The People of the Abyss

[Sam Flynn]

a photo has been located that shows men sleeping over a rope. It's from Germany http://forum.casebook.org/showthread...ed=1#post79181

The man on the right is a Chinese named Hua Ching, and the flat-capped blond guy in the middle is Fritz Siegfried, whose family owned the rope. The chap on the left is just someone who used to hang out with Hua Ching on the Siegfrieds' line.

[Roy Corduroy]

Cha-Ching, Sam son !

Henrietta Barnett wrote an account of Samuel Barnett’s life and work: Canon Barnett: his life, work and friends (1918) and I quote:

"On a freezing night, with the north wind tearing down Commercial Street, human brothers, and worse still, human sisters slept on the clean hearth-stoned Vicarage steps, and one dared not give them fourpence for the doss-house bunk, or even twopence for the rope lean-to. If we had on been poor it might have been easier, but to possess the money and to have to withhold it! - The 'principles' made life difficult, but Mr. Barnett never wavered."

[Roy Corduroy]

I mis-typed - should be "if we had only been poor"

But my point in posting the quote was she said "twopence for the rope lean-to."

With wife Henrietta at his side, Rev Barnett was Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel from 1873 to 1893 and warden of Toynbee Hall from 1893 to 1906. The Barnetts were devoted to social and educational work and knew well the conditions of the poor. Her memoir is authentic.

So I respectfully submit this as a confirmation. Harry, you are a man who brings lots of life experience to the table in discussing the old murders. Somehow you melted down over the rope-a-dope thing. Let's get past it, shall we?

Roy

[Archaic]

How Much Money Did Flophouse Landlords Make?

Hi, everyone; I've been reading through this thread, and a question occurred to me: does anybody know how much money the owners of the notorious 'Rope' doss-houses earned in a night, a week, or a month?

With people packed in like sardines, and considering that the management would have either owned the flop-house outright or paid a very cheap rent on it, it seems like they could have made a great deal of money over time. And that was clearly their goal, or they would never have conceived of packing their fellow human in like cattle bound for market. We know that they grossly exceeded the physical and 'legal' capacity of every room, even to the extent of keeping phoney books.

Was John McCarthy the landlord of any such flophouses? I know he had a little 'empire' of cheap rentals, and his family was able to 'come up' in the world. -Thanks, Archaic