Witnesses are no use in JtR case

[Ben]

With respect, Fish, I had entertained some hope that you might have embraced my suggestion to steer the thread back on course rather than engaging in unnecessary repetition. By citing a few very extreme examples of people with unusual abilities, you're only highlighting the equally extreme improbability of Hutchinson being able to memorize all that he alleged, including many items that he couldn't even have noticed. That simple lying is the better explanation by far is demonstrated by the utter futility and pointlessness of me compiling a list of people who have told lies. Astonishingly, this tends not to make the headlines, given its frequency of occurrence. As we've discussed in the past, I don't agree that Hutchinson spent any "considerable time" observing the Astrakhan man. The only window of opportunity in which to notice details of clothing and accessories was that fleeting moment as he passed in close proximity to a lamp on the corner of Fashion Street. That hardly compares with a 20-minute long excursion that was specifically intended as a memorization attempt.

And yes, it does "matter" that Wiltshire was autistic because it directly contributed to his extraordinary ability.

Perhaps - but apparently wrongly so.

No, I don't think so.

Here's an interesting extract from the Encyclopedia of Applied Pshychology, Vol 3:

"A witness' attention may be impaired or distracted if he or she focuses on the psychological stress or fear accompanying a criminal or otherwise traumatic event". Even if a witness tries to be attentive, high fears of stress may hinder the accuracy of subsequent identifications".

Meanwhile, back on topic...

[Heinrich]

....
So Hutchinson is cross with himself for not having 6d to give Kelly, .... so his ability to memorize a whole load of clothing and accessories increases dramatically, along with his ability to notice very small and indistinguishable items in poor conditions? The reverse is surely nearer the mark: that a witness in any heightened emotional state at the time of the incident will suffer a decreased ability or inclination to memorize details.

It seems Mary Kelly was in the habit of asking everyone she saw for money. The last person who admits being in Mary Kelly's lodging, Joseph Barnett, also said he had nothing to give her and he was heartbroken about this, if we are to believe him.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"With respect, Fish, I had entertained some hope that you might have embraced my suggestion to steer the thread back on course rather than engaging in unnecessary repetition."

Unnecessary? You claimed that I had made a mistake by using an example with an autist, so I provided people who are NOT autists - but who still succeeded to memorize much, much more than Hutchinson did.

I fail to see how that could be in any way unnecessary, unless you think ALL examples of such people are by definition "unnecessary"?

"By citing a few very extreme examples of people with unusual abilities, you're only highlighting the equally extreme improbability of Hutchinson being able to memorize all that he alleged, including many items that he couldn't even have noticed."

Ben, think a while - you claim that what Hutchinson did was extremely unusual. I think that if I am to exemplify others who can do the same and even more, then by the laws of nature these examples must ALSO be - as you claim - extremely unusual. I fail to see how I could exemplify using only everyday observations, not to any extent out of the ordinary.
Hutchinson´s testimony WAS out of the ordinary. But nowhere nearly as out of the ordinary as many people will have it!

Split his testimony in two parts, for example, by taking away every second item, and this is what you get:

"Description height 5ft6, dark eyes slight moustache curled up each end and hair dark, dress long dark coat, cuffs trimmed astracan. Light waistcoat, dark felt hat turned down in the middle. Gaiters with white buttons. White linen collar. Respectable appearance. Jewish appearance.

Hardly any magic stuff, is it?

The other way around:

"Description age about 34 or 35. Complexion pale, dark eye lashes, very surley looking, dress with collar. And a dark jacket under. Dark trousers . Button boots. Wore a very thick gold chain. Black tie with horse shoe pin. Walked very sharp."

Same thing. Observant, yes, but nothing much out of the ordinary. Consequently, joining the two bits together should not make for any consternation, I feel. It falls way, way short of the examples I have given, and some of them included completely ordinary people who had trained their abilities to remember, that´s all.

I don´t think that this discussion should involve what Hutch could see and what he could not see. We differ in our perception of the light available, and the issue here is not visibility but instead ability to memorize many objects.

"No, I don't think so.
Here's an interesting extract from the Encyclopedia of Applied Pshychology, Vol 3:
"A witness' attention may be impaired or distracted if he or she focuses on the psychological stress or fear accompanying a criminal or otherwise traumatic event". Even if a witness tries to be attentive, high fears of stress may hinder the accuracy of subsequent identifications".

I think we are talking about different things here. I agree that being scared may impair the ability to observe correctly. But what I pointed to was the second BEFORE the fright takes hold of you. And in Schwartz´case, that would be the exact time when he noticed BS man grabbing hold of Stride. At that stage, his focus arguably sharpened. After it, when he started to fear for himself, he would perhaps not have been a good witness, but at that stage, he would already have taken in many things.

So I think we may both be right - but on slightly different matters.

I´m off for some hours now. Will check in later, though, as usual!

The best,
Fisherman

[Ausgirl]

I commented on 'victim' recall, not 'witness' recall - in response to a post regarding victim recall, just to be clear.

Though I can see how shock might figure into say, a female neighbour's recall - if my own neighbour was found in such a horrific state, I would certainly feel some sort of shock, and - were there a well-publicised Ripper lurking about the city - more than a little afraid.

In my experience with studying another brutal and shocking crime which happened in extremely close proximity to neighbours who didn't hear a thing except perhaps for one 'muffled scream' - in this case, a triple, possibly quadruple homicide by hammer and knife - witnesses in the immediate area weren't much help at all, as most were asleep. Witnesses in the house itself were not very helpful, being children in shock and interrogated badly afterwards. Witnesses describing the movements of the victims and persons in the area earlier, however, were in some cases overly helpful - turns out some lied outright, and some inserted themselves into the case to feel important. Witnesses who told the truth provided detailed accounts of things which could have been but weren't relevant, and some reported town gossip that may or may not have been true. Some were clearly more interested in covering their own asses (as Sioban has described) than in helping the case. There were sketches made from eyewitness descriptions that did not fit the main suspects (one of whom later made a confession), but did fit in a loose way some of the people who -may - have been seen in the area at the time. It was a complete mess, and all of it presents a very confusing and obfuscating picture - and this crime was in a tiny town of a few hundred people, very far from the population of London's East End.

One thing I found peculiar was the number of people who would later claim to know who did the crime, or to have other vital information that they were not going to report to police for some reason or other - including the sole eye witness. That was 30 years ago and the crime remains officially 'unsolved' to this day.

I raise this case by sheer example of what police in Kelly's case might have faced as far as witnesses went, and to point out that small but important truths could easily have become lost in an overwhelming mass of red herrings. In this modern case, too, nobody saw a house light on yet it's very difficult to imagine all of it happening in total darkness.

Did Mary Kelly not have a kerosene or oil lamp in her room? It seems a very basic thing to own, in the days before electricity. I realise that's probably a very old question, but I'm wondering why it's not a consideration.

[Fisherman]

Ausgirl:

"Did Mary Kelly not have a kerosene or oil lamp in her room?"

She only had a candle, half-burnt as she was found, as far as I know.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ben!

I would just like to add one more thing to the ongoing discussion about Hutchinson´s testimony. And that is that we ought not forget that we are now comparing his efforts with a chinese fellow, who managed to reiterate nearly seventy THOUSAND (70 000!) figures of pi correctly.

Somehow it is completely ridiculous to even hint at the possibility that remembering forty-odd details would make old George play in the same league. That struck me as I had dinner tonight.

I think the reason the internet is not crammed with people who have managed to remember forty things, is because it is no remarkable feat at all. Therefore nobody even ponders the idea of advertising such a thing there. It´s the ones who remember nigh on 70 000 details or seven chapters of psychology who make these internet sites, not the likes of George Hutchinson. He is not exactly on par with that, is he?

Let´s not loose our sense of proportions here! (Yeah, and I do know that it was myself that posted about the true memory masters, but still ...!)

All the best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

“Unnecessary? You claimed that I had made a mistake by using an example with an autist, so I provided people who are NOT autists”

I’m talking about before that, Fisherman. You know as well as I do that we’ve been through the issue of Hutchinson’s description a great many times. You also knew that to engage me in debate on the issue again would certainly derail the thread and very probably result in another lengthy Hutchinson argument, and yet despite knowing this and despite my cautions, you decided to go for it anyway. Fair enough. It’s not a criticism, but you’re obviously quite anxious to have yet another repetitive Hutchinson debate for some reason.

I’m afraid your extreme examples of individuals with extraordinary abilities demonstrate one thing – Hutchinson almost certainly wasn’t one of them, and that the simplest explanation by far is that he probably lied. We can look at your examples and decide: maybe he was one of those rare people with very unusual abilities, or we can decide: maybe he was like every single other member of the human race and told a lie. I go for the second option. It makes so much more sense than trying to defend this aspect of the statement on the basis that, yes it’s extraordinary, but not as extraordinary as the really extraordinary people.

Speaking of which, some of these hastily googled examples are wildly inapplicable, and usually involve individuals who spent a great deal of time – often years – for the express purpose of honing their memorization abilities, usually to get into some record book or other. The individual you’ve just referred to (again) spent a year attempting to memorize digits for his grand scene. It’s really no use citing a few well-documented freak examples and claiming that they a) make Hutchinson’s claims appear less extraordinary, and b) compare to Hutchinson, who couldn’t even have seen many of the details he mentioned (if he could, his abilities would dwarf any of the examples offered so far in terms of "wow" factor!).

“Split his testimony in two parts, for example, by taking away every second item”

Why?

Of course his statement becomes less outlandish if you take half of it away, but you can’t do that, I’m afraid. You have to assess the statement as it stands, and unfortunately, it contains a whole host of items, many of which couldn’t even have been seen, let alone memorized.

“I don´t think that this discussion should involve what Hutch could see and what he could not see.”

Yes, but we’ve had that discussion several times already.

I don’t believe we can disassociate the implausible extent of memorization from the implausible descriptions of items he almost certainly could not have seen. When combined they point to one unavoidable conclusion, and that is fabrication on Hutchinson’s part, in my opinion.

Please don’t think I’m attempting to stifle debate here, but I can already see this branching out into an all too familiar and generic “Did Hutchinson Lie?” thread, and there is only one end result - Uthållighet Krig!

Best regards,
Ben

[Ausgirl]

Ausgirl:

"Did Mary Kelly not have a kerosene or oil lamp in her room?"

She only had a candle, half-burnt as she was found, as far as I know.

The best,
Fisherman

A candle is more than enough light to see by. Was anything hung over the window? Basic questions, I know. But a dim candle behind a coat or cloth hung across a window would take care of the question of how the killer saw in the dark. And, possibly, how nobody observed any light from her room.

[Garry Wroe]

I think the reason the internet is not crammed with people who have managed to remember forty things, is because it is no remarkable feat at all. Therefore nobody even ponders the idea of advertising such a thing there.

Not so, Fish. Under laboratory conditions, the average person is able to recall seven list items, plus or minus two. In other words between five and nine items.

[Raoul's Obsession]

The 7 plus or minus two rule applies to some quite specific situations.

As you mention, the average person can recall 7 plus or minus two items read out or briefly flashed up on a screen. Basically, this is the capacity of short-term and working memory. What needs to be noted is that Hutch probably had significantly more time than your average working memory experiment (not that I'm saying he had a lot of time) and some of this info would go to long term memory. Secondly, this rule applies to unrelated items - in this case, the items are all on one person, and there will be plenty of cues that enable someone to remember them better by. For starters, he'd be able to group pieces of information together (chunking: one of the many strategies used by people who remember pie to ridiculous decimal places). I reckon he'd do considerably better than 7 or 9 - but it still doesn't put me on the Hutch side of the fence.

raoul

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"I’m talking about before that, Fisherman. You know as well as I do that we’ve been through the issue of Hutchinson’s description a great many times. You also knew that to engage me in debate on the issue again would certainly derail the thread and very probably result in another lengthy Hutchinson argument, and yet despite knowing this and despite my cautions, you decided to go for it anyway."

Please don´t take this where it does not belong, Ben. It was you yourself that started to discuss the Hutchinson testimony, and all I did was to join in that discussion and point to what I thought was a misconception on your behalf. That is what we do on these threads, is it not?

So when you say "you’re obviously quite anxious to have yet another repetitive Hutchinson debate for some reason", you are quite simply wrong. What I want to do is to point out that when you point to the number of things Hutchinson recalled as a nigh on impossible thing, this is not correct.

You see, to point Hutchinson´s testimony out as something that borders on the impossible, we must make assumptions in two fields where we do not have the facts. And none of those two fields are related to the sheer number of things recorded, but instead to other parameters.

When it comes to the numbers of things recorded, we are dealing with absolute, unshakable numbers. All we have to do to judge this parameter is to count how many objects Hutchinson claimed to have observed. We end up with a number of 40, justaboutish, I believe.

After that, we need to ask ourselves whether it is possible to remember forty details after a reasonable period of observation, relating to the time Hutchinson had at his disposal. Checking for comparisons on the net, we will find for example the site

http://www.recordholders.org/en/records/quick-memory/quick-memory.html

On this site, we can take part of the record number of decimal digits people have been able to recall after having seen them flash up on a screen for different periods of time. The record number after having seen the numbers for one (1) second only is 19. Ramon Campayo of Spain did this. The same man is able to recall 25 numbers after three (3) seconds.

Thus we know that yes, it is perfectly possible to remember very many things after just a quick glance. We also know that people can absorb number chains up to close to 70 000 numbers, so the capacity of the human mind in this respect is quite formidable.

Therefore, the argument that a person could not take in the amount of 40 details is not viable as such. It is not until we add the two other parameters I spoke about that we may get a situation where this may be true. These two parameters are, of course, visibility and time.

If the visibility was too low to see that Astrakhan man wore buttoned boots and a gold chain, then Hutchinson could not have seen these things. If the visibility was to poor to allow for recognizing the color red, then Hutchinson could not have seen that the seal stone was red. And if we work from the assumption that Hutchinson had never seen the man before or after the evening in question, then he would not be telling the truth, if it can be proven that the visibility did not allow for seeing what he claimed he saw.

The same thing goes for time. We know that the record amount of numbers recorded in one (1) second is 19. If Hutchinson only had one second´s time to observe Astrakhan man, then it can be argued that memorizing 40 things seems an impossible task.

But - and it is a very important but - we do not have any way to establish either of these two factors! When it comes to visibility, we do not know how much light was afforded. We do not know how close to a light source Hutchinson was as he stooped down to look at the man, and we do not know how much light that source emitted. We do not know how many other light sources came into play, at what distance they were from Astrakhan man and in what angles. We do not know how keen an eyesight Hutchinson had. These are all unknown factors to us.

The same goes for the time. The stooping down bit may have afforded Hutchinson just the one second. Likewise, it may have been five seconds, or more. Hutch also followed the couple intently, and took great interest in the man, by his own admission. Therefore, he may have spent many minutes taking in what could be taken in, under visibility circumstances that we cannot measure.

The only reasonable conclusion must be that what Hutchinson claimed to have done could have been true OR untrue, relating to the visibility and time factors. When it comes to the number of things he took in, however, there can be no doubt whatsoever that it was well and comfortably within the boundaries for what a person may do.

The credibility thus hinges on factors that we cannot estimate more than very roughly, giving us a spectre that allows for both interpretations. Therefore, it can be reasoned that perhaps the contemporary police made the same observation - George Hutchinson could certainly, given that the time and visibility was there, have done what he claimed to have done. And Abberline´s verdict, believing Hutchinson, seems to bear witness to this.

All the best,
Fisherman

PS. I realize that this would fit better under a Hutch suspect thread, but a technical error disallows me to open threads there, so if you want to move the discussion there, I must ask you to open a new thread yourself. The problem has been forwarded to the administrators, and I trust they will see to it soon, though!

[Fisherman]

Ausgirl:
"Was anything hung over the window? Basic questions, I know. But a dim candle behind a coat or cloth hung across a window would take care of the question of how the killer saw in the dark. And, possibly, how nobody observed any light from her room."

There was a pilot coat over one of the windows, Ausgirl. But if the killer was a nightly intruder, please keep in mind that Kelly would have put the candle out before she went to sleep, and thus he would have had to surmise that the candle was there, and bring matches and look in the dark for it before we could have it burning again ...

Also, we know that it was said at the inquest that at a later hour there was no light coming from Kelly´s windows. That, of course, means that there HAD been light coming from them before. Light always finds a way, just like water. It would have taken more than a loosely hung pilot coat to stop the light from travelling out into the court!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Raoul´s Obsession:

"in this case, the items are all on one person, and there will be plenty of cues that enable someone to remember them better by."

Important factor! A gold chain, a seal stone, kid gloves and astrakhan trimmings all have something in common, and thus they would arguably be easy to group logically.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Garry Wroe:

"Under laboratory conditions, the average person is able to recall seven list items, plus or minus two."

If you care to take a look, Gary, at the link I provided for Ben in post 56, you will find that you can take a test in this discipline.
I tried it myself - good fun - and I managed 10 digits after having looked at them for just one second. Who´s "average"?

Please make an effort yourself, and then ask yourself - was this the amount of time Hutchinson would have been afforded in total, after having followed the couple around for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, with an explicit intent to get as good a look as possible of the man in Kelly´s company? Was that all he would have had at hand, a sudden flash, BAM!, for just one second ...?

Take the test, Garry, and you will no doubt see why I question what you seemingly suggest.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Garry Wroe]

The 7 plus or minus two rule applies to some quite specific situations.

True enough, Raoul, but a relevant observation given that extremes of mnemonic performance were increasingly being depicted as normal. Perhaps it might have been better had I cited Bartlett's folklore research or any number of similar such studies which have exposed the frailty of memory in normally functioning individuals.