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Evening, Lechmere.
With respect, it might have been an idea to confine the Toppy material to its relevant threads, although most of the arguments you’ve advanced here have already been addressed in considerable detail on the relevant threads in question.
“Ending up” in the East End being the buzz phrase here. There is no evidence that Toppy had any East End connections until he met his East End wife in 1895. Contrary to your post, the couple were not married that year, but three years later, in 1898. Before that time, Toppy had lived in Norwood, Eltham and Warren Street in the West End of London, but no evidence that he ever lived in the East End until after his marriage to an East Ender. Parental connections to an area relatively close to the 1888 murder district mean next to nothing. My father was born in Wigan. I have never been to Wigan, and know next to nothing about the place. Similarly, there is nothing remotely compelling in the suggestion that Toppy spurned the opportunity to make inroads into his father’s profession at the earliest opportunity in favour of venturing into that comparatively abyssal pocket of the East End purely because his parents got married there.
As for the West End address, nobody ever claimed that he lived in “posh” surroundings, but in 1891 he was living with just a handful of other lodgers that included several policeman. A very far cry from the “chronic want” that characterized the 1888 crowded Victoria Home. Why would Toppy disavow the opportunity of a head start in life, courtesy of his father’s plumbing connection, in favour of the life of an East End dosser? The idea that this sort of existence had any sort of “magnetism”, as you infer, is clearly preposterous.
Where? To Warren Street in the West End? Almost certainly because he was by then in his mid-twenties, had finished his apprenticeship by then (or perhaps more likely his father’s personal tuition), was now a fully-fledged plumber, and wanted to leave the parental home. I can’t think of anything more ordinary, and it would have followed his father’s pattern almost precisely. As you noted, George Sr was a labourer when he was 14, and thus at an age when he was not quite or only just eligible for a plumber’s apprenticeship. It is clear, however, that he embarked upon one at the earliest opportunity and became a plumber upon its completion. The overwhelming likelihood of course is that his son did precisely the same thing, and that he was listed in the 1891 census as a plumber because he was one – a bonafide journeyman plumber who didn’t cut corners to acquire a toe-hold in the profession because he didn't need to.
It’s very unlikely, Lechmere.
It’s very bad Disney film unlikely, in my opinion.
A hedonistic spoiled son of an oil magnate might attempt to “strike out away from home”, but for a young man in working class Victorian London, it would have been churlish in the extreme. The chances are that he took full advantage of his father’s plumbing trade, and thanked his lucky stars that he could be at least reasonably assured of a legitimate entry into a competitive profession.
No. He developed the East End connections after he met his wife, who happened to hail from the East End, unlike Toppy himself. The couple met when she tripped over Toppy’s cane after descending the stage steps of a music hall, where he had watched her performance as a yodeller and skipping rope artist from the front row. The location of the music hall isn’t specified, but somewhere nearer Toppy’s part of town (West End) seems the most likely. I can’t imagine an out-of-work dosshouse dweller in that filthy quarter of the East End waltzing into a music hall performance, all dapper with his “cane” somehow, unless we buy into the “riches to rags and back to riches again” theory occasionally touted by those who want Toppy to have signed the 1888 statement.
All the best,
Ben
With respect, it might have been an idea to confine the Toppy material to its relevant threads, although most of the arguments you’ve advanced here have already been addressed in considerable detail on the relevant threads in question.
“From outer Essex, to Surrey, to Kent, often in the suburbs of London and back to Essex, with Toppy ending up in the East End.”
As for the West End address, nobody ever claimed that he lived in “posh” surroundings, but in 1891 he was living with just a handful of other lodgers that included several policeman. A very far cry from the “chronic want” that characterized the 1888 crowded Victoria Home. Why would Toppy disavow the opportunity of a head start in life, courtesy of his father’s plumbing connection, in favour of the life of an East End dosser? The idea that this sort of existence had any sort of “magnetism”, as you infer, is clearly preposterous.
“Why would Toppy have moved? We have no idea but we know he did.”
“Is it unlikely that a young man might strike out away from home, try and make an independent go of it, struggle to find his way and end up in a poor sort of hostel before returning to his roots after this less than sanguine lesson in life?”
It’s very bad Disney film unlikely, in my opinion.
A hedonistic spoiled son of an oil magnate might attempt to “strike out away from home”, but for a young man in working class Victorian London, it would have been churlish in the extreme. The chances are that he took full advantage of his father’s plumbing trade, and thanked his lucky stars that he could be at least reasonably assured of a legitimate entry into a competitive profession.
“He certainly must have developed East End connections at some time as he married a girl there a few years later and settled down in the East End.”
All the best,
Ben
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