The International Working Mens Club and the GSG.

[DVV]

Hi Claire,
So, if we are going (as a mere possibility) with a scenario in which Stride and Eddowes were killed by the same person, there are simply too many coincidences about Jews that night, which would seem to me, if I had to use the adjective you have used, a little bit "untenable".
Of course, you have the right to accept these coincidences as such, and argue that they were many Jews living in the area, but however, it becomes difficult, not to say unfair, to be flat and dismiss alternative views as "untenable".

Amitiés,
David

[Sam Flynn]

So mid-way down Commercial Street and in the surrounding locale there was some very conspicuously non-Jewish housing. Strange then that "Leather Apron" was alleged to frequent the Princess Alice and "keep to the shadows" in that very "red" region.

...well, he was never very far from a blue region, Ben! Indeed, a close-up of the vicinity of the Princess Alice shows that a large part of that area was surveyed as having a high percentage of Jewish residents. The Alice pincered betwen two converging regions, one on Commercial and 'tother on Wentworth (north), both showing up as dark blue:



The Princess Alice is the grey (un-surveyed) building immediately to the north of the Victoria Home, which is the large, dark red trapezium at roughly 11 o'clock in the map above.

[Ben]

Hi Claire,

If I found a piece of blood-stained clothing under graffiti that read, 'Lisa X is a whore,' and, 'Dave woz ere,' could I construe that the blood was Lisa's and Dave killed her? Not bloomin' likely I couldn't. Even if a Lisa turned up dead not far away, I still couldn't.

You wouldn't be able to prove it, no, but you'd probably conceed that a reasonable case can be made, at the very least, for the blood having been Lisa's rather than confidently ruling out any possible connection between the two. When it comes to "Dave woz 'ere" though, my first consideration wouldn't be that Dave dunnit, but rather that someone was trying to frame Dave for the murder in a less-than-subtle fashion.

Best regards,
Ben

[DVV]

Hello Sam,
if you want to insist, I'd would point out that I have never used the expression "close proximity", but "short distance" - and I was talking of your own estimation: 100 yards.
Now, reading Ben's post and your own map, it seems to be far less than 100 yards. Indeed, "à vue d'oeil", it seems rather a matter of 50 or 70 yards... That can be called a very short distance.


Mais comme on dit à Marseille: "exagérer n'est pas mentir"!

Amitiés,
David

[claire]

I disagree, Claire.

I don't see too many "ifs" there at all. It's worth heeding the last line in particular: "these signify little by themselves but, taken together, begin to a make a persuasive case". Many aspects to the case entail a lot of "opinion and assumption", but it's not as though we're conjuring up connections from nowhere with our observations about the two murders residing close to two clubs (which is, irrefutably, "unusual in that part of London"). The GSG is arguably supererogatory for the purpose of implicating the Jews since its placement in the most concentrated Jewish hotspot around was "obvious" enough.

Rather than opinion and assumption, it's more a case of inferential probability based on the rejection of unlikely "coincidence".

Regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,

Sorry, I doubt that we're going to agree here

I do understand the placement of the GSG, and obviously (obviously, even to me!), it refers to Jews. But a) the idea that it implicates the Jews in anything apart from being the possible victims of a lot of prejudice is still up for debate, and b) the notion that it implicates the Jews in the murders is only possible because an apron was found a short distance away.

I read the sentence about 'all these things considered together' forming a strong case. I don't think it holds. If I found a piece of blood-stained clothing under graffiti that read, 'Lisa X is a whore,' and, 'Dave woz ere,' could I construe that the blood was Lisa's and Dave killed her? Not bloomin' likely I couldn't. Even if a Lisa turned up dead not far away, I still couldn't.

I'm afraid I believe coincidence happens far more than design.

[claire]

The message and the cloth are very likely related...unless someone heres opinion is superior to PC Longs....the man who found them,....and argued for the message to be preserved as evidence.

Huh? This makes no sense. What you're implying is that PC Long's opinion is infallible just because he was the one who found the apron and saw the message. Certainly his opinion was formed due to the geographical proximity of the items, but I think it's far from clear that the two things were left by the same person. As far as their being related, I am yet to be convinced that the GSG refers at all to the killings.

Only thing I would go for is a conversation in the clubs going along the lines of, 'these damned killings are all going to be chalked up to us,' and someone venting about that. (At a stretch, I might even believe it was written by a witness.)

Hi DVV,
Sorry, I don't know what you mean when you imply that I say that Liz Stride was not murdered by JtR. I don't think I said that at all; if I implied it, then I apologise for being unclear.

[Ben]

I disagree, Claire.

I don't see too many "ifs" there at all. It's worth heeding the last line in particular: "these signify little by themselves but, taken together, begin to a make a persuasive case". Many aspects to the case entail a lot of "opinion and assumption", but it's not as though we're conjuring up connections from nowhere with our observations about the two murders residing close to two clubs (which is, irrefutably, "unusual in that part of London"). The GSG is arguably supererogatory for the purpose of implicating the Jews since its placement in the most concentrated Jewish hotspot around was "obvious" enough.

Rather than opinion and assumption, it's more a case of inferential probability based on the rejection of unlikely "coincidence".

Regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Very interesting, Gareth.

So mid-way down Commercial Street and in the surrounding locale there was some very conspicuously non-Jewish housing. Strange then that "Leather Apron" was alleged to frequent the Princess Alice and "keep to the shadows" in that very "red" region.

Best regards,
Ben

[claire]

This is usually the part when I become testy. We'll see.



I don't appreciate the insinuation here, Claire; that other posters here are not speaking from a "reasonable" perspective. Just to clarify, I'm not angling necessarily for an anti-semitic ripper. I'm suggesting that a reasonable case can be made for a killer who sought to take easy advantage of the fact that the Jews had already become the generic scapegoat, just as Reg Christie made a single scapegoat out of Evans when he perceived an obvious advantage in so doing. Anyone seriously arguing that the killer would not have done something similar is arguing for a pretty churlish and not very opportunistic offender indeed.

...
Just to off-set some of the insinuations that it's just me advancing some minority-endorsed view, Philip Sugden observes:

"...Martin Friedland's suggestion that the murders were carefully contrived to throw as much suspicion as possible on the Jewish community deserves better than it has received by modern commentators. The murder of Elizabeth Stride next to the International Working Men's Education Club, the apparent hailing of an accomplice by the name "Lipski", the murder of Kate Eddowes close to another club (The Imperial) frequented by Jews, and the message "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing" chalked in the entry of a house of Jewish tenements - these signify little by themselves but, taken together, begin to a make a persuasive case"

Best regards,
Ben

Ben, I apologise. I didn't mean to sound rude. It was a flippant use of the phrase.

Nevertheless, if you look closely at your quote of Sugden's, you'll see it relies on a lot of 'ifs.' 'The apparent hailing of an accomplice,' the assumption that the GSG was authored by JtR, the idea that being close (however close) to a Jewish establishment was something unusual in that part of London...It's not enough just to grab a pot pourri of events or phenomena and assign them all to JtR; all there is, here, I'm afraid, is, in my admittedly limited view, a lot of opinion and assumption.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Ben,

What does the colour red signifiy on that map, out of interest?

Pink = 25-50% Jewish
Red = 5-25% Jewish
Dark Red = Less than 5%

[Sam Flynn]

So if the scale of Sam's map is correct, the distance between the club and where the corpse was found definitely can't be 100 yards.

Whatever it was, David, it wasn't in "close proximity", I'm afraid.

[Ben]

Thanks, Gareth.

It would be interesting to know how many clubs (i.e. anywhere where largish numbers of Jews were known to keep late hours) were littered about the locality. Note the unusually high concentration of dark splodges around Northern Goulston Street.

What does the colour red signifiy on that map, out of interest?

Cheers,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

For those on the lookout for Jewish connections here's another (slight) one from the Booth Poverty Map notebooks in 1898

I'm glad you mentioned that, Stephen, because it's very apparent from the Booth notebooks just how densely-populated with Jews that area was. Here's a section of the Jewish population, surveyed in the late 1890s, showing (green blobs, clockwise from left) the murder-sites of Eddowes, Kelly and Stride:



The areas in blue had between 75-90% Jewish residents, whilst those in the darkest blue between 90 and 100%. The large areas in grey - including the City - weren't surveyed, but one would be safe in assuming that the same broad pattern applied. Any cursory sample of the census returns of 1881-1891 will confirm as much.

In short, a series of arrows fired east, northeast, or southeast from Mitre Square would have stood a very high chance of thudding into the doorway of a dwelling with a significant Jewish connection. Ditto any arrows fired from the heart of Spitalfields in almost any direction one could mention.

[Ben]

Interesting stuff, Stephen! Thanks for sharing.

And David, thanks for that reminder of the distances involved in the Mitre Square murder. 9 or 10 yards sounds about right from the club to the Church Passage entrance, and it certainly isn't another 80 yards to get from that entrance to the Southern corner of the square!

[Stephen Thomas]

For those on the lookout for Jewish connections here's another (slight) one from the Booth Poverty Map notebooks in 1898:

At the entrance to the street by the Board School took place the first Whitechapel murder. In front of the Board School between the warehouses and the underground railway is a wide open space, well paved with cobbles, where the Jews assemble on Sundays and speechify.