Prater's stairs

[Wickerman]

My confusion, and perhaps that of a few others, is that in England the Goad map's "1st floor" is what we call "ground floor", so Goad's "2nd" is the english "1st".

I hear the US and Canadian convention is to use "1st floor" re the english "ground floor". Was Goad US or Canadian?

Yes, considering the English convention is the refer to the first floor above the ground as "ground floor", it is very odd that Goads do not use that same convention.

Charles Goad, born in England, first opened up his mapping business in Montreal, Canada, only moving back to England in 1885.
He appears to have brought his 'American' terminology with him

[MBDecre]

Yes, considering the English convention is the refer to the first floor above the ground as "ground floor", it is very odd that Goads do not use that same convention.

Charles Goad, born in England, first opened up his mapping business in Montreal, Canada, only moving back to England in 1885.
He appears to have brought his 'American' terminology with him

Smile. It is odd. Although 'defense' of our "ground floor" here, we tend to build our (litteral) 1st floor more or less actually on the ground, hence "ground floor". It seems to us here that the US build quite some amount/height of space under their homes, so "1st floor" seems more well placed. Also, we have a lot of rain so the water-table is quite a present concern when building (thus, a lot of homes, perhaps most, don't have basements; unlike the US perhaps..?)
Hoping those generalisations of the US aren't too far off the facts??!!

Thanks for the Goad history - seems like he may well have brought the Candian terms back.

[Pierre]

Richard

There is no question that your graphics will not be totally brilliant on this one or whatever project you tackle. However, this is rather complicated as to how the whole thing hangs together. As you will know, I was involved in making a video of the internal and external layout of #26 Dorset Street and Millers Court with the late Paul Kearney aka NEMO which was quite good but he cobbled together an imperfect version to show to people at the York conference. People liked it but it wasn't perfect.

I'd like yours to be perfect.

Me too.

Regards Pierre

[David Orsam]

What I am going to do is create TWO versions (which is pretty much what I've already done) - The 'Goad's' version and the 'Thomas' version.

Interesting idea. It does then bring back into play the question of the width of Mary's room, given that we appear to be back to inserting a wooden partition in front of the brick wall. To some extent it should possible to calculate the width from the furniture.

As a starting point, we know that the bed was against the partition and a table was against the bed, which table did not allow the door to be fully opened.

It is now suggested that Mary had a Small Double bed. If so, the mattress size for such a bed is 4ft (and I will assume the bedstead has the same width). If we assume a table width of, say, 1ft 4" (which seems like a reasonable width) then let's add a further 1ft to get to the edge of the door.

We are now at 6ft 4". The distance from the edge of the door to the window can't have been more than 2ft to allow for the door to be opened through the window and I suppose it could have been as short at 1ft.

So, if the bed size is right, Mary's room should be no more than 8ft 4" and possibly as small as 7ft 4".

But if the Goad plan is exactly right and the width of the original room is only 9ft (by my calculations) I don't think it's possible to fit a staircase into that space. So are we going to abandon the Goad scale?

[Pierre]

In the plan of No.26 (below), we see a wall between the the back of the house and Kelly's room, the wall shows an opening with no notes attached. The house was 3 stories, while the back room structure was 2 stories tall.
The opening therefore applies to both floors of this 2 storie structure.
.

I object! I do not SEE anything! There was NO opening between number 26 and number 13! NONONO. It was ONLY A PARTITION WALL, CUTTING the room OFF from the rest of the house.

No one could have come to Maryīs room through a passage like that since there was none. It was a PARTITION WALL. NOTHING else. No doorway. No door. No space for entrance. No nothing.

Amen.

Pierre

[David Orsam]

I object! I do not SEE anything! There was NO opening between number 26 and number 13! NONONO. It was ONLY A PARTITION WALL, CUTTING the room OFF from the rest of the house.

No one could have gotten in to Maryīs room through another passage since there was none. It was a PARTITION WALL. NOTHING else. No doorway. No door. No space for entrance. No nothing.

Amen.

Pierre

Is this sarcasm?

[Wickerman]

Interesting idea. It does then bring back into play the question of the width of Mary's room, given that we appear to be back to inserting a wooden partition in front of the brick wall.

Casebook debates have a tendency to go around in circles, though where the justification lies in creating this space between a freestanding partition and the main house wall seems to be avoided by the proposers of this idea.

[Wickerman]

I object! I do not SEE anything! There was NO opening between number 26 and number 13! NONONO. It was ONLY A PARTITION WALL, CUTTING the room OFF from the rest of the house.

No one could have come to Maryīs room through a passage like that since there was none. It was a PARTITION WALL. NOTHING else. No doorway. No door. No space for entrance. No nothing.

Amen.

Pierre

You're not making yourself clear, Pierre.

[Pierre]

You're not making yourself clear, Pierre.

Wickerman. I have problems with my eyes you see. So I canīt see the opening between the front room and the back room of 26 Dorset Street.

And I donīt understand the word "opening" since I am dyslexic.

And since the police in 1888 - praised be Abberline - has told everyone nothing about 13 Millerīs Court, nothing could have happened in that room.

Also, someone in the police has told everyone that the room was CUT OFF from the rest of the house. So there can be no opening between the two rooms.

So if someone would make a drawing of the rooms, please be sure that he fills them up properly with A LOT OF STAIRS so that nothing can be in this room except from stairs. And perhaps a dozen of costermongers carts.

Amen.

Pierre

[richardh]

I think Pierre's flipped.

[Wickerman]

Wickerman. I have problems with my eyes you see. So I canīt see the opening between the front room and the back room of 26 Dorset Street.

And I donīt understand the word "opening" since I am dyslexic.

And since the police in 1888 - praised be Abberline - has told everyone nothing about 13 Millerīs Court, nothing could have happened in that room.

Also, someone in the police has told everyone that the room was CUT OFF from the rest of the house. So there can be no opening between the two rooms.

So if someone would make a drawing of the rooms, please be sure that he fills them up properly with A LOT OF STAIRS so that nothing can be in this room except from stairs. And perhaps a dozen of costermongers carts.

Amen.

Pierre

Ok, well let me try to clarify what we are talking about.
The Goad Plan shows us the condition of how these buildings were erected, not necessarily how they were in 1888.

There was an opening from No.26 into Kelly's room at the ground floor level (first floor, on the plan), which was closed at some point, by either the door being nailed shut and wallpapered over or, some form of wooden partition installed over the opening which appears to have included an old door as a panel.
We cannot at this point in time describe the partition in detail due to the fact that we cannot know what size this original opening had been. So either of the two options are possible, but for arguments sake, it makes no difference which we prefer.
At the time Kelly lived there, there was no access through this wall between her room and No.26.

Upstairs, the opening into the room above Kelly's is also indicated on the plan, but you are not interested in this upper floor.

[richardh]

Well, If that's the case Jon, and it sounds perfectly reasonable, then the Goad map is certainly confirming that there was an opening (door?) at that very position along the passageway. It's states categorically that there is an opening on the 1st (street level) floor. The only question is if the position indicated (where the break in the line and the '1st' are written) is accurate or the opening could have been located anywhere along that passage (even on the other side of the partition! just under the archway into the court).

You've encapsulated all the relevant points there, with nothing known to contest the conclusion.
However...



On these Goad maps there are scores of examples of internal building walls with openings of various sizes.
In cases where no notes are attached to the openings, the intended meaning is that the opening applies to all floors.

Where we read "1st", and the building is 4 stories tall, the opening applies to only the first/ground floor, the floors above (2nd, 3rd, 4th), all being solid walls.
In other cases we might read a note like, "2nd, 4th", attached to the opening, which means the first/ground floor and the 3rd floor have solid walls, but the 2nd & 4th floor walls have an opening.

Some differences can be found on this small sample.


In the blue circle we see "1st", yet the building is 3 1/2 stories tall, the opening is in the first floor wall only.
Likewise, in the red circle we read "3rd", the building is 3 stories tall, so there is no opening in the lower two floors.

As can be seen in the above pic. there are numerous walls shown with openings carrying no notes, which means the opening applies to "all floors".

Goad maps only recognise a Basement, first, second, third, fourth floors, etc.
They do not use the term "ground floor", the first floor is the ground floor.

[richardh]

Now then:
That gap in #13



Jon, you say that the goad says if there is no annotation like '1st', 2nd' etc then the openings are on ALL levels. That wall is a 3 level wall:
1st = #13 - partitioned over door/opening
2nd = #19 - which had its door in that wall
3rd = room - above #19 which had a window facing into the court right above the sloping roof of #19

Could ALL the openings mentioned (above) all be in the same line - one above the other? and if so the line would be the centre of that wall (where the window above the sloping roof is positioned).

AND if the goad map only 'indicates' openings on all three floors but NOT the position then the opening in the passageway (indicated on Goad) could be just an arbitrary position and open to interpretation.

Thinking out loud here and could be totally wrong!

[Wickerman]

... The only question is if the position indicated (where the break in the line and the '1st' are written) is accurate or the opening could have been located anywhere along that passage (even on the other side of the partition! just under the archway into the court).

If these were architectural plans we would expect openings to be drawn to scale, but these dwg's were not used in that capacity.
The number and size of any openings, windows, vents, iron doors, shutters and such details are drawn using symbols, sufficiently large enough to be identifiable, not necessarily to any scale.

Precisely how far along the Millers Court passage this side-entry door was is not discernible on the Plan.

[Stephen Thomas]

Is it your view that (as indicated by the Goad map) there was a brick wall separating the back room from the rest of the house and that (as indicated by Stephen's model based on your plan) a wooden partition was inserted inside the back room so that there was a now staircase between the partition and the brick wall?

If so, why was this done?

Was there already a staircase in the house so that this created a second staircase?

And do you say that the arrangement of Mary's room, i.e. wooden partition, staircase and brick wall was mirrored in room 19 on the first floor?

Hi David

Lots of questions in your last two posts and I can't quote them all because of lack of technical ability. Some time ago you asked me how I seemed to know all about the internal workings of #26. I became interested in the subject almost a decade ago when I started to read a thread called The Layout Of Millers Court and was surprised that obviously clever posters couldn't get their heads round the simplest stuff concerning this subject.

I had bought and renovated and lived in two 19th century houses, one built in 1835 and the other in 1880, and I understood how they were put together. The logical and inevitable layout of #26 Dorset St was pretty obvious to me. As for the problems in hand at this point in time here we go.......

Nobody knows if Room 13 was originally part of #26 or added later.

Likewise the partition and them there 'Prater's stairs.

The partition would have had to continue up to become the wall of Room 19.

If you want to know what the phantom door in the alleyway is.......

PM Rob Clack. He's sure to know.