Prater/Lewis/Hutchinson/Cox

[Fisherman]

Chava!

From Casebook´s Mary Kelly timeline:

"12:30 AM: Catherine Picket, a flower seller who lives near Kelly, is disturbed by Kelly's singing. Picket's husband stops her from going down stairs to complain. "You leave the poor woman alone." he says."

Cox was not the only one, I´m afraid!

The best,
Fisherman

[Chava]

Thanks Fisherman! So Cox's account was correct. That's a shame! Because I would love something--anything!--that would mess with her timeline...

[miss marple]

three cheers for the bloater

Bloaters are delicious.
A fat smoked herring filled with roe, grilled with oatmeal and covered in malt vinegar. One of the delights of my London childhood, my nan cooked them. You cant get them now unfortunately, the pathetic undersize herrings, today are no substitute.
Miss Marple

[caz]

Is that statement of his the only thing we have left from him? Perhaps they interviewed him again and his story changed.

A nice juicy suspect has just swum right into their net and they let him go. I don't have any answer as to why, but I bet they had a damn' good reason.

Lewis's description of the man in the doorway could have fit thousands of men in Whitechapel at that time. He has no need to attract attention like that unless he is one of them attention-seeking serial killers. In which case, why did he wait until Kelly to come forward?

Hi Chava,

I shall have to try and take lessons from you in clarity and brevity. Great points here, well made and hard to argue against.

Hutch’s story did change - when he gave it to the papers. I find that difficult to reconcile with a self-preserving killer who has just succeeded in getting the cops to swallow his cover story whole. It makes it all the more surprising if they didn’t interview him again and ask him what the hell he was playing at, unless they had already satisfied themselves that he hadn’t seen the ripper and could not be suspected of being the ripper.

The striking difference between all those coming forward and making stuff up for rewards and whatnot is that Hutchinson said he was doing exactly what Sarah Lewis saw 'her' man doing at exactly the time Lewis indicated.

Not only that, but according to his story as we've come to know it, he offered a very thin reason, if any at all, for being interested in Kelly and especially her companion in comparison to his very detailed account of the encounter and the 45 minute wait in rather bad weather conditions. There's a striking imbalance there.

Hi Frank,

It’s a pity there is no evidence that the police ever made a connection between Hutch and Lewis’s man. Maybe Hutch just didn’t appear to match up with Lewis’s description (or any other witness descriptions for that matter). If they did make such a connection, it may have added weight in their eyes to Hutch’s own account of waiting for Flash Harry to emerge.

I too find Hutch’s reason for waiting there for nearly an hour ‘very thin’. But why did he claim to have waited so long out of no more than idle curiosity? That would do more to invite suspicion than deflect it. If he was worried that a witness could have seen him there all that time, what about his claim to have pushed off at 3, if he knows he did nothing of the sort?

I do wonder if he worked casually for McCarthy, helping to find paying customers who would enable the unfortunate residents to catch up with any rent arrears. If Hutch found Flash Harry for Mary, he could have hung around to learn how much she had made - perhaps even hoping to collect some back rent and save Bowyer a job a few hours later. If Abberline guessed that something of the sort may account for the vigil, but no way of proving it (and maybe he enjoyed the kind of symbiotic relationship with McCarthy that was suggested by Fiona Kendall-Lane at the WS1888) it would not have been to anyone’s advantage to push it while this promising lead was being investigated.

Ben will tell you until he's blue in the face that we’d have a surviving record if Abberline had entertained the slightest suspicion about Hutch's motives for hanging around. But apparently the same objection does not apply to the lack of a single reference to him as a murder suspect. The mantra goes that he could still have been suspected - even put under surveillance - but they could not have ‘snared’ him anyway, as if that would explain why there is no record. They couldn’t ‘snare’ Druitt either (dead/private info destroyed), or Kosminski (unfit/reluctant witness), or Tumblety (fled to America/no sign of any evidence), or any other contemporary suspect we know about.

It might have had something to do with crapping on his doorstep…

…Fifth victim - killed a couple of blocks away from Hutchinson's regular home. There are local gentile witnesses who report having seen men in the company of the deceased on the night of her death.

Hi Sam,

And that, may I say, is as good a case for Hutch’s innocence that I have probably seen to date.

Why indeed would the ripper have been so short-sighted as to spike his own guns in this way, by picking Mary as his fifth victim, waiting around for so long before striking, then killing her in her own room in this particularly gentile location, only to find himself at the cop shop within days, admitting to knowing this one personally, and putting a sixth victim out of the question for the foreseeable future - and all because of what, as Ben takes pains to point out, was the occupational hazard of being seen by one of the hundreds of local denizens as he awaited his opportunity.

There’s reckless - and then there’s wilfully crapping on one’s own doorstep (and being seen while you are cultivating a turtle’s head and have your newspaper at the ready ) for absolutely no reason known to man. What was his problem? Would Mary Kelly’s doorstep really have been the last place left in town for his dirty work?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It's like the kid who was seen near the sweet shop after it was robbed who came forward and tried to blame it on the local fat kid with chocolate smears round his mouth.

Hi Ben,

Except that Hutch wasn’t seen near the room after the murder was committed there, and you only have an assumption that he was seen, or believed he was seen, an hour and a half beforehand. He also made no attempt to blame it on the local Leather Apron type with blood smears on him from previous assaults on prossies, or the local ‘sailor’ type seen with Kate, but on what you insist would have been a totally alien sight - a Flash Harry that even Hutch had to admit was nothing like the customers Mary typically attracted down Dorset Street and into her bed.

Incidentally, there was a documentary on the Milat case last night and I would be interested in hearing again what you think this complete animal had in common with Hutch. For starters, Milat was a known hardened criminal and control freak, with a long record of violent and sexual offences, who was put under surveillance, suspected of murdering the backpacker victims. They found the evidence to put him away for good in his home, which was full of the trappings of murder, including all sorts of trophies that he couldn’t bear to part with. He would have needed to try anything and everything to shift the blame. And of course, there was no way he could have avoided being 'snared' using any self-preserving ploy that man could dream up.

…you might ponder your past experiences before making absurd suggestions to the effect that the killer could somehow avoid all contact with potential witnesses…

So where is this absurd suggestion of mine? I even agreed with you in a previous post that the ripper was not put off purely on the grounds of being seen by a witness. You are the one arguing that in the end it was one such witness - Lewis - who put him off so effectively that he went to the cops in fear that she would recognise him again, and was presumably put off permanently as a result.

Bottom line is that you're on to a losing wicket with your assertion that a serial killer would only come forward out of self-preservation if he'd remained miraculously invisible before then when he was killing other victims.

Again, where is this assertion of mine? It would be far easier for both of us if you could just stick to responding directly to direct quotes from my posts, using the quote or copy and paste functions to prevent attributing any more of your howlers to me. That way, any absurd suggestions or wicket-losing assertions that I have made should be clear for all to see, and nobody will think you could just be misquoting me again.

My assertion - and it is only an opinion, after all - would be that the ripper would only have come forward out of self-preservation if failing to do so was a greater risk to his neck. Would a guilty Hutch really have had more to fear by staying well away from the police? What if the worst happened and Lewis saw him again and was able to recognise him? How many men between the ages of sixteen and sixty do you imagine must have been near one of the crime scenes on the relevant night and never felt the slightest inclination to volunteer their stories to the cops in case someone who had seen them got in first? How could Lewis prove he was the man she saw, let alone that he went on to kill Mary later the same night?

You have to decide whether or not Hutch would have seen Lawende as a threat. If not, he had nothing to fear from Lewis alone. If he did see Lawende as a threat, do you seriously think he would have readily admitted to a close encounter with Mary, and risked Lawende being sent for to confirm a much closer one with Kate? In short, what power did Lewis have to cook Hutch’s goose, whether he had come forward or not?

See, I really know which is the correct version, but sometimes human beings make errors when they write in haste. I wrote "frward" a while back, but I know the word is really "forward". Sometimes I write "you're" when I meant "your". Often it's a by-product of haste. Maybe I get tired of having to piddle over the usual nonsense for the umpteenth time, or I simply don't respect the poster enough. Or both. Either way, you must be desperately insecure to keep highlighting people's errors as though they're genuinely reflective of ignorance.

You won’t see me highlighting the errors of anyone with a genuine literacy problem, who doesn’t try to deny it but does their best out of respect for their readers. I certainly wouldn’t accuse anyone of ignorance that they can’t help. Nor will you see me highlighting individual errors of the obviously typographical kind, such as ‘frward’. The truly ignorant are those who think they are superior to everyone else, claim they know everything - including the correct versions of anything they nevertheless manage to get wrong - and always find a way to blame someone else for their own mistakes. If none of that applies to you, then I’m not accusing you of ignorance either.

If you knew what the correct expression meant, but still wrote ‘to sure up’, either from haste or tiredness, it was an unfortunate typo. Doubly unfortunate if it resulted from not having enough respect for me as a fellow poster. It’s like a fat boy claiming he only keeps stuffing himself with chocolate because he doesn’t respect the classmate who tells him to wipe his face and not to speak with his mouth full. Stuff yourself silly then - or have enough respect for yourself and your readers not to post when you are tired or in a tearing hurry.

I take a lot of time and care over my posts, including each and every response I give you, and I realise that it's my choice to do so. I don’t expect you to do the same and it’s no skin off my nose either way. But nobody appreciates being misquoted, and haste or tiredness are poor excuses for buggering up a one-word quote in a long, otherwise well-written post. You’ll also save time in the long run if you stop misrepresenting what I have written and stop going out of your way to invent stuff I haven’t. For example, I’m curious about your certainty that Hutch would have made a great suspect. I’m even more curious to know why the diary author imagined Maybrick could be turned into one at all. Neither can be described as legitimate suspects with no evidence. And yet you continue to delude yourself that anyone who challenges the enthusiastic case you make, day in, day out, for Hutch’s guilt, is automatically arguing for a pet suspect of their own - even if they never try to make a case and tell you repeatedly that there isn’t one.

Love,

Caz
X

[Varqm]

Let me ask you guys a basic question:

Is it an established fact that Hutchinson was there in the early morning or not?

[Fisherman]

Not.

Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

Except that Hutch wasn’t seen near the room after the murder was committed there

Nor was the hypothetical kid who robbed the street-job, if you look back at the analogy. And no, it isn't just an assumption that "he was seen, or believed he was seen, an hour and a half beforehand". It's an inferntial probability based on the similarity between his version of events and those of Sarah Lewis' wideawake man, and the fact that he came forward as soon as her evidence made public. To argue otherwise would be to embrace at unrealistic coincidence of timing and detail, and would entail a far worse "assumption".

He also made no attempt to blame it on the local Leather Apron type with blood smears on him from previous assaults on prossies, or the local ‘sailor’ type seen with Kate, but on what you insist would have been a totally alien sigh

Yep, he deflected suspicion onto the most obvious and convenient scapegoat around; the siniser Jew with a pointy moustache and tightly-clasped black parcel, and whose opulent attire hinted at the "well-dressed" doctor. He was trying to incorporate as many myths and buzzwords - not to mention various bits and bobs borrowed from other witness accounts - as he could, and he couldn't have been less sutble about it if he tried. Of course he wasn't going to describe someone who looked like the other suspects seen with victims if he was the killer himself!

Incidentally, there was a documentary on the Milat case last night and I would be interested in hearing again what you think this complete animal had in common with Hutch.

Ivan Milat quickly started blabbling to others about his knowledge of the murders and what he had seen at the time ("I told a lodger about it"), and it later came to the attention of the police that he'd acquired a very detailed eyewitness sighting, so detailed in fact that it was initially chalked up to "photographic memory", a defence often accorded to Hutchinson. Your argument seems to be that because he was dodgy already, he had no choice but to pretend to be a brilliant witness, which is obviously untrue. I've never suggested that offenders come forward because they feel they have no other choice. More often that, they identity a potential problem, and perceive a potential advantage in being proactive.

My assertion - and it is only an opinion, after all - would be that the ripper would only have come forward out of self-preservation if failing to do so was a greater risk to his neck.

And I strongly disagree with that position on three very important counts:

1) It assumes that Hutchinson was in possession of all the information necessary to determine which course of action entailed the most risk.

2) Your opinion as to the "greater risk" may have been different from his.

3. Other killers have done it, despite some non-killers not thinkining it very prudent behaviour.

Again, I've never suggested it was all about "fear". In my scenario, he was advertising as well as concealing: Yes, I was there, it was me, I was there for innocent reasons. What innocent reason? I was watching the REALLY suspicious character, who looked like this. Go find him. He would have been legitimizing his presence, AND creating a false lead, AND getting one over on the police, AND getting an insight into police knowledge. Even if it wasn't blind terror that prompted him into action, he may well have recognised the additional benefits besides mere self-preservation.

How could Lewis prove he was the man she saw, let alone that he went on to kill Mary later the same night?

If Lewis was able to identify him subsequently, the real danger lay with the possibility of other witnesses from earlier murder being recalled to consolidate that identification. That would have been perilous for a putative Hutch-as-killer, especially when Joseph Lawende's statement had been suppressed, and especially if yet another witness could identify him as the broad-shouldered bruiser from Berner Street.

So yes, I believe Lawende would have been a threat in that regard. For the first time, there had been a "special reason" for withholding his description, and that was surely enough to give the killer at least a few jitters, irrespective of his identity.

If he did see Lawende as a threat, do you seriously think he would have readily admitted to a close encounter with Mary, and risked Lawende being sent for to confirm a much closer one with Kate?

If that admission was made in the capacity of a suspect, then yes, that would have been disasterous, which was why a proactive stance was arguably necessary - or at least desirable - if it prevented him from being dragged in as a suspect without having first nailed his colours to the "witness" mast and creating a false impression.

Stuff yourself silly then - or have enough respect for yourself and your readers not to post when you are tired or in a tearing hurry.

A more alarming example of blowing something out of all proportion is surely difficult to encounter. A made a couple of typos - big whoop. You know full well that I take considerable care over my posts and certainly don't convey the impression that I am in a tearing hurry. You immediately assumed that I was deliberately misquoting you to make you look silly, and you responded with a personal attack. I found that objectionable, which is why I responded in kind. The fact that you're still arguing about it now is frankly eccentric.

Neither can be described as legitimate suspects with no evidence.

I disagree. Hutchinson's behaviour more than qualifies him as a legitimately suspicious character in these crimes.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Oh hi again, Caz.

Hutch’s story did change - when he gave it to the papers. I find that difficult to reconcile with a self-preserving killer who has just succeeded in getting the cops to swallow his cover story whole.

No, I don't find that difficult to reconcile at all. In fact, I find it incredibly easy to reconcile with someone who had concocted a hastily contrived and bogus account, and who felt compelled to "tidy it up" in case any more awkward questions were asked. He was filling in a few crucial blanks that could have elicited suspicion if left blank.

It makes it all the more surprising if they didn’t interview him again and ask him what the hell he was playing at

Who's to say they didn't? And no, any subsequent interview would not have resulted in the following, just in case you're wondering; "Ah so you lied, because you're story changed! I now suspect you! Quick boys, retrieve the magic formula for determining guilt or innocence". See that's the problem I have with assumptions that "they must have satisfied themselves that he wasn't the killer". How? Not by positing the existence of imaginary alibis and odd bods conveniently stationed about the district in the small hours.

If they did make such a connection, it may have added weight in their eyes to Hutch’s own account of waiting for Flash Harry to emerge.

Absolutely.

If he was worried that a witness could have seen him there all that time, what about his claim to have pushed off at 3, if he knows he did nothing of the sort?

Ah, but then 3.00am was also the time when the last witness hobbled down the court. With the streets now deserted, he could then have been secure in the knowledge that no eye-witness need trouble him, well, unless he seriously entertained the possibility of someone peaking through some window nearby (in which case, how did he get through any of the previous murders?!)

If Abberline guessed that something of the sort may account for the vigil, but no way of proving it

....Then it was absolutely essential to make reference to it in the report he penned to his colleagues and superiors. The fact that no such reference appears suggests very strongly that Abberline had no such suspicions, presumably because Hutchinson was not employed in that capacity. My other concern with the minder scenario is that others would surely have known that he was employed in that capacity and blabbed to police and press about it.

Ben will tell you until he's blue in the face that we’d have a surviving record if Abberline had entertained the slightest suspicion about Hutch's motives for hanging around

No, he wouldn't.

They couldn’t ‘snare’ Druitt either (dead/private info destroyed), or Kosminski (unfit/reluctant witness), or Tumblety (fled to America/no sign of any evidence), or any other contemporary suspect we know about.

Enabling us to conclude...what? The suspects you named were the very antithesis of the local nobody hypothesis, not favoured back then, but which we know to make abundant sense now. Those suspects were foreign, Jewish, American, possessing medical skills, mad...they weren't the local Gentile Joe-average. Is it any real surprise that he wouldn't have made the final "strong suspect" list, even if they may have suspected him at some point?

Why indeed would the ripper have been so short-sighted as to spike his own guns in this way, by picking Mary as his fifth victim, waiting around for so long before striking, then killing her in her own room in this particularly gentile location

A perfectly reasonable explanation is that the increased vigilance and police presence on the streets may have prompted him to reconsider the type of venue, and if the streets were too risky, it may have been a prudent move to seek his victims indoors, and if he only knew of a handful of victims who lived alone and indoors...? We also know that different crime scenes will often call for different approaches, which is why Ted Bundy conducted some prior surveillance and loitering before murdering the women in the dormitory.

Best regards,
Ben

[Chava]

Okay, let's look at the bare bones of the event once again.

(1) Sarah Lewis reports that she entered Millers Court at around 2.30 am and saw a man looking up the court. He appeared to be waiting for someone. She didn't pay much attention but describes his hat and tells us he was stocky and not very tall. She appears at the inquest on November 12th.

(2) Also on November 12th, apparently in the evening, but I'm not sure of this, George Hutchinson gives a statement. Hutchinson was not at the inquest. However Lewis had already given a statement to the police beforehand, and word that she'd seen a man at the opening of the court may well have gotten out.

(3) Hutchinson basically gives himself up as the man Lewis saw.

(4) Hutchinson also gives a suspiciously detailed description of a man he saw picking up Kelly and going back with her to her room.

Hutchinson could well have been the man Lewis saw. But I have one main real problem with Hutchinson being the Ripper. And that is this: why was the killer hanging round the opening of Millers Court instead of walking straight in or walking straight out? Why in hell would he stick around to be seen? He manages to melt away from every other murder. No one ever noticed him coming out of Bucks Row/Hanbury Street/Berner Street/Mitre Square. But here he stays to admire the locality of his latest atrocity? Or maybe he's scoping out the lay of the land before he enters Kelly's room to kill her. But if that's the case, he knows her. She's not a casual victim. Because it would be dangerous to burst into 13 Millers Court if you didn't know for sure that your prey was sleeping alone, and if you also didn't know that you could get in quickly and quietly via the broken window and the latch. If Hutchinson killed Kelly, I don't think he killed the others. If Hutchinson is the Ripper, he doesn't hang around a passageway for people to see him.

[Ben]

Hi Chava,

Or maybe he's scoping out the lay of the land before he enters Kelly's room to kill her

That's pretty much my take on it. Ted Bundy managed to "melt away" from the majority of his murders, but when it came to the indoor Tallahassee (sp?) murders, he found it necessary to conduct some prior surveillance. This seems to be a common trait amongst killers who target victims in their homes, with Denis Rader and Robert Napper adopting similar strategies. They didn't know their victims either, but they'd gauged enough information about their actions and movements - by "spying" on them beforehand - to know when they were alone, and whether or not they were likely to be disturbed.

That said, I don't know why it's so surprising that the killer allowed himself to be seen alone an hour before the murder, when we have fairly compelling evidence that he allowed himself to be seen in the company of his victim ten minutes before dispatching her. The latter is surely at the more reckless end of the criminal spectrum, to say nothing of the broad-shouldered man who was seen to attack the victim.

Best regards,
Ben

[Chava]

That said, I don't know why it's so surprising that the killer allowed himself to be seen alone an hour before the murder,

Lewis has him there at 2.30 am. And we don't know exactly when that murder occurred. Sure there is at least one dissertation, using the 'oh murder!' report as part of its evidence, and also checking out Dr Bond's notes, that suggests a death around 3-3.30 am. But forensic observation was not an exact science back then. Just check out the heated discussions over Chapman's time of death! I think it's certainly possible that Kelly died around 3.00 am, but it's also possible that she was dead by 2.15 am or even 1.30 am. So from that point of view, Hutchinson is a suspect.

And I take your point about Bundy. Hutchinson could have been there scoping out the court to see if the coast was clear to murder Kelly. But Lewis is the only person who saw him. Cox did not see him when she came home around 3.00 am. No one else saw anyone hanging around the entrance to Millers Court before Lewis. And I can't believe she was the only person coming and going around there in the small hours. So whoever the man was, I don't think he was there for long. He could have simply been waiting for the coast to clear, having already ascertained that Kelly was alone and in bed. But if he'd gotten as far as to do that, he could also have gotten as far as to get into the room and kill her. It's the work of a second to pull back the coat hanging over the window, peer inside, see her asleep and go in there. No point whatsoever in doing all that and then going back to hanging conspicuously around the court and waiting for a while. Because if he was concerned about the coast being clear, he wouldn't have been there anyway. And in any case, the coast wasn't clear. Sarah Lewis saw him. You might argue that he doesn't mind being seen. But in that case, he doesn't mind walking up to Kelly's crib and knocking on the door. With respect, I don't think you can have it both ways, Ben. If he cares about being seen, he hides until he's sure no one's going up or down the court, and then he goes in. Lewis doesn't see him. He's hiding. He's not prancing round the entrance to the court and blocking people's way in! If he doesn't care about being seen, he doesn't hang about anywhere. He marches carelessly up the court like a punter and bangs on Kelly's door. Which he knows she'll answer, because he's been following her and keeping tabs.

[Chava]

And one more thing. The whole 'Hutchinson was seen by Sarah Lewis' thing could have been totally destroyed by the following incident, which may have taken place 13th November 1888.

'Hey, copper! I hear you was looking for someone hangin' arahnd Millers Court the night they done Mary Kelly. That was me! I wis waitin' for Charlie 'ere who wis gonna pay me the money 'e owed me for the last card game we 'ad. He didn't 'ave no spare gelt, so 'he nicked his old lady's best shawl while she wis sleepin' an' I waited dahn the end of the court while 'he did it. I took it to Uncle's the next day an' got 6pence on it. 'Ere's Charlie to back me up! I didn't kill no woman!'

In other words, the real person who was 'looking up the court as if he were waiting for someone' may have fetched up, wideawake hat and all, along with the person he was waiting for.

[perrymason]

Hi Ben,

Its not so much of a longshot to imagine that Marys killer would have been overtly spying before going into the court, nor is it to assume that the Wideawake Hat man seen doing that was Hutchinson...or even Fleming/Hutchinson.

The longshot is trying to pitch him as the killer of all 5 women. What you have is evidence that suggests the possibility of Marys killer as the spying man, not Jack the Ripper. That possible connection can only be made after the kill, post kill...because....pre-kill...the evidence doesnt suggest Jack at all.

Jack kills middle aged unfortunates who have no permanent residence other than frequenting certain lodging houses, they were believed to be seeking customers... in the streets, and it is believed he acted as a customer and accompanied them to dark spots outdoors,... then attacked them, cutting off their air supply in some fashion first before even using a knife.

During and post kill.... He then slits the throats, opens their legs, and mutilates them from the crotch and midsection to the breast bone.

What Hutchinson brings is an unbelievable source of data that places him at the scene of a soon to be crime. How you intend to place Jack in his shoes, which he "took" from Wideawake, I have yet to see. I know youre trying to....but I think at this point he may be a suspect in the death of Mary Jane,.....to morph him into Jack, you have a long road to hoe Ben.

Cheers

[diana]

Hutchinson/Pipeman?

If Hutchinson was a lookout, is it possible that he was one and the same as pipeman from the Stride killing?

But who would agree to assist a crazy person to do such a thing? What in the world would he get out of it?