Toffs in Spitalfields

[protohistorian]

Hello Ruby. I would not count on these professionals standing out that much. The dirty, ragged image of the area is way overplayed in my opinion. Look at the old photos and there are tons of men in suits milling around. Being well dressed alone I suspect would not make one stand out much except in certain areas. Dave

[Rubyretro]

I have come to agree with you -only the very specific combination of jewellery could only describe one particular person. It's a bit of a clincher for me, that all the people who would see this person daily -yet no one came forward to identify him?

Would JtR really pop out killing wearing such readily identifiable clues to his identify ? He seemed to take lots of care in every other way not to be caught -why take such a stupid risk?

How could he hope to melt back into the street scene of near deserted streets looking like that?

What relation could he bear to Sailorman ? And how could he pop in and out of the address in Hanbury Street ?

[Rubyretro]

..And here's something else :-

GH clearly placed MJK on the streets at a later time than the Blotchy sighting, and after the singing had stopped. He said that he saw A Man go into Mary's room with her, he hung around for about 3/4 of an hour, and he didn't see A Man come out.

Would prostitutes usually spend 3/4 of an hour on a customer ? It seems highly unlikely.

The inferrence is that either A Man was murdering MJK during this time, or he arranged to spend the night (and apparently no singing !). I think that this is what GH means to suggest.

Yet GH said that he had bent down and stared at the man in the face, and then followed the couple back to Miller's Court (close enough to observe the colour of the handkerchief and overhear some conversation). A Man must have been aware of him.

So would A Man/JtR continue to kill MJK and stay such a long time in the room if he knew that he had been seen going in, wearing that distinctive combination of jewellery clue?

Is this the same JtR who silently manoeuvres women into spots where they can't be seen from windows, takes care not to get blood on himself, takes time to rob the women of money & a ring, and creeps about not drawing attention to himself ?

[protohistorian]

Well Ruby, I cannot speak too much of that but I will share my thoughts on the matter of care taken.

Sometimes human beings perceive things to be true when they are in fact something else entirely. Take sunrise as an example. The sun does not move markedly in relation to the earth, the sun does not rise, the earth rotates.

Not being caught implies craftiness, when in fact it may be luck. When we consider the matter of crime scene location, some see daring where I see obliviousness to risk.

When we remove Victorian interpretative filters regarding clothing as a mark of class, and substitute some of what we know of the district from the directory, like the presence of professionals, we are left with non event in terms of significance of a well dressed man in the area.

This change in interpretative filters also works in the issue of crime scenes. We remove the logical construct that the victims are grouped as Knight suggests which leads us to crime scene as a function of victim locality, and we substitute mentally disturbed man with a knife who is oblivious to risk in crime scene criteria, and crime scene location becomes a function of deranged man location and has nothing to do with the victims at all. Dave

[m_w_r]

Hi Dave,

I know you and I have corresponded about this, but is there any chance you could post the names and addresses of the surgeons and solicitors you mentioned above? One of them is Dr Killeen, I think, to judge from the map you provided.

Regards,

Mark

[protohistorian]

Here you go MWR
68 Brick Lane, Septimus Swyer, surgeon
75 brick lane, William Dukes, surgeon
5 church st (fournier st) William Cook, solicitor
1 princes street (princlet street), Robert Prokter, solicitor
Dave

[jason_c]

..And here's something else :-

GH clearly placed MJK on the streets at a later time than the Blotchy sighting, and after the singing had stopped. He said that he saw A Man go into Mary's room with her, he hung around for about 3/4 of an hour, and he didn't see A Man come out.

Would prostitutes usually spend 3/4 of an hour on a customer ? It seems highly unlikely.

The inferrence is that either A Man was murdering MJK during this time, or he arranged to spend the night (and apparently no singing !). I think that this is what GH means to suggest.

Yet GH said that he had bent down and stared at the man in the face, and then followed the couple back to Miller's Court (close enough to observe the colour of the handkerchief and overhear some conversation). A Man must have been aware of him.

So would A Man/JtR continue to kill MJK and stay such a long time in the room if he knew that he had been seen going in, wearing that distinctive combination of jewellery clue?

Is this the same JtR who silently manoeuvres women into spots where they can't be seen from windows, takes care not to get blood on himself, takes time to rob the women of money & a ring, and creeps about not drawing attention to himself ?

Depends upon how much drink/money Kelly could get from him.

[m_w_r]

Here you go MWR
68 Brick Lane, Septimus Swyer, surgeon
75 brick lane, William Dukes, surgeon
5 church st (fournier st) William Cook, solicitor
1 princes street (princlet street), Robert Prokter, solicitor
Dave

Thanks Dave. I should have thought more carefully about Dr Killeen - I knew in the back of my mind that he wasn't in that year's Trade Directory. Same address, though.

Regards,

Mark

[protohistorian]

Your quite welcome sir! I have been toying with redoing the streets within the m5 as a modern phone book, alphabetically. Is this worth the effort? Dave

[m_w_r]

Hi Dave,

I've looked up the probates for Robert Prockter (solicitor) and William Profit Dukes (doctor) - Septimus Swyer died in the USA, and I can't find William Cook at all.

Anyway, the results are:

Robert Prockter, d. 17 March 1892, probate granted 27 April 1892 and 8 August 1892, total value of estate = £1867 5s 0d.

William Dukes, d. 1 April 1895, probate granted 24 May 1895, total value of estate = £2725 3s 7d.

By comparison, Montague John Druitt left an estate of £2600 2s 0d when he died in 1888 (probate was granted in 1891); Wynne Edwin Baxter left an estate of £29,319 19s 11d when he died in 1920.

On Tuesday 5 January 1892, the last-named Baxter held an inquest, at which William Dukes provided evidence. The results were reported in Reynolds's Newspaper on Saturday 10 January 1892.

On Tuesday evening Mr. Wynne E. Baxter held an inquest at the St. Phillip's Institute, Mile End New Town, respecting the death of the female child of Adolph Cushneer, a Jewish tailor from Russia, residing at 33, Spellman-street, Whitechapel.

The Father, who gave evidence through an interpreter, he being unable to speak English, stated that the deceased was born on the 23rd ult.

The Coroner: Who attended to your wife? Witness: I did.

The Coroner: No doctor or midwife? Witness: Only at the birth.

The Coroner: Who was there then? Witness: A midwife. The Witness added that he had been in England three years, and had been married eighteen months. The deceased was the only child of the marriage.

The Coroner: Have you been working? Witness: No: I have been out of work for six weeks.

The Coroner: How have you lived during that time? Witness: What I had I pawned, and when the money was gone we lived how we could.

The Coroner: Had the child any clothing? Witness: Only a napkin. (Sensation.)

The Coroner: Had your wife any clothes? Witness: She has shoes and stockings, and one garment, and an old petticoat.

The Coroner: What has she had to eat since the birth? Witness: She had three ha'porth of milk a day, and we had a fowl, which lasted us four days. It cost 1s. 6d. I pawned my trousers to buy it. After the death we got 10s. from the Jewish Board of Guardians.

The Coroner: Were there any blankets or sheets on the bed? Witness: No, sir.

Mr. William Profit Dukes, surgeon, of 75, Brick-lane, stated that this was a clear case of destitution. He continually came across such cases. (Sensation.)

A Juror: So many keep coming here to starve.

The Doctor: Now you get at it. I come across three or four families living in one room daily. The poverty in the East-end is terrible.

The Juror: They ought not to be allowed to land unless they can prove that they are capable of supporting themselves. (Hear, hear.)

The jury returned a verdict that "The deceased died from want of care and want of food owing to the poverty of the parents."

The father was called in, and the Coroner informed him that he must not let his wife die of starvation, but must at once apply to the parish and go into the workhouse. If he disregarded this warning and his wife died he would most probably be committed for manslaughter. At the close of the inquiry the jury, all working men, made a collection for the poor fellow, which amounted to 12s. 2d.

On the Coroner handing this amount to him he seemed overjoyed, and, with tears in his eyes, he seized the Coroner's hand and kissed it over and over again.

Regards,

Mark

[protohistorian]

Thanks Mark! I had underestimated how harsh life was to some. Dave

[claire]

Enough to warm the cockles of your heart

Of course, it was not just the surgeons and solicitors who were well-dressed; every entrepreneur and two-bit wide boy had a vested interest in looking as good as they could (recall Lusk's smart get-up? He was quite the dandy). The poverty, naturally, was widespread but not universal.

[Rubyretro]

I think that you are all preaching to the (newly) converted , when you prove that 'Toffs' 'mingled' in the East End.

I'm still disappointed that no one has picked up on the point that this particular 'Toff' was wearing some showy items of personal 'decoration' ( in the horse shoe tie pin and heavy gold watchchain with a red stone seal).

For the sake of argument, I'll go with the fact that both items could be found at the time...

...but regularly in tandem ?

Surely this has to narrow the field down ?

[claire]

Okay, let's imagine, for a moment, that we believe 'George,' and we are looking to establish the prevalence of the jewellery items. Horseshoes, in gold, were impossibly common in Victorian times--they came as brooches, ladies' scarf pins, jabot pins, tie pins; if you could stick a little gold horseshoe on it, Victorian jewellers did it. Then, as (diminishingly) now, they were portable symbols of good luck. So, we can say with reasonable confidence that such items were not rare.

Secondly, a man who could afford such an item in gold would likely ensure that he carried a pocketwatch. Again, by the LVP, tastes were to the ornate, and watch cases, watch pins and the like were regularly set with stones.

All of which is, of course, moot, since your argument is that Mary Jane's dapper visitor never existed.

PS: punters then, just like now, could have 45 mins, an hour, a night--whatever they had the cash for. But, as you rightly state, a man would have to be mad to have someone clock him so overtly and then nip inside to tear someone apart right, bar a few yards and a few inches of brick, before their eyes.

[protohistorian]

Are we looking for the Victorian equivalent of this guy? Dave