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** 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 March 15, 1999
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Catherine Eddowes:
Catherine Eddowes (General Discussion):
Archive through March 15, 1999
Author: Julilla
Thursday, 04 March 1999 - 01:27 pm |        | Jim, I'm assuming that Caroline is using the term 'fag hag' just as it is meant here in the U.S. Fag hag is a derogatory term for a woman who hangs out or falls in love with gay men exclusively.
Julilla |
Author: Jim DiPalma
Thursday, 04 March 1999 - 09:37 pm | | Hi Caroline, Julilla,
Honestly, I had never heard the term before, thanks for enlightening me. I know a few women with gay male friends, they hang out with them because the gay guy will go shopping with them, or to an art gallery or craft fair, all the things their straight boyfriends/husbands won't do.
It never ceases to amaze me, the things that some people will disparage others over. I'm feeling a bit badly now for being flippant about it before.
Somewhat less cheerful,
Jim |
Author: Caroline
Friday, 05 March 1999 - 03:31 am | | Oh, Jim, don't go un-cheerful on us all.
What was that gay joke I heard recently? I'll clean it up a bit here.
Gay man: 'My boyfriend is useless at sex but he has wonderful taste in curtains' (drapes to you lot!)
Love,
Caroline |
Author: Paul Ingerson
Friday, 05 March 1999 - 10:18 am | | Caroline,
Are you trying to hint that Oscar Wilde might be the Ripper? Interesting...
That would throw a new light on "The Importance of Being Earnest" where the hero has been using a web of false names and lies to hide the fact that he's secretly been coming to London to have some fun. Wasn't "Jack" one of his names?
Yours,
Pi |
Author: Caroline
Friday, 05 March 1999 - 11:48 am | | Sorry Paul,
Oscar wasn't quite wild enough to be Jack the Ripper, and he was altogether too well-known. My Jack was a very slippery creature, who shunned the limelight in practically every way but matters murderous. His favourite pastime as himself, and by himself, was fishing and collecting furniture.
He hid his many lights under a few bushels, but those which began as glimmers to me but weeks ago are fast becoming lantern-like. I still can't figure out how he managed to see in the dark, though, unless he used his favourite medium, fire, somehow.
If he had been as famous as those of his circle of friends and relations, we probably wouldn't be meeting like this now, on a Friday afternoon--POETS Day, when things have gone awfully quiet here. Sssssssh.......
Best wishes,
Caz |
Author: Caroline
Friday, 05 March 1999 - 11:53 am | | Oh, and BTW, if Karoline is listening, a good book title would be 'Jack of All Trades, Master of...One.
The film title would be a bit more ethereal, I've got one up my sleeve though, along with the snotty hanky.
Have a great weekend all,
Love,
Caroline |
Author: Julilla
Saturday, 06 March 1999 - 12:06 pm | | Caroline, glad to hear you're not implicating Oscar. I love Oscar. Everytime I think on what happened to him, I get weepy.
But it is interesting because last night for some reason I was thinking of Oscar and how horribly Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensbury behaved. If anyone could be a suspect just for being a beastly, sadistic, horrible bastard, it's the Marquess of Queensbury. I hate him. Brutal to his children and his wife, intolerant of others, a feeling of superiority to everyone around him...well, wouldn't that be interesting? Not that I've done any research into it, or anything. It was just a stray thought.
Julilla |
Author: Caroline
Sunday, 07 March 1999 - 01:11 pm | | Hi Julilla,
I think this brutality was fairly commonplace. My own great-grandfather was a dreadful bully, my grandad Walter had to defend his mother Maria from physical blows at a tender age. It makes me feel like burning the bookcase the old boy made which is now in the corner of our dining room. Trouble is it would be like burning history. Only by having the bad staring one in the face can one learn from it and start over.
My Jack had the same sense of irony about Victorian so-called 'Happy Families', and something along these lines in his own childhood is what I believe sent him over the brink.
Love,
Caroline |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Sunday, 07 March 1999 - 04:07 pm | | Julian -
A bit of a late response, but thought I might add something about the Loane statistics quoted in Paley's book. If his full report from 1887 is accessed, it will be seen that the discrepancy in death totals is due to his subtracting from the total of deaths in Whitechapel and sub-districts all non-residents of Whitechapel who died in the district while adding Whitechapel residents who died in other districts. There is still no breakdown of causes of death in sub-districts, but he does present verdicts of coroner's inquests into violent death that did not return a verdict of murder. Just a note for the general discussion.
And I must thank the ever-industrious Alex Chisholm, who provided me with the above information. Good bloke, that.
CMD |
Author: Julian
Wednesday, 10 March 1999 - 09:51 pm | | G'day CMD,
Thanks for that. Damn! I hate the way people play with ststistics. Actually there was no information forwarded as to how these statistics were garnished, just a copy of the Death stats for Whitechapel in 1887 so I can claim stupidity for not researching the information further. I guess that's one of my faults, finding a piece of information and accepting it at face value rather than questioning the source of the content. Hmmm, I'll keep that in mind.
I've just flicked back through the posts but can't find the relevant one I was chatting in. I think I was responding to someone's comment that (whoa, just found it) there was not much panic around the time of the double event. Um, Tabram, Nicholls and Chapman had been found murdered within a short distance from each other, all within a short period of time and all in the open, Chapman literally showing us what she had for breakfast, and anon says people wern't scared? Maybe it's just me but I'd probably think twice about star gazing in the wee hours of the morning after hearing about those murders.
I think it's rather commical thinking about all the tactics employed by various factions trying to catch Jack, at one point I believe the undercover police were being watched by the vigilantes who were in turn being watched by the Yard. While that might not necessarily be true I still get a smile imagining it. Yeah, yeah, I know, small things amuse small minds but....
Something I've noticed that the murders have in common is that there was always somewhere for Jack to retreat to in a split second of hearing someone coming. With Nicholls there was a door in the gate (which lead to a vacant yard) right in front of where she was killed. Chapman was killed in the back yard of a house which, from the photo, looks to have a narrow gap of a passage between the house and the fence. Stride was killed in the entrance to another yard. Eddowes was killed in front of block of vacant cottages, and Kelly was killed in her apartment which had access from two directions.
I don't reckon Jack had to run from the murder scenes, just hide there until the excitement causes a crowd then blend in with them.
No statistics here.
Jules |
Author: D. Radka
Wednesday, 10 March 1999 - 10:59 pm | | Jules,
Kelly's apartment did not have two-directional access, I don't believe. There was only one way into Miller's Court, through the narrow brick tunnel fronting on Dorset. And Mary's apartment had only one door.
David |
Author: Julian
Thursday, 11 March 1999 - 12:16 am | | G'day David,
Looking at the diagrams I have of Millers Court the passageway appears to go right through the whole thing. But you've got me with Kelly's room only having one room. Maybe the thing here is that because he was already inside and out of sight, he didn't need an escape root, merely waited until a reasonable hour of the morning when people would be going to work, then blend in with the local populace.
Just an idea, but still thinking.
Jules |
Author: Caroline
Thursday, 11 March 1999 - 08:59 am | | Hi All,
Don't forget that Kelly's murderer may have had a 'pipeman' as lookout!
Also, thinking of the murders in general, didn't they have moveable barrows (hot potato men etc.) doing the rounds in the 'teeming' streets of nothing else but cops, vigilantes, 'tarts', pimps and clients? I believe they had their own lanterns attached too for light, and would be great to hide behind for a bit of 'ow's yer farver' while JtR2 served up the spuds (sounds like Jimmy in Roddy Doyle's Van, murders apart!). Dirty deeds over, barrow plods on with two men, unhindered by any suspicion, probably not even worth a mention by witnesses at the time, who would suspect the burger van?
Just an idea for one of the series, possibly more, don't know which one or anything, but maybe worth a quick ponder just the same.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Yazoo
Thursday, 11 March 1999 - 09:51 pm | | Hey, All!
Without having seen the actual statistics -- only summaries of them -- they would seem insufficient for our purposes of discovering how much violent crime (especially murder) was occuring in 1887-1889. They give a sketch, but not enough detail. Loane seems more interested in sanitary conditions in slum housing, death caused by disease, and accidental deaths caused by occupational/illness-related conditions (e.g., malnourished, weakened dock workers following into the water and drowning, or into cargo holds and breaking their necks -- etc). Fishman's East End 1888 provides some anecdotal evidence of crime during this period. I also think Fishman points out that a lot of stats from this period are actually estimates anyway!
If I am distorting what Loane has to say about murder, please let me know, but it seems the number of murders was still relatively low.
On violent crime in the Victorian period, several books are available that appear to cover this topic -- and more seem imminent. The fields of study of Victorian violent crime and Victorian journalism seem to be an academic growth industry. Hopefully some of them provide murder rates and crime statistics.
Here are some titles I found -- some old and out-of-print and others still supposedly available. I am in the planning stages of purchasing these (most of them anyway), so I can't really recommend, only make you aware.
If people have positive or negative recommendations/reviews, please pass them on.
E. M. Palmegiano, Crime in Victorian Britain -- an annotated bibliography of Victorian journals and their coverage of violent crime
Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900
David T. Hawkings, Criminal Ancestors : A Guide to Historical Criminal Records in England and Wales
J.J. Tobias, Urban Crime In Victorian England
Thomas Burke, The Streets of London
Thomas Boyle, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism
Leonard Piper, Murder By Gaslight
Marie-Christine Leps, Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth Century Discourse -- concerns the perception of criminal deviance (not considered in a sexual context of 'deviance'); topics cover "Criminology," "The Press," and "Literature"
Unrelated specifically to crime, but includes gaslit London and its shady goings-on, is a study of three major European cities (Paris, London, Berlin) and their night-life from the onset of gas lighting to modern lighting:
Joachim Schlor Nights in the Big City
If anyone knows of any other studies of Victorian violent crime, please post the info. I'd appreciate it.
Yaz |
Author: Julian
Thursday, 11 March 1999 - 10:30 pm | | G'day Yaz,
I think the point I was trying to make with the information I had was that there wasn't any real need to have been scared of being murdered while walking around the streets of Whitechapel in the early hours of the morning.
Certainly there were other violent deaths in the area at the time but none were contributed to murder. I think this is why after the murders of Nicholls and Chapman there was genuine fear on the streets.
Jules |
Author: Rotter
Friday, 12 March 1999 - 04:41 am | | | Yaz, I have the Boyle Black Swine and while it is a good book it deals with the mid century, not anywhere near the 1880's and 1890's. It is also primarily literary in focus, dealing with the depiction of crime and "low life" in English fiction. |
Author: Yazoo
Friday, 12 March 1999 - 06:47 am | | Hey!
I agree with you, Jules.
Thanks, Rotter. Since the Victorian age lasted so long, it's not easy to tell from titles or short blurbs where the emphasis of the book is placed.
Yaz |
Author: Vt newbie
Friday, 12 March 1999 - 07:16 pm | | In reading the chapter in Rumbelow about Catherine Eddowes' murder, something struck me as odd and I hope somebody here can explain it for me. It said that one whole side of the square was taken up with abandoned buildings. When the lodging houses were so filthy and crowded, why weren't the homeless squatting in those buildings? They couldn't have been any dirtier or more squalid than the conditions I'm reading about. Were the laws so much more strict then than they are now? I believe I read years ago about one of Churchill's granddaughters squatting in a building, probably in the late 60's or 70's, so I know it's been done.
Is it possible that there were people hiding in those buildings, who did witness her murder?
I look forward to hearing your comments.
Take care, all.
Carole |
Author: D. Radka
Friday, 12 March 1999 - 11:14 pm | | Carole,
Good question!
Perhaps there were people sleeping in the boarded-up buildings fronting on Mitre Street. It has been said that at least one of them was accessible, i.e. not impassably boarded up, since it has been debated why the Ripper and Eddowes did not go into the building for sex--it would have been safer from his point of view to kill her out of view, inside that building. But to say that there may have been people sleeping there is different than to say there may have been people squatting there. Often the homeless would occupy sheds or other structures on a one-night-stand basis, then leave the next day. Squatting implies living in someone else's building on an ongoing basis without paying rent. The police were likely up to preventing this kind of thing--squatters would probably be evicted.
The police tried to locate all witnesses, and none turned up from the Mitre Square area, so it seems there wasn't anyone sleeping in the abandoned houses that particular night. Or was there?
David |
Author: Julian
Monday, 15 March 1999 - 06:05 pm | | G'day David,
This is something I've been thinking about, that Jack didn't leave the scene of the crime immediately but had some sort of 'hide' in which he stayed until it was safe to move out.
A piece of evidence that seems to back this theory up is the piece of Catherine's apron which was found in a nearby street sometime after her murder. This same street had been walked down previously by another policeman who saw nothing. This would seem to indicate that Jack was hiding for a bit (possibly in the vacant tennements) while the first policeman was walking down this street. When he passes the tennements Jack comes out and walks down the street in the opposite direction of the policeman, wipes his hands on the piece of apron and drops it in the street before going off home.
I know this is a bit garbled but I hope you can get the gist. I also don't think this is going to help us identift Jack's identity but it might just explain another tiny piece of the jig-saw.
Jules |
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