aberline,before facing Hutchinson,would have been briefed on what Hutchinson was claiming,and that was that Hutchinson was an eye witness ,who saw a male person go with Kelly to her room.Aberline questions Hutchinson,and I do not believe an experienced officer such as Aberline would have started the questioning with any preconceived thought of innocence or guilt,and later reports an opinion of honesty of Hutchinson.
Nowwhere,in any account that has been tendered of that evening,can I find information that relates to a suspicion being held by Aberline against Hutchinson,at the beginning,in the middle or at the end.That is,untill it was claimed on this thread.

[Scott Nelson]

Why was Isaacs described as a Polish Jew?

His father may have been, but not Joseph -- he was born in Whitechapel.

Further fuel to the possibility that Joseph was dropped as a Ripper suspect after December 7th, 1888 and his Leman Street Station cell mate, David Cohen, an immigrant Polish Jew, was fingered as a suitable substitute for Isaacs.

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

“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.”

No, it isn’t “circular reasoning”, and there is no “presumption”. I’m simply pointing out that if Hutchinson was lying, there were easy ways for him to escape being caught out if Abberline asked such questions as “What was Kelly wearing that night?”. If Hutchinson’s response to that question was consistent with the known evidence (no hat, red pelerine, whatever), then yes, Abberline might well have considered that a point in his favour, but only if he’d somehow ruled out the possibility of Hutchinson reading Mary Cox’s description of Kelly’s clothing in the papers and simply copying that, or having been with Kelly himself that night, albeit without any aspect of the Astrakhan story being true. Unfortunately, Abberline was in no position to rule out either possibility at the time of the interrogation.

“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.”

What’s the problem? If Hutchinson gave an account of Kelly’s clothing that was consistent with the facts, he was either being truthful or incorporating the known – and widely publicised! - facts into his own narrative to make it seem more plausible. One would hope Abberline was able to figure this out, and thus avoid using “clothing” as a means of gauging the extent of Hutchinson's honesty.

“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.”

It would have done, yes, and it would make him a lousy liar and probable publicity-seeker who wasn’t even there when he claimed to have been. But if he could describe the clothes because he had made it his business to look them up – in the way he obviously “looked up” Lewis’s evidence – then he would have no problem. Similarly, if he’d seen the clothes himself on a still-living Kelly, and wanted to conceal an altogether different reason for being in her company that night, no problem there either. In the latter scenario, it would have been a distinct advantage to include a private conversation that involved Kelly having a legitimate reason to be out and about and bumping into the spooky fictional man he wished to scapegoat: she was allegedly looking for money.

Might Abberline have asked about the clothing for other reasons, such as cementing identity? Yes, of course.

“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.”

Any suggestions as to what these might have been, bearing in mind Abberline had only just met the man and had no time to investigate his claims between the end of the “interrogation” and the submission of the report? (And I don’t want to hear about any conveniently-lost-to-history red hankies being found in Kelly’s room, please!)

“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”

I don’t know where you get “all the clothes” from. We’re talking about room #13 Miller’s Court here, not Primark. No, I don’t consider it infeasible for the killer to have made a (probably post-murder) mental note of the clothes in the room, or to have assumed correctly that the clothes nearest the bed (or on it) were the ones she’d worn that night. If he was responsible for burning some of them, then he clearly paid them some attention. And yes, it is also perfectly possible that the killer had seen Kelly in the company of Blotchy.

“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.”

Yes, and I’ve argued as much on several occasions. A sort of “yes, the evidence points towards this being probable bollocks and that is the official line we take, but maybe…just maybe”.

“Certainly on the part of the Echo hacks if they seriously believed the authorities had only just thought to ask why Hutch had not come forward sooner.”

But I never suggested anything of the sort, and nor did the Echo. You raised the very same issue on the other active Hutchinson thread (yep, they’re all the rage again), so you’ll forgive the duplicated response. The Echo made it quite clear that the authorities had come to view the late appearance of his evidence as a problem as a result of investigating the matter further.

“From latest inquiries it appears that a very reduced importance seems to be now - in the light of later investigation - attached to a statement made by a person last night that he saw a man with the deceased on the night of the murder.”

Whatever this “later investigation” turned up, it evidently undermined Hutchinson’s credibility to the extent that it suffered a “very reduced importance”. Perhaps it was revealed that Hutchinson’s explanation for his delay in coming forward (whatever it was) cannot have been true, or perhaps Abberline’s endorsement of Hutchinson’s statement didn’t sit well with his superiors? Alternatively, Hutchinson’s press disclosures might have been undoing, given their embellishments and flat-out contradictions (as well as a claim to have contacted a policeman, which could easily have been checked out and proved false). Or did he slip up somehow on his walkabout with police one night, as Garry once suggested?

Investigative development is not “poor reasoning”.

“So what went wrong on this one, for the 'authorities' to suddenly decide his explanation had been so poor that his entire story must now be in doubt?”

I don’t know, but it happened that way nonetheless, according to the best evidence. If you’re asking me to speculate, it is possible that Hutchinson attempted to explain away his earlier inertia by claiming he was nervous about reprisals from the presumed murderer, only to destroy that excuse by blabbing to reporters a day later. Alternatively, he may have claimed to have approached a policeman about the affair, only for it to be revealed subsequently that no such policeman existed.

“If Hutch's account really was discredited and put in the bin with all the other 'false scents', Mrs Cox's account must have gone the same way in the long run, assuming Blotchy similarly failed to feature among the senior policemen's major suspects as fingered in their various memos and memoirs.”

As you said on the other thread, to which I replied:

Cox did receive a mention in a police memoir - a favourable one. Nothing about her being discredited or lying or confused. If she wasn’t considered as important as Lawende and/or Schwartz, it may have been because she seemed to have followed Kelly and Blotchy from behind, and didn’t have as good a vantage point with which to view her suspect than the other two did. Additionally, her sighting occurred significantly earlier than Kelly’s generally accepted time of death, unlike Lawende’s, for instance, which occurred ten minutes prior to the discovery of Eddowes’ body.

“It is circular reasoning to argue that Hutch's account must have been totally discredited or the police would have recalled him as a witness for future identifications. Chance would have been a fine thing.”

But Hutchinson wasn’t even mentioned.

Anderson stated that the only person to get a good view of the murderer was Jewish. What about Hutchinson, who got a much better look? The “fact” that he was inaccessible for attempts at identifying suspects would have made no difference to that, and yet he is conspicuously absent from Anderson’s remarks. Similarly, Abberline had the opportunity to infer a link between dark-haired, moustachioed foreign Astrakhan man and dark-haired, moustachioed foreign Severin Klosowski, but he never made one – electing instead to infer tenuous parallels with witnesses who only saw their suspects’ backs, and men wearing “P&O” caps. This quite simply does not make sense unless Hutchinson was discredited, as contemporary records indicate. The other option is to join Jon and argue that Astrakhan was identified and then exonerated (which, quirky theories about Joseph Isaacs aside, is not even a possibility).

If the police genuinely believed Hutchinson to have been the star witness, it was pretty careless of them to have lost track of him completely, and I somewhat doubt that an excuse of “oh well, that’s him phucked off – we won’t find him again, so let’s settle for the witnesses who ARE around for identity parades, and pretend that brilliant, ripper-spotting Hutchinson never existed” was ever resorted to.

“So it would have been 'closed' to anyone who couldn't pay the going rate. Yes, I see.

Similarly the Victoria Home would have been 'closed' to Hutch without a valid pass.

Similarly, his "usual" place, if not the VH, would likely have been 'closed' to him if he didn't have enough money or a valid pass.”

No, that’s fairly obviously nonsense.

If you turn up penniless to a thriving pub in Soho on a Friday night, and are turned away because of your lack of funds, would you describe that pub as “closed”? No, clearly not.

“What evidence do you have that he had either sufficient funds or a valid pass?”

None.

What I do have is a press-recorded claim that he did not secure a bed at his “usual” lodgings that night because they had closed (and NOT because he had no money or pass). I also have the hideous illogicality of Hutchinson walking 13 miles in the small hours with the certainty that he had neither a bed ticket nor funds to pay for a bed at the other end. Sympathetic reaction? Nah, probably not. If you bend the rules for one lodger in 500, you’ll have to do the same for the rest.

“If you looked anything like Hutch's suspect, would you have hung around the district without changing your appearance?”

If you looked anything like Hutch’s suspect, would you have hung around Commercial Street when the ripper-scare was as active and as current as it was possible to be?

Me neither.

All the best,
Ben

[John G]

I do feel that there is a possibility that, in relation to Astrakhan man, the police simply gave up trying to find him due to inadequacy of resources. Yes, they may have started to doubt the veracity of Hutchinson's account for a whole variety of reasons, however, as Walter Dew's subsequent comments suggest, there doesn't seem to have been any proof that he lied.

I sense that by this time the Whitechapel force was pretty much in meltdown. It should be remembered that they probably had only a handful of detectives to commit to numerous murder inquiries and vicious crimes that occurred in 1888.

Even if we discount Eddowes, because she was the responsibility of the City Police, wouldn't the Whitechapel force have been primarily responsible for investigating the murders of Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Kelly and the vicious assault on Smith?

None of these crimes had an obvious suspect, which, as now, was pretty rare for the period. It should be remembered that prior to 1888, murder in Whitechapel was uncommon, and no doubt the vast majority of murders were quickly cleared up, i.e. because they happened in a domestic setting with an obvious suspect who may well have quickly admitted to the crime.

Isn't worth noting that almost 100 years later a far better equipped West Yorkshire force seems to have gone into virtual meltdown over the Yorkshire Ripper investigation.

And isn't the case that a force already stretched to breaking point would have to have followed up every lead, however insignificant it may have seemed? Mathew Packer is an obvious example of the media backlash that could ensue if even unlikely leads were not deemed to have been investigated.

It is surely relevant to consider their investigations into Blotchey. Despite his distinctive complexion, and the fact that he would surely be the number one suspect for Kelly's murder if Astrakhan were rejected, he was never found. And the effort that went into finding him seems to have been even less than the effort put into finding Hutchinson's suspect.

It's like an overworked, under resourced police force simply gave up.

[Batman]

Isn't worth noting that almost 100 years later a far better equipped West Yorkshire force seems to have gone into virtual meltdown over the Yorkshire Ripper investigation.

It is surely relevant to consider their investigations into Blotchey. Despite his distinctive complexion, and the fact that he would surely be the number one suspect for Kelly's murder if Astrakhan were rejected, he was never found. And the effort that went into finding him seems to have been even less than the effort put into finding Hutchinson's suspect.

It's like an overworked, under resourced police force simply gave up.

I actually see comparisons between Hutchinson and the Yorkshire Ripper Squad's mistakes.

Although the system they used for the YR murders was flawed, they did have Sutcliffe in there early on. He worked at the place that had been given the money found on a dead prostitute. They had his boot print and suspected a driver from the marks on it. They had his composite. What the system didn't do was bring people with multiple 'hits' to the front of the queue quick enough. He was being investigated (they paid several visits to him) and one detective was sure he had found the ripper... but when he went to report it...

... a hoaxer came in with tape and the lead investigator bought it on the basis that it had inside information. So anyone without a Geordie Accent was ruled out instantly which included Sutcliffe. So the detective was told to forget about that man. The lead detective was wrong. The tape had no inside info. It was all gleaned from newspapers. Its called the Wareside Jack case -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wearside_Jack

This IMO is like Hutchinson/Abberline. They have a witness and a good description of a red faced man from Cox seen going into MJKs room with her. He matches the description of Ada's attacker. He isn't a whole shot outside of Schwartz/Lawende's witness accounts either.

He should be a suspect at the very least right?

Yet look at what happens after Hutchinson shows up.

Manchester Courier
November 16, 1888
"The police are working diligently upon the clue furnished by George Hutchinson. Judging from a communication made by Mr. Galloway, a clerk employed in the City and living at Stepney, no reliance is now placed upon the statement made by the woman Cox, and the detectives rely almost exclusively upon Hutchinson's description of the supposed murderer."

Galloway thought he saw Blotchy and reported him there and then to an officer who decided not to go after them.

Interesting how they drop one suspect for a lead that went cold. Sounds familiar no?

It is worth noting the suspect Galloway saw was said to be a well known person in the area who was working in 'conjunction' with the police. Sounds sort of like a Vig. Committee member if you ask me.

[Hatchett]

Hi,

Couldnt it simply have been that they believed Hutchinson but then after further investigations decided that the man he saw was not the killer?

Best wishes.

[Abby Normal]

Hi,

Couldnt it simply have been that they believed Hutchinson but then after further investigations decided that the man he saw was not the killer?

Best wishes.

Hi Hatchett
perhaps, but highly unlikely IMHO. To determine that, they would have to have found Aman, investigated and cleared him. Which would have been found in police records or at least certainly in the press.

But even if they did find him I don't really see how they could have cleared him-the "witness" hutch said that he was alone with her for at least 45 minutes and could have been much longer, since no one saw him or mary leave.

[Hatchett]

Hi,

Well, as we all know, the police records are incomplete. So no one knows for sure. Barnet was with her that night and cleared. The Police were reluctant in supplying the press with info,so it is unlikely that they would have known.

What we do know, however, is that Abberline believed him, and he was a very experianced Policeman.

So in my opinion that is the most likely explanation.

Best wishes.

[Wickerman]

Why was Isaacs described as a Polish Jew?

His father may have been, but not Joseph -- he was born in Whitechapel.

Several news reports word it as, "said to be a Polish Jew".
It occurred to me that it may not have been obvious, neither by his features nor his accent. Given that he was born in London he may have had a local East End accent.
Yes, he was a Polish Jew by descent, his father David was a Polish Jew by birth.

[Wickerman]

I sense that by this time the Whitechapel force was pretty much in meltdown. It should be remembered that they probably had only a handful of detectives to commit to numerous murder inquiries and vicious crimes that occurred in 1888.

Well, at the risk of sounding like an advertisement, Monty's book must give the numbers. I know I have read the numbers allocated to the Whitechapel murder case several times in various sources. So the numbers are out there.

After mid November the press no longer give it the coverage they used to.
It would be a mistake to assume that because the press moved on that the police must also have walked away from the case.
The press knew very little of what Scotland Yard were doing even throughout the murders, with respect to specific case related information the press knew nothing.
That was how the Met. police wanted it.

[Batman]

Scotland Yard Investigates by Evans and Rumbelow

p.204

585 of all ranks in Whitechapel by Jmonro dated 18.7.89

If you want questions about Soctland Yard, numbers etc., this book is the one to turn too.

By december 1888 they had 143 officers in plain clothes.

In January they reduced it to 102. By Feb it had dropped in 47.

[John G]

p.204

585 of all ranks in Whitechapel by Jmonro dated 18.7.89

If you want questions about Soctland Yard, numbers etc., this book is the one to turn too.

By december 1888 they had 143 officers in plain clothes.

In January they reduced it to 102. By Feb it had dropped in 47.

Hello Batman,

Yes, I've got this book, maybe I should have checked it first! 143 officers in plain clothes does, of course, seem like a high number for such a relatively small district. However, how many of those officers, I wonder, were experienced detectives? I might be wrong but wasn't it the case that they temporarily transferred a significant number of uniformed officers into plain clothes?

[Batman]

Hello Batman,

Yes, I've got this book, maybe I should have checked it first! 143 officers in plain clothes does, of course, seem like a high number for such a relatively small district. However, how many of those officers, I wonder, were experienced detectives? I might be wrong but wasn't it the case that they temporarily transferred a significant number of uniformed officers into plain clothes?

It's a great book. Love it. One of my favs actually. I assumed they just took the uniformed officers and put them in plain clothes and back into uniform when things got quiet. That's sort of what I gleaned from reading that chapter/book.

[Ben]

Hi John,

A while ago you wrote:

“What I find most remarkable about Hutchinson's evidence is that even though it seems pretty implausible from a modern perspective- too much detail/ suspect too well dressed- a highly experienced detective, Inspector Abberline, believed him.”

And then signed the post off with:

“His misguided comments are therefore driven by his obsession that Chapman was the killer, causing him to have selective amnesia regarding witness testimony”

The problem here is that it becomes rather difficult to reconcile the two. If we characterise Abberline as “misguided”, “obsessed” and suffering from “selective memory”, why would we then accept uncritically his initial faith-based thoughts on Hutchinson’s credibility?

It doesn’t seem very likely that Lawende was prioritized to the exclusion of all other witnesses, including those who were honest and accurate (assuming it was he, and not Schwartz, who was used). The others could still have seen the same person Lawende did – and thus still be of considerable value – despite not getting quite as good a “view”.

As I’ve already mentioned, Abberline had a golden opportunity – if he truly was obsessed with his Klosowski theory – to infer superficial parallels between Astrakhan man’s appearance and Klosowski’s, but he missed it. Unless, of course, he knew or strongly suspected that no “Astrakhan man” existed.

“In the case of Kelly, for example, we have no real idea what time she was killed - Dr Bond calculated sometime between 2:00am and 8:00am- therefore Hutchinson's suspect, if identified, and assuming he existed, could simply have argued that Kelly was fine when he left her.”

He might have argued that, yes, but without being in any position to demonstrate his innocence, Astrakhan man would still have been the prime suspect in the Kelly murder, and Hutchinson a crucial witness worth mentioning in interviews and reports. But that evidently didn’t happen. Either we settle for an explanation that involves Abberline lying in 1903 in an attempt to shore up his Klosowski theory, or we continue to use this interview as “supporting evidence that he no longer had faith in Hutchinson”, which I humbly submit that it inescapably is.

“And as I noted earlier, to a modern observer what makes astrachan man so unlikely is the incongruity of such a well-dressed man being present in such a notorious neighborhood. However, not to Abberline it seems.”

But this wasn’t any old “well-dressed man”. This was presumably Jack the Ripper himself – the mysterious uncaught ghoul who many suspected of being a villainous Jew or a doctor. Who knows what this monster would do (or wear, or think, or say)...or so an 1888 detective with absolutely no experience or knowledge of serial offenders might reason.

“Therefore even if astrakhan man existed, it might have been reasoned that he was, in all probability, innocent.”

Only if the police placed all their eggs in one controversial, minority-accepted basket as far as an estimated time of death went. They certainly didn’t go with Maxwell’s late-morning sighting, and nor do they appear to have exhibited a preference for either Bond or Phillips. The available evidence instead indicates that they came to favour the mutually supportive evidence of Lewis and Prater – the cry of “murder” - as the most likely time of death. This would put Astrakhan man right in the frame (certainly not “in all probability innocent") if Hutchinson’s account continued to be accepted as both truthful and accurate.

There is no evidence that Joseph Isaacs – a homeless thief and former cigar-maker – was remotely capable of dressing as affluently as the alleged Astrakhan man. If any similarity existed, it probably extended only to them both being Jewish, dark-haired, moustachioed (?), and about the same age. Isaacs himself was reportedly in prison at the time of the Kelly murder for the offense of stealing a coat, which neatly explains the sudden lack of interest in him as a suspect. This reality completely undermined the account provided by Mary Cusins who obviously wanted rid of her unsavoury neighbour, possibly in the same way that many Germans in the 1930s “got rid” of their undesirable fellow citizens by lying about them to the Gestapo.

A terrible recent theory – blissfully unpopular and only championed by that sole theorist - asserts that Abberline was in a position to both identify Isaacs as Astrakhan man AND clear him of Kelly’s murder. This is not a possibility. Whoever Astrakhan was – if we embrace the discredited notion that he even existed – he could not possibly have been exonerated of her murder, if and when he was identified.

This doesn’t stop Isaacs being in interesting character in his own right, worthy of further research. It’s just a pity that at present he is only ever wheeled in as a supporting player to lend non-existent support for Hutchinson.

“And why were other witnesses, including PC Smith, apparently rejected in favour of Lawende? Could it be simply be a case of the police focusing on the importance of proximity of sighting to estimated time of death of a victim, at the exclusion of all other criteria?”

Only if the police were confident enough to rule out the possibility of other witnesses having seen the same man that Lawende described, albeit not as close to the “estimated time of death of a victim”. This doesn’t seem very likely. Donald Swanson’s report hints at the likely reason for the apparent non-prioritization of PC Smith’s evidence: the latter’s sighting occurred earlier than that of Schwartz, and was apparently of a different person. The implication being that Stride’s likely killer arrived in the form of Schwartz’s broad-shouldered man after Smith’s man had left. And Schwartz, of course, is still considered a candidate for Anderson’s witness.

Please bear in mind that this post is addressed to “John G” and not Jon aka “Wickerman”, just so there is no confusing which Jo(h)n I'm currently interested in hearing from. The latter’s posts I look forward to addressing when time permits.

All the best,
Ben