Kaufmann

[mariab]

a gathering with Beck (NOT Begg!) the anarchist

Third spy report (starting from the bottom):
(The Beck anarchist person is mentioned very frequently in the French spy reports. NOTE the mention of a British anarchist named “Williams“ (Wess?).

Paris, May 2, 1905 (from London).
The Russian revolutionaries of London.

On April 30 a gathering organized by the anarchist Russian London group “Solidarity“ took place at the “Black Lion“ in Whitechapel.
Anarchist Beck talked about the horrors of the ongoing war and its consequences, the widows and orphans left with no means, the unemployment leading to hunger, the blackest misery for the workers' class.
He finished his speech by saying:
“Comrades, we should encourage all means for a revolution, to liberate our brothers from the yoke of the vampire who's been sucking our ultimate drops of blood. Down to the Romanoffs and their entire consequences. Hail to the Revolution and to freedom!“
The entire room repeated these cries enthusiastically.
An English anarchist named Williams {Wess?} followed up with a violent but incoherent speech.
He was followed by a Jewish revolutionary named Mosses, who talked about the trade unionist movement and who invited all attendees to participate in tomorrow's demonstration of the people for the 1st of May.
The gathering closed with lighted projections of the Saint Petersburg massacre, the strikes of Lodz, the destruction of the Russian fleet at Port Alfred. The audience departed singing the Internationale.

[mariab]

“Der Arbeter Fraint“ on international politics

4th spy report (starting from the bottom):
NOTE for Lynn Cates: Here's a “hot“ anarchist lady for you, Lynn!

Paris, November 3, 1904 (from London I/II).
The revolutionary Jewish press in England.

Summary of issue #33 of “The worker's friend“, an instrument of the Jewish anarchists of London.
The Jewish anarchist group of “The worker's friend“ organized a conference last Sunday in London, attended by numerous comrades. Decisions for the order of the next day were met:
“This group has decided on organizing a strong union among the Jewish anarchists of London, to formulate a propaganda plan by speech and by the press, to spread the anarchist ideas among the Jewish masses.“
A correspondent from Manchester is reporting that the Jewish anarchist movement is gaining on importance every day in that city, and that the number of participants in the party's reunions is augmenting. At a gathering which took place last Sunday, numerous English Jews were present. Miss Dillington, from the English anarchist group, gave a speech leading to a hot discussion.
Gatherings will continue taking place in that city {of Manchester}, every Saturday in Yiddish and every Sunday in English.
The editorial {of Der Arbeter Fraint} comments on the Russian-Japanese war and states that the Japanese victories will have consequences on the Chinese coolies.
The time is coming when the Chinese workers will reject the yoke imposed on them by the European capitalists, which opens up a new and vaste field for anarchist propaganda.

[mariab]

anarchists' movements

last spy report (the top one) from Rob Clack's post #98:

Paris, April 20, 1906 (from London):
Mobility of the principal London anarchist revolutionaries.

The current events in Russia and the events to happen due to the Duma reunion have caused the mobility of numerous Russian revolutionaries, refugees in London, who felt compelled to return to their country.
Tchaikowsky spent some time in Moscow, before embarking on a ship for New York, where he'll be working on obtaining funding for the continuation of the revolutionary struggle. From there {New York} he plans to return to London with his family.
Tcherkesoff has been in Moscow.
Soskice left a few days ago for St. Petersburg, in his function as a correspondent for the newly founded English liberal newspaper “Tribune“ from London.
Speck, a member of the anarchist group “The worker's friend“, who left a few days ago for Riga, has been executed in that city for the assassination of a chief of police.
Kropotkin is still in London, ill, his illness being the sole cause for his not having gone to Russia.

[mariab]

And a French secret police report from Rob Clack's post #99:

Nihilists, Seine

Arrest in Paris of Russian terrorists found guilty of having constructed and detonated explosives.
Mai 29, 1890.
The following seven of them were convicted:
Renstein or Reinstein
Nachachidze or Macachadge
Lavrenius
Stepanoff
Kaschinzeff
Lewoff
Hoeckelmann de Landesen (wasn't executed)

[lynn cates]

Thanks

Hello Maria. Thanks. You do good work.

Was that last incident the one where Andrieux blew up some bombs and then blamed the anarchists?

Cheers.
LC

[mariab]

Hello Lynn.
I know about Andrieux, but no idea if this is the same event. Maybe if you cross referenced the names of the 7 anarchists arrested?
There's a last spy report I have here, as a xerox copy, which discusses (and in great length, in 2 chatty full pages) Russian nihilists and their working habits in Paris, not London. I might post a translation of it at some point tomorrow. Interested? There are lots of names in there too, including women nihilists.

[lynn cates]

Red Virgin

Hello Maria. I'd be delighted. Thanks!

Have you come across Louise Michel, the notorious "Red Virgin"?

I shall shortly email you a file/search passed along to me by Debs Arif. Enjoy!

LC

[mariab]

Debs and Lynn,
thank you SO very much for the Michel Lesure manuscript. I had a very quick look through it, and it's becoming clear to me that there are 3 directions in which we should research:
1) Obviously if Debs could keep going on with looking up for the elusive no-first-name-Schwartz anarchist in pamphlets, that could possibly bring out a hit. I'll do the same with The Jewish Standard.
2) As noticed by Debs, Schwartz is mentioned 3 times in Lesure's index, as in having participated in 3 anarchist meetings, in the summer of 1902 and 1903 and in the winter of 1905. Therefore it's clear that we need to get access to Der Arbeter Fraint from the summer of 1902 and 1903 and from the winter of 1905, and cross reference the articles for a possible reference to Schwartz (preferably with his first name). What impresses me is that in one of the meetings (if I'm not mistaken, in 1903) Schwartz is mentioned together with Der Arbeter Fraint and Rudolph Rocker. I'm already strongly suspecting that this might be our Israel Schwartz. But we'll see.
3) I was very surprised to see a box mentioned as containing reports on the London anarchists which was NOT known to me from the Archives Nationales inventaries. I'll most certainly order this box when in Paris in March. Otherwise (on a very quick look) the shelf marks look identical to what I have.

I might even arrange to meet Michel Lesure himself, as I strongly suspect that HE was the OTHER researcher keeping the boxes away from me (as mentioned in my previous post). After googling him I see that he has worked extensively on the matter of Russian pre-revolutionary socialists.
At any rate, thank you SO much again, Debs.

[lynn cates]

sed contra

Hello Maria. This is a good plan, but bear in mind:

1. It might be a differently named Schwartz.

2. It might be Israel Schwartz, but not THE Israel Schwartz.

3. It might be THE Israel Schwartz, but he might have turned Anarchist because of a kindness shown by Wess at the interview.

4. It might be THE Israel Schwartz; he may have become a club member BEFORE the interview; and yet have told the truth about BS man.

As the old adage goes,

"There's many a slip
'twixt the cup and the lip."

Just to temper your optimism a bit.

Cheers.
LC

[The Good Michael]

There was a Jacob Schwartz who came to New York about 1900 and was in a group called Frayhayt (freedom). They were arrested and tried. Schwartz was supposedly beaten in prison and died in October 1918. It's possible this was the Schwartz as well. Schwartz is such a common name.

Mike

[mariab]

Hello Lynn.
Why did I expect a Cartesian enumeration of possibilities from you?! But Lynn, this is not a philosophical argument or a mathematical progression. This is ugly reality, in an uglier neighborhood. And I'm afraid optimism has nothing to do with any of this.
Possibilities 1 and 2 (esp. possibility 2) appear to me as realistically very weak.
Point 3 appears to me as a very plausible possibility, in fact I've been thinking a lot about this possibility myself.
Point 4, hmmm... naah, if Schwartz was tight with the IWEC, I'm afraid that the coincidence of his having witnessed an early attack of the very woman who was found unpleasantly dead in front of their very club a bit later on is a coincidence quite a bit hard to swallow.

Lynn Cates wrote:
Just to temper your optimism a bit.
Lynn, I won't be jumping up and down if it turns out that Schwartz lied and BS and Pipeman never existed, and that we'd need to retrace Stride's steps from scratch on the night of September 30, 1888.
Just so you know, I have a couple of ideas of how to research BS and similar assaults in the Old Bailey and the Marlborough courts. It's a long shot, but it can't hurt to try.

[mariab]

The good Michael wrote:
There was a Jacob Schwartz who came to New York about 1900 and was in a group called Frayhayt (freedom). They were arrested and tried. Schwartz was supposedly beaten in prison and died in October 1918.
Thank you for the information, Michael, where do you have this from? Do you have any idea where this Jacob Schwartz was originaly from and what kind of languages did he speak? Unfortunately, our own Schwartz no-first-name was active in London from 1902-1905. At least this part is documented. So it doesn't quite fit with your Schwartz in NY. I'm hopeful that we might find more about Schwartz no-first-name in pamphlets and in Der Arbeter Fraint. If he gave a lot or speeches in Yiddish, he might have written for Der Arbeter Fraint.
Michael, thank you very much for the job offer, but I'm a musicologist and have things kinda planned out for the next years. Incidentally I've just found out about a job in Germany for which I might need to apply, even if it would mess up quite a bit with my other projects. Just what I needed on a Friday night, after a very long day doing bureaucracy and errands.

[The Good Michael]

I think it is a different Schwartz. The others in the group reported came from Russia. I imagine he would have as well.

Another thing going for Israel being your man is that he was said to have had a theatrical look about him. Sounds like oration is a possibility there.

Good luck,

Mike

[mariab]

The good Michael wrote:
Another thing going for Israel being your man is that he was said to have had a theatrical look about him. Sounds like oration is a possibility there.
Actually I very thought of that! Another thing going for Schwartz no-first-name possibly being Israel is that the other spy report I found about him (from 1902) calls him “a very skilled orator in Yiddish, Polish, and Hungarian“. Very stupidly I managed to ommit shooting a picture of that report (which incidentally happens to be the most relevant report I encountered), but it was very hectic both days at the Archives Nationales, late afternoon before they closed, and I was using the boxes inofficially, on the slide, as they were ordered by another researcher. But I'll go shoot that missing report in March, plus Debra Arif located a French book (at the British Library) discussing these sources and there's an additional box with more reports on London anarchists mentioned in the book. I'm pretty sure that the spy reports in the new box will continue not mentioning first names, but I hope that Der Arbeter Fraint might mention the entire name for an author of an article or editorial.

[Debra A]

Third spy report (starting from the bottom):
(The Beck anarchist person is mentioned very frequently in the French spy reports. NOTE the mention of a British anarchist named “Williams“ (Wess?).

Paris, May 2, 1905 (from London).
The Russian revolutionaries of London.

On April 30 a gathering organized by the anarchist Russian London group “Solidarity“ took place at the “Black Lion“ in Whitechapel.
Anarchist Beck talked about the horrors of the ongoing war and its consequences, the widows and orphans left with no means, the unemployment leading to hunger, the blackest misery for the workers' class.
He finished his speech by saying:
“Comrades, we should encourage all means for a revolution, to liberate our brothers from the yoke of the vampire who's been sucking our ultimate drops of blood. Down to the Romanoffs and their entire consequences. Hail to the Revolution and to freedom!“
The entire room repeated these cries enthusiastically.
An English anarchist named Williams {Wess?} followed up with a violent but incoherent speech.
He was followed by a Jewish revolutionary named Mosses, who talked about the trade unionist movement and who invited all attendees to participate in tomorrow's demonstration of the people for the 1st of May.
The gathering closed with lighted projections of the Saint Petersburg massacre, the strikes of Lodz, the destruction of the Russian fleet at Port Alfred. The audience departed singing the Internationale.

Hi Maria, no luck with Schwartz in the pamphlets as yet but I think the 'Williams' you mention here is John Williams a prominent British socialist. 'Violent speeches' seem to have been his trademark.
He was very active in 88 and 89, don't have any other dates at the moment.

Socialism in England, 1888 and 1889
Wemyss and March, Francis Wemyss Charleris (1890)