The International Working Mens Club and the GSG.

[DVV]

Very good clarifications, Ben,
Begg estimates the distance between the club and the entrance of Church Passage at 9 or 10 yards.
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.
You can keep posting here...

Amitiés,
David

[seecomber]

In view of Elizebeth Long`s testimony at Chapman`s inquest it is tempting to wonder if the killer was not seeking Elizebeth Long and got `Long Liz' in error. If this was the case the description provided by Long must have been accurate, as far as it went,to make the risk worthwhile.

[Ben]

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

Ah, finally, a voice of reason

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.

The argument that the The Imperial Club isn't "close" to where Eddowes was found murdererd is, I'm afraid, completely untenable in my view. It is certainly close, and would be considered so to anyone familiar with walking the district. Indeed, I could walk it in twenty seconds. It certainly isn't a hundred yards - it's appreciably shorter as anyone will discover from visiting the district. If I'm wrong, I'll never post here again. Ripper's corner" was the most viable secluded enclave to the club.

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

[DVV]

They just happened to be out at that time, and they just happened to be Jews.

Absolutely, Sam.
They were out at the time after having spent the evening at the Imperial Club, and they frequented this club because they were Jews...
But don't get me wrong: of course, they saw what they saw by chance - a matter of minutes... This said, the Club was not far, and then there is nothing too surprizing that the witnesses were Jews leaving it.

Amitiés,
David

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Dave,

100 yards is, after all, a short distance (Usayn Bolt could run from the club to Mitre Square in less than 9 seconds, I guess...

But it was not within "close proximity" to the corpse - a few inches or feet away would be. Five to ten yards - I'd call that "nearby", although one might at a stretch call it "reasonably close proximity". But several tens of yards and two thoroughfares away is emphatically NOT "close proximity", and it is wrong to pretend that it is.

Usain Bolt's competitors weren't anywhere near to being in "close proximity" to him - they were well out of it, despite only trailing by a couple of metres or so.

Our best witnesses for Eddowes' murder are 3 Jews who were coming from the Imperial Club, and that did not happen by sheer accident.

They just happened to be out at that time, and they just happened to be Jews. If they'd stayed in the club for a few minutes longer, or left a few minutes earlier, they'd probably not have seen anything. There's no mystery in that.

At least, your maps show that there were no Jewish clubs at every street corner.

Indeed, but the club in question was fully two corners away from where Eddowes was killed.

[DVV]

Ah, finally, a voice of reason The logical conclusion to the attempts to link the attacks with anti-semitic intent is that JtR was killing primarily with anti-semitism in mind, and he was so controlled about this that he refrained from killing Jewish women and set everything up to pin the murders on some unnamed Jew. It's as untenable as the idea that he kills two women, eviscerates one, then coolly wipes his foul hands on a piece of apron, and ditches it before wandering a few more steps rummaging for a piece of chalk that he just happened to have on his person, and carefully scribing an utterly cryptic message on a wall

Hi Claire,
I personnaly am not sure of anything about Stride's murder.
What I know, is that Schartz and Lawende could have seen the same man.
If you are certain that Stride is not a Ripper victim, good for you.
As to the adjective "untenable", it applies also to the (too) many coincidences about the Jews, in two murders that occured within the same night.
You certainly can call Sam Flynn a "voice of reason" (agreed, indeed), but those who try to explore alternative scenarii are not necessarily ready for the loony-bin.

Amitiés,
David

Hello all,

The officer who found the cloth felt the message was related to the apron piece, which was almost certainly left by the man they were calling "Jack"...the man who killed in Mitre Square that night, this is the only one of the Canonicals that has Jewish East End residents figuring prominently in not just one but two murders...the first at a site populated by Jewish anarchists with only Jewish witnesses relevant, the second near the Great Synagogue and the Imperial club, with only Jewish witnesses relevant...the members of the International Club were known by Police as anarchists, and the "benign" men from the club like Diemshutz are arrested in a few months from that date for assaulting policemen with clubs.

The message is only cryptic if you choose to suggest that the killer would have intended to leave a clear and concise message for police or other individuals...who said he wrote it for anything but to vent his own frustration?...that he is being used by the members of the club to exonerate themselves from complicity.

The arguments against the two being linked ignore all the relevant data of that particular evening, or the fact that the killer was mad, and might leave odd messages.. if at all. The fact that the model homes were 95% Jewish, and accessed via that same laneway, and perhaps housed individuals known by the killer to be members of that club, makes that positioning a creative and logical choice to leave an accusatory note.

Time to start addressing that particular night, the fact the Ripper never kills two on one night.... except for this alledged double, that the first victim shows nothing of the trademark carving this killer is known to do post mortem, and that the Jews at the International Club were to some degree lawless and violent,....as shown by their later actions and the police opinion of them pre-Double event.

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.

Best regards all.

[DVV]

Hello Sam,
100 yards is, after all, a short distance (Usayn Bolt could run from the club to Mitre Square in less than 9 seconds, I guess... ), and the fact that, from the Club to Mitre Square, you have to take Church Passage, is quite significant.
Our best witnesses for Eddowes' murder are 3 Jews who were coming from the Imperial Club, and that did not happen by sheer accident. At least, your maps show that there were no Jewish clubs at every street corner.

Hello all,
for those who haven't read it, an extract from The Star, 14 Sept, about the Berner Street's Jewish Club:

The "Worker's Friend", the Hebrew Socialist paper, of this week, announces that as a protest against the Jewish religion and the Day of Atonement, the Jewish Socialists and Freethinkers have organized a banquet for tomorrow, which will take place at the International Working Men's Club, 40 Berner-Street, Commercial Road. Speeches will be delivered in various languages. The announcement has caused much excitement amongst the Orthodox Jews, and it is rumored that a disturbance may take place at the banquet. If so, the members of the International Working Men's Club state that they are prepared, and the aid of the police will not be called in to assist in quelling it. This banquet is unprecedented in Jewish history.

Amitiés,
David

[claire]

Stride's being killed within the gates of a well-known and popular Jewish radical club is one thing, Eddowes being found a hundred metres from a discreet and short-lived gentlemen's social club is quite another. The comparison does not stand up to scrutiny - anymore than does the notion of a Ripper who puts off killing his victim until he knows there's a building with a menorah in the window within sprinting-range.

Ah, finally, a voice of reason The logical conclusion to the attempts to link the attacks with anti-semitic intent is that JtR was killing primarily with anti-semitism in mind, and he was so controlled about this that he refrained from killing Jewish women and set everything up to pin the murders on some unnamed Jew. It's as untenable as the idea that he kills two women, eviscerates one, then coolly wipes his foul hands on a piece of apron, and ditches it before wandering a few more steps rummaging for a piece of chalk that he just happened to have on his person, and carefully scribing an utterly cryptic message on a wall

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Maurice,

I don't see why we're getting all testy here.

Because I believe that there's a danger of (unnecessarily) over-egging the case for an anti-semitic, indigenous Ripper. Like Ben, I believe that the Ripper was quite probably an indigenous local, but I find it unnecessary that every single facet of the case should be used to support that argument, especially when, in so doing, objective truths are stretched or overlooked.

Ben made the perfectly reasonable observation, in reply to Kat's query, that it seems odd that two of the murders occurred in very close proximity to Jewish clubs. As he says, he is not the first to make this connection. Well it is odd, isn't it?

It would only be odd if it were actually true that the Imperial Club was in "close proximity" to the spot where Eddowes' body was formed. The simple fact of the matter is that the Imperial Club was not in "close proximity" to the corpse. One had to walk to the top end of Mitre Square, traverse Church Passage, and walk several more yards up Duke Street before one got to the club entrance, and then climb the stairs.

I lost my original drawing and map overlay in the "Great Casebook Crash", but here's a reconstruction from memory - murder site as a red "X", location of Imperial Club (as I recall) at the green rectangle:



I make that a distance of roughly 100 yards which, with respect, is not "close proximity" by any reasonable definition of the term.

Stride's being killed within the gates of a well-known and popular Jewish radical club is one thing, Eddowes being found a hundred metres from a discreet and short-lived gentlemen's social club is quite another. The comparison does not stand up to scrutiny - anymore than does the notion of a Ripper who puts off killing his victim until he knows there's a building with a menorah in the window within sprinting-range.

[DVV]

It's odd, and it deepens the semantics of the "double-event", though, just like the Grave Maurice, I don't know if it is really significant.

Amitiés,
David

[Ben]

Thanks, GM, and I fully agree - "odd" it cetainly is, if nothing else.

[The Grave Maurice]

I don't see why we're getting all testy here. Ben made the perfectly reasonable observation, in reply to Kat's query, that it seems odd that two of the murders occurred in very close proximity to Jewish clubs. As he says, he is not the first to make this connection. Well it is odd, isn't it? Does it have any significance? Dunno.

[Ben]

But, Ben - it can't be a matter of opinion that Berner Street, Goulston Street and the Whitechapel/City boundary area had a large percentage of Jewish premises and residents

Absolutely, with Goulston Street being a particularly concentrated and well-known Jewish hotspot. If you wanted to find Jewish people awake and active at that time of the night of the double event for whatever reason, their clubs were the places you were most likely to find them, and those clubs happened to be situated close to where the double event murders were committed. That's all I'm saying. If the killer had any interest in those clubs, he was probably helping to keep a false wheel in motion; the widespread suspicion that a Jew may be the murderer.

Best regards,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

Don't think we'll see eye to eye on this one, m'afraid

But, Ben - it can't be a matter of opinion that Berner Street, Goulston Street and the Whitechapel/City boundary area had a large percentage of Jewish premises and residents, so why pretend otherwise?

t wasn't a cricket-pitch distance away. It was the nearest viable and secluded spot to the club - that's "close proximity" in my book.

...and you can forget that for a start.

Please get real, old mate.