The Identity of Israel Schwartz

[Robert]

Hi Chris

Yes, that's where Mary Jacob came from.

[Chris]

In the marriage registers, there is even a Mary Jacob Schwartz! I never knew such a confused lot of Schwartzes.

Looking at the page image on FreeBMD, that seems to be a transcription error - there is a Mary Schwartz on the line above Jacob Schwarz, and it looks as though they've somehow been combined.

[Robert]

Glad to hear that, Chris.

[Debra A]

Thanks for the info on Jacob everyone.

Just as an aside, but related to not being able to positively identify Israel in the 1891 census. When Gavin was writing his lodger piece for Ripperologist he did contact me to confirm that one side of Batty Street (not sure which side, sorry) was missing from the census site I use as it was completely missing from the ancestry site that he used. I am not sure if it was ever established that one side of Batty Street had been demolished by 1891, maybe Rob Clack or someone will know for definite, but if it was just missing (and any others in that area) it may be the reason that people like Schwartz, Philip and Leah Lipski etc. can't be found....Just a thought anyway.

Debs

[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

[Robert]

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

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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?

[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

[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!

[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?

[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?

[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.