Toffs in Spitalfields

[Natalie Severn]

Ben,
I understand from many sources,including Jerry White and Iain Sinclair both of whom have wrtten on the East End---Jerry White very extensively, that Bill Fishman is considered a foremost authority,if not THE foremost authority, on the East End.
Not only is he a distinguished academic,he was born and bred in Whitechapel,the son of an immigrant Jewish Taylor and he conducted many highly commended "East End Walks" over the years in Whitechapel and Spitalfields-though they were not "Jack the Ripper" walks -mostly being concerned with the socio-economic background and history of Whitechapel for his students .
It seems no matter who is found you will immediately find fault and swear black is white.

Ragarding the dictionary definition [Longmans]of the word "BUCK" it means


[old informal usage- especially in 19th century England --this as clearly intended by Fishman]


A FINE, GAY, WELL DRESSED MAN


Regarding the word "West" in this context ,Fishman, a man born and bred in East London and therefore an "East Londoner", is intending you to understand that he is referring to the more prosperous "West " London--most definitely ,NOT "suburban" London !
You need to know the jargon Ben,you need to know London too -it would seem in this particular case .

Anyhow I have another quote,this time from A.N.Wilson in his book entitled,"The Victorians":

"Those who penetrated the East End could discover that it was indeed one of the roughest and most exotic ports in the World,where a prodigious mixture of races and cultures could be glimpsed.......................
..................The enchantment of the alien,the half thrilling terror of violence lurking in the "hell holes",the cheap excitement of knowing that "scores of such women"[he is referring to the female habitues -of vice-in dance halls and music halls-the chapter discusses Marie Lloyd and her East End beginnings-not in any way implying Marie herself was a prostitute,she was not,but the music halls had notorious "bars" at the back where women hung out to pick up men -as it was usual for them to dance in the pubs etc].
Incidently ,in the same chapter, he discusses the attraction of "the rough" for men like Max Beerholm or TS Eliot to frequent East End Halls where there was also an element of excitement---Wilson calls it "tasting a bit of rough".He adds,"It was the secular equivalent of those who came out of their cabs and carriages to "savour the exotic delights of ritualistic worship of "slum" churches.

Anyway,Ben,I really dont want to have much more to do with this thread.It has seemed to me a very hostile venue from the start .
Finally I dont think the complete lack of rapport between Claire and myself is any of your business.

Cheers
Norma

[Cap'n Jack]

Yes, Mark, I'm about as passive as a challenged wolverine.
Books have been written about Tumblety, and Batty street, and we all suffer the consequence.
I try to live through it though.

[Natalie Severn]

Well Cap"n,Tumblety may not be Jack the Ripper but he was up to something when this was in The Times in 1885 -[27th January]:

re Dynamite.....was it via Bolougne- Sur -Mer -Anglo American
-looking for John O"Connor sometimes known as Dr Clarke or Toebater......ht age peculiarities have all been published.
----and its not every suspect that got accused of being Jack the Ripper -in 1888 -[albeit in American and Canadian press].

[Sam Flynn]

Incidently ,in the same chapter, he discusses the attraction of "the rough" for men like Max Beerholm or TS Eliot to frequent East End Halls where there was also an element of excitement---Wilson calls it "tasting a bit of rough".

Depends pretty much on the sex of the "rough" concerned, Nats. As I'm sure you know, going for "a bit of rough" was a sometime hobby of Oscar Wilde and his circle, and Beerbohm befriended Wilde at Oxford. Whether Beerbohm indulged himself in "fashionable" homosexuality later in life is somewhat academic, given that he was only in his mid-teens in 1888. As for Eliot, he was figuratively wet behind the ears when the ink on Dear Boss was literally wet on the page.

Sincere thanks for the information, though (I haven't read Wilson's book: must get it), however we're still struggling for documented proof of contemporary toffs frequenting the area.

[Natalie Severn]

Well I can think of no better start than Fishman"s East End 1888.A thousand times better than Angus Wilson whose book is all fur coat and no knickers by comparison quite frankly---though entertaining and well written.Wilson was in fact referring to all East End "vice"-homosexual and heterosexual included. In Fishman"s book there are other references to the chaps from "out West " with the jangle of money in their pockets to buy favours .There are some horrific ones in Wilson"s book---about it being a common practice for certain rich old rakes to buy virgins-turns the stomach how he explains it.But then Pall Mall Gazette gives you that sort of info too-Pall Mall Gazette -1885.
But Sam,there is no one to beat Fishman on the East End-----and I am not referring to Jack the Ripper here in whom Fishman has little interest but to the knowledge acquired both by living there,being of it and becoming an academic who has observed its changes.
Best
Norma

By the way,Angus Wilson is scathing about "Ripperologists"!

[Sam Flynn]

But Sam,there is no one to beat Fishman on the East End-----and I am not referring to Jack the Ripper here in whom Fishman has little interest...

...Fishman's interest has been on the history of the poor, largely Jewish immigrant, population of the East End, Nats. I wouldn't expect, nor indeed accept, him to be an authority on all things cultural. Academics get where they are through specialising, something too often forgotten. For this reason, one shouldn't automatically assume that their knowledge extends into all areas - not even into areas related, but tangential, to their often surprisingly narrow field of study.

[Natalie Severn]

Sam,
You are quite right ofcourse, Fishman"s interest,bless him,has been just that.Nontheless his book," East End Jewish Radicals" and "East End 1888" have an authentic ring of that past time and are very highly recommended by writers and other academics .

He also happens to know what from "out West" means to a Londoner from the East End----or any Londoner come to that!

[Sam Flynn]

You are quite right ofcourse, Fishman"s interest,bless him,has been just that.Nontheless his book," East End Jewish Radicals" and "East End 1888" have an authentic ring of that past time and are very highly recommended by writers and other academics .

And rightly so, Nats. I'm sure they'd also recommend his book "Invasion of the Toffs", except that he hasn't researched or written it yet. If he does, I'll be happy to add it to my collection!

[Ben]

I understand from many sources,including Jerry White and Iain Sinclair both of whom have wrtten on the East End---Jerry White very extensively, that Bill Fishman is considered a foremost authority,if not THE foremost authority, on the East End.

Too bad he's still not a primary source, Norma.

Even worse that we've still heard no actual source for any comment involving young bucks, let alone young bucks who swanned in peacock-like into the abyss. The ripperological equivelent would be me claiming that the killer washed his bloody hands in a Dorset Street sink because Donald Rumbelow says so. Whatever "buck" might mean, we'll contine to encounter problems if we keep reading "toff" into "well-dressed". Given the context, "well-dressed" must be considered a relative term dependent upon location. Barnett, I believe, was described in those terms, but whether he'd be considered well-dressed for Belgravia is another matter entirely.

It doesn't matter what jargon was used. It is demonstrably a myth that the East End was exclusively "Cor Blimey" peaked-caps and the West End was exclusively Lords and Ladies who go chortle chortle gnarf gnarf, and I've no doubt that no Londoner would ever fall for such obviously nonsensensical black and white labelling. The East was a big place, so was the West, and there were respectable wages to be had in the former, just as there were "bit-o-rough" harlets in the latter.

"Those who penetrated the East End could discover that it was indeed one of the roughest and most exotic ports in the World,where a prodigious mixture of races and cultures could be glimpsed"

And the vast and overwhelming majority of the people who did penetrate the East End and enjoyed its dubious "riches" would have been the Eastenders themselves; Joe Average and Proley Pete.

I know it's none of my business that you and Claire didn't hit it off, but I felt she had useful contributions to make and consider it a pity that she was deterred because of unwarranted animosity.

Regards,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

Ben,If you buy the book,EAST END 1888 you will find literally thousands of very detailed and very specific references from near on a hundred books , many of these books written at the time,some a little later together with these countless Newspaper and press reports from 1888 from the East End papers as well as National newspapers and periodicals. For example,when quoting in the final chapter, one of a number of references from Charles Booth"s ,"Life and Labour",he gives Vol One pp106-12 etc And he cites dozens and dozens of other equally contemporary sources.I havent the time write all these others out for you sorry- by the way---when will you yourself start developing a little research of your own and sharing it with us?


I will however give you one example of his criticism of Booth---one I heard from other eminent researchers and scholars of The East End such as Jerry White at the The Museum of London"s lectures.


This is how he introduces his final chapter,Chapter 10,Leisure:

"To portray the East End as one sombre mass of unmitigated woe would be a travesty...........

...............WHAT MANY EARNEST SOCIAL INVESTIGATORS FAILED TO PERCEIVE WAS THE RESILIENCE,THE SORT OF ESOTERIC HUMOUR THAT SUSTAINED THE EAST END COCKNEY IN ADVERSITY.
WHILE BOTH CHARLES AND WILLIAM BOOTH IDENTIFIED MUCH OF THEIR VULGARITY AND IRRESPONSIBLE FUNMAKING WITH FECKLESSNESS, LITTERATEURS,WITH A MORE CATHOLIC PERCEPTION,CAUGHT GLIMPSES OF THE REALITY"


And Fishman ends his 400 page book thus:


" Added to the antics of Old Jack,all these [ he gives various "leisure" activities] brought a sort of perverse relief to the labouring poor,who CONTINUED TO BE

MYTHOLOGISED as a "PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS,


festering in the gloomy somnolence of their "City of Dreadful night".


Ben,it is the REALITY we should be considering----not just the various "statistics" of Booth and other middle class commentators of 1888 whose own home lives,upbringing,expectations and education mean that there was a complete and total mismatch between the folk"s lives they were examining and recording and their own life experiences,expectations and upbringing.Their own experiences at least to a degree, coloured their conclusions .Must dash-back later...

[Ben]

Hi Norma,

And he cites dozens and dozens of other equally contemporary sources.I havent the time write all these others out for you sorry

That's ok, I wasn't expecting you to write them all out, but it might have been useful to have cited a few of those primary souces from the outset as opposed to telling us what this or that modern commentator said as though their "reputability" was sufficient to go on.

As for the criticism of Booth, I can cheerfully accept that the East End wasn't entirely a "mass of unmitigated woe". I don't really think that was ever the message Booth was seeking to convey, but even if the East End wasn't a complete abyss, that's still very different to the the notion that toffs visited the East End "in droves".

Ben,it is the REALITY we should be considering----not just the various "statistics" of Booth and other middle class commentators of 1888 whose own home lives

Yes, but your perception of the "REALITY" is obviously tarnished by your unquestioning faith that modern commentators must be right, while the actual contemporary commentators such as the Booths and London (the latter actually spend time in an area he was later to refer to as an abyss) must be in error. Personally, common sense would rather dictate that the opposite extreme would at least be nearer the mark, but your mileage may vary, and clearly does.

Best regards,
Ben

[Roy Corduroy]

Hi, I would hope we wouldn't have a big scrap over it. Sometimes e-mail posts are sharper then real conversation between people face to face.

I agree that the East End was a place of poverty. As primary sources clearly tell us. But my interest in this case was piqued by Charles Van Onselen's book The Fox and the Flies, in which he painstakingly, over the course of 500 pages and over a thousand footnotes, told of a subset of immigrant, the criminal type, who came to Great Britain and on to the Atlantic World. These men might do and say things and wear certain clothes, dissemble and use aliases, any number of things which did not fit the stereotypical image of the lower middle class male in the EE.

So my point is not so much Toffs coming in, it is that people right in the district did not necessarily act and dress in predictable ways.

Roy

[Ben]

Precisely so, Roy, which goes back to my observation that "well-dressed" shouldn't always be considered interchangable with "toff". Frederick Deeming was another working class non-toff with a penchant for ponciness, but I don't know of any evidence placing either him or Joseph Lis in that part of the East End, let alone dressed incautiously.

Cheers,
Ben

[Sam Flynn]

Hello Roy,

a subset of immigrant, the criminal type, who came to Great Britain and on to the Atlantic World. These men might do and say things and wear certain clothes, dissemble and use aliases, any number of things which did not fit the stereotypical image of the lower middle class male in the EE.

The trouble is that the "EE" is a huge expanse of land, and it's a constant surprise to me that even after all this time, even seasoned Ripperologists seem to labour under the misapprehension that the "East End" was all about Spitalfields. It wasn't - it was a mere pimple on the bum of the East End, and Whitechapel (into which it is generally subsumed) wasn't that much bigger. To give you an idea, I believe that "H" Division (Whitechapel) police territory covered little over 2 square miles; whereas "J" Division (Bethnal Green) covered a whopping 27 square miles. There were plenty of places in the East End where tarted-up, wheeler-dealing immigrants might have gone in preference to the squalid patch of land in which the Ripper victims lived, and this would have held true before, during or after the Ripper scare itself.

[miss marple]

toffs

Are we defining toffs as public school educated upper class englishmen? Over hundreds of words on this post, not one single piece of contemporary evidence has been produced to connect one of these gents with a real Spitalfields prostitute.
Visiting a Fabulous music hall, or gin palace would have been great, top class entertainment, [ and the top entertainers were huge stars, Dan Leno made it to Drury Lane and starred in the annual pantomime] lots of booze. vibrant atmosphere. Music hall was enjoyed by many classes of society. I wish I could go back in time and visit one, but just because one enjoyed Music Hall and sometimes went to one in the east end, that does not mean that afterwards, one visited the mean streets of Spitalfields in the middle of the night to pick up an aged alcoholic.
The price of fourpence for a shag,and maybe a couple of drinks thrown in, was priced to suit the economy of the area. The average working class man could not have afforded much more. West End prostitutes could charge between five and ten shillings, their clients were middle class.The price difference seems to illustrate the gulf between the part time opportunistic, whoring, necessary for survival, and the more professional operations of the West End.
Miss Marple