The McNaughton Rule

[ChrisGeorge]

Absent all the literary flourishes, what I expect actually happened was something like this:

'Here's the man, sir. We think he's Jack the Ripper. Do you recognize him as the person you saw with Eddowes?'

'Well he looks a bit like him. Maybe.'

'Will you give evidence in court that this man was the man you saw?'

'No. It does look like the man I saw. But I'm not sure and I can't go on oath that this was the man.'

This isn't a good look for the police. So they spin it as 'the witness recognized the suspect but wouldn't testify because he didn't want to see a fellow-Jew swing...'

Good post, Chava. This same sort of situation occurs in almost every episode of "Law and Order." It's somewhat incredible that this reported non-identification in the Ripper case engenders so much debate. I think it's a testimony to the poor quality of the information on the police case that has come down to us.

What's your evidence though for your statement that "there were a lot of Jewish prostitutes in the East End at the time"?

Chris

[Chava]

We're kind of assuming it's Lawende, because it was a City of London Police witness rather than a Met witness. So it's for sure an Eddowes sighting. Lawende was generally reckoned to to have had the best view of the three men coming out from the Duke's Passage club.

His description:

"of shabby appearance, about 30 years of age and 5ft. 9in. in height, of fair complexion, having a small fair moustache, and wearing a red neckerchief and a cap with a peak".[4]

Unfortunately, Chris, the white slave trade was alive and well in the East End as well as on the Lower East Side and in South America. Many young women travelling alone from 'der heim' to their new lives were accosted at the docks by men who claimed to be 'landsleit' or people who came from the same area of Eastern Europe. They would spin some kind of yarn to get these girls to go along, and then rape them and turn them out as prostitutes. These predatory gangs were Jewish and worked internationally. It's a really horrible chapter in the annals of immigration. Most of these girls worked in brothels. But when they were no longer so appealing, they would be turned onto the streets and they would have worked at the only trade they knew. Also there were Jewish prostitutes working in Eastern Europe who made their way to London and New York intending to go on the game there.

[cappuccina]

http://eastlondonhistory.com/prostitution-in-the-victorian-east-end-of-london/

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Chava, Capps

In absolute terms, how many female Jewish prostitutes were there in operation in the East End at any one time during the period in which we're interested? Bearing in mind that, comparatively speaking, the number of prostitutes of any kind in Late Victorian East London would have to be numbered in the hundreds to be considered "a lot" in the first place.

[Chava]

Gareth, I've no idea about London, but I've no reason to believe it would have been proportionately different from, say, Warsaw, where, in 1872, 17% of the known prostitute population was Jewish. In Vilna it was as high as 47%. Many of those women in the East End would have been in brothels, but some would have been on the streets. Kelly was killed in her room. No reason to think that a Jewish prostitute would have been safe from the Ripper, if that's your point.

[ChrisGeorge]

Thank you, Chava, cappuccina, and Gareth for that information.

Chris

[Sam Flynn]

Gareth, I've no idea about London, but I've no reason to believe it would have been proportionately different from, say, Warsaw, where, in 1872, 17% of the known prostitute population was Jewish.

Thanks for the stats, Chava - however, we don't know the extent to which prostitutes emigrated to London. We know of Liz Stride, for example, but that's just one migrant prostitute out of thousands of British prostitutes who were already in the area. In Gothenburg, however, the opposite would have applied.

Even if percentages were preserved (and I'm not sure that they would have been), we still have to take account of the fact that East End Jews, although numerous, were but a large minority in the district. Numerically, therefore, one would expect Jewish prostitutes to have been heavily outnumbered by their gentile "colleagues".

No reason to think that a Jewish prostitute would have been safe from the Ripper

Indeed not. I doubt very much that the Ripper would have bothered about making a distinction, if a victim happened to come along under conditions that suited him.

I'd suggest, given the overwhelming majority of non-Jewish "unfortunates" in the area, that chance alone would dictate that more of his victims would have been gentiles.

if that's your point.

Not at all - it's the idea that there were "a lot of Jewish prostitutes in the East End at that time", that I was seeking to verify and/or quantify.


Edit: I just realised that this is way off-topic. Apologies - I thought I was on the "Prostitutes in the East End in 1881" thread.

[Roy Corduroy]

No apology needed Sam. It is not entirely off topic.

The recent book The Fox and the Flies is a thorough treatment of the subject Chava and cappucccina brought up, the immigrant prostitution gangs. And this has some relevance to the Whitechapel murder investigation. Because it introduces another complicating factor to the "Polish Jew" suspicions of the police - the criminal element who were in amongst the Jewish population of the East End.

Roy