|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** 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 **
Items of Interest
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Research Issues / Philosophy:
Items of Interest
Author: Jon
Sunday, 08 October 2000 - 09:04 pm |        | On the morning of August 31st, PC Jonas Mizen went to fetch the ambulance for the body of Mary Ann Nichols.....
c.1890 Police Ambulance |
Author: Penelope Vilela
Sunday, 08 October 2000 - 10:52 pm | | Jon
Great picture! In what little research I have done I find myself seeing the same photos over and over. Do you have a source for different photos? Not just the victims although I would be interested in those as well. I am mainly interested in photos of the murder scenes, boarding houses, pubs, streets where the murders occured. Are there any photos of the victims from their early days, family photos? Did the police photograph the victims personal belongings, clothing? I hope my questions don't annoy you! I am very new at this!
Thx, PV |
Author: Jon
Monday, 09 October 2000 - 12:08 am | | Penelope
I collect pictures of Victorian buildings & period items. None are specifically Ripper related, they just help give you a feel for how things were in those days.
I have no specific source except to pilfer through junk shops, used books stores & antique shops, for old books/pictures.
There are only a few pictures of the victims, you have probably seen all there is to see.
The Kelly murder scene at Millers Court was the first time photography was used at a crime scene.
Prior to that the authorities made sketches & scale drawings.
No victims photo's are known to exist prior to their mortuary photo's taken in the morgue's.
No photo's are known of the victims belongings, they were taken down on written lists, as are still available of Catherine Eddowes in her Inquest papers.
Your questions are not annoying at all.
Nice to see a newcomer come out with honest questions rather than bluster through here intent on telling us all that they know who the Ripper was, cause they've read the 'Diary'...or some such rubbish like that.
:-)
(Joking)
Regards, Jon |
Author: The Viper
Monday, 09 October 2000 - 11:20 am | | Interesting picture Jon, though the image isn't that good, at least on my computer. Is this just a barrow, or is that a smaller third wheel tucked in behind the one on the right?
The drawings of hand-operated ambulances I've seen before are of three wheeled affairs, pushed from behind the two main wheels and with the platform body tilted forwards in such a way as to accomodate a sitting patient (facing forwards).
Regards, V. |
Author: Jon
Monday, 09 October 2000 - 11:33 am | | Viper
The contraption is basically a rigid stretcher on pram wheels, and yes a smaller third wheel is at the rear in front of the feet of the PC pushing it.
Notice the thing has springs too.....no expence, eh?
Regards, Jon |
Author: Penelope Vilela
Monday, 09 October 2000 - 11:40 am | | Jon
Thanks! I too am a collector of old things. Maybe that is why this case fascinates me.
PV |
Author: Oliver Franz
Saturday, 16 December 2000 - 06:44 pm | | Hi everyone,
I was playing around with terraserver.com tonight and look what I came up with...
http://terraserver.com/image.asp?S=10&T=101&X=3514&Y=28557&Z=30&W=2
Oliver |
Author: Oliver Franz
Tuesday, 19 December 2000 - 11:03 am | | And another one:
St. Patrick's RC Cemetery, Leytonstone - Mary Kelly's last resting place.
http://terraserver.com/image.asp?S=10&T=101&X=3539&Y=28580&Z=30&W=2
Oliver |
Author: Neil K. MacMillan
Wednesday, 31 January 2001 - 08:26 pm | | That is an awesome photo! I don't have a view other than the guy who wrote the ripper diary wasn't. I'm new at this and got on here to gather information for a novel about Jack the ripper. I say James Maybrick was the Ripper mainly as a gut instinct. His language usage is wrong if any of the letter are genuine. Secondly, JTR was very specific in who he targeted. Would he later on murder his wife? Thirdly, would he stop for almost fifteen years in between murders?
I offer these for thought. As I said, I am a neophyte at this other than having read quite a bit on JTR. Thanks Neil |
Author: Rachel Henderson
Monday, 14 May 2001 - 01:55 pm | | This is partly an item of interest and partly a question (is Viper out there?).
My local freesheet had an article on hanging at the weekend, brought about by the Hanratty case. It mentioned the various public executions in Bedford (12 between 1801 and 1832, 5 between 1833 and 1870), including that of 22 year old Sarah Dazley for the murder of her first husband, their child and her second husband - all by arsenic poisoning - in 1845.
The question relates to the public hanging of Joseph Castle in 1860 for the murder of his wife, Jane. It states that on the eve of the execution, Jane's family held a party. A lace-making bobbin, inscribed "Joseph Castle 1860", was given to each of the guests. The paper states that these bobbins, known as "hanging bobbins" were produced to commemorate executions but that there are only 6 known examples around today, 5 relating to Bedford.
Does anyone know if this was common practice around the country, and for how long it continued - or indeed whether there were other types of commemorative items produced for public executions?
Thanks in advance
Rachel |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 14 May 2001 - 02:36 pm | | Hi Rachel:
Interesting question about hanging bobbins. I had not heard of them before but I have done some digging into it for you. There has been some discussion of lace bobbins and hanging bobbins specifically on the BBC Online site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/makhist_prog1b.shtml , Bobbins. Since, as stated at that site, lace making which used these bobbins was centered in the East Midlands of England, with Bedford being one of the major centers, that could explain why most of the "hanging bobbins" are known to be from Bedford. Other than Bedfordshire, the lacemaking industry was known in Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, and Wiltshire. So to answer your question on whether the use of hanging bobbins was a common practice throughout England, I should think not, but rather that it was more a local tradition either in these Midland lacemaking centers or, I would guess, mainly in Bedford.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Monday, 14 May 2001 - 08:51 pm | | Dear Rachel,
This is the first time I have heard of "hagging
bobbins" but there have been souvenirs connected
to hangings in England and Britain for many
centuries. In the 18th - 19th Centuries (the
heyday of public executions)hawkers would sell
copies of the last words of the condemned - some
fictitious pious set of homilies about regretting
the murder and hoping the execution would be
an example to warn the people not to be wicked.
Jeremy Catnatch took it one step more by selling
"poetry" (so bad it makes that of William "the
Great" McGonigal sound brilliant by comparison)
telling the crimes and the sorrows of the convict
awaiting death - these "Catnatch Press" items
including rough illustrations of the crime or the
murderer (or whatever the criminal was - it could
be a forger or a burglar or a sodomist). Catnatch
Press items are very rare, and if you can find one
for sale at a reasonable price I would suggest you
buy it. There were also straightforward pamphlet
type books that gave accounts of the crimes, as
well as pamphlets of the trials.
The executioners were in on the souvenir trade
to. Frequently they would sell small chunks of
the rope that they used to souvenir hunters.
Calcraft also found a second trade - he could
claim (as an old right) the clothing of the men
and women he hanged. In the 1840s Madame Tussaud's
started it's special room, now "the Chamber of
Horrors". Calcraft could now sell the clothes
of the executed to Tussaud's, where the clothes
would end on the wax figures of the criminals.
However, the criminals soon began to catch onto
this, and some made deals for money to leave their
families, or for their own expenses. Even as late as 1946, when John George Haigh (the "acid
bath" murderer) was executed, he arranged for
Tussaud's to get his best suit for it's statue of
him.
However, the English were not the only ones with
this taste for the macabre souvenir. At the
time of the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for
the kidnap and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.
(the crime was in 1932, the trial in 1935), people in the town of Flemington, New Jersey could
purchase miniature copies of the ladder used by
the kidnapper(s) in the crime.
I hope this can be of some use to you.
Jeff |
Author: Rachel Henderson
Tuesday, 15 May 2001 - 11:22 am | | Thanks to both of you for the info. I hadn't realised that the "last words/great crimes of . ." articles were so common, although I read somewhere that parts of the hangman's rope were sold - for luck/superstition.
I might look into this whole area further, you've whetted my appetite now!
Rachel |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 15 May 2001 - 11:39 am | | grease that's sweaten
From the murderer's gibbet...
Lost your appetite yet, Rachel? 
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Wednesday, 09 January 2002 - 09:49 pm | | Here it is, a rediscovered tour of Whitechapel, circa November, 1888 in all its Dantesque glory. From the Boston Globe, December 10, 1888. A map accompanied the original article, but [sorry] I have no way to reproduce it. [PS. Any guess to the identity of police officer B-----?] Enjoy, RP
"SLUMMING"
Scenes of Vice, Poverty, and Crime
Witnessed at Night by a Lady Newspaper Correspondent.
____
Visiting the Scenes of the Late Whitechapel Tragedies.
London., Dec 1.--"Slumming." Curious term, no doubt to you on the other side of the water, but one which London papers have universally adopted as exactly "fitting the case." For the past two years, and especially during the cold months of winter, the lady members of many of our aristocratic families of Park Lane and Belgravia have indulged in the craze of "slumming." Using their personal eloquence upon the male members of their families to accompany them, they have courageously visited, during the day, many of the poorest localities and slums of our great metropolis, seeing with their own eyes the abject poverty of their fellow citizens and relieving the wants of the poor personally and to such an extent that their visits have indeed been "Angel's visits," undoubtedly saving many a poor wretch from starvation and perhaps death. At one tenement a few loaves of bread for a starving family, at another an order for a hundredweight of coal, tea, sugar, flour, or whatever they thought would best serve the necessities of the case, these kind and humane ladies have been welcome visitors indeed.
None, however, have dared to enter those terrible dens of infamy and crime so common in the district, now so well known throughout England, and I may say the civilized world--Whitechapel--up to the last few weeks, when that enterprising paper published by Sir William Christopher Leng, the Sheffield Telegraph, commissioned its lady correspondent to make a tour at night of the famous locality, accompanied by a detective, and write for its columns her impressions and ocular demonstration of the state of affairs existing there.
The lady, who is well known and who ranks high in the estimation of her brother and sister scribblers, accompanied by a detective as equally well known, has made the tour, and the result of her observations and graphic description of the scenes she witnessed in her visit have been printed. Her pictures of vice, misery, poverty and crime are so vivid and lifelike that combined with the pluck she has shown in her hazardous undertakings, she has earned the highest praise and esteem of her fellow laborers. I send you her story, as she tells it in her own words, accompanied with a map of the Whitechapel district, so that your readers can see at a glance the streets and spots where the seven terrible tragedies have taken place.
SLUMMING WHITECHAPEL
Sights and Scenes Witnessed During a Tour by Night
Perhaps there is no locality in the United Kingdom which at the present time is so notorious as Whitechapel. The horrible tragedies so recently enacted there in such rapid succession have sent a thrill of indignant fear throughout England, while in the neighborhood itself the panic still lasts, and will do so as long as the bloodthirsty monster remains unknown and uncaptured.
After the dreadful crimes so placidly perpetrated in Mitre Square and Berners street, I conceived an ardent desire to visit and see for myself the region of a civilized city that seems to be given up to horrors unmentionable.
The thing that puzzled me was how to go. Night is the best time, but it is hardly the place where a stranger would care to go to alone, and in a great measure unprotected.
I mentioned the difficulty to a friend of mine, Inspector R--- of the city police.
"It is not a nice neighborhood," he said thoughtfully, "and it is of no use going there unless you know your way about, or else you stand a tidy chance of getting knocked on your head, or returning minus your watch and chain."
I looked rather glum, and he went on to remark "that he would have been pleased to accompany me only he was leaving town the next day on particular business."
"Where do you want to go?" he asked.
"Well," I replied, "I want to go to Mitre square, Buck's row, Berners Street, and Hanbury street and just see for myself what class of people really do live there."
"I can manage that for you," he said. "One of our men, Mr. B-----, is thoroughly efficient and highly respectable and intelligent officer, and he can go round with you."
I thanked the worthy inspector, who introduced me to Mr. B----, a tall, muscular and rather handsome man, and an arrangement was made there and then that I should meet the officer on the next night by the Law Courts.
The next evening we met at the appointed place, my escort looking very big and stalwart in his civilian dress, and I, clad in the darkest and least conspicuous of clothes.
It was a lovely night, clear and cold, the blue heavens all aglow with myriads of stars. The Strand was busy as only the Strand can be.
We hailed a 'bus, and soon we left the glare and bustle of the Strand, and Fleet Street far behind. At Leadenhall street we got down and just at the end of that street and Whitechapel road is a narrow street which leads into Mitre square.
Although Mitre square is respectable, it affords facilities for crime. At night it is comparatively deserted, and, moreover, is badly lit, the corners being completely enveloped in gloom, and another thing is that there are few thoroughfares leading in and out of the square.
The next place we visited was Berners street, and to get there we had to cross Whitechapel road and go down Commercial street.
The bustle and noise was most grateful after the fearful hush of Mitre square: there were quantities of men and women, but what men and women were they?
As we got near to Berners street, Mr. B---- asked me "if I felt frightened?"
I laughed and replied in the negative, and then he showed me with a certain amount of satisfaction that he was provided with his whistle and
A Thick, Heavy Walking Stick.
In another few minutes we were in what my companion tersely described as a beastly locality. A long, ill-paved, narrow, badly-lit street. The lamps are few and far between, and show a flickering, sickly, yellow light.
After the glare of Whitechapel road, the darkness seems trebly bad. The houses are small and squalid, and teeming with life. Late as it is, one must walk carefully for fear of falling over half-naked infants, who crawl about the broken pavements.
Soon we leave the groups of horrible children behind and the thoroughfare looks deserted and is so quiet that our footsteps ring out startingly distinct on the still night air.
We cross over, and Mr. B--- points out a door apparently leading into a house, but when he pushes it open I see to my astonishment that it encloses a court, or narrow alley.
I peep down it, and as well as I can see in the blackness--for there is no lamp in the entry--I notice that there are houses at each side. Filthy, ramshackle cottages, evidently let out in tenements, for they seem swarming with human beings.
A man half dressed, unshaven, and unspeakably brutal looking, emerges from one of the houses. He is short and thick set, one eye is blackened, and a strip of filthy plaster adorns his left cheek. He is clad in fustian trousers and a ragged blue shirt, a wisp of rag is twisted round his neck, with the end of which he wipes his mouth preparatory to speaking. When he does speak it is to gently inquire in a hoarse voice:
"What the b----- h--- we ----- ------- ------ are doing?"
The explatives roll easily off his tongue, and in the midst of his tirade he catches sight of my companion, who is keeping his blue eyes fixed sternly on his face.
The effect is magical, for instantly stops his eloquence, and he disappears into the interior. In his absence we make our exit.
"You see", says Mr. B----, "there are any amount of these alleys about, and while the police are patrolling the street the Lord only knows what goes on in the courts that branch from the man thoroughfare.
"For instance we passed a couple of constables a few minutes ago; well, they are not able to visit and properly inspect every alley in Berners street. Why, we should want at least a score of men for that duty alone. Look how dark the entries are. If a murder were committed in the street the murderer could easily escape observation by staying in one of the alleys till the first hue and cry was over, and then he could mix with the crowd and get off."
By this time we have got to a building which Mr. B----- informs me is the club rendered notorious by being so near the scene of
The Berners Street Tagedy,
whilst opposite is a stone block which is a board school. Next to the club is a pair of high wooden gates which open inwards into the stable yard.
On the right is the club, the windows of which are lit up, and further on is the side door. Opposite are three small white-washed cottages. The place is so narrow that if the hapless victim had made the least noise it must have been heard, despite the singing and merriment that were going on in the club.
A girl of about 14, barefooted and bareheaded, with a white, frightened face and sharp furtive eyes comes out of one of the houses. She starts a little when she sees us standing, and then comes across to me.
"The woman was found there," she says, with infinite gusto smacking her lips at the chance of repeating the tale of horror to an interesting listener. "'er head was on that short stone post, and 'er legs was just over the iron railings, and the blood and gore was all down there," and she pointed out the various spots mentioned with great relish.
"Do you live here?" we asked.
"Yes, sir, in the second cottage," she answered.
"And did you not hear anything?" queried Mr. B-----.
"Not a sound, sir." says the girl, earnestly, "and nobody else down here heard nothing neither. You know, sir, I think that---"
But we were fated never to hear what the girl thinks, for a voice calls out "Lizer!" and she promptly vanished into the cottage.
Occasionally we met a few brawny fellows dressed in corduroys, who peer at us curiously as they slouch along in an aimless sort of manner. Mr. B---- glances at them keenly, and sometimes he smiles a little as we pass on; afterwards he tells me that they are detectives.
We Reach Bucks Row,
and I may at once admit that I was agreeably surprised by it. The street is fairly wide, well paved, and not badly lit. The houses are small, but the majority are clean and respectable looking, and seem to be inhabited by the hard working poor. In fact, it is a very superior locality to Berners street.
The actual spot of the tragedy, although rather in the shade, is still open. There is a house with green shutters. Next to it, is a pair of high wooden gates; slantingly opposite is another lamp. Between the lamp by the gate, lying in the road itself, was found the barbarously mutilated body of the second victim of the recent murders. To my mind, this is the most mysterious crime of the lot, for it seems improbable that so ghastly an act could be perpetrated in a comparatively well-lit, thickly populated street like this, with out some trace of the assassin being found, or some clew to his whereabouts being discovered.
A door is open of one of the houses and it gives us an opportunity of seeing an interior so scrupulously clean, so bright and cheerful, that the remembrance of the black deed that took place outside seems to be even yet more horrible.
We have seen all there is to see. We leave Buck's row on our way to Hanbury street.
There is one exceedingly disagreeable feature of all these localities that deserves mention, and yet can necessarily be only lightly touched upon, and that is the men and women, particularly the former, have not the least knowledge of common decency.
Their ignorance or wilful defiance of the most ordinary rules of decorum is apt to prove both embarrassing and uncomfortable to ordinary mortals who still think that modesty and decency is even in the far East. The sights that I saw can better be imagined than described; indeed, a description would be particularly offensive, and I must admit that the women were nearly as great offenders as the men.
Hanbury Street
is a very different locality to any we have yet been in. It is long and narrow, and unevenly paved. The houses are rather high, the majority dirty, and the whole lot swarming with inhabitants.
I have remarked to Mr. B---- "that the place is not as bad as I thought."
He tells me that we are not yet in the thick of it, and he begs me to keep close to him.
I soon find out that I have been too hasty in giving an opinion, for the neighborhood and the people are vile. So much we see, I with horror-distended eyes, my companion with the placidity born of intimate knowledge of these slums, so much that dare not be written and can only be spoken of in whispers.
The foreign element predominates. Vilainous-looking Poles, ruffianly Germans, starving Russians, with the scum of half a dozen other nations all live or rather exist about here. They speak some incomprehensible jargon, and they manage to find some means of earning a livelihood. I believe that they are quiet and inoffensive if left to themselves, but it is easy to see that they are looked upon with ill-concealed aversion and distrust.
I quite credit Mr. B-----'s statement that if the murderer was found to be a foreigner, all the police in London would be powerless to stay the persecution that the rest would be subject to, in fact, they would be
Hounded out of Whitechapel.
A man who has been glancing at us wolfishly darts toward me to make a grab at the handkerchief that I hold in my hand.
"Ah would you," says Mr. B-------, and the would-be thief makes off.
I laugh at the salutary effect that my companion produces.
"They know me," he says; "I have walked into one of the doss houses (lodging houses) after a man, found him there amongst a score of his pals and have marched him off quite comfortably. They have got no real pluck; why, the majority of them are miserable cowards. Besides, as they often tell me, "We're not afrightened of you, but it's the clothes you wear that we are afraid of."
We are now near the scene of the murder; there are few shops, but any number of these common lodging-houses. The place is comparatively deserted, only a few unfortunates flitting by us, very likely seeking the wherewithal to pay for a night's shelter.
On our left is a house with the legend "Comfortable beds," written on a board outside. Opposite is the lodging-house from which the hapless victim of the Hanbury street tragedy was turned away to meet her death, because she had not the four pence to pay for her bed.
The night is still young, so the birds of prey have not as yet returned to their noisome nests. Whle we stand we see several girls disappear down the various entries. One woman asks us for assistance. She say she has no money, and since the last two murders she has been afraid to go out and seek it.
These woman make no secret of their calling, which they regard, with callous indifference, but I cannot help thinking as we watch her go into the house opposite, that she and her class, if they could be persuaded to speak, could throw some light on the mysterious perpetrator of the crimes.
The mist begins to fall in a steady melancholy drizzle, and the wind blows cold and raw. I shiver involuntarily, for the chill breezeseems to penetrate even my thick coat. The damp is surcharged with smuts and wherever they fall they leave a black smear.
A Cripple is Sitting in a Doorway;
he looks wolfish and starved; a hunk of dry bread, the rejected evidently of dogs, is lying in the gutter, and this he presently sees. He gives a low cry, and with the aid of his rough crutch, he hobbles towards it, his poor maimed leg working with excitement; he clutches at the bread eagerly drags himself back to the step and commences to gnaw and tear at the crust, more like a wild animal than anything human.
His enjoyment, however, is of short duration, for a long, yellow, thieving hand, belonging to a something that bears a faint resemblance to a woman, grasps him by his frayed shirt, and with the other hand snatches the food from him and then vanishe in the mist.
First the lad curses and blasphemes, and then he gives way to a dreadful misery; he moans and cries and the tears form grotesque little rivulets down his grimy face. He wishes he was dead and prays for the pluck to cut his throat; he shrieks out for the woman's heart, her vitals; he curses her with every curse, and then he falls moaning again.
Mr. B----- stands behind me as I drop a coin into the poor wretch's hand. He doesn't thank me but glares and blinks at me out of his wicked, tear-stained eyes, and in a low, hoarse voice says that he'll "Go and get something to eat before she comes out again."
I am unsure if she is the person who took the bread from him. He nods his head volubly.
"And who is she?" I ask.
"My mother," he responds, laconically.
I shrink back the remembrance of the curses ringing in my ears, and I shudder.
As we go along we pass another lodging-house, and there we see a sight so indiscribably painful that I find it difficult to realize that I am in a wealthy and human city.
It is an unfortunate: young, as well as we can see under the dirt and paint, pretty. She has boots and stockings on an old silk skirt, with a torn velvet bodice showing the flesh through the rents. She smells strongly of spirits, and we hear her imploring the deputy to trust her for a night's shelter. She offers him anything only to let her rest there that night. He refuses; she catches him by the hand, she almost kneels to him, but he is obdurate, shakes her from him and shuts the door on her.
At first the poor creature seems paralyzed, then she shrieks and batters at the door with her hands, then she sobs with impotent misery, and calls on Christ to assist her.
She tears at her dress, and falls to beating her breasts. She seems to take a fierce delight in torturing herself, for she strikes her head against the wall and drags out her lank hair by handfulls.
I look stealthily at my watch, and I find that it is getting late, so we proceed to direct our footsteps toward Whitechapel road, which is the first stage of my return journey homewards. As we go along the
Loafers Increase in Number.
"These men," say Mr. B-----, "are professional loafers: they sleep and drink all day, and at night they come out of the alleys and courts and lurk about the dark corners to see who they can knock down and rob. Why, if I had not been with you, you would have had every bit of your valuables stolen by this time. These fellows don't work because they won't; thieving pays them much better, and it is exciting. They know me, and they know that I know them; so that is the reason they have left us alone."
I hint a doubt as to the desirability of our detectives being so well known; but his Mr. B---- laughs at.
"I'm in plain clothes," he says, "and the folks about here recognize me; that is, because I want them to. We are not down here on business; we are merely sight-seeing, and I did not want our pleasure to be spoiled by getting into rows which I knew we could avoid by letting my calling be clearly noticeable. You mentioned a few minutes ago that since we left Berners street we have met no policemen. None we have met in uniform, but we have kept constantly running against our men so artfully dressed that you have seen no difference in them and the other individuals who were lounging about. The number of police who have been drafted down here is surprising."
We are now in Commercial street, and it seems to me a very paradise after the slums we have left. The mist has cleared away, and if it were not for the all-pervading and abominable smell of fried fish, the air would be delighfully fresh in comparison with Hanbury street.
Whitechapel road itself is a great delight to me---it is wide and noisy and presents all the appearance of a fair. Either side of the road is a long row of stalls brilliantly lit up with portable gas, and everything under the sun can be bought there.
There are butcher stalls presided over by loud-voiced men, who assure the bystanders that as it is late they are almost giving the meat away. A lean, pale woman carrying a baby, is haggling over the price of a piece of mutton. It is a fair-sized piece, and he at length agrees to take fourpence; she pays him in half-pennies and a little boy that is clinging to her skirt claps his thin hands rapturously.
Men lounge out here, but they give me the idea of idling after work is done, for they have very little of the [rakish?] look of thier Berners and Hanbury street compeers.
In short, the East End cannot be judged from the flourishing and busy Whitechapel road. It is the places that branch off from it that are so vile. It is the places where the moral sewage flows till they become hideous cesspools of vice and crime.
Fine ladies, and white-handed gentlemen will do no good down here; indeed nothing will remedy the evils while lighting is deficient, sanitary conveniences absent, and these filthy dark alleys exist. I say my goodbye to Mr. B----- at the Aldgate station and thank him, as well as I may, for his courtesy and kindness, and for his presence, which has kept me form insult and robbery in what he describes as "one of the (if not the) worst localities in London."
And as I return to my hotel I think with [th ?] of disugust of the many horrible things I have seen and heard during my night's slumming in Whitechapel. |
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia
Wednesday, 09 January 2002 - 10:44 pm | | Very nise, RJ! I'll have to go to the Boston Public Library tomorrow and find the issue for myself. If I reprint this article in "Ripper Notes," I should be able to also reprint the map. Many thanks for the entertaining read.
Cheers,
CMD |
Author: Tom Wescott
Thursday, 10 January 2002 - 11:36 am | | RJ,
That was great. Thanks for sharing. I have an idea who Mr. B might be, but I'll have to check my notes and get back with you. Anyone else have any ideas?
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 10 January 2002 - 12:07 pm | | Hi, R.J.:
Thank you so much for posting this valuable article here, about "slumming" in Whitechapel. Might I suggest that you contact Stephen Ryder and Viper about having the article archived in the press reports section?
Curiously, the activity of "slumming" is also claimed to have originated in the Five Points area of New York City and is discussed in the new book Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the Worlds Most Notorious Slum
by Tyler Anbinder which I am reviewing for the new issue of Ripper Notes. The book is reviewed on Amazon. Certainly it appears to be true that the police reporter Jacob Riis wrote about slumming in Five Points in How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890), so the question is, did the custom originate in London and come over to the United States, or did it start in Five Points?
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 10 January 2002 - 01:17 pm | | Gentlemen--glad you found the article of interest. I see now that the map that accompanied the article is exactly the same map that was printed in the Daily Telegraph on November 10th, 1888. [Reproduced in Evans & Skinner's volume, in the illustrations following page 564]. It might be worth the time for someone on the east end of the great pond to sometime check as to when this appeared in the Sheffield Telegraph. If the editor was this interested in the Whitechapel crimes, there might have been other articles of interest. Although seven murders are mentioned, and there is a reference to Kelly, a visit to Miller's Court is significantly lacking in the text, which makes me wonder if it didn't originally appear before November 10th, and the Globe doctored it up a little for their publication.
As for the identity of B-----, I'm totally puzzled. The writer identifies "Inspector R." with the city police, but the remainder of the article suggests that the detective beneath him is familiar in Whitechapel. Is this an error? Perhaps Inspector R is really Reid of the Metro, and the detective beneath him is of H division? Frankly, I don't know enough to speculate, but it seems odd that these would be City of London police, doesn't it?
But anyway, I'm glad that I found this again. It seems a lot more interesting the second time around. The descriptions of Berners Street and Buck's Row are memorable, and I hadn't realized there was such a stark contrast between Whitechapel Road and the backstreets. Best wishes, RP. |
Author: Michael Conlon
Thursday, 10 January 2002 - 05:52 pm | | Hi, all,
This story also appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Dec.9,1888, p.27 where, it is stated, it was reprinted from the Sheffield Telegraph.
Is this not the same story recorded in "The Whitechapel Murders. Or, an American Detective in London" listed in the "Ripper Media" section of the Casebook in the "Ripperological Preservation Society" section, last entry, where Stepehen Ryder writes: "apart from the fictional story, the book contains...a factual article by a female reporter, describing a walk she took through Whitechapel in the midst of the craze.:? |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Thursday, 10 January 2002 - 10:58 pm | | | R.J.Very interesting piece on "slumming" thanks for posting it.Would Inspector R be our old friend Inspector Roots ? |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 12 January 2002 - 05:47 am | | Hi, All:
I have double-checked with the book that I mentioned earlier, Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum by Tyler Anbinder, and the author does indeed seem to indicate that the custom of slumming originated in Five Points. A book by Davy Crockett (yes, that Davy Crockett) and William Clark, An Account of Col. Crockett's Tour to the North and Down East published in the 1830s first brought Five Points to national prominence, and Crockett and Clark's visit to the area was reinforced by Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842), whose descriptions of the depravity and poverty in Five Points, Anbinder says, "made it fashionable for well-to-do New Yorkers to go 'slumming' visiting Five Points as Dickens had done, with a police escort, to marvel at its poverty and gawk at its displays of vice." The author reproduces an illustration from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of December 5, 1885, showing a gentlemen and two well-dressed ladies being escorted by a New York copper with a baton amid the ragged denizens of Five Points. The caption is: "New York City -- 'Doing the Slums' -- A Scene in Five Points."
All the best
Chris George |
Author: stephen miller
Monday, 08 April 2002 - 01:33 pm | | Hi All if anyone is interested there is an article by Erroll Mcneil in this months Practical Family History about finding the JTR victims in the 1881 census
from steve
 because Scunthorpe United seem to have blown it |
Author: Monty
Tuesday, 09 April 2002 - 08:27 am | | Stephen,
Thanks for the tip.
You think you got it bad...try being a Leicester fan.....fecking Walkers bowl my arse !
Even more than Steve,
Monty
 |
|
|
|
|
