Okay,I'll take the bait

[Howard Brown]

In sum, the suspect Robert ‘Roslyn’ D’Onston Stephenson is an interesting one. He associated himself with the murders by being an early Ripperologist and attempting to put forward theories as to why the Ripper killed and who he was. This was sufficient for him to draw attention to himself at the time in both the eyes of George Marsh and W.T. Stead; in the way his knowledge of the murders was perceived to be too accurate by both men. However, against the idea of his candidature, are, most importantly, that the police appear to have dismissed the idea at the time (even though Roots apparently knew D’Onston). Also, against the idea are some of the theories behind how he would have managed to do it (faked illness) and why (black magic). However, readers must be reminded that theories in themselves can be wrong whilst a suspect can be perfectly legitimate. It is for readers to investigate further and decide where they nail their colours and why.

The above is from the recent "blog" which appears here on this site.

Allow me to add these facts to the generic description of the non-suspect Stephenson. Calling him a suspect is unnecessary anymore.

1. George Marsh did not know that Stephenson was in the London Hospital WHEN Stephenson was in the hospital. A cursory examination of the December 24th deposition made by Marsh at Scotland Yard proves that. Marsh says that. Had Marsh known when Stephenson was in the LH, Marsh would have not gone to Scotland Yard with a sample of Stephenson's handwriting.

2. W.T. Stead did know when Stephenson was in the LH and George Marsh proves that when he mentioned this fact to Inspector Thomas Roots on Dec.24th,1888 in the same deposition as the above information came from. Marsh mentions he saw letters exchanged between Stead & non-suspect Stephenson. These letters came from the period of time Stephenson was in the LH. Stephenson was jettisoned from the LH on Dec.7th. Marsh and Stephenson bent elbows together in the early part of December according to Marsh.

3. There is no proof that the police,despite taking down Marsh's deposition on December 24th,1888,actually engaged in any manhunt for Stephenson as a result of what Marsh disclosed to Inspector Roots. Two days afterwards, Stephenson himself appeared before Roots and at no time in the deposition ( The Roots report ) are any sentiments towards Stephenson issued regarding him as a suspect at all.

4. Stephenson's diagnosis of neurasthenia ( which was "mislabeled" by one of the pro-Stephenson authors ) which was not self-administered,but diagnosed by the London Hospital physicians, could not be faked,period. My recent research into what neurasthenia was reveals that only a doctor could diagnose this condition. Check out my blog for the full background on this condition. Stephenson went to the LH with a complaint which was then determined to be "neurasthenia". This condition has many symptoms and no one to date has figured out exactly what Stephenson suffered for that was diagnosed as neurasthenia.

5. As always, it remains to be proven that Stephenson ever practiced black magic. Saying he did over and over again does not mean he did.

Hope this helps

How Brown
www.jtrforums.com

[Rob Clack]

4. Stephenson's diagnosis of neurasthenia ( which was "mislabeled" by one of the pro-Stephenson authors ) which was not self-administered,but diagnosed by the London Hospital physicians, could not be faked,period. My recent research into what neurasthenia was reveals that only a doctor could diagnose this condition. Check out my blog for the full background on this condition. Stephenson went to the LH with a complaint which was then determined to be "neurasthenia". This condition has many symptoms and no one to date has figured out exactly what Stephenson suffered for that was diagnosed as neurasthenia.

Just to clarify, Stephenson was diagnosed with Neurosthenia and not Neurasthenia.

Rob

[Dan Norder]

Rob is correct. I posted the page from London Hospital records in question back in October 2006.

Here is a closeup of the line:



Those wanting to see the whole page (image is too wide to fit on screen here) can go here.

[Rob Clack]

Thanks Dan, I didn't know you had already posted the page from the In and Out Patients book. I did take photos myself when I saw the book in April, but signed a form not to publish them. I don't suppose it will do any harm to post a clearer image of the word.



Rob

[Dan Norder]

Ah, yes, MUCH better. Mine was just an extreme magnification of a low-resolution photo of the whole page. Yours is as clear as day.

I hope this means that all the various conspiracy theories about Harris purposefully misrepresenting the word as neurosthenia when it was really neurasthenia will finally go away.

And, frankly, I think it's especially silly as I have found no evidence that the two words were anything but spelling variations of the same (obsolete) diagnosis.

[Dan Norder]

Just a clarification to my previous post, as I got an email pointing out that it could be interpreted differently than what I intended.

The "when it was really neurasthenia" was meant as part of the conspiracy theory that I want to go away. The claim, as originally made by the poster "auspirograph" and then later Howard Brown (per the reference to "mislabeled" in scare quotes in his post above and in posts of JTRForums.com) was that the form said neurasthenia and that Harris had intentionally put it as neurosthenia to try to make it mean something other than what it really said. That claim, besides recklessly assuming ill intent for something that could be better explained as an error, is just plain wrong.

Harris said it was neurosthenia, and we can see from the photo above that it is neurosthenia.

From the conversation we had in October in 2006 about this topic it was discovered that the people who were claiming that it was neurasthenia were working off a transcription provided by someone who had looked at the original document but had written that word down wrong. It was a simple mistake but one which unfortunately is still being bandied around a year and a half later.

[Dan Norder]

And, oddly, despite the existence of photographs, this is still being debated over on Howard's message board.

I've been reduced to trying to explain the difference between how someone writes a lowercase cursive A and a lowercase cursive O.

Hey, Sam... you around and maybe want to dissect the photo piece by piece and put the A from the end of the word next to the O in the middle in an effort to show that they are, in fact, different letters? It seems like it'd be overkill, but I really am at my wit's end here trying to figure out what it'd take to get certain people to agree that it's an O. (Besides, you seem to enjoy this sort of thing. You could probably could roll out a comparison of all the A's and O's in all the documents even remotely related to the Ripper case in an afternoon.)

[Sam Flynn]

Hey, Sam... you around and maybe want to dissect the photo piece by piece and put the A from the end of the word next to the O in the middle in an effort to show that they are, in fact, different letters?

I'll see what I can do, Dan...

...on second thoughts - it's an "o" alright, trust me. I think Haword would agree.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Sam,

Don't waste your time.

It's an 'o'—as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante's face.

Regards,

Simon

[Rob Clack]

Just to clarify my position. It's always been an 'O' to me. When I started the 'London Hospital Archives' thread http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=589 I mistakenly spelt it with an 'A'. I'm not sure how that happened as I typed the post up in Microsoft Works and had it double checked by a friend and I definitely wrote it with an 'O'. The only reason I can think of how it turned up with an 'A' is that I got a bit trigger happy with the Spell check as Neurasthenia is on the Spell check dictionary and Neurosthenia isn't. Anyway, I spotted my mistake and posted a correction on that thread (post 33).

Rob

[m_w_r]

Hi -

It seems to me that, regardless of the spelling, the diagnosis is the same. Neurasthenia, which I understand is the accepted spelling, is searchable through Wikipedia, and, if I recall my Greek, basically means a weakness, and by extension a sickness, of the nerves. Nowadays we might more likely call this nervous exhaustion. If you Google "neurosthenia", many of the hits describe the same condition; one or two describe a condition "in which neurons respond with abnormal force or rapidity to slight stimuli", ie, a kind of hypersensitivity, but this would seem to be a more modern definition, and perhaps not current in late Victorian England.

The Greek involved in the spelling with the "o" is pretty poor, to be honest - it would be a bit like spelling neuralgia "neurolgia" - but, I suppose, everyone makes mistakes. I know little or nothing about Stephenson's circumstances at this time, or any conspiracy theories regarding supposed mistranscriptions, but it seems fairly clear that the diagnosis was effectively one of nervous exhaustion.

Regards,

Mark

[auspirograph]

The "when it was really neurasthenia" was meant as part of the conspiracy theory that I want to go away. The claim, as originally made by the poster "auspirograph" and then later Howard Brown (per the reference to "mislabeled" in scare quotes in his post above and in posts of JTRForums.com) was that the form said neurasthenia and that Harris had intentionally put it as neurosthenia to try to make it mean something other than what it really said. That claim, besides recklessly assuming ill intent for something that could be better explained as an error, is just plain wrong.

Just to clarify.

Dan is a little mixed up about this issue and has clearly not done enough research on the matter. The image he has displayed here and on the Ripper Notes site is actually an uncredited copy, used without permission, of Ivor Edwards' photo of Donston's Hospital register he took in 1997.

I have never claimed that Melvin Harris fabricated the entry in D'Onston's alleged condition nor have I claimed any "ill intent" as Dan states with certainty. I have always considered that the term was used interchangeably in Victorian times from research, Harris said as much and there was no reason to question that. Andy Aliffe who conducted the research into D'Onston's London Hospital stay for Harris saw the entries first hand and that was good enough for me. Howard made the claim that Harris hoaxed the D'Onston material and we are yet to see his evidence for that assertion. Perhaps if the concern for hoaxes was that pressing the 'Maybrick Conspiracy' remains the best contender.

The scan that Rob has kindly displayed settles the matter. It is Neurosthenia although the email sent to me by the London Hospital archivist was transcribed incorrectly compared to Harris' book, I thought considering the source Mr Evans, it was reasonable to consider if a mistake had in fact been made.

I simply wanted to check the veracity of the published entries in Edwards' book to get a clearer idea of D'Onston's alibi in considering him as a suspect for the Whitechapel murders. What I found in 2006 surprised me and that is where there were to be found marked discrepencies. Dan has clearly confused the two issues but an understandable mistake to make.

The disputed and main issue for me at least, is not the condition of D'onston's
illness as there is supporting documentation on his 'tremours' by a reliable witness, Inspector Roots in his 26 December 1888 police summary report. The contested issue was D'Onston's ward placements and why they were not published accurately by Edwards as he was aware of D'Onston's letter to the City Police dated 16 October 1888 and showing the return address of the correct ward Currie. And we are yet to get a convincing response to this discrepency. Was it a mistake or was it simply suspect bias that clouded the issue in a published work on D'Onston?

We may never know if the debate remains fixated on ambiguous Victorian medical terminology at the exclusion of other considerations for his status as a suspect for the Whitechapel murders. I don't think he was the Ripper but a reasonable case can be made for the murder of Mary Ann Nichols close as it is to the London Hospital.

[Dan Norder]

Unfortunately, it is Spiro who is confused here... The photo I posted is of a public domain document from the Royal London Hospital well out of copyright. As such it needed no permissions or credits (except to state that it was the document from the hospital, which of course was stated). The accuracy of it has never been disputed by the hospital or any researcher who has actually seen the document. Spiro tries to use his confusion about copyright laws as if it were some sort of excuse for his mistake in insisting that the document said something it didn't. Refusing to accept the first photo while conceding defeat on the second when it's a photo of the exact same thing showing the same word in exactly the same way is a pretty bizarre tactic.

On top of that, Spiro now tries to solely blame Howard for the false claims that the content of this document were misrepresented (which, as we now know, were not misrepresented). When Spiro first posted his claims about it supposedly being neurasthenia he included claims that Harris and Edwards were purposefully being fraudulent, and tried to assert that the incident was worse than the Uncle Jack document alteration. At this point, when people found out what the document really said and which did not match what Spiro was claiming about it on both this word and also other parts, some people tried to accuse him and Howard of purposefully misrepresenting what the document said. I stated then, as I still maintain, that errors can be and often are inadvertent, so that any mistake Harris might have made could have been perfectly innocent (though the main arguments that he had made mistakes in describing this document turned out to be wrong themselves) and that any mistakes Spiro and Howard had made (or Evans in the transcription of the document that they used in reference) are likely to be accidental as well.

[auspirograph]

Dan's Fractured Fairytales

More prevarication from Dan Norder in the interests not of the 'public domain' but of the self-serving dominions of 'Dan's Domain'...

... The photo I posted is of a public domain document from the Royal London Hospital well out of copyright. As such it needed no permissions or credits (except to state that it was the document from the hospital, which of course was stated).

I see, you are of course entitled to your opinions and delusions based on nothing more than a fractured sense of unreality, but the fact remains that we all have to abide by legal requirements of the appointed custodians of historical archives. Why else would Rob Clark in displaying an extract for fair use discussion responsibly state that, "I did take photos myself when I saw the book in April, but signed a form not to publish them".

No Dan, the photos of D'Onston's London Hospital registers you published on your internet site where the property of Ivor Edwards who took them in 1997 having also signed a similiar form and displayed them on the net in 2006 after applying for permission. These are the images you had revealed.

We are discussing the taking of photographic images of documents, not the documents themselves which are of course a seperate copyright issue.

[Rob Clack]

As far as I am aware, any document over 70 years old have no copyright restrictions on them. When you ask archives about reproducing items they say they own the copyright and once you point out that there is no copyright they then back track and claim reproduction rights. The reason I didn't reproduce any other documents from the London Hospital Archives was out of respect to Jonathan Evans who was very helpful and is a genuinely nice person. Since Dan posted a small section with the word 'Neurosthenia' which was good but not as clear as the one I had I didn't feel there would be any harm in posting a clearer copy and also there was a lot of rubbish been posted lately (on casebook and Howard's site) as to whether the word was spelt with an 'o' or an 'a' I thought it would clear things up for good.

Rob