Choosing which witnesses to believe

[Fisherman]

Dave:

" ... I believe most of our witnesses were economical of the truth in some regard or another, as I understand most witnesses to most crimes are ..."

Really? That´s a new one to me. If you have any substantiation for this, I would like to see it! From what I have heard - since we are speaking of what we have heard - many a witness actually tries TOO hard. Not that such a thing would produce useful evidence, but I would not call it being economical with the truth, at least not intentionally.

The best, Dave!
Fisherman

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
Call me gullible [ what's new] but I have faith in all of the main witnesses apart from Mrs Cox, those included are.
All the witnesses Hanbury street
All [including Packer ] in Berner street.
The observations at church passage
Mrs Lewis/Kennedy, Hutchinson[ yes really] and Mrs Prater 8th/9th November
The exception being Mrs Cox, and her tale of Blotchy, which elaborated to a real toff over the years, simply because she ''described'' the wrong clothing worn by Mary Kelly around midnight.
Mrs Prater described Kelly wearing a bonnet at 9pm 8th, Mary did not own one, but had access to one that evening..note Mrs Harvey's words'' Ill be leaving my bonnet then''...as she only left that item on the eve of the 8th, it would give strong claims to Mrs Prater's version of meeting MJK, therefore in strong contrast to Cox, who had her wearing a completely different outfit.
Regards Richard.

[Cogidubnus]

"Not intentionally" covers it all Fish...If I make a witness statement to the police concerning something I observed yesterday it, subconsciously or otherwise, carries my own interpretation of what I think I saw...it probably does not truly reflect 100% what actually happened...

For example, I may have "seen" a badly dressed, tattooed young man pursuing a girl down a road and concluded that an attempted assault was in progress...On the other hand they may've both been running for the same bus...or she may've dropped her purse and he was running after her to return it...I saw part of a scenario and placed my interpretation on it...

Dave

[Wickerman]

Ah, but if, like Hutchinson's account, it wasn't ultimately "accepted by the police at the time", there is justification enough for a modern commentator to dismiss it too.

Ah, I think we're mixing apples & oranges here.
There's nothing "fantastical" about him meeting Kelly and her taking off to her room with another "well-to-do" stranger, nor him loitering where he did, nor for as long as he did. His conduct may be described as suspicious, but "suspicious" is not "fantastical".

If anything is to be considered "fantastical" it will be the depth of detail provided by Hutchinson.
Ordinary people may class the detail as "fantastical" but anyone with a similar eye for detail would not, nor perhaps would a detective, or private investigator, or anyone in the security field. We might also include someone in a branch of the military (his, military appearance?).
There was nothing to be gained by Hutchinson laying on the detail as thick as he did, therefore, it was possibly reasonably accurate. Plus, he had claimed to see this stranger twice, once at night and one in daylight. So, the detail he gave to Abberline could have been a composite of both sightings.

Which establishes his location at that moment in time - nothing else. It certainly doesn't validate the reason he provided for being there.

Neither does it incriminate him.
Standing around was a common pastime among people who have nothing better to do in the East end. Today we might (some do) describe that as suspicious because we are too far removed in time to appreciate how common it was.

No. Other equally bogus non-witnesses blabbed to the press about seeing men with shiny black bags and top hats, but fortunately, they too were discredited before the inquest took place.

Shiny black bags were a fact of life, lots of men carried them, all shapes and sizes. Where does a "top hat" come into this? I don't remember any witness ever seeing a man in a top hat unless your thinking of Ludwig?

A silk-hat or high-hat is not necessarily a top-hat. The billycock hat came with both a low crown and a high crown. John Best described the man with Stride as wearing a "high billycock hat", likewise Sarah Lewis said he wore a "high hat, a round one", which could well be the same billycock style.
Mrs Paumier said it was a black "silk hat" but not that it was a top-hat, so your objections are once again ill founded.

The inquest witnesses - the one's worth taking seriously -

The "Inquest witnesses" are not all the police witnesses.
We read from one source that the police had over 50 witness statements to pursue. So it would not be wise to assume that what we read from the Inquest comprises the total knowledge the police had on the matter.

His account is not just "very" detailed. It is impossibly so,

Not impossible at all, far from it.

As for the inference that being of military appearance means he had an unusual capacity to take in detail, I'm afraid that strikes me as very tenuous indeed.

Any opinion which offers suggestions as to "who/what Hutchinson was" will naturally be tenuous, some would do well to remember that.

Hey, who's for a long-winded Hutchinson debate?

Can you come up with anything new?

All the best, Jon S.

[Bridewell]

From what I have heard - since we are speaking of what we have heard - many a witness actually tries TOO hard.

Hi Fisherman,

Entirely agree. Witnesses have been known to sub-consciously guess detail of which they are unsure, but which they feel they ought to remember. That's why I'm more impressed than most by Mrs Long's evidence - when she was unsure she said as much.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Cogidubnus]

Ah Colin, but here we come up against the use of "economical of the truth" as a synonym for shading the truth or even lying, (per Spycatcher), as opposed to "economical of the truth" in it's more literal form (with-holding information)...I intended the former, but you're implying the latter...With hindsight I suspect Fish may be doing the same...

But it all contributes to my argument...a witness who tries too hard, supplementing the truth with what he feels ought to be the truth, or what he feels the police want to hear, may inherently be just as unreliable as a witness who for whatever reason suppresses part of the truth, or even lies outright...

I don't envy the poor copper who has to make a value judgement based on such testimony...

Dave

[Bridewell]

Ah Colin, but here we come up against the use of "economical of the truth" as a synonym for shading the truth or even lying, (per Spycatcher), as opposed to "economical of the truth" in it's more literal form (with-holding information)...I intended the former, but you're implying the latter...With hindsight I suspect Fish may be doing the same...

But it all contributes to my argument...a witness who tries too hard, supplementing the truth with what he feels ought to be the truth, or what he feels the police want to hear, may inherently be just as unreliable as a witness who for whatever reason suppresses part of the truth, or even lies outright...

I don't envy the poor copper who has to make a value judgement based on such testimony...

Dave

Hi Dave,

We should perhaps also consider the experience and capability of the officer taking each witness statement. A good statement taker won't apply pressure to a witness to recall more than he or she actually can.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Ben]

Ordinary people may class the detail as "fantastical" but anyone with a similar eye for detail would not, nor perhaps would a detective, or private investigator, or anyone in the security field. We might also include someone in a branch of the military (his, military appearance?)

And yet interestingly, Jon, when Bob Hinton spoke to several police officers about Hutchinson's description, they discarded it without exception as fiction. If you like, I can just copy and paste one of the many past discussions on the Hutchinson description, but I hope it will suffice to remind people that he simply could not have recorded all that he claimed in that time, and in those lighting conditions. Not even the tests for photographic memory require anything like the feat of observation and recollection that Hutchinson, in his discredited account, claimed to have achieved. The extent of "detail" only scratches the surface of the problem - he claimed to have memorized items that he couldn't even have noticed.

I really wouldn't get too carried away with this "military appearance" business. It could merely imply that he had a straight back, neatly trimmed moustache or muscular physique. There is not the slightest reason to think that any aspect of his appearance betrayed an "eye for detail". The Astrakhan man, in any case, is an unsubtle amalgamation of all the "scary" physical attributes that press and public had conjured up. It's akin to someone saying they saw the Loch Ness Monster - green, slimy, with three humps, wearing a tartan scarf and chewing a thistle.

There was nothing to be gained by Hutchinson laying on the detail as thick as he did

Of course there was. It was in the interest of deflecting suspicion in the direction of a convenient bogeyman that his efforts were undoubtedly directed, especially as they ensured that the focus was taken off himself and his own arguably suspicious loitering antics near a crime scene shortly before the murder. One of the Milats submitted an "eyewitness description" during the notorious Australian backpacker murders that was initially attributed to photographic memory, such was the extent of "detail" therein. One of the Milats turned out to be the killer.

Plus, he had claimed to see this stranger twice, once at night and one in daylight.

The latter claim was apparently made to the press only, which ought to raise serious questions as to its veracity. We're talking about minute, fiddly items here. Surely you're not seriously suggesting that that he half glimpsed the horseshoe tiepin in the darkness of Commercial Street, then saw it again on Sunday ("Hmmm there it is again. Yep! Definitely horseshoe. And, oh yes! That's unmistakably a linen collar"), and yet still harboured uncertainty that it was the same man?

Standing around was a common pastime among people who have nothing better to do in the East end

So at 2:30am on a miserable November night, you think he had "nothing better to do" than stand in the street and fixate on the entrance to Miller's Court? Wow. And no, sorry, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this was a remotely "common pastime".

Shiny black bags were a fact of life, lots of men carried them

It was also an element that a lot of transparently bogus, discredited "witnesses" threw in to lend perceived gravitas to their woefully implausible "I saw Jack" tales. There is no reason to think the real killer ever owned such an item, let alone carried the tools of his trade in one. You may be quite right, incidentally, that Sarah Lewis (and others) was referring to a Billycock or Wideawake hat, but then there's no reason to think that the man she described was anything more "upscale" for the district than the local Joe average.

The "Inquest witnesses" are not all the police witnesses.

No, but they were the witnesses who survived the filtering-out process that wisely discarded the nonsense touted by Mrs. Kennedy and chums.

Can you come up with anything new?

I don't need to. I'm using precisely the same arguments and objections that did the trick very nicely when these points were first raised. I'm simply countering repetition with repetition.

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Dave:

" it all contributes to my argument...a witness who tries too hard, supplementing the truth with what he feels ought to be the truth, or what he feels the police want to hear, may inherently be just as unreliable as a witness who for whatever reason suppresses part of the truth, or even lies outright..."

True enough, although the kind of witness I referred to was more of the less sinister kind, simply wanting very much to help the police and therefore subconsciously forming pictures with no true original substance. I found your wording "economical with the truth" pointing to people withholding things, but I realize now that you used it in a broader context.

The type of witness I would warn very much about investing too much in is very much personified by Sarah Lewis. She gave an original statement to the police in which she spoke of having noticed a man standing in the street outside Miller´s Court, and in that statement she was very clear about not being able to describe tthe man in any way.
Later, though, at the inquest, she was able to lay down a number of things about his clothing and bodily stature. The built-in discrepancy inbetween the two statements nullifies her value as a witness, more or less. The added description may well represent exactly what I am talking about - a wish to help out, just as it may represent what YOU are talking about, an intentional misleading. No matter what applies, Lewis´ value as a witness must be regarded as very low. And the inference if we accept that she was adding things to make the police and inquest happy is of course that she may indeed have done so from the outset - maybe there was nobody in the street at all as she passed it. No other source corroborates her on this score, and her lack of consistency urges us to be careful with her as a witness.

All the best,
Fisherman

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
Why do the majority of us, stick rigidly to the opinion that all witnesses are unreliable?
My opinion is instead of dismissing , we should try to make sense of what we have, because the truth is more likely to be amongst all the original statements, then entering the world of conspiracy, albeit some are good fun.
Poor old George H, a witness who has been disbelieved from the very depths of Casebook...and I still wonder why?
Regards Richard.

[Fisherman]

Richard:

"Why do the majority of us, stick rigidly to the opinion that all witnesses are unreliable?"

Beats me. I am all for believing in a witness until that witness gives me a reason not to do so.

"My opinion is instead of dismissing , we should try to make sense of what we have, because the truth is more likely to be amongst all the original statements ..."

However far and wide you search, Richard, you will not find a poster that agrees more with this than I do ...!

All the best,
Fisherman

[Rubyretro]

The type of witness I would warn very much about investing too much in is very much personified by Sarah Lewis. She gave an original statement to the police in which she spoke of having noticed a man standing in the street outside Miller´s Court, and in that statement she was very clear about not being able to describe tthe man in any way.
Later, though, at the inquest, she was able to lay down a number of things about his clothing and bodily stature. The built-in discrepancy inbetween the two statements nullifies her value as a witness, more or less.

Funnily enough, Fishy, although I said that I don't believe in any of the witness statements, there is infact one that I do believe and that is Sarah Lewis ( Oh yes, and Paul in Buck's Row ).

The reason is Lewis's very lack of a detailed description - she clearly wasn't embroidering. The added details were only 'stout, not tall, and wearing a wide awake hat', and a description of the man's body language. So hardly a vast difference, and exactly what might be gleaned from a near silhouette at a distance.

Furthermore, whether you think that Hutch was telling the truth about everything, or you think that he lied about A Man, if he was in Dorset Street that night, then he is clearly the man whom Lewis saw.

I have said before that Mrs Lewis's description fits well with exactly the sort of behaviour that I would expect of a woman walking down a dark street late at night who spots a lone man lurking in a place which she will have to approach : she fixs him from a safe distance to try to ascertain what he is doing and whether he is a threat and, as she gets closer, she keeps her head down and especially doesn't look at him (so not inviting any contact, either verbal or physical) and scurries past. So therefore she would be able to give a description like Lewis's, but not of the man's face nor any detail of his clothing seen up close.

If Mrs Lewis didn't see the man up close, it is believable that she thought that her description was too general to be worth mentioning initially -afterall, very many men must have been 'not tall' and have owned wideawake hats ( I'll put the corpulence aside ).

[Rubyretro]

:

"Why do the majority of us, stick rigidly to the opinion that all witnesses are unreliable?"

Beats me. I am all for believing in a witness until that witness gives me a reason not to do so.

I'll tell you quite clearly (again !) why I don't believe witnesses -because of two personal experiences :

-The first was where a man came to my then shop and stole some clothes..I had spent 5 minutes or so talking to him under the spotlights in the shop. I went up to a man in the street and accused him of being the thief -I was really convinced to do that, since I am very shy. I got the wrong man ! As proved when the real thief reappeared at the shop to try and do it again.
(back to Mrs Lewis -the two men did have the same height and corpulence though !)

-The second was my two stepdaughters who got caught up in a murder enquiry, and had to describe for the Police 3 blokes with whom they had spent part of the evening before (met in a bar), in order to make sketches. When they saw the blokes again, they turned out to look nothing like the portraits -one of them even had a moustache which had been 'forgotten'.

The fact is, if you don't have a very good reason to remember someone when you meet them, then you have only a hazy image. So what hope for a random stranger passed in the street for a matter of seconds ?

edit: oh yes, and clothing and hair fashions must have been so much more similar way back then -just a glance at old photos or films shows that people in the street looked very much less individual than they do now.

ps...In the light of the above, it is evident that Hutch's description of Astro Man is laughable.

[Sally]

I think all witnesses should be taken at face value--unless and until a problem with the testimony comes up

I agree with Lynn.

Having said that, there is I think a distinction to be drawn in terms of how any witness statement is delivered - specifically, whether the statement is elicited by the police or volunteered by the witness.

When the former, the resulting statement is almost certain to be less detailed - less constructed - than when the latter; because it constitutes a spontaneous response. A witness who volunteers a statement after the fact, at a time of their choosing, has thought about what they will say. That type of witness statement is prepared - not spontaneous - and likely to be more of a construct.

Now, whether that necessarily makes the latter less reliable than the former is a matter for debate - it doesn't necessarily follow that a prepared statement is less honest or accurate than a spontaneous statements - it is something to be aware of however.

[Fisherman]

Ruby:

"although I said that I don't believe in any of the witness statements, there is infact one that I do believe and that is Sarah Lewis"

And you are quite free to do so! What I am doing is going by the book; she changed her testimony, and that is it. After that, you are done for as a witness, technically speaking. It does not mean that I am right or that you are wrong; it only means that the police would - at least going by todays´standards - have considered her testimony more or less worthless.

"( Oh yes, and Paul in Buck's Row )."

That´s about the worst guy you could pick for the witnesses´role, I´m afraid! The discrepancies inbetween what he and Lechmere and Mizen says sinks Paul to the bottom.

The best,
Fisherman