HELP: The Farthing 'myth'

[John Savage]

Surely Some Mistake

"To the confusing part, we could add that Major Smith refers to the fartings in his memoirs"

A simple typing error no doubt, yet it does rather some up some peoples opinion of Major Smith's memoirs.

Rgds
John

[kensei]

If there had been any type of coins at Annie's feet I suppose it would have had to have been considered one of the Ripper's cruel jokes, like he was paying her for her services after killing her.

But it's also widely written about that two rings had been taken from her fingers and that rather than farthings the contents of her pockets- a comb, a folded piece of muslin, an envelope containing some pills, etc.- were arranged neatly at her feet. Aren't those things considered to be accurately reported?

[Magpie]

I wrote a brief article about this in the Rip, and while the rest of the "arrangement" can be dismissed as press hyperbole, the farthings myth does seem to have some grounding (whether that makes them relevant is another argument altogether).

As Dan pointed out, there was a possible instance of someone passing off polished medals or farthings as half-sovereigns on Hanbury street shortly before the murder--the description of that miscreant was actually pretty close to that of the suspect Piggott, who was eventually found and cleared of the murders. It might be worth considering that Piggott was the source of the myth--certainly after he was found and cleared the police seemed to lose interest in the "polished farthing" angle.

[DVV]

Hello,
To the confusing part, we could add that Major Smith refers to the fartings in his memoirs, and so did inspector Reid in a later murder's case (this is to be found in the sourcebook, I think).
Thanks.
DVV (broken-english poster)

[Dan Norder]

Hey BB,

There is no police record of farthings having been found at Chapman's feet. It seems to have come from garbled press accounts, like a lot of the other standard myths. For the longest time book authors didn't have access to police documents and just repeated press claims over and over. Some recent authors are still passing off these myths as accurate just because they don't know any better. That's probably all it is in this case, depending upon which books you had read.

The partly confusing part here is that there was an ambiguous reference to the Chapman murder by a police officer discussing a later murder in which a polished farthing was found under the body. Some authors have decided that this meant that there was, in fact, also one of more farthings by Chapman's body. What this officer was referring to was not to any coin by Chapman's body but to witness reports around the time of the Chapman murder that a suspicious man in the area had been trying to pass altered coins as a higher denomination than what they actually were. It's possible the authors you refer to are familiar with this report and were confused by it... though they may not have known anything about it and were just going by extremely outdated information from old books.

[Billy Bulger]

Hi everyone, I'm new and I was hoping someone could help me out with this. Up until recently I like many, considered the eerily placed farthings by Annie's feet merely another enduring myth of the Ripper and his legacy. But several authors in the last several years have claimed that the farthing 'myth' is, in fact, truth. Can someone clear this up for me or is this yet another area of Ripper study thats destined for perpetual argument?

Thanks guys