Dear Boss

[Tom_Wescott]

Lynn,

There won't be much to find now on the IWEC, but you should be able to locate documents pertaining to Wess' various sweaters and laborers unions from the late 1880's through 1890's, and that is the most likely place you're liable to find a Schwartz/Wess link.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Tom,
Lynn's approach is precisely the same as yours, but he added William Wess' and his brother's visits to William Morris' Farringdon Street Socialist club, and William Morris article in The Commonweal.
That William Wess did the interpreter for Leon Goldstein is new (and very relevant) information to me.
Good luck in occupying the entire Top 40 of Ripperology for weeks on end.

[lynn cates]

Wess & Wess

Hello Maria.

"Lynn's approach is precisely the same as yours, but he added William Wess' and his brother's visits to William Morris' Farringdon Street Socialist club, and William Morris article in The Commonweal."

Actually, it was added by their signatures. And the William Morris material--a good bit of that is online and more is lying here and there in libraries and archives.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

material

Hello Tom.

"There won't be much to find now on the IWEC, but you should be able to locate documents pertaining to Wess' various sweaters and laborers unions from the late 1880's through 1890's, and that is the most likely place you're liable to find a Schwartz/Wess link."

And I may know just the chap for this--Professor Fishman who, I believe, is professor emeritus and still alive. He is a mine of information.

Oops! I think I am hijacking a thread.

Cheers.
LC

[mariab]

Gentlemen,
possibly in a couple of weeks (when I get back to Berlin, NOT from Paris) I'd be willing to help a little bit with research, if it's online. (But I doubt it severely that data on “sweaters“ and laborers unions from the late 1880's through 1890's are listed online in the UK!)
Now really to make something to eat. I'm having convulsions like Jessica Alba in Dark Angel (when deprived of milk/Tryptophan)...

[mariab]

Lynn Cates wrote:
Actually, it was added by their signatures.
Right, I remember your little quizz! That was fun. I just realised that this is a recent discovery.
Prof. Fishman, author of 2 books about the anarchist movement in Victorian London? (The one I, in my innocent newbie status, initially mistook for our Swede friend, Fisherman?!)
I gotta cook this duck thing, or I'll be dead before it's done.

[Mishter Lusk]

Forgive me if this point has already been brought up, as I haven't read this entire thread through.

But it seems to me like it would have been a (fairly) simple task trying to identify Jack through this letter. All the police would have had to do is ask any and all hospitals in the area if any of their 40-something year old female cadavers with Bright's are missing any kidneys. If not, then that pins the sent kidney to Eddowes and the police have a handwriting sample.

Then it's just a matter of demanding a handwriting sample from everyone in town, and if someone doesn't comply, they're taken in to spend some time in prison and fined, and still have to submit a sample. If the Ripper's in town, they would find him this way.

I don't know though...perhaps there's an aspect I overlooked. I'm betting there is.

-Aaron

[The Good Michael]

Aaron,

Probably a plethora of university kidneys as well, not to mention trying to tell the person's gender and age from a kidney let alone species.

Mike

[Mishter Lusk]

Hello Mike,

Good points, I was just always under the impression that forensics determined the kidney was from a middle-aged woman with Bright's. Perhaps I am wrong. Also, if Jack really did send it, he most likely wouldn't have had the means to travel too far out of the Whitechapel vicinity to different universitys or hospitals, wouldn't he?

-Aaron

[Stewart P Evans]

Understand

Forgive me if this point has already been brought up, as I haven't read this entire thread through.
But it seems to me like it would have been a (fairly) simple task trying to identify Jack through this letter. All the police would have had to do is ask any and all hospitals in the area if any of their 40-something year old female cadavers with Bright's are missing any kidneys. If not, then that pins the sent kidney to Eddowes and the police have a handwriting sample.
Then it's just a matter of demanding a handwriting sample from everyone in town, and if someone doesn't comply, they're taken in to spend some time in prison and fined, and still have to submit a sample. If the Ripper's in town, they would find him this way.
I don't know though...perhaps there's an aspect I overlooked. I'm betting there is.
-Aaron

I'm afraid that you obviously do not understand the situation regarding not only the 'Lusk kidney' but also the position regarding bodies and the obtaining of body parts. It is explored in Jack the Ripper Letters From Hell.

[Mishter Lusk]

I'm afraid that you obviously do not understand the situation regarding not only the 'Lusk kidney' but also the position regarding bodies and the obtaining of body parts. It is explored in Jack the Ripper Letters From Hell.

Might you briefly enlighten me? Or shall I just read about it?

[Stewart P Evans]

Thrashed

Might you briefly enlighten me? Or shall I just read about it?

This subject has been thrashed to near death so many times in the past that I assumed you had read the standard texts on it.

For a start it is a fallacy that the age and sex could, at that time, be determined from a piece of kidney. In those days just about any kidney disease was regarded as 'Bright's disease' and it was quite common anyway. There is no 1888 source stating she had Bright's disease anyway and alcohol did not have the adverse effect on the kidneys that was assumed. And it was not as simple as asking 'any and all hospitals in the area if any of their 40-something year old female cadavers with Bright's disease are missing any kidneys.'

The simple fact is, and it was stated by the police at the time, it would have been a simple matter for a medical student to obtain a kidney.

[mariab]

Stewart Evans wrote:
The simple fact is, and it was stated by the police at the time, it would have been a simple matter for a medical student to obtain a kidney.
As a newbie I apologize profoundly for not having read Jack the Ripper – Letters from Hell yet (I will absolutely read it in the coming months), so I'm most probably asking a question which is answered extensively in the book, but I was wondering how often medical students obtained fresh bodies in Victorian hospitals. The Lusk letter kidney would have needed to be relatively fresh (as in, less than a week old, or one week old tops). It could not have been left in alcohol for several weeks/months, otherwise even Victorian doctors would have immediately noticed the difference. I would even consider grave robbing as a possibility here (in my uninformed opinion).

[Tom_Wescott]

Lynn's approach is precisely the same as yours, but he added William Wess' and his brother's visits to William Morris' Farringdon Street Socialist club, and William Morris article in The Commonweal.

I'm afraid I don't see how William Morris fits into the Schwartz scenario. It's no secret he was a supporter of the club, sometimes more because he had to be than because he wanted to be. He even paid them money at one time for space rental, so it's no secret he was intimately acquainted with the men of the IWEC. But what does this have to do with Schwartz or the Ripper? And which particular article in Commonweal? I'm sure Lynn is onto something interesting here, but I seem to be in the dark.

As for Fishman, his books are interesting, but are rather superficial and don't delve too deep into the underbelly of London anarchism.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Tom,
according to Lynn, William Morris apparently published an article/editorial in The Commonweal making accusations that Stride's murder was allegedly an act committed by an agent provocateur JUST to harm the IWMC! I'm sorry, I don't know on which exact date (in early October 1888) this article is supposed to have appeared, as I have a bit of “tunnel vision“ right now, concentrating on some research I'm doing under very chaotic conditions here in Paris. But I'll ask Lynn about this in a little while. I have to email him anyway, to give him the email address of a Jewish friend of mine in Chicago who (we hope) might help translate Der Arbeter Fraint.
If Fishman's books are a bit superficial, then all the better, because there's NO way I can afford to buy them. Does the Butterworth book go more in depth? (I've perused Butterworth online, and it felt a bit superficial too, concentrating too much on little scandals and stuff, about Karl Marx's ailments and whatnot.)
The funny thing is, when I first heard of Fishman, in my innocent newbie status I mistook him for our Swede friend, Fisherman!)