Room 13 Miller's Court

[Rob Clack]

Thanks Glenn, all the best to you.


As for 26 Dorset Street, I believe it was built with three doorways. One facing Dorset Street, one in the passage it self and one leading into the court itself (Mary's room). The shed portion would originally have been used as a shop, so the tenants who lived above would need the passage entrance to get to the upstairs room and then you would have had the door to the back parlor which became Mary's room.
I use to work in a place in Knightshill which had a similar layout. I don't know how old the building was but it had outside toilets. Anyway, you had the shop entrance, there was a door that lead to the upstairs rooms and a door to the kitchen. There was also a door around the side that accessed the stairs and a door around the back that lead to the back garden and to the toilets. So I think 26 Dorset Street originally looked like this, and the partition was just the two inside doors close to the stairs.



Rob

[Sam Flynn]

Sam

Why would those Georgian architects have two doors leading to the same place?

I'm not sure that they did, Stephen. It appears that the side-door to the upper floors was more "aft" than one might imagine, if I read this rather low-res segment of the Goad plan correctly. See the red circle on the top segment and compare it with the original image beneath:



...there seems to be a doorway indicated just under the red circle, on the left hand side of the passage. If so, this might have been the side-entrance to the back parlour (as the room is labelled in your diagram), the front door perhaps being reserved for the original "masters" of the house. I'd have thought that the front door might also have been used for welcoming guests - one wouldn't have expected them to shuffle down that cramped alley to the "tradesman's" entrance.

As I said, I'm only basing this conjecture on a crummy image of the Goad plan. Perhaps someone has a better reproduction of the relevant section they could post?

[Jane Coram]

Hi Perry,

I can see what you are getting at, but there could be another side to the coin. (I did put a wink icon in there but it looked as if he was constipated, so I took it out again. )

The pump yard and the dustbins were right outside number 13. If it was being used as a kitchen/scullery at any time, then there would need to be a door at the back for practical purposes - that is to collect the water, get rid of waste liquids down the drain, and also to put rubbish in the dustbins.

Okay it's not that much further to the other door in the side wall, but if that door led to the staircase and the other rooms, I can't see people wanting to trudge through with buckets of refuse and water to get into the scullery. Much more logical just to take a couple of steps from the back door to the bins and pump.

Even things like taking the washing to hang out, or the chamber pots and buckets used overnight for you know what, would have to be taken down to the WC's at the end of the court. Again, better to take them out of the back door than through the passage at the side, especially as that door was half way along the passage and if anyone was coming through it at the time, they might not be too happy being confronted by a slopping bucket of Heaven knows what!

Hugs

Jane

xxxx

You can tell I've done a lot of bucket carting. Lol.

Oh just seen Rob's new plan, and that looks spot on to me, that is exactly how I pictured it. I wonder if the door from the shed into the hall opened the other way though (inwards) other wise they would bash into one another if they both opened at the same time. Some poor sod would be walking along minding his own business and get squashed against the wall Lol.

[John Casey]

Hi Rob, the only issue I can see with your reconstruction of the original layout is why would you need to build a partition once Kelly's room was converted to a bedsit? Sure, you'd need to block the door off, perhaps as someone said, with the original front door, but I cant see that being called a partition.......?

[perrymason]

Hi Jane,

Thanks for addressing the post, I was feeling invisible, but I have never, ever, heard or read anywhere that Marys room was anything but a sitting room or parlour before conversion. It was never a kitchen or scullery. Which means water obtained from the pump would not pass through that room at all, unless destined for use in that room. And since Prater seemed fine with transporting it through the archway door upstairs, maybe not such an inconvenience.

Anywho,....Im satisfied with what I feel is the answer here, so Ill bow out so others can gain their own sense of accuracy. Nice to see you Ms Coram...as always.

Cheers.

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Hi Rob, the only issue I can see with your reconstruction of the original layout is why would you need to build a partition once Kelly's room was converted to a bedsit? Sure, you'd need to block the door off, perhaps as someone said, with the original front door, but I cant see that being called a partition.......?

I am not sure what you mean here, John.
If McCarhty needed to create another room in order to cash in more rent, he would have needed to put up a wall in order to separate the room from the rest of the ground floor space of #26. And apparently a non-usable door was included in that partition wall.
I don't see any problem with this. It's common practice when you need to create more rooms, that you erase a partition wall. McCarthy just didn't bother to use a very high quality one; seems like he used what he could hold of or didn't use anymore.

All the best

[John Casey]

Hi Glenn, yes that would be true if there were no dividing wall between the staircase and Kelly's room. What I was wondering was, if, as Rob seems to have suggested in his graphic of how he sees the original layout, there was a perfectly good dividing wall, then all you'd need to do would be to block the connecting door as I understand it, rather than building a partition where a wall already exists.

[Sam Flynn]

We needn't assume that McCarthy put the partition in place - although he may have been the first to sequester the ground floor front room for use as a shed. Remember, Miller's Court had been divvied up for rental long before McCarthy took it over, and he'd only done that fairly recently.

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Hi Glenn, yes that would be true if there were no dividing wall between the staircase and Kelly's room. What I was wondering was, if, as Rob seems to have suggested in his graphic of how he sees the original layout, there was a perfectly good dividing wall, then all you'd need to do would be to block the connecting door as I understand it, rather than building a partition where a wall already exists.

John,

I don't think there was a real, proper dividing wall to begin with.
The sources seem to indicate that it was a very thin partition wall, so it is most likely that it wasn't a proper wall belonging to the original layout, but that it had been in place somewhere else originally and had been put up as a divider at a later stage as a temporary solution in order to create the room #13.
I am no building expert but probably the partition consisted of only the pure wooden panels without the actual original wall material.

I can't give a good explanation for why the door is there, but most likely it was a 'blind' one and that it at one point was functional when the wall was at its original place, before it was moved to divide Kelly's room from the rest of the ground floor space.

All the best

[Rob Clack]

Just a thought, why does a partition have to be the whole wall? The door could have been sealed, papered over etc. So in effect it would be partitioned from the rest of the house.

Rob

[Sam Flynn]

Just a thought, why does a partition have to be the whole wall? The door could have been sealed, papered over etc.

Precisely my thoughts, Rob. A sealed doorway is a more likely proposition IMO, especially when one considers the dimensions of the room - I can't see more than one door being fitted into a length of wall barely ten feet long.

[Stephen Thomas]

Sam and Rob

I think that the word 'partition' is mentioned too many times (especially in the1898 Kate Marshall murder trial) for that wall to be anything else. If it had been a regular lathe and plaster non-loadbearing internal wall it would not have been referred to as a 'partition'. I'm starting to think that this partition and the staircase behind it were part of the original house and not a later add-on. The first house I bought, a London terraced house built around 1870, had a wooden partition in exactly the same place, ie about 3 feet behind the main back wall of the house, to allow access to the garden. There was a door in the partition to enter the back kitchen.

[Veritas]

Wow thanks Stewart for that phot of Prater'swindow!

[Chava]

I was looking at this thread and a couple of things occurred to me:

- When Mary Ann Cox describes Kelly entering her room with Blotchy Face, she does not say mention anything unusual about how Kelly entered that room. She simply describes Kelly walking in and the door banging shut behind her. So either Kelly had found her key, or that door was left open. Which suggests she wasn't interested in security. But many witnesses claim that she was. Perhaps the door was left open as a courtesy to other prostitutes using the room when needed. If the door were bolted, then Kelly would know to stay away. Perhaps Kelly had found her key. In which case where was it at the crime scene? Either way, it sounds out-of-character for Kelly to leave her room completely open and undefended when she went out.

- I believe there was very little furniture in the room. So where did Blotchy Face sit and where did Kelly sit while she serenaded him for that long period of time? It's probably not germane to any investigation, but it interests me. We don't know when Blotchy Face left, and he may well have left almost as soon as he arrived. Leaving Kelly to sing to herself for an hour. After all, he clearly wasn't getting what he came for anytime soon.

- If Bowyer could push aside the 'curtain' that blocked the window in order to see inside the room, then the hole in the glass wasn't stuffed with material. If it were, he would probably hesitate to push it through since, for all he knew, there was a sleeping woman inside who might get very annoyed with him for waking her up.

[Ben]

Either way, it sounds out-of-character for Kelly to leave her room completely open and undefended when she went out.

She was probably drunk and absent-minded, Chava. Besides, I'm not sure how "out-of-character" it would have been for Kelly to leave her door on the latch. We know from Chief Inspector Moore than many East-Enders were in the habit of leaving their doors unlocked.