The Manchester Murders

[MrBarnett]

SF,

Can you clarify: are you saying that you believe a Victorian would have been less aware of the distinction between Manchester and Bolton than 21st century Brits such as Gareth and myself?

Gary

Not to mention modern day Boltonions (if that’s a word):

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/11542130.amp/

[MrBarnett]

That's an interesting premise with regard to weather in the Victorian era. I'd like to see proof though because I think a Victorian would say Manchester, if he went there. Is it any different that someone going to London and Camden and saying where the weather was bad? Of course, I can double check the records and documents and literature for myself.

SF,

Can you clarify: are you saying that you believe a Victorian would have been less aware of the distinction between Manchester and Bolton than 21st century Brits such as Gareth and myself?

Gary

[Sam Flynn]

I would agree with this argument as a case can be made that a "hoaxer" would have had to have had extensive profiling knowledge, behavioral and geographic, on a par with anything today.

I doubt that the alcoholic loser John Humble had any such sophistication behind his mention of the Preston murder in his hoax "Yorkshire Ripper" letter of 1978.

[Trapperologist]

The Manchester murders are a strange detail but I assume the hoaxer wanted to account for the lack of kills closer to home and bookend the Whitechapel series....

I would agree with this argument as a case can be made that a "hoaxer" would have had to have had extensive profiling knowledge, behavioral and geographic, on a par with anything today.

[Trapperologist]

I think we both forgot we're actually talking Farnworth which is in metropolitan Bolton but is 3.7 km away from Bolton and 12.1 km away from Manchester. Bolton, okay, but "Farnworth was cold and wet"? No.

[Trapperologist]

That's an interesting premise with regard to weather in the Victorian era. I'd like to see proof though because I think a Victorian would say Manchester, if he went there. Is it any different that someone going to London and Camden and saying where the weather was bad? Of course, I can double check the records and documents and literature for myself.

[Sam Flynn]

I don't think it likely that anyone would generalise Bolton as "Manchester" at any time.

[Trapperologist]

For the sake of argument, let’s say the author had a murder in Bolton in mind.

Would a modern hoaxer trying to look Victorian say the weather was bad in Bolton after visiting Manchester and Bolton? Or would a modern hoaxer with today’s weather services make the differentiation?

[Sam Flynn]

Even if he’s talking about the weather being cold and wet?

I'd have thought that Bolton is Bolton, whatever the subject. I daresay the only circumstance under which I'd think of Manchester in connection with Bolton would be if I were asked this question on a game-show: "Complete the following; Bolton is a town in the metropolitan county of Greater ____". And even that isn't equating/conflating Bolton with Manchester.

[Trapperologist]

Even if he’s talking about the weather being cold and wet?

[Sam Flynn]

Was Bolton considered part of Manchester or Greater Manchester in 1888?

The answer appears to be a resounding yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Manchester

But Bolton was a sufficiently large conurbation to be called by its own name and, given the town's importance to the cotton industry, a cotton merchant like Maybrick would surely have referred to it as Bolton, rather than the generalisation of "(Greater) Manchester". The diarist almost certainly meant Manchester, period.

[Harry D]

The Manchester murders are a strange detail but I assume the hoaxer wanted to account for the lack of kills closer to home and bookend the Whitechapel series. It was a long time ago, records are lost, crimes are unreported, they could use the "evidence of absence" argument to cover themselves.

[Trapperologist]

Here's Betsy Dyson's Death Certificate. Date of death is wrong. She died February 12th.

[Trapperologist]

Betsy Dyson died on February 12.

The Last Victim book says Maybrick took the lease in Battlecrease in February 1st.

Doesn’t that mean he signed the lease in the 1st? That doesn’t leave much time to move in and then go to Manchester or Bolton to commit murder.

[MayBea]

Was Bolton considered part of Manchester or Greater Manchester in 1888?

The answer appears to be a resounding yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Manchester

Places such as Bury, Oldham and Bolton played a central economic role nationally, and by the end of the 19th century had become some of the most important and productive cotton-producing towns in the world.[17] However, it was Manchester that was the most populous settlement, a major city, the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods,[18][19] and the natural centre of its region.[20] By 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world";[19] and by 1848 urban sprawl had fused the city to its surrounding towns and hinterland to form a single continuous conurbation.[16]

The suspicious Bolton death cannot therefore be ruled out without unproven assumptions.