The meaning of the GSG wording

[RivkahChaya]

Riv, you don't call Queensbridge a housing project?

It's called "North Queensbridge," or "South Queensbridge." It's not called "the projects." It may have been called a "housing project" when it was built, in the 1950s, but that's pretty much a synonym for "slums" now. A new such project would be called a "Public housing development." Some day that'll probably become synonymous with "slum," and they'll change it again. People use "Housing project" only to refer to historical projects, like Watts, or Cabrini Green, or in Chicago, where "the projects" means a run-down neighborhood, with some old project buildings.

Queensbridge was home to one of the most notorious drug rings in Queens, by the way. I wasn't allowed to go there, and my parents pretty much gave me the run of things-- I could take the train into Manhattan on the weekend when I wanted when I was 12, and they didn't know where I was, just that I'd promised to be home by four, or call.

[Michael W Richards]

Since specific wording is an issue I thought I would point out that I never said that the Wentworth Dwellings were built for Jews, I did acknowledge that I knowingly misrepresented the actual number of Jewish occupants in these model homes at the time of the murders,...and that to find buildings almost entirely occupied by Jews within that small area was not surprising at all. By 1914 it has been said that 90% of all the Jewish Immigrants in England lived within that small area of the city, and in 1900 its reported that approx 135,000 Immigrant Jews lived in the East End.

For all intent and purpose, its not misleading to suppose or suggest that those Model homes were predominantly, (insert whatever percentage you feel makes that point), Jewish.

Most certainly relevant when considering both the apron section and the writing.

Cheers

[sleekviper]

I think that it depends on original location. In the Midwest, Queensbridge is on par to Cabrini Green, as far as urban blight goes. Why many think Watts is the projects, but Jordan is the project within the area of Watts. Robert Taylor homes was actually the nightmare in Chicago, did not go within blocks unless you lived there. One of those things where if going to visit people, had to know where one could go, and could not go without someone accompanying at least part of the way.

[sleekviper]

Micheal, with all due respect, one can not say "exclusively" and not mean built or converted for a select group. Percentage plays no role in the term; 100% does not make something exclusive, but exclusive does make something 100%. Golf courses and Country Clubs were exclusive in America; minorities were not allowed to play and join. Laws have changed that, but it does not mean that all have members that are minorities, it does mean that if they did want to join, they are now able.

[RivkahChaya]

I think that it depends on original location. In the Midwest, Queensbridge is on par to Cabrini Green, as far as urban blight goes. Why many think Watts is the projects, but Jordan is the project within the area of Watts.

Fair enough, but I was just talking about what "the projects" means in common parlance. I have never lived for a long time anywhere but New York, or Indiana, and one year in Washington DC. I did spend a lot of time in Chicago because I had some cousins there, and I have some cousins there now, so it's still a place I visit at least once a year, and my brother went to college there. Chicago is the only place where I've heard "the projects" used pretty much as a synonym for "slums," but I don't know that there aren't places west or south with that usage.

I also know that at least since the 1970s, government agencies in New York have tried to avoid the term "housing projects," preferring "public housing developments," or some other term, I assume specifically to avoid the word "project." In Indiana, people tend to talk about "subsidized areas," or "section 8 housing," (section 8 is part of a legal code, not a geographic area).

All I was really talking about was what people say, and it was in response to the idea that "housing projects" = "council housing" because I was not under the impression that council housing tended to conjure up the idea of slums for most people. I could be wrong, though.

Micheal, with all due respect, one can not say "exclusively" and not mean built or converted for a select group. Percentage plays no role in the term; 100% does not make something exclusive, but exclusive does make something 100%.

Sleekviper is right. Even if only Jews lived there, unless only Jews were allowed to live there, "exclusively" Jewish would not be right. Actually, I'm still not sure it would be right-- should it be "inclusively Jewish"? Oh well.

At any rate, that why I asked about the eruv, because there may have been a perception at the time that Jews were attempting to make it exclusive, when it wasn't supposed to be, and that was a source of resentment, so if Michael read something that referred to the area, or building, however incorrectly, as "exclusively Jewish," that could be the reason.

If the building happened to have only Jewish residents, maybe "completely Jewish," or just say it happened to be all Jews, but not by design.

For the record, wherever there are a lot of Jews, whether it happens to be in a department at a university, or in a neighborhood, they are always assumed to be plotting something. That assumption doesn't get made about other ethnicities, at least in the US, with the exception of Italians, and if they are teenagers gathered on a street corner, Puerto Ricans.

[Cogidubnus]

Oh sod your "american developments" (which are clearly of no relevance whatsoever to the thread)...are there any answers yet to the answers which were originally posed? like post #1.... Are there any answers even to my post #465 ???

All the best

Dave

[sleekviper]

Riv, I apologize for directing your attention away from the direct question of the thread, please accept my apology. That applies to anyone else also, it shall not happen again.

[RivkahChaya]

Oh sod your "american developments" (which are clearly of no relevance whatsoever to the thread)...are there any answers yet to the answers which were originally posed? like post #1.... Are there any answers even to my post #465 ???

They're of relevance to me, in trying to understand exactly what the neighborhood was like. Maybe it wasn't exactly the terrible slum I imagined, if there were new buildings, and maybe the rest of London was as indifferent as I always hear, if the government was trying to provide decent, low-income housing.

weren't the Barnett crowd involved somewhere in these schemes...don't know where I read it, but it lurks in the nethermost regions of my mind...perhaps it's to do with the Wentworth Street Arch...was that erected by the Four PerCenters perhaps? It's certainly before the Rowton Houses...

I have no idea what any of these things are.

I'm starting to think we really need a glossary for Americans, and people who have never been to London, also maybe newcomers to the JTR story, who may not be familiar with non-JTR specific Victorian terms and phrases.

If I propose on to the mods, and start working on it, beginning with all the things I'm running into here, and things I know Americans might need to know, like "shilling," "quid," will you Brits, and especially Londoners, help me with it?

Around here, "Four-percenter" means one of two things: it means people who reliably save 4% of their income, every single paycheck, and don't withdraw, even for emergencies, but keep it for retirement, or the four percent of repeat offenders (criminals) who commit the majority of crimes, aka, "the usual suspects." Some police like to say "4% of offenders commit 96% of crimes," which I think is completely made up, but it is true, IIRC, a stats class in college, that the recidivism rate rises on a parabola, so that the number of previous crimes a person commits predicts whether or not they will commit another crime, and at the time the study was done, the plateau, or place where people had 100% chance of offending again represented 4% of all at-large convicted felons. Obviously, that number should change a little every year, but people still call those destined to reoffend "four-percenters."

I am assuming that in this case, Cogidubnus means neither of those things. Would someone translate?

[Roy Corduroy]

Good morning Rivkah,

4% in this instance means the investors were willing to accept a 4% return on investment, making it feasible financially. There were a number of schemes to clear slums and provide better housing in the East End -the Rothschild Buildings, the Peabody Estates, etc.

Actually right here on Casebook Wiki is a good article about the Wentworth Dwellings (click here)

In fact, I have found the information section of Casebook and Casebook Wiki to be a great learning tool. Go to the left to the topics and begin.

And now back to regularly scheduled programming

Roy

[Cogidubnus]

I apologise for the ill-tempered nature of my last post incidentally...We'd just had some domestic discord, but there wasn't any call for it to be taken out on posters here... apologies

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

I apologise for the ill-tempered nature of my last post incidentally...We'd just had some domestic discord, but there wasn't any call for it to be taken out on posters here... apologies

Dave

If that was directed at me, no harm, no foul.

Sorry if the diversion annoyed you, but to me it was interesting, because I had no idea there were anything along the lines of housing projects, even of the ill-fated Cabrini Green variety, in the East End. The Four-percenters are news to me as well.

Actually, this goes to show what is wrong with a lot of Ripper theory. The writer (Cornwell, or whoever) will know a lot about serial murder in general, a lot about the JTR specifics, and a lot about their pet suspect, but virtually nothing about Victorian London, or the East End in particular, especially if they are Americans. Our education about Victorian England usually has to do with reading a Dickens novel in high school, so Americans tend to think of Victorian England as one thing, not realizing that the last good bit of it had streetcars, telephones, photography, manufacturing, vacuum cleaners, and gas heating and lighting. It wasn't 1860 in London until suddenly it was 1901.

[Michael W Richards]

Hello all,

I acknowledged the error in my choice of wording, so perhaps we could just get on with it?

Thread related, the message being placed in a spot that was most probably going to be seen by Jewish people first....due to the fact that the majority of the people in the Model Homes were Jewish...is I think an important detail.

We know that there was some discord between the Orthodox and Reformed Jews, could the message be written by someone like that as an accusation, or by someone Gentile as an accusation, or by a Jew suggesting that the Jews will be found innocent?

Cheers

[Cogidubnus]

You're quite right Rivkah...and it's another reason I'm a little suspicious of profiling...how can one construct a profile unless one underrstands the different social conditions...

Just understanding the evidence (such as it is) is fraught...In many ways even Brits are in a foreign country here...these people probably thought and reasoned totally differently to ourselves...

By the by a quid is a british pound, and a shilling a coin one twentieth of that value worth twelve (old) pennies...there were 240 pennies in a pound...

All the best

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

We know that there was some discord between the Orthodox and Reformed Jews, could the message be written by someone like that as an accusation, or by someone Gentile as an accusation, or by a Jew suggesting that the Jews will be found innocent?

Reformed Jews? I think you mean "Reform" Jews, but I'm skeptical of there being many actual committed Reform Jews in the East End in 1888. The movement began in Germany (although the idea came from France), in just a few synagogues, and involved the idea that you could be a citizen of the country in which you lived, as well as a Jew, and that "Zion" was a metaphysical place, not a geographical one-- that's why Reform Jews called their synagogues "Temples" (a practice that has stopped since the founding of the modern State of Israel).

Since it seems that most of the Jews in the East End were E. European, I think you mean "observant" vs. "non-observant."

When Jews lived in shtetls, or were restricted to settlements, it was a lot like living in a Puritan village. You kept kosher, because all the food available was kosher. You didn't work on Shabbes, because no one did, and there was no work to do. It was monolithic. And if you got on everyone's bad side by being difficult, there was no where else to go.

In London, the possibility of not "being Jewish," was there for the first time. It appealed to some people and not to others.

There's a wonderful movie called Hester Street, about a Jewish immigrant couple living in New York's Lower East Side, in the 1890s, struggling with the fact that the wife wants to remain Jewish, and the husband wants to be an American. It probably could have been about a couple in the East End just as well; I'm sure lots of Jewish families faced the same things.

However, I'm not sure how the GSG is something a non-observant jew would write to an observant one, or the other way around.

By the by a quid is a british pound, and a shilling a coin one twentieth of that value worth twelve (old) pennies...there were 240 pennies in a pound...

Actually, that I know, from reading PG Wodehouse, and Noel Streatfeild. Sadly, I'm actually quite knowledgeable compared to most Americans. I even know what bubble & squeak, and Whizzer and Chips are. And cobbler's awls.

Still don't know how much to tip a cab driver, though.

[RavenDarkendale]

Question: I can see the fleeing killer step into the doorway on Goulston Street to wipe hands or knife on the piece of apron, look out to see if he has been traced, and then vanishing into the night. Why would a murderer, still with blood on his person from a fresh kill stop to write on a wall such insipid nonsense? The Jews were already under suspicion as being involved in the Whitechapel Murders, some strongly suspected if we go by Macnaghten and other police officials. No need for the murderer to waste time chalking up an antisemitic message. Besides, correct me if I am wrong, but there were quite a few more of these chalked messages all over the East End. Are we really to believe JtR wrote the message in chalk and did not get blood smears from his sleeves on the wall as well?

Just a thought...