The Identity of Israel Schwartz

[dave]

So:

1. Therfore, there is no compelling Israel that Israel Schwartz suddenly changed his name to Jacob, let alone John!

2. There is no compelling evidence at all that he hailed from Hungary.

3. Is therfore it likely that the likelhood that Israel Schwartz is the same Israel Schwartz referred to in the 1891 and 1901 census who resided first at 22, Ellen Street, and then 10 years later at 21 Jubilee Street? These seem to be one and the the same person, based on the family info recorded.

[Chava]

I think it's entirely likely that the interpreter was speaking Yiddish and the newspaper reporter assumed it was Hungarian because Schwartz himself was Hungarian.

As for the name, one thing that comes up all the time in the UK as well as the US is the Immigration Officer effect. These people are coming in off the boat. Their papers may be written in Cyrillic. A lot of their other documentation--marriage contracts etc--will be written in Hebrew. Even the Jews from Central Europe will be speaking German or whatever and don't speak English, and their papers will be in funny languages as well. So the immigration officer asks their name and they try and tell him and he tries to write it down. He may have already learned how to write 'Schwartz', but the guy is trying to tell him that his name is 'Schatz' or 'Schultz'. Doesn't matter. The officer is gonna write down 'Schwartz' and have done with it. Our boy Israel Schultz now has 'Israel Schwartz' written on his documents. Which he shows the police when they interview him. But the neighbours know him as Izzie Schultz and that's the name he does business under.

I'm not saying our boy Izzie definitely isn't called 'Schwartz'. I'm just saying that might be a reason why you guys can't find him...

[Robert]

Well, I find this all terribly confusing - you've got God himself changing his name from Jehovah to Jesus to Allah to Eric Clapton. Let's just call him Bert and have done with it.

[Sam Flynn]

No. God changed Jacob's name to Israel. He did not make that decision himself.

Perhaps God did the same favour for our flamboyant Hungarian friend, Chava - it'd certainly be difficult to disprove it if He had And there was I thinking that the book of Genesis would be the ultimate precedent...

I take your point, however.

[Chava]

Hi Chava,I got my info from the Bible. Didn't Jacob change his name to Israel?

No. God changed Jacob's name to Israel. He did not make that decision himself. It's impossible that someone called Jacob would then go and call himself Israel unless he wanted to disappear from sight and avoid the police, angry ex-girlfriend's family, whatever. And in that case he could change his name to anything. Moishe, Isaac, Joseph, Christopher (just kidding...)

In any case, what happens in the bible is not what happens in daily life. Israel Schwartz could well have had a brother called Jacob. But just 'cause he was called 'Israel' he wouldn't have all of a sudden decided to call himself 'Jacob'. I know we're all called names out of the bible, but we aren't called those names in honour of biblical characters. We're called those names in honour of our dead relatives--for example: Chava, which in English is Eve, was my grandmother's name; my brother's Hebrew name is Isaac after our grandfather. So Israel was almost certainly named after an ex-loved one. To change his name arbitrarily would have been an insult to that person's memory. It wouldn't happen.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Chava,

Gareth, I don't know where you are getting your info from, but 'Israel' and 'Yakob' are not at all interchangeable ever.

I got my info from the Bible. Didn't Jacob change his name to Israel?

[Chris]

For what it's worth, my feeling is that by far the likeliest candidate is the tailor Israel Schwartz who lived at various addresses close to Berner Street around this time. The only real difficulty with this identification is that according to census returns, he was born in Poland, not Hungary.

But as far as I know this does indeed rest on reports from a single newspaper, and normally such information would be treated with caution (particularly as we know that newspaper's report of Schwartz's story differs in several respects from Swanson's).

Swanson's report does state that Schwartz did not speak English, so he would certainly need an interpreter. The Star implies that he spoke Hungarian and that this was interpreted into English for the reporter. I wonder if it's possible that it was really Yiddish being interpreted by a Hungarian-born Jew, and that the reporter misunderstood what was going on?

[Chava]

Oh boy...

Gareth, I don't know where you are getting your info from, but 'Israel' and 'Yakob' are not at all interchangeable ever. It would be like saying 'David and Christopher are interchangeable names'. All Jews are given what we know as 'Hebrew names'. A boy's name will be called out at the Brit ceremony when he is 8 days old. A girl's name will be called out at her baby-naming ceremony which takes place the Shabbat after she is born. In later times--ie after the 17th century--Jews in a large part of Europe were forced to also take or give themselves proper or recognizable to the local population surnames, and after that Jews did so as a regular thing. However we all have Hebrew names which are used when we get married/ die/are buried. Our Hebrew names all contain our fathers' names. So my Hebrew name is Chava Bat (daughter of) Chaim. This bears no resemblance whatsoever to my 'English' name.

Now we get to 'Israel' and 'Yakub'. Yes, in the bible the same man was given both names. But if a Jewish man is named Israel, he will not answer to Jakob/Jacob/Yacob/Ya'acov. Ever.

Now we get to the Anglicization of names. Yacob is likely to go to Jack or Jake or Jakey or, sometimes, John. Israel is likely to go to Izzie or Isadore. Quite why we went to Isadore, which is the name of a famously anti-semitic cardinal, is totally beyond me, but there it is. In later times, boys whose Hebrew name is Israel tend to be called Ian or Ivan.

Now the issue of the interpreter.

If Mr Schwartz had been living in Whitechapel, it is very possible that he would need an interpreter. He would be surrounded by Yiddish-speaking people, and Yiddish would be the language he'd be using. He may only have spoken broken English. It wouldn't matter that he came from Hungary, or Russia, or Poland. Anywhere east of Vienna and he would be speaking Yiddish and his local Hungarian or whatever dialect. So he can communicate easily with all the Jews in his environment no matter where they come from. But I doubt he had as much facility with the locals. If I was a police officer then, I'd bring an interpreter to be sure I understood exactly what Mr Schwartz was trying to tell me. I wouldn't be taking chances on guessing and miscommunication in this murder case!

[DVV]

Hi Dave,
I can't answer your question, but I'd just point out that Hungary wasn't a nation as it is today. In 1888 central Europe was an imperial territory.

Amitiés,
David

[dave]

Been there, tried that, Joel This is a Schwartz thread, so I'd rather not go down the Morganstone route please.

I'd recommend Chris Scott's book, "JTR: A Cast of Thousands", which you can browse online here.

Sam or anyone here:

Can anyone here please simply explain to me if it is beyond all reasonable doubt that the real Israel Schwartz was Hungarian, rather than Polish or Russian? I always thought that this assumption was based on newspaper reports, which as we know are by themselves not evidence as such. Is there any evidence available from the original police reports/statements that he hailed originally from Hungary? If these latter are not in fact available, then what other real compelling evidence is there?

[Chris]

Funnily enough, I just came across an example of a Jewish man having his marriage registered under two names - John and Jacob - and from other evidence he was actually known as Jack.

The other obvious example is Jacob/Jack/John Pizer, of course.

[Debra A]

Hi Debs,

The West side of Batty Street went through some major changes in the 1880s, notably the South West side with the construction of the Fairclough Street School. Also several houses were demolished and rebuilt in 1888 (the Lipski being one of them). There were residential houses but not as many as there were in 1881.

Rob

Thanks Rob!

[Sam Flynn]

Is that Gareth's "Snipski" theory laid to rest, then?

...all I can say is that I'm in a right strop, now.

[Robert]

Is that Gareth's "Snipski" theory laid to rest, then?

[Rob Clack]

Hi Debs,

The West side of Batty Street went through some major changes in the 1880s, notably the South West side with the construction of the Fairclough Street School. Also several houses were demolished and rebuilt in 1888 (the Lipski being one of them). There were residential houses but not as many as there were in 1881.

Rob