Hutch's Man

[Busy Beaver]

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.

Maybe he was using the privy. I really don't think the Ripper did go down passage ways, where he would easily have been cornered. MJK's room was what- a foot from the street?, so He probably decided it was an ok place to go, do a murder and take off without being noticed. Which does still lead me to think the killer was local and knew where and where not to go, although the Stride murder was almost his downfall (if he was the killer). So, if he did not go up the court on his own accord that leaves three men who could have been the killer- Blotchy, Astrachan man and Aman/BGB. The Ripper as I see him, would not allow himself to be seen, hence why most witnesses only saw the back of him and these three men were noticed, two with pretty good descriptions. And going back around the round about, perhaps that was why the murders suddenly stopped? I'm done with the brick walls and brick perverbials. Busy Beaver

[Curious Cat]

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.




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.

Whatever the order of the events in her account were given, she still doesn't say the couple entered the passage.

It's a 20-30 second walk from the corner of Dorset Street - by the doors of The Britannia - to the entrance of the passage. If the couple passed along and went into the passage ahead of Lewis then she would've been practically up their backsides when she went through and into the court herself. She wouldn't be able to miss two people stopping at or entering No.13. She make no mention of having such a close encounter with them at such a crucial point. The loiterer and the couple Lewis describes are all in Dorset Street as they are all ahead of her. Only she of the four people enters the passage.

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

Yes, as I said, there is a separate issue with Hutchinson's statement before we get to him possibly being the loiterer Sarah Lewis saw. How can he witness what's going on between Mary Kelly and Astrachan when he's places himself at a location that takes them out of his eyeline?

[Wickerman]

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?

The distance from Millers Court to the east end of Dorset street was just over 100ft (if I recall correctly).
"A minute or two" was just a figure of speech. Lewis was far enough behind that when they paused at the entrance, according to Hutch, Lewis still did not catch up to them. Lewis saw them walk up the court before the loiterer took up his position opposite.
If you are asking for a precise number, you must have a reason.

[Sam Flynn]

Lewis saw them walk up the court before the loiterer took up his position opposite.

That is not the sequence of events we have - at least it's not explicit, so we can only suppose one way or the other. And we also have "further on", remember? Call me old fashioned, but I usually see foreground objects first. Besides, if Lewis saw the "loiterer" take up his position afterwards, why didn't she say so explicitly?

Anyhow, the couple simply did not enter the court or it would have been unambiguously reported in most if not all sources, including her official testimony, and not just in one newspaper report - the same source that would have us believe that Lewis saw "Hutchinson" standing in the doorway of 13 Miller's Court. Whether the journalist, the editor, or both were having a bad day, that particular report clearly cannot be trusted.

[Wickerman]

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.

That's what he said, yes. Though I expect most readers realized that Hutchinson did not wear a watch, as he took his time from the nearby church clocks. Therefore, his "about three minutes" was just an estimate, like everyone else estimates when they don't have a watch.
To my way of thinking, they must have paused long enough to say & do what they did, then they walked up the court. And, what they said & did would only takes seconds.

[Wickerman]

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.

Again, why was it important?
I think you are making a deceptive argument. Of course it would be important if Lewis knew the woman was Kelly, but she didn't.
Had the couple been two unimportant lodgers, as it appeared to the coroner, it would have no bearing on the case. Which is precisely why very little attention was given to them by the coroner.

[Wickerman]

If Hutch was speaking the truth, the couple he saw had already entered Miller's Court by the time he started his vigil,....

Which is consistent with Lewis seeing them enter the passage, but not seeing anyone standing opposite - he had not started his vigil.
In fact, he could have been on the other side of the street walking in the same direction as Lewis, just a bit ahead of her.
Only when she reached the passage did she notice this man on the opposite side of the road, standing.

and he reports seeing nobody else enter the Court during that vigil - not Sarah Lewis, even, and certainly not another couple.

Compare how brief in detail ALL the witness statements to police were, with what came out under questioning at the inquest.
You tend to forget, Hutch's statement was his initial story, it was not what he told Abberline. Which had to be a more complete version.
Besides, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[Wickerman]

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.

What I find odd is, there is not the slightest hint of the existence of a second couple in Dorset street at the time.
They need to be invented, and they have been invented in order to justify one interpretation of what "further on" might mean.
Instead of just accepting that a couple walking some distance in front of Lewis could be described as "further on" from Lewis.

Yet what we do have as a fact is the existence of testimony describing a couple walking up the court. This is being rejected because in order for it to be true it must be written down more than once?
Yet "further on" was written only once, but it is accepted.

On top of this, you question the fact that Hutch did not mention Lewis, yet no-one mentioned this other couple, yet you accept them?

This doesn't look like bias?

How does any of this make sense?

[c.d.]

"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?"

Hello Michael,

I would say because while busier thoroughfares meant more potential customers they also would attract more competition from other women soliciting as well.

c.d.

[Wickerman]

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"

Yes, and the Times wrote:
"...and saw a man standing at the lodging-house door by himself."

Yet, the Echo wrote:
"...She saw a man at the entrance to the court."

One of the reasons to justify collating all the sources, odd mistakes appear on various topics throughout the inquest. No one version can be relied on.
Today, there is still debate on where he was standing.

[Wickerman]

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.

The Times failed to mention the couple seen by Lewis at all.
That's how important they were at the time.

[Wickerman]

Whatever the order of the events in her account were given, she still doesn't say the couple entered the passage.

The inquest record is incomplete, for the reason's I already gave.

It's a 20-30 second walk from the corner of Dorset Street - by the doors of The Britannia - to the entrance of the passage.

Which is the same as saying no-one could follow anyone down Dorset street, at any time for any reason. It's just impossible.
Really?

Yes, as I said, there is a separate issue with Hutchinson's statement before we get to him possibly being the loiterer Sarah Lewis saw. How can he witness what's going on between Mary Kelly and Astrachan when he's places himself at a location that takes them out of his eyeline?

I don't see why you think he was out of eyeline with what he claims. No-one has mentioned anything like this before.

[Wickerman]

That is not the sequence of events we have - at least it's not explicit, so we can only suppose one way or the other. And we also have "further on", remember? Call me old fashioned, but I usually see foreground objects first. Besides, if Lewis saw the "loiterer" take up his position afterwards, why didn't she say so explicitly?

But isn't that what I said?
Her testimony, taken in sequence has Lewis noticing this couple who were ahead of her (in her foreground), before they reached the court.

Anyhow, the couple simply did not enter the court or it would have been unambiguously reported in most if not all sources, including her official testimony,....

Why, what could possibly cause you to think this was important?
It's just two locals out at night.

You do realize that what you argue is straw-man argument?
You are making it important in order to dismiss it, when no-one at the time treated it as important.

[harry]

Just a figure of speech Jon? Why use it?It was just as easy to nominate a reasonable distance.Your one to two minutes was a claim,now when you realise even a minute would equate to about 80 yards and make your reasonings false,you want to discard it.
You continually use Hutchinson as being honest and precise.Now you are trying to turn his three minutes into just seconds.Why could he be so wrong about that,but so accurate abought everything else he claimed?

[Sam Flynn]

You do realize that what you argue is straw-man argument?

No I don't, and no it isn't.

You are making it important in order to dismiss it, when no-one at the time treated it as important.

I'm thinking things through.

In fact, I've thought things through, and have nothing more to say, other than - you're wrong.