the Rent arrears

[Jane Coram]

Hi,

I know I've posted this before, but there are some newcomers to the boards that might not have read the post, so apologies

There has to be a good possibility that the 'laundry' that Maria Harvey brought around and left with Mary was actually destined for the pawn shop to help towards her rent arrears.

The fact that Maria also left a pawn-ticket for a grey shawl, on which 2s had been lent supports the idea that a trip to the pawn shop was on the cards. Why did Maria leave the pawn ticket? - Well Mary could have used part of the proceeds to redeem to shawl to return to Maria. I can't think of any other reason she would have given it to Mary.

As Caz pointed out, Mary must have been well aware that she was living on borrowed time and needed to give Bowyer something when he called. The amount of clothing that Maria left would have accounted for enough of the arrears to placate McCarthy for a bit.

There are only a couple of other reasons that Maria would have left the clothing with Mary. The suggestion that it was actually laundry goes completely out of the window when one looks at the items in question. Some of them could be laundered, but some could certainly not be, which puts paid to the idea that Mary was supposed to be scrubbing away all evening. Apart from that there were no facilities whatsoever to wash even the washable items in Mary's room. Washing clothing at that time was a hideously labourious and utensil heavy occupation.

The other possibility is that they were stolen goods and Maria wanted Mary to hide them for her.....but the pawn ticket still goes more in favour of the items being destined for the pawn shop.

It was extremely common in the East End then for household items and clothing to be pawned on a weekly basis to pay for rent or food - in fact it was the usual way of life at that level of society. Most families literally lived from week to week by pawning items like bedding and crockery just to survive. So it would seem a fair bet that is what Mary was going to do.

I do think though that the other point that Caz raised - that Mary might well have been trying to get a really lucrative hit that night to solve the problem is a good one. She was still attractive enough to get a better price for her wares, so it would seem like a sensible way to try and get out of her predicament. Whether or not she succeeded is another matter, but I can't imagine the idea didn't cross her mind.

Hugs

Jane

xxxx

[BillieHoliday]

Hi jane, I think, you're probably right about the laundry.

But there is a good chance that Miller's Court did have laundry facilities at the end near the public toilets. Courts such as these would usually have a wash-house attached to a privvy. The wash house would have contained a Copper to boil up water and wash the laundry plus scrubbing board and a mangle.

I can't believe a court that size would not have these laundry facilities provided, however shabby they might have been.

[Chava]

So Mary pops the clothing. Pays Harvey some money out of the proceeds and redeems the shawl. I do think the clothes could have been nicked. It wouldn't have stopped them being pawned. There was no identification check at a pawnbrokers. Eddowes had 2 pawn tickets in her possession when she died. Both different names and false addresses.

[perrymason]

Although I rarely disagree with anything Jane posts, I do believe that there is evidence that suggests laundry may just be laundry.

Mary and Maria were said to have spent the entire afternoon Thursday in her room....Mary has a pump outside her window, she has a tin bath under her bed...and we have reason to believe that a fire had been recently burning in the fireplace....and the kettle spout is recently melted off. Maria says she gave Mary a few coins. There are clothes that do not belong to Mary and some are identified by Maria as her clients laundry. The remnants of the hat and the skirt fabric in the fire were 2 of those items.

I have seen courtyard photos from that same period in almost identical layouts with clotheslines strung back and forth like power lines.

There is no smoking gun in the circumstantial evidence that they did do laundry, but my bet is if Mary worked that afternoon and felt like she had earned her night out...it might explain her gay mood when arriving home....

...To what some people would like to imagine is the tense and imminent threat of eviction....something which can be categorically dismissed as it is not even mentioned by her landlord at the Inquest.

Mary had helped out Maria with a place to sleep, at the very least they were close, why wouldnt Maria share her income a bit with Mary now, to help her out?

Lets say they did do the laundry.. for the jolly...Mary went out feeling good about a decent days work....she doesnt clean houses or knit socks when not soliciting like some of the other Canonicals...and while feeling spreeish she has a Docker type taking a shine to her, buying her some pints.

The pub is near closing, Mary is tired from the afternoon but feeling good about herself, so she secures the arm of the Docker for an escort home, and much to what I would imagine was his chagrin, she sings to him. Note that no mention of a male voice joining in is made.

Thats the key moment for him...when she stops singing. Does Blotchy then get the reward he hoped for..does she shoo him out, then pass out half undressed on the bed...do they both leave again....no-one has the answer, but the status of the room remains dark and silent by any accounts that might have heard or seen otherwise.

Best regards all.

[Jane Coram]

Hi Billie,

As far as I know there was no laundry facility in the court, and there are fairly detailed descriptions of the court that mention toilets and dustbins, but no mention of a laundry anywhere. There would not really seem to have been room for one as all the space in the court seems to be accounted for.

The only building that was not being used as a dwelling at the time was the one at the end of the court which was by the toilets, so could have had adequate drainage, and it is possible that it was used as a laundry, but there doesn't seem to be any record of it if it was.

There was a municipal laundry at Goulston Street Baths, and others dotted around the area, which is probably where most of the residents in the area that didn't have their own facilities would go to do their weekly wash.

Model dwellings like George Yard Buildings did have purpose built laundry's, but they were to cater for a lot more residents than there were in the small courts in the area.

It will be interesting to see if anyone else has any information that's been missed about a possible laundry room in Miller's Court.

Hugs

Jane

xxxxx

[Jane Coram]

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to have to disagree as well, but there are a great many solid reasons that work against the suggestion that the 'laundry' that Maria left was actually laundry.

Firstly, if we look at what Maria left:

Two men's dirty shirts, a little boy's shirt, a black overcoat, a black crepe bonnet with black satin strings, a pawn-ticket for a grey shawl, upon which 2s had been lent, and a little girls white petticoat.

Out of these, the only things that were washable, were three shirts, and a little girls petticoat. If Mary did wash these as a paying job, she would probably have got about a halfpenny for washing each garment, a little more if she ironed them as well. I do have a list of the prices charged by professional laundresses somewhere, and it was a truly pathetic wage for the work involved.

So if Mary did wash those items, (and supposing that she kept it all herself and didn't share it with Maria,) she would have got twopence-threepence for doing it at best. Not really much towards the rent arrears.......... especially when you consider that she could earn at the very least fourpence for two minutes up against a wall.

Why would Maria leave non washable items with Mary calling them 'laundry' anyway, unless it was a euphemism? (It's worth noting that a lot of prostitutes routinely called themselves 'laundresses,' and it was almost a standing joke at the time.)

More importantly, if Mary pawned the items, using the average prices for pawning such garments, she would have got at least a shilling each on the washable items, a good half a crown for the pilot coat and a couple of shillings for the bonnet, again depending on their state.

If she was a good bargainer she might well have come away with 10 shillings or more on that lot...take off the 2 shillings + interest for the shawl and she would have a nice sum to give to Bowyer to keep McCarthy off of her back.

Not only that, but doing the laundry in those days, would hardly be recognisable to us today. Let's say Mary was a professional laundress and did want to wash those items. All whites had to be boiled, and boiled hard to get them white, in fact, to get them even vaguely clean.

This meant having a zinc copper which had to be kept on the boil for hours at a time, in order to get the items white. Mary might have been able to get away with a big wash tub, which was continually refilled with gallons of boiling water - but one kettle of hot water would not have been enough to wash a hanky, let along several shirts and a petticoat.

Then they had to be thoroughly rinsed, in another tub and put through a mangle to get the excess water out. Of course in the middle of all of this, Mary would have had to cart the water in to boil and out to throw down the drain, using a saucepan or pot, one scoop at a time as she would not have been strong enough to lift the tub up to take it out on her own.

So although I'm sure Mary did do the odd bit of her own washing in her room, if she wanted to do anything substantial like sheets and bulk washes, she would have taken it to one of the municipal laundries.

Sorry to be a wet blanket (no pun intended. Lol) but I honestly think that lot of clothing was destined for the pawn shop, and I agree with Chava that it was probably nicked, or they were hoping they could redeem it again and return it before it was missed.



Hugs

Jane

xxxx

[perrymason]

Those are good points Janie....but let me add a comment made by Dew referring back to seeing Mary Jane about the area...he said she always had a clean white apron/frock on. I dont recall him saying pressed...but that clean white image might reflect on Marys personal habits. She wore her hair out often...not always braided I would imagine,....so she likely washed it often.

And the heat you suggest would be needed to boil water to clean white cottons and linens would almost be enough to melt a spout off a kettle.

Im not contending Mary or Maria didnt pawn their own, or nicked belongings from time to time, and we have evidence other Canonicals pawned belongings..their own and others.

Its just the cumulative circumstantial evidence...including the position of the tin bath under her bed in MJK1. My guess is almost out far enough to trip on isnt the usual spot...it was likely tucked way under the bed.

The laundry, the remnants of a large or very hot fire, the tin bath visible, a few pence for Mary, the mythology that says the garments were folded, the melted spout, the entire afternoon out of sight, the location of the pump,....Marys chipper mood...

I dont suggest that Mary tried to make rent money of any kind from Maria via the laundry services...or Blotchy for the serenade...in fact I think Maria gave her money as a gesture rather than payment, and Blotchy bought her drinks perhaps intending on taking trade in exchange.

I dont see anything that Mary does her last known hours resembling a woman trying desperately to earn rent money....as, for all we know, Mary Ann Cox may have been doing.

Best regards Jane as always.

[Jane Coram]

Hi Michael,

I think we'll have to agree to differ on this one. I spent the first 20 years of my life doing my washing like that and to be honest with you, I wouldn't blame Mary for doing anything rather than turning her hands red raw from the carbolic soap and washing soda.

Still, it would be a boring old world if we all agreed all the time wouldn't it?

Much love

Jane

xxxxx

[BillieHoliday]

Hi Jane, I seem to recall a newspaper report about the night of the double event. It mentioned a policeman finding blood in a public sink in a court off Dorset Street. It didn't name Millers Court but when I read it, I wondered if there was some kind of washroom in there.

Victorian outside loos didn't provide sinks to wash your hands in back in those days as I recall. So there's a good case for a washhouse being in MC.

In some of the Georgian houses still standing in Spitalfields, wash houses have been preserved where they stood at the back of the garden. It's not inconceivable that a washhouse was built in MC when the buildings were first erected.

Does anyone else recall this report?

[Chava]

I always wondered about that 'washing his hands in a sink near Dorset St' thing. But I suspect, if it had been Millers Court, the press would have been all over that after the Kelly killing even if the police wanted it kept quiet.

[Jane Coram]

Hi Billie,

They'd be very lucky if the toilet had a door, let alone a sink.

Seriously though, I've tried to keep this on topic of rent arrears, but don't know if I've succeeded. Lol.

I have to say I think it very unlikely that there were any washing facilities in the court. Houses in courts off Dorset Street were literally thrown up, (sometime around the 1850's) made of the cheapest materials, and about as basic as any habitation could be. In fact they were often so badly built that people were better off in the slums they had left.

McCarthy was probably glad to just get anything in rent from them, as he knew that if he threw the tenants out, the ones he moved it would have been just as bad or worse, and presumably better the devil you know.

Fact is though, that every amenity was spared, and the houses didn't have running water or drainage of any kind, hence the pump yard at the top of the court and the need for outside toilets. There is no mention of a water pump at that end of the court that I've found, but it's possible that it just wasn't mentioned. The story of the blood in the sink off Dorset Street could really have nothing to do with Miller's Court though, even if there is any basis in it.

The contemporary sketches show that the pump outside Mary's window was a free standing one, without a sink under it, which meant of course that the householders had to take their own buckets to get water and take them back home.

I would think that as the pump there was so basic, it's unlikely that there would have been a sink with a tap at the other end of the court, and even less chance of a washroom come laundry of any kind.

Although we don't know, it's probable that the toilets drained into a cess pool rather than being on main drainage and they would have been so disgusting that I seriously doubt any of us would have been able to use them without chucking up.

Basically Miller's Court was such a s***hole, that McCarthy was lucky to get any rent for his rooms there, but beggars can't be choosers.......

Hugs

Jane

xxxxx

Ps Ripperologist 97 carried an article called 'Dorset Street Revisited' which gives a fairly detailed description of the area including Miller's Court, it's history and its background for anyone that is interested.

[perrymason]

Hi again all,

AP discovered that there were "public" privy's at a few Canonical sites, or very nearby, but as Jane mentioned they were not equipped with running water or sinks. I would imagine the pump in the alcove might have had some tub or basin kept under the faucet when not in use by a resident though.

The arrears though...its been my position throughout this thread that unless you choose to use a story the police decided to discard, how can you suggest staying in her room demonstrates that she had rent arrears on her mind?

This pattern of arrears and eviction with Mary does have a precedent. Her last room, before this one, and with Joe B.

A working woman, meaning prostitute in this case, would know Fridays held special meaning for rooms rented by the week,...it was often Friday or Saturday morning that it would be collected.....and as we can see by Mary Ann Cox, there was at least one woman of that court visibly out soliciting that rainy night.

Some trips while we understand Mary is in her room singing to her company that arrived with her.

Demonstrated Effort, or Expressed Concern by Mary for arrears both present and in the past, is not in evidence here.

Hutchinson is the only witness that can assist her "trying to earn" argument....Caroline Maxwells statement would have no impact on that either way. So thats the choice as it is at the moment, Hutchinsons story is proof that she was out soliciting...but it was thought 3 days after it was given at the station, to be a false account.

On the books officially, Mary is still thought to be last seen by Mary Ann Cox... when Mary Jane came "spreeishly" home with Blotchy.

Best regards all.

[Mr.Hyde]

Mary Ann Kelly may have been laying low after Eddowe's murder almost 6 weeks previous.She was a long term tenant with good earning potential.Perhaps McCarthy had set a deadline on the arrears.

[perrymason]

Mary Ann Kelly may have been laying low after Eddowe's murder almost 6 weeks previous.She was a long term tenant with good earning potential.Perhaps McCarthy had set a deadline on the arrears.

On the part I put in bold Mr Hyde, if so, he didnt mention it to the police nor did Barnett mention he was aware of any deadline. Nor did anyone that knew Mary say anything to that effect at the Inquest. More to the point....no-one said Mary ever mentioned being concerned about arrears or eviction at all. And if there was a deadline related to Bowyers visit Friday morning, why wasnt she behaving like Mary Ann Cox apparently was,...actively seeking work.

With what we know of Marys past arrears issues elsewhere and her behaviour that night...there seems to be little reason if any to suggest she went soliciting unseen to address her rent arrears.

Unless of course you would like to believe a stranger met her that night and went with her to her room to kill her...in which case you may already have one of those in evidence.....without her leaving her room after 11:45pm.

Best regards Mr H

[caz]

Hi Perry,

Let me ask you something. Forget about whether Blotchy could have been a client, if you are so against the idea. Forget about whether Mary could have been getting anxious about the rent situation, if you flat out don't believe she was.

If you truly believe that she would have spent the last afternoon of her life doing laundry in her room to get two ha'pennies to rub together, why do you not think it would even occur to her, when being treated to drinks that night by Blotchy - whoever he was and whatever the relationship was between them - that she could tap him for a bit of cash as well, even if she had no intention of frittering it away in the morning on boring rent arrears?

It's a serious question, considering the fact that we can't eliminate Blotchy from being the last man in with Mary, and considering the fact that even if she had managed to scrape together anything at all that day, from scrubbing, begging, borrowing or stealing, it was all gone by the time her killer was.

If she didn't have a penny to her name when she met up with Blotchy, she would have depended on someone like him for any food and drink she consumed that night. Wouldn't it also stand to reason that if Joe Barnett had had to let her down earlier, she'd have seen Blotchy as an alternative cash source in addition to a walking bar restaurant? Why wouldn't she have asked him for some money, if the worst she thought she would get was a polite "No"? When would enough ever have been enough for a woman in Mary's pitiful circumstances at her young age?

Even if she had a bit of money on her, do you really see her putting her hand in her own pocket with Blotchy around offering to pay for her drinks and supper?

So once again, why would she have died without a penny piece unless Blotchy was a tight sod (in more ways than one) or knew she wouldn't be needing rent where he was sending her?

Love,

Caz
X