Hutch's Man

[Wickerman]

I have no reason to trust the Telegraph less than the Daily News, as the Telegraph is a generally reliable source. Besides, there is no earthly reason why the Telegraph should have inserted the words "further on" if they hadn't actually been uttered by the witness.

Remarks like this intrigue me.
The Daily Telegraph, Times, Standard, Morning Post, Daily News all had equal standing with regard to accuracy and respectability. So, I can't imagine where you get that idea, I hope it wasn't from another poster who also tried to denigrate the Daily News, and purely because they wrote something he did not agree with.

If the couple, possibly Mary Kelly and her killer, had indeed entered Miller's Court, don't you think that this rather more "interesting", if not important, fact would have appeared in every paper, and not just as an edited, summarised sentence the Daily News?

No I don't, and the reason is quite simple.
No-one had any idea that Kelly had been out after her liaison with Blotchy.
This was why Hutchinson's story was such a revelation, no-one thought Kelly was on the street.
Sarah Lewis didn't even mention this couple in her initial police statement. Lewis did not know Mary Kelly so it's not like she was there because she saw Mary out with a man - she had no idea who the female was. She was summoned because she saw a man loitering opposite the soon-to-be crime scene.
The passing of this couple was inconsequential to her story, they only became of supreme importance after Hutchinson told the police who that couple actually had been.

Or is it not more likely that, when reporting of LEWIS's "passing up the court", the DN reporter/editor made a mistake and thought that the couple had done so as well?

The DN did not include Lewis saying she went in the court, only the couple.

There is another small point. Lewis thought the loiterer was "waiting for someone". This makes it clear she did not associate the man standing opposite with the couple who she had just seen enter the court. Which suggests the man was not standing there at that time.
Yet, by the time Lewis arrived at the passage, "she then noticed a man standing opposite". This suggests a small measure of time between the couple walking up the passage, and the arrival of the loiterer opposite, & Lewis herself.

This again is consistent with what Hutchinson said about following behind Astrachan & Kelly.

[Wickerman]

You didn't quote the inquest.

I asked because you might have repeated a mis-quote made in the press at the time and might have been influenced by it.

Ok, fair enough.
The inquest record c/w press coverage of this same inquest is, the inquest. All of it together is the inquest.
Some press were at the inquest so it is necessary to include their observations with the less than satisfactory official record.
Some theorists will choose to follow one account and dismiss the rest. Historians use all available accounts, that's the correct approach and, it is the best way to expose any internal errors.

You forget I'm relatively new to the finer details of the case and so come to the evidence objectively, take pinches of salt but also link information together that create a wider picture. Aside from who saw what couple and whether or not they went up the passage, I objectively have an issue with Hutchinson's account separate from any crossover with Lewis' statement

The actual inquest record, recorded by the Coroner's deputy, Mr Hodgkinson, was written down in long-hand, so there is less detail in the official account than what we read in the press who used short-hand. So we have to collate all the sources to obtain a more complete picture.

I have spoken with people who have experience with 19th century inquests, and also held detailed discussions with the head archivist at the National Archives in London.
Here is just a small section of the original record by Hodgkinson. The red circles indicate "-" a dashed line. This 'dash' replaces a question, by either the coroner or a member of the jury. Hodgkinson did not include the question, this was standard procedure. The court was only interested in the witness's answers.



Some here on Casebook have thought Sarah Lewis was telling a continuous story, but she was not. You cannot do that in court. You speak when you are spoken to, and only answer the question posed to you.

After giving the court her personal details Lewis is asked a question......(unknown)
She replies with:

"I know Mrs Keyler in Millers Court. I was at her house at half past 2 on Friday morning she lives at No 2 in the Court on the left on the first floor I know the time by having looked at Spitalfields Church clock as I passed it"

So she is at the Keylers at 2:30, but she didn't tell the court how she got there.
Then comes the next question......(unknown)
And she replies:

"When I went in the court I saw a man opposite the Court in Dorset Street standing alone by the Lodging House. He was not tall – but stout – had on a wideawake black hat."

If you notice, she is backtracking, not telling a continuous story, but going back to how she approached the court.
Then another question......(unknown)
To which she replies:

"I did not notice his clothes"

The above questions seemed to concern the loiterer, then the next question.......(unknown)

"another young man with a woman passed along"

As we can see Lewis was continually backtracking, this means she noticed this couple before she saw the loiterer. And this interpretation is supported by other press accounts.
I remember you saying something about Lewis mentioning the loiterer THEN talking about the couple, so the couple must be further away.
Her story was backtracking, not flowing forward so she saw the couple before she saw the loiterer.

As the presence of this couple seem to be of no consequence to the coroner, he asks again about the loiterer, question.......(unknown)

"The man standing in the street was looking up the court as if waiting for some one to come out, I went to Mrs [Kelseys – deleted] Keylers I was awake all night in a chair I dozed I heard no noise I woke up at about half past three"

I thought it necessary to point this out so you can see that there is no indication here that a couple was further away down Dorset street. She only mentioned them after talking about the loiterer, because the coroner asked.

He is walking away from the spot he says he saw Mary Kelly and Astrachan man meet. He then apparently jumps to a location that gives him no eyeline to their position. How does he see Astrachan put his arm around Mary Kelly? How does he get to the Queen's Head pub while simultaneously witnessing Astrachan's approach when he has his back to him?

Never mind the detailed description of Astrachan, the logistics of Hutchinson's account are fairly sketchy.

You seem to be talking about the initial meeting in Commercial street now?

[harry]

Jon,in post 69 you report Lewis as being a minute or two behind.How far,in yards, would that be?

[harry]

Correct the above,post 69 has someone else reporting you said a minute or two behind.Did you say that?My question though is still the same.What is the distance in yards?

[Sam Flynn]

So, I can't imagine where you get that idea, I hope it wasn't from another poster who also tried to denigrate the Daily News, and purely because they wrote something he did not agree with.

I didn't get the idea from anyone else, and I'm not trying to denigrate the Daily News. You may as well suppose that I'm denigrating all the other papers who didn't report the - surely important - "fact" that Lewis saw a couple, who could well have been Kelly and her killer, entering Miller's Court. To me, it speaks volumes that the majority of reports, and indeed Lewis's witness statement, simply do not mention this couple entering the Court.

[Sam Flynn]

Ah, so you can accept Hutch was standing watching a man & a woman in Dorset street?

If Hutch was speaking the truth, the couple he saw had already entered Miller's Court by the time he started his vigil, and he reports seeing nobody else enter the Court during that vigil - not Sarah Lewis, even, and certainly not another couple.

[Sam Flynn]

The DN did not include Lewis saying she went in the court, only the couple.

This is what I believe to be the origin of the error in the Daily News. LEWIS says that she entered the court - we know that she did from all the other sources - and shortly before doing so she saw "Hutch" and the couple in Dorset Street. My contention is that the DN journalist/editor, in creating their précis version of events, conflated and confused LEWIS's entry into the court with the couple's entering the court.

[Sam Flynn]

"another young man with a woman passed along"... As we can see Lewis was continually backtracking, this means she noticed this couple before she saw the loiterer.

Irrespective of when she saw them, "passing along" is not the same as "entering Miller's Court". If she'd have seen anything as interesting/significant as that, then she'd surely have said so. "Passing along" means just what it sounds like - passively walking by, as opposed to actively turning 90° and entering the passage to the scene of a major crime.

[harry]

Hutchinson says the couple stood for about three minutes outside the court before entering.
If Lewis is talking about the same couple,she also would have seen the couple stationary before they entered the court?.She only reports people moving.

[Sam Flynn]

She only reports people moving.

Indeed "passing along".

[Joshua Rogan]

This is what I believe to be the origin of the error in the Daily News. LEWIS says that she entered the court - we know that she did from all the other sources - and shortly before doing so she saw "Hutch" and the couple in Dorset Street. My contention is that the DN journalist/editor, in creating their précis version of events, conflated and confused LEWIS's entry into the court with the couple's entering the court.

The DN account doesn't actually say that the loiterer was in Dorset St, but "In the doorway of the deceased's house I saw a man in a wideawake hat standing"

[Sam Flynn]

The DN account doesn't actually say that the loiterer was in Dorset St, but "In the doorway of the deceased's house I saw a man in a wideawake hat standing"

Indeed, and this is almost certainly another error on the DN's part. The general drift of all the other sources suggest that what Lewis actually said was something like "[as I entered] the doorway of the deceased's house I saw a man [opposite] in a wideawake hat". In compressing the text, the DN gives the erroneous impression that Wideawake Man was actually standing at the entrance of Number 13! Again, there's no way on earth that all the other papers, or Lewis's official testimony, is going to miss out as significant a detail as that. The only conclusion is that the DN account of the entire Lewis episode is too garbled to be trusted.

[Michael W Richards]

Why would the Ripper be skulking in a "domestic" dead-end like Miller's Court, when he would have been more likely to find vulnerable, homeless victims on the open streets? This tactic worked for him on three/four other occasions, and it would work for the (non-Ripper) Whitechapel murderers too.

To use this argument in another Canonical murder, why would Liz Stride solicit on a street that is deserted when much busier nighttime thoroughfares were available?. Your argument of "whats in this scenario for the killer" is good, it does help illuminate the question of what circumstances existed so that the killer found himself in Millers Court that night. He wasn't trawling...like I suspect Polly and Annies killer was. In Strides case it opens discussion about what the circumstances existed to have her there, at that location, at that time, on that particular night.

[Sam Flynn]

To use this argument in another Canonical murder, why would Liz Stride solicit on a street that is deserted when much busier nighttime thoroughfares were available?

It's a perfectly legitimate question to ask, although it might be more apposite to ask whether it's more likely that Stride and her man (might not have been a punter) met up somewhere more obvious, e.g. Commercial Road. This then leads us to question how/why they ended up in the gateway to Dutfield's Yard and not somewhere more conducive to "transactional" sex or a romantic assignation, whatever the case might have been. Perhaps they were on their way to somewhere more appropriate, but things got out of hand. So many possibilities!

Anyhow, that's a question for a Stride thread.

[Harry D]

But this does not mean that A man was Mary's killer, I still believe that she was killed much later then medical opinion. and most likely met her killer around 9.am.

Why? The killer never struck that late before. Granted, he didn't need the cover of darkness if he was acting indoors, but killing that late still increased the odds of getting caught. There are more people around, more chance of a disturbance, and harder to hide any bloodstains in broad daylight. I'm not convinced.