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I hope I am putting this in the correct area. Please let me know if I haven't.
In discussing JtR's activities in the Whitechapel/Spitalfields area, we tend to focus on the availability of prostitutes and a general tendency towards lawlessness in the area. We also tend to view this as the reason a non-local JtR might have come into Whitechapel looking for easy prey.
Although I am certainly not all knowing regarding Victorian London, I am aware of other areas of the city which also had reputations for vice and villainy which could rival Whitechapel's. I'd like to know if members of this board have considered these other vice areas and considered if they might have been easier to access for someone who was not a Whitechapel local. I ask about this because one of the stereotypes of a possible JtR is the 'slumming aristo' who might come from the western side of Greater London.
To this end I present for the esteemed board's consideration- St Giles/Seven Dials.
"St. Giles in London is one of the prominent quarters where poverty and the lowest species of vice abound. It is crowded by a half-Irish population, of all occupations, and no occupations, guilty of all manner of vices, from petty thieving up to cold-blooded murder.
The London Statistical Society recently appointed a committee to examine the sanitary condition of Church Lane in St. Giles. A friend of ours was one of that committee, and here are a few of the facts embodied in their report. The Lane is three hundred feet long, and contains thirty-two houses. It has three gas-lights, and water is supplied to it three times a week, but no tanks or tubs were to be found. The first house which the committee visited contained forty-five persons, and only six rooms, and twelve beds ! The windows were broken in - really a beneficial thing - and filth abounded everywhere. In the second building, there were fifty persons, and thirteen beds. In the third, there were sixty-one persons, and only nine beds, averaging seven persons to a bed, and these of both sexes, all ages and conditions ! When it is remembered that these buildings are low, small, and wretched; the rooms mere pens, some idea of their occupants cart be formed. The three houses mentioned are only a fair sample of the whole Lane, every house of which the Committee visited. In their report, made for the use of Parliament, they say:
"In these wretched dwellings, all ages and both sexes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grown-up brothers and sisters, stranger adult males and females, amid swarms of children - the sick, the dying, and the dead, are herded together with a proximity and mutual pressure which the brutes would resist : where it is physically impossible to preserve the ordinary decencies of life, where all sense of propriety and self-respect must be lost."
Such is the picture of London poverty, drawn too, by Englishmen. Into this region, scarcely ever, does splendid Vice set its feet. Here are only common thieves and the lowest of the prostitutes. Sin is horrible in its lineaments in St. Giles - it can put on no seductive features there. The expert gamester and richly apparelled prostitute of St. James, little expect to one day make their home in the filthy St. Giles; yet a few years will accomplish the transition. It is invariably the last resort of the wretched and vicious. [-128-] When all other portions of London have cast them out, St. Giles opens its doors to them, well knowing that they can go no farther - till they step into their graves." London by Day and Night, by David W.Bartlett, 1852
What other areas of London might have given a non-local JtR access to his preferred prey other than Whitechapel?
In discussing JtR's activities in the Whitechapel/Spitalfields area, we tend to focus on the availability of prostitutes and a general tendency towards lawlessness in the area. We also tend to view this as the reason a non-local JtR might have come into Whitechapel looking for easy prey.
Although I am certainly not all knowing regarding Victorian London, I am aware of other areas of the city which also had reputations for vice and villainy which could rival Whitechapel's. I'd like to know if members of this board have considered these other vice areas and considered if they might have been easier to access for someone who was not a Whitechapel local. I ask about this because one of the stereotypes of a possible JtR is the 'slumming aristo' who might come from the western side of Greater London.
To this end I present for the esteemed board's consideration- St Giles/Seven Dials.
"St. Giles in London is one of the prominent quarters where poverty and the lowest species of vice abound. It is crowded by a half-Irish population, of all occupations, and no occupations, guilty of all manner of vices, from petty thieving up to cold-blooded murder.
The London Statistical Society recently appointed a committee to examine the sanitary condition of Church Lane in St. Giles. A friend of ours was one of that committee, and here are a few of the facts embodied in their report. The Lane is three hundred feet long, and contains thirty-two houses. It has three gas-lights, and water is supplied to it three times a week, but no tanks or tubs were to be found. The first house which the committee visited contained forty-five persons, and only six rooms, and twelve beds ! The windows were broken in - really a beneficial thing - and filth abounded everywhere. In the second building, there were fifty persons, and thirteen beds. In the third, there were sixty-one persons, and only nine beds, averaging seven persons to a bed, and these of both sexes, all ages and conditions ! When it is remembered that these buildings are low, small, and wretched; the rooms mere pens, some idea of their occupants cart be formed. The three houses mentioned are only a fair sample of the whole Lane, every house of which the Committee visited. In their report, made for the use of Parliament, they say:
"In these wretched dwellings, all ages and both sexes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grown-up brothers and sisters, stranger adult males and females, amid swarms of children - the sick, the dying, and the dead, are herded together with a proximity and mutual pressure which the brutes would resist : where it is physically impossible to preserve the ordinary decencies of life, where all sense of propriety and self-respect must be lost."
Such is the picture of London poverty, drawn too, by Englishmen. Into this region, scarcely ever, does splendid Vice set its feet. Here are only common thieves and the lowest of the prostitutes. Sin is horrible in its lineaments in St. Giles - it can put on no seductive features there. The expert gamester and richly apparelled prostitute of St. James, little expect to one day make their home in the filthy St. Giles; yet a few years will accomplish the transition. It is invariably the last resort of the wretched and vicious. [-128-] When all other portions of London have cast them out, St. Giles opens its doors to them, well knowing that they can go no farther - till they step into their graves." London by Day and Night, by David W.Bartlett, 1852
What other areas of London might have given a non-local JtR access to his preferred prey other than Whitechapel?