The Police Vs. The Press : Discussion

[How Brown]

Thread for discussing the relationship between the power of the press versus the long arm of the law....The Press versus the Police in 1888.

Anyone of the opinion that there was no reason for the communication breakdown between the two...or perhaps, do you feel that there was no real breakdown and that there was nothing intrinsically different in how data, clues, and details were transmitted by the police to the press in the Autumn of Terror than in any other normal circumstance ?

Lets start with this one....

If you think there was a breakdown between the two....what do you attribute it to ?

Thanks....and lets try to participate on this one.

[Simon Wood]

"Police must not on any account give any information whatever to gentlemen connected with the press, relative to matters within police knowledge, or relative to duties to be performed or orders received, or communicate in any manner, either directly or indirectly, with editors, or reporters of newspapers, on any matter connected with the public service, without express and special authority . . . The slightest deviation from this rule may completely frustrate the ends of justice, and defeat the endeavor of superior officers to advance the welfare of the public service. Individual merit will be invariably recognized in due course, but officers, who without authority give publicity to discoveries, tending to produce sensation and alarm, show themselves wholly unworthy of their posts."

C.E. Howard Vincent, A Police Code, and Manual of the Criminal Law, 1881.

Regards,

Simon

[How Brown]

Great addition Simon....Thanks very much for that.

Here we see a clear cut explanation why data and facts in regard to ongoing cases have to be harbored from the spin doctors from a Police adminstrator.

I for one fully understand that the ramifications of such a protocol would encourage the Press, stymied by the dearth of facts which may have trickled out only on occasion from renegade officers such as Inspector W.N. Race..would be frustrated to the point that they would attribute their mutual across the board inability to provide their readership with more case developments ...that they would criticize the police openly....despite each member of the Press being fully aware of the guidelines beforehand that C.E.Vincent laid out in the excerpt Simon Wood graciously shared.

That the Press were not aware of the protocol is yet another myth in the Case....that being that the Press were debilitated by the police unnecessarily and without precedent.

[Chris G.]

Hi Howard

Simon is correct. There was no regular, formal contact between the police and the press. Unlike today there were no press briefings or news conferences. This probably does not need to be said, but it's true.

The press reporters picked up what information as best they could from other sources: witnesses and informants, and this is one reason why the press reports were so often filled with misinformation.

Or else they made up colorful pieces of their own making, which could have been the case with the stories about the Jewish suspect "Leather Apron" if, as has been theorized, that suspect never actually existed in fact on the streets of London.

That is, a newspaper reporter such as Harry Dam might have been "gilding the lily" in terms of inventing such a suspect as a likely person to have done the murders, as discussed by Paul Begg and myself in "Henry Jackson Wells Dam (1856-1906). Part 1. Scandal in California, Murder in London’s East End," Ripperologist No. 106, September 2009.

Paul will be expounding further on his ideas about Leather Apron in Ripperologist No. 109A, December, in an article based on his London Conference talk. So stay tuned. :thumb:

Best regards

Chris

[Chris G.]

That the Press were not aware of the protocol is yet another myth in the Case....that being that the Press were debilitated by the police unnecessarily and without precedent.

To this day, police in England reveal few details about ongoing cases, which is one reason if you read about a murder case on the BBC News website, the facts given are few and far between and news stories tend to be repetitive.

Chris

[Simon Wood]

Hi Howard,

During the Whitechapel Murders the Metropolitan Police played this gag order for all it was worth. Jack the Ripper was the first manifestation of what today we call news management.

Regards,

Simon

[How Brown]

Dear C.G....you said:

Simon is correct. There was no regular, formal contact between the police and the press. Unlike today there were no press briefings or news conferences. This probably does not need to be said, but it's true.

I was and am in agreement with that commentary. We do know what happened in the case of Inspector Race for his indiscretions regarding Cutbush in early 1894.

I know that the police didn't simply start minimalizing what they told the press during the WM as if this was something unique. Some I believe feel that it was something that was inaugarated during the murder skein.

Dear Simon:

If possible, at your leisure, please provide some of your views on which specific instances stand out as being managed by the police for the press and down to Joe Bloggs.

Thanks.

[Chris G.]

Hi Simon and Howard

The following is adapted from an answer I just posted over at Casebook in the thread on "Suspects for Astrakhan Man?" (http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=106094#post106094) and might be pertinent to our discussion in this thread. I am talking about the report in the Daily News of 8 December 1888 (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_news/18881208.html) about the poor Polish Jewish suspect "Joseph Isaacs, 30, who said he had no fixed abode, and described himself as a cigar maker". Isaacs was a sometime denizen of a lodging house in Paternoster row, Spitalfields and the woman deputy lodging house keeper testified about what she knew about the suspect at Worship street Police court while Detective Sergeant Record, H Division, spoke for the police.

It's often hard to distinguish what were the feelings of the police about a certain suspect and the way the news writer described their interest. In this instance, for example, the Daily News reporter seems to push the envelope in terms of highlighting the police interest in the suspect. But it might be just the writer's take about how sure the police were that the man was a likely suspect for the murders:

"The prisoner, who was brought up in the custody of Detective Sergeant Record, H Division, is the man who was arrested in Drury lane on Thursday afternoon on suspicion of being connected with the Whitechapel murders. It transpired during the hearing of this charge [the offense of stealing a gold watch] that it was committed at the very time the prisoner was being watched as a person 'wanted.' . . . Detective Record said that there were some matters alleged against the prisoner which it was desired to inquire into."

Chris

[How Brown]

Dear C.G.

Its also reported that when Abberline got involved with Isaacs he mentioned out loud that "this is something big this time" or words to that effect. I'm beat at the moment and don't have time to provide the correct syntax.

If the police were interested in Isaacs...and that occurred on December 7th....it means that between Pizer and Isaacs, there was a period of time of almost exactly three months between these two Jews being arrested.....not that others may not have been detained to our knowledge, but none are present in the available files. Kosminski was not arrested and again,Ostrog was in France.

Sounds like an epidemic huh, A.P. ? Two in 3 months !

[Simon Wood]

Compare and contrast, as my English master liked to say.

The Star, 10th September 1888—

"They [the police] treat the reporters of the newspapers, who are simply news-gatherers for the great mass of the people, with a snobbery that would be beneath contempt were it not senseless to an almost criminal degree. On Saturday they shut the reporters out of the mortuary; they shut them out of the house where the murder was done; the constable at the mortuary door lied to them; some of the inspectors at the offices seemed to wilfully mislead them; they denied information which would have done no harm to make public, and the withholding of which only tended to increase the public uneasiness over the affair."

Compare and contrast this state of affairs with the "Ripper" correspondence and ornately-detailed George Hutchinson story which the police handed to the press on a silver salver.

Regards,

Simon

[A.P. Wolf]

Then Simon, perhaps like me, your conclusion is that the entire George Hutchinson saga was simply and purely deliberate police misinformation and disinformation, designed yet again to place a Jewish suspect at the forefront of public and press suspicion for the Whitechapel Murders?
Within hours of the press release, well-dressed Jewish gentlemen were being pursued by angry mobs of East Enders, shouting out 'It's Jack the Ripper' through the train stations of London.

[Chris G.]

Then Simon, perhaps like me, your conclusion is that the entire George Hutchinson saga was simply and purely deliberate police misinformation and disinformation, designed yet again to place a Jewish suspect at the forefront of public and press suspicion for the Whitechapel Murders?
Within hours of the press release, well-dressed Jewish gentlemen were being pursued by angry mobs of East Enders, shouting out 'It's Jack the Ripper' through the train stations of London.

Was it "deliberate police misinformation and disinformation" or was it Hutchinson who misled the enquiry, just as, in the Yorkshire Ripper case, "Wearside Jack", revealed later to be John Humble who has been serving a sentence for his crime of perverting the course of justice, misled that enquiry by sending a tape to the police that made them think the man they were seeking had a northeast England accent?????

Chris

[How Brown]

Within hours of the press release, well-dressed Jewish gentlemen were being pursued by angry mobs of East Enders, shouting out 'It's Jack the Ripper' through the train stations of London.

Sources please....

[How Brown]

A few days ago one of their number was arrested amid every sign of consternation among his local co-religionists on a suspicion of complicity in one of the most appalling crimes which have ever agitated the London public. In a day or two he was released without a stain upon his character, and the joy of his friends and neighbors could only find vent in the refrain from their own Psalms, "Hallelujah!"---Star Nov. 14th, 1888
********************

That sort of reporting sounds like one of your concotions, A.P...only it hasn't got violin accompaniment....

Nameless suspected man...one of probably close to a hundred...and one who was Jewish....from the policeman's friend, The Star....who turned out to be Pizer, not the nicest boy on the block.

[How Brown]

Here's some "objective" journalism from The Star...not.

"As for the article in Murray's it was extremely useful as showing that Sir Charles Warren was no more fit to be entrusted with the care of our liberties than a homicidal maniac with the care of a six months' old baby"

Oy vey. Such literary license....

[How Brown]

Chris:

Of course, A.P. knows better than to state that the police invented the Hutchinson story... but in his patented style, he slips those little flights of fantasy in whenever possible based simply on the fact he wants the police to look bad.

A.P.'s insistence on his version of events reminds me...without the scathing rebukes and nastiness, which A.P. is basically incapable of rendering due to his nature... of the theorist who vociferously promoted one suspect's guilt despite the now obvious fact that the elements which comprised that theory were inventions of his own delusion and making...expecting the other poor schlub to accept the inventions as facts and knowing beforehand that the position he maintained was false....

I also see a little of Stephen Knight in A.P....like the situation where Hobo 'fessed up and Knight just acted as if that was no deterrent to his position on the Royal Conspiracy.

Simon:

Do we know all the facts which compelled the Police to present the Hutchinson deposition in the aftermath of the Nov. 9 Massacre?

Comparing police decisions made in September to November's decision for said deposition's release may be comparing apples to oranges.

From here, and this is just a thought and hardly a concrete fact, it may have had to do with the consideration of a new approach to his reign of terror... where the killer was being thought likely to having taken his "A" game indoors.

Putting myself in the shoes of the police, thats a frightening thought. By then it was becoming clear that Mr. Hold Back The Cold Meat was focusing exclusively on women involved with solicitation...but they could not know whether he was going to leave the street for the hovels and homes....due to the impending cold weather, appearance and effectiveness of street Vigilantes, and so forth.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Howard,

I don't share your innocent faith in the white-hattedness of the LVP cops, and I am 100% with AP on George Hutchinson. I have an article in December's Ripperologist which will explain a lot, and I am working on two more which demonstrate the mechanics of the Whitechapel Murders, which had nothing to do with a serial killer.

Regards,

Simon

[Chris G.]

The Whitechapel murders were of course committed by the police themselves, who then left the world with the impression that they didn't have a clue who had committed them. All very clever and ingenious when you think about it. Case closed. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3511098070_a9386cb6de_o.gif

[How Brown]

I don't share your innocent faith in the white-hattedness of the LVP cops, and I am 100% with AP on George Hutchinson----S.Wood.

Simon...

I will be anxious to read your version of the Hutchinson Deposition. I am sure it differs from what A.P.'s explanation of the November 12th trip to the police will be.

Just to set the record straight on my impression of Hutchinson's trip....even though I doubt very much that he was involved with a murder, he is one of the four people I would like to see more material uncovered on. The other three are two of the Macnaghten mentioned fellows and this Fleming character. I don't think he's a suspect, but simply a suspicious enough fellow to pursue research on.

With all due respect to you ( which goes without saying just as it applies to A.P.)....I am under the impression that you feel the police helped Hutchinson created a composite of the killer they would have liked to see...somehow encouraging the mnemonical miracle ( The details Hutchinson was able to provide three days after seeing Kelly and Astrachan Man in the dark....I don't remember what I was wearing yesterday and I put the clothes on myself !) with details of their own...to fit up a foreign born chap.

If I am in the same ballpark here, please let me know without extrapolating too much to avoid discussing your upcoming article. I sincerely want to know what makes anyone think...especially two researchers with about 70 years experience in the field combined...that the police would stoop to the point that they manufactured a paint by numbers Ripper....if in fact, that is what you or perhaps A.P. are suggesting.

Please let me know Simon.

Ciao
How

[Simon Wood]

Hi Howard,

My upcoming article isn't about Hutchinson per se. It's about how much we can trust certain police sources when it comes to JtR.

It's going to be a cold day in hell when we get more information on George Hutchinson, because he didn't exist. He was an invention. One of my forthcoming articles is about the reason why.

The Whitechapel Murders, especially Millers Court, were not about what we think they were about. We have to rid our minds of the serial killer notion. It's yesterday's cold potatoes and not worth a plugged nickel. There is a far more fascinating story waiting to be uncovered, and uncover it we shall because at last cracks are starting to appear in the tired old story we've been fed for the past 121 years.

Regards,

Simon

[How Brown]

Simon:

I'll wait for the article to appear and in the meantime concern myself with A.P.'s take on the matter at hand. This sounds interesting Simon. Thanks for the advance notice.

[A.P. Wolf]

Good words, Simon, and indeed you are right, many facets of the conditioning process that is inherent in this study - forced upon us by the hapless encumbents of the study who wrestle one another in a strictly confined hessian sack to which none others are privy - need to be consigned to the great Eurobin in the sky.
Hutchinson's statements, if they ever really existed as witness statements, are the virtual ravings of senior Met officers furiously trying to scribble over the obvious with the plainly ridiculous, but also tinged with the racist maliciousness of portraying the Jew in all his glory as the 'suspect'.
It seems obvious to me that the murder of Mary Kelly set certain alarm bells ringing in Scotland Yard, alarms that really should have gone off three months before... and it is at this exact moment that the massive disinformation and misinformation campaign was set in motion to divert interest away from the true circumstances of the case, and who better to fit the bill than the blood ritualised Jew?
They knew something that the press didn't know, so they fed the press and people with what they wanted to read and hear... the sinister Jew about his nefarious business in Whitechapel, as reported by a good Christian cockney lad.
Cor blimey.

[Sam Flynn]

The thing to note about Hutchinson's statements is that the one given to the police describes the suspect, specifically, as Jewish, whereas the statement Hutchinson gave to the press doesn't. In addition, the Hutchinson press statement contains a whole lot more detail than his police statement - and even contradicts it in key places.

Both these facts cast serious doubt on the notions that Hutchinson and his statement were both invented by a desperate police force seeking to implicate the Jews.

[How Brown]

Hutchinson's statements, if they ever really existed as witness statements, are the virtual ravings of senior Met officers furiously trying to scribble over the obvious with the plainly ridiculous, but also tinged with the racist maliciousness of portraying the Jew in all his glory as the 'suspect'.

Maybe on the planet you live on they didn't exist, but on Earth they did.

No, Simon is not "right". Thats simply Simon's opinion.

What else doesn't exist A.P. ? Anything else not conform to your fantasy view of the Case?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Howard,

How do you and others know for sure there was a George Hutchinson?

You don't. It's just a collective opinion amongst those who believe every word that dropped like pearls from the lips of the Metropolitan Police.

Be careful, mon ami. Who's to say that yours is not the fantasy view of the case?

Regards,

Simon

[Chris G.]

Good words, Simon, and indeed you are right, many facets of the conditioning process that is inherent in this study - forced upon us by the hapless encumbents of the study who wrestle one another in a strictly confined hessian sack to which none others are privy -

Spoken like a true outsider. Very fine.



How do you and others know for sure there was a George Hutchinson?



So, Simon, you are prepared to question the reputations of the police officers engaged in the case, just as AP is prepared to do the same with the authors who have written on the case. Ah well. . .

C

[Simon Wood]

Hi Chris,

Yes I am. Certain police officers lied through their teeth, and what others have had to say on the subject is hardly holy writ. Even well-known authors can write downright tosh. As many have.

If you're not willing to challenge the status quo why are you interested in the subject, or are you happy just spinning your wheels to no purpose?

I don't mind what you believe; just don't ever patronize me.

Regards,

Simon

[How Brown]

Simon....hang on a second before I ask you a question or two...

I'll ask you the following (below) because A.P. is intentionally avoiding addressing the facts of the matter, most likely because he knows the sources for his claims exists only in his mind, not in reality. He doesn't even bother to counter my presentation. His constant smears of people who spent a lot of time working all sorts of angles to find the killer leave a bad taste in my mouth and I'm tired of arguing the point with him.



*********************

Simon:



Let me ask you this...and again I don't want to make you divulge much from your upcoming article...because I am interested in something you haven't said ...something even you may not have considered....contained in the following :

1. Do you contend that Hutchinson was some sort of device created by the police to lure the killer out ? Is this why its been a problem to locate him in the census and part of all the other concomitant issues surrounding him...such as his subsequent vanishing act?

2. Do you contend that the time between his appearance at the police station and the actual murder....a condition that we all have considered as being a little strange, if not very suspicious....is a sign of this "cardboard" Hutchinson being a possible reality and that specifically because of the time between the two events....it demonstrates some sort of organized conspiracy involving the press as well ? After all, as we know...

3. .... we've read that Hutchinson's description....the description of Hutchinson himself,that is.... as provided in the Times on Nov. 13th mentions military appearance. Are you contending in any way that that was a sham or fabrication in order to give the cardboard character an identity ?

Personally Simon....if the police wanted to roust Jews or anyone they may have thought was the killer or in league with him....they could have done so without all this rigamarole. Just my opinion. But I am interested in your take on this.

Back to you,old friend.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Howard,

George Hutchinson is a subtle, political [small p] thing. What other witness in the history of crime detection was unleashed upon the press sight unseen in such a fanfare of glorious detail and time-coded story before the cops had even a moment to investigate the truth of his story?

GH wasn't created "to lure the killer out". That idea is too modern, too much like a slick plot-point in 'Criminal Minds'. GH was created to account for the presence of Sarah Lewis's man [originally a man and a woman] on the steps of the lodging house opposite Millers Court early in the morning of 9th November, and how it all ties together is something we need to work out.

Regards,

Simon

[Roy Corduroy]

It seems obvious to me that the murder of Mary Kelly set certain alarm bells ringing in Scotland Yard, alarms that really should have gone off three months before...

That has a ring of truth, because at this exact time they went looking for James Kelly.

Roy

[How Brown]

Roy:

Is it not just as likely that the search for Kelly which found authorities at his ex-Mother in laws a coincidence, since there had been 69 days between the time of the first canonical murder and MJK's ? Why go then and not after, say, the Double Event ? I'm not sure Kelly was a contemporary suspect....and I had and lost a large post to share with you on this matter.

In other words, why didn't they make a move on Brider ( the Mother in law ) before then ? Could it not be just a coincidence ? What specifically distinguishes MJK's murder from the Double Event in terms of alarm on the part of the police ?

For me, Roy, the "alarm bells" that have been suggested as being a little late in coming has more to do with the fact that the weather had changed...and that her murder occurred indoors. There was also going to be a new Sheriff in town since Warren had just resigned the day before the Kelly murder. These possible & coincidental developments are likely in my view for what its worth and it gives us the impression that the police felt James Kelly may have had something to do with MJK's death when in all likelihood he didn't....and that the search for him coincided with that awful event resulting in the police winding up at her door...in a short span of time.

Again...Kelly doesn't appear in any official SY files relative to the WM. Why ? Are we to believe that they considered him that much of a threat if the first time they land on Brider's doorstep is nearly a whopping 11 months after he escaped ?

Kelly, and this really ought to be on another thread....may well have been considered sane and and nonviolent for the majority of the year 1888 and for that reason a very lukewarm or meager attempt to locate him is what we find as a result of that determination. There was no mention of his escape ( unless something has been uncovered that I am unaware of ) and had he been considered violent during the time of the murders, we may have found more on him in official WM related files. Just an opinion.

[Roy Corduroy]

Certainly, Howie, a fuller examintion of it belongs on a James Kelly thread.

I mentioned it here because with the talk about secret stuff, police withholding from the press, etc, well this was a secret, his escape and being on the loose at the time. A sensitive matter involving several Home Office entities, the police and the asylum. You don't hear it mentioned in any subsequent memos, memoirs, jottings, or whatever.

That's all. This is an official secret we know of today.

Roy

[Sam Flynn]

Hello Simon,GH was created to account for the presence of Sarah Lewis's man [originally a man and a woman] on the steps of the lodging house opposite Millers Court early in the morning of 9th November, and how it all ties together is something we need to work out.
What doesn't tie together is that Hutchinson's statements make no mention at all of Sarah Lewis's arrival on the scene. That, to me, renders Hutchinson's story deeply suspicious in and of itself, and by no means in terms of its being a police concoction. On the contrary - one would think that the police, knowing that Sarah Lewis passed by during Hutchinson's putative vigil, would have included that detail in the story at some point... but there's no sign of her in either the police or the press statement.

To compound matters - at least from the POV of a police "fit-up" - the newspaper-reading public would already have known about Sarah Lewis's story by the time they read Hutchinson's press interview and in some instances, if memory serves me correctly, they'd have had both accounts before them in the same edition, if not on the very same page.

[Roy Corduroy]

I'm not sure Kelly was a contemporary suspect....


He was 100% a contemporary police suspect.

For me, Roy, the "alarm bells" that have been suggested as being a little late in coming has more to do with the fact that the weather had changed...and that her murder occurred indoors.

I don't really know why AP said alarm bells in November, he didn't explain it. But I know for a fact the James Kelly bell did go off with police.

Again...Kelly doesn't appear in any official SY files relative to the WM. Why ? Because this was a very sensitive matter.

Again, my only point in recounting this is to isolate and throw light on a secret that actually existed in the real world. So as to contrast it with the supposed secret stuff that police withheld that folks suggest.

Suggest like to get hyp-no-tized? :bowl:

[Simon Wood]

Hi Sam,

I agree. The stories don't fit. However, try this—

Put the puzzle together again, but this time don't use logic. Instead, be artful. You have five characters to play with—Mrs Kennedy, Sarah Lewis, Mary Kelly, George Hutchinson and Mister Astrakhan—any one or more of whom may or may not have existed within the context of this 2.00—3.00 am episode.

See what you come up with.

Regards,

Simon