Any info on the vics speaking voices?!

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

Just curious about this again;

OK, a tough thing to talk about.

We know, that Liz Stride was quiet, while sober...

MJK was noisy, while drunk, very quiet, while sober (when did she do that?! )...

Catherine had a sharp tongue...

All the best
Jukka

[kensei]

Isn't it fascinating how we want to know every intricate little detail we possibly can about them? Pity we have no sound recordings (though there almost surely must be some of at least a few of the Ripper suspects, I would think). We can only imagine the victims' voices and compare what we imagine to what we've heard in the movies. Both Heather Gramm and Lysette Anthony as Mary Kelly got the Irish accent right, but probably too pure of a one. As for Liz Stride, no movie to my knowledge has ever even acknowledged that she was Swedish, making her English instead. For shame.

[Sam Flynn]

If Kelly had indeed lived in Wales since she was "very young", I have no doubt that she'd have spoken in a noticeably Welsh accent. After perhaps 15 years, first as a child and then as a young woman, in one place, the cadences of her adopted home would have predominated. She may have preserved some idiosyncrasies of Irish pronunciation in some words (e.g. saying "annie" instead of "any"), but not all.

Stride, I believe, was said to speak English with very little of a "foreign" accent - although whether that made her sound like a broad cockney (or a cockney broad) we don't know.

(By the way, Ken - I thought Lysette Anthony's Irish accent was pretty dire.)

[The Grave Maurice]

Carrotty Mustache: "Would ya care fer a sip o' beer, m'dear?"

MJK: "Oh, look you now, boyo, isn't it. Ta."

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Sam!

My Irish friend once thought, that MJK could have used the Western-Irish version "Da" instead of "Daddy", when talking about her family...

All the best
Jukka

PS. A technical question; As far as I know, the first recording device was a wax machine of some sort. Did it already exist about this time?

[Brenda]

There were recordings as early as 1877. If you are interested in the history of recorded sound, this site is never-ending fun:

https://www.tinfoil.com

They have a treasure trove of early recorded music, singers, and speakers.

[AlfredFJones]

It would be very interesting if we could have a sample of one of these ladies' voices.... alas, there is probably none such recording that exists.

[Magpie]

Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria are just two of many whose voices have been recorded.

[halomanuk]

The films and TV series always use the stereotypical voices which are too exaggerated and obvious - Eddowes,cockney....Kelly,Irish.
So you get the classic 'all roight guvna ?' and 'top o the morning to ya'..

Makes me cringe sometimes when i watch them.
Basically we will never know their accents or voice patterns,just whatever has been said at the inquests about them.

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

Just refreshing my memory about the posts on this thread.

Well, Magpie:

Florence Nightingale can be added to the list of early voice-recordings!

All the best
Jukka

[JTRSickert]

Isn't it fascinating how we want to know every intricate little detail we possibly can about them? Pity we have no sound recordings (though there almost surely must be some of at least a few of the Ripper suspects, I would think). We can only imagine the victims' voices and compare what we imagine to what we've heard in the movies. Both Heather Gramm and Lysette Anthony as Mary Kelly got the Irish accent right, but probably too pure of a one. As for Liz Stride, no movie to my knowledge has ever even acknowledged that she was Swedish, making her English instead. For shame.

Hey Kensei,

In regards to Mary Kelly's voice, in real life, I think she might have spoken with an irish-Welsh accent since she lived in Cardiff for most of her youth, probably more Welsh but that is my opinion. In the movies, Lysette Anthony definitely does a good Irish accent, but Heather Graham seems to be speaking with a rather common London (if not just plain English) accent. Also, in regards to Liz Stride being Swedish, it must be remembered that even though she spoke Swedish fluently and even some Yiddish, several people who knew her testified that she spoke English fluently as well without any trace of a foreign accent, so I suppose her depiction of being a Swede in the movies and such is rather a moot point.

[Gman992]

"Cupa tea, cupa tea, how abouts a shag, cupa tea?"

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

Well, my Irish friend told, that the Wester-Irish accent contains at least the following things:

"Daddy" is "Da" and "Mama" is "Ma"...

All the best
Jukka

[Chava]

I'd agree with Gareth. She arrived in Wales very young--if she is to be believed--and her natural accent would have been Welsh. I suspect the Irish would only have come out in vocabulary.

Stride sounds like she had an ear for language so probably spoke English well-enough to pass for a native English-speaker.

[Neal Shelden]

Mary Ann Nichols: London working class sounding voice

Annie Chapman: probably well spoken english but not in anyway posh or cockney. May have made her sound a bit above the people in Spitalfields though?

Elizabeth Stride: she had spent the last 22 years of her life in London, and therefore, would have had a London accent. I don't think there would have been much, if any, trace of a Swedish accent left?

Catherine Eddowes: was taken to London at about aged 1, so had a working class London accent, but may have picked up some Wolverhampton ways of saying certain things from her parents and older siblings. But she was generally a London sounding girl if we take the fact that her accent was probably set in stone from aged 2 to when her father died in 1859 and she was aged 17.

Mary Jane Kelly: Welsh, Irish, who really knows???