Was Annie Austin a Ripper Victim?

[MrBarnett]

I read somewhere that there was an occasion when Sgt Thick was being attacked by the mates of a villain he was attempting to arrest in a doss house and certain of the lodging house keepers involved in the boxing match went to his aid. From memory Satchell was one of them, I can’t recall who the other(s) were. That was perhaps why he was willing to provide them with character references.

[MrBarnett]

The transformation of our understanding from mild mannered Grocer's Shop owner and landlord, to a man who was invited senior policemen's retirement do's and the head of a business empire which included multiple lodging houses, an over 30 year career as the 'unspoken' backer of local boxers and eventually becoming the 'principal propreitor' of one of London's largest boxing venues (a fact which is mentioned in a couple of articles in 1911, but then seems disappears from the historical record...), will naturally lead to questions.

We know that there was organised crime in the East End in the 1880's. There were illegal gambling dens, protection rackets at the Cambridge Music Hall and tobacco smuggling operations which can only have been possible with an organised criminal element. But where are they in the historical record? - they are strangely absent.

There were undoubtedly crime and criminals around Jack McCarthy in all his activities. Illegal gambling in boxing, prostitution in lodging houses, some of which if he did not directly or intentionally profit from, but he undoubtedly did profit from them.
Then we have men in his employ, certainly Henry Buckley and possibly Billy Austin, who have an ability to be a bit violent with knives and other weapons. And now it turns out he may have directly employed Jack Spot during the early stage of his career. We do now have him in a direct business relationship with Dick Burge, a major player in a strange and extremely organised embezzlement operation (which by the time he's publicly doing business with Jack McCartney, he's served his time and he is, of course, a reformed man).

Those who deal with criminals might take care lest they thereby become a criminal. Perhaps in his dealings between the world's of the police, legitimate businesses and the East End underworld which was always close by, he managed to stay whiter than white. He must have been a savvy business man to have stayed successful for so many years. Questions as to the nature and extent of his business empire, I maintain, are very much historically valid.

It would have been almost impossible to run the businesses McCarthy ran in the East End and be passionate about boxing without rubbing shoulders with villains. But there are degrees of villainy. When someone shows me evidence of McCarthy’s involvement in serious villainy, I’ll accept it. That he had to employ tough guys to protect his business doesn’t surprise me. Billy Maher (not Austin) was such a tough guy, but as I’ve said repeatedly, the evidence suggests he was Ann McCarthy’s minder for some 30 years. Yes, Ann was Jack’s sister-in-law, but she was also Bill Crossingham’s daughter . Next you’ll be claiming Crossingham was a latter day Al Capone and we’ll be well on or way to a resurrection of the Lords of Spitalfields nonsense.

[seanr]

They had to get Al Capone on tax evasion. One of the problems with prosecuting organised crime is that it is very difficult to prove and almost impossible to show a connection to the leaders of the organisations, leading to a tendency to take out the foot-soldiers, but never the field marshalls.

If John McCarthy was not involved in serious villainy then no evidence to connect him would be found, and if he was he would have been careful to avoid evidence which led back to him. So no conclusive evidence may ever be found.

Asking the questions remains valid.

[MrBarnett]

The East End was a tough place to run a business.

John Satchell clearly found it so. Some ‘Lord’ he was. Perhaps if he’d had a Billy Maher on the payroll, he might have fared better.

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/vict...#8217;t-thrive

[MrBarnett]

They had to get Al Capone on tax evasion. One of the problems with prosecuting organised crime is that it is very difficult to prove and almost impossible to show a connection to the leaders of the organisations, leading to a tendency to take out the foot-soldiers, but never the field marshalls.

If John McCarthy was not involved in serious villainy then no evidence to connect him would be found, and if he was he would have been careful to avoid evidence which led back to him. So no conclusive evidence may ever be found.

Asking the questions remains valid.

Yes, Capone was devious, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was a major crime figure, is there? Are you really comparing him to McCarthy?

Any higher offers out there? Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin? Satan?

After all, there is some doubt about how much padding there was in those gloves.

[seanr]

Yes, Capone was devious, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was a major crime figure, is there? Are you really comparing him to McCarthy?

Any higher offers out there? Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin? Satan?

After all, there is some doubt about how much padding there was in those gloves.

I am not comparing Capone to McCarthy, no. Rather using Capone a useful example to demonstrate how difficult it would be to ever prove if other figures were involved in crime. There's real doubt Capone was a major crime figure, yet it cannot be proved conclusively he was.

I would have thought the phrase 'If John McCarthy was not involved in serious villainy then no evidence to connect him would be found' would have made it clear.

I mean, they had to get Charles Manson on 'conspiracy'.

[seanr]

Well, MrBarnett you've only gone and done it... you found the generational link from McCarthy to acknowledged gangsters of the next generation such as Jack Spot and Charles Sabini, with an extra spice of weirdness with William Brogdon Jnr (the son of the Chief Constable of Great Yarmouth, addressee of the strange 14 Dorset Street letter).

What on earth am I blabbering on about?

Seems there's a lot to be said about the boxing venue The Ring in Blackfriars. As the article was posted originally at the other place, out of sheer manners it seems right to say those things over there. https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/vict...g-organisation
It will complement some of the discussion points which have been raised in this thread.

For the sheer fun of it, I've started out with the most 'conspiracy theory' observation I think can be made about the 'The Ring Organisation' article.

[MrBarnett]

Sean,

Have you read ‘Mob Town’ by John Bennett?

McCarthy gets a mention in that.

Gary

[MrBarnett]

If Bennett’s talking about McCarthy, his statements that the charges being more serious than just organising the fight and receiving a fine are both wrong.

The note 58 against the claim about Thick ‘enjoying a financially beneficial relationship with the Lords of Spitalfields seems to be attributed to the Daily News of 29th March, but I suspect it should have to Tom Wescott’s The Bank Holiday Murders, a highly entertaining - one of my favourite Ripper books - but largely conjectural.

So, in a book about organised crime in London, McCarthy gets a single mention, complete with errors and a dubious source.

Note to McCarthy accusers: must try harder. Find something serious. Anything!

[drstrange169]

>> One single conviction for having some involvement in a prize fight which may have been just about technically illegal becomes a history of involvement in ‘illegal boxing matches’ (plural) and makes him a million times more evil than the Krays.<<

Calm down Gary, Nobody has suggested McCarthy was "a million times more evil than the Krays, because of his boxing connections". Even the person that mentioned the Krays (not in connection with boxing I might add) has already admitted the comparison was over the top.


>> What a monster Jack McCarthy was. He was almost certainly personally responsible for all the 11 WM and the criminal mastermind behind every crime that occurred within a 5 mile radius of his lair in Dorset Street. <<

Well said,

Image for example, just because someone was a witness in a high profile murder case, and despite the fact that there was no direct evidence of any kind against them, some people were to go around claiming that witness was responsible for all the unsolved murders, not just in a five mile radius, but right across London!

You posed the question that "McCarthy’s ‘notoriety’ can be traced to a single event - the murder of his tenant, Mary Kelly".

Others have debated that, nothing more.

[seanr]

At the west end of Dorset Street leading into Brushfield Street is Little Paternoster Row. Black on both sides. In map on East side only. 2 - 3 storied common lodging houses. Ragged women, children, holey toeless boots. Windows dirty patched with brown paper & broken, prostitutes, thieves, ponces. Buildings owned by the notorious Jack McCarthy of Dorset Street.

Source: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b3....0924%2C1772.5

Emphasis placed in bold is mine, not George Duckworth's.

From the context, people can decide for themselves whether Jack McCarthy is notorious because he was the landlord of Mary Kelly.

To me it's clear that Jack McCarthy is considered notorious because of the state of his houses and the people who live there. It's not clear if these are Duckworth's own words, or the words that Sergeant French used to describe the street to him. But it has nothing to do with Mary Kelly.

[The Macdonald Triad]

Source: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b3....0924%2C1772.5

Emphasis placed in bold is mine, not George Duckworth's.

From the context, people can decide for themselves whether Jack McCarthy is notorious because he was the landlord of Mary Kelly.

To me it's clear that Jack McCarthy is considered notorious because of the state of his houses and the people who live there. It's not clear if these are Duckworth's own words, or the words that Sergeant French used to describe the street to him. But it has nothing to do with Mary Kelly.

It's odd how Mr Barnett brings McCarthy's henchmen to the front but then almost apologizes for them in the same breath. I'm sure we'll some tripe about how he wasn't a slum lord but a businessman.

[seanr]

So, in a book about organised crime in London, McCarthy gets a single mention, complete with errors and a dubious source.

You answer your own question... errors and a dubious source. This wasn't comprehensive dig into John McCarthy, his businesses and his associates.

There's a reason we read about characters like Arthur Harding. They fight in public and make a spectacle of themselves, they even gloat about it. They make good copy and they are easy to research. Anyone quietly fixing boxing matches, receiving stolen goods and running brothels behind the guise of a common lodging houses can quietly go about what they are doing without ever needing to be publicly responsible for disorder.

The subtitle of ‘Mob Town’ by John Bennett (which I haven't read, by the way) is 'A History of Crime and Disorder in the East End'. It's in the title, he's looking for examples of disorder. He wouldn't be interested in say more bureaucratic crimes like fixing the prices of barrows in Spitalfield's market or running protection rackets against the local pubs, unless these things spilled over into violence. And even then, they want to talk about who threw the punches and not who employed them.

Note to McCarthy accusers: must try harder. Find something serious. Anything!

There might not ever be anything conclusive. Collecting evidence against him would have been difficult even if he was guilty of giving the orders for any crime (emphasis on if). The best we might ever get is a weight of inference. We know he hired muscle who carried (and used) knives and sometimes revolvers. We know at least some describe his properties as brothels, we know some suggest he controlled a whole street.
We also know he formed business associations with convicted fraudsters. That he spent many years in the East End boxing industry and backed many boxers, perhaps putting up the prizes up for prize fights.
How much money are we talking about? - to back so many boxers, buy and lease so many houses and to (part?) own a church and renovate it to create a major boxing venue in Blackfriars.

Where did the money come from?

And where did he find the time? - we know his shop was open for many hours and he was supposedly there manning it as a mild mannered chandler shop owner.

Imagine if we could implicate him in relation to a fixed boxing match, or if we can find an associate of his committing a string of assaults including one which led to a man's death and one where a revolver is held to a Spitalfield's publican's head - and even after all this this associate continues to enjoy McCarthy's patronage in public and rubs shoulders with his showbiz friends or what if we can find some extremely valuable stolen goods turning up in the hands of a general manager in his employ and inside of an establishment he owns?

If we could establish things like this, in addition to the things we can acknowledge right now, would you admit to at least a little doubt?

[The Macdonald Triad]

Mr. Barnett,

What if the reason Mary Kelly was so far in arrears (rent wise) was because she was young and pretty and an old Pimp like McCarthy would be willing to take her on her word? Just had an epiphany, I wonder if all the Whitechapel victims (all 11) were in arrears to a certain Dorset St slumlord?

[MrBarnett]

Source: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b3....0924%2C1772.5

Emphasis placed in bold is mine, not George Duckworth's.

From the context, people can decide for themselves whether Jack McCarthy is notorious because he was the landlord of Mary Kelly.

To me it's clear that Jack McCarthy is considered notorious because of the state of his houses and the people who live there. It's not clear if these are Duckworth's own words, or the words that Sergeant French used to describe the street to him. But it has nothing to do with Mary Kelly.

People should first investigate whether McCarthy actually owned any property in Little Paternoster Row. And then ask themselves why he was ‘notorious’ when Crossingham and a dozen others running similar businesses and having a similar clientele in the area didn’t get a mention.