Washing up in public

[RockySullivan]

Second hand clothes markets were prevelent. Petticoat Lane fo one. Most Londo street markets would sell second hand clothes. Seven Dials near Covent Garden was famous for its second hand clobber. The poor could not afford new clothes. Those who worked in the rag trade probably had access to new stuff. The second hand clothes shops also operated on 'tick', paying off, a bit at a time.
There were big laundries for the washing of sheets etc, many girls who went to industrial schools or homes for fallen girls were trained in laundry work.There were washerwomen who operated as individuals, these were patronised by the better off working class, clerks etc. The bagwash.

The poor would need a sink or a bath, running water, a copper to boil the water in. a washboard, laundry soap, and a packet of blue for the whites plus starch. And if you were lucky a mangle. My gran still did washing like that in the fifies.Itwas backbreaking. The council flat she lived in in Kings Cross had a separate room attached for doing laundry [ the flats were built in the 30s]

Even Mary did not have those facilities, running cold water and a tin bath.

The lodging houses probably had coppers for boiling water.


Miss Marple

I think washing up in the public sink is a very possible idea but wouldnt somone notice the blood stained water near the murder site in the hours after? I was also thinking about the second hand clothes recently since Liz Jackson's dismembered remains were found in the LE Fisher underwear bought used from a servant, I had wondered if that was Torso's connection to his victim. Wouldn't make much sense though. I wonder if the ripper had access to a supply of used or new clothes, if his clothes would be bloodied from each kill that's quite alot of sets of clothes to lose. Perhaps he had a method for only getting blood on his hands and sleeves?

[Harry D]

I have a vague memory of someone mentioning a report of a suspicious man seen washing his shoes after one of the murders(?). I'm not putting any stock into it, it was most likely completely innocent, but can someone clear up the source of this?

[RockySullivan]

I have a vague memory of someone mentioning a report of a suspicious man seen washing his shoes after one of the murders(?). I'm not putting any stock into it, it was most likely completely innocent, but can someone clear up the source of this?

The shoes would be likely to get bloodied no?

[Harry D]

The shoes would be likely to get bloodied no?

Who knows? There were no bloody footprints found at any of the murder scenes. Some might have splashed on the front of his shoes. It was the early hours of the morning, would anyone have noticed? "I mean, seriously, how often do you look at a man's shoes?"

It wasn't so much that I was inquiring about, but the origin of the story itself.

[RockySullivan]

good point unlikely to be noticed yet you just mentioned a story of someone washing their shoes so...

[Jon Guy]

People also used the Baths and Wash houses in Goulston Street.

Alice McKenzie was known there as a regular who used to earn money washing clothes for Jewish families.

[Mayerling]

I think washing up in the public sink is a very possible idea but wouldnt somone notice the blood stained water near the murder site in the hours after? I was also thinking about the second hand clothes recently since Liz Jackson's dismembered remains were found in the LE Fisher underwear bought used from a servant, I had wondered if that was Torso's connection to his victim. Wouldn't make much sense though. I wonder if the ripper had access to a supply of used or new clothes, if his clothes would be bloodied from each kill that's quite alot of sets of clothes to lose. Perhaps he had a method for only getting blood on his hands and sleeves?

Interesting point about somebody noticing blood stained water near the murder site. Reminds me of an odd story - unrelated to Whitechapel, but in spirit very much into this particular situation, for a case in Paris some twenty years earlier.

In 1869 there was a murder that would become the subject of a memoir by the Surete detective who handled it, Gustave Mace, entitled "My First Case". Mace was assigned to find out the fate of one Bodasse, a wealthy miser. His family and friends had not seen him in weeks, though at night some noticed his shadow in his apartment (the apartment's curtains and shades were drawn, but there was light from inside and someone moving. It subsequently turned out that the killer of Bodasse, a police informer and spy named Pierre Voirbo, had very cleverly set up his activities in searching Bodasse's apartment in such a way that it looked to outsiders that it was Bodasse moving about, not Voirbo, and that Bodasse would be reported "as alive' long after he actually was murdered.

The case has been called the best example of "diamond-cut-diamond" in the 19th Century, as every action of Voirbo was painstakingly undermined by Mace's stick-to-it-ness until a brilliant conclusion involving an experiment with a sloping floor where the murder was committed.

However, for our purposes there was one intriguing moment showing a clever murderer overcoming police inquiry. Bodasse's body was cut up ,and parts dumped in wells and the Seine. But it required iron nerve (which Voirbo had plenty of), and on one occasion he was carrying a bag of Bodasse's remains to a corner of the Seine and dumping the pieces in casually. Two gendarmes came over to ask him what he was doing. "Oh," he said calmly, "I'm sorry gentleman, I am a fisherman, and I am just dumping some scraps of meat here to attract the fish - I will come back in the morning to get some good fishing done!" The gendarmes looked at him calmly tossing the fragments into the river, and wished him well with his fishing!

Now, granted bloodied water soon after a horrible murder on a nearby locale is not like a man with a bag of "meat" fragments dropping them into the Seine to improve the fishing, but this shows you that a calm killer might very well talk himself out of a similar type of enquiry.

Jeff

[Rosella]

Major Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police at the time of the murders, wrote in his memoirs that he was within five minutes of catching Jack (in his opinion) as out on the City streets he had come across a public wash basin with bloodied water in it down an alley way after the Mitre Square murder. His memoirs were titled 'From Constable to Commissioner: The Story of Sixty Years Most of them Misspent' (1910). Only trouble is, Smith was supposed to be a very amusing man but not strictly reliable, to say the least!

I wouldn't put too much faith in lodging houses having coppers for boiling water. One observer of a lodging house kitchen at the time described it as reeking, and with inches of dirt all over the floor and walls. Any lodgers probably had a basin and a jug of cold water as part of the facilities, and that would be it.

The Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association maintained lots of drinking fountains with cold water taps and basins outdoors, near pubs in London. (They wanted to promote temperance.)

There were indeed lots of second hand clothing markets, many run by Jewish people, in Victorian London. For a sixpence or so the Ripper would probably be able to buy a pair of trousers or a jacket. Or he could go to a public wash-house. That's always supposing of course that Jack got a lot of blood on his clothes or that he wasn't employed in a job where blood would go unnoticed.

[GUT]

G'day Rosella

I wouldn't put too much faith in lodging houses having coppers for boiling water. One observer of a lodging house kitchen at the time described it as reeking, and with inches of dirt all over the floor and walls. Any lodgers probably had a basin and a jug of cold water as part of the facilities, and that would be it.

From some reports I've read I really doubt that some of them even had that, maybe a cold water spigot, sometimes outside on a verandah that they could use for a scrub if they could get a bit of soap from someone [remember the puch up over a sliver of soap].

[Cogidubnus]

Major Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police at the time of the murders, wrote in his memoirs that he was within five minutes of catching Jack

Ultima bullshitta I'm afraid...

[Rosella]

Oh look, the old boy probably enjoyed writing his memoirs and big-noting himself at the same time!