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

[claire]

Adam, I understand what you are saying and, having worked in international development for some years, have seen illiteracy and lack of educational opportunities on a grand scale. But, at the same time, I think there are at least as many reasons to suppose that MJK could read as there are to presume that she could not. Your 'evidence' for her illiteracy seems to derive solely* from the statement that JB read the paper to her; on the other hand, we have McCarthy stating that she received letters (which JB did not know about), Mrs Phoenix (was it her?) stating that she was 'quite the scholar,' and others saying she seemed to be of a better class of girl. Further, on the Wales topic, MJ stated repeatedly that she lived in Wales as a youngster, regardless of having been born in Ireland, and there is at least one account of her speaking Welsh. These, of course, are just statements, but no less convincing as to her potential literacy than listening to her common-law read the paper is to her illiteracy.

*(beyond a statement of general conditions which Caz, Garry and myself have indicated include several opportunities to become literate in the mid-late Victorian period)

[Adam Went]

Claire:

I don't think it's possible to state with certainty either way about her literacy levels, I'm simply basing it on what I've read about many thousands of others of Mary's class, and that tells us that there's a good chance that she was illiterate, or close to it - which is exacerbated by the fact that I don't believe there's any known samples of her writing in existence. And Barnett reading to her out of the papers, of course.

As for these witness statements about her being "quite the scholar" and what not....yes, and there were witnesses who described Liz Stride as a "quiet, sober woman" as well, despite the fact that she'd been a regular fixture at the courts for her drunken ways in the past. Obviously, nobody wanted to speak ill of people who had been killed by JTR. They were not perfect women, and there's no use trying to romanticise them as such.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Garry Wroe]

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.

If you choose to disregard historical reality, Adam, that’s your business, but the facts are that the 1870 Education Act imposed mandatory schooling on children aged between five and twelve. Those who failed to attend classes were sought out by the local truanting officer, an individual who had the statutory power to bring offending parents before the courts. Since such an expedient was likely to result in a fine or worse for the accused, most parents exercised due diligence with regard to school attendance. It was simply the lesser of two evils.

Equally, the official literacy rate for the East End at the time of the Ripper murders was somewhere in the region of ninety-four percent. Thus the findings of Mayhew, recorded thirty or forty years earlier at a juncture which predated the Elementary Education Act, have no bearing on the present discussion. The contention, therefore, of an overwhelming likelihood of illiteracy on the part of Mary Kelly is supported by neither the official literacy rates of the late-1880s nor the anecdotal evidence of Kelly’s compeers. Indeed, the weight of evidence, I would suggest, lies in the opposite direction.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[The Grave Maurice]

I'm beginning to think that all the very well-reasoned arguments here might be wasted on Adam. He seems to have come to his conclusions and remains unwilling to be swayed by either new information or logic. Perhaps it's just best to leave him to it.

[Adam Went]

Garry:

If you choose to disregard historical reality, Adam, that’s your business, but the facts are that the 1870 Education Act imposed mandatory schooling on children aged between five and twelve. Those who failed to attend classes were sought out by the local truanting officer, an individual who had the statutory power to bring offending parents before the courts. Since such an expedient was likely to result in a fine or worse for the accused, most parents exercised due diligence with regard to school attendance. It was simply the lesser of two evils.

Garry, I'll ask again, if the parents have no money in the first place, how can they afford to send their children to school? When you consider the many tens of thousands of children who had been brought up to a life of street-selling, before, during and after 1870, a large portion of whom were already out on their own well before their teens, be that because they were orphaned, apprenticed, had run away, or whatever, surely you can see it would have been impossible to police such an act to any satisfactory degree. If the police had decided to prosecute every single case, the courts would literally have been overflowing.

Equally, the official literacy rate for the East End at the time of the Ripper murders was somewhere in the region of ninety-four percent.

I'm presuming you have a source for this information which you would be able to share? As I said already, Jack London, writing at the turn of the century, largely echoed the sentiments Mayhew did 40-50 years before him.

GM:

I'm beginning to think that all the very well-reasoned arguments here might be wasted on Adam. He seems to have come to his conclusions and remains unwilling to be swayed by either new information or logic. Perhaps it's just best to leave him to it.

I'd like to know what part of that post was well-reasoned or constructive? Not happy, leave the thread. Simple.

Cheers,
Adam.

[claire]

I'm really sorry, Adam, but I don't think I have romanticised anything. I simply stated that there was at least as reasonable a chance of Kelly's literacy as there is of her illiteracy. It is unreasonable for you to take as given the anecdotal 'evidence,' collected posthumously, of JB reading to MJK, but to disallow comments of others. It's not even as though this occurrence would preclude her literacy, as has been exhaustively pointed out.

Of course there were families who would have refused to send their children to school on the grounds that they were needed to perform some more useful economic function. But, similarly, others were happy to see their kids off to school in the daytimes, knowing that there was precious little to be had on the streets. Further, none of this takes into account class mobility, and the propensity of many fancy whores (sorry if that is a romanticisation) to become more educated as they accompanied wealthier punters about. The explosion in mass-produced printed material, from penny dreadfuls to Hansard, along with the mass postal system, hints too that literacy rates were not the close-on-zero you suggest.

But I'm sorry if you consider that contribution not be be well-reasoned or constructive, so perhaps I should leave the thread, and agree to differ.

[Adam Went]

Claire:

Let me clarify my position here, and for everybody else as well: Go back and read through the posts, I have NEVER, not once, claimed that there is absolutely no doubt that MJK was illiterate. All I have said is that by using contemporary sources on this subject and inferring from what we know of MJK, it would not be unreasonable to say that her literary skills were not exactly brilliant. I am simply expressing an opinion (and what I would call an educated opinion since I've spent years researching the people of the Victorian era) and nothing more, yet some people have chosen to take my meanings out of context and start throwing barbs. If people want to believe that MJK was a regular Shakespeare, fine, but it is ridiculous to suggest that the literacy rate for the poorest, slummiest areas of London in 1888 was almost a full 100% - many modern day civilized cities, government schooling and all, could not boast that!

As for the schooling, the school system was not run then as it is now. I believe that a good portion of the children who did attend school only did so from 9 AM till 12 PM, not your full 6 or 7 hour days that are done now. Many children who had at one time attended school, left soon afterwards because they didn't like getting the cane - which of course is outlawed now as well. Much, much different.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Ben]

I loved “one-eyed Pete from Peckham”, Jane. I think he’s still there!

Hi all,

Firstly, it cannot be stressed enough that there was never any “consensus” that the killer had “medical knowledge”. In fact, the preponderance of medical evidence was to the effect that the killer had little to no knowledge. I’d elaborate further were in not for the fact that this issue was thrashed out very recently, and in considerable depth on another thread:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=4072&page=1

Suffice to say that only one doctor at one victim autopsy thought he detected surgical skill – the same doctor who believed Kate Eddowes was killed by a different hand, and in the case of Dr. Brown, he was effectively out-numbered four to one in his judgement that the killer had considerable anatomical knowledge.

A minor clarification may also be in order with regard to the expression “shabby genteel”. For a good illustration of the phrase’s usage by the locals at the time, consider James Taylor’s description of the bedraggled individual seen in Mrs. Fiddymont’s pub – torn shirt, badly-fitting pepper and salt trousers, dried blood between fingers and below the ear, and yet he too was described by Taylor as “shabby genteel”. Since there was clearly nothing “genteel” about the man’s behaviour, Taylor may simply have been observing that the clothes may have seen better days at some point, and with items of clothing finding themselves pawned several times over in the district, this shouldn’t come as any surprise. What we shouldn’t be tempted to conclude is that the individual wearing the clothes betrayed any other indication of being “genteel” or belonging to a class above the majority local populace.

In terms of the type of client most likely to be considered “safe” by the local prostitutes, the “tried and tested” inconspicuous local would undoubtedly have fitted the bill better than most. With the amount of media scaremongering over the possibility of the killer being an outsider from the higher classes (lent some earlier weight by Wynne Baxter’s errant conclusions in the wake of the Hanbury Street murder), any punter who appeared conspicuously out-of-place or opulently dressed was more likely to have been a deterrent rather than attraction, although it would work very much in reverse for any potential muggers and vigilantes on the streets in the small hours.

Garry has already cleared up much of the confusion surrounding lodging houses and their practices, especially with regard to lodging house kitchens which, unlike the sleeping areas, were not generally patrolled by a doorman even during the small hours. Certain houses adopted an entrance policy whereby the establishment would close its doors to any lodger without a weekly or daily pass at 12:30am, which meant that any lodger in possession of such a pass could get entry at ANY time of the day or night.

Contrary to an earlier suggestion, the “street-selling classes” did not know each other very well, and couldn’t have done, at least not on any large scale. Sheer numbers, overcrowding and the largely transient nature of much of the population precluded this even as a vague possibility, at least on anything other than a very small scale. Even if you belonged to the “street-selling classes” it doesn’t mean you had to be involved in selling on the streets as an occupation. The majority of costermongers and hawkers would hardly have enjoyed any intimate acquaintance with the dockworkers, for example, whose employment took them considerably south of the region encompassing northern Commercial Street, unless both groups deliberately sought out each other’s company. Lodging houses in particular afforded their patrons the chance of becoming the proverbial needle in a haystack, which may explain why streets which boasted an unusually high number of lodging houses were popular with the “vicious and semi-criminal” element in the district. The gang responsible for duffing up Thomas Sadler bolted into a doss house immediately after the tack, evidently regarding it as a safe haven.

As for the suggestion that the timing and dates of the murders somehow indicate a financially better-off killer, I’m afraid I struggle to understand how this conclusion is arrived at. Surely it is possible to belong to the poorer classes, and yet still be out of work? Moreover, there’s no reason to discount the possibility that the killer was working at some stage on the weekends or holidays in question.

As for another point recently raised that the killer must have looked like he had the means to pay for the services of a prostitute, that’s fair enough, providing we also accept that Kate Eddowes was, in all likelihood, perfectly content with a “rough and shabby” bloke with the appearance of a sailor, a neckerchief and a loose-fitting jacket.

Generally, I see no compelling evidence that the killer was in any way removed from the impoverished masses.

Best regards,
Ben

[caz]

Welcome back, Ben.

I hope we can get along a little better this time. I'll try hard if you will.

As for another point recently raised that the killer must have looked like he had the means to pay for the services of a prostitute, that’s fair enough, providing we also accept that Kate Eddowes was, in all likelihood, perfectly content with a “rough and shabby” bloke with the appearance of a sailor, a neckerchief and a loose-fitting jacket.

I agree, and I suppose much depends on her mental image of the Whitechapel murderer at the time. Also, she had only just returned from hopping, and she was arguably dehydrated and hungry after her drunken slumber down the nick, so her guard was possibly more down than up, despite the general fear that the killer could strike again at any time and nobody really knew what he would look like when he did.

The hand on the chest thing suggests a number of possibilities. One of them is that she was appealing to him to take her for a much-needed coffee or baked potato: "pretty please", and he may have been holding onto his own ha'pennies: "all in good time, woman, when you've earned it".

I don't think Kate was tired of living just yet, so she'd have been wary of going alone into that dark square with just anyone, without sufficient communication between them beforehand to make her feel it was worth the risk. I think it would at least be safe to say that whatever her mental image of the murderer was - his appearance, gait, mannerisms, behaviour, voice, conversation and communication skills - this man was nothing like it.

Which brings us nicely back to the topic of...

...JtR's accent.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Thanks for the welcome, Caz! Good to be back.

I’m in complete agreement with your post (how’s that for a good start!?), and would only add that in spite of my view that the ripper was both locally based and probably a member of the “street-selling classes”, it could be argued that even a woman in Kate Eddowes’ predicament would have thought twice about offering her services to a complete vagrant with outward and visible signs of loopyness, or – dare I say it – a “David Cohen” type.

All the best,
Ben

[caz]

Thanks for the welcome, Caz! Good to be back.

I’m in complete agreement with your post (how’s that for a good start!?), and would only add that in spite of my view that the ripper was both locally based and probably a member of the “street-selling classes”, it could be argued that even a woman in Kate Eddowes’ predicament would have thought twice about offering her services to a complete vagrant with outward and visible signs of loopyness, or – dare I say it – a “David Cohen” type.

All the best,
Ben

Agreed, Ben - complete vagrants and men behaving badly or oddly were really not what Kate needed at that point.

For whatever reason, she must have trusted her killer's ability and willingness to treat her with generosity of spirit and pocket.

Which takes a man with certain basic attributes.

Love,

Caz
X

[Phil H]

The thread title is JtR's "accent".

A point that doesn't seem to have been made that in 1888 "accents" in Britain, would have been quite different to those used today.

You can still hear a little of the Victorian London accent in pre-war films from actresses such as Kathleen Harrison (try Alistair Sim's version of Scrooge/Christmas Carol). I recall as a child going to London to visit my grandparents, and to my rural Lincolnshire ear, London people talked in a confident, staccato manner, quite clipped, compared to a slower country accent.

Incidentally, you can hear Gladstone himself speak in a clip on the Lib-Dems website!!

But I doubt that "upper class" people spoke as we might think - just as in Elizabethan England, the regional accent still survived - I have heard that Lord Curzon (Viceroy on India c 1900, died 1926ish) spoke with a pronounced Derbyshire accent, with flat "a"s - and he was mocked as a "superior person".

"Toffs" or "upperclass" people may have "drawled" their words rather than being crystal clear and clipping their consonants. There are still subtleties today between the way people educated at different public schools speak - qualities of intonation rather than accent - but in my experience, someone who went to Winchester will speak slightly differently from an old Etonian.

In the melting pot that was the 1888 East End, I suspect that the range of accents would have been enormous - including foreign dialects, such as Polish and Russian, and the use of non-English words from Yiddish or many other languages. Would dr llewellyn have spoken with a welsh accent? MJK was said to be a fluent Welsh speaker (alternatively Gaelic) - so did she have a lilt when she spoke? I assume that long Liz may have had a swedish accent to a greater or lesser degree.

All these people would therefore have "heard"/perceived the way others spoke in differing ways and may have drawn differing conclusiond from what they heard.

In "Pygmalion" (or "My Fair Lady") Shaw has Higgins say that he can place someone within 2 streets in London purely based on their manner of speaking - probably a humourous exaggeration, but Shaw studied phoenetics so maybe not too much of a stretch of the imagination.

So what am I saying/ Simply that we should not - IMHO - draw too many conclusions from accents - even if evidence could be found. there are too many variables, and the range of accents would have been too great.

My first post here in over five years. It's good to be back and to see some familiar names still doing excellent work.

Phil