Where does Joseph Fleming fit into the equation?

[Debra A]

It would be interesting to see the dates on those letters.
So DVV, how do your think the City of London Union knew who to write to?

Give me a couple of hours to dig them out and I might be able to tell you. The address was correct on the envelope but the name was Henrietta Evans,later Fleming. I posted (pictures of) the envelopes somewhere before.

[Debra A]

Debra
Yes I know that was a distillation what you had established.
I recounted it to put in context for other readers how the various pieces of information on the records were collected.
I put your name at the top as you had highlighted that Fleming's true birth date was known (by another department within the City of London Union), and you will no doubt have noticed that this was seized on by others to suggest that the age given in the Stone Case Book was therefore an obvious and potentially correctable mistake. And you did not correct those assumptions which were based on your post.

You did suggest that Stone would have been informed of Fleming’s actual birthday. I gave reasons why this does not seem to have been the case.

If you will be drawn on these matters, you have also suggested that one reason he was unlikely to have been 6 feet 7 inches tall was that he had boots, a shirt, trousers and a coat when he was detained.
From time to time there would have been outsized poor people and I doubt they would have run around naked.
Why do you think it would have been prohibitively expensive for a man of 6 feet and 7 inches to kit himself out in clothing? Do you think it was impossible to add a bit of material to extend the legs or sleeves? Or for him to wear half mast trousers? Or to cut the toes off his shoes and fashion a rough cap.
If you think about it, being large would provide problems but ones that a tall person would be used to dealing with.

By the way, you have mentioned that you have seen military service records where heights are recorded in inches only as well as feet and inches, with mistakes such as one man being recorded as being 55 feet tall.
Are you able to illustrate any of the examples or give details of what sort of records these are?

I said "I find it hard to believe that Stone wasn't informed.
It was also just an opinion about the clothing issue as Fleming was well stocked clothing-wise, boots, even socks, waistcoat, overcoat shirt, trousers, braces-things we know other men of average height went without in the same neighbourhood (was it Timothy Donovan who appeared a the inquest of Annie Chapman without a shirt on?). His pay as a dock labourer wouldn't have made him well off and his records suggest he was a drinker- was there really enough exceptionally tall men's clothing available second hand in that area? That is my reason for thinking it may be in error.

Okay, if he was wearing short and half mast clothing as you say I can't counter that as we really have no way of knowing for sure- so what's the point in arguing over it?-it's your opinion that he might do that. Fair enough.

When I trawled through 150+ soldiers pension files I noticed that sometimes the heights were recorded in inches instead of feet and inches. As both methods were used it seems sensible to suppose that some medics were accustomed to measuring height in inches only and had the equipment to do that? No?


One soldier I looked at had a recorded height of 55 feet 99 inches- obviously a doubling up of figures . But that is his official pension record height.

[DVV]

From this we might gather that between five and seven adult males stood taller than 6' 6", in 1888's East End.

But, judging from the news media attention that certain 6' 6" (+) giants seem to have received in the latter stages of the Victorian era, I would think that we could safely assume that no more than three to five adult males stood as tall a 6' 7", in London's East End of the late 1880's.

Thanks for that, Colin.
Out of these five giants (let's be generous), I wonder how many were weighting 11st and could work on the docks.

[Lechmere]

It would be interesting to see the dates on those letters.
So DVV, how do your think the City of London Union knew who to write to?

[DVV]

I think that during this lucid moment, he told them his real name and gave them his mother’s details.

I'm afraid that's impossible.

See Debs post #577 : Letters in the file are addressed to Henrietta Evans originally, later corrected to Fleming.