The Red Handkerchief...

[Sam Flynn]

I don't dispute the fact that Cox provided a more detailed description than Lawende. I was suggesting that the latter's vantage point may have better facilitated a good description, since Cox's evidence gives the distinct impression that she only followed Blotchy from behind.

But she was very much closer than Lawende. Since faces are generally symmetrical, a 50% turn of Blotchy's head would have given her more than enough visual info to describe him. Even a lesser turn of the head, at close range, might be better than the view Lawende's more distanced vantage-point, even if the latter saw him full-face. And, don't forget, it's quite possible that Cox saw Blotchy full-face when he and Kelly stopped, mere feet ahead of Cox, at the entrance to 13 Miller's Court.

Even if the man had turned round at some point, one woman's "blotchy" impression is another man's typical weathered-looking East-ender.

Perhaps it takes an East End woman to make a definitive pronouncement on another East-Ender's complexion! To me, they all look the same

Well done, by the way, on picking out yet another parallel between GH's story (the phrase "met the murdered woman") and those appearing in the popular press of the 10th November. I hadn't spotted that one, although it appears in a number of newspapers.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

Hutchinson's police statement:

"...just before I got to Flower and Dean Street I met the murdered woman Kelly and she said to me: “Hutchinson, will you lend me sixpence?”

Daily News, 10th November:

"Kelly informed her that she had no money...Soon after they parted, and a man who is described as respectably dressed came up and spoke to the murdered woman Kelly and offered her some money."

And:

"on Thursday night she met the murdered woman at the corner of Dorset street"

In only two sources do the phrases "met the murdered woman" and "the murdered woman Kelly" appear, and these sources are Hutchinson's statement involving Kelly encountering a witness whilst looking for money, then bumping into a respectably dressed man and taking him home, and the Daily News article involving precisely that sequence of events. We either have two independent accounts that are "coincidentally" near-identical to one another in terms of event chronology and terminology, or we have one account heavily "inspiring" the content of the other.

Well, whaddoyaknow - you are absolutely right!

Then again, she WAS the murdered woman Kelly, right? And even though it makes the coincidence more obvious, it really is not a very damning feature. How many people on the streets do you think spoke of "the murdered woman Kelly"?

Think about it. It´s not a very complicated combination of words, it´s not an illogical phrase in the context and like I said, the phrase "the murdered woman" was common enough. What you needed to do to tell the Dorset Street victim specifically from any other murdered woman, was to add her name: The murdered woman Kelly.

Being the Googler that I am, I decided to take a look at the phrase "The murdered man Jones". It turned out that there were 1790 hits.

As Eric Idle put it: Say no more, say no more ...

But if you're destitute and supposedly in desperate need of hard and fast cash for tomorrow's rent collection, you're not likely to be whiling your time away singing and boozing. If not mutually exclusive, the two "phenomenons" are mutually incompatible to say the least.

Ben, alcoholists - and there is every chance that Kelly was one, or en route to becoming one - will drink no matter what mood they are in. And prostitutes would have been treated by their customers, more than likely.
So there we are: we have Kelly desperately in need of money and drunk on somebody else´s expense.
According to you, what happens now is that Kelly will find it impossible to sing, given that she is out of money and drunk?

You need to reconsider that, methinks.

This was the Victorian East End of London, Fish, not the Moulin Rouge. These were beggars who could not afford to be choosers, and that applies to both parties in the transaction. The grotty local punters were no more holding out for a soprano with a smile than the prostitutes were holding out for silk top hats with wads of cash. Hour-long boozy serenades were about the last thing one would expect to occur in a typical east London prozzie-punter transaction. If a prostitute could charge top dollar for that sort of thing, she would not be on the poverty line and she certainly wouldn't be living in Dorset Street, and if a punter could afford to pay top dollar for that sort of thing, he certainly wouldn't be venturing into the slums of the East End to find it.

That´s some generalization! No, Ben, the punters were not all the same, people never are. Some dream, some are cynics. Some have more money, some have less. Some are happy, some are sad. Even in the East End!
The East End represented if not all, then at least very many walks of life.

I realize that you need to use stereotypes only if your reasoning is to hold a little bit of water. But it does not hold up to scrutiny.
It´s the exact same thing as your reoccurring assurances that nobody who seemed a bit affluent would ever venture into the East End. It´s just as wrong, as proven by the many people who went slumming, some of them incredibly rich.

If we are to have a real chance of understanding what happened, we must accept that not all people were moulded in the same shape.

Nope, just two shunts and a grunt, and a few coins cast onto the cobblestones while the flies are done up. Then onto the next one, spend the earnings on gin, then onto the next one...etc etc.

Yeah - all of them, supposedly? No prostitute took any punter home, no punter was seduced by a girl smiling and flirting, no sex affair was accompanied by a song that year - not one. Not in the East End.

Or?

...who sailed to exotic island locations in distinguished company, and who didn't live in an east end hovel on the poverty line.

Yep, I know the one...

Ah - so in exotic islands, prostitutes COULD be noisy and happy? But in the East End they could not?
And were ALL prostitutes in exotic islands noisy and happy?

Generalizations, Ben. Stereotypical, one-dimensional thinking, moulding all people to the same shape. It does not pan out for a split second.

Yes, in all probability.

Significantly, there is distinct dearth of a "respectably clad" men mentioned at the inquest.

Hmm. Let´s just say that when you speak of "all probability", I can discern some probability that does not adjust. Quite some, actually.

No, let's acknowledge the reality that if Schwartz had referred to the man as looking "respectable" when speaking to the police, the detail would have appeared in Swanson's report.

No, let´s not do that, since it would be to draw conclusions that we cannot draw. That´s not how we should work. We may suggest that it would have gone down in the report, but we can never be certain that this is -as you choose to put it - a reality.
I think that we can be reasonably safe - I like to put it that way - that Schwartz WAS asked about the man´s overall appearance. It would be strange if he was not. So it is to my eyes a lot more probable that what he said was left out, than it is to think that he was never asked the question.

Disregarding all of this, let´s work from your scenario as an assumption. Let´s assume that Schwartz never got any question from Swanson about the general appearance of BS man´s attire. Maybe Donald forgot to ask. Or maybe he was uninterested.

If this was so, what does it mean?

That if the reporter of the Star instead asked about it - or was told without asking - then we must not listen to what Schwartz reportedly said?

When we have a paper source stating something totally uncontroversial where the police report has mentioned nothing at all, then the paper version is all we have - and we must accept that it is probably correct.
It of course predisposes that the information is not at odds with other information. But in this case there is no conflict to see however far we cast our eyes.

The information could of course be wrong - but there is nothing at all to support such a suggestion.

When we discussed this before, you had somehow come up with the notion that BS man was a simple roughian and you supported that take with the information that he had reportedly been tipsy. The picture of a drunken hooligan emerged.

The interesting thing was that the tipsy bit was ALSO only in the paper, so the bolstering factor did not live up to your demands of veracity. I trust you remember the debate?

I think that the tipsy thing is something that would be much more prone to get into Swanson´s report than the respectable thing. My guess is that Schwartz did not say anything about the tipsy part to the police. But that does not mean that we should throw the information out - just like the respectability bit, this is the only information we have, and it is not in conflict with the rest of the sources, like for example the knife.

The best,
Fisherman

[Sally]

By George! I think He's read it!

The 'Well-dressed man accosts victim, offers her some dosh and goes back to her place' tale was in currency even before the 10th.

Even the Wheeling Register, this week's hot publication, had that one:

It has been learned that a man, respectably dressed, accosted the victim and offered her money. They went to her lodgings on the second floor of the Dorset Street house.

[9th]

The story was out there from an earlier point in time than we might think. It orignated somewhere, but not with Hutchinson.

[Fisherman]

The 'Well-dressed man accosts victim, offers her some dosh and goes back to her place' tale was in currency even before the 10th.

Even the Wheeling Register, this week's hot publication, had that one:

[9th]

The story was out there from an earlier point in time than we might think. It orignated somewhere, but not with Hutchinson.

But isn´t this a very mundane description of how an affair between a prostitute with a room and a punter goes down?
A man approaches a woman, a deal is struck and they go to her room to complete it.

Has it occurred to anybody that if another man of respectable appearance got it in his head to buy Kellys services, he´d be in the clear for having acted as the typical punter?

There is absolutely nothing strange with punters acting like punters. Or with prostitutes acting like prostitutes.

During her time as a prostitute, how many times was Kelly approached by men who offered to pay for sex with her?

The best,
Fisherman

[Sally]

Yep Fish, you're absolutely right.

Fancy punters accosted Kelly in the street all the time. Particularly on the night of her death.

[Wickerman]

...... yet another parallel between GH's story (the phrase "met the murdered woman") and those appearing in the popular press of the 10th November. I hadn't spotted that one, although it appears in a number of newspapers.

Not only do we have to be amused by the suggestion he can't think for himself, but now we are being told he can't speak for himself.

[Fisherman]

Yep Fish, you're absolutely right.

Fancy punters accosted Kelly in the street all the time. Particularly on the night of her death.

I´m sorry, Sally, but we don´t have any track record of who accosted Kelly on the other nights, so we cannot make that assumption. Unfortunately, that reduces your post to baseless jesting, nothing else.

I have made the suggestion that Kelly may have been somewhat more expensive to rent than the other victims in the canonical five.

If you disagree with that and can provide evidence for why this universal rule (the younger and the better looking, the more expensive the prostitute will be) would not have applied to Kelly, then do so.

If we can agree that what applies otherwise would also have applied to Kelly, then we may perhaps also agree that she could have had more customers with better resources than the rest of the women in the series. Nothing dramatic, just enough to procure more customers with a little more money and somewhat better dressed than the average punter.

I personally don´t think this is rocket science and a preposterous suggestion. If you do so, then I´m afraid it will take some explaining on your behalf, instead of jesting.

Are you up to that?

The best,
Fisherman

[harry]

Seems strange,if Kelly was attractive enough to engage better paying customers,that by that November she was living in the slum of a one room hovel,up to her neck in debt,and by one account,thinking of ending it all.

[Sam Flynn]

Not only do we have to be amused by the suggestion he can't think for himself, but now we are being told he can't speak for himself

It's not a question of his not being able to speak for himself - he clearly could - but of whether he wrote the script.

[GUT]

G'day Harry

Seems strange,if Kelly was attractive enough to engage better paying customers,that by that November she was living in the slum of a one room hovel,up to her neck in debt,and by one account,thinking of ending it all.

But how much better paying the others were said to be 4p, was she 6p perhaps?

Now of course it could be that with so many unfortunates around she couldn't afford to charge any more than the others.

She had also probably been off the game while living with Joe, at least according to him.

Finally how much was she spending in the pub?

[Fisherman]

Seems strange,if Kelly was attractive enough to engage better paying customers,that by that November she was living in the slum of a one room hovel,up to her neck in debt,and by one account,thinking of ending it all.

Suggested scenario:

Kelly works the West End, drinks away her money, cannot pay the rent, and is turned out.

Kelly moves- step by step - closer to Dorset Street, all the while spending away what she earns, in the end having to rely on guys like Barnett to provide for her.

Kelly ends up in Dorset Street, still fairly attractive and fairly young. She turns tricks, and she is payed 30 per cent more than Chapman and her likes, but it is still not enough to allow her to grow rich - she drinks, she pays the rent as best as she can, but she is sloppy and finds it decidedly hard to make ends meet. Perhaps there is a pimp in the background that we do not have on record, perhaps there´s an extortion gang who shares her money with her.

In any major city in the world, there will be prostitutes. Many of them will be young and beautiful, and some of these girls will earn ten times the money that you and I make. Nevertheless, many of these girls will live in squalor and run-down houses, finding themselves in debt much of the time, being forced to turn more and more tricks.
As they grow older and less attractive, they are pushed further down society´s ladder, being able to charge less for their services, and having aquired a need for alcohol, drugs etcetera.

This is how prostitution looks. It´s an ugly face, and that face never was young and attractive.

The best,
Fisherman

[Lechmere]

And they get locked into it - getting money without real work, almost on demand and as required. But then drinking their earnings to make themselves feel better - or buying a nice new hat to make themselves feel better (nowadays drugs and handbags). I would guess that Kelly lied to Barnett about what she did while they were together, or perhaps Barnett was ashamed to admit it.
Either way, Kelly's living conditions in Dorset Street were a considerable step up from those enjoyed by Nichols, Chapman, Stride or Eddowes, even if we today would not like to live in Miller's Court.

[Fisherman]

Either way, Kelly's living conditions in Dorset Street were a considerable step up from those enjoyed by Nichols, Chapman, Stride or Eddowes, even if we today would not like to live in Miller's Court.

That´s an important qualifier, Edward, thanks for that!

the best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

I´m sorry, Sally, but we don´t have any track record of who accosted Kelly on the other nights, so we cannot make that assumption. Unfortunately, that reduces your post to baseless jesting, nothing else.

Sally was deliberately joking, I think, Fish.

[GUT]

G'day Lechmere

Either way, Kelly's living conditions in Dorset Street were a considerable step up from those enjoyed by Nichols, Chapman, Stride or Eddowes, even if we today would not like to live in Miller's Court.

At least for the time being she had a place to call her own.