A Cross by any other name...smells like JtR?

[Lechmere]

Mr B
I didn't say school board inspectors dud not exist.
And we are more prosperous now than in the 1950s and 60s.

[MrBarnett]

Low crime rates in the 50's and 60's had more to do with prosperity than innate conformity or deference to authority.

Sadly, I am old enough to have had Victorian grandparents, and believe me they were appalled at the lack of respect their children and grandchildren had for authority. The experience of two generations coming back from world wars had put paid to all that nonsense, but their elders were fixed in their ways.

My old nan (born in Breezers Hill in 1896, gord bless 'er) used to reply 'Good night, Mister' to the nice gentleman on the BBC TV news every night, because he had said good night to her and it would have been rude not to. Our s******s were ignored. She was one of Booth's blackest of the black, but from a very early age she had learned where the power lay in society and
did not want to fall foul of it.

MrB

Unfortunately the censor considers the word for a surreptitious laugh that rhymes with rigour to be racist.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Ed,

Guess who Charles Booth used as the foot soldiers for his original survey (published in 1889, presumably researched a year or two previously) - school inspectors . I doubt he would have used them if they were not already firmly embedded in their locality.

MrB

[Lechmere]

And to reiterate a point I have made before.
In the 1888s London and the East End were still expanding with people pouring though it from Europe and the rest of the British isles.
It was much more transient and life more mobile.
Local government was in its infancy and council housing unknown.
These factors affected how people lived there lives and often makes the exact tracing of people through every year difficult.
But it is not at all difficult for Charles Lechmere

[Lechmere]

Sally, no it’s not really a very smart post, with all due respect to Mr B.

I would suggest there was a vast difference in degrees of conformity between Caz’s South West London and the East End of the 1960s and even greater difference between the 1960s and the 1888s.
As I said – the 1950s and early 1960s were sociologically almost the most conformist decade in our history, with for example, record breaking low crime rates.

I would not compare Lechmere to people inhabiting Booth’s black districts – and never have.
Not so long ago Sally disbelieved that there were over 100 Lechmere records – now she thinks it was the norm for someone like Lechmere
It wasn’t the norm.
As I have said universal male suffrage was new – it was not established. These things take time to take hold, via procedures to make the registration of electors efficient and by electors becoming used to the process of registering themselves.
Similarly universal education was new. The role and wok of school inspectors had not had time to bed down. The East End was a place where – particularly in the 1960s and dare I say even today – many people did not put a very heavy premium on education.

[Cogidubnus]

It is of course the very typical late Victorian aspiration of dragging one's life and family out of the working classes and more towards the emerging lower middle classes...even if you didn't quite get there that was the aspiration that was encouraged...

Hence perhaps the progress from carman to shop proprieter? From "labour" to "trade"...a small differential today, but I suspect a greater one then.

All the best

Dave

[Sally]

Ed,

I'm sure there are reams of academic research to back up your contention that 1880's East Enders were less conformist than those of the 1960's, but I remain unconvinced.

Because we focus here on the dregs of Victorian London it's easy to lose sight of just how deferential the wider society was. Those who were in the direst straits, the blackest of Charles Booth's black classification effectively of no fixed abode and not knowing where their next meal was coming from, can be forgiven for not leaving a perfect paper trail. But someone in Charles' position, with a stable job and accommodation would be keen to maintain an air of respectability. So filling in forms as required by law and not falling foul of the local school inspector would be high on his list of priorities.

MrB

Smart post Mr B.

The blackest of Booth's black were legion, of course; and are evidenced as such in surviving records. The scale and depth of want present on the contemporary streets of London is truly shocking, as anybody who's spent any length of time studying local demographics will know.

The contrast between the lives of these people and the likes of Crossmere is stark - they did not inhabit the same world, but that world was apparent to them, nonetheless. For many, the fear of entering the poverty stricken underworld was very real. As you say, most people fortunate enough to be in a long term stable position would have been likely to adopt the mantle of respectability where they could.

Adherence to the 'right' social group is common human behaviour, widely attested.

[MrBarnett]

Ed,

I'm sure there are reams of academic research to back up your contention that 1880's East Enders were less conformist than those of the 1960's, but I remain unconvinced.

Because we focus here on the dregs of Victorian London it's easy to lose sight of just how deferential the wider society was. Those who were in the direst straits, the blackest of Charles Booth's black classification effectively of no fixed abode and not knowing where their next meal was coming from, can be forgiven for not leaving a perfect paper trail. But someone in Charles' position, with a stable job and accommodation would be keen to maintain an air of respectability. So filling in forms as required by law and not falling foul of the local school inspector would be high on his list of priorities.

MrB

[Lechmere]

Caz
I’m not at all sure of the value in drawing comparisons between the impact of moving home on school attendance in suburban south west London in the early 1960s, a period of unprecedented social conformity, with the same in the East End of 1888.
The same goes for form filling 1961 style compared to the 1880s and 1890s.

Whoever the culprit was, we must guess that he did not go equipped with a mirror, soap, bucket of water and a bullseye lantern.
After the Chapman and Eddowes murders, where there was considerably more risk of blood splatter on the culprit than after the Nichols, one must wonder what precautions he took in the event – quite possible – that he might be stopped by a passing policeman. Maybe he trusted to luck. That seems to me to be the most likely answer.
I think we have to assume that the killer trusted to luck, so I see no reason why Lechmere, if he was the killer, should have trusted to anything else.

In the case of Lechmere – if you momentarily suspend your refusal to consider that there is a case – you might consider that he was lucky Mizen didn’t switch on his lamp. Mizen’s account of their brief meeting certainly suggests he did not.
Or you may say he was unlucky to have bumped into Mizen.
Or that he managed the situation by saying something to Mizen to disarm him – to as far as possible create his own luck.

[GUT]

G'day Caz

Hi MrB,

I well remember moving house when I was 9, in the terrible winter of 62/63, when the snow was deep and our pipes froze and then burst. Granted it didn't involve a change of school, as the houses were about a half-hour's walk away in south west London. But the last thing my parents would have wanted was me and my brothers getting in the way during the moving process (or in fact skipping school for any reason unless we were at death's door ). So they were all too grateful to pack us off to school as usual. Depending on how young the Lechmere brood was when the family moved home and changed schools, it might have suited everyone concerned to send the kids off for the day while the move went ahead.

The meticulous form-filling by Charles Allen Lechmere also reminds me of my own father. Rather than indicating a controlling nature, I think it shows the opposite - a wish to comply with authority and do the right thing, for himself and his family. My father certainly fell into this category, and I do too to only a slightly lesser degree.

Love,

Caz
X

Your parents were soft the day I died mine still sent me to school.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Caz,

I remember that long cold winter too. I also remember how difficult it was to blag a day off school. I remember on one occasion sniffing pepper in an attempt convince my mum that I had a cold - it didn't work!

MrB

[lynn cates]

Hear, hear!

Hello Caroline.

"Rather than indicating a controlling nature, I think it shows the opposite - a wish to comply with authority and do the right thing, for himself and his family. My father certainly fell into this category, and I do too to only a slightly lesser degree."

Hear, hear!

Cheers.
LC

[caz]

Hi All,

I personally find Lechmere a very interesting candidate. His profile, the little we know of it, ties in perfectly with my own hunch as to the killer's background and character. But I would not say the evidence we currently have makes him a very strong suspect. And some of the claims made for his candidacy seem a little imaginative for my liking. For example, he is said to have displayed an "extraordinary"( for which read unhealthy) diligence in form-filling in his Lechmere name. But the evidence put forward to support this seems to be perfectly unremarkable for
someone in his position. Census forms, birth and marriage certificates, school registration, trade directories, electoral registers: all perfectly normal, most of them legal requirements which only those on the farthest outskirts of society would fail to comply with. The icing on the cake is the suggestion that his children did not even have time off when the family moved home. That does seem a little unusual, but is it based on attendance registers or dates of registration? In applying to a new school, a parent would presumably provide the leaving date from the previous school and the child would be enrolled from the day after. That in itself does not mean that the children were not allowed a day's leave to settle in to their new home. Clarification on that point would be very interesting.

MrB

Hi MrB,

I well remember moving house when I was 9, in the terrible winter of 62/63, when the snow was deep and our pipes froze and then burst. Granted it didn't involve a change of school, as the houses were about a half-hour's walk away in south west London. But the last thing my parents would have wanted was me and my brothers getting in the way during the moving process (or in fact skipping school for any reason unless we were at death's door ). So they were all too grateful to pack us off to school as usual. Depending on how young the Lechmere brood was when the family moved home and changed schools, it might have suited everyone concerned to send the kids off for the day while the move went ahead.

The meticulous form-filling by Charles Allen Lechmere also reminds me of my own father. Rather than indicating a controlling nature, I think it shows the opposite - a wish to comply with authority and do the right thing, for himself and his family. My father certainly fell into this category, and I do too to only a slightly lesser degree.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Lech,

By the same token, a guilty and potentially blood-splattered Lechmere would have had no light or mirror by which to examine himself before coming across PC Mizen, and would also have gambled on the policeman not getting his lamp out - even when confronted by not one, but two unknown males, in not the safest of districts.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lechmere]

Bolo
When PC Neil approached Nichols' prone body he initially thought she was drunk and went to move her - something about her alerted him and he realised all was not well and he took out his lamp and shone it on her whereupon he realised he throat had been cut.
This shows that his first thought when approaching what he thought was a living person was not to get his lamp out.
Hence I see no reason why Mizen would have got his lamp out particularly when he did not closely question Lechmere or Paul.