Identifying Hutchinson

[Amanda]

Hi Amanda,

It just occurred to me that Hutchinson may have been younger than first thought. It could explain why he wasn't present at the inquest.

Does anyone know what the minimum age was that someone could give evidence in the 1880s?

Also having read about how his signature looked like it was written by Badham, and other samples were dissimilar. Makes me wonder weather he was younger.

Also it could explain why Abberline didn't consider him a suspect.

Hi Natasha,
Not my area I'm afraid, although I know that in the early 1800's children as young as 12 have given evidence in court (younger than that during witch trials over a century before). However, the law could have changed drastically by 1888

I have managed to find a man that I think is a 'new' Hutchinson. Interestingly he married in 1887 but was single a year later. I've sent for the marriage certificate anyway.
You might be right about his age, but why would a younger person be hanging around Dorset Street late at night?
Amanda

[Natasha]

Was Hutch A Minor?

Hi Amanda,

It just occurred to me that Hutchinson may have been younger than first thought. It could explain why he wasn't present at the inquest.

Does anyone know what the minimum age was that someone could give evidence in the 1880s?

Also having read about how his signature looked like it was written by Badham, and other samples were dissimilar. Makes me wonder weather he was younger.

Also it could explain why Abberline didn't consider him a suspect.

[Garry Wroe]

Thanks, Sally. A source who I regard as impeccable told me a couple of years ago that Brian Marriner had been a guest of Her Majesty for a time. Interesting that he then went on to become a true-crime author.

[Sally]

Take it from me, Amanda, no-one has ever found a newspaper reference to Hutchinson's age or place of origin. I'm relatively satisfied that the 'twenty-eight' claim was a canard introduced by Brian Marriner after he'd read some of my Hutchinson research in the early 1990s and later went on to write about Hutchinson himself. At the time I told him that I was interested in a Depwade candidate who was twenty-eight at the time of the murders. Draw your own conclusions.

As for Hutchinson's 'signature', his police statement contains three examples, each of which is radically different in style and structure to the other two. In other words there is no instance of a definitive Hutchinson signature.

This is something you might care to bear in mind should you decide to read the Leander thread that I initiated a few years ago.

Hi Garry

Thanks for clarifying - useful to know.

[Sally]

Thanks Debra & Sally,

You've given me some great info, which will hopefully save me a lot of time.

I'm going to give it a few weeks of intense research now, will let you know if I find anything significant.
Amanda

Hi Amanda,

Glad to have been of help - good luck with your research

[Fisherman]

Amanda!

It is quite correct that there are three signatures on the Hutchinson testimony. It is equally correct that the three signatures differ inbetween them - although they do have common characteristics aplenty too. All of this can be accessed from the threads on the matter.

What we therefore need to ask ourselves is whether Leanders verdict is useless. He saw only the signature from the third page of the testimony, and I sent it over to him because I thought it was a very close match to the signature Toppy wrote numerous times; the one you can see in the post I referred to before.

Frank Leander confirmed that the two signatures were indeed so close matches that he would be surprised if they were not by the same writer - as I stated before. The inherent characteristics of these two signatures governed that call on his behalf - a renowned professional in the field.

To me, that is more than enough. There were a number of posters who saw the likeness, and who were equally absolutely convinced that the witness Hutchinson had been identified.

It deserves mentioning that Toppy Hutchinsons´ own son, Reg Hutchinson, confirmed that his father had claimed to be involved as a witness in the Kelly affair. The ones proposing Hutchinson as the killer, though, will point to how other things Reg said would point to his whole testimony being useless.

This has been quibbled over for years out here, and it has never been a friendly discussion. My own suggestion would be not to get too bogged down in these details. The one and only thing that carries weight here is that Toppy Hutchinsons signature was found, that a number of posters believed that it was a nigh on perfect match with that from the third page of the witness testimony, that it was sent to one of the most well-known document examiners of his time, Frank Leander, and that Leander said that A/ he would need at least ten signatures to make any definitive call, and he only saw one signature from the testimony of the witness Hutchinson (there are only three, so ten cannot be achieved anyway), and B/ from what he saw, he felt that the signatures WERE of the same hand, so much so that he would be surprised if they were not, and that he expected any forthcoming information in the future to confirm his take on things.

I have been attacked for this numerous times, on a factual as well as a personal level, and I have no inclination to go much further into this a second time. It has for example been suggested that Frank Leander said what he said just to get rid of me, even - such was the gentlemanly level of discussion that was employed. I may add that this is in no way unusual when dealing with the small but vociferous clan of people speaking for Hutchinson as the probable killer.

No doubt, accusations will once again be flung around as a result of my mentioning this, and I will be pointed out as the worst culprit of it all. I am used to it, so I don´t care much about that. In the end, all that matters is the evidence before us. We either recognise that the signatures are very close matches and we accept the words of Frank Leander, who spent his entire working life and carreer in the field of document examining, rising to become one of the worlds´ most renowned authorities - or we go with the view that the signatures are not alike at all, and that I either turned Leander into a pathetic liar or that I lied about what he had said.

There is really nothing more to it, which is why I have said what I have to say.

Others, though, will undoubtedly try to deny things once more, and I am not ruling out that it may once more involve the odd attempt at character assassination. If so, keep in mind that once such things are prioritized over a measured discussion about the facts, then there is something to be learned from such a thing.

Now I´m outta here. I just wanted you to see the whole picture before that.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Garry Wroe]

Take it from me, Amanda, no-one has ever found a newspaper reference to Hutchinson's age or place of origin. I'm relatively satisfied that the 'twenty-eight' claim was a canard introduced by Brian Marriner after he'd read some of my Hutchinson research in the early 1990s and later went on to write about Hutchinson himself. At the time I told him that I was interested in a Depwade candidate who was twenty-eight at the time of the murders. Draw your own conclusions.

As for Hutchinson's 'signature', his police statement contains three examples, each of which is radically different in style and structure to the other two. In other words there is no instance of a definitive Hutchinson signature.

This is something you might care to bear in mind should you decide to read the Leander thread that I initiated a few years ago.

[Fisherman]

To save you even more time, Amanda, let me point out that the crucial post of the "Hutch in the 1911 census" is post 567, where you can compare the signatures of Toppy and the witness. It can be added that the highly renowned document specialist Frank Leander of the Swedish Criminal Laboratory took a look at these signatures and reached the conclusion that he would be surprised if they were not by the same man. He also said that he expected any forthcoming future information to confirm this.

This is however a VERY unwelcome view amongst those who propose that Hutchinson was in fact an alias and who think that the groom was the killer. He may have been, regardless if he was Toppy or not, of course.

Have a look and decide for yourself whether the signatures match!

All the best,
Fisherman

[Debra A]

Thanks Debra & Sally,

You've given me some great info, which will hopefully save me a lot of time.

I'm going to give it a few weeks of intense research now, will let you know if I find anything significant.
Amanda

Good luck, Amanda.

[Amanda]

Thanks Debra & Sally,

You've given me some great info, which will hopefully save me a lot of time.

I'm going to give it a few weeks of intense research now, will let you know if I find anything significant.
Amanda

[Debra A]

Thanks, Sally.

[Debra A]

Thanks Debra,
That's helpful, I think I've found a couple of possible leads from the 1881 census reports (been up all night!) so might try rent books now.
Comparing signatures is always a good way to go, presuming our George Hutchinson could read & write. If he couldn't, things could be tricky..
Amanda

Here's the Hutch in 1911 census thread in case you haven't seen it, Amanda.

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=2204

It might help you out with what has been researched as far different Hutchinsons and their signatures go and save you some groundwork.
The signature comparison has featured prominently in past research because William Topping Hutchinson was ruled out as being the witness by a handwriting expert consulted about it, despite there being more similarity between the signatures than most of us expected before we had seen it for ourselves.

Yes, some couldn't sign their names, also, some weren't alive in 1911 or ever got married, like the GH I mentioned so haven't been included in signature comparison discussions. Plus, if a GH couldn't sign his name then there's a good chance he isn't the witness as the witness apparently did sign his statement, although this has also been debated many times over the years too!

[Sally]

Hi Amanda, I am pretty certain that there is no newspaper report or document that gives an age for Hutchinson that has been discovered yet-perhaps Sally or other people who have also researched Hutchinson in depth too will come along and confirm this.
The 'Cottage Grove' watch stealer has been proposed several times over the years but as I said to Maybea, his actual surname was Hutchison.

I always wondered if George Hutchinson, son of Ambrose Hutchinson could have been the witness. He lived in Church St (IIRC) but died in or before 1901 so there is no 1911 census signature to compare(remembering back to the various Hutchinson 1911 signatures comparison thread we had going once) -plus he doesn't appear to have married to check that document either.

Hello Debra and Amanda

It's a tricky issue, this Hutchinson business. I had a pretty good go at it, but like others before me, got precisely nowhere in the end

Firstly, you are right, Debra, there don't appear to be any newspaper reports that give Hutchinson's age. I had also understood that Bob Hinton had found a newspaper report stating his age as 28; but that this reference had since been lost. Of course, it's possible that it's out there as not everything has been digitised [astonishing as that resource is - don't get me started, I could go on all day about how grateful I am for online newspapers...] On the other hand, an isolated reference should always be treated with caution by default unless there's a good reason for not doing so. I guess the upshot of all that is that we might never know how old Hutchinson purported to be.

I did look at several people with the same name. The most promising candidate by far was George James Hutchinson, a former groom and subsequent butcher, who lived in the East End all his life. He was the son of a stonemason from Bishop Auckland, who died when he was a child. He married at a young age and had two children, one of whom sadly died in childhood. In later years, he separated from his wife and took up with another woman, with whom he was still living when he died from heart failure in 1905 - so like George son of Ambrose, no 1911 signature.

However, in his case there is a marriage signature and also a signature on the death certificate for his daughter Eliza; and neither of them are similar to that of the witness Hutchinson - so I don't think he's the one.

As for Toppy - well, I think there are too many issues with that one for me to accept it at present. It's possible of course; I haven't ruled it out; but I have my doubts. Without wishing to provoke another Toppy debate - for which I have neither the time nor the inclination - one of the issues for me is that a mere three years subsequent to the events of 1888, Toppy was living in a respectable, private lodging house in a street where rents were typically between 8 and 10s a week. His fellow lodgers, of which there were but a handful, were, like him, professional men - because by that time, he was working as a journeyman plumber - not apprentice, mind you. He was one of four plumbers living in the same street. It's likely that three of them were working for the other, who was a master plumber with his own business. The house where he was living at that time had fewer inhabitants than at any time since the census began - a sure sign of relative affluence in an overcrowded area. He lived in an area that generally serviced Tottenham Court Road and it's environs, in a street where some households had servants; and several their own businesses. Tottenham Court Road was itself servicing the affluent; being home to luxury dining establishments and hotels; dressmakers, jewellers and hairdressers; and a servants' registry.

All that seems to me to be a long way up from an out of work labourer in a 4d a week bed in a dosshouse [albeit one of the least worst] in Whitechapel a mere three years previous. It doesn't fit together very easily for me.

To be honest, I'm more inclined to think that 'George Hutchinson' was an assumed name these days; perhaps inspired by something he'd read in the paper - but then, I'm now pretty happy to say I think that he relied heavily on other sources for his story, so it's probably understandable that i'm not giving him much credence

Having said that, It'd be great if the witness could be identified - quite happy to be wrong about it being an assumed name.

[Amanda]

Hi Amanda, I am pretty certain that there is no newspaper report or document that gives an age for Hutchinson that has been discovered yet-perhaps Sally or other people who have also researched Hutchinson in depth too will come along and confirm this.
The 'Cottage Grove' watch stealer has been proposed several times over the years but as I said to Maybea, his actual surname was Hutchison.

I always wondered if George Hutchinson, son of Ambrose Hutchinson could have been the witness. He lived in Church St (IIRC) but died in or before 1901 so there is no 1911 census signature to compare(remembering back to the various Hutchinson 1911 signatures comparison thread we had going once) -plus he doesn't appear to have married to check that document either.

Thanks Debra,
That's helpful, I think I've found a couple of possible leads from the 1881 census reports (been up all night!) so might try rent books now.
Comparing signatures is always a good way to go, presuming our George Hutchinson could read & write. If he couldn't, things could be tricky..
Amanda

[Debra A]

Thanks MayBea/Debra,

If that age group (28-33) is correct, then George Topping Hutchinson would not fit the bill.
I've found another George Hutchinson with very interesting details & was just deciding whether to dig deeper, think I might just do that now.

If anyone can find a specific report with a definite age I would appreciate it, can't cope with too many wild goose chases at my age
Amanda

Hi Amanda, I am pretty certain that there is no newspaper report or document that gives an age for Hutchinson that has been discovered yet-perhaps Sally or other people who have also researched Hutchinson in depth too will come along and confirm this.
The 'Cottage Grove' watch stealer has been proposed several times over the years but as I said to Maybea, his actual surname was Hutchison.

I always wondered if George Hutchinson, son of Ambrose Hutchinson could have been the witness. He lived in Church St (IIRC) but died in or before 1901 so there is no 1911 census signature to compare(remembering back to the various Hutchinson 1911 signatures comparison thread we had going once) -plus he doesn't appear to have married to check that document either.