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Hi,
It was a half-penny on a penny bottle, so fairly hefty in comparison with the price of the ginger-beer.
When you consider that a large gin was three pence though, then ginger-beer was quite cheap. I suppose those earthenware bottles held nearly a pint, I've never really thought work it out. Although the law stated it was only supposed to be 2% proof, you can bet your life that it some of it was a lot stronger. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you couldn't get quite pissed on a couple of bottles.
Just in case anyone hasn't seen a ginger-beer bottle (highly unlikely), here's what one looks like. I would have thought that neck was quite narrow to get an old fashioned pen in, so I presume that if anyone was going to try and use the blood to write a letter, then they would have to pour it out into something. Which does beg the question how did they get it in there in the first place?
Just assuming that Jack did collect some of his victim's blood in the ginger-beer bottle, then I find it impossible for him to have been able to get much in there without a funnel or something. We start getting into rather bizarre territory here, of Jack running around Whitechapel with a veritable kitchen load of utensils in his pocket.
I'm afraid that I have to go with the generally accepted idea that a journalist(s) wrote the letter and thought it would be a bit of macabre fun to give it a gruesome embellishment.
Hugs
Janie
xxxx
It was a half-penny on a penny bottle, so fairly hefty in comparison with the price of the ginger-beer.
When you consider that a large gin was three pence though, then ginger-beer was quite cheap. I suppose those earthenware bottles held nearly a pint, I've never really thought work it out. Although the law stated it was only supposed to be 2% proof, you can bet your life that it some of it was a lot stronger. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you couldn't get quite pissed on a couple of bottles.
Just in case anyone hasn't seen a ginger-beer bottle (highly unlikely), here's what one looks like. I would have thought that neck was quite narrow to get an old fashioned pen in, so I presume that if anyone was going to try and use the blood to write a letter, then they would have to pour it out into something. Which does beg the question how did they get it in there in the first place?
Just assuming that Jack did collect some of his victim's blood in the ginger-beer bottle, then I find it impossible for him to have been able to get much in there without a funnel or something. We start getting into rather bizarre territory here, of Jack running around Whitechapel with a veritable kitchen load of utensils in his pocket.
I'm afraid that I have to go with the generally accepted idea that a journalist(s) wrote the letter and thought it would be a bit of macabre fun to give it a gruesome embellishment.
Hugs
Janie
xxxx
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