A Cross by any other name...smells like JtR?

[Lechmere]

Very surreal

[lynn cates]

games

Hello Christer. Thanks.

Good suggestion. But I prefer your earlier one--withdrawal.

My favourite games are chess and Scrabble.

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

Hello Christer. Thanks.

Good suggestion. But I prefer your earlier one--withdrawal.

My favourite games are chess and Scrabble.

Cheers.
LC

Oh no, Lynn - I insist! Surely you can produce one sensible post, telling us why a brazen character would not fit in with Edwards and my theory! Or was it the Kürten reference that put you off?

All the best,
Fisherman

PS. No, I don´t imagine your favourite games are chess and Scrabble.

[Fisherman]

Very surreal

Yep. One can see quite easily why Lewis Carroll was brought into Ripperology. He would have marvelled ...

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

games

Hello Christer. No thanks.

Besides, why waste time with games, as you expressed it?

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

Hello Christer. No thanks.

Besides, why waste time with games, as you expressed it?

Cheers.
LC

Because it´s seemingly your favourite pastime, Lynn - and because it is ever so nice to offer an opponent the chance to respond to having had his theory dissed. And - if such matters mean anything to you - because people who refuse to explain themselves after having dissed a theory without bolstering it often come across as having no explanation to offer.

Otherwise, I can´t think of any other incentive. And it IS your choice. It´s just that I would very much like to get an opportunity to clear my (well...) theory from any misconceptions on behalf of those who take a look at it.

Now, what was that again, about a brazen attitude not tallying with my theory...?

The best,
Fisherman

[Dane_F]

I certainly like the story of Lechmere. There are some interesting parts to it and I feel I could be persuaded to believe he is a likely suspect.

One point I did not see mentioned, and someone with far more knowledge please correct me if I am wrong, but his stepfather was a policeman correct?

Would it not make sense to introduce yourself as a person who has a connection to a police officer if you were found over a dead body? Ignoring whether he was the killer or not, I see a person who wanted to draw a direct connection with someone who might have been known in the police force.

For example, my middle name is my mother's maiden name. My mother's brother, my uncle, owns a paint store in a town near mine. Whenever I need work done at my home, I use my middle name to directly draw a correlation between my uncle and myself in hopes of receiving a better deal.

Does this make me Jack the Ripper?

I also have step cousins who on all of their official documents have their original father's last name. However depending on which side of the family they are around they will use one or the other last name.

Heck, my two nephews from my very own brother both go by their middle names, yet on all official documents (even school work) they have to write their first name.

I simply see Lechmere as trying to gain an advantage by using Cross, because of the connection of the name with the police. This is something many people have done and I don't think can be used as grounds for making him a liar/suspect or anything of the sort. However, the other points might be very valid for him being one.

[Sally]

Hi Dane,

Yep, makes perfect sense - and welcome to the forums.

[Lechmere]

Dane
What advantage do you think he was trying to obtain from the police by associating himself with his long dead ex policeman stop father?

[Dane_F]

Dane
What advantage do you think he was trying to obtain from the police by associating himself with his long dead ex policeman stop father?

My father passed away about 8 years ago. He worked at a car dealership. Whenever I go there I still mention his name in hopes it will help. He was well known and liked. People are usually very kind.

There is a saying that is popular, "It's not what you know. It's who you know."

The advantage was in the hopes people would notice the name and assume some credibility to him due to his association. He was found over a body, no matter if he was the killer or not he would want his story to have as much credibility as possible. Its a very logical assumption to make. Certainly more than some sinister plot to try to hide his identity while giving his work information.

Of course, like I said. Other points might very well finger him as a good suspect. I just don't think the Cross name mention is one. People have done this for thousands of years.

[Fisherman]

If Lechmere wanted to draw upon the advantage of having had a police stepfather, he could just as well have used his real name. "My name is Charles Lechmere. I actually used to have a stepfather called Thomas Cross who served as a policeman, but died nineteen years ago".
If somebody remembered Cross, then fine. If not, it would not help him to use the alias Cross. Any policeman who had served with Cross could potentially also have known that his stepchildren had been baptised and were called Lechmere, incidentally.

It´s not as if giving his real name would deny him his history. It only denied the police, and the public not least, access to who he truly was.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

If a senior and very well respected policeman claimed in black and white to have interrogated Lechmere then I would feel bound to accept that and I would have to accept that it diminished the chances of his being the guilty party.

I don't believe you, Lechmere. No offense.

Abberline was bound to use the word "interrogate" when communicating with his superiors for the obvious reason that it creates a favourable impression. That does not, for one moment, mean that he was any less thorough with witnesses with a proven connection to a crime scene, such as unpopular suspect Charles Cross, and nor does it mean that he would not have used the same word in reference to earlier witnesses. "I was really thorough because I said I was", is about as useless as "I'm innocent because I say so".

Any "interrogation" that leads to the formation of an "opinion" before any attempt at verification could be conducted does not sound like a particularly thorough interrogation to me.

So far as we can determine Lechmere did conceal his identity from the police his family and from generations of ‘Ripperologists’.

Not even a remote possibility if he was known socially, and at work, as Lechmere. There is no escaping the reality that a great many friends and colleagues would recognise Lechmere as the true identity of the man calling himself Cross in the papers, and this recognition could not have failed to find its way to the attention of the police.

Should Lechmere’s presumed appearance at a police station to make a statement followed by his testimony at the inquest be regarded as social calls?

It should be regarded as a willingness to provide the name he was known socially and at work by, as he fully expected friends and work colleagues to recognise him in the papers as the man who discovered the body, whatever name he gave. If he stuck with his "rule" of sticking his birth name on all official documents, regardless of whether or not they received a public airing (which all the others would not have done), it was just awkwardness waiting to happen.

Since he was going to be known to the press-reading public as the bloke who works for Pickfords, there was an obvious incentive in using the name he was known by at Pickfords.

Are you claiming that Mizen recognised that he made an error?

Yes.

Regards,
Ben

[Lechmere]

This was a murder case not a case of trying to get a better price on something.
In a murder case is it credible to think that an innocent man would think he would gain an advantage by mascarading under a different name? If discovered it would make him look more guilty not less surely.
I think that is obvious.

[Dane_F]

This was a murder case not a case of trying to get a better price on something.
In a murder case is it credible to think that an innocent man would think he would gain an advantage by mascarading under a different name? If discovered it would make him look more guilty not less surely.
I think that is obvious.

I think that is the disconnect between what you are saying and what I am saying.

You see it as "mascarading under a different name". I see it as well within his right to make the claim he did. He is Lechmere AND Cross by rights.

If a police officer came across the Lechmere name and asked him, "I thought you said you were Cross?" Would his explanation of, "Lechmere is my given name. Cross my step-father's." not been perfectly acceptable? Especially with how fluid names were back then?

Fisherman,

How did he deny who he really was when he provided his correct work information? Or am I mistaken in this point? Would it not have been easier for him to hide his identity by giving a false name and a false work address?

Is it more logical that he used Cross as a means to gain some amount of credibility with the police or that he was acting sinisterly in trying to hide his true identity but to not hide his work information which could lead back to his true identity?

[Fisherman]

Dane_F:

If a police officer came across the Lechmere name and asked him, "I thought you said you were Cross?" Would his explanation of, "Lechmere is my given name. Cross my step-father's." not been perfectly acceptable?

I have much faith that Lechmere would have banked on that. I think this is the exact reason why he chose "Cross" and not Wigginbottom.

How did he deny who he really was when he provided his correct work information? Or am I mistaken in this point? Would it not have been easier for him to hide his identity by giving a false name and a false work address?

You would not know this, Dane, but I have explained this a hundred times...

... but here we go again!

He told the police that he:
1. Was named Cross.
2. Lived at 22 Doveton Street.
3. Worked at Pickfords.

This would certainly have ensured that the police would be able to identify him, if they tried, just like you say. They never did, apparently, since they always referred to him as Cross.
At any rate, what we can see here is that he did not try to totally obscure his identity from the police.
If he had, and if it had been found out, he would have run the risk of becoming the prime suspect. That goes without saying.
He did, however, hide his true name, it would seem.

So! If his aim was not to hide his identity from the police, then why give the name Cross?
Because, I think, he did not want his family, aquaintances and working comrades to know that it was he who had "found" the body of Polly Nichols.

That would help him to stay undetected and unsuspected by those who knew his paths and timings. The police did not look into these matters, apparently, but his wife, for instance, would know that Tabram, Nichols, Chapman and Kelly died along his working routes and quite possibly at times when he passed them. She would also know that Stride died close to his mothers, perhaps on a Saturday night when he visited there, and that Eddowes was slain close to Pickfords.

Therefore, he would be wise to hide that he had been found by the mutilated body of the presumed first canonical victim.

There are two more faint straws in the wind, pointing to him having tried to obscure things from his family and aquaintances:

1. He arrived to the inquest in his working clothes, although he would have been requested to attend the whole day.
He opened up a shop around 1900, he left a significant sum of money behind as he died, he sent all his kids to school; he was a man of some means, apparently, and he would have had other clothes to wear than his working clothes and his sacking apron.
Two papers remarked on this odd thing.
My suggestion is that if he tried to keep his wife and family out of the know, he would have waved goodbye on the inquest morning, claiming that he was on his way to work. Hence no Sunday best.

2. Witnesses normally give their names and addresses at the inquest. Apparently, Lechmere refrained from saying where he lived. Only one paper recorded this, and that was the Star. Not only that, but they also got the name and the number of the street completely correct, whereas the papers otherwise on a regular basis spelt these addresses wrong.
My suggestion is that the Star reporter got the address from a clerk, whereas none of the many other papers published as much as a syllable of it. It makes it kind of evident that he never gave his address in open court.

The outcome of this is easy to see: He was presented in all papers (but the Star) as Charles (or George, the papers got all names wrong to a certain extent) Cross, working at Pickfords. That effectively erased the possibilitites for his wife and family etc to recognize him. Lots and lots of carmen - hundreds of them - worked at Pickfords, and "Charles Cross" could have been any of them to his wife - apart from Charles Lechmere.

Is it more logical that he used Cross as a means to gain some amount of credibility with the police or that he was acting sinisterly in trying to hide his true identity but to not hide his work information which could lead back to his true identity?

I think he simply gambled and won when it comes to the police interest in him. He could have been approached and asked why he had given the wrong name, in which case he could point to his old stepfather and explain that matter.
Otherwise, the police had nothing on him, since he had slipped through the net on the murder night. So he had secured his freedom already, and could only hope to secure staying anonymous fortwith.
Had he called himself Rudolph Wigginbottom of 99 Bogus Alley, working as a shipmate, he would have risked a lot more, and he would certainly have turned the police against him, had they found out. Finding out that he was the stepson of a fellow PC would do his cause no harm at all.

In the end, the case against Lechmere rests on a large numer of pillars. The name swop is just one of them. But just as I said in my earlier post, if Lechmere wanted to impose upon the policemen that he was once the stepson of a colleague of theirs, then the name Cross would not be the detail that clinched it. No matter what he was called, he could rightfully make that claim anyway.

Before we move any further, let´s also lay down that there is not a hint anywhere, not a letter anywhere, no recording anywhere that Lechmere said anything at all about his stepfather. That version of "the truth" is just today´s conjecture. All we know is that he called himself Cross, and that he apparently never gave his real name, since that would have gone into the protocol otherwise.

A final point: since you ask me what is more credible, the sinister or the innocent version of giving a false name, I will ask you the same type of question:
Who stood to benefit most from telling the police that he was the former stepson of a policeman (if this is what he did, which we have absolutely no record of):
A killer who wanted to polish on his image, or a man that was completely innocent and had nothing to fear?

All the best, Dane!
Fisherman