Socialism in the East End

[seanr]

Thanks Robert, that is much more readable. It seems, unless I am much mistaken, this is not the volume which contains the chapter on 'Women's Work'. I'll have a proper dig later on.

The chapter contained in this volume within 'Notes on Administration' on 'Prostitution' is illuminating. I've not read it all yet, but Booth draws a distinction between brothels and 'houses of disorder'. A house of disorder being an establishment which turns a blind eye and a brothel being an establishment run for the purpose.

Booth clearly identifies that his use of the term 'bullies' aligns with the modern term 'pimp'. Therefore the use of the term 'bullies' when describing Dorset Street leaves little doubt about what he means.

In his notes on 'Dorset Street', both the word 'brothel' and the word 'bullies' in conjunction with the houses; 'houses owned by Jack McCarthy'. This leaves little doubt that Booth thought Jack McCarthy was a brothel-keeper. Also, directly seems to suggest that were pimps operating around the Ripper victims which should have been able to offer them protection.

Booth also draws a distinction between prostitutes who take men back to their own private residences relying on their own judgment of the men they take back and prostitutes who work in brothels, who can expect protection in the form of a madam and a bully. It's obviously interesting to speculate on which of these Miller's Court was in 1888.

Should Mary Kelly have been able to expect the protection from a bully? If she could, who might this have been? - Thomas Bowyer, Henry Buckley or perhaps even George Hutchinson?
If she could expect protection at Miller's Court, why didn't she receive it? - Did the police follow this line of enquiry at the time?

Or... Mary Kelly was simply taking men back to her own private residence and the bullies are simply a red herring...

[Robert]

Just clicking 'see other formats' seems to do the trick.

[seanr]

The "chapter" on "Women's Work" in "Life and Labour of the People in London",courtesy of https://archive.org/stream/lifeandla...tgoog_djvu.txt

Thanks for the link. The text unfortunately appears to have been scanned in and is somewhat garbled. Although amongst the noise can be found:

WOMEN'S WORK. Vol IV., chap, ix., pp. 256-326

Which suggests the chapter was some 70 pages.

[DJA]

The "chapter" on "Women's Work" in "Life and Labour of the People in London",courtesy of https://archive.org/stream/lifeandla...tgoog_djvu.txt
(A) * Women working at washing send their children to school in the morning, and do not themselves return home until 8 or 9 p.m. During the hours after school the children mix with other boys and girls in the streets, hearing and learning all kinds of evil talk and action. Their characters are ruined in those hours.' As an extension of the work of the Recreative Evening Schools Association, this witness (a Baptist minister) suggests that playing halls should be provided, where tea could be obtained at a small cost. (t) 'The lowest class of women who work (says a lady visitor) shell peas in the market ; above them in the social scale are box makers. Girls take employment as soon as they leave school, and for the first year or two work intermittently, but afterwards settle into regular factory employment/ (j ) ' On either side of the road (runs one of our notes on South London) lies the dust yard of a contractor for several vestries, full of rough, dirty women from the surrounding streets : a disgusting occupation/ (k) ' Nearly all the girls in Central London work at some trade or othen They would not make good servants, and it is a frequent argument of mothers that it is a good thing for them to have something to turn their hands to, so that if they marry and lose their husbands, they are independent. There is a terrible temptation to widows to lead an immoral life, more or less publicly, which may thus be, at least in part, avoided/ {[} *Onc of the managers of an Institute says that the girls who come to it are wage-earners, receiving from 7s to 21S a week at mantle and clothing factories. Numerous breaches of the Factory Acts seem to occur, for which the foremen are perhaps to blame, rather than the employers ; but the girls are generally unwilling to talk of it ' 8# HABITS OF THE PEOPLE (m) 'Step-girls do nothing but clean steps, at 2d or $d a house. They prefer the freedom they secure, to being general servants. In some districts they are numerous, and their presence throws light on the standard of the lower middle-class households for which they work/

[seanr]

The Victorian social reform movements were active in the East End before, during and after the time of the Ripper murders. Yet seems to be little discussed in Ripperology (with the possible exception of being used for the purposes of promoting the ‘Ripper as social reformer’ theory). This seems a shame, as a cursory glance into topic seems to throw up a wealth of secondary source material which seems capable of illuminating discussions as to the character of the Whitechapel area around the time of the Winter of Terror.

For starters, historically notable figures turn up in places related to the crimes. For example, Beatrice Webb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Webb) a co-founder of the London School of Economics, lived in Wentworth Dwellings for a time in 1885, when staying at the apartment of Ella Pycroft: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...20dwellings%22

Ella Pycroft and Beatrice Webb were at the time, both working for the East End Dwelling Company as rent collectors for the nearby Katherine Buildings.

Beatrice Webb’s description of the character of the area gives an opinionated yet intriguing view of the East End around the time of the Ripper.

East End life, with its dirt, drunkenness and immorality, absence of co-operation or common interests, saddens me and weighs down my spirit. I could not live down here; I should lose heart and become as worthless as a worker.

If this is the voice of someone profoundly sympathetic to the suffering of the poor, how must those who were not social reformers have talked about the people of the East End?

Ella Pycroft apparently worked for the East End Dwelling Company for five years from 1885, so it is possible that she stayed on in her apartment in Wentworth Dwellings and was resident there on the night the piece of Kathryn Eddowes apron was found there.

Margaret Nevinson, a notable Suffragette, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Nevinson) lived for a time in the East End and was on familiar terms with Ella Pycroft, both of them were working as rent collectors. It turns out the two women lived very close to each other. Nevinson lived on Goulston Steet in a worker’s dwelling in Brunswick Buildings, the building which at the time was opposite Wentworth Dwellings (source: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ret%20nevinson). Nevinson moved to Hampstead in 1887 so was out of the area before the murders occurred.

Beatrice Webb left the East End Dwelling Company and went on to work with Charles Booth, to help produce his enquiry into the lives of the London poor. The enquiry was published in 1889 and much of the research for the study took place in 1888. Another researcher working on Booth’s enquiry was Clara Collet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Collet), she compiled a section on the working lives of the poor women in London, this included speaking to the prostitutes of the East End, enquiring into their reasons for taking on the work they do and their lifestyles. She was interviewing these women in 1888, literally during the Autumn of Terror. The resulting chapter on ‘Women’s Work’ in ‘Life and Labour of the People in London’ seems like it could be fascinating reading but as yet I’ve been unable to find a copy of the chapter.

Booth’s enquiry seems to promise a wealth of interesting information. Notably, he produced maps of London classifying streets by the poverty of the people living there using a colour code. Black being the absolute worst and a ‘semi-criminal’ class. Wikipedia has this image of a section of the map showing Dorset Street and Flower and Dean Street colour coded as black: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...hitechapel.jpg

https://booth.lse.ac.uk/ has full searchable versions of the maps. I’ve personally never seen a better source for maps of Whitechapel and Spitalfields at the time of the murders.

The same LSE site also includes a searchable database of the documents and notes which made up the enquiry which may hold interesting relevant observations. Consider this first hand source from 1898 stating that the lodging houses of Dorset Street were really brothels and that the street was frequented by ‘thieves, prostitutes, bullies’ (bullies being the name used for pimps at the time, was it not?) - https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b351#?cv=54&c=0&m=0&s=0&z=1299.762 8%2C732.3015%2C1286.6689%2C765.2852
’The majority of the houses are owned by Jack McCarthy’ - this seems like a fairly direct insinuation that Jack McCarthy was running brothels.

I’ve not seen the Social Reformers discussed so much in relation to the Autumn of Terror but it may be worth looking at them again. There might be a lot of interesting material waiting to be uncovered.