|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** 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 **
Bloodhounds
Casebook Message Boards: Police Officials: General Discussion:
Bloodhounds
Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 22 January 2003 - 01:43 pm |        | Hi, all:
An article by Edwin Brough, the man who staged the bloodhounds trial with bloodhounds for Sir Charles Warren in Hyde Park on the morning of October 9, 1888 can be found at the following link. It appeared in the popular American quarterly, The Century, Volume 38, Issue 2, June 1889, pp. 189-198. If you follow the link, you'll find the article has some neat drawings of bloodhounds and some pondering by Brough on why the hounds could not catch Jack, as well as more than you ever wanted to know about bloodhound breeding and training. 
The Bloodhound, by Edwin Brough
Also see the October 10, 1888 Times article on the previous morning's trial of the bloodhounds Barnaby and Burgho in Hyde Park here on the Casebook at
THE EAST END MURDERS
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Brian Schoeneman
Wednesday, 22 January 2003 - 03:12 pm | | Chris,
Thanks for the great info.
I have always been of the belief that the funding snafu that erupted between Matthews and Warren over the purcashing and training of the bloodhounds that led to their being returned and not available after the Kelly killing was a travesty.
The bloodhounds could have given us a wealth of valuable information had they been available. The tests were successful, so it's possibly they may even have found the Ripper.
Alas, we'll never know.
B |
Author: Dan Norder
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 12:53 am | | The tests were successful? I thought the first set with extremely easy conditions worked, but second tests with less than perfect conditions failed miserably.
But let's assume the bloodhounds got in there... were they seriously expected to chase off out into the masses in the East End and get anywhere? Would they sniff suspects and people questioned as witnesses? Is it likely that Jack's scent was distinct enough over MJK's and possibly older scents of Joe and Maria, or men who had visited, that the dogs would know which scent to follow?
From the (admittedly limited) readings I have done on modern trained dogs, I doubt these bloodhounds would have made any headway. But then I suppose there's always the off chance. Like if the Ripper were nearby for some reason and the dogs got at him he might have cracked under pressure.
 Dan
----------------------------------------------------------------
Consider supporting this great site by making a donation |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 02:14 am | | Hi, Dan:
Yes you're right. The trials with the bloodhounds were not the success hoped for by Warren and Brough. I personally do think that fear of the bloodhounds was one factor that kept the Ripper from murdering for six weeks from the Eddowes murder to the weekend of the Lord Mayor's parade when he murdered Kelly. So in that sense, if I am right, the bloodhounds were a partial success as a deterrent to the murderer's operations even if they did not help in his ultimate capture.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Kevin Braun
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 10:17 am | | Chris,
Thank you for the informative links. I was surprised to learn that Brough trained his dogs to follow "the clean boot", which proved difficult on the London stones (pavement). I suppose that there are many methods of training bloodhounds such as letting the dogs acquire the scent from an article of clothing.
JtR may not have been a bloodhound expert. He could only speculate on their tracking abilities. You wrote, he may have had a "fear of the bloodhounds". The bloodhound tests were widely publicized. He may have thought the dogs could follow his scent on Eddowes' apron. Could a fear of the bloodhounds have driven JtR indoors? I like the six week layoff theory. Then again, I also like the burning of the clothes to destroy the scent in 13 Miller's court theory.
Take care,
Kevin |
Author: Brian Schoeneman
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 07:02 pm | | Chris and Dan,
The information that I recalled reading in Sugden (page 294) differs:
"At seven on Monday morning, the trials began in Regent's Park. Although the ground was thickly coated in hoar frost the hounds performed well, successfully tracking a man who had been given a fifteen minute head start for nearly a mile. That night they were used again, this time in Hyde Park. It was dark and the dogs were worked on a leash but once more they were successful in performing their allotted task. Next morning, 9 October, further trials were held in the presence of Sir Charles Warren. In all, half a dozen runs were made, the Commissioner himself acting the part of the hunted man on two occasions. Again the results were encouraging. In every instance the bloodhounds hunted complete strangers and occasinally the trail was deliberately crossed to deceive them. Whenever this happened, the dos were checked, but only temporarily, for one or other of them, casting around, invariably picked up the trail again. 'In consquence of the coldness of the scent,' reported the Central news, 'the hounds worked very slowly, but they demonstrated the possibility of tracking complete strangers on to who trail they had been laid. The Chief Commissioner seemed pleased with the result of the trials, though he did not express any definite opinion on the subject to those present.' Warren's caution was justified. We are not told the venue of the third trial but it was, like the others, in one of the London parks. Therein lay the problem. For however impressively the dogs might work on grass across country there could be no certainty that they could repeat their success in Whitechapel. Nevertheless, Sir Charles thought they were worth a try and instructions were issues that, in the event of another murder, the body must not be touched until the dogs had been put on the scent."
The "failed miserably" test that Dan mentions was probably the "Tooting Common" episode, which Sugden proves, was a misunderstanding and didn't actually happen. This is also confirmed by the defense of the dogs that's written by their owner, that you can find in the chapter on the bloodhounds in Stewart's "Ultimate Companion".
Here's what Sugden says about the "Tooting Common" episode (page 294-295):
"The Tooting Common episode, which is said to have discredited the whole experiment, is a myth. It sprang from a false news reportof 19 October: 'It is stated that Sir Charles Warren's bloodhounds were out for practice at Tooting yesterday morning and were lost. Telegrams have been dispatched to all the Metropolitan Police stations stating that, if seen anywhere, information is to be immediately sent to Scotland Yard.' The truth was less dramatic. On 18 October a sheep was killed on the common and local police wired to London for the loan of the dogs. Unfortunately neither animal was available. Burgho had already been returned to Scarborough. And Barnaby was out being practised by Mr. Taunton, a friend of Edwin Brough, at Hemel Hempstead. Some comment that the hounds did not arrive in Tooting when sent for must have been made and noised abroad. This, blown up as only a journalist knows how, was the sole basis for the press story."
In any event, I think that the bloodhounds may have offered the chance of at least leading us towards a possible suspect. Again, who knows, but the fact that the whole idea foundered upon a sum of less than 100 pounds a year is, in my opinion, unconscionable, and the blame for it lays firmly in the lap of Henry Matthews.
B |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 10:46 pm | | I wish somebody would do a more careful look
into the bloodhound snafu. In 1888 the use of
bloodhounds was not so easy to sneer at, as we
tend to do today. Only twelve years earlier,
a child murderer named William Fish was tracked
down (in part) by a dog in Blackburn, England.
The same dog was used in the Earl of Crawford's
case in 1880 (when the body of the Earl was stolen
from his tomb). I might add that specially trained dogs are still used for searching for hidden drugs.
Jeff |
Author: Walter Timothy Mosley
Thursday, 23 January 2003 - 10:56 pm | | All bloodhound combatants are encouraged to read the astonishing "Lo, Hear the Gentle Bloodhound" by James Thurber to learn exactly how these dogs are employed to track criminals and find lost children. So long as there was left behind no specific article of the Ripper's that could be used to set the dogs upon his scent, he was safe from them.
WTM |
Author: Dan Norder
Friday, 24 January 2003 - 10:58 am | | Jeff-
Actually dogs today are used for a number of things: searching for drugs, sniffing out explosives, identifying the specific odor of dead humans (cadavre dogs can even be trained to take to the water to smell minute quantities of human decay seeping up), and following scents from clothing and so forth.
It's basically 20/20 hindsight that tells us that the dogs most likely wouldn't have gotten to far in the MJK case... but then it's possible, as Chris suggests, that he changed his strategy specifically to avoid detection by the bloodhounds. Overall, especially if the failed tests are just another myth, it would have been a reasonable expense to keep the dogs on call -- just in case, if for no other reason.
Dan
----------------------------------------------------------------
Consider supporting this great site by making a donation |
|
|
|
|
