So would he have run?

[Lechmere]

One can but marvel at the dilemma faced by windy carman Lechmere.
What route to take to work?
It’s one thing girding his loins to traverse the inky gloom of Bucks’ Row – that haunt of gangs.
But whither next?
Hanbury Street – the scene of many a crime, of which he may be the next victim?
The broad boulevard of Whitechapel Road, where even more crime took place despite the relative profusion of gas lamps?
Or the fearsome Old Montague Street route that would take him past the house of death, the undistinguished shed that doubled as Whitechapel’s public mortuary? And once this dread scene was negotiated more horrors awaited as Old Montague became Wentworth and the black hand of Booth fell upon the lodging houses of the flowery dean as they spilled upon the northern shore of that benighted street. Those one hundred yards of danger could only safely be passed at a sprint lest the honest worker be relieved of his sacking apron.
In the end we must judge that the windy carman eschewed the shorter Old Montague route for the known haunt of Hanbury. That must be the case and anything else is just piffle.

No such route worries would trouble the unsung hero of Whitechapel. Bold Mulshaw was his name. He sat by his Winthrop Street brazier unperturbed by the High Rips and their pale imitators. Like a later day Hector he strode into the inquest and with a rare display of sang froid gave his real name and address. If need be he would face the gangs down should they turn up at his night watch. He would not be troubled nor deflected. He would give his evidence, look the coroner in the eye and be true to the bold and illustrious name of Mulshaw.
Quite unlike the knave Lechmere. The windy carman hid behind his mother’s petticoats and adopted his long dead step father’s name in a desperate attempt to throw the High Rip’s off his scent. Never mind that his testimony gave no suggestion of High Rip involvement and did not so much as hint at identifying the perpetrator (although he sometimes used the term perp in deference to his long dead ex-policeman step father).
But in his trepidation the windy carman slipped up and gave his real address and workplace! Oh dear, those High Rips might splice and dice him after all. He might become fodder for the worst street roughs of the East.
How he managed to escape this fate history does not tell us. But it is very obvious that this is what happened.

[MrBarnett]

Wow! Is this the first chapter of the Magnum Opus???

[Fisherman]

Wow! Is this the first chapter of the Magnum Opus???

Yes - but not Edwards.

Fisherman

[MrBarnett]

Don't forget to mention that the carman was a mummy's boy and absolutely anal about filling in official documentation. It sort of bolsters the idea of his windiness.

Oh, and perhaps leave out the bit about Whitechapel High Street being more dangerous than OM Street - it was simply one of the busiest and most policed streets in the East End, so not surprising that there were more apprehended criminals there. Bit like Oxford Street today, I would suggest. Lots more recorded crime than, say, a council estate in Tottenham, but probably less scary to walk through in the early hours .

Hope that helps, but please don't feel obliged to send a complimentary copy.

MrB

[Fisherman]

Lots more recorded crime than, say, a council estate in Tottenham, but probably less scary to walk down in the early hours .
MrB

It is not the criminals that scare at these hours; it´s the emptyness of the street, the total silence, the darkness ...

Emptyness has always been scary. Just saying.

the best,
Fisherman

[MrBarnett]

Hey, Fish, we're almost there!

If we add a local reputation for street violence near lodging houses, we have the perfect excuse for our windy carman to take the simpler/safer/more familiar route.

And if the NUC (National Union of Carmen) should baulk at our depiction of Lech's windiness, we can point to Paul, who was patently sh!!t scared of Spitalfields but had no alternative route because that was where he worked.

MrB

[DVV]

The man who talked to Mulshaw is a better suspect than Crossmere for the Bucks Row murder.
And he was wise enough to disappear.

[Fisherman]

The man who talked to Mulshaw is a better suspect than Crossmere for the Bucks Row murder.

Why?

Fisherman

[Sally]

Wow! Is this the first chapter of the Magnum Opus???

It's beautiful - pure genius. A glittering career in the penning of the Penny Dreadful surely awaits....

[Cogidubnus]

Magnum Opus...ok fine...an over-rated Ice Cream which melts as soon as you look at it...

[MrBarnett]

Sally,

I agree totally. And what a complete surprise: I had always expected the MO would start with Pusillanimous Paul slinking into Buck's Row to discover... But what do I know, I'm a mere neophyte.

MrB

[Lechmere]

DVV
the person who spoke to Mulshaw was probably Tomkins or one of he other House Slaughterers

[Ben]

No, that was Edward claiming that

No, it was Edwards argument

Ah...

So you're saying it's all Edward's fault for coming up with bad arguments that you're now eager to distance yourself from? Fair enough, Fisherman, although that's possibly a bit harsh on Edward. I think a quick PM would suffice: "Edward, mate, you're killing me here! You say he avoided Old Montague for all those reasons I disagreed with, and here I am arguing that he was just bat-poo evil and crazy and would have done absolutely anything! Which is it?!".

A bit of disunity in the Crossmere ranks is not unhealthy, though.

And it all evens out. Edward doesn't like your "went to Pickfords after Mitre Square" explanation, and made that very clear on the recent GSG thread.

I'm genuinely not trying to be horrible or divisive here, but it is important for co-theorists to have points of discord between them, lest the theory is presented as a tag-team onslaught, which has been the recurring danger here.

All the best,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Mr B
In truth, before rushing to conject, I think it is advisable to see if there is anything to help with one’s powers of deduction. Baseless conjecture is so dissatisfying I find.

Ideally I like for the **** to crow four times before I am really happy that I can sustain a piece of conjecture. It is the cumulative effect. One or two factoids that suggest one conclusion can be dismissed – but four?
For example, was Charles Lechmere anal about form filling?

****-a-Doodle Once
He had all eleven of his children baptised. In itself not earth shattering. But many children were baptised late in life – he was himself. With infant mortality being what it was many never made it to their christening. Two of Charles Lechmere’s children died young but all were baptised.

****-a-Doodle Twice
When he moved his children didn’t miss a day’s school. OK we don’t have attendance records. Maybe he went out of his way to register them before he moved and they didn’t actually attend on their first day of registration. But given that universal education had only just come in to effect and this was the East End – an overcrowded relative ant heap off humanity - it would not exactly have been remarkable if he had moved and then arranged for their new schooling afterwards, but no he (probably, rather than his illiterate wife) went out of his way to arrange it before-hand.

****-a-Doodle Thrice
Despite moving six times he never missed an entry in the electoral register in about 35 years. It may be a civic requirement but he must have been proactive in making sure he was on the list each time. Again male universal suffrage was a new thing in those days.

****-a-Doodle Four Times
He accumulated enough money to start family businesses that ran in tandem with his rather menial job as a carman from the early 1890s up to when he stopped being a carman and ran his own shop in around 1901 and he left about £250 in his will which is recorded in the probate register. This was a tidy sum in those days.

Each of these things on their own doesn’t mean much – but together I think give an insight into his character and allows for the suggestion to that he was a rather careful and controlled person.

What about his mother? I don’t know that anyone has suggested he was a mummy’s boy, but is there any evidence that she was a powerful woman and probably a major influence on his life?

****-a-Doodle Once
She brought him and his elder sister up single handed until he was 9. His sister died in 1869, which meant Charles was her only son and heir.

****-a-Doodle Twice
She managed to marry three times. The second two weren’t actually legal as her first husband was still alive, but she married in church and did not just live with someone and take their name. Her first bigamous husband was nearly ten years her junior and a policeman and the second was ten years her senior. Most Whitechapel Murder victims started their downwards spiral when they split up from their husbands. Charles Lechmere’s mother did not succumb to that path but instead prospered.

****-a-Doodle Thrice
Charles Lechmere’s mother brought up his second eldest daughter, who never seems to have lived with her parents.

****-a-Doodle Four Times
Charles Lechmere’s mother started up her own business when she was in her late 60s as a Horse Flesh Dealer for Cat’s Meat (yum yum) which she maintained at least into the mid 1890s.

Taken together, I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that Charles Lechmere’s mother must have been a strong woman who very likely exerted a dominant influence over his life.

But was Charles Lechmere a windy carman?
Are there any ****-a-Doodles to suggest that we can sustain this blot on the escutcheon of the venerable family of Lechmere? Should their pelican crest be adorned with a white cockerel feather?

Of course there isn’t the slightest hint that he was windy.
In fact when Paul approached him from behind, after Lechmere had spied the prone body of a woman, he went up to Paul and displayed no hint of alarm. It was Paul who thought he was about to be mugged. If anything this is one ****-a-Doodle to suggest that Lechmere was not a flapper and that those frightful hundred yards of Boothoid blackness on Wentworth Street would hold no fears for him.

So the suggestion that Lechmere might have been windy and avoided the Old Montague Street route or that he gave the name Cross to avoid retribution from the dreaded High Rips or their ilk is baseless conjecture.
In contrast the suggestions that he was a careful and controlled person and that his mother was a dominant figure in his life are conjectures that have some basis to them.

[Lechmere]

Oh dear I forgot that this forum was very puritanical about the word **** (a male hen).