Mary Jane and Blotchy

[Herlock Sholmes]

If Elizabeth Long did not see her suspect's face, how did SHE know he was Jewish?

She didn’t mention him being Jewish as far as I’m aware? She said that he looked like a foreigner.

[Wickerman]

Or by the colouring and features of his face. My family have looked like foreigners in the UK since we arrived in 1911...
Also, respectfully, I don't think we should parse every word to mean exactly what it says. After all 'it looks like rain' doesn't mean 'These small drops of water look like...'
'He looked like a foreigner' would I think generally be taken to mean 'he was a foreigner'.

The problem is, she was reported to have said "I did not see the man's face".
Mrs Long appears to have approached the couple from the man's rear.

[Chava]

As fashion is often universal today it can be hard to tell ethnicity from the way a person is dressed.
This was not the case in the late Victorian period, in fact society expected you to dress according to your station in life.
Mrs. Long was reported to have said "..he looked like a foreigner", not that he "was" a foreigner. This would imply she was influenced by the clothes he wore.

Or by the colouring and features of his face. My family have looked like foreigners in the UK since we arrived in 1911...
Also, respectfully, I don't think we should parse every word to mean exactly what it says. After all 'it looks like rain' doesn't mean 'These small drops of water look like...'
'He looked like a foreigner' would I think generally be taken to mean 'he was a foreigner'.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

As fashion is often universal today it can be hard to tell ethnicity from the way a person is dressed.
This was not the case in the late Victorian period, in fact society expected you to dress according to your station in life.
Mrs. Long was reported to have said "..he looked like a foreigner", not that he "was" a foreigner. This would imply she was influenced by the clothes he wore.

Well, I don't want to go over old ground, but I did write long ago that Jews and Gentiles were distinguishable in East London at that time and was made to suffer for it, as if I had crossed some red line.

Would you then agree with me that when Lawende described his suspect as a man with a fair moustache and the appearance of a sailor, he was indicating that he looked like a Gentile?

[Wickerman]

If Elizabeth Long did not see her suspect's face, how did SHE know he was Jewish?

As fashion is often universal today it can be hard to tell ethnicity from the way a person is dressed.
This was not the case in the late Victorian period, in fact society expected you to dress according to your station in life.
Mrs. Long was reported to have said "..he looked like a foreigner", not that he "was" a foreigner. This would imply she was influenced by the clothes he wore.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

If we don't know who Aman was, how do we know he was Jewish?

If Elizabeth Long did not see her suspect's face, how did SHE know he was Jewish?

[Abby Normal]

Not as far as I know. He took statements from James Martin and Elizabeth Haynes. Steve Earp did have transcipts of these with Abberline's marginalia on his website, which appears to be knackered and no longer works. The police statements indicate that detectives were sent to Bury's execuation and were ordered to make nothing public. I tend to think it must have been abberline in charge of the investiagtion into Bury.

Really though, the witness descriptions/clothing etc are small fry when discussing Bury. Not only did Bury stab and cut areas the ripper liked (some of the things Bury did must surely be classed as extremely rare and found also on Eddowes), prior to this he seems to have fluked a near identical way of strangling his wife with a cord leaving a mark all the way around the neck apart from a couple of inches to the left of the spine - same as found on Mylett. I find the combination of these things extraodinary sus - Bury has the same sig as the ripper and same strangulation MO as some bloke that took a prostitue into a dark corner and throttled her. Surely Dr Brownfield was made aware of the latter. Shame the file on Bury is no more.

ok thanks!!

[Aethelwulf]

thanks wulf
refresh my memory please... did abberline go to dundee to question bury?

Not as far as I know. He took statements from James Martin and Elizabeth Haynes. Steve Earp did have transcipts of these with Abberline's marginalia on his website, which appears to be knackered and no longer works. The police statements indicate that detectives were sent to Bury's execuation and were ordered to make nothing public. I tend to think it must have been abberline in charge of the investiagtion into Bury.

Really though, the witness descriptions/clothing etc are small fry when discussing Bury. Not only did Bury stab and cut areas the ripper liked (some of the things Bury did must surely be classed as extremely rare and found also on Eddowes), prior to this he seems to have fluked a near identical way of strangling his wife with a cord leaving a mark all the way around the neck apart from a couple of inches to the left of the spine - same as found on Mylett. I find the combination of these things extraodinary sus - Bury has the same sig as the ripper AND the same strangulation MO as some bloke that took a prostitute into a dark corner and throttled her. Surely Dr Brownfield was made aware of the latter. Shame the file on Bury is no more.

[Abby Normal]

Intersting but I find that a bit unlikely. Although Bury went to the police of his own accord, that was in the context of killing someone where he would be the only suspect, short of concocting some cast iron false alibi. I can't see hutch being Bury and going to the police of his own accord when there is nothing to connect him directly to the murder.

If we don't know who Aman was, how do we know he was Jewish? The dundee press said bury had a jewish look when viewed from the side (perhaps the most likely view that any witness got). He was observed in Dundee to wear a tweed suite outfit during the day and change into dark smart eveing clothes; he owned some curious clothes (tall silk hat, silk sash, balck kid gloves, long black fur lined cloak); and the amount of jewellry he wore was noticed by his neighbours in Dundee. I don't doubt hutch's story (after all it is just a man in smart clothes) and wickerman has provided a decent explanation of the delay reporting what he saw IMO. I sort of think it was a confident ruse to get up smart under the pretence of going to the LM's show the next day, or he was just coming back from one his 'smoking concerts'.

I would say the police at the time had a better idea that who looked like who, and Bury was out that night.

thanks wulf
refresh my memory please... did abberline go to dundee to question bury?

[Aethelwulf]

theres more of a chance that hutch was bury using a false name than aman was a real person. besides, aman was jewish, and bury was not.

actually, coming up with a false name and faking aman sounds like something bury would do.

Intersting but I find that a bit unlikely. Although Bury went to the police of his own accord, that was in the context of killing someone where he would be the only suspect, short of concocting some cast iron false alibi. I can't see hutch being Bury and going to the police of his own accord when there is nothing to connect him directly to the murder.

If we don't know who Aman was, how do we know he was Jewish? The dundee press said bury had a jewish look when viewed from the side (perhaps the most likely view that any witness got). He was observed in Dundee to wear a tweed suite outfit during the day and change into dark smart eveing clothes; he owned some curious clothes (tall silk hat, silk sash, balck kid gloves, long black fur lined cloak); and the amount of jewellry he wore was noticed by his neighbours in Dundee. I don't doubt hutch's story (after all it is just a man in smart clothes) and wickerman has provided a decent explanation of the delay reporting what he saw IMO. I sort of think it was a confident ruse to get up smart under the pretence of going to the LM's show the next day, or he was just coming back from one his 'smoking concerts'.

I would say the police at the time had a better idea that who looked like who, and Bury was out that night.

[New Waterloo]

Please don't switch off when I mention PC Spicer, who as you may recall spoke to the press during the 1930's suggesting that he had arrested a man on the night of the double event and who was released after it was discovered he was a respectable Doctor. The reason I mention this is that Spicer describes the man as having 'rosy cheeks' and interestingly that he wore a gold watch and chain. Apparently he was arrested very close to James Hardiman (13 Heneage Street) who has also been suggested as a suspect. Often witnesses are debated at length. some are believed some are not but why is PC Spicer always considered as unreliable. He is no more unreliable than many. Rosy cheeks (blotchy) possible similarities with descriptions. Sacked from the Police and went to live in Woodford Green as a gardener. I know I am not helping much but just thought it worth a mention.

[Abby Normal]

Assuming Aman is who the police are referring to below there is an interesting addition to Hutch that seems like the police belived him:

• Scotland Yard felt that “his description was very like that of the man who had been speaking to the young woman Kelly on the night of the crime”
• Scotland Yard “had established the fact that he was missing from his lodgings on the night that Marie Kelly was done to death in her home in Dorset Street”

theres more of a chance that hutch was bury using a false name than aman was a real person. besides, aman was jewish, and bury was not.

actually, coming up with a false name and faking aman sounds like something bury would do.

[Aethelwulf]

Those comments are from Hastings' research on bury.

[Wickerman]

Assuming Aman is who the police are referring to below there is an interesting addition to Hutch that seems like the police belived him:

• Scotland Yard felt that “his description was very like that of the man who had been speaking to the young woman Kelly on the night of the crime”
• Scotland Yard “had established the fact that he was missing from his lodgings on the night that Marie Kelly was done to death in her home in Dorset Street”

Those points do fit Joseph Isaacs, he was known to dress up 'above his station', he was a 'middle-aged Jew', he did live in the area (just off Dorset St.), he was known to have worn a gold watch chain, but missing the actual watch. It was reported that when the police finally laid their hands on him they thought they had collard Jack the Ripper. Sadly though, Joseph Isaacs had spent that Thursday night in a jail in Barnet. So it was not possible that he was the man described by Hutchinson.

[Wickerman]

Indeed, you can understand his reluctance to come forward. Perhaps this is one of the reasons it took three days for him to approach the police

But did it though?
It only looks that way if we think Hutchinson knew Kelly had been murdered in the early morning, and this is what theorists assume he knew. Yet neither the press, police or public believed this, in fact as I've pointed out a number of times, everyone was under the impression Kelly had been murdered after 9:00am Friday morning.
This fact puts a different face on the problem.

The situation on Friday & Saturday was that witnesses had seen Kelly alive late Friday morning, so this is what Hutchinson would also have known.
She was (apparently) killed after 9:00 am, and he had only seen her between 2-3:00 am, so there's no need for him to feel the need to make an issue of it.

It was only on the Sunday when doctors finally determined she had been killed about 3:00am, and as we read, it was Sunday when he finally approached a policeman to tell him what he knew.
So the sequence of events fits the facts as we know them, once he realized what he had seen could be of significance, he came forward. Then following a discussion with another resident of the home on Monday he went to the police station.

He wasn't holding out, he simply had no reason to think the man he saw Kelly with at 2:00 am could have had anything to do with her death (apparently) after 9:00 am, once that situation changed (on Sunday), he came forward.