Toffs in Spitalfields

[Natalie Severn]

RJ,
I "ll need to digest this from the Ducrocq book! must get up the courage to ask for it at my library. I did already know from Thomas Hardy"s ,Tess of the D"Ubervilles as well as the "Short stories of Guy de Maupassant "that these seductions of working class girls by their bosses were the norm ---and often had tragic consequences for the girls.But it was after Lord Archer"s trial ,that the newspapers over here -both quality and tabloid,were full of all this stuff about Archer and other toffs having this penchant for a "bit of rough"---which I had only ever heard of up until then regarding the artist Toulouse Lautrec. However ,Jean Genet,in The Balcony,refers to it at some length and has High Court judges,Chief"s of Police the entire caboodle of the upper class establishment requesting the enactment of all sorts of sexual fantasies with the girls in the brothel who were given to peels of laughter whenever one of these fetishes were requested-one that I recall was of a bishop requesting flagellation by the Virgin -this particular scenario being repeated and re-enacted in Bunuel"s films ! Then we have things like Van Gogh and his bandaged up ear - these blokes all bringing wierd fetishes from their Upper and Middle class backgrounds---well apart from Genet who was gay anyway.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma - So you've examples of East End gangs from the Victorian era wearing Astrakhan coats and fake gold "glittering" chains and knuckle dusters? If not, I'm afraid we're in danger again of venturing into "questionable relevance" territory, as we are with Reservoir Dogs.

Ben

Hi Ben,
I didnt say that you know!Re-read and you"ll see I am referring to the 50"s Teddy Boys!
Ed Glinert describes some very smart,flashilly dressed characters from the gangs of the 1880"s/90"s

[Sam Flynn]

I mentioned Ed Glinert"s book on East End Gangs-including Victorian ones,and how some of these gangs were very much the precursors to the 50"s Teddy Boys with their fake Edwardian gear , DA haircuts, astrakhan trims

... what about the vast majority of 50s Teddy Boys with their fake SILK trims?

[Ben]

Fair enough, Norma.

I'm just anxious that we escape this notion that characters from Reservoir Dogs or the Krays can be construed as an indication that the East End of 1888 was home to lots of flashily-dressed gangs. No doubt the vast majority of gangs in 1888 Whitechapel and Spitalfields were an extremely grimy and dishevelled bunch indeed.

Ben

[Roy Corduroy]

Sgt. Badham was also on duty at Commercial Street police station on the evening of 12 November 1888. The inquest into the death of Mary Kelly had completed earlier that day. At around 6.00pm a man named George Hutchinson arrived at the station claiming he had seen Kelly with a man of 'respectable appearance' on the night of her death. Badham took Hutchinson's initial statement that evening.

Sgt. Badham was involved in three of the murder investigations, Chapman, Kelly and McKenzie. From the Casebook page here

(If that link doesn't work, the story on Badham is at the bottom of the Related Pages under the Victims/McKenzie tab)

[miss marple]

Toffs

First of all we have the assertions of Grayling about the hoards of toffs using the east end as a knocking shop,
Secondly the debate about whether any toffs actually lived in the East End
Thirdly how gangsters and toffs dressed,
Forthly whether a particuliar astrakhan toff went into the East End to target old street women.
I not denying the interest of upper class men men in working class women, but working class women could be picked up all over London. The secret diaries of WALTER A Victorian toff, details his adventures in seducing working class girls, maids etc He goes for young girls, none in the East End
Arthur Mumby preferred Physically strong muscular working women and he photographed them. The working class maid that he married Hannah Culliwick [he first meet her in the west end, she was not a prostitute ]was both good looking and strong, he tried to turn her into a lady but it did not work, she preferred physical labour.
George Gissing who being involved with a 17 year old alcoholic prostitute while at Oxford and later married her. She made his life a misery and died young. I have seen a photo of her, she was beautiful, not a clapped out old fleabag.
The evidence is, that all the women were consorting with, living with and getting their punters from East End working class men.
Jack LONDON when researching his book People of the Abyss,1902 bought second hand working men's clothes to go into the east end to do his research.
The evidence on Fournier St in 1881 census is that the houses were muli occupied by small tradesman, and one was a school.
Because we one this website are obsessed with the EastEnd , that does not mean the Victorian toffs were. For most of them, it did not enter into their imagination on any level.
Lets get back to the most likely suspect, A local working class man.
Miss Marple

[Natalie Severn]

First of all Miss Marple his name is not Grayling it is Sir Christopher Frayling.

All,
Before people " throw out" the Hutchinson statement its important to remind ourselves of its context and importance.Thanks so much Roy, for that important Sgt. Badham link , which may help to calm down the boos and shrieking about the Astrakhan suspect.

Inspector Abberline believed Hutchinson"s story and Abberline knew the East End of 1888,its villains,its back streets and alleyways,even some of its street walkers, better than any policeman has ever done and certainly better than any of us today can hope to know it.
Moreover the other senior police at the time,for example Robert Anderson cannot compare .Anderson was not even in England for four of the five murders and couldnt be compared with Abberline for "hands on " involvement in Whitechapel,his vast range of knowledge and experience of the district and its types.Swanson did his best ,it appears, to collate and co-ordinate but he was swamped in paper work together with the hundreds of letters----amounting to several thousand in all ,arriving from the public every week that he had to have have sifted,together with the false leads and his totally inferior knowledge of the East End in every respect.He wasnt all that smart a police chief either,Swanson.
But Abberline was one of their "stars"".It was Abberline who on Monro"s say so successfully arrested and tracked down the Tower of London Irish bombers who were lodging in Mitre Square in 1885.A CID man as well as a hands on detective.
So there may well be a reason why Abberline was so keen to take up Hutchinson"s lead on this.Lets not forget Littlechild for a minute here,and his remark that Tumblety was a "likely" Ripper and a police suspect.Tumblety loved waxing and twirling up his moustache,dressing up and also donning disguises.
We now know,thanks to RJ, Palmer,that Tumblety actually visited Whitechapel at the time of the murders---Tumblety owns up to that.....we know too thanks to Stewart Evans, that he was a police suspect----who was ----very strangely and mysteriously, allowed to jump bail.We suspect he involved himself in Fenianism-"one way or another "and that he was allowed to "slip past "Melville,the first M---- posted in Boulogne to catch fenians and dynamitards.

Mary Kelly"s could even be the one murder the ripper did not commit.Meanwhile the real ripper has been placed "in care"!

[claire]

So there may well be a reason why Abberline was so keen to take up Hutchinson"s lead on this.

Jeepers!!! I can think of a more obvious one--he was trying to catch a pretty high profile killer! And then quickly dismissed the statement...not because of some sinister Irish plot involving moles in northern France and rogue doctors and fictional representations of fetishism, but most likely because Hutch's statements ended up having too many holes in them.

Anyhow, I'm still reeling from the shock that Genet's plays have been brought in to marshall arguments about well-off Londoners hanging out in their finery in the East End. If there is anyone here who can tell me what the blazes Genet, who (a blinking long long time after the WMs, by the way) rightly had a bit of an axe to grind against the establishment, of course, has to do with any of this, then I would very much welcome the enlightenment. And how is van Gogh's mental trauma even remotely relevant to fetishism--or this?? And what the bloomin' heck has Genet's sexuality got to do with it? And, for all that, would people please stop appealing to works of fiction as sources of factual evidence??!!

[Sam Flynn]

Thanks so much Roy, for that important Sgt. Badham link , which may help to calm down the boos and shrieking about the Astrakhan suspect.

It doesn't really, Nats - in fact it's rather a tautology. The description "respectable appearance" came from the mouth (strictly-speaking the statement) of Hutchinson himself, so the Badham link posted by Roy doesn't change much.

[Ben]

Hi Norma,

Before people " throw out" the Hutchinson statement its important to remind ourselves of its context and importance.

It is only by reminding ourselves of both things that we can truly appreciate how bogus it clearly was. We've just been exploring and discussing the "context", which serves to highlight better than anything the implausible nature of Hutchinson's claims with regard to the Astrakhan man. "Important" it may have been, but almost certainly not for the reasons you're envisaging.

Thanks so much Roy, for that important Sgt. Badham link , which may help to calm down the boos and shrieking about the Astrakhan suspect.

Why would that happen? Yes, the policeman on duty at Commercial Street police station who took Hutchinson's initial statement was Edward Badham, as pointed out by Roy. This lends credence to the Astrakhan description because....?

Inspector Abberline believed Hutchinson"s story and Abberline knew the East End of 1888,its villains,its back streets and alleyways,even some of its street walkers, better than any policeman has ever done

How can you make these sort of pronouncements? Better than "any" policeman has "ever" done? It should be startlingly apparent by now that Abberline's enthusiasm for Hutchinson's statement cannot have had a very long shelf-life, because by 1903, he was only focussing only on witnesses who had described men with peaked caps or had acquired rear views of foreigners. Since Hutchinson alleged a front-on view of his suspect, and since Abberline "missed" a golden opportunity to infer paralells between Astrakhan and Klosowski, it's only reasonable to deduce that he ultimately shared the view of the entire seniority of the police force who also discredited Hutchinson's evidence. As early as 15th November '88, the Star had reported that the statement was "now discredited".

Please can we avoid the usual hobbyist nonsense about Abberline being brilliant and every other policeman of seniority being crap? It annoys me. Asserting that the man with overall responsibility for the Whitechapel murders "wasnt all that smart a police chief either" is far from an objective observation and probably has more to do with your lack of enthsiasm for the Polish Jew theory than anything else. Every statement ended up in Swanson's hands, it being his responsibility to collect and assess the reports fed up the hierarchal police chain.

Tumblety loved waxing and twirling up his moustache,dressing up and also donning disguises

And?

There's no evidence that Abberline had any opinion on Tumblety's candidacy, let alone considered him plausible on the basis of Hutchinson's description - which looks nothing like Tumblety anyway, nor is there any reason to suppose that Littlechild's interest was piqued by any witness description. We also know from recent research that Tumblety didn't dress in an ostentatious manner when he claimed to have visited Whitechapel.

Best regards,
Ben

[Roy Corduroy]

My post on Sgt. Badham was not meant as an argument one way or the other. Just an interesting page I found on this great site Casebook and linked here. (while my friends in England were fast asleep)

Jack LONDON when researching his book People of the Abyss,1902 bought second hand working men's clothes to go into the east end to do his research... ...Because we one this website are obsessed with the EastEnd , that does not mean the Victorian toffs were. For most of them, it did not enter into their imagination on any level. Lets get back to the most likely suspect, A local working class man.

Miss Marple, those are some excellent points you made. My only point is, you didn't have to be a card carrying member of high society to dress up flash. And as you pointed out, an imitation astrakhan garment could be had.

As to the Jack London book, it is certainly an eye opener as to conditions. The rolling back of the middle class. Block after block taken over by poverty. But as much as I like it, I'm going to have to give it a disclaimer. Because note how he begins preaching socialism in large chunks. At that point he is no longer a disinterested observer to me.

Clarie, I agree with you about fiction. Actually some works of fiction, like Jago by Morrison could be helpful. But again, that is not the point I was making here. My point is that not everybody looked and dressed according to some cookie-cutter template.

Roy

[Ben]

My only point is, you didn't have to me a card carrying member of high society to dress up flash

Right you are, Roy.

The question is not so much whether your local butcher or tailor could dress up flashily. It's more a case of whether they would, and I'm strongly disinclined to think so for reasons discussed throughout the thread.

Best,

Ben

[Natalie Severn]

Jeepers!!! I can think of a more obvious one--he was trying to catch a pretty high profile killer! And then quickly dismissed the statement...not because of some sinister Irish plot involving moles in northern France and rogue doctors and fictional representations of fetishism, but most likely because Hutch's statements ended up having too many holes in them.

Anyhow, I'm still reeling from the shock that Genet's plays have been brought in to marshall arguments about well-off Londoners hanging out in their finery in the East End. If there is anyone here who can tell me what the blazes Genet, who (a blinking long long time after the WMs, by the way) rightly had a bit of an axe to grind against the establishment, of course, has to do with any of this, then I would very much welcome the enlightenment. And how is van Gogh's mental trauma even remotely relevant to fetishism--or this?? And what the bloomin' heck has Genet's sexuality got to do with it? And, for all that, would people please stop appealing to works of fiction as sources of factual evidence??!!

....and---- I couldnt give baboons bare arse what you think!

[Natalie Severn]

Right you are, Roy.

The question is not so much whether your local butcher or tailor could dress up flashily. It's more a case of whether they would, and I'm strongly disinclined to think so for reasons discussed throughout the thread.

Best,

Ben

But thats not the point he is making Ben.Its your intransigence and black and white dogma about dress code and who wore what that is in question.Most butchers and tailors probably would not have dressed flashily but some might and some of their apprentices might have too.

[John Bennett]

....and---- I couldnt give baboons bare arse what you think!

This sounds familiar...

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=60464#post60464