“I am certain you are wrong about the best time in the day for a prostitute to earn a good living in the East End of 1888 (Polly Nichols had her did money three times over early in the evening yet took an hour to find the Ripper almost certainly her last client)”
I’m still not wrong about the Victoria Home entry guidelines, and I still never described the actual streets as “crowded” in the small hours. I said the number of people legitimately on the streets in the small hours would have been two great for anyone to home in on any particular individual to the extent of recording their movements for every murder. The ripper was clearly one such person and he was never caught.
“I was being gallant and am reluctant to accuse Reg of being an outright liar of the worst order”
“he was aged 22 at the time of the murders and he lived in London and his later life at least was spent in the East End.”
“Hutchinson’s claim to have walked about all night as he was late (rather than because he had no money) was in exact accord with what we know were the published rules of the Victoria Home.”
“We have no idea whether he was a fully fledged plumber in 1891, rather than someone who picked up the trade maybe by on-the job learning.”
All this was discussed there in extensive detail.
The restrictions and limitations governing entry into the plumbing trade had been tightened in advance of 1891 and would have been in place at that time, drastically reducing Toppy’s chances of cutting corners as a means of entry into the profession. Reginald, who you believe in your gallantry, observed that his father worked as a plumber (I believe with his father) and was “rarely, if ever, out of work”. It seems likely therefore that Toppy followed his father into the profession at the earliest opportunity. If had learned it in his teens (i.e. during an apprenticeship) that would have made him “a plumber by trade now working as a labourer”, not “a groom by trade now working as a labourer”.
“As I said and as you actually demonstrated, the whole Flemming business is ‘filling-in-the-blanks’”
When did Fleming crop up here anyway? And Toppy for that matter?
All the best,
Ben
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