Prater/Lewis/Hutchinson/Cox

[Writerboy]

Th Hutchison episode does fascinate me because it doesn't seem that anyone at the time, even him, seemed to mention just how alarmingly detailed the description was. He doesn't even seem conscious of it. In the BBC Jack the Ripper they comment that if he was interested in Kelly, "you would have a good look at a fella who was going off with a bird you fancied." But I wonder if this hints at another factor: was Hutchison taking such a detailed look at the stranger with Kelly because he thought he could have been the Ripper at the time? Surely at that point every man seen with a prostitute was gonna be looked at with suspicion and people would make a good mental note of what he looked like in case they should need to describe him to the police later. The time delay in him coming forward is odd but also perhaps if he was an attention seeker he'd have rushed to the police sooner?

I've always assumed that the reason the Kelly murder was so horrific was partly because the Ripper became more deranged with each killing and more confident, but also because this was the first time he'd had privacy without too much fear of discovery and so could spend a horribly long time at his grisly task. Perhaps he also stayed a long time because he was aware of Hutchison lurking outside.

[Celesta]

Writerboy,

I used to wondered whether he might have been suspicious about the man with Kelly and took careful note of him. That seems to be the impression he tried to give. Later, I thought he might have spent Saturday stewing over whether Lewis could identify him, and coming up with a detailed description of a man just in case he needed one. Now, I think he probably knew she couldn't identify him. His motives are not so easy to discern. They've been discussed a great deal here.