JtR's Accent........

[claire]

Both, perhaps, Lynn I've got a steak and kidney pud on the go for dinner right now; some things never change round here.

[Jane Coram]

Hi,

Not sure how we got onto offal, but a few snippets of information that might interest you, be warned if you are eating your dinner, wait until you've eaten it to read on.

Back in the LVP, and indeed right through until the early 1960's in the poorer parts of London, an offal shop could be found in every row of shops. They were very common indeed. They sold the usual offal that most are still familiar with, like heart, liver and kidneys, but they also sold a lot of the bits the cow, pig or sheep didn't even know it had.

One delicacy was tripe, which was the stomach lining of a cow, white and spongy and usually cooked in milk. Cow heels were also sold, which were boiled up for the jelly that came out of them, the same with pigs trotters. Brains and tongues were sold, for human consumption. Sheeps heads would be cooked whole (skinned) and sit steaming in the window. The lungs, called Lites or Lights were usually sold for dog food.

Most poorer Londoners that had cooking facilities lived on offal, as they couldn't afford better cuts of meat. Certainly the residents in the lodging houses would have eaten a great deal of offal, probably kidneys and liver more than hearts, because they would have to cook it on a pan on top of the stove, and hearts would have taken too long.

Whoever wrote the From Hell letter, had almost certainly eaten kidneys at some point in his life, judging by the terminology he used, but that doesn't say much about is background, because the wealthy were partial to kidneys as well as a breakfast dish.

There was quite a distinction between what the various slaughterhouses in the area did. Barber's for instance only slaughtered horses, which went for dog and cat's meat.

The best cuts went to places like Mrs Hardiman's at 29 Hanbury Street, or were sold from carts that went around the street, selling from door to door. The rubbish went for dog's meat. It's fairly safe to say that a lot of cat's meat ended up being consumed by humans.

At Barber's the horses were slaughtered with a blow of the axe and then totally stripped of innards and all of their flesh, so that nothing was left but the skeleton. The meat was then boiled up in large vats and then the bones boiled up, to be used for glue. The hides were sent to tanneries, and the bones once boiled sent to the refuse depots to be ground up for manure. Now that's what you call recycling!

The other slaughterhouses, which dealt with sheep, cattle and pigs, only killed them and removed the offal, sending the carcasses off to butchers to be dismembered.

So really, whoever said it would be very common to see kidneys in a lodging house was certainly spot on. There would have been offal, flying about all over the place.

Hugs

Jane

xxxx

[Zodiac]

Fava Beans anyone???

Oh Boy!!!

Remind me never to take a plane fight over the Andes with any of you lot!!!!

Zodiac.

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

Ruby:

Opinions on his medical ability were not unanimous, but there was a concensus, Dr. Bond aside (and MJK was more or less just ripped to pieces, so you can understand his comments to that effect).

Again, I can't state it clearly enough that I am not saying that Jack was some wealthy surgeon, nowhere near it - simply that he had had experiences in his life, perhaps some sort of medical training, which allowed him to know where to find what and how to remove it in the most discreet and efficient manner possible. I'm not sure your average slaughterman would possess skills to that level, though it's possible.

Probably leaning more towards a failed medical student, possibly a hospital attendant or a mortuary worker (no, not Robert Mann)....you know, somebody who either worked or had worked in that field. Perhaps even somebody who had made quite a success of himself in the medical field early on and was now not so well off....."shabby genteel", and annoyed with the world.

Cheers,
Adam.

[The Grave Maurice]

So, Adam, when you say we could eliminate certain suspects, you don't mean all of us in Ripperdom, what you mean is that you have eliminated some. Nothing at all wrong with the latter; just don't confuse it with the former. Why, for example, could JtR not be a spritely 51-year-old, or a rather mature 19-year-old? Your age range seems rather arbitrary to me. I realise that it's based, probably, on the witness statements; but we can't be sure that anyone actually saw JtR (although my money is still on Lawende).

As to Barnett reading to MJK, this has, in the past, been discussed at length. Reading to one another was a common form of LVP entertainment. It doesn't mean that MJK couldn't read. It seems, to me, unlikely that anyone would write a letter to an illiterate.

[Marc]

However, since Jack managed to remove kidneys in the dark in a short time we can be sure that he HAD got some idea of what he was doing. This would fit well with being a rural person who has cut up animals before but has had no professional training as a surgeon or even a butcher.

He, he, now I can see the tail of Hutch the groom

More seriously, Ruby, is there any remote possibility that a former groom might get involved in the horse slaughter trade, by acting as an assistant to an horse buyer for instance ?
In the late 1800's rural US, cattles bound for slaughter houses were frequently shipped on saturdays (special trains) and were often put under the watch of men called 'drovers' untill reaching stockyards and being secured by buyers.
Don't know if things worked the same way in Great Britain, so beside being far reaching as far as JtR suspect business goes, all this is also pretty hypothetical

[Marc]

It seems, to me, unlikely that anyone would write a letter to an illiterate.

As much unlikely as we may find it, and I would have included myself in the 'we' just a few years ago, iliterate people would got their letters written by more educated relatives/associates, and would send these to iliterate relatives associates who would get it read by more educated ones, like the village priest
or school teacher.
This happened as late as WW1, and there are scores of letters reading "My dear wife/father/mother etc...I had this letter written by Lieutnant Y or Sergeant Z etc..."

[The Grave Maurice]

Quite right, Marc. My point was only that we have no reason to believe that MJK couldn't read.

[Adam Went]

GM:

So, Adam, when you say we could eliminate certain suspects, you don't mean all of us in Ripperdom, what you mean is that you have eliminated some. Nothing at all wrong with the latter; just don't confuse it with the former. Why, for example, could JtR not be a spritely 51-year-old, or a rather mature 19-year-old? Your age range seems rather arbitrary to me. I realise that it's based, probably, on the witness statements; but we can't be sure that anyone actually saw JtR (although my money is still on Lawende).


Well, the witness statements are all we have to gain any idea of the appearance of the killer, and surely it's impossible that they were ALL wrong, or that they ALL didn't actually see the killer? Out of all the major witnesses that we hear much about, Mrs. Long is the only one who described a man over 40 - and that was because she only saw him from back-on. Everybody else (including a policeman, and along with Lawende who you mention) placed him around 28-35. Do you really think they all could have been wrong by 20 years or more?

So, when I say "we", I mean me and anybody else who has an iotre of common sense in that large void between their ears.

As to Barnett reading to MJK, this has, in the past, been discussed at length. Reading to one another was a common form of LVP entertainment. It doesn't mean that MJK couldn't read. It seems, to me, unlikely that anyone would write a letter to an illiterate.

From London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew, Volume I, p. 21/22:

An intelligent and trustworthy man, until very recently actively engaged in costermongering, computed that not 3 in 100 costermongers had ever been in the interior of a church, or any place of worship, or knew what was meant by Christianity. The same person gave the following account, which was confirmed by others. [...] "And really what is the use of giving people reading before you've taught them to read? Now, they respect the City Missionaries, because they read to them - and the costers will listen to reading when they don't understand it..." [...]

And from Volume I, p. 24:

One experienced man told me, that he had seen a poor costermonger's wife - one of the few who could read - instructing her children in reading; but such instances were rare.

And from Volume I, p. 25/26:

It may appear anomalous to speak of the literate of an uneducated body, but even the costermongers have their taste for books. They are very fond of hearing anyone reading aloud to them, and listen very attentively. [...] "The costermongers," said my informant, "are very fond of illustrations. I have known a man, what couldn't read, buy a periodical what had an illustration, a little out of the common way perhaps, just that he might learn from someone, who could read, what it was all about."

Those are just a few examples out of many of what the state of literacy was for a general percentage of the lower classes. I don't see what Mary having letters sent to her has to do with anything, if the sender of the letter knew that she had somebody who could read them out to her......i'd find it a lot more interesting if there was letters around which Mary herself had written in reply to these letters, and do we know if any of those exist?

Cheers,
Adam.

[caz]

Hi Adam,

And when was Mayhew writing - in 1888, when our Mary was in her mid twenties? Or nearly forty years earlier? Hmmm?

That would make a considerable difference to the chances that she couldn't read, wouldn't it? We know that coster-cum-fish porter Joe could read in 1888, so why the assumption that Mary could not?

She probably wasn't idle while Joe read to her, but using the time to catch up with some mending or putting the kettle on.

It's what they did.

Love,

Caz
X

[Adam Went]

Caz:

So you are suggesting then that the rate of literacy would have sky-rocketed amongst the lower classes between the 1850's and 1880's? For the record, some of Mayhew's work on this topic came out in later volumes in the 1860's even, and he himself was alive until 1887, yet I haven't come across any amendments to such comments.....

Once again the mistake is being made about considering the question in terms of 2010's society, not 1880's society.

As I said, if somebody can show me a verified letter that Mary herself wrote in response to any of these letters she apparently received, I will gladly state that i'm wrong. Until then, I'm going with the laws of probability.

Cheers,
Adam.

[claire]

Hi Adam,
The literacy rate certainly would have improved from the time of Mayhew's research to the late 1880s.

Two more things: the ability to read does not imply the ability to write (writing is a more advanced skill--I know there are a few teachers on here to verify this, but for eg., I can read Russian but I'm buggered if I can string a decent sentence together in written form). Secondly, actually, the literacy rate in Wales was better than it was in England, so if we believe one of MJK's stories about being from Wales/having lived in Wales from an early age, that leans in her favour as regards literacy, too. There were a number of schools in each of the three areas that she might have grown up, just regular schools for the children of local workers, and so we shouldn't presuppose that, because she ended up on the game and in debt in London, she was illiterate (Mayhew's right-hand man on prostitutes, Bracebridge Hemyng, gives some clear examples of this sort of 'fall').

Just thoughts

[Adam Went]

Hi Claire,

I think reading some other works from around that era such as "People Of The Abyss" by Jack London (which is available online) would give a fair idea of what the situation was like at the turn of the century anyway.....I haven't read all of London's work but much of what he has said sounds very similar to what Mayhew said 40-50 years before him.

Here's the thing: It's difficult to comprehend it from our point of view, because we all live in civilized countries where, in 2010, it would be almost unheard of for a young person who didn't have some kind of disability to be completely illiterate. Well off parents send their kids to private schools, average people send their kids to public school and parents who don't have a lot of money have their children's education payed for by the government. That system didn't exist in the Victorian era and many of the lower class had never set foot in a school - their education was on the streets. So it's important when discussing this type of thing to think like a Victorian....

You mentioned about Mary possibly coming from Wales - true enough, but then there's also popular rumours that she was Irish, and spent her early years in Ireland - which had a worse literacy and education rate than even England at that time.

It's true though that it's difficult to say what is literate and what isn't - Mary might not have been completely illiterate but only had a very basic understanding, or something similar. It's difficult to say.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Garry Wroe]

So you are suggesting then that the rate of literacy would have sky-rocketed amongst the lower classes between the 1850's and 1880's?

I can't speak for Caz, Adam, but that is precisely what I was proposing in an earlier post when referring to the Elementary Education Act of 1870, a piece of legislation that imposed compulsory school attendance on all children aged between five and twelve. Shortly thereafter the East End and many similarly deprived areas saw the emergence of classes specifically introduced to eradicate adult illiteracy. So whilst Mayhew provides a fascinating overview of the London labouring poor of the 1850s and 1860s, his descriptions of educational provision were distinctly out of date by 1888.

Similarly, on the subject of Mary Kelly's alleged illiteracy, it may be the case that, courtesy of a poor diet and an over-reliance on alcohol, she may simply have been experiencing failing eyesight.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[Adam Went]

Garry:

Imposing compulsory school attendance is a waste of time if the parents can't afford to send their children to school in the first place though. Besides, that would have been a very difficult policy to police, especially amongst the youngsters already making their living on the streets.

Similarly, on the subject of Mary Kelly's alleged illiteracy, it may be the case that, courtesy of a poor diet and an over-reliance on alcohol, she may simply have been experiencing failing eyesight.

If that was the case, would it not be more so with the other JTR victims, who in some cases were almost twice MJK's age, therefore had been exposed to similar conditions for much longer?

Not a bad thought though, she could also have suffered from some sort of degenerative condition.....but that's just guesswork....

Cheers,
Adam.