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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through January 7, 2000
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Research Issues / Philosophy:
Primary sources:
Archive through January 7, 2000
Author: kemp
Monday, 03 January 2000 - 03:54 pm |        | Having recently been hooked on the case I have decided to initiate a discussion focusing on primary sources. I must thank those more experienced Ripperologists for their help and hope that these thoughts provoke some interesting discussion.
All historical analysis is to some extent subjective but by avoiding a priori judgements one can try and attain some level of objectivity.In the course of several letters I propose to review primary source material and hence reveal what I believe to be intriguing happeningss.At this stage I shall not say facts!
NB. Please see E.H.Carr's "What Is History" for a more detailed discussion on interpretation of facts.
The follow up letter to this statement will focus on the Inquests by Baxter and MacDonald.
Kemp |
Author: kemp
Monday, 03 January 2000 - 04:14 pm | | Re-Inquest on C/man.
This inquest opened on the 10th Sept,88.Dr. Phillips initially only gave basic info on the death of the above.He declined to go further because of a concern for the "..feelings.." of the public.He then implied he was not fully prepared(" if notice...I should have been better prepared...")He declined an offer of a postponement and started to give evidence. He then stated the details ought to be only given to the jury and coroner.
On correction again he stated that the info. he had about injuries took place ".. after death.."
Questions.
How can giving details "..thwart the ends of justice..".Why was he so reluctant to give gruesome details about this specific case? Why did he refuse an offer to postpone if he was really so unprepared? Was this an excuse? Did he not think that the usual common law practise of giving all the details was just as necessary here as in his other experiences of murder?
Why did he not realise that ".. Injuries after death .." was only his opinion.The jury foreman wanted all of the details.
Kemp |
Author: kemp
Monday, 03 January 2000 - 04:43 pm | | Re-Kelly inquest
Kelly was found In Miller's Court,Dorset St.The Inquiry was held in Shoreditch Town hall. Why?Some jurors were not happy with this.
Coroner MacDonald said it happened in his area.(QUESTION...Isn't Dorset ST. in W/chapel?) Did Mac.. make a mistake. If so why did he also use the excuse that "..jurisdiction is where the body lies not found.." Which explanation did he mean?
Why would anybody want a murder not in their area of responsibility?If for some reason they did then why finish so quickly?
Why did he not establish the time of death? Not important?
Why did he not establish the type of weapon used? Few details about mutilations were asked for. Why not?
The Inquest was only held for day? Why?
What did Mac.. mean by ".. other evidence I propose not to call..."
The Daily Telegraph said this Inquiry lost ".. an oppurtunity for putting statements on oath.." Is this valid or are statements not necessary in this case.
Was Hutchinson's 12th Nov statement to the Met policenot important. If so why not call him to give evidence? If not then why did the police circulate his description to " all Stations"
Why not reopen the inquiry to give relatives a chance to identify the body? Was it fair that Dr.Phillips said he was not a free agent as he worked for the Home Office? Is this reason enough to not reopen a case?If so then why close so early?Is it fair to hold the inquest before the relatives of Kelly had identified the body? If this is fair then is it not also only prudent to delay the proceedings slightly to give Kelly's relatives a chance to travel from Ireland.
Conclusions.
Major irregularities involving these inquiries.
(QUESTION...Why?)
After giving readers a chance to comment I shall proceed with a further analysis of primary sources involving this case.
Thanks for reading,
Kemp. |
Author: Bob_C
Tuesday, 04 January 2000 - 05:37 am | | Hi kemp,
As I understand you, you are writing about the apparant reluctance on the part of authority to give 'all the evidence'. This has often been used to generate some 'cover-up' story, such as S. Knight's absurd story about Gull, Sickert, Nettley and Co.
Such storys are generally accepted as being hogwash, the reluctance on the part of the doctors to describe injuries and the other seeming 'covers-up' being nothing more than the contemporary usual restraining of details according to the wishes of the police when the culprit had not been caught or at least identified.
There were good grounds for the police trying to keep details secret. The amount of sham 'Jack' letters, each of which had to be carefully checked up, were evidence enough of the ability of members of the public (and probably others)to help thwart the investigations of the police. Containing some details of the murders, many of these communications had to be assumed to be suspect Jack, untill evidence could prove the falsity of the document. This costed a lot of very valuable police time.
Although nowadays not practiced as strictly as then, details even today are not released that could warn the culprit he may have become under suspiction.
Kelly's MacDonald, incidently, was almost certainly wrong and the juror correct. About irregularities. You get them by the ton today, why not then? Any attempts to use that to try to generate the 'Cover-up' motive detracts generally from the seriousness of the point.
Anyone can build up a complicated story based on unsure interpreted facts and supposition, sometimes my hair stands on end at the fantastic results. Example: Maybrick's diary... Harrison's book explains that while the writing in the diary is different to Maybrick's will, the will must be forged!' That is like saying that the NASA visits to the moon must be lies because the astronauts claimed to have brought back stone samples and everyone knows that the moon is made of cheese!
If we want to investigate about any possible 'cover-up', and there is no reason not to do so, we must go much further and deeper into the contemporary evidence, HO memos, MEPO stuff, everything that could perhaps show a reason why a 'cover-up' should be attempted at all. Forget the Eddy/Catholic marriage bit and all the other stuff is my advice. Eddy was known for having tastes other than common Ladies.
Best regards
Bob |
Author: kemp
Tuesday, 04 January 2000 - 01:28 pm | | Hi Bob,
Thanks for your reply. I am a "Gullite" I must admit but in these articles I am not initially arguing that particular theory. It is my intention to focus on primary sources so as to reveal a cover up ( but not necessarily a la Sickert).Over a period of time I intend to try and establish that the many "errors of judgement" by the authorities were not procedural but by intent. I shall address your specific points in follow up mail.
Regards, Kemp.
Ps. Jon, I hope to reply to your recent letter shortly.
CU Kemp. |
Author: Bob Hinton
Tuesday, 04 January 2000 - 02:16 pm | | Dear Kemp,
welcome to the madhouse. May I make one suggestion and that is to check very crefully the 'facts' that you are hoping to use to illustrate your theory.
For example in your above posting you mention Hutchinsons statement and ask why he wasn't asked to give evidence at the inquest. Quite simply because he didn't make the statement until after the inquest had been concluded. Now if you've managed to let such a well known piece of information slip past you I would earnestly suggest you go back and have another look.
all the best
Bob Hinton |
Author: Bob_C
Wednesday, 05 January 2000 - 04:00 am | | Hi Kemp,
Sorry, I forgot/didn't think to welcome you to the board. Thanks, Bob H for the lesson in good manners.
As Bob H says, you need to check very carefully before starting some theory. The number of sages on the board and elsewhere that have chewed through e.g. this particular aspect of the case have left pretty much no stone unturned. That does not mean that you should not have a go yourself, who knows what could per chance be found, or thought of? I wish you luck!
Best regards
Bob |
Author: kemp
Wednesday, 05 January 2000 - 07:46 pm | | Dear Bobs!
Thanks for the welcomes. I should have stated my point on Hutchinson more clearly. He did make his statement just after the inquest closed.My argument is not only was this inquiry closed in too much haste but it did thus deny the public a chance to hear such evidence. Also this failure could have been rectified by re-opening the inquiry.
The above made his satement at 6pm,12th Nov.
Cu Kemp. |
Author: kemp
Wednesday, 05 January 2000 - 08:25 pm | | Further to my discussion on primary sources.
Matthew Packer was not called to give evidence as regards him selling grapes to an individual in the company of Liz Stride.
Being apparently interviewed by private detectives Grand,Batchelor,Chief Inspector Moore and Sir Charles Warren the police excused the grocer's non appearance by stating he was unreliable!
Question? If he was so unreliable why was he further interviewed by Inspector Abberline? If he was reliable perhaps he had something worth listening to? Grapestalks had been variously either found or allegedly seen by Diemschutz,Eva Harstein,Grand and Batchelor.
Mrs. Mortimer was not called to give evidence at Stride's inquest. One would expect the authorities to be interested in allowing the public to hear about her possibly overheard"...row at the Socialist's club..."Perhaps she was incorrect? Why not call her...?
C.I. Swanson received info. from Israel Schwartz on 30 Sept as regards seeing 2 men near Commercial St. One man assaulted this woman near to where the body of Stride was found. Where the 2 men together? Did the 2nd man chase Israel? Did the 2nd man also flee for his life? Perhaps it was just an oversight to not call this witness to inquest?
Conclusions. More irregularities...
A cover up would not be needed with this now long list of mistakes,errors,contradictions,malpractices and incompetence.
Question? What if the mistakes were not all down to amnesia? |
Author: kemp
Wednesday, 05 January 2000 - 08:29 pm | | Dear all,
Must improve my typing!
:-) Kemp |
Author: anon
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 01:39 am | | | Try improving your facts also. |
Author: Bob_C
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 04:54 am | | Hi Kemp,
Mathew Packer turned out to be such an unreliable 'witness', it would have been sensless to have brought his 'testimony' before the inquest. Any later interviews were simply as a follow-up to ever-new claims of this man. The police were bound to follow any information they had, be it ever-so shakey. To take the tenor of your apparant thinking further, if Packer had been called as witness, that could be construed as being part of a 'cover-up' for using such a proven fabicator to give 'evidence'.
The whole story about grapestalks being found on/near Stride's body was found to have been a complete fabrication, started by Packer's claims to have sold grapes to Stride's companion and carried on by the usual excited persons wanting to find what they wanted to find.
Now, witnesses are not called before a coroner's inquest to satisfy the curiosity of the public. They are there to give evidence to help the jury decide on the cause of death, and that alone. Therefore it were not necessary for for any member of the jury to hear about any non-existant row at any club, or even about grapes. That was a matter for the police.
The same for Schwartz. His testimony was a very important matter for the police, giving a possible lead to the killer. Schwartz could not testify a thing about the cause of death, however. As witness you are not allowed to say 'I saw so-and-so and later this happended, therefore so-and-so caused this'. You can only say 'I saw this happen, and then saw this'.
Maybe a tip would be to look at the points you suspect to indicate a cover-up, then assume for a moment that the opposite happend. See what that would have suggested to you. (Repeating the example: assume Packer had been called to give his 'evidence'. What would that say? A known teller of stories! Would that not have been much more evidence to suggest your 'cover-up?)
Best regards
Bob |
Author: kemp
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 08:44 pm | | Dear Anon,
Ouch. :-) |
Author: kemp
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 08:53 pm | | Dear Bob C,
Thanks for the reply. You are ,I feel, being slightly disingenuous.Why not accept one of these truths; (1) The police and authorities simply made a massive amount of hitherto unheard of mistakes.
or (2) The authorities knew exactly what they were doing.
To disprove my perspective you must address the evidence inherent in the primary sources and not just act as an apologist for each "cock-up".
Best regards,
Kemp.
Ps. Even more coincidences to follow. |
Author: Jon
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 11:14 pm | | Kemp
It is far easier to ask questions, than it is to answer them.
There are several reasons why someone asks a question, ie:
- they may misunderstand the point of the subject.
- they may have incomplete information.
- they may be trying to lead an audience in a particular direction.
- they may have read contradictory evidence.
...and so on....
For example, why do you claim it is strange that certain people were not called at an inquest?
What is an inquest?
Looking through Websters we find...
Main Entry: in·quest
Pronunciation: 'in-"kwest
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French enqueste, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin inquaesta, feminine of inquaestus, past participle of inquaerere to inquire
Date: 13th century
1 a : a judicial or official inquiry or examination especially before a jury <a coroner's inquest> b : a body of people (as a jury) assembled to hold such an inquiry c : the finding of the jury upon such inquiry or the document recording it
2 : INQUIRY, INVESTIGATION
Also Websters Medical Dictionary describes an Inquest as..
Inquest, postmortem examination to determine legally the medical cause of death; act of inquiry.
(to determine the medical cause of death)
So, think about those names you mentioned, Mrs Mortimer, Schwartz ...etc...how could they help determine the medical cause of death.
I know I'm repeating Bob here but you must be aware that you cant make a case for conspiracy, complacency or cock-up just because certain people knew something about the events of that night. The police inquiry was still on-going and is a seperate issue to the Coroners Inquest.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Bob_C
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 03:20 am | | Hi all,
Yep, Kemp, Jon is right. You do seem to be desperately trying to make a case for something that will be very hard to substantiate. Nothing wrong in that, all power to your sword, but you won't, I'm afraid, get very much support from others.
As I wrote earlier, and Jon supports, much of which you claim to be evidence for a cover-up is none of the kind. Once again, ask yourself what you would think if the opposite had occurred.
To try to reduce my choice to two is a non-argument anyway. Where is your evidence for:
'(1) The police and authorities simply made a massive amount of hitherto unheard of mistakes.
or
(2) The authorities knew exactly what they were doing.'?
I see no case at all for either.
i) The police make no special mistakes. They had no DNA, no fingerprinting, photography would hardly help, no computers, no modern forensics, not even a police laboratory. Please don't think of the police of those days in terms of our modern force. Any modern Bobby will tell you that even today, they'd have had a hard time finding the man. Look at case Black Panther, just as a point. How much more difficult then it must have been.
ii) Which authority? The police, the HO, the Government, the Queen? Salisbury? What did they know that they didn't want to let out? What could induce them to risk something that could, were it to come out, have brought down Monarch and Government for such a questionable stake? What would induce the idiotic ripping murders of whores in public when it would have been much easier, safer, even cleaner, to have let the women simply disappear?
To suggest that that ripping was an attempt to frighten the others into silence would reduce the perpetrators to the level of moronic imbeciles. If you are in danger of being blackmailed, and would stop at nothing to remove the source of it, you would not simply try to frighten the source into silence. You would arrange for the source to cease to exist in such a way as to eliminate all risks for you.
What, then, do you believe the authorities were hiding, and why? Taking into account the aminosity between Matthews and Warren, how do you think they would have covered up anything between them, being at each other's throats as they were? Or do you think that the police/Government didn't know about any 'cover-up'?
Best regards
Bob |
Author: kemp
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 10:55 am | | Dear Bob and Jon,
You both make very valid points and thanks for taking the time to reply. I am in the process of answering your various suggestions and adding a few notes of my own. Watch this space.
Slain leat agus..
Kemp. |
Author: Jon
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 06:47 pm | | This little tete a tete here between Kemp, Bob & myself brings up a little issue that may be worth going through in detail.
A Coroners inquest is very different from a trial, if we look at the procedures step by step it might help some to understand why only certain people attend an inquest.
When a body is found dead under suspicious circumstances, take for instance MJK as one example and Rose Mylett (Millet) as another. Every Policeman knows it is expected that a Doctor be brought to the scene to determine the condition of the body, and to pronounce life extinct. No matter how suspicious the police are they cannot proceed to arrest any likely suspect for murder until a Coroner has decided that this is in fact a murder case.
MJK was obviously a case of murder but Rose Mylett was first thought to have been strangled, then it was changed to choking, accidental death, but it takes a Coroner to determine this.
The Police following the discovery of MJK were straight into a murder case mentality, for obvious reasons. However suppose MJK had died naturally, then someone finding her body had butchered her remains. The Police would not be seeking a murderer, I'm not sure what the actual charge would be, but it would not be murder.
So, on discovering a body the police send for a Doctor to pronounce life extinct. Then an autopsy has to be performed as soon as possible, the Doctor in charge of the autopsy has to assess the evidence at the crime scene and the condition of the body to make a report to his satisfaction, that explains the death.
Next, a Coroners inquest has to be scheduled and it is the Coroner that will determine the 'legally' defined cause of death. The Coroner only wants to hear evidence from the autopsy and from any other witness who may have seen the victim alive prior to the body been found.
The Coroner will use the autopsy findings and witness testimony as to when & where the victim was last seen alive, all this he will use to determine if the case is a suicide, murder or accidental death.
So, was it really suspicious or even important that Hutchinson was not at MJK's inquest?
No, he was not required to be there, but he did give a statement to the Police, that was all he was required to do.
Mrs Mortimer was not required to be at Strides inquest either, what she had to say is of interest to the Police in their criminal investigation, but not to the Coroner in his determination as to the cause of death.
I appologize for being very boring but we seem to confuse the Coroners inquest, with a murder trial.
Regards, Jon |
Author: The Viper
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 07:07 pm | | | No need for apologies at all, Jon. A very informative poste and I for one have learned something from it. But surely in the case of Hutch, the issue is that he only came fowards after the inquest was completed on 12th November. He claimed to have seen MJK only a couple of hours before her likely time of death, but nobody at the inquest would have known it. Can there be any doubt that he would have been called to give evidence if his story had been known earlier? |
Author: Jon
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 09:35 pm | | Hello Viper
Yes, if the police had known of Hutchinsons involvement then he may have been called, however they did not. Also how would his testimony have influenced the Coroner in determining the 'legally' defined cause of death?.
MacDonald already had the testimony of Mary Cox, Joseph Barnett, Thomas Bowyer, Elizabeth Prater, Caroline Maxwell, Sarah Lewis, Maria Harvey and he could put together a rudimentary sequence of events from those statements.
Hutch may have been called if the Police had known about him, but it is not strange nor suspicious that he was not there.
So it is really is a mute point.
Let me quote MacDonalds closing comments to the jury as reported in The Daily Telegraph, Nov. 13th.
The Coroner (to the jury): "If the Coroners jury can come to a decision as to the cause of death, then that is all they have to do. They have nothing to do with prosecuting a man and saying what amount of penalty he is to get. It is quite sufficient if they find out what the cause of death was. It is for the police authorities to deal with the case and satisfy themselves as to any person who may be suspected later on".
I think that spells it out clear enough.
Regards, Jon |
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