Pawn tickets in Mitre Square

[GUT]

Also popular items to buy since you can make clothes out of them.

Yep, that's why they were good to pawn they had value.

[Errata]

Bed sheets and curtains would be items you could live without (perhaps more importantly with little impact on your earning capacity) yet would have (because of the amount of material in them) some value.

Also popular items to buy since you can make clothes out of them.

[GUT]

Bancroft Library had an open evening a few years back where you could look at a variety of historic documents, covering a period from Elizabethan times through to the 60s.

The two I remember best were a Victorian midwife's notebook detailing the births she supervised and how much she charged the family and a series of pawn ledgers.

What surprised me the most about the pawn ledgers was what was actually pawned. Bed sheets and curtains seemed to be a favourite item to hock.

Bed sheets and curtains would be items you could live without (perhaps more importantly with little impact on your earning capacity) yet would have (because of the amount of material in them) some value.

[yen_powell]

Bancroft Library had an open evening a few years back where you could look at a variety of historic documents, covering a period from Elizabethan times through to the 60s.

The two I remember best were a Victorian midwife's notebook detailing the births she supervised and how much she charged the family and a series of pawn ledgers.

What surprised me the most about the pawn ledgers was what was actually pawned. Bed sheets and curtains seemed to be a favourite item to hock.

[Mirandola]

For them, the only way to make ends meet was to pledge domestic items at the local pawnbrokers to raise some cash for the week ahead. The possessions pledged could be as diverse as clothing, shoes and jewellery through to flat irons and occupational tools.

The pawnbroker’s customers were not those in abject poverty who had nothing of value to pledge, but those living close to the bread-line who were in regular, yet poorly paid work. For the majority of the working classes, pawning was simply a way of life. When in employment, they used their clothing, especially their Sunday best, as capital on which to raise cash. Clothing was often pledged on a Monday and redeemed on a Saturday after the breadwinner of the family had been paid. It was worn to chapel or church on a Sunday, and pledged again the next day. This was the reason that Saturdays and Mondays were the pawnbrokers' busiest days.
‘Uncle’, as the pawnbroker was colloquially known, could always be turned to in times of need. Pawnshops were an urban phenomenon, and with the rise in population throughout the Victorian period, the number of pawnbrokers increased dramatically. Some streets had more pawnbrokers than public houses.

Pawnbrokers did not benefit greatly when people could not afford to redeem their pledges. Their profit was made from the interest charged when regular customers pledged and redeemed their belongings. The pawnbroker was entitled to keep and sell unredeemed items pledged for less than ten shillings after the redemption period of one year and seven days. Unredeemed pledges of more than ten shillings did not automatically become his property; these items had to be sold at a public auction, although he could set a reserve to avoid making a loss.

http://visitvictorianengland.blogspot.com/2014/01/making-ends-meet-role-of-victorian.html

[Ginger]

Acts of charity at this level are rare I'd suggest.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, poor people are fairly helpful/generous to their friends, rather moreso than the middle class.

[Rosella]

We are dealing here for the most part with people who lived from day to day, picking up casual work, sometimes from meal to meal. They would probably have been used to popping goods at pawnbrokers all their adult lives and IMHO would probably have known within a penny or two what a pawnbroker would give for a hat, a pair of boots, a shirt.

I just think that three shillings for a shirt in the 1880's would have been incredibly expensive. Even tradesmen like bricklayers earned only about 46 shillings a week in the summer and in the winter, when work was much scarcer, about 36 shillings. For a working man with a family a shirt costing that amount would be prohibitive.

It would only be the working poor with a regular wage coming in who would lash out and consistently buy new clothing on a regular basis, new bonnets for Polly Nichols aside. That clothing would have been coarse and cheap.
If, as I believe, the average price of a shirt was under two shillings that still gives a profit to the pawnbroker if he sold it on.

[David Orsam]

Catherine Eddowes may well have said to herself, "Tenpence halfpenny; that's cheap for a flannel shirt, John, if it fits you. They cost four bob in that shop on Commercial Road."

And so, off they waddle on their way to London.

Hi Simon,

The above is the only part of your post that strikes me as being relevant to my question.

If I read you correctly, I think what you are saying is: Yes, it would have made fiscal sense for Eddowes to have accepted a 9d pawn ticket, which could be redeemed for 10½d, if the value of the shirt was greater than 10½d.

So that there is no misunderstanding, can you confirm that I have got that right?

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow and I couldn't enjoy myself if I thought you were fretting unnecessarily.

So—

Catherine Eddowes may well have said to herself, "Tenpence halfpenny; that's cheap for a flannel shirt, John, if it fits you. They cost four bob in that shop on Commercial Road."

And so, off they waddle on their way to London.

On Friday John earns sixpence. Not enough to redeem the shirt.

They then decide to pawn John's boots for 2/6d at the very pawnbroker who lent Emily Burrell 9d on the flannel shirt.

Catherine Eddowes pawned Johns boots under the name Jane Kelly, so she could not have passed herself off as Emily Burrel to redeem the shirt. Joseph Jones and his son made a number of expert witness appearances at the Old Bailey. He kept strict accounts and was very proper about such things.

So Emily Burrell's pawn ticket was useless to Catherine and John, and was found by the side of her body in a tin mustard box.

Personally, I doubt the provenance of the Emily Burrell pawn ticket.

Please don't bother arguing the arse out of this, because I'm not interested.

Happy Valentine's Day,

Simon

[David Orsam]

No David

I simply posted my thoughts.

Sod all to do with anything else.

What your personal questions are with Simon are of no personal concern to me.

I just posted my thoughts. My ...own...thoughts.

Now..can you kindly not read anymore into things? I'd be most obliged.

Thank you.

I see, just random thoughts unconnected to anything else in this thread, jolly good.

That's why I used the word "if", Phil, when I said "if any of the above has been posted in response to my question".

Before leaving you to your random thoughts, I should tell you that will read into things whatever I want, if I think it appropriate.

And I haven't asked Simon any "personal questions". I have asked him a public question about the meaning of one of his posts in this thread.

[Phil Carter]

No David

I simply posted my thoughts.

Sod all to do with anything else.

What your personal questions are with Simon are of no personal concern to me.

I just posted my thoughts. My ...own...thoughts.

Now..can you kindly not read anymore into things? I'd be most obliged.

Thank you.


Phil

[David Orsam]

Here's a thought or two.

When a person pawns an item..They know one thing. They need money. Fast.
Now..passing that pawn ticket on to a third party is. .amongst poor people. .only done if money was owed to the third party but at that moment could not be repaid. Hence. Take my own ticket..its all I have is one possibility. .

Or..It gets stolen from the owner at some stage.

Acts of charity at this level are rare I'd suggest.
but all of the above can be used if forming a line of opinion. However..We do not know any of the above happened.


Therefore it isn't certain either that Eddowes or Kelly WOULD know the value of the item. There is no firm ground for speculating that either would. But one can make up reasons for anything if wanting to make a point I suppose.

Phil

Hi Phil, funnily enough, I've been expecting you would be posting in this thread.

Can I just say that if any of the above has been posted in respect of my question to Simon then you have misunderstood it.

Just to clarify. I am asking Simon if holding on to the pawn ticket would have made fiscal sense (to use his expression) to Eddowes/Kelly if they knew that the shirt was worth more than the cost of redeeming the ticket.

In answering this question, one only has to assume that the shirt was worth more than the value of the ticket and that Eddowes/Kelly knew it. One does not need to speculate about anything or to agree or admit that the value of the shirt was in fact worth more than the ticket or to agree or admit that Eddowes/Kelly knew it. That is the meaning of the word "if" in the question. It is, if you like, hypothetical. I am trying to understand the principle, or principles, involved in Simon's concept of fiscal sense.

I might add that whether the ticket was given to Eddowes/Kelly as an act of charity or for any other reason is utterly irrelevant to my question because I am only asking about the motives of Eddowes/Kelly.

[Phil Carter]

Here's a thought or two.

When a person pawns an item..They know one thing. They need money. Fast.
Now..passing that pawn ticket on to a third party is. .amongst poor people. .only done if money was owed to the third party but at that moment could not be repaid. Hence. Take my own ticket..its all I have is one possibility. .

Or..It gets stolen from the owner at some stage.

Acts of charity at this level are rare I'd suggest.
but all of the above can be used if forming a line of opinion. However..We do not know any of the above happened.


Therefore it isn't certain either that Eddowes or Kelly WOULD know the value of the item. There is no firm ground for speculating that either would. But one can make up reasons for anything if wanting to make a point I suppose.

Phil

[Pierre]

a) Conceivably.
b) They spent time hopping with her, slept in a barn with her, if she misidentified herself then its she you should be questioning.
c) There is no evidence that Kate and John went to 2 pawn houses, the Birrell ticket was issued from a different pawnbroker.
d) Because that was the date it was issued on. Not Saturday, as John first claimed.
e) The only real point of interest raised by this line of questioning.

D) Yes, but the date on that ticket was "31 August". It was issued on the day of the murder of Polly Nichols.

E) But he couldn´t have planned the murder on Kelly before Barnett moved out, or could he? So is it a pure coincidence?

And the contents of the two pawn tickets taken together - is it a pure coincidence that there were to bits of paper in a tin on the murder site in Mitre Square, giving the date for the day of the murder in Buck´s row as well as the name of the victim and the street where the next murder would occur?

And was John Kelly just protecting the memory of the deceased, thinking that she might have been pawning some stolen goods?

Regards, Pierre

[Errata]

A pawn broker lends less than he can sell the item for except on very rare occasions. A shirt is not a rare occassion. So If the ticket was for 10 1/2d, they knew the value was going to be more than that amount because they know the pawnbroker anticipated selling it for more than that amount, say, 15d or more. If the pawn broker doesn't think he can make money selling it, he doesn't take the pawn. And if there is one thing you can count on it is that pawn brokers are not angels of mercy making great deals to help the innocent poor.