New Book

[Jonathan H]

So, it starts with a bang and ends with the [previous] whimper; of a nominal capitulation spiced with a backhander of abuse.

I suppose I should show some grace and accept it as the best quasi-apology I am ever going to get from that quarter.

OK, apology accepted.

The moment you actually begin mentioning specific sources and interpretation of sources, people who are ingrained fanatics -- and who cannot see sources except flatly and one-dimensionally -- usually fold, as in this case.

More than ever I am sure that Inspector Andrews was investigating Dr. Tumblety in Canada, and produced a report that Macnaghten read, a report now, like so much, lost to us.

If you want to see why I believe that, then just read "The Suckered Trilogy" by David 'Orsom' because, I think like me you will enjoy it, you will find it interesting -- and you will fail to be convinced.

Speaking of which, I also felt, for years, that the lone gunman theory regarding Oswald did not make complete sense. Almost, but not quite. I had no doubt to his guilt, but the motive was obscure.

Why would this Leftist-Anarchist put his hero, Castro, in such jeopardy?

Further research proved that a classified report by two key lawyers on the Warren Commission wondered this too and speculated that Oswald might have been manipulated by anti-Castro adventurers posing as Castro's people. This was declassified in 1975 and mostly ignored, but I think they nailed it. That is not the same as proving it, which the FBI were not interested in for political reasons in 1963/4, but it provides an historical solution to that mystery.

That is a provisional solution. Ironically if Oswald had been taken to court he might have been found not guilty -- like Lizzie Borden -- which shows what a courtroom verdict is actually worth.

[Mayerling]

At Nicea, they basically defined Jesus as being of the same substance as God (consubstantiality) hence declaring heritics all those rejecting this affirmation. They also came out with the creed (Credo) which says that Jesus resurrected since many of the first gospels had mentioned this event. At Nicea, they also decided which gospels should be accepted as the 'canonical' ones, the four ones we know. They were considered canonical before that but the Church had not given it's approbation yet. Many versions of these gospels were however circulating and contained transcription errors. It wasn't until Trent did the Church decide to re-write them and produce the Church's official version. They also decided to include the Book of Deuteronomy.

Man, are we well away from JTR? Sorry about that.

Cheers,

Hercule Poirot

That we did, but we two found it interesting. And neither of us decided to say that we had all but a small amount of research left that might cause the world to re-evaluate religion, but were not willing to go into details yet until we were fully sure!! That's a relief too, isn't it?

[Hercule Poirot]

Thank you for posting that Hercule. I am very grateful.

No need to be grateful with me, David. It's just a question of putting aside one's way of seeing things for a moment and paying close attention to someone else's mindset. Like the guy said, the mind is a like a parachute, you gotta open it to see it work. He should have added "and breath deeply to better oxygenate your mind".

I hope one day, someone will write a "101 JTR book for dummies", explaining how to formulate premises, gather, analyse and interprete data before coming out with another 'case closed' conclusion thing (I have to much respect for the definition of the word 'book' and preferred 'thing' instead). LOL

Cheers,

Hercule Poirot

[Hercule Poirot]

That we did, but we two found it interesting. And neither of us decided to say that we had all but a small amount of research left that might cause the world to re-evaluate religion, but were not willing to go into details yet until we were fully sure!! That's a relief too, isn't it?

Sorry for the delay in responding to you.

The most funny thing about one particular religion, is that it even assumes that the Jewish, Christian and Muslim God exists simply based on one single document: the Bible. Hence, if it speaks of God, he then must exist (the greatest inference reasoning ever)!!! Another one of those primary-secondary source ongoing interpretations debates!!!

How many deadly religion wars have taken place since this assumption? Now, when it comes to JTR, we keep having confrontations, some of them quite aggressive. However, when will we see a Kosminski, Druit, Tumblety suspect based international war begin? As Don Henley of the Eagles said, "When hell freezes". Given the abundant climate changes theories, there's no indication it will happen soon amongst us Ripperologists nuts. LOL

Now, if I may, I shall go for another pint of one of our famous Belgian lambic beers, Boon Faro.

Cheers (or as Yoda would have said, may the yeasts be with you)
Hercule Poirot

[David Orsam]

So, it starts with a bang and ends with the [previous] whimper; of a nominal capitulation spiced with a backhander of abuse.

I suppose I should show some grace and accept it as the best quasi-apology I am ever going to get from that quarter.

OK, apology accepted.

I find this quite a bizarre response considering that my post contained no 'backhander of abuse' nor 'nominal capitulation' nor apology or 'quasi-apology' but Jonathan seem to be reading things that aren’t there in all my posts in this thread so I'm not terribly surprised.

[David Orsam]

Ironically if Oswald had been taken to court he might have been found not guilty -- like Lizzie Borden -- which shows what a courtroom verdict is actually worth.

The real irony is that it was Jonathan who was distinguishing historical arguments from arguments in a court of law as if there was some more inherent reliability in court verdicts. My point was that there is no real difference in the two, they are both based on the same type of evidence – in the case of criminal verdicts, decided by twelve randomly selected members of the public and always by fallible human beings - so of course you will get wrong verdicts just as you get wrong conclusions by historians.

[David Orsam]

The moment you actually begin mentioning specific sources and interpretation of sources, people who are ingrained fanatics -- and who cannot see sources except flatly and one-dimensionally -- usually fold, as in this case.

Those who took my advice from yesterday to review the posts in the Suckered! thread between 18-28 June 2015 will know that I already responded to all of Jonathan's conjecture in that thread (without any, or any effective, response) but am happy to repeat myself in this thread and will now do so.

[David Orsam]

"The Pall Mall Gazette" was wrong on Dec 31st but also half-right, as Palmer argued to my satisfaction.

Jonathan's argument collapses at the first hurdle it has to overcome.

The story in the Pall Mall Gazette of 31 December had already appeared in the Daily Telegraph earlier that day, provided by that paper’s New York Correspondent. The New York correspondent of the Telegraph had simply lifted his copy wholesale from a story that had appeared in the New York World on 21 December, with the addition of an inaccurate claim that Inspector Andrews had arrived in New York.

The New York World story was that Andrews would be coming to New York to search for the Whitechapel murderer, having received a commission to do so along with two other Scotland Yard men.

Pausing there, everything is wrong for Jonathan’s theory. There is nothing about Andrews carrying out background research on Dr Tumblety (or indeed anyone at all) in Canada.

So far from being 'half right', the story, from Jonathan’s perspective, is completely wrong, as indeed it was.

We know that the story was derived from an inaccurate report from Montreal which was based on nothing more than the fact that, on 20 December 1888, while passing through Montreal, from Toronto, on his way back to London via Halifax, Andrews had given the press a few titbits about the investigation in London into the Whitechapel murders. This led to all kinds of speculation as to what he was doing in Montreal and a belief that it must have had something to do with Jack the Ripper. This was combined with a further error that he was on his way to New York.

In the process of briefing the press, Andrews said something very significant. He revealed that there were twenty-three detectives, two clerks and one inspector involved in the Whitechapel murder case. That needs to be repeated: one inspector. This must be Inspector Abberline. It means that from his own lips Walter Andrews has effectively said he was NOT involved in the Whitechapel murder case at this time.

Of course he wasn’t. He was in Canada having accompanied Roland Barnett to Toronto at the request of the Toronto authorities who were paying for his trip. That is a documented fact.

Unfortunately, the myth of Andrews chasing Jack the Ripper in New York became incorporated into stories in London newspapers (such as the Telegraph and Pall Mall Gazette) and was repeated in 1928 by Guy Logan.

It all originated from an obvious newspaper error in the United States but Jonathan seems happy to base his entire theory on it!

[David Orsam]

Walter Dew mentions Andrews as a Whitechapel detective, yet nothing appears in the extant record except hyperbolic newspaper articles about Andrews chasing Tumblety to New York City.

Walter Dew never mentioned Tumblety or any background research carried out by Inspector Andrews in Canada or anywhere else. So it's not a great source for Jonathan from the start.

All Dew said is that Andrews was one of three detectives investigating the Whitechapel murders but not in what time period. If he was correct, it could easily have been in 1889 and more likely would have been because Inspector Abberline was the only detective inspector working on the case in 1888 (as Andrews confirmed in Montreal).

More likely is that Dew was wrong, having been influenced by the aforementioned stories that Andrews had been chasing an unnamed suspect across the Atlantic to New York. This is what Guy Logan had included in his 1928 book (i.e. nothing to do with any background research being carried out by Andrews in Canada).

In 1888, Dew was a lowly detective constable working in Whitechapel. He was no more privy to what the senior inspectors in Scotland Yard were doing than any other member of the rank and file, all of whom were as much in the dark as the newspapers.

Reports in the newspapers that Andrews had been to America to chase a prime suspect must have been read by some police officers and they would have had no reason, or inside information, to disbelieve them. Dew could well have been influenced by this when he came to write his memoirs some fifty years after the murders. His memoirs are known to be unreliable on facts connected with the murders and, bearing in mind, that not a single official document mentions Walter Andrews having any connection with the case nor did a single newspaper, who were all very interested in the case, report any involvement of his at all in the investigation in London.

Walter Dew does not help Jonathan at all.

[David Orsam]

. Ergo, strip back the hyperbole, and you have Andrews trying to find otu what he could about a suspect who had enormous potential to embarrass Scotland Yard, and to some extent already had.

People who think that it was entirely tabloid hype are, in my opinion, falling for the cover story, or the Irish-American propagandist need, by some in North America, to link Scotland Yard with the Parnell inquiry and embarrass them that way. It was quite a mine-field, public relations wise.

I don't really know what the above sentences mean. Why did Andrews (or Anderson) need to find out anything about a suspect who had enormous potential to embarrass Scotland Yard? Jonathan doesn't tell us. What 'cover story' are people falling for? Whatever he is talking about is no more than opinion, without any evidence in support, so can safely be ignored.

[David Orsam]

After reading everything there was in primary and secondary sources I made the judgment call that Dr. Anderson would not have sent Andrews, in the middle of the Whitechapel murders, to Canada unless 1) it was Ripper related business, and 2) it could not be covered with some other work-mission and provide plausible deniability.

Anyone familiar with the primary and secondary sources on JTR will be aware that Jonathan is hopelessly wrong on this 'judgment call'.

The idea that Anderson would not have sent an inspector to Canada on important official business following a request from the authorities in Toronto unless JTR related is unsupported both by any evidence and common sense and is nonsense. As Inspector Andrews made clear in his press briefing in Montreal on 20 December, there was only one Scotland Yard inspector working on the Whitechapel murder case at the time. That was Inspector Abberline.

There was no public pressure in parliament or from the press for more inspectors to be assigned to the case let alone every single inspector within the Criminal investigation Department. Everyone appreciated that the police had other crimes to investigate, other work to do. The pressure was to assign more constables on the beat, more plain clothes officers on patrol and more detectives to conduct door to door inquiries (but detective-constables or detective-sergeants). No-one – absolutely no-one - would have criticised Anderson, the Commissioner or the Home Office for sending Inspector Andrews to Toronto in November 1888 as long as that trip was not paid for out of the public purse. Scotland Yard had plenty of detective-inspectors but only one was needed on the Whitechapel case along with, uniquely, a chief inspector (Swanson) who had been assigned full-time to the Whitechapel case.

Therefore to say that Anderson would not have sent Andrews to Canada unless it was Ripper related business is about as wrong as anyone could be.

It follows that I don't need to deal with the second part of Jonathan's sentence regarding 'plausible deniability', not only because it is convoluted and unfounded and I don't quite know what he means by it but because it only comes into play if it is true that Anderson would not have sent Andrews to Canada in the middle of the Whitechapel murders which it clearly is not.

[David Orsam]

That the preponderance of evidence supports R. J. Palmer's thesis.

Jonathan has told me that R.J. Palmer's trilogy was 'beautifully written'. That's great. But how did he do on the facts of the case? Not very well is the answer.

In the first place, Palmer missed a crucial point about timing.

By the time Andrews arrived in Toronto, Tumblety had fled from England to America on a charge for which there was no extradition. Andrews knew that Tumblety had jumped his bail when he arrived in Toronto so there was absolutely no purpose to be served by carrying out any form of 'background research' into a man who was not in custody. Any such research would have been a complete waste of time. As I have said, it's a point that R.J. Palmer missed but it absolutely destroys his entire argument.

I raised this with Jonathan in the Suckered! thread but did I get a response? Of course not.

Let me now reproduce some extracts from one of my posts in the Suckered! thread which Jonathan may not even have read because he had already run away from that thread:


He [Jonathan] tells us that Palmer’s trilogy is "one of the great long essays written on this subject" which "exhibits the highest standards of historical scholarship."

It is strange, therefore, that, in his post, Jonathan completely ignores the document which Palmer categorically states is "one of the key documents, if not the key document" (Palmer Trilogy, part 2, p.74). This, Palmer tells us, is Robert Anderson's letter to the Home Office dated 19 November 1888. According to Palmer, this letter "has gone missing" but I found it in the National Archives. Far from supporting Palmer’s claim that, in this letter, Anderson "inquired about the feasibility of sending a man to North America and was further asking whether he could use the extradition of the prisoner Roland Barnett to do it", he does no such thing and the letter simply shows that Anderson was corresponding with the Home Office about the procedure to extradite Roland Barnett to Canada at the request of the Toronto police.

Despite, Palmer being "the greatest living writer on this subject" (as Jonathan told me in another thread in February), Jonathan evidently does not think much of Palmer’s argument that Anderson got his information about Tumblety’s connection with Canada from a New York newspaper because he now speculates that Tumblety himself was Anderson’s source. Thus, he says, "We do not know what Dr. Tumblety told the police about himself when they had him", the implication being that Tumblety told the British police he had recently been in Toronto.

It is rather unlikely that Tumblety would have told the police anything considering that they were not allowed to question a suspect after they arrested him but had they managed to extract such irrelevant information from him on the gross indecency charge – which must have been at some point on or before Tumblety’s appearance before a magistrate on 7 November 1888 – an urgent cable to the Toronto police requesting information on a Dr Francis Tumblety would surely have sufficed.

According to Palmer, Anderson had no problem contacting San Francisco for information about Tumblety on or before 23 November so why not Toronto? If a "discreet background check" was so important, why not do it immediately rather than hang around waiting to see if the Canadian authorities might be prepared to pay for an officer to be sent over to Toronto and then wait a further period of time for an officer to sail slowly out there?

Jonathan is surely aware of this which is why he includes the sentence: "Especially if police could clarify, face to face, whether they think this is Jack, or not". But "face to face" with whom? Could Anderson or Andrews seriously have expected that a Scotland Yard inspector was going to be able to clarify in Toronto whether Tumblety was JTR? And how is this consistent with a "discreet background check"? It seems to have now become a full-on investigation in a foreign country!

.....

Back in February, he [Jonathan] told me on another thread that I should get hold of Palmer’s trilogy and Wolf Vanderlinden’s essays and that: "You will then come to your own conclusion as to who is probably correct in their examination of the primary record".

I did get hold of both works and discovered that neither of them were correct in their examination of the primary record. Palmer’s trilogy may or may not have been "beautifully written and judiciously argued" but what I failed to find as I read through his full trilogy was any evidence at all that Andrews was doing anything Tumblety related in Toronto. I did, however, find a series of misunderstandings. Comments such as

"under the auspices of the Fugitive Offenders Act, it was entirely up to the Canadians to come and fetch Barnett." (part 2, p.67) - This is factually incorrect.

"it is clear from Lushington’s letter that Robert Anderson had inquired about the feasibility of sending a man to North America and was further asking whether he could use the extradition of the prisoner Roland Barnett to do it." (part 2, p. 75) - It is not "clear" at all and is disproved by the contents of Anderson's letter.

"A critical point is that at this stage the negotiations that would eventually bring Inspector Andrews to Canada were still ongoing. The authorities in Toronto, blissfully unaware that Barnett’s extradition papers had been filed in London on November 6th, were still scrambling to get Barnett’s extradition in order". (part 2, p.88) – This so called "critical point" is not factually correct.

One factually correct statement we do find in Palmer’s trilogy is this:

"Not a single known document filed at the C.I.D. or forwarded to the Home Office reveals what Andrews was actually investigating."

The reason for this is that Andrews was not actually investigating anything. He was escorting a prisoner to Toronto under standard extradition procedure.

ENDS

The errors that I have identified in Palmer's work seem not to trouble Jonathan in the slightest although to ensure that he doesn't have to face up to them he simply ignores them.

[David Orsam]

Finally I argue in the book that Macnaghten misled Littlechild about Tumblety's fate. He did, I argue, partly because claiming that the doctor had taken his own life airbrushed out of existence the disappointment of Andrews' trip. Had the trip not been about the Ripper, Mac would not have needed to bother.

Here Jonathan seems to have become confused about his own theory. What 'disappointment' of Andrews' trip? Didn't he just go to Canada to do some background research? So how and why the disappointment? Is it that Jonathan thinks he didn't find out anything? If so, it would have been a very short report he presented to Anderson!

[David Orsam]

In conclusion

The whole dispute between myself and Jonathan began when he posted in my Suckered! thread that there was some 'conflicting data' in existence which potentially invalidated the conclusions of my Suckered! trilogy. The use of the word 'data' made it seem like I had missed some actual evidence which could negate my work. After much to and fro-ing it transpired – as Jonathan has demonstrated by his postings in this thread - that there never was any data, no evidence at all. Indeed, it is the very absence of evidence that seems to appeal Jonathan's finely tuned instincts. But it seems to me that a belief without evidence is no more than a religious belief, an article of faith. My research was completely evidence led. I had no pre-conceived notions at all. Had I found that the evidence supported a Tumblety reason or a Parnell reason for Andrews' visit to Toronto that would have been fine with me. But all the evidence tells me that Andrews went to Toronto to escort Roland Barnett and for no other reason. Jonathan is entitled to believe whatever he wants to believe but I don't agree that he is entitled to say that he believes it on the basis of 'data' or to say that there is 'data' which conflicts with the conclusions of my trilogy. And he should have made clear in his book that it is no more than a personal theory of his that Inspector Andrews ever filed a report on Tumblety.

[Jonathan H]

So that non-apology apology lasted all of five minutes. To be expected of course. Still depressing about human nature.

I've got to say it is still amazing to me that Barrett is a middle-aged man, writing all these long, long, long dismembered (by him!?) diatribes full of boyish, and rather immature words like "negated" and "Suckered".

As in, the these old fogies were suckered by being old fogies, whilst I, the young whippersnapper, has set things right.

It is comparable to Bruce Robinson's bombastic sludge about people like us, though he is an old guy openly writing like a young and angry undergraduate for the student rag -- even to writing swear words.

I was quite happy to encourage and indulge that because young people should be, but they also have to grow up too. They have to learn that their enthusiasm does not guarantee consensus and that they should not take that to mean it is automatically because we fossils are too old whilst they are so pure and young, e.g. that we are calcified and rigid and they are supple and lateral.

I'm still in shock that this person is older than I am.

The real reason the first 'debate' ceased was because, like a youngster, Barrett could not handle disagreement.

We agreed to disagree because our positions were not reconcilable (I did not even write the trilogy, R. J. Palmer did, but to agree with Palmer damns me as a heretic anyhow). It is hardly earth-shattering. I said that we had gone as far as we could, we were not going to agree, and so we could leave it that.

No, no, no, no, Barrett said. That was unacceptable. Un! Ac! Ceptable! I had to agree with him, and only then could it end. And if I did not agree I would be abused as a coward and empty, and so on.

I exited because I had nothing more or new to say, and had become disturbed by the irrationality of the other poster. And now on he goes, flailing away, cutting and pasting, misusing words like ironic with abandon, even though nothing new is being shared. This 'debate' is just another manic attempt to force my agreement, by somebody who obviously reads no history and knows no history (and is noticeably uncomfortable with such topics and concepts).

Which is not the same as me being aged and stuffy about dissent -- dissent away. Tear the book apart. Be my guest. My closest friends here are not going to be persuaded by my book. So what? I would not expect them to be.

Will I then do a David the Orsom (such an adolescent moniker) and endlessly berate and abuse them -- whilst creepily denying I am doing either -- until they meekly capitulate?

I don't think so. It's all such wasted energy.

For other readers, let us examine a couple of pertinent secondary sources.

If you read the excellent "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of President Kennedy" (1993) by Gerald Posner, who is a lawyer and not an historian, he does not tell you that a Dallas policeman testified that he ran into a man behind the 'grassy knoll' whom he swore identified himself as Secret Service. There were no such agents except with the motorcade and this has led to much speculation that this unidentified person was involved in the death of the president.

It has always been counter-argued that the policeman simply mis-identified a Treasury agent as a Secret Service agent because the credentials look so much alike (the SS is an organ of Treasury). But this is a theory about this bit.

What Posner does is simply summarize it pithily that some people were mis-identified but the explanations are probably innocent, and leaves it that -- no fake SS agent at the Knoll is specified driving JFK-Buffs apoplectic (sound familiar?). You would be in the dark about the original testimony and how suggestive it is of something perhaps sinister, criminal and conspiratorial.

Yet what I learned from that for the rewriting of my manuscript-- in which I took out speculation that Andrews was not investigating Tumblety -- is that you the author can and should make decisions about what you think is important for the thrust of your narrative and argument. I chose to do the same thing, to focus not on the arguments about whether Andrews' business abroad was Tumblety-related (I think it was) but to focus on why Tumblety was suspected, and to what extent he was likely to have been the Ripper (I think he wasn't, because Macnaghten did not).

In the same book, Posner judges the Silvia Odio incident in a way that I do not agree with, but nevertheless accept and agree with his right as the author to make the editorial decision that he did. He depicts her as an unsatisfactory, unreliable witness and ipso facto her testimony as close to worthless -- if you use it to point to a conspiracy involving Oswald being framed.

What Posner does not tell the reader is that lawyers for the Warren Commission took her very seriously and judged her to be reliable. He also does not tell you that the alleged Oswald lookalike (and the resemblance is uncanny) William Seymour, whom Posner thinks Odio actually met and mistook for Oswald later, had documented evidence that he was in another state (which still does not rule out Seymour, because he might have met her a month later if she has her timing off, which again make her testimony arguably unreliable).

Should not the reader be exposed to everything? Practically-speaking there is not room in a single book, and anyhow the author is presenting an historical argument not by cherry -picking but by making judgment calls about a massive amount of sources; deciding which are relevant and what they mean. Even Vincent Bugliosi's massive tome on this subject --also excellent -- could not find room to include the line by Warren Commission lawyers about Oswald perhaps being manipulated by anti-Castroites posing as their ideological opposite -- one line, but it is not in the thousand or so pages.

But is his right not to include it because he judged it to be extraneous. Do I agree? Not at all. I think Bugliosi missed the solution because of its exclusion, but that does make his book hopeless. It is just my interpretation of limited and contradictory data.

Hence historians disagreeing diametrically about the same subject and the same sources. I think Posner is wrong about Odio but he has every right to make such an argument -- and it is a brilliant book. But saying something is brilliant and enjoying it does not mean you have to agree with it's thesis.

Can I get through to somebody out there? I suppose not.

I have no problem with Barrett disagreeing with my decisions of: this in and that out, rather it is the relentless, repetitive and reductionist vehemence which slides all too easily into the worst kind of character assassination, abuse and bullying.

Which is all denied, just as vehemently?!

If you think you have won the argument why do you keep making it?

Because I won't fold. To anybody normal, that would be, again, so what?

Only to fanatics must there be agreement and capitulation. There is nothing really to 'debate' because they already know the truth. It is just a question of assent and not dissent, because the latter is forbidden.