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Although I am fairly new to these pages, I have been a student of all matters relating to JtR for many years. One difficulty I used to have, which many other people experience, is attempting to put important events into a usable time frame, for example the many confusing and conflicting incidents that allegedly took place around Berner Street at the time of the Stride murder, or the time scale of the events at Buck's Row. I look at the timing of events differently, because of a magazine article which I read some years ago.
The article was called something like "The way things were" and featured a re-print of an interview (from about 1895) with a fairly ordinary everyday man, but who was a sort of local "celebrity" in, I think, Stepney. He was well-known locally because of some success as an amateur sportsman, or something of the sort, but I don't remember much about his personal life, because it was his comments about "time" that grabbed my attention, and I remember those quite well.
He was the youngest of many children, and when he married, he and his wife stayed in his childhood home to care for his one surviving parent, so that in 1895, at the age of 70 plus, he had lived in the same house all of his life. He started work for his one employer in his teens, first as a menial tea boy cum sweeper-up, then graduating to semi-skilled, then skilled, then foreman, and then some sort of senior foreman by the time he retired. On his last day of work, he was presented with a watch which was said to have been an excellent time-keeper. He had never had a watch previously in his life, and said that very few working men had one. He set the watch to the works clock and walked home as he had done all of his working life. The walk always took 20 minutes, gave or take a minute or so, but he was astonished, despite his age, to time the walk at only 15 minutes. He then noticed that the grandfather clock in his house, which they regularly corrected to agree with the nearby church clock, was five minutes slow. He concluded that for over 50 years he had walked to and from work, always believing it took 20 minutes, when it really was just 15 minutes, all because his home and the works clocks were presumably synchronised with two different time sources!
A few days later, he took his wife to the city to see the sights, and re-set his watch to agree with Big Ben, as his watch proved to be 2/3 minutes fast. He then decided that his home clock had typically been about 2/3 minutes slow, and the works clock, typically 2/3 minutes fast. He admitted he became like a child with a new toy, and found himself checking the accuracy - or frankly the inaccuracy - of all the church and street clocks which he saw. He said that he was amazed by the variation he found, and reckoned that very few were even reasonably accurate, and many were quite inaccurate. Ten minutes error was not rare, and on one occasion he found two clocks in one London suburb which were twenty minutes off! He was so obsessed that he laughed, when telling how his wife had scolded him for being embarrassing because he had said to one shop-keeper, "Do you realise that your clock outside is almost 15 minutes slow?"
So, I got a slightly different picture of victorian London, after reading this, and after absorbing some other bits of information. The typical working man, and that would be most of the Eastenders of the day, probably did not own a watch. Indeed, police officers, even those engaged in "knocking-up" duties, rarely had watches, and judged time by the clock they last passed. Clocks on view to all, like church clocks and shop clocks, were accepted by the locals as telling the time, but were likely to be inaccurate.
So when considering JtR related incidents I do not expect timescales to tally. Time was a foggy nebulous approximation in 1888. We naturally want to try to be precise when assessing an incident, but what hope have we got? At Buck's Row, for example, we had Lechmere giving an approximate time, based on his home clock, Paul giving a more precise time, but based on his home clock, three police officers estimating possibly from three different clocks that they passes on their beats, and then the doctor relating times to presumably his home clock and/or watch. We naturally want to work out how long each aspect of their various actions may have taken, but how can we do this accurately when each individual was using a different source for his estimate of the time? It is reasonable to try to do this, of course, as long as we remember that it is all a bit approximate!
Other contributors may have information to share about issues relating to the measurement of time in victorian London.
The article was called something like "The way things were" and featured a re-print of an interview (from about 1895) with a fairly ordinary everyday man, but who was a sort of local "celebrity" in, I think, Stepney. He was well-known locally because of some success as an amateur sportsman, or something of the sort, but I don't remember much about his personal life, because it was his comments about "time" that grabbed my attention, and I remember those quite well.
He was the youngest of many children, and when he married, he and his wife stayed in his childhood home to care for his one surviving parent, so that in 1895, at the age of 70 plus, he had lived in the same house all of his life. He started work for his one employer in his teens, first as a menial tea boy cum sweeper-up, then graduating to semi-skilled, then skilled, then foreman, and then some sort of senior foreman by the time he retired. On his last day of work, he was presented with a watch which was said to have been an excellent time-keeper. He had never had a watch previously in his life, and said that very few working men had one. He set the watch to the works clock and walked home as he had done all of his working life. The walk always took 20 minutes, gave or take a minute or so, but he was astonished, despite his age, to time the walk at only 15 minutes. He then noticed that the grandfather clock in his house, which they regularly corrected to agree with the nearby church clock, was five minutes slow. He concluded that for over 50 years he had walked to and from work, always believing it took 20 minutes, when it really was just 15 minutes, all because his home and the works clocks were presumably synchronised with two different time sources!
A few days later, he took his wife to the city to see the sights, and re-set his watch to agree with Big Ben, as his watch proved to be 2/3 minutes fast. He then decided that his home clock had typically been about 2/3 minutes slow, and the works clock, typically 2/3 minutes fast. He admitted he became like a child with a new toy, and found himself checking the accuracy - or frankly the inaccuracy - of all the church and street clocks which he saw. He said that he was amazed by the variation he found, and reckoned that very few were even reasonably accurate, and many were quite inaccurate. Ten minutes error was not rare, and on one occasion he found two clocks in one London suburb which were twenty minutes off! He was so obsessed that he laughed, when telling how his wife had scolded him for being embarrassing because he had said to one shop-keeper, "Do you realise that your clock outside is almost 15 minutes slow?"
So, I got a slightly different picture of victorian London, after reading this, and after absorbing some other bits of information. The typical working man, and that would be most of the Eastenders of the day, probably did not own a watch. Indeed, police officers, even those engaged in "knocking-up" duties, rarely had watches, and judged time by the clock they last passed. Clocks on view to all, like church clocks and shop clocks, were accepted by the locals as telling the time, but were likely to be inaccurate.
So when considering JtR related incidents I do not expect timescales to tally. Time was a foggy nebulous approximation in 1888. We naturally want to try to be precise when assessing an incident, but what hope have we got? At Buck's Row, for example, we had Lechmere giving an approximate time, based on his home clock, Paul giving a more precise time, but based on his home clock, three police officers estimating possibly from three different clocks that they passes on their beats, and then the doctor relating times to presumably his home clock and/or watch. We naturally want to work out how long each aspect of their various actions may have taken, but how can we do this accurately when each individual was using a different source for his estimate of the time? It is reasonable to try to do this, of course, as long as we remember that it is all a bit approximate!
Other contributors may have information to share about issues relating to the measurement of time in victorian London.
. I’m not saying that they couldn’t have had them but I don’t think that we can assume it.
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