Motives for Druitt and Kosminski?

[RivkahChaya]

I have an ancestor who came to the US during the civil war and accidentally joined the army .... He fought for the North, deserted during a battle and was presumed dead, was captured by the South, fought for them, deserted during another battle and was again presumed dead, and died in Ohio 30 years later. So he has three graves. I feel like we should tell someone that he's not actually in two of those graves, but I don't know who to tell.

Nah. Don't worry. Helps make up for all the Civil War dead who have no grave.

(Although, technically, they probably aren't graves, just headstones, aka, "memorials," unless somebody misidentified a mangled body, or just a leg, or something as him, and that got buried. I'd still let it go. The more of that war that stays buried, the better.)

[lynn cates]

in for a penny, in for a pound

Hello Dave. Thanks. Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

tight

Hi Lynn

Yes there was the young Aberdonian who reached the age of 13 before he realised what his grey piggy bank on the wall actually was...

All the best

Dave

[lynn cates]

tips

Hello Rivkah. Thanks. The Scots people often do not tip at all.

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

He married my grandmother, a half Scot half German woman (which happened through some weird anti Covenanter work and somehow stuck), who's family had also been Jewish in Germany until the uprising of raging antisemitism in the late 19th century, when they converted to Catholicism. And somehow everyone was so surprised when my mother married a Russian/Austrian/Scots Irish Jew.

My Jewish, quarter-Irish grandmother was Esther Reyna Fitzpatrick. When she had a job, before she got married, her boss assumed she wasn't Jewish, and she never said anything about it. She took a bus to the second-closest kosher butcher on her way home, though, so her boss wouldn't see her going into the closest one, which was on the same block.

It was pretty silly, because lots of gentiles went to the kosher butcher. Some people believed the meat was cleaner (and for all I know, it was, because you can't cut off a spoiled part, and sell the rest as kosher), and there is a certain cut of meat on the thigh that is difficult to butcher, because the sciatic nerve has to be removed, so a lot of shecters just sell the whole cut to gentiles, cheaply, along with organ meats, and things you can't kasher. The butcher my mother went to always had a separate case labeled "dog meat," which is to say for dogs, and it would be meat that was found to have something wrong with it, so it couldn't be made kosher. A lot of non-Jews bought it, because there wasn't anything wrong with it, other than that it wasn't kosher, and it was cheaper than meat from the regular butcher, at least, according to my mother. I wouldn't know; I've been a vegetarian since I've been old enough to do my own shopping.

[Errata]

I once heard that loads of Jews from Eastern Europe were dropped off in Aberdeen after being told they'd got to New York.

I can't speak to that, but there were a couple of boatloads of Jews who were dropped off in Aberdeen or thereabouts after actually going all the way to New York, but immigration restrictions on Jews and Irish had just sent in, so they were turned away, brought back, and dumped at the nearest port.

My mom's family is the Scottish side, but she was raised Catholic. But originally her family was English Jews, dairy workers if I recall. After getting thrown out of England, they moved to the Highlands of Scotland to sort of lay low. And there became a tradition of marrying spare Stuarts, though I'm not sure how that came about. They had a fair amount of success in convincing their spouses to convert, so the family stayed Jewish until the mid 17th century when a Catholic Stuart refused to convert, and the family became Catholic. After the American Revolution the family moved to South, where they became indentured servants in Louisiana and then poor share croppers, and my great grandparents became Baptist due to a lack of Catholic churches. And that's my grandfather's family. Still has a bastardization of the original English name which sounds Catholic but is actually merely geographic.

He married my grandmother, a half Scot half German woman (which happened through some weird anti Covenanter work and somehow stuck), who's family had also been Jewish in Germany until the uprising of raging antisemitism in the late 19th century, when they converted to Catholicism. And somehow everyone was so surprised when my mother married a Russian/Austrian/Scots Irish Jew.

My Dad's father is straight boring Austrian. My Dad's mother was straight boring Russian, until they escaped the Pale and my great great grandfather married a Scots/Irish Jew he hooked up with in London (Mary Jane Neumann, which I think is just a hilarious name). Whitechapel actually. They came to the States in 1912.

My family is one of those who sort of obliviously ends up in all these historical moments. I have an ancestor who came to the US during the civil war and accidentally joined the army instead of signing up for day labor, which was the guy on the other side of the dock, but he was evidently the victim of a vague gesture or something. He fought for the North, deserted during a battle and was presumed dead, was captured by the South, fought for them, deserted during another battle and was again presumed dead, and died in Ohio 30 years later. So he has three graves. I feel like we should tell someone that he's not actually in two of those graves, but I don't know who to tell.

[RivkahChaya]

Hello Rivkah. Thanks. Yes, your last name coincides with Judas Maccabeus, of great fame.

No, "tip" refers to an expenditure of money for services rendered--often over and above standard fees.

Cheers.
LC

So, then what was the joke about being Scottish?

I probably did overtip drivers a little; the standard NYC tip was 15-20%, and I tipped on the high end, because I had friends who drove cabs. I'd round it up, because I was taking much shorter trips than I'd ever take in NYC, and I felt weird tipping less than a pound, so I'd tip £1 for a £4 ride. Waiting for 20p change felt terribly cheap-- at the exchange rate at the time, it was about 33 cents. I would have rounded up in the US for that amount.

The thing is, in the US, unless I were buying a TV, or something, I wouldn't take what amounted to a $6 or 7 cab ride. In the 8 or so years I lived in Manhattan as an adult, I think I took a cab maybe five times.

Was that really a huge tip? In the US, it would be generous, but not unheard of, and I don't think would suggest "foreigner who doesn't understand the money."

[lynn cates]

tip

Hello Rivkah. Thanks. Yes, your last name coincides with Judas Maccabeus, of great fame.

No, "tip" refers to an expenditure of money for services rendered--often over and above standard fees.

Cheers.
LC

[Stephen Thomas]

I'm a Scottish Jew. We are few, but we are... well we're just few.

I once heard that loads of Jews from Eastern Europe were dropped off in Aberdeen after being told they'd got to New York.

[RivkahChaya]

I'm a Scottish Jew. We are few, but we are... well we're just few.

Here's some more for you, Errata, that the rest of you on the thread can skip: some of my father's family came from England in the 1880s. They had been in England for several generations, and spoke the Queen's English. They weren't poor, and didn't travel in steerage (second class). Most of them hung around New York for a while, but a few made thier way up to Massachusetts, where they began quietly going to the Episcopal church, started spelling their name a little differently, and just didn't talk much about the past.

Also, my grandmother's grandmother was a Southern Jew, and her family, umm, owned a bit of property. It's just as well, because she got disinherited for marrying an Irish Catholic, and a couple of years later, he got excommunicated for nun-napping. They moved to New York, and just in the nick of time, as I understand it-- something like 1856.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Errata]

Yeah, one of those Scottish Jews, the MacCabee clan.

I'm a Scottish Jew. We are few, but we are... well we're just few.

[RivkahChaya]

Hello Rivkah.

"By the way, how much should you tip a London cab driver?"

It all depends. You aren't Scots, per chance? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

Yeah, one of those Scottish Jews, the MacCabee clan.

You don't know how really funny that is, because my last name is "Maccaby," pronounced like "Maccabee" in the Hanukkah story. We're always getting it mispronounced, and mail addressed to MacCaby, MacAby, McCabby, and even McAbey. Some computer programs automatically capitalize a second "C" in a last name, so that I can't enter "Maccaby" without the program changing it to "MacCaby."

I'm sure I am entirely missing something. Is "tip" British slang for what we might call "percussion therapy"?

[lynn cates]

tips

Hello Rivkah.

"By the way, how much should you tip a London cab driver?"

It all depends. You aren't Scots, per chance? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

By the way, how much should you tip a London cab driver?

[RivkahChaya]

Refreshing honesty Rivkah...and I'm sure you know a helluva lot more about London than most of us right-ponders know about New York.

Sadly, I know more about London than most Americans, just from watching public TV imports.

No, Europe isn't a country, "Euro" isn't a language, and the capital of England isn't "Hogwarts."

"I don't understand...are the Olympics in London, or England? and what's the 'Yoo-Kay'? That sounds like a city in Japan." <--real quote overheard last month. You have no idea how much I wish I were making that up.