More Tumblety in the Evening Post

[PaulB]

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the definition of primary and secondary sources bouncing around these Boards.

A primary source is a source that was from the time being studied.

That includes newspapers.

You have to then judge their reliability based on the particular primary source's strengths and weaknesses, e.g. a newspaper is there to tell a good story, and so on.

A primary source does not have to be an eyewitness to an event.

Not at all.

Sir Robert Anderson in 1910 is a primary source for the [alleged] identification of a Polish suspect. Whether he was there or not.

What is being misunderstood is the element of second-hand information, of people at the time learning about events that they were not a witness to. But second-hand is not a secondary source, which is a source created not from the time being studied, or not by a person who had been there during the era or event being studied--e.g. likely an historian.

There are important considerations and tensions as to the veracity of a primary source. How did they know what they claimed to know? Is it self-serving, or not? Is it both self-serving and probably correct too? Has a fading memory taken its toll, or not?

But somebody being there is no guarantee of an absolute truth.

For example, we have in 2015 two ex-Navy SEALS who both claim to have been the soldier who shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Sir Winston Churchill is a primary source about Britain in the Second World War. But in his own account of that event he reported on events that he was himself not a witness to, and yet nobody suggests he is not a primary source. He was there and he was a key player, obviously. But he is, at times, a second-hand primary source.

Dr. Tumblety was a suspect by Scotland Yard for the Ripper murders. A strong case can be mounte, based on a range of primary and [early] secondary sources, that he was the leading police suspect of 1888, but that for most police he did not retain that status -- probably due to subsequent Jack murders which appeared to clear him.

Had the American been in a cell during Kelly's murder he would have been 'cleared' earlier.

Is that a fact? No it is an interpretation of limited material, but a logical one nonetheless.

Well done, Jonathan. A clear exposition, for which I thank you.

[Mayerling]

Hi again Jeff,

We also need to take into account how the British Press felt about the World. T.C. Crawford was the NY World's London correspondent in the early to mid-1888's (went back to the US to report on the Hatfields and McCoys), and his autobiography about his few years in London are quite revealing.

Sincerely,

Mike

Sorry to bring up something tangential again Mike, but did you read Crawford's total autobiography? The reason I ask is, he was in London at the time of a murder case that I've always been curious about (and even started researching once) - that of a British reporter named Duncan M'Neill, who died under murky circumstances in December 1887 in France, where he had gone to cover a boxing match. He was drowned, and there is plenty of evidence that he was murdered. There was even a local man who was suspected. But the French police somehow did not do a good job in the investigation (and resented involvement by Scotland Yard). The incident caused a great deal of anger in the fourth estate in Britain because of the apparently bungling, and my guess is that had there been no Whitechapel Murders in 1888 the M'Neill affair would be better remembered today by true crime students.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

Keep in mind, this was a time when Sir Henry Irving and anyone involved in the homosexual subculture enjoyed themselves. Irving's days were numbered only later. Tumblety clearly loved London, because man bonding superseded even husband-wife bonding. I don't see him threatened by carrying correspondences like these, especially since he was from the upper crust (per the diamonds and letters he possessed from prominent figures).

Sincerely,

Mike

Hi Mike,

Actually this is the first time I heard of Sir Henry as being homosexual (in actuality he was bi-sexual if he did have homosexual leanings, for he was married and had two sons, Henry who was a lawyer and criminal historian, and Laurence who was an actor and (with his wife) a victim of the sinking of the "Empress of Ireland" over 100 years ago).

Tumblety, if he went slumming for sexual companionship, presumably would have been wiser to carry a weapon with him into the dens he'd have to got to, rather than letters. Also, when you mention he possessed letters from prominent figures (the ones listed in that pamphlet) I take that with a great deal of salt. He was quack who boasted of how he helped Generals Sherman and Lee (I take he meant Robert E. Lee, not Fitzhugh Lee, or any other member of the Virginia family that served in the Confederate army). "Marse Robert" had heart trouble (he may have had a heart attack shortly after the death of Stonewall Jackson in May 1863, and if so it may have contributed to his performance at Gettysburg - which was good, but not his best. That General died in 1870, so Tumblety could have known him. He cold have known Dickens too, who also died in 1870. Samuel Morse died in 1872 (since he was a scientist, would he have really sought out a quack doctor?).
The Hon. G. Ward Hunt (I believe) may be the associated justice on the U.S. Supreme Court who was appointed in 1874, but whose career was wrecked by ill health (he left the court in 1882, and died in 1887). Ward Hunt is best recalled (if it is the jurist) because he sentenced Susan B. Anthony to jail for a few months for illegally trying to vote in the 1872 elections under the 14th Amendment granting extension of the vote to African - Americans (she claimed the language was broader than that). Hunt probably got his nod to the U.S. bench for his now hideously nasty action toward Anthony. Disraeli died in 1881. The Lord Stanley I believe was the ex-Prime Minister from the 1860s. A nice list - I just can't believe a) he knew them, and b) they trusted themselves at all to his care.

Jeff

P.S.: General William Tecumseh Sherman died in 1891, and the pamphlet existed in 1888, so it is possible that Sherman (who resided in New York City) was aware of the pamphlet mentioning his connection to Tumblety. It would be interesting if anyone digging into surviving personal papers or letters of the General to his brother Senator John Sherman (of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890) or any other family or friends mentions Tumblety at all, and whether if the doctor is mentioned he is regarded as a friend and good doctor or as an impudent fraud.

[Mayerling]

This is an excerpt from a review by Martin Crotty in "The Sydney Morning Herald" (Dec 7th 2013) of Paul Ham's recent opus "1914: The Year the World Ended" (Random House Australia) and it is, I think, relevant for this debate about Dr. Tumblety:

'Ham declares at the outset that there is no single cause for the war, and that rather than try to explain the origins of the war through advancing and defending a thesis, he will simply set out the facts on the page and let the reasons for the war's beginning emerge, as if by some process of natural osmosis.

This does not work. In the first place it is an inherently flawed way of proceeding; what facts is he choosing to include? The selection of stories and personalities included in the book, the chosen contributing factors, will necessarily permit some interpretations and close off others, and leave yet others unannounced. Facts do not speak on their own; they are chosen, marshalled, and deployed in historical interpretation.'

Hi Jon,

Interesting comment on your part - it reminds me that when I was in college I had to read "What is History" by E. H. Carr, the writer on the Russian Revolution. Carr said basically what you said, that to properly write history you have to marshal your facts to present the thesis that you are bringing forward as an interpretation. Just to grab any facts means nothing. I recall he illustrated this at one point by mentioning that a crowd at a street fair in 1851 in some English town (I think it was Bury St. Edmond) rioted and stoned a tradesman who they thought was cheating them to death. Carr mentioned when he stumbled on that story it seemed curious, but that it never seemed to fit into any reason to mention it as a "fact" because it led nowhere in any of his writings.

Of course one man's rejected story can become someone else's fact. But that is why actual history is constantly changing as new sources are found and new interpretations occur. Certainly that is the case when the subject is huge, like the Whitechapel murders or the origins and causes of World War I.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Facts alone will not save us

This is an excerpt from a review by Martin Crotty in "The Sydney Morning Herald" (Dec 7th 2013) of Paul Ham's recent opus "1914: The Year the World Ended" (Random House Australia) and it is, I think, relevant for this debate about Dr. Tumblety:

'Ham declares at the outset that there is no single cause for the war, and that rather than try to explain the origins of the war through advancing and defending a thesis, he will simply set out the facts on the page and let the reasons for the war's beginning emerge, as if by some process of natural osmosis.

This does not work. In the first place it is an inherently flawed way of proceeding; what facts is he choosing to include? The selection of stories and personalities included in the book, the chosen contributing factors, will necessarily permit some interpretations and close off others, and leave yet others unannounced. Facts do not speak on their own; they are chosen, marshalled, and deployed in historical interpretation.'

[mklhawley]

I wonder if everyone here is aware of a certain snobbishness uniting the press against Mr. Pulitzer's New York "World", especially in the articles David found (Good job David!).

Joseph Pulitzer first published newspapers in the Midwest, in St. Louis. In 1882 he purchased the ramshackled "New York "World"" from it's current owner, Jay Gould the Wall Street railroad tycoon who owned Western Union.
Within two years the paper was showing an immense profit due to Pulitzer gleefully allowing it to wallow in the muddy gutter. He had huge headlines, and political cartoons, and printed up on the latest political scandals, crimes, and murders. His methods would all be absorbed in a decade by his younger rival William Randolph Hearst, who would add comic strips like "the Yellow Kid" to his paper, as Pulitzer would to his (hence "Yellow Journalism").
But Hearst really does not get started in New York City with the New York Journal until the early 1890s. So in 1888-89-90-91 Pulitzer has the gutter to himself, and profits handsomely.

The New York Times is moribund (it's big crusade in the 1870s against the Tweed Ring was long over). Dana's New York Sun was the best edited newspaper in New York City. The Herald, under James Gordon Bennett Jr., almost approached Pulitzer and Hearst for a share of the gutter, but Bennett was interested in international politics (especially Irish politics). The Tribune under Whitlaw Reid was concerned with the national scene and policies of the Republican party. It was very rare for most of these newspapers to concern themselves in homicide cases (political assassinations were an exception). Pulitzer was aware of this, and organized accordingly.

You will recall the comments made (somewhat sniffishly) about the "World" reporter who got into Tumblety's rooming house and into his room and found he had flown the coop. The "World" had been starting to develop a staff of ace Detectives who actively went after leads in homicides, sometimes working with the police in New York City, sometimes working on their own clues. In the next few years they would be involved in two major poisoning cases that were solved with their help (that of Carlyle Harris in 1891, and of Dr. Robert Buchanan in 1895) and in competition with Hearst's Journal staff both would help crack the 1897 Guldensuppe mutilation murder. This did bug their more staid competition, which were not pleased at the amount of money first Pulitzer and then he and Hearst made in this (to us) fairly intelligent way of getting sensational news. In 1896, when Adolph Ochs and the Sultzbergers take over and revamp the New York Times to what it is today, they pointedly printed their on the title page: "All the news that's "FIT" to print!!". Personally I think it was sour grapes, but Ochs did save the "Times".

If Tumblety's rooming house on West 10th Street (near Greenwich Village in Manhattan, by the way) was being watched by detectives from England and New York City, and a "World" reporter was able to get into the building despite the landlady, I suspect the reporter probably paid a "retainer" to the New York City detective to help get him into the building. Somehow I suspect Tumblety had to have assistance on this - he was last seen outside the building and boarding an uptown streetcar, but he was not seen carrying any luggage (Gladstone bag?) and such a bag with an abandoned boot was found in his empty room. Somebody helped him!

Jeff

Hi again Jeff,

We also need to take into account how the British Press felt about the World. T.C. Crawford was the NY World's London correspondent in the early to mid-1888's (went back to the US to report on the Hatfields and McCoys), and his autobiography about his few years in London are quite revealing.

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

Valid points Howard. What got me is more procedural, but it bugs me.

I don't know about you, but when get any important correspondence I tend to leave it in a spot in my house I can quickly find it when I will respond to it. I don't carry such letters with me unless 1) it is a personal check I have to deposit in the bank; or 2) it is of a special nature and I want to show it to someone. Tumblety would have been foolish to go carrying around items like mash notes from gay lovers on his person when he could just as easily have left them in some secure box in his rooms. So again, how were these obtained by the police, and what were the circumstances of their detention by the police?

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Keep in mind, this was a time when Sir Henry Irving and anyone involved in the homosexual subculture enjoyed themselves. Irving's days were numbered only later. Tumblety clearly loved London, because man bonding superseded even husband-wife bonding. I don't see him threatened by carrying correspondences like these, especially since he was from the upper crust (per the diamonds and letters he possessed from prominent figures).

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

Jeff:
I just asked the same question myself, elsewhere.
I've always been puzzled why, if the police knew and used the dates ( July 27, August 31,October 14, Nov.2 ) from the first three assignations in the indictment, that they waited until November 7th for the bust.
Could the correspondence which was found in his possession been the only evidence they had of these incidents....therefore, the incident on November 2nd, was what they originally intended to arrest him for...and when they did a little more investigating, they found these letters and added these charges on the arrest ?

Hi Howard,

I don't believe they waited for anything, since this is an assumption there was an earlier investigation. Tumblety was a quack even in their eyes, so why would they expend the effort? He was arrested on suspicion near November 7, they are very suspicious of this 'American doctor' and considered him a hot suspect (for whatever reason), and since they had correspondences in Tumblety's possession of a clear violation of gross indecency, they got the idea to hold him on this (couldn't hold him on the Ripper case just like anyone else). These dates (July 27, August 31,October 14, Nov.2) could have easily come from their interviews with these young men between November 7 and November 14 (thus the reason why they didn't put Tumblety in front of Hannay on the 7th to be transferred to Central Criminal Court because they had yet to speak to the four young men).

Again, they didn't know these dates until AFTER November 7th and the first investigation on this no nothing quack was when they considered him a potential Ripper suspect.

I see the Victorian World attempting to ignore the homosexual undertones of such a male dominated society, but came to a head only AFTER the Cleveland Street scandal. Tumblety was before this, so I see them preferring to ignore it. ...but of course, the quack caught their interest.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Howard Brown]

Valid points Howard. What got me is more procedural, but it bugs me.

I don't know about you, but when get any important correspondence I tend to leave it in a spot in my house I can quickly find it when I will respond to it. I don't carry such letters with me unless 1) it is a personal check I have to deposit in the bank; or 2) it is of a special nature and I want to show it to someone. Tumblety would have been foolish to go carrying around items like mash notes from gay lovers on his person when he could just as easily have left them in some secure box in his rooms. So again, how were these obtained by the police, and what were the circumstances of their detention by the police?

Jeff

Jeff....I agree...considering that all it took for him to do was have his coat rifled unbeknownst to him and a letter nicked...then he's got some serious problems.
The answer may be that he didn't trust his rooms and only set them down somewhere in the room when he was present.
I still think it unusual that the police, and again if this is what happened, waited that long to arrest him if they had the goods on him back in July.

Ciao
How

[Mayerling]

Jeff:
I just asked the same question myself, elsewhere.
I've always been puzzled why, if the police knew and used the dates ( July 27, August 31,October 14, Nov.2 ) from the first three assignations in the indictment, that they waited until November 7th for the bust.
Could the correspondence which was found in his possession been the only evidence they had of these incidents....therefore, the incident on November 2nd, was what they originally intended to arrest him for...and when they did a little more investigating, they found these letters and added these charges on the arrest ?

Valid points Howard. What got me is more procedural, but it bugs me.

I don't know about you, but when get any important correspondence I tend to leave it in a spot in my house I can quickly find it when I will respond to it. I don't carry such letters with me unless 1) it is a personal check I have to deposit in the bank; or 2) it is of a special nature and I want to show it to someone. Tumblety would have been foolish to go carrying around items like mash notes from gay lovers on his person when he could just as easily have left them in some secure box in his rooms. So again, how were these obtained by the police, and what were the circumstances of their detention by the police?

Jeff

[Howard Brown]

Jeff:
I just asked the same question myself, elsewhere.
I've always been puzzled why, if the police knew and used the dates ( July 27, August 31,October 14, Nov.2 ) from the first three assignations in the indictment, that they waited until November 7th for the bust.
Could the correspondence which was found in his possession been the only evidence they had of these incidents....therefore, the incident on November 2nd, was what they originally intended to arrest him for...and when they did a little more investigating, they found these letters and added these charges on the arrest ?

[Mayerling]

What is the thing about the New York "World"?

I wonder if everyone here is aware of a certain snobbishness uniting the press against Mr. Pulitzer's New York "World", especially in the articles David found (Good job David!).

Joseph Pulitzer first published newspapers in the Midwest, in St. Louis. In 1882 he purchased the ramshackled "New York "World"" from it's current owner, Jay Gould the Wall Street railroad tycoon who owned Western Union.
Within two years the paper was showing an immense profit due to Pulitzer gleefully allowing it to wallow in the muddy gutter. He had huge headlines, and political cartoons, and printed up on the latest political scandals, crimes, and murders. His methods would all be absorbed in a decade by his younger rival William Randolph Hearst, who would add comic strips like "the Yellow Kid" to his paper, as Pulitzer would to his (hence "Yellow Journalism").
But Hearst really does not get started in New York City with the New York Journal until the early 1890s. So in 1888-89-90-91 Pulitzer has the gutter to himself, and profits handsomely.

The New York Times is moribund (it's big crusade in the 1870s against the Tweed Ring was long over). Dana's New York Sun was the best edited newspaper in New York City. The Herald, under James Gordon Bennett Jr., almost approached Pulitzer and Hearst for a share of the gutter, but Bennett was interested in international politics (especially Irish politics). The Tribune under Whitlaw Reid was concerned with the national scene and policies of the Republican party. It was very rare for most of these newspapers to concern themselves in homicide cases (political assassinations were an exception). Pulitzer was aware of this, and organized accordingly.

You will recall the comments made (somewhat sniffishly) about the "World" reporter who got into Tumblety's rooming house and into his room and found he had flown the coop. The "World" had been starting to develop a staff of ace Detectives who actively went after leads in homicides, sometimes working with the police in New York City, sometimes working on their own clues. In the next few years they would be involved in two major poisoning cases that were solved with their help (that of Carlyle Harris in 1891, and of Dr. Robert Buchanan in 1895) and in competition with Hearst's Journal staff both would help crack the 1897 Guldensuppe mutilation murder. This did bug their more staid competition, which were not pleased at the amount of money first Pulitzer and then he and Hearst made in this (to us) fairly intelligent way of getting sensational news. In 1896, when Adolph Ochs and the Sultzbergers take over and revamp the New York Times to what it is today, they pointedly printed their on the title page: "All the news that's "FIT" to print!!". Personally I think it was sour grapes, but Ochs did save the "Times".

If Tumblety's rooming house on West 10th Street (near Greenwich Village in Manhattan, by the way) was being watched by detectives from England and New York City, and a "World" reporter was able to get into the building despite the landlady, I suspect the reporter probably paid a "retainer" to the New York City detective to help get him into the building. Somehow I suspect Tumblety had to have assistance on this - he was last seen outside the building and boarding an uptown streetcar, but he was not seen carrying any luggage (Gladstone bag?) and such a bag with an abandoned boot was found in his empty room. Somebody helped him!

Jeff

[Mayerling]

A Question on Police Procedure in England

Today, if someone is arrested, they are searched, and if the arrest has been a legal one (a ticklish area of the law) whatever is found, if it is of an incriminating nature, can be used against that party.

Similarly, if the police have a search warrant for the home of the individual's residence, it has to usually spell out the item that is being searched for (i.e., if I am being searched in my home for a stolen stamp album, but the police find letters I was signing with a forged name to another party, these letters have nothing to do with the search warrant, and cannot be taken into police custody, unless tied to the aforementioned stolen stamp album).

In 1888, when Tumblety was arrested, did the police search his person, find the letters for the four young men, and hold them even if they were searching him for say the Dorset St. Murder?

Or did they find the letters in his rooms or flat in London?

And what made the letters of such importance to them that they retained them if he was initially (as some suggest here) being looked at as Kelly's killer?

Was such police behavior acceptable in 1888? What the search procedure involved?

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Primary versus Second-Hand

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the definition of primary and secondary sources bouncing around these Boards.

A primary source is a source that was from the time being studied.

That includes newspapers.

You have to then judge their reliability based on the particular primary source's strengths and weaknesses, e.g. a newspaper is there to tell a good story, and so on.

A primary source does not have to be an eyewitness to an event.

Not at all.

Sir Robert Anderson in 1910 is a primary source for the [alleged] identification of a Polish suspect. Whether he was there or not.

What is being misunderstood is the element of second-hand information, of people at the time learning about events that they were not a witness to. But second-hand is not a secondary source, which is a source created not from the time being studied, or not by a person who had been there during the era or event being studied--e.g. likely an historian.

There are important considerations and tensions as to the veracity of a primary source. How did they know what they claimed to know? Is it self-serving, or not? Is it both self-serving and probably correct too? Has a fading memory taken its toll, or not?

But somebody being there is no guarantee of an absolute truth.

For example, we have in 2015 two ex-Navy SEALS who both claim to have been the soldier who shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Sir Winston Churchill is a primary source about Britain in the Second World War. But in his own account of that event he reported on events that he was himself not a witness to, and yet nobody suggests he is not a primary source. He was there and he was a key player, obviously. But he is, at times, a second-hand primary source.

Dr. Tumblety was a suspect by Scotland Yard for the Ripper murders. A strong case can be mounte, based on a range of primary and [early] secondary sources, that he was the leading police suspect of 1888, but that for most police he did not retain that status -- probably due to subsequent Jack murders which appeared to clear him.

Had the American been in a cell during Kelly's murder he would have been 'cleared' earlier.

Is that a fact? No it is an interpretation of limited material, but a logical one nonetheless.

[mklhawley]

Hi Mike,

If the 18th November arrest date is incorrect, why did you say that a third Tumblety arrest may have taken place on that day?

Regards,

Simon

Either you didn't get my point or you're up to your red herring ploy. Any further discussion about a possible third arrest, we can continue here:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=5093

So Simon, we have a British source explaining how Scotland Yard received their clue about Tumblety's gross indecency cases involving the four young men, correspondences in his pocket discovered upon his initial arrest on suspicion. If I am correct, you, Trevor, and company, believed there was some sort of gross indecency investigation prior to November 7, even though nothing supported this, especially now.