Was Annie Austin a Ripper Victim?

[MrBarnett]

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?

You aren’t the first to have that that totally baseless epiphany.

[MrBarnett]

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.




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?

Remind me, how much did Gehringer leave in his will? Far less than William Crossingham. And the combined wealth of Crossingham, McCarthy Gehringer was a drop in the ocean compared to the real heavyweights in the business, the Oylers.

Do you really envisage McCarthy sitting behind the counter in his shop all day selling screws of tea?

Spitalfieds was a tough neighbourhood and I have no doubt that McCarthy was a hard man. I’ve no doubt that nefarious goings on occurred on his various premises.

So far, your evidence seems to be coded references to organised crime in the sporting press and the misdeeds of people McCarthy may have crossed paths with.

[MrBarnett]

>> 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.

Have you read the whole of this thread, Dusty?


Another interesting point for those that like John McCarthy as the Ripper. He owned the doss house at 35 Dorset St where Austin was attacked.

[MrBarnett]

Can anyone point me in the direction of an image - photo, sketch - of William Crossingham in the press? How about John Satchell?

Presumably they gave press interviews when the residents of their doss houses started dropping like flies. Or perhaps they preferred to keep a low profile so as not to earn unwelcome notoriety.

[MrBarnett]

There’s really nothing to see here.

From Pall Mall Gazette 12th May, 1882:

[MrBarnett]

Part 2

[MrBarnett]

Part 3

[MrBarnett]

Part 4

[MrBarnett]

The prosecution actually requested that the case be heard at the Old Bailey so that the abstruse legal issues it threw up could be decided by a higher authority than the Middlesex Sessions.

[MrBarnett]

Jack McCarthy’s criminal record consists of a single conviction for being involved in some way in the organisation of a single (not plural) boxing match thereby committing a ‘trifling offence’ that ‘was not considered of sufficient importance to deserve any punishment at all.’ Whether the match was illegal at all was a moot point at the time.

What a monster the man was.

The fact that there is no evidence of any other wrongdoing him against is proof that he was as devious as Al Capone, the Krays were babies in comparison and he was probably Jack the Ripper.

[seanr]

Another interesting point for those that like John McCarthy as the Ripper. He owned the doss house at 35 Dorset St where Austin was attacked.

Pretty sure that's William Crossingham's place. It was William Crossingham who appeared at the inquest as the owner.

Crossingham also owned a few houses in Little Paternoster Row.

[MrBarnett]

Pretty sure that's William Crossingham's place. It was William Crossingham who appeared at the inquest as the owner.

Crossingham also owned a few houses in Little Paternoster Row.

Of course it was. I was quoting from an earlier post in this thread.

Which houses in Little Paternoster Row did Crossingham own? According to Duckworth, the ‘notorious’ Jack McCarthy owned the houses in Paternoster Row, but there is evidence that some outside observers got Millers Court and Little Paternoster Row mixed up.

[seanr]

Of course it was. I was quoting from an earlier post in this thread.

Which houses in Little Paternoster Row did Crossingham own? According to Duckworth, the ‘notorious’ Jack McCarthy owned the houses in Paternoster Row, but there is evidence that some outside observers got Millers Court and Little Paternoster Row mixed up.

I don't know off hand which houses in Little Paternoster Row Crossingham owned. But Chris Scotts transcript of the Times coverage from the inquest has:

William Crossingham, of 64 Western road, Romford, stated that he owned several lodging houses in Dorset street, White's row and Little Paternoster row.

I'm pretty sure Crossingham must have owned number 4, which Daniel Sullivan stated he lived at and looked after in his testimony, at the Mary Ann Austin inquest.

On the Booth notebooks, I don't think Sergeant French would have mistaken Little Paternoster Row and Millers Court. The purpose of Booth's secretaries having a local policeman, like Sergeant French, accompanying them on their walks was to prevent those kinds of mistakes.

Here's historian David Englander's view on the police opinions expressed in the Booth notebooks. From his essay 'Policing the Ghetto: Jewish East London, 1880-1920' available here: https://journals.openedition.org/chs/1141

For this purpose the Metropolis was parcelled out into a number of beats each of them patrolled conjointly by interviewer and respondent. Nearly every street in London was visited and its social composition recorded. In H Division Booth and his associates enjoyed the company and co-operation of Inspector Reid, Sergeant French, and Superintendent Mulvaney. Not only were policemen required to identify so called Jewish streets, they also presented much incidental information about the character of the community. ‘During these walks’, wrote Booth, ‘almost every social influence was discussed, and especially those bearing upon vice and crime, drunkenness and disorder’

Booth’s investigators, though sceptical of much that was said, had no grounds for thinking that police observation was rank-related or distorted by social class. And neither have we. The information given to the Booth Inquiry is probably as representative of police attitudes and opinion as we are likely to obtain.

The information in the notebooks makes sense if Sergeant French's opinion/ understanding is that McCarthy owns/ controls Crossingham's properties, too.

[MrBarnett]

I don't know off hand which houses in Little Paternoster Row Crossingham owned. But Chris Scotts transcript of the Times coverage from the inquest has:



I'm pretty sure Crossingham must have owned number 4, which Daniel Sullivan stated he lived at and looked after in his testimony, at the Mary Ann Austin inquest.

On the Booth notebooks, I don't think Sergeant French would have mistaken Little Paternoster Row and Millers Court. The purpose of Booth's secretaries having a local policeman, like Sergeant French, accompanying them on their walks was to prevent those kinds of mistakes.

Here's historian David Englander's view on the police opinions expressed in the Booth notebooks. From his essay 'Policing the Ghetto: Jewish East London, 1880-1920' available here: https://journals.openedition.org/chs/1141





The information in the notebooks makes sense if Sergeant French's opinion/ understanding is that McCarthy owns/ controls Crossingham's properties, too.

So now McCarthy owns/controls Crossingham’s businesses too? Where on earth does that come from?

[seanr]

So now McCarthy owns/controls Crossingham’s businesses too? Where on earth does that come from?

No. It is possible that Sergeant French's opinion was that the Crossingham properties were controlled by McCarthy. This would explain how Duckworth was provided with the 'information' that McCarthy owned most of the properties in Dorset Street and the houses with the broken windows in Little Paternoster Row.