A new critique of the Cross/Lechmere theory from Stewart Evans

[Rubyretro]

The ONLY pieces of evidence asserted against Cross are:

a) being beside the body when it was still warm; and

b) giving a name that appears other than the one he usually used.

Sorry Phil, I haven't yet read your post -which I'll now do with great interest.
I just got this far, and collapsed in giggles....you've got to see the irony in it ?

[Phil H]

Oh I see the irony - it amused me.

But at the end of the day that is all the case against Crossmere depends on - laughable indeed. And both statements could be interpreted in other ways.

[John Bennett]

Surely, the position is that we do have NO solid suspects? We may use the term "suspect" loosely, but the fact is there are none - we have no evidence.

I think this is a vital point that needs reinforcing.

Sometimes, when a researcher claims that 'X' is a suspect, it is often misconstrued as meaning that they think 'X' was obviously the murderer.

Kosminski is a suspect. Druitt is a suspect. Tumblety is a suspect. W. Bury is and so are William Gull, Walter Sickert, Robert Mann, I could go on and on, but just because they are a suspect it doesn't mean they were the Ripper.

I think I am right in saying that when Stewart defends Tumblety (for example) as a suspect, he is merely pointing out just that. He was named as a suspect by John Littlechild and was noted as being so by many US newspapers and thus he, just like other contemporary suspects, is important and needs looking into. But we are not being told that there was cast-iron evidence to say that Tumblety definitely 'dunit'. (Hopefully Stewart will correct me if I got this wrong!)

With Lechmere, he too has been put forward as a suspect - no problem with that.

But he is also being built up as Jack the Ripper himself, which changes the whole game. And thus more solid evidence is required, over and above all the conjecture and 'maybe's'.

[Lechmere]

If a case is made that someone should be regarded as a suspect in the Whitechapel murders then it naturally follows that they are being built up - potentially - as bring Jack the Ripper. That is a little unavoidable.

Also Phil is putting forward a different proposition.
Studying WHY the police suspects became suspects - how they came to the attention of the police, what made them suspicious or likely candidates - is quite a different activity from trying at this remove to establish who was most likely to have dunnit.
I think unravelling why the named suspects became named is interesting as it tells us a lot about late Victorian society and it's prejudices and the vanities and pecadilloes of the principals involved.

The proffered explanation for Tumblety being a suspect is incidentally bolstered by conjecture passed as fact (that Andrews's visit to Canada was certainly to do with Tumblety for example) and very weak and virtually unsupported propositions (Eg that Littlechild had a big file on Tumblety due to his supposed Feinianism). But that is for another day...

[Lechmere]

Any sensible historical analysis will involve using a variety of sources to build as complete a picture as possible.
for example studying events in Anglo-Saxon England will involve consulting contemporary chronicles, later medieval legends, surviving deeds and charters, looking at the Doomsday Book, archaeology and possibly topography.
Phil uses 'indiscriminate ' as a qualifier to indicate that he disapproves of the sources used I guess, which as an argument is baseless.
Dare I say it that all the theories are bolstered in this way.

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE=Phil H;274993]

Sorry Ruby I have to disagree totally

.

Now there's a surprise !

First of all I have nothing against "Crossmere" as a figure of interest. I find him an intriguing and amusing character. Amusing because, wouldn't it be ironic if the person who appears at the very start of most books on JtR turned out to have dunnit"!?

It would indeed be ironic ! However my accusation of 'bloodymindedness' was more intended to suggest that if Ed or Fishy made posts saying 'white', some posters here would automatically say 'black'. Conversely, if Begg or Fido wrote a post, then some posters would sit up to attention and consider its merits solely because of the person who wrote it. Can't we leave personalities out of it and consider each idea on its merits ?

I admire Stuart Evans et al, as anybody interested in the Ripper case must do, but the wheel turns and they don't have a monopoly on the case by some divine right.

( and before someone accuses me of just supporting Ed and Fish, I can assure them that if we were discussing Hutchinson, then I would find myself arguing against them).

My objection is to the extension of that interest into a full-blown and to my mind, insecure thesis andto the way that that case is developed and argued.

Well to your mind the thesis is insecure, and to my mind it isn't.

The ONLY pieces of evidence asserted against Cross are:

a) being beside the body when it was still warm; and

b) giving a name that appears other than the one he usually used.

Well as a starting point its a pretty bloody good one ! Montague Druitt rather pales by comparison.

BOTH are capable of explanation in innocent ways.

Everything else is conjecture and speculation.

But your points a) and b) were hard facts ! (and what facts !) Its all your 'innocent explanations' which would be conjecture and speculation !
You are outrageous, Phil !

In that case, we'd have no suspects at all, as hard evidence is missing for all of them !

Surely, the position is that we do have NO solid suspects? We may use the term "suspect" loosely, but the fact is there are none - we have no evidence.

[/B]

We have some information on the case which should arouse our suspicions towards some of the people involved. I say 'some' because I'm not fixiated on Lechmere as the killer -but he was holding a 'smoking gun' so to speak. Of course he might be innocent still, but he's got to be a good suspect at least.

]

However, as I have said before many times, a number of individuals have a special status as being "of interest" because they were named by senior figures at the time - Kosminski, Druitt, Tumblety (and to an extent Ostrog).

In the absence of the complete set of files those three men are studied to understand WHY they were under suspicion in 1888(ish).

It's very interesting, but after they had been gone into by very capable people, many times, none of them were found to be credible suspects. I think that we can safely conclude that none of them were JTR.

Lechmere does not fall into that category. he may be mentioned in press reports and police files, but he was never OF INTEREST to them at the time. He might better be associated with figures like Dr Barnardo who is similarly mentioned as around and has been suspected in the past by modern writers.

What twaddle. Was Dr Banardo ever found standing over a warm body giving a false name ? Nope. Dr Banardo was famous -which gives a motivation for people to put him forward as a suspect- Lechmere wasn't. To put them in the same sack is being plain silly.

Furthermore, if that person can be linked to all the different murder sites in the right time frame, he has to be of interest.

But Lechmere acnnot be LINKED to any other site, at least no more than can thousands of other inhabitants of the East End who lived and worked in the area or passed through it on their "commute" daily.

None of those other 'thousands of inhabitants' were standing over a body though, were they ? Also you have no idea how they could be linked to the murder sites, but we do know that Lechmere can be linked.

It is also logical to be suspicious when that person gave police a name that was different to the name which we know that he gave on every other occasion that has come down to us.

But there could be several other explanations for that. As you yourself say "Never mind what different name he gave police, nor if we think that he might of used it at work -that is speculation. We don't know."

Nor with respect, do we know why he gave a false name that day.

It is simply being wilfully obtuse to deny it.

I have never denied he used a false name - only that one can extrapolate from that that he killed several women.

The FACT that Lechmere used a false name ( and I used the word 'different' in my post! You used 'false ' !) has to be grounds for suspicion. It might be groundless suspicion, but it merits suspicion.

[

B]Whenever there are opinion polls, the majority of people seem to opt for 'unknown local man' -so someone who wasn't suspected by contemporary senior figures at the time.

Not my point, you are simply seeking to change the nature of the discussion to one more supportive of your view. I have set out the reasons why the contemporary suspects MUST take precedence many times - and why they are in a separate category.

[/B]

Oh ? I thought that it was your point. Of course I was seeking to support my views. You did say that contemporary suspects should take precedence, and I scoffed.

It seems to me that 'no contemporary suspicion' is no sort of argument at all. Surely we can agree on that ?

Not if one adheres to the usual scholarly approaches and the historical method. Opinion polls are amusing, can be of interest but are, frankly, irrelevant to anything serious.

It depends on who is voting on the opinion poll, though. I'm not 'superior' and so I would take seriously other peoples points of view on these forums. The fact is that they don't vote for a contemporary suspect as the prime suspect, they vote for 'ordinary working class man'. And Lechmere fits into that category.

Of course one tries to take evidence from various different sources ! Taking evidence from only one source at your own discrimination would hardly be better, would it !

If I was your college tutor I'd have you expelled for lazy thinking and sheer inability to understand. (Just joking, but there is a serious point here.)

The biggest fault a student could have is just to gob anything that the tutor (you apparently) said without questioning. A good student needs to have a curious, open, mind, and seek fresh information. I'd say that it would be the measure of a good tutor not to close minds but to welcome debate and be able to change his thinking -he would encourage his pupils to bring fresh ideas, not do them down with pomposity. We are ALL here to learn.

I am talking of discriminating in a clinical and academic way between first hand evidence, legal testimony (under oath), police statement, official files etc (what one might group together as the record) and press reports which we know were often incorrect or faulty (names etc).

However dishonest people lie under oath. The press is often illuminating. Obviously though, we need to look at different sources and collate them.

I think even a first year student would understand those differences and use the "evidence" accordingly.

Yep. I'm amazed you can't.

It is not SAFE (in an academic sense) to simply use material from one type of source to fill in gaps in more reliable testimony. Oh it can be done - and is - but only with careful explanation and equal care about how that is then extrapolated or the inferences drawn. To make the distinction clearer, - a jury in a court is expected to reach a verdict on the basis of the testimony it has heard and the evidence it has seen - it would be out of order to add in what press reports might have said; gossip; or personal knowledge.

Please don't say, but the Ripper is a special case, we don't have much material to work with!! In fact scholars working on the ancient world or some other more recent periods, have to do exactly the same thing. they have developed approaches to do so and those are the ones, i assert, we should use.

New scholars come along all the time. Sometimes they proove that the old scholars were wrong. Sometimes they use fresh approaches. That is how our knowledge of 'the ancient world' has grown deeper with time.

Lechmere is an excellent suspect.

[John Bennett]

Lechmere as the Ripper needs more than just filling in gaps with conjecture and 'what if's'.

Imagine this: that there is an interview with Inspector Reid in some newspaper many years after the event where he says:

"We made extensive enquiries after the Buck's Row murder and were strongly of the suspicion that the murderer was somebody near to the scene of the crime. However, our investigations came to nothing, yet I still feel that we were on the right track even then and had it not been for countless claims and red-herrings following the later outrages, my detectives would have not been so distracted and that we would have got our man."

Now that would be something. No name, but you have a choice of some of the residents of Buck's Row, the Barber's slaughtermen and of course Lechmere and Paul. It would serve as an interesting pointer.

Or what about a City Police detective saying:
"We knew who he was and under the suggestion of the Metropolitan force we conducted surveillance of this man on his way to work in the City."

Another little tease and the sort of thing we have with a number of other suspects. But, alas, not with Lechmere.

[Fisherman]

John Bennett:

With Lechmere, he too has been put forward as a suspect - no problem with that.

But he is also being built up as Jack the Ripper himself, which changes the whole game. And thus more solid evidence is required, over and above all the conjecture and 'maybe's'.

Hi John!

First of all - I could easily have said that I think Lechmere is interesting and that I regard him as a suspect - no more than that.

I could have put the lid on my own conviction, thus.

I have chosen not to do so. It would make things very awkward, and force me into lots of veiled hoohs and hums. I prefer not to do it that way.

I do not, however, buy your suggestion that "more solid evidence" is required before one is allowed to make a stance like mine. If you give it some afterthought, you will realize that I think that the evidence we do have is enough for me to make the call that it is more credible than incredible that Charles Lechmere was the Ripper. I would not have done that if I did not feel like this.

It´s another thing altogether that different people out here will require different material to recognize "solid evidence". You will know that quite well. I have many, many times seen posters deny apparent truths that hurt their own theorizing. I know, though, that you don´t belong to these groupings, and so I accept that you yourself do not grade the evidence relating to Lechmere as solid. And to a degree, I concur - none of the bits and pieces are solid on their own. The solidity of the case instead lies in the combined weight of all parameters involved. And to me, that is enough to make my call: I think that Lechmere was the killer.

Please note that I am not saying that he must have been, that there is proof or anything like that. I, personally, believe that the evidence involved points to him being the Whitechapel killer. And if he was not, I´d be surprised. That´s it and that´s all.

The best,
Fisherman

[John Bennett]

On another note, the sad thing about the Lechmere theory is that it exists in pieces; in lectures, periodical articles and extensively on the message boards. That's a lot of work!

Have you guys considered bringing the whole thing together and turning it into a book? It would be good to see the whole case as one study and I for one would buy it, even though I am not convinced.

[Fisherman]

Lechmere as the Ripper needs more than just filling in gaps with conjecture and 'what if's'.

Imagine this: that there is an interview with Inspector Reid in some newspaper many years after the event where he says:

"We made extensive enquiries after the Buck's Row murder and were strongly of the suspicion that the murderer was somebody near to the scene of the crime. However, our investigations came to nothing, yet I still feel that we were on the right track even then and had it not been for countless claims and red-herrings following the later outrages, my detectives would have not been so distracted and that we would have got our man."

Now that would be something. No name, but you have a choice of some of the residents of Buck's Row, the Barber's slaughtermen and of course Lechmere and Paul. It would serve as an interesting pointer.

Or what about a City Police detective saying:
"We knew who he was and under the suggestion of the Metropolitan force we conducted surveillance of this man on his way to work in the City."

Another little tease and the sort of thing we have with a number of other suspects. But, alas, not with Lechmere.

John, if they had been on to Lechmere, they would have nailed him. Starting with the name swop, and going on to realize that the victims died along his trodden paths at times when he could or even would reasonably have been there.

He is not a man you can start to dig into, only to say "Nah, it probably was´nt him".

The mere fact that they never even bothered to check his name - or so it seems very clearly! - says it all.

He went voluntarily to the police not once but twice, seeking out the long arm of the law of his own free will. That must have impressed - and kept him in the clear.

Having the sort of passage written about him that you suggest would be an absolute anomaly - once seen, soon nailed. But noone saw - that´s my contention.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Jenni Shelden]

Sorry Phil, I haven't yet read your post -which I'll now do with great interest.
I just got this far, and collapsed in giggles....you've got to see the irony in it ?

Where is the irony?

Laughing at others is all very well , but they are not the ones trying to build a case.


Jenni

[Jenni Shelden]

Hi Ruby,
I was just catching up on Casebook and came across this thread and read it with increasing disbelief, since those who refuse to admit Lechmere as a suspect appear to do so out of sheer bloodymindedness and personal animosity.

This is a classic tatic of suspect Ripperology of trying to turn around things onto those pointing out problems with a theory. How is that bloody mindedness? I have no axe to grind whatsover.

Others have their authority and reputation linked to who they think the murderer is. I for one and not one of these people.

I am quite happy to alter my opinion if the facts or my knowledge of them change.

However, nothing anyone has said on this theory has done so.

Where is all the evidence against Cross?

There is not any, any more so than against Bowyer or Richardson or PC Watkins or Louis D.



I]In that case, we'd have no suspects at all, as hard evidence is missing for all of them

In my opinion we have plenty of suspects, Cross is now one ofthem as his name has been dragged into it. But we have not got any Rippers. Hard evidence is what you need to say your candidate is Jack the Ripper.

In my opinion it is wrong and imoral to name someone so vehemntly as the Ripper but without any evidence, hence forever tainting them. And for what purpose? What good does it do?

Still, if this were a modern day case, then the first person that we would have to look at closely would be the person placed over the body at the TOD. What is so hard about admitting that ? (and surely most people would agree that, if the killer wasn't Lechmere, then he interrupted the killer -so he was certainly there at the TOD).

Stewart already mentioned he thought this would have been done. Why do you not think so?Yes, that is speculation, but it works both ways. Lack of evidence is not evidence.


Furthermore, if that person can be linked to all the different murder sites in the right time frame, he has to be of interest. That is just logical. It is also logical to be suspicious when that person gave police a name that was different to the name which we know that he gave on every other occasion that has come down to us.

How does Cross link to e.g Miller's Court, Berner Street or Hanbury Street, in fact, what are the links to all the murder sites in the right timeframe?

Never mind what different name he gave police, nor if we think that he might of used it at work -that is speculation. We don't know. We only know that he gave police a name that he never ever used on official papers -and there are lots of examples. It is simply being wilfully obtuse to deny it.

We do not know that, he used it on the 1861 census, i accept the 'problems' outlined with this, but equally it is an offical document. Yes, you want to ignore that, but doing so is in itself speculation.

It would be more troubling if he used a totally different name, I would see your point.

I dont see how it is being any more willfully obtuse than to say that he used it as he was the Ripper.

Whenever there are opinion polls, the majority of people seem to opt for 'unknown local man' -so someone who wasn't suspected by contemporary senior figures at the time. This doesn't appear to cause anybody any problems ? Whoever the Ripper was, he must have lived with/next to loads of people in such an overcrowded city, none of whom suspected him. It seems to me that 'no contemporary suspicion' is no sort of argument at all. Surely we can agree on that ?

When we are thinking of this type of person we do not mean someone the police met in the course of the investigation, that kind of person is known. Contemporary suspiscion is one of the few things we have in terms of nailing the Ripper. There is very little else that is solid. That is the problem really.

Of course one tries to take evidence from various different sources ! Taking evidence from only one source at your own discrimination would hardly be better, would it

no indeed. but where we fall down on occasion is to say speculation is evidence, Charles Cross gave a name he didnt use, he was trying to hide something maybe it was the fact he was the ripper, for example, relies on speculative evidence only.

I have no idea if Lechmere was JTR or not, but he is a bloody good suspect

I fail to see what makes him a good suspect, but we can agree to disagree

You could call it willfully obtuse, i see it more as a failure on the part of those putting him forward.

And last time I checked, the burden of proof was on those who are putting someone forward.

Jenni

[Phil H]

I really do despair. Either people can't or won't understand what I write.

John gets it, but I don't think you are even trying Ruby.

But your points a) and b) were hard facts ! (and what facts !) Its all your 'innocent explanations' which would be conjecture and speculation !
You are outrageous, Phil !

But any interpretation of them is speculation and conjecture. Any fact (as EH Carr made clear in his "What is history?" decades ago) becomes less certain when considered in juxtaposition to any other fact. These are all basic tenets familiar to any serious student of history.

I am not going to refute your long post replyling to mine since most of what you say is "daft" not to put too finer point on it. One point demonstrates why:

Was Dr Banardo ever found standing over a warm body giving a false name ? Nope. Dr Banardo was famous -which gives a motivation for people to put him forward as a suspect- Lechmere wasn't. To put them in the same sack is being plain silly.

But Barnardo HAS been promoted as a "suspect" and did meet Stride (it appears) before her death. You try to use my analogy to dismiss what I say - but I do not (never have) asserted Barnardo's candidacy. I simply suggested that Crossmere falls into the same category of RECENTLY (ie long after the 1880/90s) identified suspects, rather than into the historically recorded individuals (named above) who must, in scholarly terms, take precedence. they have standing, modern suspects do not unless peer review establishes them as worthy of such status. I argue Lechmere does not warrant such standing, albeit he is of interest.

To suggest somehow that I support Barnardo as a "suspect" or that my post can be interpreted as doing so, shows how inadequately you read what I wrote.

If a case is made that someone should be regarded as a suspect in the Whitechapel murders then it naturally follows that they are being built up - potentially - as bring Jack the Ripper. That is a little unavoidable.

Think again - the terminology here is difficult because not agreed. Druitt, Tumblety and Kosminski are contemporary suspects named in the record, they thus have an ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT standing from those proposed more recently. No question of that.

Rob Houses' book on Kosminski is an excellent example of seeking to understand why Kosminski might have been a suspect. It does not argue the case for him as JtR.

You are seeking to promote Crossmere as the Ripper - there is insufficient evidence (as against conjecture) to do so IMHO.

Studying WHY the police suspects became suspects - how they came to the attention of the police, what made them suspicious or likely candidates - is quite a different activity from trying at this remove to establish who was most likely to have dunnit.

Precisely and that is as much as we can do.

There is a word for what you Crossmerites are doing and that is "sophistry". What you are doing is akin to that and it is a dangerous intellectual game to play. Everything becomes distorted by the reflecting mirror of your theses and the critical faculty is lost.

I do not dismiss Cross/Lechmere by any means, but perfervidly (look it up!) pushing a notion into a thesis is more than the material will bear - at this stage.

Phil

[Jenni Shelden]

Hi Ruby


It would indeed be ironic ! However my accusation of 'bloodymindedness' was more intended to suggest that if Ed or Fishy made posts saying 'white', some posters here would automatically say 'black'. Conversely, if Begg or Fido wrote a post, then some posters would sit up to attention and consider its merits solely because of the person who wrote it. Can't we leave personalities out of it and consider each idea on its merits ?

I admire Stuart Evans et al, as anybody interested in the Ripper case must do, but the wheel turns and they don't have a monopoly on the case by some divine right.

( and before someone accuses me of just supporting Ed and Fish, I can assure them that if we were discussing Hutchinson, then I would find myself arguing against them).



That is what I for one was doing.

I dont see why people keep mentioning other suspects.

This suspect can be considered on his own merits, he's better than X isnt an argument

Jenni

[Phil H]

Very wise, Jenni. Phil