Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[Elamarna]

I don't think this proves anything, but taking a quick look in the census, Myers Jacoby, the one using the slur, was born in Bavaria/Cologne and his wife was born in Cornwall, whereas (provided I have found the correct man, and I think I have) Philip Solomons, tailor (he's in Goulston Street, Whitechapel in 1891) and his wife were born in Poland.

I'm just making an educated guess, but it could be a case that Jews who felt they were more 'assimilated' might be more inclined to use a slur against a Polish Jew. Friedland, in The Trials of Israel Lipski, did discuss tensions between the 'British' Jews and the 'Foreign' Jews. Jacoby wouldn't have fallen in the former class, though he might have felt like he was deserving of it.

I suppose I'm straying off-topic.

A suggestion that requires consideration, particular with regards to the origin of BS man.

Steve

[Elamarna]

I accept cash, PayPal, credit cards, and most brands of stout, porter, and IPA.


(I should note that this is from 29 January 1888)

That it predates the events in Berner Street is of interest to me.

Steve

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Fair point. Like many of the bits of information we have, these sorts of things never have only one possibility associated with them. I would think the odds would suggest if B.S. was shouting the "Lipski" insult at Schwartz, then B.S. is more likely to be a gentile. Moreover, given that removes the connection between B.S. and Pipeman, it would mean Pipeman could be anything.

But yes, given that Lipski wasn't only used by Gentiles towards Jews, but also between Jews (and probably between Gentiles at times as well), there remains reasonable grounds to not draw that conclusion too strongly. In fact, if my presumption that it was more common as a Gentile to Jewish insult is incorrect, and it was more common as a Jewish to Jewish insult, then the exact opposite argument can be made.

- Jeff

Hello Jeff,

I certainly wouldn’t argue that BS man was more likely to have been a gentile. I’d just sum it up by adding that I wouldn’t entirely dismiss the possibility that BS man might have been Jewish. And I certainly would dismiss a suspect on the grounds of his being Jewish.

Perhaps I can be accused of being over-cautious but I’m also slightly wary of the description ‘Broad shouldered’ man too. He might well have been Broad shouldered and of stocky build but I don’t think that it’s impossible that clothing might have accounted for this; or exaggerated it. Just a possibility worth considering imo.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I accept cash, PayPal, credit cards, and most brands of stout, porter, and IPA.


(I should note that this is from 29 January 1888)

Thanks Mr. P.

Good taste in beer by the way. I had a few cracking stouts on the Bermondsey Beer mile recently.

[JeffHamm]

I don't think this proves anything, but taking a quick look in the census, Myers Jacoby, the one using the slur, was born in Bavaria/Cologne and his wife was born in Cornwall, whereas (provided I have found the correct man, and I think I have) Philip Solomons, tailor (he's in Goulston Street, Whitechapel in 1891) and his wife were born in Poland.

I'm just making an educated guess, but it could be a case that Jews who felt they were more 'assimilated' might be more inclined to use a slur against a Polish Jew. Friedland, in The Trials of Israel Lipski, did discuss tensions between the 'British' Jews and the 'Foreign' Jews. Jacoby wouldn't have fallen in the former class, though he might have felt like he was deserving of it.

I suppose I'm straying off-topic.

That's a possibility, particularly if Jacoby moved to the UK when very young.

But yes, I suppose we are drifting off-topic now.

- Jeff

[rjpalmer]

In fact, if my presumption that it was more common as a Gentile to Jewish insult is incorrect, and it was more common as a Jewish to Jewish insult, then the exact opposite argument can be made.

I don't think this proves anything, but taking a quick look in the census, Myers Jacoby, the one using the slur, was born in Bavaria/Cologne and his wife was born in Cornwall, whereas (provided I have found the correct man, and I think I have) Philip Solomons, tailor (he's in Goulston Street, Whitechapel in 1891) and his wife were born in Poland.

I'm just making an educated guess, but it could be a case that Jews who felt they were more 'assimilated' might be more inclined to use a slur against a Polish Jew. Friedland, in The Trials of Israel Lipski, did discuss tensions between the 'British' Jews and the 'Foreign' Jews. Jacoby wouldn't have fallen in the former class, though he might have felt like he was deserving of it.

I suppose I'm straying off-topic.

[rjpalmer]

Sorry it’s so small Jeff, I haven’t a clue how to make it bigger and clearer.

I accept cash, PayPal, credit cards, and most brands of stout, porter, and IPA.


(I should note that this is from 29 January 1888)

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

My apologies for such a slow response.

In regard to the emboldened part of your post I wonder if you’d seen this when I last posted it. It was found by Debra Arif and is an example of the insult ‘Lipski’ being directed by a Jewish person to another Jewish person.



Sorry it’s so small Jeff, I haven’t a clue how to make it bigger and clearer.

Hi Herlock,

Fair point. Like many of the bits of information we have, these sorts of things never have only one possibility associated with them. I would think the odds would suggest if B.S. was shouting the "Lipski" insult at Schwartz, then B.S. is more likely to be a gentile. Moreover, given that removes the connection between B.S. and Pipeman, it would mean Pipeman could be anything.

But yes, given that Lipski wasn't only used by Gentiles towards Jews, but also between Jews (and probably between Gentiles at times as well), there remains reasonable grounds to not draw that conclusion too strongly. In fact, if my presumption that it was more common as a Gentile to Jewish insult is incorrect, and it was more common as a Jewish to Jewish insult, then the exact opposite argument can be made.

- Jeff

[Herlock Sholmes]

We have Abberline's report, which mentions Schwartz's Jewish appearance and implies that the assailant was a Gentile.

I have already quoted from a report that the average height of Polish Jewish conscripts at about that time was 161 cm.

The corresponding average for British conscripts was about 168 cm.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/47750/did-the-average-height-of-men-in-late-victorian-england-decline-due-to-poor-nutr

That suggests that Pipe Man, who was 5 ft 11 ins tall, is more likely to have been a Gentile than a Jew.

Contemporaneous reports on the almost total absence among Jewish men of displays of drunkenness in public and physical attacks on women in public suggest that Broad Shouldered Man was much more likely to have been a Gentile than a Jew.

The fact that he used a well-known anti-Jewish insult as a man of Jewish appearance passed by again suggests he was a Gentile.

One would need to have a compelling reason to suggest otherwise.

There is no such reason.

From Abberline’s report:

”I beg to report that since a jew named Lipski was hanged for the murder of a jewess in 1887 the name has very frequently been used by persons as mere ejaculation by way of endeavouring to insult the jew to whom it has been addressed, and as Schwartz has a strong jewish appearance I am of opinion it was addressed to him as he stopped to look at the man he saw ill-using the deceased woman.”

He doesn’t mention or even hint at the nationality or religion of the BS man or Pipeman. All that he states is that Schwartz had ‘a strong Jewish appearance’ which made sense if the insult was directed at him. That was all that Abberline said; he implied nothing.

——————

On the height issue we have this:

“The only other similar study on the height of Jewish military recruits in Vienna found that their average height toward the end of the 19th century was close to 167 cm – about 0.7 cm shorter than average (Komlos, 1992).“

This is around 5’6”. And as this is an average it means that some would have been shorter than 5’6” and some would be taller than 5’6”. So if Pipeman was Jewish then he was simply 5 inches taller than the average which can’t be particularly unlikely or rare. I’m 4 inches taller than the UK average and my younger brother is 6 inches taller yet neither of us are remarkably tall.

Im not in any way pushing the suggestion that either BS man or Pipeman were Jewish in any way. Only that we should be cautious when dismissing possibles because things that might appear to us to be less likely might actually have been the case.

——————

The fact that a word that was used an anti-Jewish statement doesn’t prove in any way that it couldn’t have been used by a Jew to insult a fellow Jew. And to confirm this we have documented evidence of an example of this. Again, I’m not making any claim here because none of us can possibly know. All that I’m saying is that caution is not a bad thing. Even if we think something likely we shouldn’t preclude alternatives just because we don’t have evidence for them. We have no evidence that the killer was Welsh…..but he might have been, so we wouldn’t dismiss it as unlikely would we?

[Fleetwood Mac]

Contemporaneous reports on the almost total absence among Jewish men of displays of drunkenness in public and physical attacks on women in public suggest that Broad Shouldered Man was much more likely to have been a Gentile than a Jew.

Agreed, assuming BS man was more than the product of an over active imagination.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

We have Abberline's report, which mentions Schwartz's Jewish appearance and implies that the assailant was a Gentile.

I have already quoted from a report that the average height of Polish Jewish conscripts at about that time was 161 cm.

The corresponding average for British conscripts was about 168 cm.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/47750/did-the-average-height-of-men-in-late-victorian-england-decline-due-to-poor-nutr

That suggests that Pipe Man, who was 5 ft 11 ins tall, is more likely to have been a Gentile than a Jew.

Contemporaneous reports on the almost total absence among Jewish men of displays of drunkenness in public and physical attacks on women in public suggest that Broad Shouldered Man was much more likely to have been a Gentile than a Jew.

The fact that he used a well-known anti-Jewish insult as a man of Jewish appearance passed by again suggests he was a Gentile.

One would need to have a compelling reason to suggest otherwise.

There is no such reason.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Whether the insult was justified or not isn’t the point because we know that it was still made by a Jew against another Jew. Lipski was a figure of shame within the Jewish community and not just to gentiles. I have no doubt that the local newspaper was correct when they said that it was commonplace for gentiles to use Lipski as an insult to Jews but nowhere does it say that this was never used by Jews toward other Jews and the quote that I posted proves that this did happen at least once. And if it happened once it could have happened on other occasions.

And not everyone who is Jewish is of ‘Jewish’ appearance of course. On a previous thread numerous photographs were posted of people who were known to have been Jewish but who didn’t look Jewish. Nothing about Schwartz descriptions of BS man or Pipeman precludes them from being Jewish so we shouldn’t rule out possibilities. I’m not saying that BS man or Pipeman were Jewish by any means, only that we can’t entirely rule it out. We should be wary of generalisations is basically what I’m saying.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Those people were already acquainted and the couple who are alleged to have used the insult had a grudge against the person at whom they directed it, and he was having a relationship with a young woman and they objected to it - a quite unjustified reference to the Lipski case.

That is quite different from someone who was obviously not of Jewish appearance using the insult as a person of pronouncedly Jewish appearance passed by.

According to a local Jewish newspaper, it was commonplace for Gentiles at that time to make anti-Jewish remarks as Jews passed by them in the street, and that, I suggest, is what happened that night in Berner Street.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

I don't believe he did. Rather, his initial statement was that Lipski was shouted at Pipeman and it appears Schwartz took that to be Pipeman's name, and that Pipeman was working with Broad Shoulders. While not definitive, it would suggest that Schwartz therefore assumed Pipeman was Jewish (Lipski being a common-ish Jewish name) and by implication so was Broad Shoulders.

However, when the police pressed him on this point (who exactly was Lipski shouted at), it appears that Schwartz backed down from his interpretation that it was shouted at Pipeman, and accepted that it could have been directed at he himself (given its derogatory use at the time, and apparently he was readily identifiable by sight as being Jewish - perhaps by manner of dress and/or hair style, etc). Once he changed his mind on that point and accepted it could have been directed at him, then it that too changes the view of Broad Shoulders from a Jewish offender shouting a warning to his Jewish accomplice, to a Gentile offender shouting an antiemetic insult to a Jewish looking bystander.

The whole Schwartz testimony is quite an interesting bit of the whole case, as we have some insights into the police questioning of witness statements and so forth. It would be fascinating, and I think very informative, if transcripts of that interview, including the questions asked, were available for us to go over. I would not be surprised if there were a lot of other interesting details contained in them that have since been lost to us. Indeed, the absence of such police documents, where we're left only with summaries of reports, is one of the barriers we have when trying to get at the actual statements of the various witnesses, or at the details of the police investigations.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

My apologies for such a slow response.

In regard to the emboldened part of your post I wonder if you’d seen this when I last posted it. It was found by Debra Arif and is an example of the insult ‘Lipski’ being directed by a Jewish person to another Jewish person.



Sorry it’s so small Jeff, I haven’t a clue how to make it bigger and clearer.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Of course I can’t estimate anything like that, but I can say that any duration of time is possible. So any suggestion is reasonable and no more likely to be wrong or right than any other suggestion.