Lord Orsam's Blog

[Caroline Brown]

Would you have been more impressed by a Cos, Caz?

Cos not, Gaz.

And I romaine adamant.

It's all bloody salad, ain't it?

Love your little gems though. I'm almost certain you'll keep 'em coming.

Love,

Caz
X

[Gary Barnett]

Cos not, Gaz.

And I romaine adamant.

It's all bloody salad, ain't it?

Love your little gems though. I'm almost certain you'll keep 'em coming.

Love,

Caz
X

Wasn’t Romaine Adamant a New Romantic Who Never Was?

[Caroline Brown]

I'm almost certain he was a Spandau Ballet reject, Gary.

Love,

Caz
X

[Abby Normal]

Here’s my reason for thinking so:

I’ve just read Lord O’s stunning research into a possible reason for George Hutchinson’s vigil outside the entrance to Miller’s Court.

He draws our attention to Alfred Wilkins, the Duval (Dorset) Street resident who observed a strange man enter and leave Miller’s Court on the night of Kitty Roman’s murder in July, 1909. The details are very similar to the Hutchinson scenario of two decades previously.

Then he drops the bombshell that a few weeks later Wilkins was part of a gang who mugged a ship’s carpenter named George Smith in Commercial Street. The cogs of the noble brain begin to turn and the solution to why Wilkins, and possibly Hutchinson, were hanging about outside Millers Court is revealed:

There is an interesting twist in this story. A lot of people have speculated that Hutchinson was standing in Dorset Street because he wanted to rob someone (in particular the man he saw taking Kelly into her room).

Well it is almost certain that Wilkins was standing in Duval Street for a nefarious purpose of a similar nature.

Within two months of Kitty's murder, Wilkins was arrested for robbery with violence upon one George Smith, stealing from him one watch and chain.


What is almost certain is that Wilkins was standing outside 17, Duval Street, directly opposite the entrance to Miller’s Court, because that was where he lived. While he was there, another resident of 17, Duval Street, an organ-grinder named Charles Watson, turned up and engaged Wilkins in conversation. Lord O neglects to mention him for some reason.

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It is true that a few weeks after the Roman murder Wilkins was tried for his part in a street robbery in Commercial Street. It was a typical Spitalfields ‘lumber’. A gang of three were involved, two of them holding Smith’s arms while the third relieved him of his watch and chain.

Lord O. tells us that at the time of his conviction for the robbery on Smith, Wilkins had ‘several previous convictions’. Although the transcript of Wilkins’ Old Bailey trial uses those very same words, when he gave evidence at the trial of the man accused of murdering Roman, Wilkins claimed he had only one previous conviction. This is borne out by the court calendar produced after his robbery conviction which records a single previous conviction in 1906 for stealing lettuce.

So let’s recap:

Wilkins is standing outside his own lodgings where he is seen by and converses with a neighbour. His criminal record at the time consists of a single conviction for stealing (a?) lettuce. A man enters a court a few feet away from where he is standing. The man has the appearance of a policeman (a soldier according to Wilkins) and is not molested by Wilkins, who is standing at the spot long enough to observe the man enter the court with Roman and depart some 20 minutes later. As far as we know, Wilkins was alone outside his lodgings, not with other criminal types who might together have committed a typical street robbery of the time.

Is it really almost certain that Wilkins was standing outside his own front door for ‘nefarious reasons’? Quite unlikely, I’d say.

hi Gary
who knows? i was just struck by the similarities between the two and here we have an actual case where a man whos later convicted of robbing someone hovering outside a womans home who just brought back another man. in dorset street no less.and yes i see the differences and you make good points.

as you may know hutch is one of my favored suspects. i just cant get over that on the night of her murder we have a man lurking outside her house engaged in stalking like behaviour. the waiting to rob her client has always been weak in my mind, partly because i think that aman was probably an invention by hutch. but if not, perhaps he was just waiting for him to leave so he could crash at marys place and or hook up with her. or murder her. or rob him? of course we dont know for sure why hutch was lurking but it was certainly more than the lame non reason he told abberline that he was surprised to see mary in the company of such a wealthy man.

[Gary Barnett]

hi Gary
who knows? i was just struck by the similarities between the two and here we have an actual case where a man whos later convicted of robbing someone hovering outside a womans home who just brought back another man. in dorset street no less.and yes i see the differences and you make good points.

as you may know hutch is one of my favored suspects. i just cant get over that on the night of her murder we have a man lurking outside her house engaged in stalking like behaviour. the waiting to rob her client has always been weak in my mind, partly because i think that aman was probably an invention by hutch. but if not, perhaps he was just waiting for him to leave so he could crash at marys place and or hook up with her. or murder her. or rob him? of course we dont know for sure why hutch was lurking but it was certainly more than the lame non reason he told abberline that he was surprised to see mary in the company of such a wealthy man.

I didn’t know you were a Hutch man, Abby. When it comes to proper Ripperology, I’m the boy standing in the corner of the class wearing the dunce’s cap. My interest is often at a very micro level. During his testimony at the Hall trial, Wilkins mentioned that he had told ‘Patch McGuire’ about his sighting of the stranger with Kitty Roman. That’s intriguing because there was a Patrick McGuire who was a local ‘terror’ at the time. I’ll probably look him up to see if I can find him being referred to as ‘Patch’.

I agree there is something not quite right about the whole Hutch story. Where do you stand with the ‘Topping’ ID? Do you think he was the witness GH?

The part about GH that most interests me is the Romford connection. If he was indeed a groom, he might have gone there looking for casual work at the weekly horse auction - but that would have been on a Wednesday.

And a horsey GH might gel nicely with the horse dealer Stephen Maywood, who also had connections to Romford, and who would have been MJK’s next door neighbour when she lived in Pennington Street. I think I’m right in saying that GH claimed to have known Kelly three years or so previously when she was in the Highway area?

[Abby Normal]

I didn’t know you were a Hutch man, Abby. When it comes to proper Ripperology, I’m the boy standing in the corner of the class wearing the dunce’s cap. My interest is often at a very micro level. During his testimony at the Hall trial, Wilkins mentioned that he had told ‘Patch McGuire’ about his sighting of the stranger with Kitty Roman. That’s intriguing because there was a Patrick McGuire who was a local ‘terror’ at the time. I’ll probably look him up to see if I can find him being referred to as ‘Patch’.

I agree there is something not quite right about the whole Hutch story. Where do you stand with the ‘Topping’ ID? Do you think he was the witness GH?

The part about GH that most interests me is the Romford connection. If he was indeed a groom, he might have gone there looking for casual work at the weekly horse auction - but that would have been on a Wednesday.

And a horsey GH might gel nicely with the horse dealer Stephen Maywood, who also had connections to Romford, and who would have been MJK’s next door neighbour when she lived in Pennington Street. I think I’m right in saying that GH claimed to have known Kelly three years or so previously when she was in the Highway area?

thanks gary
yes hutch is one of my favored suspects among a handful whom i think are the least weak suspects, including blotchy, koz, bury, chapman and dare i say lech.
i lean toward toppy not being hutch, mainly because of sigs not really matching IMHO and also the dodgy circs he was found. but i dont really care either way because serial killers often have appearingly normal family lives.

the whole groom thing intrigues me as his aman was wearing a horseshoe pin. is he a fictional mixture of suspects described in the papers along with an actual rich jewish man in the horse business whom hutch had jeolousies and or hatred for? was it actually as you brought up Maywood perhaps(and hutch is telling the truth?)

something strange going on with hutchs story methinks and either way i beleive mary kelly murder is the key to solving it, if its ever going to be.

[Gary Barnett]

thanks gary
yes hutch is one of my favored suspects among a handful whom i think are the least weak suspects, including blotchy, koz, bury, chapman and dare i say lech.
i lean toward toppy not being hutch, mainly because of sigs not really matching IMHO and also the dodgy circs he was found. but i dont really care either way because serial killers often have appearingly normal family lives.

the whole groom thing intrigues me as his aman was wearing a horseshoe pin. is he a fictional mixture of suspects described in the papers along with an actual rich jewish man in the horse business whom hutch had jeolousies and or hatred for? was it actually as you brought up Maywood perhaps(and hutch is telling the truth?)

something strange going on with hutchs story methinks and either way i beleive mary kelly murder is the key to solving it, if its ever going to be.

Abby, have you seen the photo of Maywood’s blind brother wearing a horseshoe tie pin?

[Gary Barnett]

Here’s Henry Maywood, Steve’s older, blind brother. Note the upside-down tie pin.



There’s a photo of Steve which shows he had a rather blotchy face...

[Edward Stow]

Blind?

[Gary Barnett]

Blind?

Of course!

[R. J. Palmer]

I don't wish to step into the middle of this dog fight, but I'm wondering: might not this be the same bloke? Tower Hamlets Independent, 6 August 1910.

[Gary Barnett]

I don't wish to step into the middle of this dog fight, but I'm wondering: might not this be the same bloke? Tower Hamlets Independent, 6 August 1910.

Yes, it is.

[Gary Barnett]

Yes, it is.

Sorry, RJ, I should have said no, I don’t think so.

I saw 1910 and gold watch and thought it was our AW’s other conviction. He was sentenced to 9mths for stealing one on 28th July, 1910. It’s the 1910 conviction I mentioned earlier where his previous was:

[Gary Barnett]

Sorry, RJ, I should have said no, I don’t think so.

I saw 1910 and gold watch and thought it was our AW’s other conviction. He was sentenced to 9mths for stealing one on 28th July, 1910. It’s the 1910 conviction I mentioned earlier where his previous was:

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As a comparison, on the same page of the court calendar as Wilkins in 1910 we have this guy:



Could we even say that on any given night he was ‘almost certain’ to have had criminal activity in mind? Did such people never take a day off?

[Gary Barnett]

I haven’t found RJ’s AW, but here’s another one who was making more of an effort to produce a half-decent rap sheet.




You’ll notice that in Feb, 1901, he was convicted of attempted buggery. If he’d been the Roman witness and LordO had spotted that, I wonder what we would have been told he almost certainly had in mind for Kitty’s visitor.