Mentor's Response to Anderson, "A more wicked assertion to put into print

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Simon,very helpful and just what we needed.
Cheers
Norma

[Sam Flynn]

Abstract In the decades before the First World War, London worried about anarchist outrages, and particularly, about Jews said to instigate them. Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888)...

Thanks, AP - but, whilst that is evidence for police suspicions about a Jew being the Ripper (which was in any case a widely-held suspicion outside the police), or Jews as political agitators, it does not speak to the suggestion that the police were arbitrarily or "institutionally" racist back then, in the sense that their alleged Rasta-bashing descendants would be in the latter quarter of the 20th Century.

I'll say again, for the sake of clarity, that I have no doubt whatsoever that antisemitism existed, and that there were antisemitic individuals in all walks of life - including the police. It's just that I've seen little evidence that would point to the Met of the 1880s/1890s being "as bad, if not worse" in terms of racism than the Met of today is made out to be.

[Stephen Thomas]

An example of the ambivalent attitude toward the Whitechapel Jews from the 1898 Booth notebooks which happily uses what would be regarded as an extremely racist phrase today, 'unswamped by the Jewish tide', alongside admiration for the healthiness of Jewish children. In the same notebook the researcher notes with apparent surprise that the Jewish children emerging from the Board School on Berner Street are well dressed, with boots and hats no less.

[Dan Norder]

If you have any evidence that contradicts my assertion, in the (clear) terms I set it out, then I'd be more than happy to be disabused.

If you think you get to set the terms of a debate and declare victory unless people respond in the way you demand, then you are clearly either delusional or hoping you will get away with unfair debating tactics.... or perhaps a bit of both.

You have to prove your side to other people's satisfaction if you make a claim that's the exact opposite of what the experts say. You don't get to point to evidence of a modern study and demand statistics from an equivalent study in the past when you know (or should know) that of course no such study had ever been done back then. The reason no such studies were done was because racism wasn't considered a problem to be solved, it was what people educated by the standards of those days were encouraged to follow. The main criminological theories at the time were that crime was based upon racial background and inferior types.

I mean, come on, read a book or something. This is all quite well known and even obvious.

[Cap'n Jack]

Quite right, Dan.
Booth's boys were working on the hard face of the iron, but even they saw hundreds of thousands when they were but a few... or do I mean a 'Jew'?

Booth. B346, p77:

'Of all forms of prostitute the Polish Jewess is the worst. Their men are more often foreigners than Englishmen and often themselves Polish Jews.'

I'm absolutely certain that this perverted and converted view was shared by the London police force of the age.

[Howard Brown]

I'm absolutely certain that this perverted and converted view was shared by the London police force of the age.- A.P.

Dear A.P.

It should be pretty easy to find a document or letter from at least one police official to another...you know, goy to goy...that would prove what you and Dan and Nats are trying to maintain. Please do so.

Believing in that one's entity is superior to another entity is one thing...practicing that belief is another.

Assimilated Jewry is responsible for just as much "anti-Semitic" commentary as any entity in the LVP...and particularly more so than the police.

If police policy was as anti-ANYONE as its claimed on this thread, it ought to be easy to find a document from an official to prove that.

I hope all this badinage isn't the best we can do to counter Anderson and this identification issue....

I suggest reading Scotland Yard Investigates, by Donald Rumbelow........and SPE. Read Chapters 15 & 16.

[Sam Flynn]

Hello AP,

I just don't think such views and behaviours were as widespread or as extreme as the racial discrimination alleged in our lifetimes, let alone worse. Getting stuck into political radicals aside, I've not come across many references (actually, none) that hint at institutionalised racialist treatment by the police of ordinary Jews during the LVP. Certainly none approaching that which was alleged of the police in the days of "SUS", and the subsequent horrific race riots in Brixton, Tottenham, Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham in the 1980s.

[Chris]

I posted this on another thread, but it's worth re-posting here.

The Times, 30th July 1888—

Arnold's evidence appears to have been in the nature of a factual report on recent immigration to the East End, as shown by the following account from the Jewish Chronicle of 3 August 1888:

[Sam Flynn]

Arnold's evidence appears to have in the nature of a factual report on recent immigration to the East End, as shown by the following account from the Jewish Chronicle of 3 August 1888.

As an aside, yet again the name "Pash" turns up on Casebook. They got around a bit, didn't they? It's almost a case of "Pash partout", as they might say in France

[Cap'n Jack]

Yes, How, by 1907 it had become the damn Eyeties:

'Borowitz Jack the Ripper Collection: Macnaghten-Sims Letter [1907?, Feb. 11]
Page 1 of letter


Page 2 of letter


Transcription of text:
[page 1]

11. 2. '07. [possibly '01]

Dear Sims,

Yet another "light" in dark, & not
generally known, metropolitan spots has
flashed across my mind: --
Eyre Street Hill -- Clerkenwell -- where
there is a large colony of Italians who
are mostly ice-cream vendors by day,
&, not infrequently, stabbers & shootists
by night.

It may also save you the trouble of
research if I give you the times &
places of Jack the Ripper's pleasantries.

(1) 31st Aug. '88. Mary Ann Nichols. Found
at Bucks Row with her throat cut &
slight mutilation of stomach.

(2) 8th Sept. '88. Annie Chapman found in a
back yard at Hanbury St., throat cut & bad
mutilation as to stomach & private parts.

[page 2]

(3) 30th Sept. '88. Elizabeth Stride, throat
cut only (no mutilations) in Berners
St. near Anarchist Club.

(4) 30th Sept. '88. Catherine Eddowes, found
in Mitre Square, throat cut, bad mutilation
of face, stomach & private parts.

(5) 9th Novr '88. Mary Jeanette Kelly, found
in a room in Miller's Court, Dorset St.
with throat cut, and the whole face &
body fiendishly mutilated.

Don't forget "Dowt" which her name
is Devereux, & don't trouble to reply
to this

Yours always

M.L. Macnaghten

[Natalie Severn]

Howard,
This thread is about the racism/anti-semitism of Robert Anderson as perceived by the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle,Leopold Jacob Greenberg ,who not only found Anderson"s remarks about Jack the Ripper being a Low class Polish Jew to be without a shred of evidence,but found his accusation about the Jewish Community to have enabled the Ripper to continue his murder spree by hiding him from the law, to be "a wicked assertion" and also for it to be quite ridiculous.The City Chief of Police, Henry Smith agreed with him and said so loudly and clearly in print.
So here you have a prominent member of the Jewish community AND a prominent member of the Police ,independently confirming Anderson"s overt and outrageous racism.
Norma

[Sam Flynn]

Thanks for that again, AP. If some Italians toting guns (now there's a novelty!) were known to Macnaghten, might it not have been a simple case of "police intelligence" than "institutionalised racism" on his part?

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks for that again, AP. If some Italians toting guns (now there's a novelty!) were known to Macnaghten, might it not have been a simple case of "police intelligence" than "institutionalised racism" on his part?

Now there"s a novelty -mind your language!

[Howard Brown]

Dear Nats:

I understand that,dear lady.

Neither Smith or Mentor's comments are remotely close to being proof of institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Met or City police departments.

Neither Smith or Mentor confirm anything, Nats, other than that they read what Anderson said ( whether correctly or not ) and counterpointed it with their views on the issue.

In fact, Smith's reaction shows something quite opposite of an institutionalized anti-anything in the MPD or CPD. By blasting Anderson, he would be in defiance of any unwritten "protocol" which, according to the belief that institutionalized anti-Semitism existed, would be "telling tales out of class". That he openly criticizes Anderson may well show the opposite of what the premise of this thread is trying to prove. That being, that this institutionalized anti-Semitism would not have been tolerated, even if it was suggested in the words of Anderson-in-retirement.

Mentor did not mention nor hint at the existence of institutionalized anti-Semitism in the police department....only in the mind of Anderson. One man alone does not a police department make.

Anderson did make a correction to what he intended to say. In fact, he's not the only one who delineated Polish Jews from assimilated ( read: successful,British Jews,such as the Sephardim and German Jews who arrived earlier in Britain than their Polish cousins...) Jewry. I have found ample evidence to show that non-Polish Jew Rabbis ( nearly 500 references within newspaper articles which distinguish Polish Jews from "other" Jews ) made far more egregious comments about their country cousins than Anderson did....and they never made amendments to their original statements.

Using the instance of Diemshitz's wife getting smacked down to illustrate anti-Semitism is like claiming anti-Irishism to describe when some Irishman...a rank and file Mick...getting his ass kicked by Whitechapel cops for being drunk. Can one prove that because Mrs. D was a Jewess that that was the reason for her being smacked down? C'mon.

Using the rousting that the Jews in the IWEMC building recieved ( searched and queried ) after the Berner Street murder isn't "inst.anti-Sem." either. Thats police procedure. If they were riffraff like say, Hungarians, its still police procedure.

Lets see a document from Inspector SoAndSo to Supt. Whatsisname which provides a procedure for dealing with Jews specifically. Then we'll talk kugel...er, turkey.

Later sweets...

How

[Natalie Severn]

Howard,
I am aware you desperately wish to move to another agenda on this thread.
I myself did not open it to discuss either "institutional Racism of Victorian Police" or the internicine struggles between long settled Jewish people and the newly arrived Jewish people---that was their business .

Certainly those struggles you refer to had nothing whatever to do with this Editor of the Jewish Chronicle and thus a leader of the
Jewish Community illustrating UNEQUIVOCALLY Robert Anderson"s racism and calling his remarks "Wicked aspersions",or Chief of Police, Henry Smith, calling those same remarks "dangerous and reckless".
If you want to move this discussion to one of "Institutional Racism" why not open a new thread on it?
And don"t patronise me Howard----p-l-e-a-s-e.