|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** 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 **
Archive through April 18, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
Anti-semitic prejudice in the Seaside Home "identification"?:
Archive through April 18, 2001
Author: Paul Carpenter
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 05:41 am |        | The Seaside Home identification was, and is, advanced by those who believe that the Police had both a credible Jewish suspect and a credible eye witness who could 'unhesitatingly identify' the man in question. However, this identification -despite being surefire - amounted to nothing, because the witness was also a Jew and wouldn't testify against a co-religionist.
I would contend that perhaps circumstances actually mitigate against this interpretation.
In effect, I am speculating that the whole 'identification' was a kind of racial fit-up. The Goulston street graffito (which has become far more ambiguous a piece of evidence with the passage of time), coupled with a belief that the murders could not have been committed by a 'phegmatic' Englishman, contrived to lead some investigators to the conclusion that the murderer had to be a Jew. Therefore their whole investigation becomes a hunt specifically for a Jew.
Eventually, those who take this line of investigation find a mad Jew (Kosminski/Cohen/Whoever) who fits their 'profile' of the killer - a madman of non-English blood and non-Christian ethics. Coupled to the belief that masturbation and uncleanliness are part of the abnormal psyche that the killer must surely have, they begin efforts in earnest to close the case.
However, as an asylum inmate, he is immune from prosecution (I believe - please correct me on this if I am wrong) and so the formal mechanisms of the law courts cannot be used. Still, the investigators want to close the case to their own satisfaction. Pulling some strings, the inmate is released from his asylum for a weekend, and taken to a safe house - where Police discretion will make sure that the affair is kept as secret as possible. The best witness that the Police have is brought down from London, and the identification takes place.
Here we enter the heart of my speculation: That the witness was unsure about his identification - but this was interpreted in the framework of prejudice as a reluctance to identify a co-religionist. Of course the mad Jew was the Ripper (how could it be otherwise?) so why won't the witness say so? Because the witness too is a Jew. It is a 'remarkable fact' after all, that the Jews stick together, and won't give one of their number up to Gentile justice...
But is that the case? Is it not apparent now that we are looking at a part of the investigation that was primarily driven by a form of anti-semitism? The witness is unsure (it is two years, after all, since he had a fleeting glance of a man that might have been the killer)... but he is pressured: "We know this man is Jack the Ripper. How can you not testify against him?"
The witness, much to the chagrin of the investigators, refuses to be so bullied. The fact that he was willing to try this identification in such unusual circumstances is testimony enough to his willingness - and if his identification was really that good then he would already know that the suspect was Jewish.
But the Police, sure of their conviction, read this in the wider context of their belief of the complicity of the Jews in the crimes. Not only did a Jew commit the crime, but a Jewish witness refused to testify against the perpetrator! Years later, this still rankles in the recollections of those involved, and comes to us as 'fact' in their memoirs.
And yet, if this were a fact, why wasn't the suspect leaned on heavily to testify against their man? By witholding his testimony he was effectively acting as accomplice to the killer and might be open to some kind of charge (again - I am unsure of the legal points on this) or at least the threat could be made... I find it hard to credit that if there was a cast-iron identification of a major suspect that the Police would not have moved heaven and earth to secure a conviction - by hook or by crook.
Cheers,
Carps |
Author: Martin Fido
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 06:27 am | | I think you start from a misleading position, Carps. The police search for a local Jewish suspect didn't spring from personal antiSemitism or an examination of the Goulston street graffiito. Indeed, Warren explicitly recorded that he thought that the graffito was part of a calculated attempt by an antiSemitic villain to throw false blame on Jewish socialists. the CID's suspicion arose from their house-to-house interviews and especially the interviews with street prostitutes, who pointed to the Jewish 'blackmailer' known to some of them as Leather Apron. There is evidence in the press that even after Pizer's ambiguous identification as that suspect, the prostitutes continued to charge that a local Jew who was threatening them was the man they suspected. And, for whatever reason, it seems that Scotland Yard after examining all the interview notebooks agreed that they were probably right.
There is copious evidence that both Met and City Police went out of their way to examine and suppress accusations arising from antiSemitism, after the Met's initial error of letting their actual suspicion find its way into the papers.
On another tack entirely, shortening your surname as you do, I don't suppose you are related to that great Penzance and Truro School hero John Kendall-Carpenter?
Martin F |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 07:46 am | | Hi Martin...
I think perhaps I wasn't clear enough in what I was getting at. I don't want to imply that I think the whole investigation was an anti-semitic witch-hunt, but rather that the atmosphere of the time was laden with some assumption that a Jew was behind the slayings, and that this probably affected the judgement of some of those working on the case. In much the same way as some favoured Druitt because of the faulty supposition that the murderer would only stop if 'his brain gave way altogether' and he committed suicide.
So I don't think that we can say there was such a thing as "police opinion" on the matter as a unified whole. Those involved in the case were still maintaining different theories until well into the 20th century which I would say rather exposes the personal nature of their suspicions.
There was already an atmosphere of anti-Semitism and racial tension in the area - as there often is in areas of poverty where there is a large immigrant population. There is no reason to suppose that all of the Police force would have been entirely immune to popular misconceptions on the subject of race, and the Leather Apron connection probably only served to heighten the prejudices of those who already thought they could detect a foreign hand behind the murders.
The official line, I would imagine, had more to do with suppressing the possibility of race riots (the reason given for erasing the Goulston Street graffito) than an explicit rejection of the idea that the murders had to have been carried out by a Jew. But an official line is only a public exercise to maintain a fiction of unity - and we know that opinions amongst those on the ground differed wildly as to who the culprit could be.
So what I read in this is that some officers, convinced that they had found their man - a mad Jew - tried to get the proof that they needed via an identification, and when that identification failed, they blamed the fact on the Jewish connection. It's the fallacy of the undistributed middle:
1. The murderer is a mad Jew (for who else could commit such crimes?)
2. We have found a mad Jew
3. Therefore we have found the murderer
"...and only the reticence of another Jew to get involved with Gentile justice prevented us from catching him - and that's the story of how Jack The Ripper evaded the law." Puffs on pipe and - misty-eyed - rocks back in chair.
This to me is the significance of why the identification took place at the Seaside Home and nowhere else. It wasn't an officially sanctioned move - otherwise why not hold the identification in either the asylum itself or at a Police station? It was someone following their personal hunch and pulling a few strings. I don't know enough about the law of the time to be certain, but I wouldn't have thought that a patient in an asylum could have been hauled off legally when not actually charged with a crime. Hence the reticence of Police officials to publicly name the location of the identification, or the witness, or indeed the suspect.
Of course, it is only speculation, but to me it is highly suggestive of a chain of erroneous supposition and assumption. A false premise which led to an uncertain identification, worked into a larger fiction about the Jews in general that satisfied the prejudices of some Police officials, and enabled them to fondly imagine that they had laid the Ripper by his heels.
...and much as I wish that I or my relatives were heroes in the Southernmost reaches of this isle, I don't know of any connection to any Kendall-Carpenters! I am pleased to know that the family name is upheld with honour, whatever he did to deserve his school-hero status 
Cheers,
Carps |
Author: Jim Leen
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 11:57 am | | Hello Paul and Martin,
I think Paul makes some excellent observations not least the apparent reluctance of the police to "lean on" the witness. The fact that the a report does not reside in the official archive, conclusively naming the detectives involved, the suspect, the witness, even the location, implies an element of hearsay. Maybe!
I've just posted some points relating to the this discussion under the heading of Jacob the Ripper.
It seems that the Judaic aspect is well worthy of a balanced and in-depth analysis.
Thanking you
Jim Leen |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 10 April 2001 - 01:11 pm | | Hi
Might I just throw one small observation into the pot here, there are no papers on any suspects in the official archive, so I don't think we can really base any conclusions on there being no mention of the identification.
I feel that the arguments based on the supposed anti-Semitism of the policemen involved miss what is for a me a central question (although not one for Martin, unfortunately, since he thinks the suspect was Cohen), namely that we don’t know what aroused suspicion against Kosminski in the first place. All we have is the reference to a threat with a knife. These were very rough streets and someone threatening the life of his sister with a knife was unlikely to have aroused much interest, let alone suspicion, especially in 1891. So why did anyone suspect Kosminski of being the Ripper?
If there was evidence against him then his being a Jew may have been irrelevant to everyone except the witness, who may in fact be the only person involved who attached any significance to the suspect being a Jew. We simply don't know. But if there was 'evidence', this, coupled with the eye-witness identification, may have been what convinced the police. |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 03:51 am | | Hello,
It is certainly true that we don't know the whole of the facts that were arraigned against any of the leading suspects - which is why we are all here after all!
I do, of course, accept the limitations of my supposition - without any direct evidence it becomes just another straw in the wind.
So, following my scenario in the quest for weight and factucality:
Given that Anderson and Swanson are the ones who identify the killer as being the Jew Kosminski/Cohen/Whoever - and cleaved to this theory years later, it may be that my theoretical identification was carried out at their behest. I would be interested to know if there is any evidence in their writings of explicit anti-semitic beliefs? I don't want to start stretching my idea too far, so some kind of factual input would be very much appreciated from someone who knows Anderson/Swanson better than I (i.e., almost everyone!)
I apologise if this is something that has been covered in tedious detail elsewhere...
Carps |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 - 06:49 am | | Hi Carps,
If you go back through 'Topics' to
Ripper Media: Specific titles: Non-Fiction: Cases That Haunt Us, The (Douglas and Olshaker, 2000): Archive through Nov.25, 2000
you'll find a posting from Paul Begg dated November 24, 2000, 05.12.am, which opens 'Some random thoughts and responses to the above'. This and a following long one from me covering a range of topics give a fair account about the antiSemitism or otherwise of the police officers holding the 'Polish Jew' theory. (We really don't know much about what Swanson thought of such things).
The great 'Carps' of the 1950s captained the newly amalgamated Penzance/Newlyn rugby XV when it was a great team and not a crappy little local club. And he also captained England.
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Friday, 13 April 2001 - 09:09 pm | | As a member of the the same ethnic/religious
group as suspects Cohen and Kosminski I can only
say that the "Jake" the Ripper theory has to
make one pause. On the one hand, it is impossible to deny the anti-Semitism that was
part of daily life in 1888. If we are more
critical of it today, it is due to recurrent
tragedies, particularly the Holacaust, but in
1888 what most of us blanch at was second nature.
But that shouldn't prevent us from seriously
considering the chance that the Ripper was Jewish.
In the years before 1888, there had been criminals
in England who were Jews. A year before the
murders, Israel Lipski was tried and found guilty
of the murder (of a Jewish woman, by the way).
A newspaper campaign, spurred on by W.T.Stead
(who occassionally showed a degree of anti-Semitism himself)nearly prevented Lipski's execution, but a confession ended the question and
led to Lipski's execution (if anyone wants to
study this fascinating case, try Judge Martin
Friedland's excellent book, THE TRIALS of ISRAEL
LIPSKI). Ten years before, in 1877, Isaac Marks
had killed Frederick Barnard, (a fellow Jew) after Marks lost out in a rivalry over a woman
in Newington. But the homicide cases were rarities. Most of the crimes involving Jews dealt
with thefts and receiving stolen goods. Possibly
the best known Jewish criminal figure in the
first half of the 19th Century in England was
Ikey Solomon, the thief trainer who was the
original for Fagin in Oliver Twist.
I might add that Jews would remain tied to criminal activites like other groups in society. At about the time of the Whitechapel Murders, a boy was born who would grow to be the burglar (and
possible murderer) Stinie Morrison. And there
were Morrison's contemporaries, Marks and Morris
Reubens, who were hanged twenty years after the
Whitechapel Murders for killing a sailor named
William Sproul in a robbery in Whitechapel.
It is possible to accept the concept of a Jewish
Ripper. The fact that the murders were committed
in Whitechapel (which had a large Jewish population) increases the possibility of a Jewish
Ripper. I think that it is the idea of the
silence of co-religionists protecting the Ripper
that makes the idea less attractive. But then
the theory that the British Masons or Nobility
or Establishment closed ranks to protect some
social notable (the Duke of Clarence, Lord Randolph Churchill, or whoever)is just the same
idea, only based on social class rather than
ethnic/religious group.
Jeff |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Friday, 13 April 2001 - 11:41 pm | | | Hi Jeff, Lord Lucan was defended in his actions by those of his own class.One went so far as to state,"I cant really see what all the fuss is about, the victim was only a nanny"!!!! |
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 14 April 2001 - 12:51 am | | Jeff -
Ikey Solomons was indeed the best-known early 19c Jewish criminal. But despite popular rumour he wasn't really the original of Fagin. Ikey was a fence who took goods from top class thieves and kept them in his house in Whitechapel. He was also quite good-looking and a bit of a dandy. (And tragically famous for giving himself up, after a brilliant escape, when the law put the bite on his wife. Only to have her betray him and run off with another settler when they were both transported to Australia). Fullest details in Philip Collins' life of him: which concludes he wasn't really the original of Fagin.
Fagin owed much more to a fence called Barney something-or-other who used boy thieves to pinch silk handkerchiefs for sale in Field Lane. His 'den' was in Baldwin's Gardens off Gray's Inn Road, where the Anglican church is now. Dickens was shown it AFTER he'd created Fagin, on one of his night rambles with Detective Inspector Field.('Fagin's den was where our font is,' a very pleasant lady handing out tracts said to me when I wandered into the church to see what it looked like).
Fagin's appearance, with 'scarlet hair' owes most to stage presentations of Shylock, who traditionally wore a scarlet wig in the late 18th and early 19th century (like the principal boys in Penzance pantomimes in the late 1940s and early '50s). Off stage I've never actually seen scarlet hair on Jews or Gentiles, even those as adicted to henna as Hermione Gingold.
Sometimes even I feel that I can be a bit of a know-all... sorry...
Martin F |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Saturday, 14 April 2001 - 07:49 pm | | Dear Martin,
As a matter of fact I have to look at DICKENS
AND CRIME by Collins to double check this. However, we both forgot that Dickins had a friend
named Bill or Bob Fagin who worked at the bottling
or blacking business that Dickens had to work at
when he was a young boy.
Anyway, we got the main point across.
Jeff |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 15 April 2001 - 06:01 pm | | Agreed Jeff. It was Bob Fagin in the 'Warren's Blacking' where Dickens actually worked, and which he re-created as Murdstone & Grinby's wine business in 'David Copperfield', with Bob Fagin renamed Mick Walker.
Isn't Fagin an Irish rather than a Jewish name?
Martin |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Monday, 16 April 2001 - 05:39 am | | Dear Martin,
The Fagins and Sykes are Yorkshire family/clans...
the Sykes notorious in the West Ridding during the 19th century as poachers/thieves.
Rosemary |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Monday, 16 April 2001 - 10:39 pm | | Dear Martin,
Actually, I have no knowledge of the national
origins of either Fagin or Sykes. In fact,
aside from the characters in OLIVER TWIST,
the only time I heard of anyone with either
name was the English comic actor Eric Sykes.
Jeff |
Author: Martin Fido
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 05:59 am | | Hi Jeff,
There was a Sykes at that notorious school of mine where there was also a Carruthers. There was no Fagin. But I do remember listening to radio commentaries on 1st Division football matches c.1949-1950 in which a player called Fagin or Fagan featured. Mr Begg may be able to help us here.
Six years residence in Yorks didn't bring me into contact with either name.
Dickens's character, by the way, is spelled Sikes.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 10:39 am | | Hi Martin/Jeff
I wouldn't know about a Fagin who played football in the 1940s and was, of course, unable to listen to radio commentary of those matches because I wasn't at that time born. Fagin is quite a common name and is, I suspect, of Irish origin. There is a State Representative named Brian Fagin.
I thought Dickens himself claimed that Fagin was based on Ikey Solomons, who was, of course, a rather well to-do chap who lost his inheritance through gambling and unwise investments. He took to journalism and was a friend of Dickens until they quarrelled. Fleeing from the law, Solomons adopted numerous pen names; he wrote a gardening column under the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh and charming railway stories as The Fat Contributor - later plagiarised as the Fat Controller in the well-loved Thomas the Tank Engine stories - and for some obscure reason as Fitz-Boodle. As Billy Thackeray he edited Vanity Fair magazine very successfully.
But it has been a long day and I may have confused a little of that. Just in case any part of it needs correcting there is a book by John J. Tobias called Prince of Fences: The Life and Crimes of Ikey Solomons, from which, I should hasten to add, none of the foregoing was derived. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:14 am | | Hi, Paul, Martin, and Jeff:
Isn't the point of the names Dickens chose for his characters not that they were common names but that they were unusual and colorful names that were not common? I am thinking of names such as Martin Chuzzlewit, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Mr. Bumble, Mr. Pickwick, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, and so on, and also the names you have mentioned, Sikes and Fagin. Choice of such out-of-the-way names is also a characteristic of present-day fiction writers, for example, the mystery writer Dick Francis, who invariably gives his characters colorful Dickensesque names, possibly to avoid any confusion with (and possibly lawsuits from!) present-day persons in the British horseracing world where Francis's mysteries are invariably set.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:18 am | | I don't know about everybody else, Paul, but I'm certainly impressed.
Now if you can name all of the characters in "War and Peace," well, I just flat give up!
Grins,
Yaz |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:45 am | | Hi Yaz
A late and much lammented science fiction writer once wrote a novel in which the main character was called Warren Piece. I never made any connections until I spoke the name out loud. And that's an admission I only make in private. And I once very successfully managed to sleep through an all night showing of the Russian War and Peace at a cinema in Cardiff. I think I woke briefly during the Battle of Borodino, but that may have been due to the noise. |
Author: Jim Leen
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:50 am | | Hello Everybody,
Way off topic here but were Liverpool FC not managed by Joe Fagin in the early 80's? A connection with the 40's footballer perchance?
Thanking you
Jim Leen |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:54 am | | Hi Yaz
And I almost forgot:-
Anna Pavlovna Scherer, Prince Vassily Kuragin, Princess Kuragin, Prince Anatole Vassily Kuragin, Prince Ippolit Vassily Sergyevitch Kuragin,
Princess Ellen Vassily Kuragin, Prince Nikolay Andreivitch Bolkonsky,
Princess Marya Bolkonsky, Mademoiselle Borienne, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, Princess Liza Meinen Bolkonsky, Prince Nikolay Boldonsky, Katya, Monsieur Pierre, Count Kirill Vladimirovitch Bezuhov, Princesses Olga, Katerina (Katish), and Sophie Mamontov, Princess Anna Mihalovna Drubetskoy, Prince Boris Drubetskoy, Count Ilya Rostov, Countess Natalya Shinshin Rostov, Countess Natasha Ilinishna Rostov, Count Nikolay Rostov, Sonya, Count Petya Rostov, Countess Vera, Lieutenant Alphonse Karlitch Berg, Marya Ivanovna Dolohov, Dolohov, Madame Marya Lvovna Karagin, Julie Karagin, Lorrain, Mihail Ilarionovitch Kutuzov,
Captain Vaska Denisov, Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo, Lavrushka,
Lieutenant Telyanin, Captin Tushin, Marya Dmitryevna Ahrosimov, Pyort Nikolaitch Shinshin, Prince Nesvitsky, Captain Proho Ignatitch Timohin,
Zherkov, Aaron Kosminski, Mack, Straunch, Karl Bogdanitch Schubert, Schmidt, Biblin, Prince Bagration, Tsar Alexander Pavlovitch, Osip Alexyevitch, Brotherhood of Freemasons (members include: Osip Alexyevitch, Villarsky, Smolyaninov, Abbe Morio, Sir William Gull, Walter Sickert), Sperasky, "Uncle" Rostov and his dog Rugay, Anisya Fyodorovna, Balashov. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 12:25 pm | | Hi Paul,
What about the poor old snooker player, Inoff The Red, and his wife of striptease fame, Eva Vestoff?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 12:48 pm | | Hi Caz
Well, they're not very significant figures in War and Peace really. I mean, even Schubert is actually in the book, though he doesn't compose much. |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 01:25 pm | | What about the most annoying "character" of all...the ubiquitous and at the same time never seen Countess Apraksina! Everyone talks about her, is coming from/going to her house, etc. etc. throughout most of the bloo--blooming book.
Tolstoy's little private joke, no doubt; like James Joyce's "man in the brown mackintosh."
And I learned-ed all I knows about Freemasonry from W&P! I'm so proud.
I also flat out give up now.
Yaz |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 01:44 pm | | Hi, Jim:
Joe Fagan managed Liverpool FC's first team in 1983-1985, emerging from the famed "Boot Room" at Anfield begun by Bill Shankly that also included Bob Paisley, Ronnie Moran, and Roy Evans, each of whom also managed the club. Fagan's career as manager was curtailed by the Heysel disaster in Belgium, which led to his retirement.
Willie Fagan, a red-haired Scot from Musselburgh, and no relation to Joe Fagan, played as a center forward for Glasgow Celtic and Preston, before joining Liverpool in 1937. He was one of Liverpool's leading scorers for a number of seasons before joining Belfast club Distillery in 1952.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 08:35 pm | | Dear Paul,
It took me forty four years before I tackled any
of Tolstoi's novels, and it was RESURRECTION. I still look at KARENINA and WAR AND PEACE with dread. Hell, it took me nearly a month to plough
through LES MISERABLES, which is nearly as long
as WAR AND PEACE.
Oddly enough one name was missing from your list:
Napoleon Bonaparte! True, he is just mentioned
and vaguely seen in Stendhal's CHARTERHOUSE OF
PALMA, but Tolstoi has him all over WAR AND PEACE.
And isn't it odd that your friend Aaron Kosminski
got into the list of characters. I don't recall
Ripper like murders in the plot of WAR AND PEACE
I see that Sir William Gull and Sickert are there
too. Take another look...is Col. Percy Fawcett
also going to pop up? Maybe Judge Crater or
Ambrose Bierce?
Deliriously,
Jeff |
Author: David M. Radka
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 08:58 pm | | I am not so sure that Mr. Begg was not already born in the 1940s, as he asserts above. I think he indeed may have been hearing radio broadcasts then.
David |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 17 April 2001 - 11:38 pm | | Probably the only two things Tolstoy left out of "War and Peace" are a serial killer and a yacht race.
"Les Miserables" is a great book, IMHO, much better than W&P -- even though the snitty editor of the Everyman's Library edition (tied in with the Liam Neeson fillum) wrote an Introduction that is a blatant piece of snooty Francophobia. And I won't even mention the editor's name being Peter Washington as I wouldn't want to embarass the long lost Fourth Stooge. He may also get his firm of solicitors, Dewey, Cheatum & Howe, to sue my rascally little self.
Ah, nothing like a good rant before retiring for the night.
Yaz
P.S., Scholars now believe it was a Maybrickian ancestor, high on arsenic and having gone hopelessly wrong when he turned right on a Liverpool street instead of left, who was tricked into getting into a bear costume and masquerading as Pierre's Bear during the drinking contest scene and its aftermath. Tolstoy skipped the revelation that a historical bear was actually a non-historical Man...a sort of Everyman in a bear suit, if you will. Oh the joys of symbolism, philosophy, and historiography in 19th century Russian prose. (Though you'll be pleased to know -- and a sense of Justice and Proportion may swell your Being -- that the bear/Maybrickian was nicked by a copper, at last, for doing the backstroke in the Moyka Canal after midnight. "Poetic justice and a Christian lesson for us all," natters Malcolm Muggeridge. "Those clever Roosian fellows, I tell you.")
Past my bedtime, huh?
Yaz |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 12:38 am | | Hi Jeff
I did mention Napoleon Solo though.
Hi David
That's you off my Christmas card list! |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 06:52 am | | Don't let him intimidate you, David. He doesn't only know ITMA, he could sing you Arthur Askey animal songs from The Band Wagon or help Winnie interpret Horace. I privately believe that he originally lived in that famous flat on the top of Broadcasting House and tuned in to 2LO on a cat's whisker crystal. That is assuming his severities don't prove him to be Lord Reith in person, secretly rejuvenated and kept alive with transplanted organs.
Martin the Mischiefmaker |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 07:12 am | | Wot. In the flat with Big Hearted Arthur and Stinker Murdoch, Mrs Bagwash the char and, for some surreal reason, Lewis the Goat...?
Oh, what a wonderful thing to be
a healthy, grown up busy, busy bee..
"Can I Do you now, sir?"
"Mind the Diver"
What the Americans make of this really doesn't bear thinking about... |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 07:20 am | | | And by a convoluted thought process that led me from Arthur Askey "The Runaway Train" to the genius himself, Will Hay, and "Oh Mr Porter", to the ever-delightful "Genevieve" starring the libido-awakening Kay Kendall playing the 'plumpet', your question for today is (and those of you attending the Conference in September might find this as part of Jeremy Beadle's fiedish quiz, so pay attention): - what links Kay Kendall and "Oh Mr Porter" to Jack the Ripper? |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 08:07 am | | "Ishter weg ongs oo know wop is connguckshun atwing kay kengl ung omishshuh pawker ung zhacker wipper. Duz oo know, Winnie?"
'Horace said, 'Mr Begg wants to know what is the connection between Kay Kendall and O Mr Porter and Jack the Ripper'."
'Duzhen ishter weg know happy Harry Hemsley, then, Winnie?'
Martin the Mystifier |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 09:10 am | | Fancy using language like that in a place of mixed company like this. I blush with the shame of it. Do I take it that that's a 'don't know' then?
(My brain is dying... Mr Harry Hemsley was a music-hall performer who didn't to the best of my knowledge have a BBC radio comedy series, though he did broadcast his baby and childrens' voices to the enjoyment of many and had a catch phrase "What's Horace saying?" Generally nobody knew. He made a 1951 sitcom for television but sadly died before it was completed.) Your turn |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 09:32 am | | He did appear on radio, though not, I think, in a series, but in 'magazine' music-hall programmes. And slightly older sister Winnie was the only one in 'the family' who could interpret Horace's goo-goo talk.
Martin the Miraculously well-Informed (except about wrestling) |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 10:03 am | | Absowootwee.
Duz oo nowop connguckshun atwing kay kengl ung omishshuh pawker ung zhacker wipper, artn? Neeone? |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 10:59 am | | I say, I say, I say... No, no, Mr Interlocutor, I do not know the connection between Kay Kendall and O Mr Porter and Jack the Ripper. But Mr Bones knows what has four legs and eats grass and goes on wheels.
Martin the Minstrel |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 10:59 am | | Hi Paul,
"Yer wastin' yer time."
Will Hay's bearded friend. (Not Moore Marriott, the other one - I think. )
PS I seem to remember that the connection had something to do with Kay's hubby? Was he Rex Harrison? Or am I barking up the totawy wong twee? |
Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 11:19 am | | Hi, Paul:
Since Andy Aliffe during his presentation at the Park Ridge convention mentioned that Kay Kendall was a relative of John McCarthy, Mary Jane Kelly's landlord, I imagine the connection you mention is somehow involved in that family relationship, although I am not sure how Kay Kendall and Jack the Ripper fit in with "O Mr Porter." Perhaps you can enlighten us, Paul!
Best regards
Chris |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 - 11:21 am | | Hi Caz/Chris
You're very nearly there, so I'll tell you. Actually, Moore Marriott was the old man in the movies and would have been the one to say the line, rather than Graham Moffat, who was the portly one. However, the line wasn't said by either, but by character actor Dave O'Toole, who played the postman in "O Mister Porter".
Dave O'Toole was a great friend of John McCarthy who was, of course, the landlord of Mary Kelly, Jack's final victim, and he was a mourner at McCarthy's funeral. The lovely - sigh - Kay Kendall, who married Rex Harrison, was really named Justine Kendall McCarthy and she was the great-granddaughter of John McCarthy.
And as readers of the current issue of Ripperologist will have read, McCarthy was also a great friend of the most famous of all music hall entertainers, Marie Lloyd. All of which brings us back to that music hall entertainer and master of ickle baby voices!
(Thanks of course to your own, your very own Mr. Andy "It's up yer sleeve" Aliffe) |
|
|
|
|
