Author: Trevor Robert Jones
Sunday, 15 December 2002 - 04:12 pm |        |
Dear All,
Please forgive me (a newcomer) for asking this : Why were the official Police files closed to public scrutiny for 100 years ?
I was under the (perhaps mistaken)impression that if any crime was commited for which no person is charged , the files remain open , and information added indefinatly.
It makes one think , as does the fact that the Police Re-inforcements were stood down so soon after the Mary Kelly murder.
I hope this does not make me sound too much like a "conspiricy theorist"!
I apologise if this question has been answered previously.
Many thanks
Trevor (DrPox) |
Author: Brian Schoeneman
Sunday, 15 December 2002 - 05:42 pm | |
Trevor,
The police reinforcements weren't removed for a couple of months after Mary Kelly was killed. Kelly was killed in November, and they didn't remove all of the extra police until the middle of March. This was mainly due to monetary constraints, not any kind of a conspiracy. But, to their credit, right after Coles and MacKenzie's deaths, they bumped them right back up, for a few weeks.
This was one of the few places where they did the right thing - dumping the extra cops on the streets probably wouldn't catch the Ripper, but they did make the people feel better.
B |
Author: Howard Brown
Sunday, 15 December 2002 - 06:37 pm | |
| Trevor: Brian's right. I saw a program awhile back where it was falsely stated that police presence was "cut back" almost immediately after MjK's death..... |
Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Sunday, 15 December 2002 - 07:22 pm | |
Whatho Trevor,
100 years is the standard time of closure for files at the Public Record Office which contain personal information. Not only such files as the Ripper crime files are covered by this rule but so are the census results.
The normal closure for ordinary files is 30 years unless the item is already in the public domain. In the case of the stuff I sent to the PRO for the British Railways Board it meant all correspondence files were closed for 30 years but things such as working timetables were open on transfer.
I also dealt with defence and Royal matters (from the railway perspective) and the normal closure for these would have been 70 years but the PRO's Inspecting Officer and I decided to put the standard 30 closure on them as the information they contained was hopelessly out of date.
Cheers, Mark |
Author: Trevor Robert Jones
Monday, 16 December 2002 - 05:56 am | |
Many thanks to you all for answering my questions,very much appreciated.
Regards,
Trevor |
