The Kosher Rozzer

[Chris]

Here's an interesting book review from the Jewish Chronicle of 20 June 1958:

[Robert]

So Chris, this is the same Michael Harrison who wrote the Clarence book?

[Chris]

So Chris, this is the same Michael Harrison who wrote the Clarence book?

Yes, it is, which I think tends to make it more interesting.

[curious4]

Shamus

Hello all,

I thought Shamus was irish. I suppose many american police were irish, so perhaps both meanings could apply. A "Shamus" - a policeman, and the yiddish meaning.

Best wishes,
C4

[Robert]

It certainly is interesting."Kozminski" isn't a terribly common name, and he has "Abraham" as well.

[Chris]

It certainly is interesting."Kozminski" isn't a terribly common name, and he has "Abraham" as well.

I wonder whether anyone knows whether Harrison had an interest in the case as early as the 1950s, or whether he might have been in a position to pick up any inside information - though as these novels predated the discovery of the Macnaghten memorandum I'm not sure who would have been in a position to give him the name Kozminski at that time. His Wikipedia page mentions that he "served brifly in the British Military Intelligence during World War II."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harrison_(writer)

There is a bit of background information about Harrison here:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=4535

[Robert]

Here's one of his non-detective books with a long introduction by Colin Wilson :

http://tikaboo.com/library/Harrison.Michael.The.Roots.of.Witchcraft.eBook-EEn.pdf

[Chris]

Here's one of his non-detective books with a long introduction by Colin Wilson :

http://tikaboo.com/library/Harrison.....eBook-EEn.pdf

Thanks - that's very helpful.

I see the 'A to Z' quotes a passage about the Ripper from the 1963 book by Harrison mentioned by Colin Wilson:
'As a boy, I heard from my mother, my aunts, and assorted servants, exactly who Jack the Ripper was - the most slanderous identification, I remember, being that of the venereally infected son of a royal surgeon. ("They couldn't hang a man with those connections. They had to hush it up. They never brought him to trial. Locked him up in Broadmoor. He's still there, they say.")'

[Robert]

That's about three different theories mixed together in that one quote.

[Chris]

I see the 'A to Z' quotes a passage about the Ripper from the 1963 book by Harrison mentioned by Colin Wilson:
'As a boy, I heard from my mother, my aunts, and assorted servants, exactly who Jack the Ripper was - the most slanderous identification, I remember, being that of the venereally infected son of a royal surgeon. ("They couldn't hang a man with those connections. They had to hush it up. They never brought him to trial. Locked him up in Broadmoor. He's still there, they say.")'

Unfortunately Harrison doesn't write much more than this in 'London by Gaslight' (1963). The passage above (on p. 137) is only prefaced by this:
'For a man who was never caught, not even identified, it is astonishing how many 'identities' Jack has collected.'

Perhaps there is an implied reference there to Donald McCormick's 'The Identity of Jack the Ripper' (1959). In any case it tends to confirm the impression that Harrison's relations and servants suggested a number of different identifications to him when he was a boy (that would be c. 1920).

[RivkahChaya]

A "razzer," if anyone doesn't know, is a "pig." I'm not sure which slang term for police came first, the word pig, or the Yinglish, but the actual Yiddish word for pig is "chazzer," with the "ch" being a glottal fricative that doesn't exist in English. It's pretty similar to the way "ch" is pronounced in German, although to some people, it might sound like the French "r." That's the joke behind "kosher razzer."

I always thought "shamus" was from "Seamus" too. "Shammas" isn't pronounced that much like "shamus," and at any rate is usually "shammash." It means "helper" or "aide" and that doesn't make much sense, unless at one time it was mainly used to refer to the investigators employed by lawyers in private practice, a lot of whom were Jewish, at least in New York City.

There really were a lot of Irish cops in New York, partly because there was just a big influx of Irish immigrants at one point, and people who'd been here a few generations were snobbish about hiring new immigrants, but the police, which needed a lot of manpower in a rapidly growing city, hired people just off the boat, as long as they could speak English. As a result, a lot of Irish, and also a lot of Scottish people were hired as police. It's tradition to have a wake for any police officer who dies, even if he's black or Jewish, and they always play bagpipes at the funeral of a fallen officer. I guess the family can turn it down, but I went to a few funerals, mostly as a sign language interpreter, and I always heard bagpipes.

[Chris]

A "razzer," if anyone doesn't know, is a "pig."

Evidently this is only one suggestion as to the origin of the term 'rozzer'. There's a useful discussion here, which lists the suggested Yiddish origin along with three others, but concludes that there is no direct evidence to support any of them and that the origin is unknown:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-roz1.htm

[Robert]

I suppose to be sure that this was all just a coincidence, it will require that the Kozminski novels be bought and read through and checked for any morsel of insider knowledge - though somehow, I have a gut feeling that Mr Evans did just that 20 or 30 years ago.

[RivkahChaya]

Evidently this is only one suggestion as to the origin of the term 'rozzer'. There's a useful discussion here, which lists the suggested Yiddish origin along with three others, but concludes that there is no direct evidence to support any of them and that the origin is unknown:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-roz1.htm

It's probably the one the writer of the article knew, because it explains the joke "kosher-rozzer."

"Chazzer" is the same insult among Jews that it is among gentiles, although since Jews wouldn't be familiar with pig-keeping, I'm going to guess it wasn't a common insult until Jews started spending time with gentiles, ie, once they shtetl walls came down.

[Stephen Thomas]

So Chris, this is the same Michael Harrison who wrote the Clarence book?

Hi Robert

I'm confused.

What has Harrison to do with the press article in the first post here?