Diemschutz arrival

[lynn cates]

nyet

Hello Jon. Thanks.

"Is there really a benefit to involving the club in this subterfuge?"

On my part? Can't think of any. But I DO have a passion for getting at the bottom of what happened. It is a minor point and, I think, explains the 10-15 minute gap from murder to Dimshits' arrival.

Cheers.
LC

[miakaal4]

Just hanging around...?

What was Stride doing THERE? Was she waiting for someone in the club, waiting for a potential client given the club was in good use. Or meeting someone, using the club as a rondezvous? Was she just passing getting stopped by BS purely by chance? More questions but only one elusive answer.

[lynn cates]

Q & A

Hello Miakaal. Excellent question. If we could answer that, this murder might just get cleared up.

Cheers.
LC

[Michael W Richards]

Hello Lynn,

I just don't see the need for a made up story. If there had been no previous murders or if Liz had not been a prostitute I might be a little more inclined to see the wisdom of such a move. But here you have a prostitute killed with her throat cut like the earlier murders in a dark yard where a prostitute might conduct her business. The club then cooperates with the police as if they had nothing to hide.

Now if they made up a story, how did that come about? Was a poll taken by all members? Was everybody in absolute agreement on this? Were all members informed as to what the story would be? All you need is two members telling different stories or Schwartz getting tripped up in his story to make the police suspicious. Plus Schwartz could find himself in the middle of a murder investigation charged with giving false information to the police. Would he really want to chance that if the Club was completely innocent in all of this?

Again, I think the best course of action for the Club was to cooperate fully with the police rather than having a hastily made plan backfire on them.

c.d.

Hi cd,

Since we have no idea whether Liz was prostituting herself that evening and circumstantial evidence suggesting she wasnt, your premise begins on shaky ground.

The part I made bold in your quote is the main thing I wanted to address, we in fact do have members giving different stories about what time they were alerted to the body and what happened next. Maybe thats your evidence right there....and maybe why Israel was called to the Inquest.

Cheers

[Michael W Richards]

I think some folks believe that for the club members to fabricate any details about what transpired a wide conspiracy to contain the actual truth must have been in place.

Thats not what Im suggesting, nor do I believe it what Lynn and some others are suggesting. What Im saying is that the International Club did not have a spotless reputation, in fact it had one for "low men" before this killing took place, and it happened a little over 3 weeks after the general public began believing that an Immigrant Jew was killing women like Martha, Polly and Annie. Partially because of the Leather Apron myth.

The club was rife with Immigrant Jews and many in that club were considered involved with acts of anarchy. They fought club and stick with the Police in Dutfields Yard the very next spring, Louis, and I believe Kozebrodsky also, is arrested.

Why Liz would be there is, as was noted, the key to many riddles here. I believe its in the best interest of the search for truth that its accepted that its possible the men responsible for the club might fabricate details so as to ensure the club, and its members, were looking shiny clean. I believe its likely that Israel is the icing on that witness evidence cake. Something as innocuous as many claiming the yard and passageway were empty might be a clue here, its stated that often people gathered in that passageway, after meetings, until after 1 in the morning. This is by neighbor accounts to the police and press. Yet we are told that at 11:40 that night both areas were empty. Why then was the kitchen door ajar I wonder?

Ive never suggested they were concealing something like culpability or actual guilt, but Im not opposed to the idea either.

Cheers

[Wickerman]

The club was rife with Immigrant Jews and many in that club were considered involved with acts of anarchy.

Is this an hypothesis?
The membership of the club was of mixed ethnicity. It was the political platform the club represented, ie socialism, where the clubs infamy came from. Not specifically immigrant Jews.

Regards, Jon S.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Wick. Actually, that's true. The membership of the club was almost exclusively Jewish, although anyone was welcome to ATTEND the club meetings and support the club. Their newsletter was in Yiddish, so that should tell you something. They were aiming almost exclusively to the Jewish immigrant demographic, while their sister club, the Autonomee club, went after German and French immigrants.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi all,

I was just scanning the last page of the thread and saw some discussion about the wheel ruts in Dutfield's yard. There were no wheel ruts. That press report (repeated in a lot of books, hence the hold it's taken) is in error.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

stuck in a rut

Hello Tom. The "ruts" were merely a basis for estimating width--all from a discussion I had read.

If there were ruts, Dimshits may have had a devil of a time with his cart, given the recent rain.

Cheers.
LC

[Michael W Richards]

Thanks for re-iterating the clubs ethnic make-up Tom, the meetings speech by Eagle that night was "Why Jews should be Socialists", a recurring theme.

I would imagine that Diemshitz and Eagle and Wess and some others relied on income derived from memberships and meeting fees, that in and of itself could be a motivation for ensuring the club stay out of this murder mess.

Ive begun to feel that Israel Schwartz may just have altered the location of what he says he saw, if for example Israel attended the meeting, and while he was leaving via the side door he witnessed the altercation he describes inside the passageway. When BSM pulls at Liz and she falls, if she did so on the spot she was killed, that might well have been the murder commencement.

Cheers

Best regards

[Errata]

Thanks for re-iterating the clubs ethnic make-up Tom, the meetings speech by Eagle that night was "Why Jews should be Socialists", a recurring theme.

We Jews have a fine tradition of socialism. Eastern European Jews had been practicing forms of socialism for about a hundred years at that point. So it's really no surprise that we dominated the movement in England. We knew the advantages. We had benefited from socialism. Of course in the Pale we really didn't have any access to a free market economy, so it made more sense there. Thus the speeches. Jews were bailing on socialism once they realized that there was no barrier to them becoming as successful as they wanted to be. Which is why Jewish socialism changed in the 1920s or so to a demand for socialized government services instead of pure socialism.

BUT despite the popular opinion of the day, you can't be a socialist and an anarchist. I mean, it would be interesting to see how they might try to work it out, to have goods and services distributed by no central authority whatsoever. I imagine it would look something like a Marx brothers film.

[Tom_Wescott]

We Jews? Seriously? Aren't you like 1/8th Jewish or something? You're something else, Errata. You really should be writing fiction.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Michael W Richards]

While re-reading some press clippings I cam across this one, and I think it may contain the answer to a mystery regarding Strides murder. The Evening News of Oct 1st, 1888.

"When the alarm of murder was raised a young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found. She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty-minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises."

To me this addresses fully whom James Brown likely saw that night. She places herself at the location he saw the couple, at about the same time.

It also states that a neighbor 2 doors down, (Fanny), said the following..

"It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact. The quiet and deserted character of the street appears even to have struck her at the time. Locking the door, she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor, and it so happened that in about four minutes' time she heard Diemschitz's pony cart pass the house, and remarked upon the circumstance to her husband."

In that piece she hears the bootsteps just before 12:45...(what about Israel?), she goes to the door and is only at the door for about 10 minutes just after that, and that she heard the pony and cart after she locked up and was in bed.

Since she did not see any cart and horse approaching while at the door, in fact she was taken on how deserted the street was, it seems to me she could in no way verify whose cart she heard.

Cheers

[Errata]

We Jews? Seriously? Aren't you like 1/8th Jewish or something? You're something else, Errata. You really should be writing fiction.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Umm.. no. All Jewish. Bat Mitzvah-ed and everything. Two Jewish parents, Jewish sister.... Now my mother converted from Catholicism before she married my Dad, so I have a Scottish Catholic half of the family, but according to Judaism, and the way I was raised, I'm 100% Jewish. Hebrew school from the age of three to the age of 18, I read from the Torah on big family occasions, keep the holidays but mostly at my father's insistence, can ask for basic implements in Hebrew, automatic citizenship in Israel. So yeah. We Jews.

Not sure why you thought otherwise. Perhaps you are thinking of someone else?

I should write fiction though. I think I'd be good at it, though I think I probably lack the requisite concentration, and ability to finish things I start.

[Wickerman]

While re-reading some press clippings I cam across this one, and I think it may contain the answer to a mystery regarding Strides murder. The Evening News of Oct 1st, 1888.

"When the alarm of murder was raised a young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found. She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty-minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises."

To me this addresses fully whom James Brown likely saw that night.

Michael.
You will find the Echo, 1st Oct. expands on that story a little..

It is established almost beyond doubt that the poor creature met her death some time between twelve and one o'clock. And yet no one seems to have heard a struggle, or a groan, or the slightest indication of what was going on. From twelve o'clock till half-past a young girl who lives in the street walked up and down, and within twenty yards of where the body was found, with her sweetheart.

"We heard nothing whatever," she told a reporter this morning. "I passed the gate of the yard a few minutes before twelve o'clock alone. The doors were open, and, so far as I could tell, there was nothing inside then." "I met my young man (she proceeded) at the top of the street, and then we went for a short walk along the Commercial-road and back again, and down Berner-street. No one passed us then, but just before we said "Good night" a man came along the Commercial-road; and went in the direction of Aldgate."

The trouble is, Brown's sighting is approximated to have been 12:45 am., but, when he went to the Chandlers shop it might have been 12:30 when he saw them. He doesn't say he passed them twice, so I would ask, did he see them on his way to the shop, or on his return from the shop? There could be 15 minutes between his travels out and back.

Details aside, yes I think Brown saw this same couple. Naturally, Tom thinks I'm wrong

Personally, I think its close enough given the tendency for witnesses to badly estimate the times they gave.

Regards, Jon S.