The People of the Abyss

[Ally]

We've got the rope thing all wrong...this was how they actually did it...

[Ally]

Cheyah...the idea of people sleeping draped over a rope...CRAZY!!






From www.sleepingchinese.com

"Whenever I linger through the boomtown Shanghai, I carry my snap shot camera with me. Because at every corner you can discover people that either are napping in the strangest positions and situations, or are even snoring, while sunk in a deep sleep. Noteworthy are the missing mattresses and pillows!""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...e-napping.html



Go and take a look at some of the snapshots of hard sleepers if you even want to think about arguing that people can't sleep in some of the weirdest positions imaginable if they need to. There are pictures of people sleeping while STANDING.



And just because I found it amusing...


"What is more, the human being's ability to sleep in virtually any circumstances is well documented in history. The phrase 'hangover' does not come from some alcohol-related source but from the bedtime tradition in Victorian workhouses. Workers lined up along a bench and a rope was tied from one end to the other, allowing them to sleep by draping their arms over the rope which they 'hung over' as it supported them."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/apr/09/health.healthandwellbeing

[The Good Michael]

Ally,

How do you know there were people in the East End? Were YOU there?


Mike

[Ally]

Harry,

The article focused on the plight of the poor, not on an individual doss house. So why would it be named? By your pitiful reasoning skills, there were no doss houses, and the poor didn't sleep on benches either.

Why? Here:

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/pall_mall_gazette/18881115.html

Read this account of a homeless shelter, written up in the pall mall. Is there an address? Is it named? No. So by your reasoning, this didn't exist and the women spent all night standing up outside not sleeping on benches.

And your idiotic attempt to compare people who would pay to spend money sleeping on a rope IF THEY HAD OTHER OPTIONS to people making a choice to sleep over a rope if that's the only option they had is yet further example of your fervent BELIEF that it didn't happen, which isn't going to be swayed by logic.

So now the only point of being on this thread is not to convince you, because really, it's not going to happen, but merely point out, over and over, how flawed and shoddy your logic and mental acuity is.

And thanks for admitting you lied and slandered a book you hadn't read for your own agenda. Quite the devoted true believer you are willing to do whatever oily thing to promote your cause despite the evidence. Says it all doesn't it?

And since you ask. No I have never lied about someone else to get people stirred up about something I knew was false. That's the tactic of conmen. I find it rather despicable.

[The Good Michael]

And if I go off topic why do posters follow?.

Because once in a while, madmen have a moment of brilliance. Not in this case, however.

Cheers,

Mike

[harry]

Mike,Ally,
You both seem to be the persons that are raving.To bolster your arguements you bring up more unsupported claims.I ask again,who are the persons and what are the names and addresses of the establishments.Do the papers say that,and are papers once more,the fountains of truth?The thread does seem the place to write of late 19th century happenings.Of course I lied.Have either of you never lied.If I hadn't mentioned Jack London I doubt many would have shown interest,but his name had you all jumping up and down, trying to prove something,but you have not yet done so.People did not sleep the night away slumped over ropes.
A friend and I hope it can be proven.We intend to open,here in Australia,a string of Rope and Breakfast hotels,in opposition to the bed and breakfast establishments.Should be a goer.Heaps of good advertisement here.Ally and Mike can have a franchise,their experience and knowledge of the practice will be a godsend.Reply by tomorrow,April 1st.And if I go off topic why do posters follow?It is so easy to separate the sheep here.
Limehouse,
So you are a woman.What does that prove?Still haven't seen any figures that prove anything.Heres something to go on.Infectious diseases were the biggest killers,and cancers the smallest.Today it is almost reversed.

[Limehouse]

Harry, Limehouse is a woman. I can't prove that she is - but she should know.

Thank you Robert! Yes, I am a woman, although I have a feeling that if I was to prove it to Harry, he would ask for further proof.

[Chris]

It may depend on how one defines the "East End". There were parts of it that would have been comparatively better-off than, say, Spitalfields - which was in itself probably even more wretched than Whitechapel as a whole.

Yes. It seems unlikely London made the figure up, but it may refer to a restricted geographical area and/or only part of the population (as does the 61% figure from the 1840s quoted above), and it may have been out of date when he quoted it.

[Sam Flynn]

Re. the mortality rates, Chris:

It may depend on how one defines the "East End". There were parts of it that would have been comparatively better-off than, say, Spitalfields - which was in itself probably even more wretched than Whitechapel as a whole.

[Chris]

If you read that chapter yourself,fifty five per cent is stated by London to die within the first year,and another twenty five out of every hundred before the age of five,a total of eighty per cent.

The copy I'm looking at says:
"... in the East End fifty-five per cent of the children die before five years of age. And there are streets in London where, out of every one hundred children born in a year, fifty die during the next year; and of the fifty that remain, twenty-five die before they are five years old."

Having said that, looking at the numbers for Whitechapel on FreeBMD, 55% does seem rather too high. It looks as though about a third of deaths in 1903 were before the age of five.

[Ally]

[QUOTE=harry;77467]Alley,

The first part of your last sentence reveals a great deal.

Yes the words "so" and "why" are deeply insightful and meaningful.

It was in 'Children of the Abyss' that I expected to find a reference to the practice of sleeping slumped over ropes.I didn't.

Is Children of the Abyss yet another book thread that you are going to start a pointless argument on and run the thread completely off topic? Oh wait, you meant people of the abyss. I see. So you "expected" to find a reference here. But you didn't. But you started the argument on this thread anyway, even though there is no reference to the topic you decided to start the argument on. So you derailed this thread topic, made the entire thing off topic, because you didn't actually read the book, didn't know whether the mentioned reference was even in here, but went ahead and made a statement about the contents of the book when you had no idea what they actually contained.

It is one thing for someone to claim a happening,another thing to prove it.So far all I have read are claims. Do you know of any contemporary source that was a witness to or actually engaged in the practice,that posters are saying was widespread.

Yeah there are a lot of historical claims that have no proof. That whole Jesus one gets me every time.

You were provided with contemporary newspaper accounts of this event occurring. You have been given, on this thread, that you ran off topic, contemporary newspaper accounts that mention this practice. You refuse to accept them.

Now you want OTHER different contemporary accounts?What precisely do you want? Do you want us to transport you back in time and allow you to witness this first person? You'd probably still not accept that it happened. You are arguing stupidity and off topic.

If contemporary newspaper accounts are not enough to convince you, then you are a person that has a belief that cannot be swayed by facts. That makes you deluded.

You've been given contemporary accounts. You've been given the proof that it occurred. You don't want to believe. Fine. But your obstinate belief isn't going to change the facts, and the facts are, this thread is off-topic, and you look like an idiot right now.

People, there is nothing that will ever convince Harry that this happened. He has FAITH that it didn't. He BELIEVES. Facts will not convince him. You can spend days searching and finding even more newspaper accounts of rope sleeping, but that won't convince him either.

[The Good Michael]

Harry,

You raving lunatic! London doesn't mention rope sleeping and yet you bring your argument up on the thread about his writings? You say you expected to find something about it for corroboration, yet you think London a liar. If London is a liar, had he written about it, in your warped mind, it would have been a lie. Because he hasn't written about it, still following your bizarre logic, it must be true. It should be the end of the story for you, yet you go on and on in your meaningless and stupifying fashion. Go to Pub Talk and start a thread called: Rope-Sleeping for Dummies, or something. Leave this one alone if your thoughts have nothing to do with it.

Cheers,

Mike

[Robert]

Harry, Limehouse is a woman. I can't prove that she is - but she should know.

[harry]

Alley,
The first part of your last sentence reveals a great deal.It was in 'Children of the Abyss' that I expected to find a reference to the practice of sleeping slumped over ropes.I didn't.It is one thing for someone to claim a happening,another thing to prove it.So far all I have read are claims.Do you know of any contemporary source that was a witness to or actually engaged in the practice,that posters are saying was widespread.The address of any flop house where it was carried out?Something that will lead me to a source,so that I can be convinced it happened.Some real evidence.Can anyone?That's what I am asking.Is that too much to ask?
It is the same with Limehouse.50% of what?We know that each birth and death in England at that time had to be registered.That from these registers statistics were published.It should be an easy matter for him to quote both the number of births for a particular period and the number of deaths of children up to the age of one year.From that it is then easy to calculate the percentages of children who died in the first year,but he avoids giving numbers.I wonder why?.I can be convinced by real evidence.

[Ally]

Limehouse,
\
Ally,
You are quite correct in what I wrote.I still stand by it .I have made my own experiments.Have you?Here is what was wrote in the book"The crimes of Jack the Ripper',by the author Paul Roland.'The most desperate settled for 2d,the price of sharing a crowded room slumped over a rope in a doss house".I hope he doesn't mind me quoting the words.Why I brought it up in that particular thread should be obvious.Why I mention it is to forstall people like yourself assuming I made it up.

And that still has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote. You stated, on this thread, which is about People of the Abyss, Jack London's work, that it read more like fiction, and started an argument about a topic you apparently knew wasn't even in the book but in an entirely different book.

You slammed this book, saying it was more like fiction, based on information you are claiming you knew wasn't in it.

So whatever Roland may or may not have written in his book is completely irrelevant to this book and the argument you started based on information you knew wasn't even in it.

There is no mention of rope sleeping in People of the Abyss. So why did you start the argument based on it in this thread?