Anti-semite or not

[Ben]

Hi Lars,

I complimented you for starting a potentially interesting thread, but now I'm going to have to growl at you: Growl!

1. between a tenuous victim and a club that catered for everyone
2. between a victim a Jewish club/whatever beside a prime whore killing spot
3. between a shitty apron fragment and a vague graffiti

Ah, now don't you get me stroppy, Lars. The double event murders were both committed in close proximity to two Jewish clubs, and in Mitre Square you had a synagugue not far away to boot (anyone unfamiliar with the distance between Mitre Square and Duke Street ought really to consider the negigible distance - try a 25 second walk!) Now, although you had Jewish establishments dotted around the locale, it wouldn't be at all true to say that Jewish clubs were all over the place. Clubs are significant in that, unlike many Jewish establishments, they were active in the small hours; the killer's hours, which means that a Gentile committing murders in close proximity to Jewish clubs would enable the obvious inference that the killer might have been one of the club attendees, which wouldn't have been feasible if a Jewish ecclesiastical establishment or a Jewish shop was targetted, for instance.

Already, this is militating very heavily against "random coincidence", but when taken in conjunction with the fact that a Jewish-related message was found in the most most concentrated Jewish hotspot in the district and accompanied by Eddowes' apron remnant, the "coincidence" angle is rendered even more unlikely.

I'm afraid it's a little bit fallacious to argue that if the killer didn't implicate the Jews in a ludicrously over-the-top and blatent manner, then he wasn't implicating the Jews at all. Clearly this isn't the case. It wasn't subtle anyway, but to expect anything less subtle is to expect the unreasonable.

Unless you want to argue that the prevailing animosity against Jews was such that he couldnt fail to use it as a smoke screen?

I want to argue that he would have been pretty churlish to bypass the opportunity to take advantage of the prevailing animosity against the Jews, and I'm sorry, but anti-Jewish sentiment was far greater than anti-Irish or anti-police views, and it was Jewish Leather Apron that had kick-started all the association between the killings and Jews.

[Sam Flynn]

Ah, now don't you get me stroppy, Lars. The double event murders were both committed in close proximity to two Jewish clubs

Ben, dear boy! There was emphatically no close proximity in respect of the Duke Street Club. The Imperial Club was above street level, round the corner and - ahem! - "several" yards away from where Eddowes was killed. I argued as much before the server crash and I'm sticking to it. Mainly because it's true

[Cap'n Jack]

Sam
wasn't there a Jewish orphanage or children's home, or even something similar, that had a view over Mitre Square, and access through there?
I just seem to remember the witness testimony of someone working there who saw nothing, even though he was looking out of the window at the time.
You'll of course remember the case I found from the early 1800's where a resident of Mitre Square shot a celebrating Jew with a blunderbus?

[Jon Guy]

Ben, dear boy! There was emphatically no close proximity in respect of the Duke Street Club. The Imperial Club was above street level, round the corner and - ahem! - "several" yards away from where Eddowes was killed. I argued as much before the server crash and I'm sticking to it. Mainly because it's true

If my memory serves me well, wasn`t it the Great Synagogue that formed one side of Chuch Passage ?

[Sam Flynn]

If my memory serves me well, wasn`t it the Great Synagogue that formed one side of Chuch Passage ?

There or thereabouts, Jon.

So - and this is mainly for Ben - if it's not clubs, it's synagogues. Ever feel you're in a "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario

[Sam Flynn]

Sam
wasn't there a Jewish orphanage or children's home, or even something similar, that had a view over Mitre Square, and access through there?

I daresay, AP. Mitre Square/Aldgate bordered on one of the more densely-packed Jewish enclaves of London. It would have been difficult not to have found some tenuous Jewish link with a body deposited there.

So, it's clubs, synagogues or orphanages now... Oy gevalt! Shlomo Minsky (whom I've just made up), who had an umbrella stand in St Martin's Lane had better watch out.

[Monty]

It was a Jewish Library, which actually overlooked St James Place really.

As Gareth states, we can find connections anywhere, Kearley and Tonge in Bucks Row and Mitre Square eh AP?

Monty

[Mr Poster]

hmmmm

Loads of posts later an still.....not one shred of evidence that our man had any notion of trying to make Jews look like killers.

One victim possibly was killed near an orphanage/synagogue or maybe a club or something (as opposed to just being killed in a dark corner).

The masonic conspiracy is about as valid and possibly more likely.

Now i think I'll just watch the goalposts shift by the hour and watch as the thing gets more complex and all the while the only logical and the simmplest conclusion gets lost in the dust.

Dont forget folks......still no evidence to suggest that there was any Jewish connection of any kind at all for all the victims. And given tht you are struggling to find one for one victim....it should be mighty craic wacthing ye try and do it for Chapman and kelly.

Oh yes....

p

[Sam Flynn]

it should be mighty craic wacthing ye try and do it for Chapman and kelly...

...or Nichols, for that matter. Personally speaking, I can only see a Jewish connection with the murder site of Liz Stride - and there's a reasonable argument in favour of even that being circumstantial, given the large number of Jews living in the area in which her body was found.

[FrankO]

(as opposed to just being killed in a dark corner).

Or: as opposed to being killed close to the 'Prostitutes Church'.

Cheers,
Frank

[Ben]

Loads of posts later an still.....not one shred of evidence that our man had any notion of trying to make Jews look like killers.

All except the evidence you've ignored, Lars.

And I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the argument that the Imperial Club isn't close to Mitre Square makes about as much sense as arguing that Duke Street isn't close to Mitre Square. It was - simple as, unless we wish to argue that a 20-second walk of a few yards wasn't "close" (which means imposing some pretty funky and arbitary limitations on what constitutes "close"), or that it was somehow feasible to kill right in front of the Imperial Club. Dutfiield's Yard was bad enough. It's also completely hypocritical for you, Lars, to start bemoaning anything that militates against the "simplest" explanation, when you've just finished criticising others for jumping on the "simplicity" bandwagon by subscribing to the local-man theory.

I'm not suggeting it was his ulitmate number one prioity; merely that he sought, on occasions, to take advantage of a generic scapegoat when it would have expended precious little effort to do so. There's really nothing complicated about it, and Philip Sugden didn't think so either. There's endorsing simplicity, and there's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

...or Nichols, for that matter.

That's because the Leather Apron brouhaha had only kicked in after the Nichols murder, Gareth.

[Mr Poster]

hi ho

All except the evidence you've ignored, Lars.

No evidence has been ignored. As the majority recognise, there is no evidence that our man had anything against Jews or was trying to finger Jews.

Public Service Announcement: Could readers please not that we have now slipped into the usual "evidence exists" mode of operation where we are assured evidence exists for something, its never put forward, and the only argument for its existence is couched in laboured tortured contortions designed to wear people out so they wont persist and th emyth can continue.

I repeat: there is no evidence our man was anti-semitic or trying to finger Jews.

It's also completely hypocritical for you, Lars, to start bemoaning anything that militates against the "simplest" explanation, when you've just finished criticising others for jumping on the "simplicity" bandwagon by subscribing to the local-man theory.

As all the victims were female prostitutes and there is no evidence that they were Jewish, were killed in ways Jews might be expected to kill people, were killed anywhere near significant Jewish facilities or locations, were left in places or poses indicative of Jewishness etc etc ....the simplest solution is that Jewishness had nothing to do with it.

Ben tries to divert the debate away from there being no evidence to point out that I may be hypocritical.

What he is of course referring to is the local man debat where he knows full well that I am not on the "simplicity" bandwagon.

I am on th ebandwagon that says that th elocal man theory has only been propogated by people wishing to distance themselves as much as possible from "toff" theories to quickly invest themselves with a shred of credibility.

Neither the local man concept nor the Jew framing one have any evidence.

Bens position on both is not established on the existence of evidence, never has been and never will be and solely exists as one more thread is his over arching theory of everything that is well described elsewhere at length.

Just so people are clear as to what is going on.

As to his rather pathetic deferral to Sugden.....need I remind folk that his suddenly discovered touchstone also favoured Chapman and dismissed GH.

STrangely selective of Ben there. But then again....I feel he may be under the weather somewhat and will cut him some slack as its been long and many the day since someone typed "Growl" (his emphasis) at me in what I can only assume was some kind of John Inman-esque "hows yer *****" type event.


p

[Carrotty Nell]

I would like to add my voice to that of Mr P.

I can believe the following hypothesis: that Jack was not an anti-Semite per se, but that following the attempt to blame the murders on the Jews post Chapman he decided to take advantage of the situation on the next night he went a-slaying.

But what then happened on 8 November? Why did he not keep this up? On 8-9 November he killed a woman with no known Jewish connection in a street which far from having any Jewish connections is supposed to have been the most anti-Semitic street in the East End.

I'm sorry but it makes no sense to me.

[Varqm]

I think if the ripper was an anonymous guy who would not or think he would not be questioned by the police anytime soon that he would have no reason but to go home after the murders. I kinda do not see the point. Unless he lived in the district or an acquaintance.

[Pilgrim]

Evidence & Hypotheses.

What would amount to evidence ? Without actually knowing who the murderer was, the immediate facts linked to the crime scene can only serve as mere indications. Indications can however serve to build hypotheses, which may or may not be strenghtened, weakened or negated by any supporting evidence that might possibly exist, at the crime scene, immediate, extended, and beyond it. Clearly, the explanatory value of any fact linked to the crime scene can only be confirmed retroactively; by actually knowing who the murderer was.

~~~

Why would a (hypothetically) anti-semitic murderer kill a Gentile woman in the possibly most anti-semitic street in the East End ? There surely can seem to be some indications that the conclusion already had been made, that the murderer was "foreign-looking" and a "low-class Polish Jew" ?

~~~

Pall Mall Gazette, 24 March 1903

"All agree, too, that he was a foreign-looking man,--but that, of course, helped us little in a district so full of foreigners as Whitechapel. One discrepancy only have I noted, and this is that the people who alleged that they saw Jack the Ripper at one time or another, state that he was a man about thirty- five or forty years of age. They, however, state that they only saw his back, and it is easy to misjudge age from a back view."

~~~

"In Anderson's memoirs he makes the following statement with regard to his supect:

During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him. Investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice.

This passage has led some modern theorists to argue that the house to house search must have yielded evidence as to the identity of the killer. Anderson was wrong on one point here, for the search was conducted after his return from the continent in early October 1888., and not during his absence abroad. We know from the comments of senior officers such as Swanson and Monro, and arguably Anderson himself in 1889, that the police had no clue as to the identity of the murderer." Evans & Rumbelow, "Scotland Yard Investigates", p.254)

Throughout October the police continued to focus their attention on young Jewish or "foreign-looking" males with dark complexions, black hair and beards, and dark clothing. No doubt thousands of men in the East End answered this generic description. Although some suspects did deviate from the Jewish stereotype in so far as they possessed sandy moustaches or fair complexions, the Goulston Street inscription kept the hot coals of anti-semitism glowing. (...) Far from being an exclusively working-class problem, anti-Semitism thrived within the political and social elite. Robert Andersson, the new Assistant Commisioner of Police, who took charge of the Ripper investigation on October 6, believed not only that the killer was a "low-class Polish Jew," but also that the Jews would never "give up one of their number to Gentile Justice." (L. Perry Curtis, Jack The Ripper and The London Press, p.170-71.)

1882. Tiszaeszlár blood libel.

~~~