The International Working Mens Association/Wiiliam Wess

[perrymason]

Just found a website that has a catalogue of the papers and publishing of William Wess....including 4 photos of him. The papers themselves are held at the Modern Records Center at the University of Warwick.

https://www.warwick.ac.uk

......and some were in Yiddish Tom.

Cheers

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Michael,

Yes, I have copies of them all. Including his membership card to the club, which is pretty cool. I wish I could read Yiddish! Unfortunately, there's not much in there. Anything potentially revalatory, or that might paint Wess or his associates in a bad light, would have been taken out by his family and friends who owned the collection before it was donated.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

Yiddish

Hello Tom. My understanding is that Yiddish is about 85% German whilst the remaining 15% is an amalgam of Russian, Polish, Hebrew and English.

Moral to the story, if you can read German you can read Yiddish.

The best.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

I have no idea, Lynn. But thanks for that. When my research veers me back to the club, I'll start researching that stuff more closely.

I have a copy of the Der Arbeter Fraint issue Philip Krantz was editing on the night of the murder, and also the issue that came after. My hope was that they'd write something about the crime, but it looks like they ignored it. Nevertheless, I would love to have those issues translated into English one day. If nothing else, the advertising is interesting.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[perrymason]

Hi Michael,

Yes, I have copies of them all. Including his membership card to the club, which is pretty cool. I wish I could read Yiddish! Unfortunately, there's not much in there. Anything potentially revalatory, or that might paint Wess or his associates in a bad light, would have been taken out by his family and friends who owned the collection before it was donated.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Did you come across a Doris Zhook.....his sister?

Heres a bit from Living my Life by Emma Goldman, Alfred Knopf Inc, 1931....

"The anarchists of London were my friends of many years, solicitous and willing to assist in anything I wanted to do. They were the remnant of the old guard of the pre-war groups, including John Turner, Doris Zhook, her brother William Wess, Tom Keell, and William C. Owen, a former co-worker of mine in America. But they were divided among themselves. Tom Keell, the publisher of Freedom, and Owen, its editor, had kept the paper alive in spite of all vicissitudes. But there was no real movement in London or in the provinces, I soon learned. Coming as I did from the seething anarchist activities in Berlin, the situation in England was depressing. The general political conditions were worse than I had anticipated. The war had created greater havoc with traditional British liberalism and the right of asylum than it had in other lands. Getting into the country was extremely difficult for anyone of advanced social ideas. More difficult to remain if one engaged in socio-political propaganda. The Labour Government was expelling people on as slight pretexts as had the Tories before. My comrades thought it extraordinary that I should have been granted a visa, and expressed doubt that I would be allowed to remain long if I became politically active. The anti-alien laws had almost destroyed the Yiddish anarchist movement, as everyone active in the East End feared expulsion at any time. The disruption in radical ranks brought about by the nefarious methods of Moscow served to strengthen the hands of reaction. In former days the liberal and radical groups used to take a common stand against every encroachment on political freedom and in opposition to economic injustice. Now they were all at each other's throats over the question of Russia."

Cheers Tom, all.

[Archaic]

Hi, Lynn; you had asked about Annie Besant.

Yes, she was Walter Besant's sister. They were both deeply involved in the Social Reform Movement.

It was a very small world, wasn't it?

Best regards, Archaic

[Tom_Wescott]

Yes I did. Keep reading and making notes of anything that sticks out though. I only looked through the stuff once, and that was years ago.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Phil Carter]

Hello all,

Just a sec... I have to get this together a bit...

1) The IWMC is certainly in Berner St.
2) They have a certain link to the Bryant and May strike (pardon the pun)
3) That has a certain link to 22, Hanbury St
4) No, 22 is certainly very near No.29, a murder site.
5) We have the CERTAIN names of some members of the IWMC.
6) ONE of those members is a John Turner. CERTAIN
7) A "John Turner" in 1901 is incarcerated for a violent crime on a female. CERTAIN
8) THAT John Turner is in 1888 Charles Le Grand, or Mr. Grand. CERTAIN
9) Le Grand is a hired private detective, hired by the Whitechapel Vigilante Committee. CERTAIN
10) They are hired AFTER the double murder had taken place. CERTAIN
11) That double murder's FIRST VICTIM is within the gates of the IWMC. Certain.
12. Isreal Schwartz could have seen the murderer.
13. Isreal Schwartz could have been Anderson's witness.
14.Anderson's SUPPOSED suspect was taken to Whitechapel Infirmary. in Feb 1891. He names Kosminsky.
15.Macnagten says that he believed Kosminsky to have been incarcerated in 1889. And alive in an asylum in 1894.
16. Anderson was head of The Special Branch.
16. What if the Kosminsky suspect, a named person, and his incarceration was a ruse by Anderson to deliberately not name the real suspect? Why?..see No.18.
17. What if the REAL suspect was Turner/Le Grand
18. Where was Turner/Le Grand from 1888 to 1901.
19. When was he charged with the 1901 crime?
20. Quote Tom Westcott... Naturally, Fenians and anarchists would run across each other and even work together. But to what extent? Certainly, they both dealt in bombs and such. The Berner Street club is no exception. This is one line I plan to research more in the future.
21. Berner St IWMC is a place of organised planning of murder?
22. IF it was he, Schwartz that refused to name his man, because he was a fellow jew.. who murdered Stride WITHIN the grounds of this IWMC....
23. And it is jews that frequent the IWMC? Members of the IWMC.
24. Was the murderer a member?
25. Was it a certain Mr. John Turner?

Thats a pretty rum lot of things. And I ask...is it impossible, unlikely or just plain ridiculous? Or could this be possible?

best wishes

Phil

[lynn cates]

amongst Freunden

Hello Tom. Yes. The Yiddish Der Arbeter Fraint would be Der Arbeiter Freund in German. The languages are quite similar.

The best.
LC

[lynn cates]

thanks

Hello Archaic. Thanks for that. Yes, a small world indeed.

The best.
LC

[perrymason]

Heres something else on Wess, from the reminiscences of Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) in her essay The Making of an Anarchist.....

"We were three together in the plain little home of a London workingman - Will Wess (4), a one-time shoemaker - Kropotkin, and I. We had our "tea" in homely English fashion, with thin slices of buttered bread; and we talked of things nearest our hearts, which, whenever two or three Anarchists are gathered together, means present evidences of the growth of liberty and what our comrades are doing in all lands. And as what they do and say often leads them into prisons, the talk had naturally fallen upon Kropotkin's experience and his daring escape, for which the Russian government is chagrined unto this day.

Presently the old man glanced at the time and jumped briskly to his feat: "I am late. Good-by, Voltairine; good-by, Will. Is this the way to the kitchen? I must say good-by to Mrs. Turner and Lizzie." (5) And out to the kitchen he went, unwilling, late though he was, to leave without a hand-clasp to those who had so much as washed a dish for him. Such is Kropotkin, a man whose personality is felt more than any other in the Anarchist movement - at once the gentlest, the most kindly, and the most invincible of men. Communist as well as Anarchist, his very heart-beats are rhythmic with the great common pulse of work and life."

Seems like Wess shared a home with other anarchists and socialists.

Best regards again....still reading.

[lynn cates]

ze little grey cells

Hello Phil. I hear your neurons synapsing all the way from here. (snicker!)

The best.
LC

[lynn cates]

eh?

Hello Mike.

"Is this the way to the kitchen? I must say good-by to Mrs. Turner and Lizzie."

Whom?

The best.
LC

[perrymason]

Heres a sample of a Wess leaflet from 1889, ..check the address at the bottom....

[lynn cates]

Marriott

Hello Mike. Well, don't tell Trevor about the Feigenbaum on the poster will you? (snicker!)

The best.
LC