Where does Joseph Fleming fit into the equation?

[Wickerman]

You're swimming in nonsense, Jon.

You're asking me to provide an article talking about Fleming's height ?

You seem to need some rest.

My point is precisely that there is nothing, nowhere, about MJK having known a giant. And you know what ? Because there was no giant in her life.

As for Mrs McCarthy, I was referring to Mrs McCarthy from Breezer's Hill, of course. The one to whom Mary said so much about her dear Joseph. She even knocked her door at two in the morning to speak with her.... about her dear Joseph....

And once again, no mention of him being a giant, although there was no coroner around to intimidate them.

Cheers

No David, I am asking you to provide an article in which the context exists to mention his height.

Only 'you' insist it would have been important enough to mention 'out of context'. You seem to think everybody should have been talking about it, yet even if they were, local gossip is not recorded for posterity by anyone.

So, once again, which interview contains the context where Fleming's height would have been brought up?

I'm asking you to provide the article and show 'where' this detail should have been mentioned. Police statements are out because this detail is not important. Likewise the Coroner is not interested in the height of Kelly's ex-lover, so where are we supposed to have read about it?

And don't say "anywhere", that's a cop-out.

[DVV]

Good Lord.

I thought the police tried to trace Fleming.

Which obviously makes his height and physical appearance of no importance.

What Fish and you are saying is quite simple, and utterly nonsensical : Fleming's height was extraordinary, but that we hear nothing about it is just normal.

Would you forgive me if I don't applaud ?

Cheers

[Wickerman]

I see you have not found this "Mrs Carthy" article,... it doesn't exist, does it Dave

She is referred to in paraphrase, her actual words are not recorded anywhere so, the reader has no idea what she said, or what questions she was asked.
In short, there is no press article with which you can insist Flemings height would have been mentioned.

That's pretty much the end of it.


If you follow the trail, this whole episode concerning Mrs Carthy seems to begin with Mrs Phoenix, who, we are told, approached Leman-street police station and told all she knew about Kelly's earlier days in the East End.
It is from Mrs Phoenix that the police would have began their enquiries to locate Joseph Fleming.
From her words too they would have located this Mrs Carthy. What both Phoenix and Carthy told the police about Joseph Fleming, including his unique height?, and any other physical details to help them in their inquiries, is unknown to us today.

[The Good Michael]

If Kelly simply had to have told her few friends about a 6'7" boyfriend's height, I'm sure she would have talked about his semi-luminar scar on his temple, his bouts of melancholia, his persecution complex, and his delusions. In fact, I'm positive she did say something to her friends like, " he was a bit loony and was very tall." Having never met him, these concepts wouldn't have sunk into their heads necessarily. Therefore, they never came up at the inquest. Had he been a suspect (and of course he wasn't), this knowledge would have come to the fore. Any real speculation on what Kelly may have said to her associates is just that and can be argued either way with no resulting agreement. Also, since there were no other errors exactly like 67 inches being confused with 6' 7", he was 6'7" (maybe in his boots), until this is disproved.

Mike

[DVV]

Oh, Mike.
Do you realize you are saying that Fleming was in 1886-88 exactly in the same mental conditions that caused him to be committed in July 1892 ?

If such was the case, why had he not been caged in 1888 or before ?

As for your reasoning concerning his physical appearance, I fail to see its logic.

Mary could have told Julia : "I loved him very much. But he could be violent at times. And you know what ? He's so tall, you wouldn't believe".

It works quite better than : "I loved him very much. But he could be violent at times. And you know what ? He has a semi-lunar scar on the left temple."

[DVV]

What both Phoenix and Carthy told the police about Joseph Fleming, including his unique height?, and any other physical details to help them in their inquiries, is unknown to us today.

And because this extraordinary height is never mentioned, never and ever, nowhere, it's likely that it has been mentioned.

I admire that logic, Jon, but can't follow it.

here we are : not a single word about the Bethnal Green giant, and a weight that doesn't fit. (This I repeat because I want to hear more on Uma Thurman and Jennifer Lopez.)

[Wickerman]

And because this extraordinary height is never mentioned, never and ever, nowhere, it's likely that it has been mentioned.

I admire that logic, Jon, but can't follow it.

Perhaps you should try to consider that the press were not the final repository of factual knowledge about the Whitechapel murders.



(ie; if it ain't in the papers, it never happened?)

[Cogidubnus]

Perhaps you should try to consider that the press were not the final repository of factual knowledge about the Whitechapel murders.

Except presumably that doyen of the Late Victorian press, the Morning Advertiser?

All the best

Dave

[DVV]

(ie; if it ain't in the papers, it never happened?)

And if it's nowhere, it must have been somewhere ?

[Wickerman]

Except presumably that doyen of the Late Victorian press, the Morning Advertiser?

All the best

Dave

The press are a source of opinion, not facts.

[The Good Michael]

Still waiting for those hospital records with the height in inches mistaken as feet and inches.

Mike

[The Good Michael]

Interview with Joseph Fleming...takes a while before they mention height.

Mike

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLpH40s7nHw

[DVV]

Still waiting for a dock labourer without lumbago. With a BMI of 17.3.

[Lechmere]

The only source we have for Joe Fleming being Kelly’s ex is Barnett – a very unreliable source.
It is conjecture that Venturney’s Joe equals Barnett’s Fleming.
It is conjecture that McCarthy’s builder equals Barnett’s Fleming.
The name Joe and the occupation builder were not exactly rarities.

If, hypothetically, these people were all referring to the same person who was genuinely called Joe Fleming, then we have no reason to suppose that any of them saw Fleming and actually reason to believe they did not.

The name Joe Fleming wasn’t that unusual. There were two Joseph Flemings in Bethnal Green that could fit the bill.

We have a credulous Hull journalist who thought that the tallest man in England was 6 foot 6 inches tall. This says more about the parochialism of that social cul-de-sac on the Humber than it does about height in 1891.
May I add that this man’s height seems to have assisted him in his trade as a painter. He doesn’t seem to have experienced problems hitting his head on low ceilings! I would guess that being tall would be of similar utility to a plasterer.
I would guess that if we went as far back as 1066 then the tallest man in England has never been as ‘small’ a six foot and six inches.
There were nearly 38 million persons in the UK in 1891, about the same number as there were in all of Western Europe in 1066.
I would expect there to be several dozen people over 6 foot 7 in the UK in 1888.

I am reminded of Harald Sigurdson, known as Hardrada, sometime King of Norway who died at the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. Hardrada meant ‘hard ruler’. He brooked no nonsense.
However he was also reputed to be 7 feet tall.
At Stamford Bridge, King Harold Godwinson of England is reputed to have offered Hardrada ‘six feet of English ground or however much more as he was taller than most men.’
However many accounts of Hardrada’s life do no refer to his stature and his nick-name certainly wasn’t ‘the Tall’!

Does this prove anything? No.
And neither does all the twaddle about who wudda cudd shudda said what to whom about the height of Joe Fleming – if he was 6 foot 7 inches tall.

Similarly the BMI stuff is utter nonsense. If just one healthy individual can be produced with the same statistics as Evans/Fleming – in any era – then it can be shown that Evans/Fleming’s weight was not out of the ordinary. Peter Crouch is all that is needed for that.

Kosminski’s puny weight decreased from less than 7 stone 8 pounds in May 1915 to 6 stone 12 pounds in February 1919. Without comment. A drop from 106 pounds to 96 pounds. That is a loss of 9.4% of his weight.
Fleming’s biggest loss was from 11 stone 8 to 11 stone exactly. That is a loss of 4.9% of his weight.
Again without comment.

I do not think that the asylum Joe Fleming wasn’t Kelly’s ex because someone would have noted his height I think it is doubtful as everything about Kelly is doubtful.
I suspect that Kelly had lots of ‘boyfriends’. Should they all be fitted into one person - ‘Flutchinson’ - a not tall but stout (and so at all costs certainly not 6 foot 7 and 11 stone 8!) sometime builder and plasterer then dock labourer who wanted to marry her and who lived in Bethnal Green but ended up in the Victoria Home before going mad?
I suspect not.

What we do have is a hospital record that says that the individual who called himself James Evans, but who was really called Joseph Fleming, was 6 feet and seven inches tall.
Unequivocally.

This height record is in a working book. It was not a record that was noted down and filed, never to be seen again by the human eye until nosey researchers started pocking about many years later – like the census for example.
The record was added to on a regular basis. The additional notes were made immediately. It is clear that notes were not scribbled in rough scraps and then transcribed later to the book. It is a rough working book. With different hand writings, different pens, different inks. The notes show clear signs that they were written hastily, probably accompanying the doctors or nurses or warders while they went on their rounds.

Every height taken in this book is in feet and inches. Not one is written in inches only.
Because some other record keepers in other institutions (the military perhaps) sometimes recorded heights in inches and sometimes got mixed up between inches and feet and inches has absolutely no bearing on this record. It is not comparing like with like.

We have a height given as 6 feet and 7 inches.
This was on the same page as other notes that were made on a regular basis over about two years. The weight was regularly checked and note made of it in the margin.
Different people used the book to make these notes.
It is clear the notes were made immediately and not transcribed later.

For the height to be wrong we must believe that several different people were negligent, lazy or both.
This seems unlikely.
The height is dreadfully inconvenient for some theorists.
But it is a far more reliable record than any other with respect to Joe Fleming.

[DVV]

Joseph Fleming born 17 March 1859 in Bethnal Green, whose height was most probably 5'7 was MJK's ex-lover.
The "other" Fleming, ie Edward Joseph Fleming, doesn't fit the bill.

And there is nothing "dubious" in what Barnett said concerning Fleming.
It matches both Venturney's testimony and Mrs McCarthy's account.

It's just the way you are presenting things that is fallacious.

What is certain is that :

1 : Barnett said Mary had lived with a plasterer from Bethnal Green named Joseph Fleming.

2 : there was a Joseph Fleming born in Bethnal Green in 1859, whose father was a plasterer. And this Fleming started dossing in Whitechapel in September 1888.