Jewish Ritual Motive: Discussion

[Howard Brown]

Recently, elsewhere, I made a comment in response to A.P. Wolf to a reference A.P. made to the old and inflammatory "blood libel" accusation which has been suggested throughout the years as being what was in circulation at the time of the murder skein in East End London.

I should have mentioned... I'm doing it now.. that it has been claimed and there is documentation for this that converted Jews were the source for the bulk of the original "blood libel" claims...Whether that documentation is accurate or not is not the issue and frankly, I doubt it. My mention of it was a non sequitor at the time and I posted in haste yesterday morning, regretting placing the post all day and frankly,being surprised no one "called me on it".

Nevertheless, references are available on line and have been given as the source of the specious claim. In case anyone saw that poorly phrased response I made to A.P., I apologize if it gave anyone the impression that I believed in the source and believed in blood libel. Thats absolutely untrue. All I should have done was do the following:



It occurs to me that in my press trawls...and I haven't been doing this for decades, so I will be careful in how I phrase it this time....that I have yet to see ONE reference in a newspaper which mentions that the man in the street believed that the real motive for the WM was that these murders were some sort of sacrifice performed by a Jew or Jews to appease some God or fulfill some ritual.

I have trawled the press from 1888 to 1896 using several different phrase and search term combinations and the ONLY reference to a ritual in the area or in circulation...were the deaths of 4 Portugese Jews and that one of the victims or the perpetrator called himself a "killer",( shochet). In short, there were no references to anyone and this theory of Jewish blood ritual in the contemporary newspapers that I could locate.

This whole concept of the "man in the street" or a few men in the street or dozens of men in the street giving credence to the old and tired ....yet deadly at times...canard of "blood libel" has no foundation in the Press trawling I have conducted.

I firmly believe now...unless someone can come up with an example...that this is a myth...and one that can be seen at play as if it were indicative of contemporary sentiment in the 1970's film, "Murder By Decree".

In this fine film, Anthony Quayle, a veteran of Ripper films going back to 1965....in a Study In Terror....portrays Sir Charles Warren. Quayle, in one scene states rather emphatically to Sherlock Holmes that the man in the street believes that the crimes were committed by a Jew in service to his God.

I now ask each and every member to provide one example of this sentiment in either a book, newspaper, or official document from the period of 1888 until 2009. Can you do it, dear friends ?

I think this idea that has been in circulation for some time....has its roots in that film and not in reality.

Back to you.

[Chris G.]

Hi Howard

The idea of the "blood libel" did not originate with the 1970's film, "Murder By Decree". Rather, acting Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler was forced to write about in 1888, which shows that rumors were circulating back then and were reflected in an article in The Times to which Rabbi Adler reacted.

Manchester Guardian
4 October 1888

THE Whitechapel murders are so unparalleled in their horror that the wildest theories are afloat as to their perpetrator. The fact that there is a considerable Jewish population in the district has led to the revival of some the anti-Semitic slanders that have so strange a vitality. The Vienna correspondent of the Times has made himself responsible for the repetition of certain charges made during the notorious Cracow murder trial. "There is no doubt," he says, "that the man was innocent; but the evidence touching the superstitions prevailing among some of the ignorant and degraded of his co-religionists remains on record, and was never wholly disproved." The particular superstition here referred to is an atrocious form of the "blood accusation." We have on several occasions shown the baselessness of this mediaeval fable. Dr. DELITZSCH, Dr. CHWOLSON, our own Professor THEODORES, and many others have exposed the charge of human sacrifice which credulity, at once ignorant and cruel, has brought against the Jews. It has been a favourite weapon in the hands of the persecutor. When Christianity was a young society surrounded by a hostile pagan world, its disciples were charged with sharing in obscene and murderous rites. The same accusations were brought by the "orthodox" against the "heretics" of the early and middle ages. These falsehoods formed the chief pretext for the long, bitter, and deadly persecutions of the Jews by which mediaeval Christendom were disgraced. They have reappeared in recent years in such cases as the Tiaza Esslar trial. If the anti-Semites were not for the most part ignorant fanatics, they might be reminded that they are merely reviving the cruel falsehoods originally invented by the heathen in their struggle against the inroads of Christianity. Dr. HERMANN ADLER, and Dr. M. GASTER have each written to the Times protesting against this revival of the blood accusation. There is, of course, no justification in the "Talmud" for the charge. "I can assert without hesitation," says Dr. ADLER, "that in no Jewish book is such a barbarity even hinted at. Nor is there any record in the criminal annals of any country of a Jew having been convicted of such a terrible atrocity." It would add to the danger of the situation if the powerlessness and inability of the police so far to arrest the Whitechapel monster were to lead to any recrudescence of the anti-Semitic prejudices amongst the panic-stricken people of the East End. It is the duty of all who have the opportunity to protest against the false scholarship and false witness upon which the Judenhatze has to rely.

Chris

[A.P. Wolf]

How & Chris
Indeed The Times in 1888 carried some very damaging, and convicing, reports from Europe on the supposed ritual murder of children by Jews, however by 1889 the newspaper was in a full state of retreat, admitting that such accusations were base nonsense and the scurillious work of anti-semites. I did have the 1889 reports but lost 'em. I'll see if I can't find them again.

[A.P. Wolf]

This report from The Times of August 1883 does show that such Jewish blood rituals were very much in the public domain a full five years before the Whitechapel Murders.

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/Photo%20Thanksgiving/aug12018831.jpg

[Magpie]

Didn't Robert Anderson issue a condemnation of the "blood libel" theory after having drinkies with a high-ranking Rabbi? I seem to remember reading something along those lines, whether it be an news article or one of Anderson's various scribbilngs.

[Chris G.]

Hello Pilgrim

Thanks for posting this letter, Pilgrim. Neil Bell and Robert Clack in their article "City Beat: PC 968 George Hutt" in Ripperologist 103 believe that writer "G.H.H." was City Police Constable George H. Hutt. This is verified by the fact that on 14 September the Jewish World stated in part that "MR. G. H. HUTT writes to the Evening News calling attention to the insulting treatment to which the Jews are being subjected in the vicinity of Whitechapel. . . ." It might be noted as well that in the writings of Chief Inspector Reid, he also spoke well of the Jewish population of the East End.

Chris

[Howard Brown]

Thanks a million for everyone's contribution here. Most appreciated as this is a subject that intrigues me a great deal.

Chris G:

In post number two, I did not see any reference to the Whitechapel man in the street making such noises regarding the silly,but potentially lethal, claims of Jewish ritual murder. I DO see the Vienna correspondent mentioning it in relation to the Cracow murder. To me and with all due respect, Rabbi Adler's response appears to be preventive medicine toward the potential mention of blood libel and a response to events already underway and transpiring on the streets of Whitechapel/Spitalfields which were manifesting themselves in other ways.

Anyone else feel that way ?

A.P.

Thanks for the newspaper clipping. As always, with all due respect to you, the article from 1883 is relative and in relation to continental Europe in 1883 and that does not suggest that the same sentiment towards Jews existed in Whitechapel in the years 1888 up until, lets say, 1896. Chris George's Adler letter regarding the blood ritual/blood libel nonsense ( excuse me: Horseshit) is relative to what happened in Europe and appears solely as I mentioned before : as preventive medicine.

Anyone else feel that way ?

Pilgrim,dear sor...

Ditto the kudos for posting Hutt's decent defense of the neighborhood Jews.

A lot of generous remarks and yet....not one from Hutt on whether he had heard any babbling and what should have stood out....that of blood libel being the hue and cry from the East Enders. Not a peep,partner.

Anyone else with me on this ?

Mag;

It may be that SRA had heard something from someone in regard to the blood libel accusation. As you know,dear friend, that does not mean this concept was prevalent on the streets...or even that SRA heard it being mentioned on the street.

The point I am trying to raise by all this...and I am glad I brought it up....is that the only real reference to blood libel had been uttered in the press by Rabbi Adler in what appears to me as being preventive medicine and the article written in response to anti-Semitic attitudes probably brought about by irresponsibility in journalism....but again without the mention of that specific charge.

Out of all the hundreds of articles that appeared...and many were sensationalized and some insulting ( such as the ones at the outset of the WM in regard to Leather Apron & Pizer), we do not have a single article...and A.P.,Pilgrim, and C.G. are as good as any in the field for trawling...which specifically mentions an outbreak of anti-Semitism with the concept of blood libel raised....from 1888 to 1896 or any year as a matter of fact.

I believe Debra Arif has located one article on the murder of a lad in Northern England where that charge had been made. If she would like to contribute it, that would be most welcome. Yet...and I've already mentioned this to Debs...it still isn't Whitechapel.

If we as a cadre are going to do the field a positive service, we as a cadre should try and correct mistakes, eliminate myths, reduce mysteries within The Mystery and provide everyone,community member or civilian as well, with the facts.

The facts as I see them being presented do not indicate the hue and cry of blood libel in the East End in 1888 until (pick a year).

If anyone disagrees with my position...and I'm just one person out of many in the field, please continue to do so and share your observations.

I hope that this thread encourages every single member to participate....not because of its theme, its relevance, or its connotations, but because it might be a good starting point for a group of Forums members to work together and take certain concepts that have slipped into the fabric of the Case history and attempt to correct them wherever possible.

Thank you.

Back to you...................

[Debra Arif]

It occurs to me that in my press trawls...and I haven't been doing this for decades, so I will be careful in how I phrase it this time....that I have yet to see ONE reference in a newspaper which mentions that the man in the street believed that the real motive for the WM was that these murders were some sort of sacrifice performed by a Jew or Jews to appease some God or fulfill some ritual.



How, there was a mention of this connected to the 1888 Gill murder:

Birmingham Daily Post (Birmingham, England), Tuesday, January 1, 1889

Among the more ignorant inhabitants of the district where the victim lived there is a belief that the crime is the work of the Jews, this being due to a partial survival of the old and gross superstition which credits the Jews with the sacrifice of Christian children at Christmas time.

[Howard Brown]

Heck of a way to start off 1889, eh Debs?:kiss: All it took was one azzhole to mention that among the ne'er been schooled and its a rumor with dire potential.

Thanks for sharing the Bradford reference.

Tonight...after I do some Photobucketing...I am going to do everything except go back in time and scour those sources....I hope others will too.

Not go back in time....but trawl the Press.

[Robert Linford]

Of course the blood libel is all bosh, nevertheless I have great difficulty in believing that no Jew in any country was ever convicted of it. I would expect some of them to have been framed, especially in anti-semitic countries like Poland.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, I've been following your thoughts on the other thread you started in connection with the matter we discuss here; and I have to say I think we are ignoring cause and effect here... in other words it is unwise to ignore the fact that popular daily and evening newspapers of the metropolis were in 1888 reporting salicious stories that did implicate the Jews in the Whitechapel Murders because of a series of spurious events that took place earlier on the continent linking the Jewish faith to the ritual slaughter of women and children.
Accepted that this was plainly nonsense, however the man on the street would have read such racially motivated and downright dangerous propoganda, and then run with it... as I think events do show.
I shall try to chronicle those events, starting off with a report from The Times of 2nd October 1888:

'THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS.


VIENNA, OCT. 1.
With reference to the recent atrocious murders in London, attention may be called to a crime of an exactly similar kind which preoccupied the public in this country for nearly three years. A Galician Jew named Ritter was accused in 1884 of having murdered and mutilated a Christian woman in a village near Cracow. The mutilation was like that perpetrated on the body of the woman Chapman, and at the trial numbers of witnesses deposed that among certain fanatical Jews there existed a superstition to the effect that if a Jew became intimate with a Christian woman he would atone for his offence by slaying and mutilating the object of his passion. Sundry passages of the Talmud were quoted which, according to the witnesses, expressly sanctioned this form of atonement. The trial caused an immense sensation, and Ritter, being found guilty, was sentenced to death.
The Judges of the Court of Appeal, however, feeling that the man was the victim of popular error and anti-Semitic prejudice, ordered a new trial upon some technicality. Again a jury pronounced against Ritter, and once more the Court of Appeal found a flaw in the proceedings. A third trial took place, and for the third time Ritter was condemned to be hanged, but upon this the Court of Appeal quashed the sentence altogether, and Ritter was released, after having been in prison 37 months. There is no doubt that the man was innocent, but the evidence touching the superstitions prevailing among some of the ignorant and degraded of his co-religionists remains on record and was never wholly disproved. '

[A.P. Wolf]

The Jewish Chronicle responded to the reports of ritual murder and it's supposed relationship to the Whitechapel Murders on the 5th October:

'Jewish Chronicle (U.K.)
Friday, 5 October 1888


NOTES OF THE WEEK.
The absorbing pre-occupation this week of our brethren in the East of London has been the ghastly mystery of the Whitchapel murders. It was reserved for the Vienna correspondent of the Times to give a still more sombre hue to their thoughts by a strangely imperfect reference to a Galician cause celebre. We reported on March 5th, 1886, the acquittal of Moses Ritter. He, his wife, and the Christian Pole, Stochlinski, were imprisoned for four years while the several trials were proceeding, and the unhappy Christian peasant who was accused of being the actual perpetrator of the crime, died during this long confinement. It was alleged that Ritter had outraged a Christian girl, and in order to destroy all evidence of the fact, had caused his victim to be murdered. The crime was thus of a very different nature both in its motive and circumstances from the six apparently purposeless and maniacal atrocities which have terrified London. But the correspondent speaks of it as "of an exactly similar kind", although in the recent atrocities there was no evidence of, and in the last crime no time for, the perpetration of any offence previous to murder. The correspondent goes on to commit still grosser errors. Evidence, he said, was given, and passages quoted from the Talmud to show, that a belief existed among ignorant Jews that an Israelite who had been intimate with a Christian woman might make atonement by slaying and mutilating her. The correspondent adds that there was no doubt Ritter was innocent, but that the evidence as to this superstition was never wholly disproved. How could it be disproved, one may ask, if the Jew was innocent as a fact. In that case any evidence as to what his motive might have been, assuming he had been guilty, would be immaterial. But Professor Delitzsch and Dr. Bloch did give evidence that no such superstition existed, although the correspondent fails to mention their testimony.


This telegram appears to us as dangerous a piece of composition as could be imagined. Of course it is not correct. The crime of which Ritter, his wife, and the unfortunate Polish Christian were accused, was quite different as we have pointed out from the series of murders in England. It is equally untrue that any such diabolical belief, as that imagined, exists among Jews. What witnesses can be found to swear to, and what falsifications they will make in Hebrew books to suit their purpose, appeared from the Tisza-Eslar charge which is known from subsequent events and confessions to have been an anti-Semitic plot from first to last. Dr. Herman Adler has written to the Times stating positively, as the fact is, that in no Jewish book is there any support for such a barbarity. Dr. Gaster has shown, in the same medium, that these calumnies were long since wickedly used by heathens against Christians, and were next employed by Catholics against Reformers. He might have added that such stories are still invented in Spain against Protestants, and in China against Europeans. The impropriety and injustice of the libel is only equalled by the danger involved in telegraphing it. Although it is a Jewish member of Parliament who offered the first reward for the discovery of the murderer, and Jews are active members of the Vigilance Committee, no one knows what an exited mob is capable of believing against any class which differs from the mob-majority by well-marked peculiarities. Many English and Irish workpeople at the East End are inflamed against the immigrant Jews by the competition for work and for houses, by the stories of the sweaters and the sweated. If these illogical and ignorant minds should come to believe in the report heedlessly spread by a writer who is obviously not quite just nor well-informed himself, the result might be terrible. Fortunately the press generally has treated the suggestion with the contempt which it deserves. '

[A.P. Wolf]

And again, the Jewish Chronicle felt obliged to defend the Jew on the East End street with another rebuttal on the 12th October 1888... but did it work?

'Jewish Chronicle (U.K.)
Friday, 12 October 1888


NOTES OF THE WEEK.
There are not wanting signs of a deliberate attempt to connect the Jews with the Whitechapel murders. A butcher writes to a contemporary to suggest that the character of the incisions is such that they were made by a butcher, and thence he jumps to the conclusion that it was a Jewish butcher, a trade rival exclusively employed by Jews. Now we have made it our business to ascertain whether this could be. Dr. Gordon Browne, the City Divisional Surgeon, to whom the City detectives submitted the body and to whom the knives used by the Jewish slaughterers have also been shown, has authorised us to state that he is thoroughly satisfied that none of the knives have been used. We may add that the Jewish slaughterers are a very small, learned and respectable number of persons whom nobody acquainted with them would suspect. As a make weight the report has been thrown in that the murderer wrote on the wall in a neighbouring street "Shall the Jews be blamed for nothing?" But if this inscription ever existed, if it had reference to the murders, if it was the work of the murderer, it was written to throw the public off the scent, not to put them on. The peculiar horror entertained by Jews of any mutilation of the human body after death is either unknown to, or concealed by, the theorists. To us it seems wrong for respectable newspapers to lend their columns to such suggestions, which are the work of ignorance if not of malice. We observe with satisfaction that the more ably conducted journals refrain from reproducing them. '

[A.P. Wolf]

Not really, because then we have the enormously popular evening rag of the metropolis, The Evening News, reviving the dangerous thread for its readers on the 25th October 1888... and you'll note the innocuous seed of doubt.

'
EAST END MURDERS.
THE RITTER TRIAL.

On October 16, we published a summary of two letters on the Ritter trial, one from Dr. Josef S. Bloch, member of the Austrian Parliament, and the other, also from Vienna, from a "Lawyer of Twenty Years' Standing." Dr. Bloch denied and the other correspondent affirmed the existence among the low-class Jews of Galicia of a superstition such as would account for the mutilations of the body of the woman for whose murder the Ritters were tried, and, it has been suggested, for the mutilations in the case of the Whitechapel murders. Dr. Adolf Stein, of Vienna, who acted as counsel for Ritter and his wife, now writes strongly corroborating Dr. Bloch's view of the case, and adding that, though the superstitions of thieves were mentioned at the trial, it was never asserted that the superstitution (sic) was Jewish. Dr. Gotthelf Carl Mayer also writes from Vienna to the same effect, and states that the superstition in question was never proved at the trial as existing among the low-class Jews of Galicia, and that the Ritters were finally acquitted by the Supreme Tribunal on the merits of the case, and not because the only witness against them had died in prison. '

[A.P. Wolf]

A good month before all this nonsense in the press about Jews slaughtering women and children in some kind of blood ritual or sacrifice, there was increasing ill-feeling against the Jew in the East End, as this report from Lloyd's Weekly News of the 9th September demonstrates, so for the press to run with these claims against the Jews was I suggest a deliberate attempt to whip up racial tension and hatred on the streets, and an attempt to reinforce the ever popular notion that 'no Englishman could have committed such crimes'.

'
As the day advanced and the Jewish East-end crowds congregated around the scene of the murder, and its neighbourhood became more leavened with English working men, the excitement grew; and, unfortunately, owing to the rumours about the individual "Leather Apron," took a rather nasty turn. Bodies of young roughs raised cries against the Jews, and many of the disreputable and jabbering women sided with them. This state of things caused several stand-up fights, thus putting a further and serious strain on the police, many of whom began to express their fears of rioting.
Describing the scene in the district last night, a correspondent says :- The excitement in Hanbury-street and the surrounding neighbourhood still continues, and extra police have been employed to keep a course for the traffic of the evening, but in this they are very much hampered by noisy crowds of men and boys crying "Down with the Jews." Sometimes there is a show of resistance, but the strong force of police on the spot are equal to the occasion, and promptly separate assailants. Just as our correspondent was writing a gang of young vagabonds marched down Hanbury-street shouting "Down with the Jews!" "It was a Jew who did it!" "No Englishman did it!" After these the police were prompt, and whenever there was a stand they quickly, and without ceremony, dispersed them. There have been many fights, but the police are equal to it, as men are held in reserve under cover, and when there is a row they rush out and soon establish order. As the night advances the disorderly mobs who openly express antipathy to the Jews increase, and a request has been forwarded to headquarters for extra men. This request has been promptly attended to, and men have been sent. '

[A.P. Wolf]

And make no mistake, the Whitechapel Murders were acting as fuel on the fire of Empire, the Jew being partly blamed for the disintegration of the British Empire... leading to open letters such as this one to the Evening News on the 14th September 1888 from a concerned Englishman.

'The Truth is very plain. Our wealth and commerce have grown enormously the last fifty years, but our fighting strength has, if anything, diminished. This is not surprising, considering we allow the best of our blood to ooze out in emigration, and introduce the poisonous refuse of the Continent and fill our workhouses and prisons with the results of the played-out and obsolete doctrine of Free-Trade.'

The writer by 'poisonous refuse of the Continent' is of course referring to the recently arrived Jew.

[Howard Brown]

Dear A.P..

No time to engage on the issue at present...but you know I will...and I thank you for bringing these posts together on one thread, They're very useful over the long haul.

If I could agree 101 percent with you, I would, that there was animosity between the immigrant community and the native born population. If the WM could enhance how the police were being "graded" as to their efforts to nab the killer...how the press became more influential on public thought...how the politicians had to be more concerned with the conditions of the East End and how the rank and file people of the East End probably became a little more suspicious of their neighbor...then animosities that lay under the surface and those lingering on the top between Jew and non Jew would naturally be exacerbated by the killer. Thats the natural result of a tragedy which people are at a loss to explain.

I'll get back to this later....but for the time being, the only real argument that I have with anyone positing the belief in blood libel being in the wind during that Autumn is that there's no mention of it at all other than from what you and Roy Corduroy placed on another thread and that came from a Jew in regard to the Cracow murder. Then of course we have the Hollywood version of events ( that film from 1979 ) where it was stated matter of factly that it was a common belief.

A.P...to me, its like the part in From Hell where Depp as Abberline matter of factly states to his superior that "no one in the East End can afford grapes..."....a statement which over time becomes accepted as some sort of fact. Not that all of these add ons are relative to the ethnic tensions...but there are others which have been absorbed into the fabric of the Case that need reevaluation.

Again,old bean, thanks a ton for posting the previous material. They are valuable.

[Chris G.]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2218/2457709180_7dce34185b_o.jpg

Zionist leader Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) mentioned above.

* Not sure why this thread won't let me post the actual image. Howard???

[Howard Brown]

Let me try it myself, C.G. I run into that problem as well when I try to convert Nemo's attachments on the site. It might be a glitch but lemme try it.

Same problem here... CG.

[Chris G.]

Let me try it myself, C.G. I run into that problem as well when I try to convert Nemo's attachments on the site. It might be a glitch but lemme try it.

Same problem here... CG.


The options above the box don't show me the normal pic for posting an image.

C

[Roy Corduroy]

This whole concept of the "man in the street" or a few men in the street or dozens of men in the street giving credence to the old and tired ....yet deadly at times...canard of "blood libel" has no foundation in the Press trawling I have conducted.

I firmly believe now...unless someone can come up with an example...that this is a myth...

It's not documented. I'll agree with that. As we hop around the threads. :nod:

But people did read the Times Cracow article. The story would have had some traction in the general public. It's not like Londoners intentionally did not read the Times that day, or the next when the rebuttals appeared.

I understand in the East End, the Times was not the main paper going. (I read that somewhere, but can't remember where. Anyone feel free to confirm that or explain that I am mistaken, because I could well be.)

Is that what you're getting at How? That East Enders read different newspapers?

Roy

[Howard Brown]

Dear Roy:

No sir, what I'm trying to do..let me look for the word here...okay..."expose"... the condition which exists in our field where certain beliefs ( such as the one where blood libel was on Everyman's lips) have become sort of like chocolate stains on a tee shirt....hard as hell to remove and had a little more thought gone into eating it, the stains wouldn't have been there in the first place.

I understand that some people...at least one... may have thought that Portugese sailors were, due to their genetic makeup, more likely to commit such atrocities than an Englishman. We need go no further than the exchange of letters between Ed Larkins and SRA for confirmation of that nonsense.

I understand that some may have felt a Malay sailor ( Just yesterday, I brought to the fore a post with commentary from American prison inmates and one brought up the likelihood of a Malay sailor being behind the knife.) was the culprit.

These theories aren't the same as theorizing a shochet...a butcher...a doctor...etc was the Ripper. These are across the board generalizations of entire entities. Just as we have some references to the physical features of the Ripper which are thinly veiled references to those who happen to be Jewish.

In the case of the blood libel, one would think that it WAS a commonly stated belief,since Jews have been accused of numerous things they were usually the victims of in the first place. Yet, there is nothing mentioned in ANY paper as to the blood libel remark being prevalent.

I might have been better off using a different example at the outset and then wheedle into this current bone of contention. I certainly don't want anyone ( any Jewish members ) being offended and misinterpret what I have posted thinking I am intentionally oblivious to the social scene to the best of my ability that existed in 1888. Not just for one group, but for all of them.

Hope this explains it,Roy. Thanks for asking.:couch2:

[Roy Corduroy]

Yes I understand you completely How. So we have:

(1) the 1888 Times article and rebuttal

(2) the instance Debs found in 1889 where it was used by common folk after a murder of a child in another town.

(3) a movie in 1970. And from your description, that was a portrayal of the police saying that. In a movie.

That wraps it up, then, doesn't it?

Roy

[Howard Brown]

Dear Roy:

Not that it necessarily wraps things up....because someone may be able to find something between August 7th and lets say....1894 or any year in and around that time...that might demonstrate that I spoke too soon. I would appreciate it if someone who could find something along those lines to show me that I was in error. I really don't "care" if I am wrong Roy...I never do, because I will always own up to a mistake...but in this case I don't think I'm in error. I firmly believe that the assumption of blood libel being a buzzword on the streets of the East End is incorrect and baseless.

Thanks for replying,old bean.

[A.P. Wolf]

How & Roy
sorry fellahs, but I don't think you can dismiss the role that the newspapers played in whipping up this myth of blood ritual; and it wasn't just The Times either... just look at this propoganda from The Evening News, 9th October 1888, and it was directed right at the man in the street.

'
A HIDEOUS SUPERSTITION.
A Vienna correspondent, telegraphing last night, states that Dr. Bloch, a member of the Austrian Reicherath for the Galician constituency of Kokomes, has called his attention to certain facts which may throw a new light on the Whitechapel murders, and, perhaps, afford some assistance in tracing the murderer. In various German criminal codes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as also in statutes of a more recent date, punishments are prescribed for the mutilation of female corpses, with the object of making from the uterus and other organs the so called Dieblichter or Schlafslichter, respectively "thieves' candles" and "soporific candles." According to an old superstition still rife in various parts of Germany, the light from such candles will throw those upon whom it falls into the deepest slumbers, and they may, consequently, become a valuable instrument to the thieving profession. Hence their name.
In regard to these Schlafslichter quite a literature might be cited. They are referred to by Ave Lallement in his "Das Deutsche Gaunerthumm" published at Leipsic .in 1858; by Loffler in "Die Mangelhafte Justiz";by Thiele, and numerous others. They also played an important part in the trials of robber bands at Odenwald and in Westphalia, in the years 1812 and 1841 respectively. The Schlafslichter were heard of, too, at the trial of the notorious German robber, Theodor Unger, surnamed "the handsome Charley," who was executed at Magdeburg, in 1810. It was on that occasion discovered that a regular manufactury had been established by gangs of thieves for the production of such candles. That this superstition has survived amongst German thieves to the present day was proved by a case tried at Biala, in Galicia, as recently as 1875. In this the body of a woman had been found mutilated in precisely the same way as were the victims of the Whitechapel murderer. At that trial, as at one which took place subsequently at Zeszow which is also in Galicia, and in which the accused were a certain Ritter and his wife, the prevalence amongst thieves of the superstition was alluded to by the Public Prosecutor. In the Ritter case, however, the Court preferred harping on another alleged superstition of a ritual character amongst the Jews of Galicia, which, however, was shown to be a pure invention of the Judenhetzer. Dr. Bloch, who, for ten years, was a Rabbi in Galicia, and has made the superstitions of the Province his special study, affirms that the "thieves' candle" superstition still exists among robbers of every confession, and, as he believes, also of every nationality. He considers, however, that it prevails most amongst German thieves. Amongst other German laws, where the crime in question is dealt with, the Code Theresiana, chap. XXII, clause 59, may be referred to. '

[Howard Brown]

Dear A.P.

"In the Ritter case, however, the Court preferred harping on another alleged superstition of a ritual character amongst the Jews of Galicia, which, however, was shown to be a pure invention of the Judenhetzer." ( German for "Jew baiter').

Thanks for providing this, but in all honesty I don't see how Galicia relates to Goulston Street, old bean.

Personally, I don't see how the article can construed as appealing directly to the man in the East End street.

How about anyone else ? Where do you stand in this discussion ?

[Jon Simons]

I firmly believe that the assumption of blood libel being a buzzword on the streets of the East End is incorrect and baseless.

I`m with you on this, How. From my understanding, the people on the streets were more concerned with toffs carrying black bags. The people on the streets lived and worked alongside each other, they being the first point of contact for new arrivals to the district.

The newspapers may have whipped up their own storm, but these people didn`t live in the East End, where different faiths lived shoulder to shoulder in tough, cramped conditions.

Didn`t Mary Ann Nichols work for Jewish families. God knows how many others relied on their more industrious neighbours.

Even when the papers pointed the finger at a Leather Apron. There were no religious elements involved in the accusations.

[Howard Brown]

Jon:

That point about Mrs. Nichols ( Stride as well...) working for households that happened to be run by Jews...not because they were Jews...is worth mentioning and I'm glad you did Jon.

Not only did fellow Jews in the area obviously depend on other Jews with the available gelt to employ them, but local Gentiles were obviously employed as well. So much for this wide gulf between the two ethnic groups in terms of them rubbing shoulders from afar. Thats false.

Not necessarily so sure about whether one group was more industrious than the other here...since hiring people to do housework seems to suggest one wanted to abstain or had to abstain from actual work and needed/wanted someone else to do their work....but in any event, to me its not surprising that anyone with a little cash might hire someone on. It was a mitzvah that some Jews did hire the downtrodded Gentile ladies on.

I think you'll agree Jon....thats its a tendency for Ripperologists in our time...the modern day Ripperologists, rather than then... closer to the actual crimes... to see references or suggestions that the Jews and Gentiles were distanced in their day to day life.

That, in itself, is a modern condition in my view born of a desire to be politically correct . I do not recall reading material from back then...when flippant remarks could have been hurled at Jews by then-contemporary writers...to a degree anywhere near of what I read in books on shelves now based on the post World War two trend of inevitably characterizing Jews as a "race" of professional victims. They're not even a race.

Think about that Jon. Think about how often you have read comments written (other than SRA, before someone blows a gasket) from 1888-1945 in reference to East End life which point out significant differences between the neighbors in the East End. Not very frequently, I'd guess. There was a lot more mingling than mangling....yet that concept of cameraderie doesn't sell papers nor does it heighten the tension when one reads a Ripper tome...or random posts made on websites.

I might start a thread on a list of books which have such statements that need correction this week.

Back to you buddy.

[A.P. Wolf]

You'll not be surprised, How, to hear that I disagree.
The last report I posted was the stuff of an East Ender's nightmare, murdering Jews ripping the birth parts out of women to make candlesticks from. And as I said, the Evening News was not The Times, it was specifically designed for the working man on the street, and it was his street bible.

'The first issue appeared on July 26 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_26), 1881 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1881). It was the first popular evening paper in London (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London). It was priced at one halfpenny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_halfpenny_coin), distinguishing itself from the more serious penny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_one_penny_coin_(pre-decimal)) papers such as The Times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times). '

Each and every lodging house had a newspaper for the lodgers to read, and you can bet your dollar it was the Evening News at a halfpenny rather than The Times for a penny.
I believe the problem you are having here is perhaps not making the distinction between an urban myth and the genuine article, because no matter how hard you try to demystify and eradicate an urban myth the stronger it grows, and people will always believe in the urban myth, despite being shown it is a myth.
These type of urban myths, such as Jews murder and mutilate women and children to make candlesticks out of their innards, always have a point of source, and that point of source is most often a totally false and unreliable story in a newspaper.
But then the story goes onto the street, where it becomes the whispered urban myth, and then the populace start to believe that it must be a Jew, for no Englishman would do such a thing.
Bollocks! Did they never hear of Wainwright who chopped up women right there in the East End of London?
But you see the urban myth is more important, and certainly more vital than the plain old boring truth.

[Jon Simons]

Great post, How!! As you say there seemed to be more mingling than mangling

Yes, I`d forgot about Stride. Both Eddowes and Stride may also have been targetting Jewish clubs for a bit of trade.

I do get the impression that the many of the new arrivals were more industrious than their gentile neighbours, as many were educated young people, who were using the area as a starting point.

How many of the Ripper letters that were sent in banged on about the killer being a Jew? Not many. Actually, I say this off the top of my head!! I`d better have a browse through my Letters From Hell!!

Ironically, if Schwartz is to be believed, it was the killer used who used an anti-semitic taunt?!?

[Jon Simons]

it must be a Jew, for no Englishman would do such a thing.

Hi A.P.

Was not the above term born of the modern film-makers, spoken by Anthony Quayle`s or Ian Richardson`s pompous Warren?

[A.P. Wolf]

Indeed not, Jon, I have already quoted it twice from different journals of 1888 on this thread, but there are other quotes from the same year.

[A.P. Wolf]

Post no. 15 on this thread, from Lloyd's Weekly, 9th September 1888:

'Just as our correspondent was writing a gang of young vagabonds marched down Hanbury-street shouting "Down with the Jews!" "It was a Jew who did it!" "No Englishman did it!"

[Howard Brown]

Jon...in regard to the attempts of the immigrant Jews to assimilate:

They had to . The notion of ethnic or cultural insularism by the vast majority of Jews makes no sense if they were to integrate themselves with their new hosts. There's no way that the presentation of Jews as hiding behind windows...huddling in hovels...an accurate reflection of the majority of the tradesmen ( Over 50 percent of the names of the MEVC members are those of Jews) and workers in the district. Thats Hollywood and thats what encourages people to whip out the violins and pluck away at some dirge when it comes to representing Jews in the East End. Jews were a majority in the area...although by the tone of posts made recently you might get the impression that there were 8 or 9 of them hiding under a nice corned beef sandwich...behind the pickle.

Not only were Jews, in general, more alert, more conscious, and more sensitive before the murders began due to their need, not the other way around, of assimilating....but after they began it was only natural that many of them...not all of them...many of them were anticipating that "they" would be blamed for something.

A.P.

Again, senor, nice find....but its not showing us any evidence of what we're talking about here with all due respect.





These type of urban myths, such as Jews murder and mutilate women and children to make candlesticks out of their innards, always have a point of source, and that point of source is most often a totally false and unreliable story in a newspaper.---from A.P.'s previous post.

I was waiting for that A.P.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qLkGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=Schlafslichter&source=bl&ots=bs4D5-LP39&sig=iUm9IYPP7S212IBXs3OtxFFcZQ4&hl=en&ei=OLf-StHeHoallAe7r8GWCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Schlafslichter&f=false

By the way, Unger is only mentioned as being a German....not a Jew.

Where do you find any reference to him and his band of thieves being Jews?

[A.P. Wolf]

Then, How, we must assume that it was some kind of miraculous coincidence that the following letter appeared in the same edition of the Evening News as the urban myth story of Jewish candles made from from the innards of christkinder?

'
IS THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERER A JEW?
IMPORTANT LETTER.
"Shall the Jews be blamed for nothing," was the inscription alleged to have been written on the wall in Goulston street by the perpetrator of the Mitre square murder. In view of this the following letter, received by us from a correspondent with a long experience of metropolitan slaughter houses, seems of peculiar interest.

To the Editor of "The Evening News."
Sir - Of the many theories that have been put forward as to the probable perpetrator of the East end tragedies, hardly any, to my mind, suggest the likeliest class of man to be capable of working in the silent, quick, and skilful manner that he evidently does, according to the medical evidence given at the various inquests. Having read the many letters in the "dailies" I feel that my views as to the manner of the committal and person committing them may be of some interest to you and your readers.
1. The person likely to commit an act of this description and in the peculiar manner, is a man who is thoroughly acquainted with and is practical in the Jewish method of slaughtering animals for human consumption, a business which is carried on in the immediate neighbourhood of the murders, and at the market in Deptford, which is in constant communication by rail or van with this locality at all hours day and night. My reasons for assuming this is that only a man having a perfect knowledge of how to deliver a cut so effectually and with such certainty as in these cases must know exactly the kind of knife to use, and I know of no more suitable instrument than the knife used by a "Jewish cutter" when slaughtering sheep or oxen. These knives are from twelve to eighteen inches long in the blade, about one and a half to two inches wide, with square end, very rigid, strong back, and made of finest steel, sharpened upon a hone to a razor edge. The mode of using it is as follows: The sheep or ox is cast turned on its back, the head drawn back to render the skin tense, the cutter is then called upon to do his work which is to cut the animal's throat with one heavy downward drawing cut, using the knife from heel to point so as to divide the whole of the vessels, windpipe and muscles, down to the vertebral column, the animal dying quickly and noiselessly from such a wound - a wound requiring to inflict upon so large an animal as an ox a perfectly suitable knife, skill and force to use it.
2. After the animal is dead the skin being removed by assistants from the abdomen of the carcass, a second person, called a "searcher," steps in and makes a longitudinal incision in the abdomen, immediately below the base of the chest, in this case a razor is used as a cutting instrument. The hand is passed through this opening, and two incisions are made in the diaphragm in order to pass the hand entirely round the cavity of the chest on either side, and feel for any attachment of the lungs to the walls of the chest. The organs of the abdominal cavity are examined by touch in a similar manner, and if it passes the examination as fit for Jewish consumption, it is marked by the searcher, and afterwards a sealer seals it with a small leaden seal.
In my opinion a man who has seen or carried out these functions has committed these crimes, from the fact of the certainty, cleanness, and depth of the cuts in the throats of the victims, the mutilations being so extensive, and evidently carried out by the sense of touch, for it is evident no light could have been used.
Should you publish this letter, I will conclude my argument in a second one tomorrow.
I am, &c.,
A Butcher. '

[Pilgrim]

News of the World (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/news_of_the_world/notw001021.html)
Sunday, 21 October 1900 (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/news_of_the_world/notw001021.html)

A "JACK THE RIPPER" SUSPECT DEAD.

The death has just occurred in the East-End of London of Julius Lipman (http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/4991.html), nicknamed "Leather Apron," a cobbler, who in 1889 fell under suspicion of being "Jack the Ripper." He satisfied the police of his innocence, but the stigma never left him. His business gradually disappeared, and he went to another neighbourhood, where he took to drink. He died of neglect and semi-starvation.

~~~

One of the most startling facts was the role of the Jewish Board of Guardians - a relief organization - in sending Jewish immigrants back to Eastern Europe. Fifty thousand persons were returned between 1880 and 1914 in a scheme that was inaptly called 'The Exodus'. It is no surprise, I point out in the book, that when Theodor Herzl came to England advocating a homeland for the Jews*, he was welcomed by the established Jewish community, who were looking for an alternative to immigration by impoverished Jews from Eastern Europe to the United Kingdom.

Martin L. Friedland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Friedland), My life in crime and other academic adventures (http://books.google.no/books?id=FkFOTMBAHGcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=friedland+life+crime&lr=&as_brr=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false), p. 305. (http://books.google.no/books?id=FkFOTMBAHGcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=friedland+life+crime&lr=&as_brr=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

~~~

*Israel Zangwill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Zangwill)[I] became a leading member of the Order of Ancient Maccabeans, a Zionist society established in 1891.The Zionist movement was working toward the establishment of a Jewish homeland, that became a reality with the birth of the nation of Israel in 1948. And when Zionist leader Theodor Herzl visited London in 1896 he met Israel to discuss the plans for that state. Argentina and Uruguay were two of the venues proposed for the new homeland, as well as the eventual Israel of the Holy Land.

eastlondonhistory.com - Israel Zangwill (http://eastlondonhistory.com/israel-zangwill/)

~~~

See also:

Theodor Herzl, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat)Der Judenstaat, 1896 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat)
Aliens Acts, 1905 and 1919 (http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server.php?show=conInformationRecord.35)
Balfour declaration, 1917 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917)
British Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_empire#Plantations_of_Ireland)
Gaza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War)In 1905, after Herzl's death, Zangwill split with the main-stream of the Zionist movement to form the Jewish Territorial Organization (known as the ITO), whose goal was to establish a Jewish homeland anywhere that land could be obtained, in an effort to rescue Jews suffering persecution in Russia. Although subsequent history suggests that any such settlement outside Palestine would have been a disaster, Zangwill's plan was based on an understanding of the difficulties involved in settling Palestine, a land that already had a substantial Arab population. Zangwill's 1923 speech in New York City to the American Jewish Congress, Watchman, What of the Night?, unsparingly criticized the Zionist organizations and declared political Zionism dead. Zangwill's reputation among Jews rapidly declined, although some Jewish leaders, including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who had chaired the American Jewish Congress at the time of Zangwill's speech, remained loyal. Rabbi Wise was in England at the time of Zangwill's funeral and delivered the eulogy. In America Zangwill's obituary appeared on the front page of the New York Times, an indication of the reputation he still held in the United States, even after his political heresy.

Israel Zangwill and Children of the Ghetto (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_1_48/ai_64688888/pg_4/?tag=content;col1)

[Howard Brown]

Dear A.P.

No offense, but you've lost me on this one. How does Handsome Charley fit in here with the article you provided ( thanks by the way...)

1. The man who wrote this letter doesn't mention candles. No one in the trawling I've done has when it comes to the WM. Please provide a source if possible.
2. The man who wrote this letter is in no way singling Jewry out for the crimes. Thats obvious. What he's done is what Robin Odell has done: Theorize that a shochet was behind the knife.

Is it now your contention that anyone positing the notion that a Jew committed the WM an anti-Semitic platform?

Is it now your position that anyone positing the suggestion that a shochet was the possible killer....and it IS a good suggestion... is an anti-Semite ?

Is it now not obvious A.P. that with each post you've brought up on the issue that there is no reference to blood libel....nothing anti-Semitic in stating that one believes someone involved in the shechita ritual ( ONLY a Jew would be) was the Ripper....and that the few articles mentioning disputes between neighbors in the East End are not entirely reflective of the contemporary East End community thought and behavior at large ?

Back to you...old bean.

[Pilgrim]

'Children of the Ghetto', the first realistic literary portrait of East End Jewish immigrant life, appeared in 1892.

Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry, pp. 73. (http://books.google.no/books?id=MKWEwUxMSQEC&pg=RA1-PA168&dq=london+zionism+1891+1888&lr=&as_brr=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

~~~

Children of The Ghetto (at gutenberg.org) (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12680/12680-8.txt)

~~~

Commentary magazine (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/abouthistory.cfm), October 1950:

Zangwill's Ghetto Is No More: The Passing of Whitechapel (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/zangwill-s-ghetto-is-no-more-br-em-the-passing-of-whitechapel-em--1121)

By Barnet Litvinoff (http://www.amazon.com/Barnet-Litvinoff/e/B001HPN4P0/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1) (1917- )

[Jon Simons]

Indeed not, Jon, I have already quoted it twice from different journals of 1888 on this thread, but there are other quotes from the same year.

Fair enough.

[Howard Brown]

In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were brethren.
Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim--descendants of the Spanish
crypto-Jews who had reached England _via_ Holland--had modified its
boycott of the poor Ashkenazic immigrants, now they were become an
overwhelming majority
--from Zangwill's work which Pilgrim provided.

Not to be trite, A.P....but thats a reference from the man who invented the term, The Melting Pot.

Thats a direct quote regarding the actual and factual elitism demonstrated by Jews on other Jews.

In light of this comment by a Jew on the assimilated Jewish attitude towards immigrant Juden...what do you think of those kosher apples?:kiss:

[A.P. Wolf]

Well, How, as I said the urban myth has no real legs, it slithers and slides through a population infecting the populace with its nonsense, until it actually starts to grow legs and becomes a living breathing entity.
In the same way today that a newspaper can state that some famous person was caught doing some infamous thing, the population will take that on as an urban myth, even if the same newspaper retracts that story... then this also applies to myths of Jews mutilating women in the LVP.
You seem to be saying, How, that the comprehensive society of the LVP, from the lowest unfortunate on the street, to the men who wielded power and influence in Parliament, would not have been influenced in any manner or form by reports in almost all the newspapers of the day that male Jews were apparently ripping women apart on the Continent to either atone for having sex with 'em, or to make candles from their birth bits... and that the man on Wentworth Street would have read such about his newly arrived Jewish brethren, and then gone to the nearest coffee stall and discussed the weather?
This does seem a somewhat unrealistic view of a very real piece of clever propaganda.

[Pilgrim]

Into the heart of East London there poured from Russia, from Poland, from Germany, from Holland, streams of Jewish exiles, refugees, settlers, few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb, but all rich in their cheerfulness, their industry, and their cleverness. The majority bore with them nothing but their phylacteries and praying shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and Christianity. For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution. He knows that he is in 'Goluth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora)', in exile, and that the days of the Messiah are not yet, and he looks upon the persecutor merely as the stupid instrument of an all-wise Providence.

...

Christian roughs bawled derisively in the street, especially when doors were opened for Elijah; but hard words break no bones, and the Ghetto was uplifted above insult.

...

For the London Ghetto persecution had dwindled to an occasional bellowing through the keyhole, as the local rowdies heard the unaccustomed melodies trolled forth from jocund lungs and then the singers would stop for a moment, startled, and some one would say: "Oh, it's only a Christian rough," and take up the thread of song.

...

"Who's that? What's that noise?" asked the Rebbitzin.

"Only some Christian rough shouting in the street," answered Hannah.

It was truer than she knew.

...

Israel Zangwill, Children of The Ghetto.

~~~

[A.P. Wolf]

And I'll highlight what The Times said on the 2nd October 1888 again just to make sure we all know the implication that was being made here by the leading newspaper of the day. That being the murder and mutilation of women in Whitechapel could be best explained by looking at the murderous behaviour of the recently arrived Jews from the continent.

'The mutilation was like that perpetrated on the body of the woman Chapman, and at the trial numbers of witnesses deposed that among certain fanatical Jews there existed a superstition to the effect that if a Jew became intimate with a Christian woman he would atone for his offence by slaying and mutilating the object of his passion.'

[Howard Brown]

You seem to be saying, How, that the comprehensive society of the LVP, from the lowest unfortunate on the street, to the men who wielded power and influence in Parliament, would not have been influenced in any manner or form by reports in almost all the newspapers of the day that male Jews were apparently ripping women apart on the Continent to either atone for having sex with 'em, or to make candles from their birth bits...

Okay A.P....lets discuss this statement.

1. Where on earth is there a reference to Jews and candles in the newspapers ? I asked this before and you haven't answered that question. Where is the reference to the thieves in 1811 being of the Jewish persuasion?

2. How many actual newspaper reports have YOU seen with references to the "ripping women apart on the Continent? " Strangely, I'm coming up with only the ones you provided....not that the Cracow murder actually affected the man in the street in Whitechapel.

3. Where are there any written references from Jews or Jewish newspapers on the actual hue and cry of blood libel being heard? Jewish newspapers and chroniclers wisely employed preventive medicine if required...and yet,A.P., not one of them so far has been found to refer to blood libel being uttered on the pavements. Only Gaspard and Adler are referenced...and that was, as mentioned, preventive medicine.

Its not being unrealistic to declare that the blood libel hue and cry as portrayed being prevalent is one based on wishful thinking or managed documentation. Its a fact. Until someone can show us...including you and me...that there was this alarming level of animosity on the street in opposition to the reality that people worked together for a common goal at the time....we've been misrepresenting the situation.

Its a fact that researchers in our field unconsciously present ideas or notions without definite sources. I know of no researcher who is immune to this, not that there isn't one or two who are not immune. Its not a bad thing or even an intentionally malicious act. It just is.

Whats troubling A.P. is that we are supposed to be the generation that demystifies the scene in 1888....yet there are still misrepresentations that need correcting in large part due to political correctness and suspect based Ripperology.

Blood libel on the lips of the East Ender being one of them.

[Pilgrim]

"Ungrateful!" said Esther hotly. "Why, what have you ever done for us?
When my poor mother was alive you made her scrub your floors and clean
your windows, as if she was an Irishwoman."

Israel Zangwill, Children of The Ghetto.

...

Irishwoman, n

a woman who is a native or inhabitant of Ireland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_empire#Plantations_of_Ireland).

...

The Sketch (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Irish_potato_famine_Bridget_O%27Donnel.jpg) of a Woman and Children represents Bridget O'Donnel. Her story is briefly this:-- '. . .we were put out last November; we owed some rent. I was at this time lying in fever. . . they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. . . I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead. I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick.'

~~~

[A.P. Wolf]

How, by the due process of human nature and social behaviour, what was written in the newspapers is passed onto the street level where it then becomes the urban myth of which we speak. This need not have any basis in truth or fact, it is enough that the myth appears in the press, therefore in the eye of the reader it is real.
Some newspaper reports were more discrete than others, not actually mentioning a Jew, but let's accept the simple fact shall we that the stories of blood rituals and atonements were about the Jews of the continent.
Or are you disputing that now?
I'm not trying to show that it was a common belief or otherwise to carry or cherish a belief that Jews ritually slaughtered Christian women for the man on the Whitechapel street, because the newspapers of the day carried that belief for the man on the street. That is indisputable.
Here is another cleverly crafted letter from the Evening News of the 10th October 1888.

'
THE EDITOR'S DRAWER
WHO IS THE MURDERER
TO THE EDITOR OF "THE EVENING NEWS."
Sir - In the absence of any definite clue to the perpetrator of the recent dreadful atrocities at the East-end of London, it seems desirable to consider the question from the point of view of what, for want of a better term, I may call speculative jurisprudence. It will be admitted that if suspicion can be, with even reasonable conclusiveness, focused on a particular, and, if possible, small class of persons, there may be a greater probability of the speedy detection of this perpetrator than a more or less vague inquiry directed over a large and densely populated area. At the same time, assuming my hypothesis to be fallacious, there is no reason why, whilst investigating it within its own narrow limits, the wider inquiries now being pursued should be diminished. There is, I think, a reasonably general consensus of educated opinion that the late several murders, with their exceptionally concomitant horrors, are the work of one and the same person. Inquiry has also fairly established that the theory suggested that the murders and mutilations were to secure a particular organ of the victim's body is untenable. Robbery, or the gratification of animal passion, or revenge, in its ordinary personal acceptation, being beyond the question, the solution of motive may have to be sought in some form of mania arising from one or other, possibly, of the following causes, viz: some wrong, real or imaginary, sustained at the hands of the class to which the poor murdered women belonged; or an insane belief as to the good to result to society by their extermination. It is observed that homicidal mania, in the sense of an unrestrainable desire to kill merely, is not here present, the tendency being directed against a particular class exclusively. These questions, are, however, for the moment comparatively unimportant beside the more pressing one as to the direction in which the murderer, or homicidal maniac, is to be sought. For reasons which I shall state concisely I venture to suggest that the perpetrator of these several outrages is a man of foreign origin. The grounds for this conclusion are: (a) That in the whole record of criminal trials in England there is, I believe, no instance of a series of crimes of murder and mutilation of this particular horrible character. (b) The celerity with which the crimes were committed are inconsistent with the ordinary English phlegmatic nature, but entirely consistent with the evidence given in some more or less similar cases abroad. (c) The mutilation and removal of certain organs involved a degree of anatomical knowledge and skill, which, according to high medical opinion, would not be likely to be possessed by an English slaughterman (to whom, at first, suspicion pointed): whereas this special skill is possessed to a not inconsiderable degree by foreigners engaged in the charcuterie and other kindred trades abroad. (d) The character of the knife used, as suggested by the medical evidence at the inquests, is similar in kind to the instrument known as French "cook's knife;" or at least is, in the circumstances, more consistent with its use by a foreigner than an Englishman. In offering these opinions I do not desire to suggest, what indeed my experience negates, that a foreigner, as such, has any monopoly of brutality over an Englishman. There are forms of brutality which are committed by Englishmen which a Frenchman or an Italian, for instance, would never dream of. But there are also idiosyncrasies of crime which are, as if were, peculiar to particular countries, both in their conception and mode of execution.
I am, &c.,
EDWARD DILLON LEWIS
8, Bow-street, Convent Garden, W.C., October 3. '

[Roy Corduroy]

This need not have any basis in truth or fact, it is enough that the myth appears in the press, therefore in the eye of the reader it is real.
Some newspaper reports were more discrete than others, not actually mentioning a Jew, but let's accept the simple fact shall we that the stories of blood rituals and atonements were about the Jews of the continent.

I'm not trying to show that it was a common belief or otherwise to carry or cherish a belief that Jews ritually slaughtered Christian women for the man on the Whitechapel street, because the newspapers of the day carried that belief for the man on the street. That is indisputable.


AP, I'm with you 100%. And thanks for adding the one about the candle bit. The title of this thread is Jewish Ritual Motive, of which both blood libel and that bizarre candle thing apply.

Again, the stories were in the papers. People read the papers. As Wolf points out, the Evening News was a popular paper. So there is your belief by the common East Enders.

Roy

[A.P. Wolf]

Thanks Roy, much appreciated.
I think this report from the Daily News on the 11th September 1888 sort of sums up the entire situation.

'There is positive danger in the growth of any other opinion at present in Whitechapel. As we have said, the mutilation of bodies, excepting in rare cases to further the murderer's chances of safety, is foreign to the English style in crime. There is a disposition at once therefore to set down such atrocities to the credit of some ill bred and ill nourished foreigner from the lowest dens of vice in Europe. So, in Whitechapel, there was arising a murmur of ugly foreboding for some of the foreign element there. Sheer rumour of the silliest kind was beginning to take an odious precision, and there was arising in the East end a Judenhelze more abhorrent than that which abroad is due to religious fanaticism. '

[Howard Brown]

Some newspaper reports were more discreet than others, not actually mentioning a Jew, but let's accept the simple fact shall we that the stories of blood rituals and atonements were about the Jews of the continent.
Or are you disputing that now?

Am I disputing whether the story of blood ritual had been mentioned? Of course not, since a Jewish rabbi wrote about it in the papers....and yet, that had not surfaced on Whitechapel's streets. That had occurred in Cracow.

Am I disputing you ...and now Roy, as to whether these stories were being repeated on the streets of Whitechapel ? Of course I am and will continue to do so since you have yet...after all this time....shown one example of that being true.




I'm not trying to show that it was a common belief or otherwise to carry or cherish a belief that Jews ritually slaughtered Christian women for the man on the Whitechapel street, because the newspapers of the day carried that belief for the man on the street. That is indisputable.

Thats not only false, thats absurd. Newspapers most certainly did not carry that belief to people on the street.

Lets see either of you locate the source that says candlestick man Theodor Unger was Jewish. I have the distinct impression that you jumped on this without verifying it A.P. because you haven't presented it.

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

One more thing....you know perfectly well that the next to last article you brought up mentioned French and Italian men...not Jews... by their national origin.

You seem to be having a heck of a time accepting that your original belief in this blood libel being some sort of buzzword was and is incorrect.

The last article, once more and probably in the future as well...didn't mention blood libel either.

[Howard Brown]

Read it n' weep....

Notice that the myth of the soporific candles is mentioned as still en vogue in Germany....NOT Galicia or anywhere else.

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/unger.jpg

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

One disturbing thought that occurred to me is that had civilians or interested parties stopped by this thread, they would have thought by the tone of your posts that Whitechapel was the Warsaw Ghetto.

All those posts which you have supplied are fine additions and often accurate representations of the thought processes of the person offering them. The man who felt a shochet was possibly behind the knife....the man who opted for the Frenchman or the Italian...or the rabbi who employed preventive medicine in order that anything like the Cracow rumors or the German chap, Unger,was stifled before it hit the streets ..

All I have asked you and I asked this a long while back... is to show ONE example of someone uttering "Blood Libel" on the street and that being repeated in the papers. You haven't...because you can't.

Until you do, I'll be busy elsewhere. If this expression and the belief in it being at large was 1/100th as prevalent as you and you alone seem to suggest....we would have found it at the outset.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, as I'm sure you know and realise, the candle angle is only one tiny piece of that which we discuss, that being the prevalent belief in 1888 that Jews were capable of murdering and mutilating women and children for religious reasons or belief.
The following newspapers ran with the story of Jewish blood rituals slap bang in the middle of the Whitechapel Murders in 1888:
The Times - 2nd October 1888.
The Evening News - 25th October 1888.
The Daily News - 22nd November 1888.
The Star - 11th September 1888.
The City Press - 13th October 1888.
The Manchester Guardian - 4th October 1888.
The Pall Mall Gazette - 2nd October 1888
and bless 'em - The Woodford Times - 12th October 1888.
Now tell me that this had no influence whatsoever on the man on the street.

[Howard Brown]

A.P.


I took the time and scoured the October 2nd PMG....and found this.

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/talmud.jpg

Again...this is preventive medicine. Read the article. It does NOT state that people were using the term blood libel on the street....rather it was hoping that it remained off the streets.

Will I have to go through each of the links someone provided you and show you the same sort of preventive medicine?

Do me a favor. Find one that shows that phrase being used at all.

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

You or someone else will have to dig up those other papers...as I do not have access to them at present.

But...I'll be here waiting for the first one with a mention of the "blood libel" being en vogue in Whitechapel.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, all I can say is that you are ignoring the obvious in favour of the impossible.
I leave you with this sandwich from one of the most popular newspapers of the LVP in 1888.
Now why would they want to put a story about Jews mutilating folks right in the middle of copy about the Whitechapel Murders?
Your answer could win you a prize.

'The man is reported to have drawn a knife and made a desperate resistance, but he was eventually overpowered and conveyed to Commercial street station.

RELIGIOUS FANATICISM AMONG THE POLISH JEWS

The Ostroff correspondent of the Warsaw Dnevnsk reports another instance of the savage vengeance occasionally wreaked upon an apostate co-religionist by the orthodox Polish Jews. Franz Platkowski abandoned Judaism for the Greek Church, some fifteen years ago, and believed that he had lived down the vindictive opposition of his friends and relatives. Platkowski, who was resident in the village of Dlugosselo, near Ostroff, latterly lived on ostensibly good terms with his neighbouring relatives. He received a visit from one of these a few days ago, who invited him to return with him to Brok, another village in the same district, where the relative alleged some property had been left to Platkowski. He unsuspiciously went with his relative. In passing through a wood he was suddenly attacked by his two brothers and uncle, who dragged him into a tarantass they had waiting. After being severely beaten the victim was thrown on his back by one of his brothers, who knelt on his chest and pinioned his arms, whilst the other, with the uncle's assistance, forced open and poured into his mouth a quantity of vitriol, splashing the burning liquid also over his face and head. Believing their victim to be dead his relatives threw his body out of the car and left him. He was discovered next morning, and removed to the military hospital at Ostroff. Platkowski was scarcely recognisable by his friends. Both eyes, the tongue, and one ear were destroyed, and the head and face horribly burnt. The victim, who was able to make his deposition, is not expected to recover.

Another Sensation in Whitechapel '

[Pilgrim]

Was the expression 'blood libel', or any truly equivalent phrase, a 'buzzword' in the streets of Norwich, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Norwich) in the streets of Tiszaeszlár (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiszaeszl%C3%A1r_blood_libel), at the island of Rhodes, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_blood_libel) or during the Hilsner affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilsner_Affair) ? Or during any other such case of blood libel ? I very much doubt it. And that would rather seem to have been part of the problem, as 'blood libel' quite literally refers to false allegations of ritual murder. Clearly, making false allegations by calling them false allegations makes no sense at all.

[Roy Corduroy]

Am I disputing you ...and now Roy, as to whether these stories were being repeated on the streets of Whitechapel ? Of course I am and will continue to do so since you have yet...after all this time....shown one example of that being true.


Dear Howard,

I never said the man on the street is quoted anywhere regarding this. He isn't. I am saying it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Jewish Ritual Motive was discussed locally. It was printed right at the time of the murders and newspapers were selling like hotcakes. Connect the dots.

Roy

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

Your explanation as to how on Earth does that story (without the source name ) relate to the WM could get you a yarmulkah with a propellor on the top.:brick:

Seriously old bean....how does that story of a guy getting lumped up by two other guys...all without mention of blood libel or anything remotely resembling it...and all without the use of...drumroll....a knife...relate to the girls in the East End ?


Pilgrim...

Can you find one example of a reference to "false accusation of ritual murder" in the newspapers and related to the WM ? Thanks and thanks for bringing up those three cases that you supplied,buddy.

[Chris G.]

How, all I can say is that you are ignoring the obvious in favour of the impossible.
I leave you with this sandwich from one of the most popular newspapers of the LVP in 1888.
Now why would they want to put a story about Jews mutilating folks right in the middle of copy about the Whitechapel Murders?
Your answer could win you a prize.

What is the newspaper, AP? :rolleyes:

C

[Howard Brown]

Dear Roy:

My premise is that there was no widespread belief in blood libel...ritual murder...and other scurrilous assumptions of that ilk...in the East End. Just because A.P. thinks that it was doesn't cut the mustard.

I wasn't trying to be rude to you because the 1811 case and the Galician story of 1875 were mentioned by Jews and there is no reference....even in The Star, because A.P. would have shown it to me by now...to people other than the newspaper reports making noise about blood libel.

I can't and neither can anyone else, ascertain what people may have discussed over their meals or in private conversation from back in 1888. I'm not trying to appear facetitious, but there should be a reference to people making noise about in back in that period of time after Nichols' murder...and yet there wasn't...according to how strenuously A.P. has argued that it was.

Please don't misunderstand me, Roy....I enjoy debating the issue and hope you weren't put off by my response. I just felt you were going to provide something other than the German (Not Jewish) reference to candles and something contemporary with a Jewish theme since A.P. can't...

[Roy Corduroy]

Concerning the Oct 10 Standard piece AP shared, about the candle deal, this imiplicated Germans.

And no, those are not Jews. Correct, How. Absolutely, technically, correct.

But Germans made up the largest group of immigrants in the East End until the arrival of large numbers of Jews in the latter decades of the 1800's, and were still a strong presence in 1888. To the man on the street, they are all immigrants. All non-English. The fears, rumors, stories, hearsay, misled beliefs, and outright falsehoods that applied to one group could apply to all.

Snuff out the candle. Banish it from all discussion of Jewish Ritual Motive. But by doing so, we are probably not thinking like the man in the street thought back in Ye Olde Whitechapel.

Roy

ps Saw your post. No not now not ever do I think you rude. Perish the thought, and I mean that, How. I have learned on these boards to roll with the punches. If we were having this discussion over a Phillie CheeseSteak or a BBQ samwich it would be more sociable. You're the greatest How. Keep up the good work.

[A.P. Wolf]

It was, Chris, the Daily News of the 22nd November 1888.
But they had been there before, on the 11th September.

[Chris G.]

It was, Chris, the Daily News of the 22nd November 1888.
But they had been there before, on the 11th September.

Thanks, AP.

C

[A.P. Wolf]

How you use this expression in a previous post:

'Again...this is preventive medicine'

I'd like to ask you who that preventive medicine was designed for?

[Howard Brown]

Roy;

Thanks for understanding how I meant what I said in response to you before. I neither want to appear pushy or that people are being asked to do something that no one can do at this time...but the fact is, is that if the cry or whisper of blood libel was prevalent or that that concept was making the rounds, that vile accusation would have been repeated in the tabloids of the times....and A.P., who I am also not trying to bicker with, would have shown it up front at the beginning. He, after all, is usually in the forefront waving his banner at the head of the anti-Police, anti-British, anti-establishment, philo-Foreigner cadre that posit such ideas. This whole argument falls into that anti-Briton, anti-Establishment category. My position is that of total neutrality. I fully understand that we aren't arguing against Jews being under pressure due to the WM. However, drunks,bullies, semi-educated buffoons and ne'er do wells could be found haranguing non-Jews as well all throughout the course of Case study...a point that my dear A.P. seems to forget.

Yet...after all the hoopla on this thread... this seemingly prevalent sentiment cannot be demonstrated as being touched upon at all. We might as well say that Britons considered that "the Jews" were making foodstuff out of the organs of victims. There's nothing like that present and neither is this blood libel/false accusation of ritual in the East End from the people who lived there.

All A.P. has done so far is bring up a 77 year old case which had been mentioned....without a word about Jewishness in it...and to top it off, we do not know whether the people or person who did come up with that 77 year old case was a historian or policeman or charwoman.

Apparently this 77 year old case had inspired people/someone with considerable imagination,since no one in 1888 was able to say they lived back then, and because of their imagination.......they were able to connect those dots...and posit the idea, which made its way to Reb Adler and from there, the old man attempted to nip in the bud any future consideration of the nonsense of any sort of ritual murder involving Jews and non-Jew.



While A.P. claims its obvious that this sort of scuttlebutt was on the minds of the man in the street, he is asking us to think about the Case using his ideology....not any sort of facts.

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

First of all...I assume that none of those articles you pasted on the thread had anything to do with what we're talking about or rather, they were mirror images of the same unrelated articles found before. Thank you.

Quite naturally, the preventive medicine was designed to eliminate any possible repetition of the 1875 reference ( The Ritter/Galician case) before it broke out. Smart move.

It worked.

[A.P. Wolf]

Accepted, How, but you didn't answer my question... who needed the preventative medicine?
It was the man in the street, wasn't it?

[A.P. Wolf]

I'll post it again:

'I think this report from the Daily News on the 11th September 1888 sort of sums up the entire situation.

'There is positive danger in the growth of any other opinion at present in Whitechapel. As we have said, the mutilation of bodies, excepting in rare cases to further the murderer's chances of safety, is foreign to the English style in crime. There is a disposition at once therefore to set down such atrocities to the credit of some ill bred and ill nourished foreigner from the lowest dens of vice in Europe. So, in Whitechapel, there was arising a murmur of ugly foreboding for some of the foreign element there. Sheer rumour of the silliest kind was beginning to take an odious precision, and there was arising in the East end a Judenhelze more abhorrent than that which abroad is due to religious fanaticism. '

Now, How, what do you think this 'Judenhelze' is based on?
A rumour of the silliest kind... this is on the street, How. So what rumours? That Jews murdered and mutilated women and children in a blood ritual, or that the coffee was bad at Shcmutz's stall in the petticoat lane?

[Howard Brown]

Absolutely it was the man in the street that needed that sort of constructive advice from Rabbi Adler, A.P. ! Thats what I've been trying to establish.

That it didn't get to be an issue is a miracle considering how long the murder skein took. I will be the first to admit that. In fact, I would expect it to have been prevalent. That it didn't goes back, in some degree I'd think, to Adler and the fact that the majority of people in the neighborhood ,despite what we may think, considered prostitutes the same way we do now...and of course, that many of the folks were Jewish and their efforts to patrol the streets after September 10th in the MEVC had to be taken into account.

I have already, in case you have not seen it, provided one article where some putz suckerpunched a Jewish guy...and a few Jews, including Jewish ladies, lumped his ass up...got the beat cop involved...and told him that the guy they lumped up was Jack The Ripper. Its not just Jews who felt the heat, A.P....which you know...but a lot of lone individuals who were unfortunate enough to be picked on for their black bag, being unfamiliar with people in the neighborhood, or other attributes.

Shalom.

[Howard Brown]

Our posts crossed there, A.P.

If what the Daily News stated is correct, then I would be in error about the issue.

As I said, if I'm wrong, I'll accept it. Thats how we learn. We all are therefore on the same page.

What I have to wonder in all honesty is why you brought up completely limp references to candles and the like and only now bring up what should have been brought up at the outset. I'm glad that you did. I told you before...if I am wrong, then I'll admit it. I asked for ONE reference to the blood libel and even though it may not be THAT particular "theory" that was going around, I'll accept that the odds say it does mean it.

I was wrong.

P.S. Schmutz' coffee tasted like goat piss.

[A.P. Wolf]

Peace, How, as an old pirate I know not to raise me flag until I know me enemy ship.
But I think me and you will disagree on this until the sun sets on my grave.
My final volley of fine shot is that I believe from Fleet Street to Whitehall Place in 1888 there was a genuine desire to blame the Jew for the ills that beset the East End of London; and that the press and police worked together upon such a fractured and tarnished image; and that this despicable badge has been carried forward into our domain by modern writers and researchers who really should know better... and I consider it my job to teach them that lesson.
If you want to bait Jews do it in Galicia, not on my patch.

[A.P. Wolf]

No sweat, How, old warriors need to sharpen a sword once awhile; and my reference to Galicia is to the writers and researchers who still dwell on the Jew, not to you. Pax.

[Pilgrim]

A minor detail, perhaps... but it would seem the word Judenhetze were misspelled in that Daily News article. That is, correct spelling should be the same as to be found in the German legal concept Volksverhetzung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung).

Hetze, f

1. hurry, rush
2. hunt, chase
3. hate speech

~~~

[Roy Corduroy]

I too say Uncle

You have amply demonstrated through our inability to contradict you that the man in the street cannot be documented to have believed or whispered about Jewish Ritual Motive. And your premise was to demolish a line in a movie where Warren said that to Holmes. :spy:

I have never seen tha movie. Is this the one so descibed?

In 1965, Ellery Queen's A STUDY IN TERROR was adapted for the screen by Columbia Pictures**. It varied from the novel primarily in that the framing story involving Queen was totally omitted and only the Holmes portion was retained. This resulted in the movie accepting the theory that Ellery disproves in the closing chapter of the novel! the film suffers from many of the same problems which plagued the novel. The details of the Ripper case are hopelessly confused or ignored and the conclusion is unbelievable. Not helping this situation was an incredibly wooden performance by John Neville as Holmes. His Holmes is but a shadow of Rathbone's and derives much of its characterization from the great actor. The plot revolves around a Lord Carfax who has been murdering prostitutes in order to find a particular one named Angela Osbourne (who, of course, never appears in any other Ripper book or movie) who had brought his brother to ruin. The movie is only notable for its being one of the first to bring to the public the idea that one of aristocracy committed the murders and paves the way for some of the later features.

So you have debunked a movie based on a novel.

Again, enjoy having the confab with you and all,

Roy :pop2:

[Robert Linford]

Here is a libel of a different sort, but still nasty. Bottom right of page.



http://grubstreet.rictornorton.co.uk/jews.htm

[Howard Brown]

Dear Roy:

Anthony Quayle ( who did play in the 1965 Study In Terror....) portrays Sir Charles Warren in "Murder By Decree".

During the part where Holmes & Watson go to his office, Quayle explains why he removed the G from the Wentworth Building.

According to Quayle as Warren, it was because the most common theory on the street was that a Jew was committing sacrifice to his God....which of course is patently false. We've seen several other theories which surpass that one...such as the doctor-theory, lunatic-theory, man with black bag,etc.

Its in large part the reason I set this thread up. I knew,regardless of whether there was a reference to it in a paper which, in the 11th hour,A.P. provided...that that theory wasn't as prevalent as how the filmmakers made it out to be.

[Howard Brown]

Nice find Robert.

[Roy Corduroy]

My final volley of fine shot is that I believe from Fleet Street to Whitehall Place in 1888 there was a genuine desire to blame the Jew for the ills that beset the East End of London; and that the press and police worked together upon such a fractured and tarnished image; and that this despicable badge has been carried forward into our domain by modern writers and researchers who really should know better... and I consider it my job to teach them that lesson. If you want to bait Jews do it in Galicia, not on my patch.

and this:

and my reference to Galicia is to the writers and researchers who still dwell on the Jew, not to you.

I am now going off the topic of this thread, which is one line spoken in one movie based on a novel, and did it have any basis in fact.

AP, you say the press and police worked together in 1888 to blame Jews. I could not disagree more.

(1) The press whipped up every kind up story, rumor, sensationalism, you name it, whether it had anything to do with Jews or not.

(2) In direct contradction to your take on it, the police in 1888 did everything in their power to tamp down the prejudicial aspects of the crime spree. They stepped in to stop a riot against Jews. They encouraged Jews to move along at crimes scenes lest they become targets of abuse. They erased the graffito which contained the word Juwes. They did not have Israel Schwartz testify, with his account of the cry of "Lipski." And the centerpiece of their effort was to publicly clear John Pizer.

You have combined two things that have nothing to do with each other. The press and the police.

Later, McNaghten named Kosminski as one of his three suspects in response to the Sun articles. I don't see that as part of some big conspiracy, especially since his prime suspect was Dr. Druitt. Nor do I see it as anti-semitic.

Later still, Anderson said he was certain a Jew did it, and Swanson made his jottings. These are the personal memoirs and notes of then private citizens.

But here is the bad part you are really saying. You are castigating all modern researchers, starting with Martin Fido onward, who have followed the clues on the Jewish suspect.

Jews comprised 40% of the population in Ye Olde Whitechapel. According to you, anyone then or now who even entertains the possibility that the killer could have been Jewish is an anti-semite. You just said that in plain English.

Roy

[A.P. Wolf]

Roy, praise be that I've never spoken plain English in my life, eh?
You'll be aware that I talk here not of a mainstream public relations exercise on behalf of the Metropolitan police force of London through the good offices of Anderson, Warren or the like, but rather I talk here of the bobby on the beat and how he enjoyed whacking a socialist head, and even better when that head was wearing a skull cap.
I talk of identity parades to identify a killer in which twelve Jews stood in line and the witness was asked to point to the suspect. Blimey! It was a Jew after all, the witness picked out a Jew!
Later, when dust settles, the police chiefs can allow their clear prejudice to shine forth, 'of course I can reveal that the killer was a low class Polish Jew'; 'the only witness that could identify the killer was a Jew and you know how these johnny foreigners stick together'; and so on and so forth. So without a scrap of evidence, without the merest shred of factual material, Scotland Yard bait the Jew and another urban myth is born, and then carried forward by authors and researchers who really should know better than to blame the bogeyman.
But of course the Whitechapel Murderer cannot have been an Englishman, could he? We don't do that sort of thing, old boy.

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

Just an observation here.

Granted, you did find an article which I would agree suggests that the libel claim was being circulated. To what extent, we don't know. Since we all know that it wasn't nearly as "lethal" as you made it out to be, lets drop the issue. Maybe in another 50 years, one of us will find the second reference to that claim being circulated...or even a reference in Jewish papers which mentions it. Certainly no one died as a result and Roy provided a few instances....real instances...which demonstrate that the police did perform their duties satisfactorily. The rest of us, at least those who actually pay attention to Ripper literature and LVP history when we trawl papers, know that the opposite of what you maintain is true.

You mention:

"but rather I talk here of the bobby on the beat and how he enjoyed whacking a socialist head, and even better when that head was wearing a skull cap."

The underlined is in need of corroboration and less wild imagination . You're stating matter of factly that the police were anti-Semitic in their performance and yet in the literature, there are several examples of the police putting their own necks on the line for foreigners. We've already been through this before and you ( and anyone else for that matter ) cannot produce an example of the police singling out any group with excessive force. In fact, the opposite is true and I,along with others, have shown examples of such.

The part about whacking a socialist head is really neither here or there....even though we both know that socialists of any ethnic origin would get the same "whacking". If most socialists were of one common origin, then its obvious that the odds would be that that ethnicity, in this case Jews, would have their heads whacked.


Here's another flight of fancy:

"I talk of identity parades to identify a killer in which twelve Jews stood in line and the witness was asked to point to the suspect. Blimey! It was a Jew after all, the witness picked out a Jew...

Identity parades are constructed with men who look alike in order to determine any minute differences, so that the correct and guilty party may be pointed out....not just to haphazardly throw men together based on a common gene pool. . I'd also like to know what you would think if 12 non Jews, lets say 12 Irishmen, were put into a lineup and scanned by a witness. We both know that in two instances where Jews were asked to describe who they saw...Schwartz and Lawende, they both said the man they saw was fair. Was that an anti-Gentile reaction on their part ? Of course not. Its who they saw and nothing more just like who other witnesses saw was how they described them.

Lets look at an article that you posted before right after this little gem:

Scotland Yard bait the Jew and another urban myth is born, and then carried forward by authors and researchers who really should know better than to blame the bogeyman.
But of course the Whitechapel Murderer cannot have been an Englishman, could he? We don't do that sort of thing, old boy.



You also disprove your own points....a trait often displayed on the boards by positing one idea and then providing evidence to disprove it.

WHO put this little warm and fuzzy on the boards yesterday?

RELIGIOUS FANATICISM AMONG THE POLISH JEWS

The Ostroff correspondent of the Warsaw Dnevnsk reports another instance of the savage vengeance occasionally wreaked upon an apostate co-religionist by the orthodox Polish Jews. Franz Platkowski abandoned Judaism for the Greek Church, some fifteen years ago, and believed that he had lived down the vindictive opposition of his friends and relatives. Platkowski, who was resident in the village of Dlugosselo, near Ostroff, latterly lived on ostensibly good terms with his neighbouring relatives. He received a visit from one of these a few days ago, who invited him to return with him to Brok, another village in the same district, where the relative alleged some property had been left to Platkowski. He unsuspiciously went with his relative. In passing through a wood he was suddenly attacked by his two brothers and uncle, who dragged him into a tarantass they had waiting. After being severely beaten the victim was thrown on his back by one of his brothers, who knelt on his chest and pinioned his arms, whilst the other, with the uncle's assistance, forced open and poured into his mouth a quantity of vitriol, splashing the burning liquid also over his face and head. Believing their victim to be dead his relatives threw his body out of the car and left him. He was discovered next morning, and removed to the military hospital at Ostroff. Platkowski was scarcely recognisable by his friends. Both eyes, the tongue, and one ear were destroyed, and the head and face horribly burnt. The victim, who was able to make his deposition, is not expected to recover.

Of course Jews are just as vile and vicious as any European group...despite what Mentor claimed in that the WM crimes were not being the sort a Jew would commit. Thats flat out bullshit. Its not the sort of crime ANY ethnic entity can be excluded from.


I'm going to take you to task here and ask you to, at your leisure after you finish listening to the "Internationale" over there, to show us one example of police brutality....without all the gyrations and soapboxing....and share it with us.

That shouldn't be too hard to do, considering how prolific it was, hmm?

[Pilgrim]

East London Observer
Saturday, 15 September 1888. (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/east_london_observer/elo880915.html?printer=true)

A Riot Against The Jews

On Saturday in several quarters of East London the crowds who had assembled in the streets began to assume a very threatening attitude towards the Hebrew population of the district. It was repeatedly asserted that no Englishman could have perpetrated such a horrible crime as that of Hanbury-street, and that it must have been done by a Jew - and forthwith the crowds proceeded to threaten and abuse such of the unfortunate Hebrews as they found in the streets. Happily, the presence of the large number of police in the streets prevented a riot actually taking place.

~~~

[Howard Brown]

Thanks Pilgrim....thats the reality of the situation, no more and no less.

One could laud Warren for not violating police protocols and maintaining decorum during the skein.

There are several other instances like the above. Its just that it makes for better copy if the police and the native born are seen as being venal.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, hey presto! The first part of your request... read carefully for it casts no doubts that the rumours referred to are indeed of the blood ritual.

'
Jewish Chronicle (U.K.)
Friday, 5 October 1888

NOTES OF THE WEEK.
The absorbing pre-occupation this week of our brethren in the East of London has been the ghastly mystery of the Whitchapel murders. It was reserved for the Vienna correspondent of the Times to give a still more sombre hue to their thoughts by a strangely imperfect reference to a Galician cause celebre. We reported on March 5th, 1886, the acquittal of Moses Ritter. He, his wife, and the Christian Pole, Stochlinski, were imprisoned for four years while the several trials were proceeding, and the unhappy Christian peasant who was accused of being the actual perpetrator of the crime, died during this long confinement. It was alleged that Ritter had outraged a Christian girl, and in order to destroy all evidence of the fact, had caused his victim to be murdered. The crime was thus of a very different nature both in its motive and circumstances from the six apparently purposeless and maniacal atrocities which have terrified London. But the correspondent speaks of it as "of an exactly similar kind", although in the recent atrocities there was no evidence of, and in the last crime no time for, the perpetration of any offence previous to murder. The correspondent goes on to commit still grosser errors. Evidence, he said, was given, and passages quoted from the Talmud to show, that a belief existed among ignorant Jews that an Israelite who had been intimate with a Christian woman might make atonement by slaying and mutilating her. The correspondent adds that there was no doubt Ritter was innocent, but that the evidence as to this superstition was never wholly disproved. How could it be disproved, one may ask, if the Jew was innocent as a fact. In that case any evidence as to what his motive might have been, assuming he had been guilty, would be immaterial. But Professor Delitzsch and Dr. Bloch did give evidence that no such superstition existed, although the correspondent fails to mention their testimony.


This telegram appears to us as dangerous a piece of composition as could be imagined. Of course it is not correct. The crime of which Ritter, his wife, and the unfortunate Polish Christian were accused, was quite different as we have pointed out from the series of murders in England. It is equally untrue that any such diabolical belief, as that imagined, exists among Jews. What witnesses can be found to swear to, and what falsifications they will make in Hebrew books to suit their purpose, appeared from the Tisza-Eslar charge which is known from subsequent events and confessions to have been an anti-Semitic plot from first to last. Dr. Herman Adler has written to the Times stating positively, as the fact is, that in no Jewish book is there any support for such a barbarity. Dr. Gaster has shown, in the same medium, that these calumnies were long since wickedly used by heathens against Christians, and were next employed by Catholics against Reformers. He might have added that such stories are still invented in Spain against Protestants, and in China against Europeans. The impropriety and injustice of the libel is only equalled by the danger involved in telegraphing it. Although it is a Jewish member of Parliament who offered the first reward for the discovery of the murderer, and Jews are active members of the Vigilance Committee, no one knows what an exited mob is capable of believing against any class which differs from the mob-majority by well-marked peculiarities. Many English and Irish workpeople at the East End are inflamed against the immigrant Jews by the competition for work and for houses, by the stories of the sweaters and the sweated. If these illogical and ignorant minds should come to believe in the report heedlessly spread by a writer who is obviously not quite just nor well-informed himself, the result might be terrible. Fortunately the press generally has treated the suggestion with the contempt which it deserves. '

[A.P. Wolf]

And here we have a plain clothes police officer smashing down the door to a Jewish club, beating up the steward of the club and then kicking and punching his wife... depending on whether you believe the police or the Jew of course.

'
East London Advertiser
Saturday, 27 April 1889
THE SOCIALIST RIOT IN WHITECHAPEL.
At Clerkenwell Sessions-house, on Thursday, before Sir P. H. Edlin, chairman, Lewis Diemschitz [Louis Diemschutz] and Isaac Kozebrodski surrendered to their bail to answer an indictment charging them with assembling together and making a riot, to the great terror and disturbance of her Majesty's subjects there being, also with assaulting and beating Israel Sunshine, Julius Barnett, Emanuel Snapper, Joseph Frost, and other persons. A man named Samuel Friedman was also included in the indictment, but failed to surrender and his recognisances was entreated. - Mr. Gill and Mr. Partridge prosecuted; and Mr. W. M. Thompson defended. - On March 16 there was a demonstration of Jewish unemployed at the East-end, and a procession was formed up at the International Working Men's Club, in Berners-street, Commercial-road, and marched to the synagogue in Great Duke-street, Aldgate. They were refused admittance by the Chief Rabbi, and then went to a piece of land named Mile-end-waste, where they held a meeting. Inspector Ferrett and nine constables followed the procession. After the meeting was over a crowd gathered round the International Club, and some little disturbance took place in consequence of one of the defendants coming out of the club in his shirt-sleeves and striking a boy. Hooting ensued, and then the two defendants, with Friedman, struck out right and left among the crowd. Frost remonstrated, and then he was kicked and violently assaulted. Friedman caught hold of him, and with the aid of the other defendants dragged him into the passage of the club, where he was again struck over the head with a stick and hit by Kozebrodski two or three times. The defendants were arrested, and at the station charged with riotous conduct. When at the police-station Lewis Lyons went there and preferred a charge against the police, which, however, was dismissed. Application was also made for a summons against Inspector Ferrett for assault, which was not granted. Evidence in support of the charge was given by Inspector Ferrett, Sergeant Wright, Police-constables Frost, Harris, Sherrington, and other constables. - Israel Sunshine, Julius Barnett, Emanuel Snapper, and others, also spoke to being in the crowd, and being assaulted by the defendants without any provocation. - For the defence, Mr. Thompson called a large number of witnesses, most of whom were foreigners, whose evidence had to be interpreted, who said that on March 16th there was a synagogue parade, &c., "procession of the unemployed and sweaters' victims." After it was over there was a great disturbance outside the International Working Men's Club. The people were throwing stones and creating a great disturbance. The door of the club was broken open, and Frost struck Diemschitz, and rushed into the club. The police ran after Diemschitz; and two of the crowd struck him on the back. None of these witnesses saw any blows struck by members of the club, the mob and the police being the aggressors. Mrs. Diemschitz made an attempt to rescue her husband, and did strike the police with a hair broom, but that was the only assault that was committed. On the way to the police-station Diemschitz was kicked and handled by the police. One of the witnesses said he saw the handle of the door tried by some boys, and on Diemschitz and his wife coming to see what was the matter, although Inspector Ferrett was there, Frost kicked Mrs. Diemschitz, and struck her in the chest. - Mr. Thompson, in his address to the jury, contended it was highly improbable that the case as submitted by the prosecution was correct, as a great deal of what occurred was in a dark passage, where it was highly probable that the police had made a mistake. He thought very little reliance could be placed on the evidence of those persons in the crowd who declared they had been assaulted, for they were in such a state of excitement that they hardly knew what did take place. - Mr. Gill briefly replied, remarking the charge was one of assault only, and that undue importance had been attached to it by the course taken by the learned counsel for the defence. - His lordship, having summed up, the jury, after a brief deliberation in the box, found both the prisoners guilty of assaults on the police only. - Kozebrodski, who was recommended to mercy, was ordered to pay a fine of £4, or in default one month's imprisonment, the money to be paid on May 6th. Diemschitz was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour, and at the expiration of that time ordered to enter into his own recognisances in the sum of £40, and to find two sureties in the sum of £20 each to be of good behaviour for 12 months. '

Questions were raised in Parliament about this bit of savagery, when it was found that Diemschutz's wife had been illegally kept out of the court room by the police.

[Sam Flynn]

And here we have a plain clothes police officer smashing down the door to a Jewish club, beating up the steward of the club and then kicking and punching his wife... depending on whether you believe the police or the Jew of course.
True, but then that was a crowd-control/riot situation, after all, AP. Rather different from routine discrimination, regardless which version of the story we believe.

[A.P. Wolf]

I'll save you a fifty year wait, How, for that second press report confirming that it was indeed the blood ritual urban myth that was being referred to by the press, as this report makes absolutely clear:

'
Manchester Guardian
4 October 1888
THE Whitechapel murders are so unparalleled in their horror that the wildest theories are afloat as to their perpetrator. The fact that there is a considerable Jewish population in the district has led to the revival of some the anti-Semitic slanders that have so strange a vitality. The Vienna correspondent of the Times has made himself responsible for the repetition of certain charges made during the notorious Cracow murder trial. "There is no doubt," he says, "that the man was innocent; but the evidence touching the superstitions prevailing among some of the ignorant and degraded of his co-religionists remains on record, and was never wholly disproved." The particular superstition here referred to is an atrocious form of the "blood accusation." We have on several occasions shown the baselessness of this mediaeval fable. Dr. DELITZSCH, Dr. CHWOLSON, our own Professor THEODORES, and many others have exposed the charge of human sacrifice which credulity, at once ignorant and cruel, has brought against the Jews. It has been a favourite weapon in the hands of the persecutor. When Christianity was a young society surrounded by a hostile pagan world, its disciples were charged with sharing in obscene and murderous rites. The same accusations were brought by the "orthodox" against the "heretics" of the early and middle ages. These falsehoods formed the chief pretext for the long, bitter, and deadly persecutions of the Jews by which mediaeval Christendom were disgraced. They have reappeared in recent years in such cases as the Tiaza Esslar trial. If the anti-Semites were not for the most part ignorant fanatics, they might be reminded that they are merely reviving the cruel falsehoods originally invented by the heathen in their struggle against the inroads of Christianity. Dr. HERMANN ADLER, and Dr. M. GASTER have each written to the Times protesting against this revival of the blood accusation. There is, of course, no justification in the "Talmud" for the charge. "I can assert without hesitation," says Dr. ADLER, "that in no Jewish book is such a barbarity even hinted at. Nor is there any record in the criminal annals of any country of a Jew having been convicted of such a terrible atrocity." It would add to the danger of the situation if the powerlessness and inability of the police so far to arrest the Whitechapel monster were to lead to any recrudescence of the anti-Semitic prejudices amongst the panic-stricken people of the East End. It is the duty of all who have the opportunity to protest against the false scholarship and false witness upon which the Judenhatze has to rely. '

[Pilgrim]

The Star
Largest Circulation of Any Evening Paper in the Kingdom.
LONDON. FRIDAY, 12 OCTOBER, 1888. (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/star/s881012.html?printer=true)

Dangerous Errors.

A News Agency says: - The police authorities attach a great deal of importance to the spelling of the word "Jews" in the writing on the wall. The language of the Jews in the East-end is a hybrid dialect, known as Yiddish, and their mode of spelling the word Jews would be "Juwes."

This is absolutely incorrect. A representative of The Star called at the Jewish Chronicle office, and was informed by the editor, and by a responsible member of the staff whose father is a Polish Jew, that the Yiddish word for Jew is Yiddin, the word "Yiddish" meaning, of course, the language of the Yiddins.

Much indignation is felt amongst the Jews at these repeated and unjustifiable attempts to fasten the responsibility for the dastardly crimes on them. The Jewish Chronicle says: - "We are authorised by Dr. Gordon Browne, the City divisional surgeon, to state, with reference to a suggestion that the City and Whitechapel murders were the work of a Jewish slaughterer, that he has examined the knives used by the Jewish slaughterers, all of which have been submitted to him by the City detectives, and he is thoroughly satisfied that none of them could have been used.

~~~

News of the World (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/news_of_the_world/notw001021.html)
Sunday, 21 October 1900 (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/news_of_the_world/notw001021.html)

A "JACK THE RIPPER" SUSPECT DEAD.

The death has just occurred in the East-End of London of Julius Lipman (http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/4991.html), nicknamed "Leather Apron," a cobbler, who in 1889 fell under suspicion of being "Jack the Ripper." He satisfied the police of his innocence, but the stigma never left him. His business gradually disappeared, and he went to another neighbourhood, where he took to drink. He died of neglect and semi-starvation.

~~~

[Howard Brown]

That previous post of mine will be back up soon...I need to point out some more things in it. I had to tone it down because unlike A.P. I don't wish to offend anyone who may misunderstand my position on this thread.

A.P.

You know perfectly well as I have pointed out before and will continue to do so that if the police had altercations with any residents in the East End...it was not based on their ethnicity or religion. That the police had an altercation at a majority Jewish socialist club is undeniable.

I am amazed...absofukcinglutely amazed.... with your constant desire to distort these articles...distortions of facts...and inferences of anti-Semitism at the drop of a pin. You are making a mockery of these articles with your intentionally falsified accounts of what is in print.

That event in 1889 was caused by one group of Jews going after another group of Jews !

Jesus Christ,A.P.....have you lost the ability to comprehend what you are reading ?:doh:

At Clerkenwell Sessions-house, on Thursday, before Sir P. H. Edlin, chairman, Lewis Diemschitz [Louis Diemschutz] and Isaac Kozebrodski surrendered to their bail to answer an indictment charging them with assembling together and making a riot, to the great terror and disturbance of her Majesty's subjects there being, also with assaulting and beating Israel Sunshine, Julius Barnett, Emanuel Snapper, Joseph Frost, and other persons.

[Howard Brown]

I also am now of the opinion that while there could have been some murmuring of blood libel on the streets....one has to wonder if the murmuring came from Jews themselves in some way and who may have been more alert to that incident from a decade prior.

[Sam Flynn]

I also am now of the opinion that while there could have been some murmuring of blood libel on the streets...
Surely most of the murmurings stemmed from civilian gentile beliefs that Jack the Ripper - or "Leather Apron" - was a Jew? A proportion of the working/lower-working classes inclined to be prejudiced against the immigrants in their midst for the simple reason that they were "foreigners taking our jobs". In most people's minds, I'd be surprised if the "blood libel" entered the equation at all.

[Howard Brown]

Sam:

Thats what I'm thinking as well. While I acknowledged to A.P. yesterday that there was a reference that seemed to suggest blood libel had made its way to the streets, there's always the possiblity that the British press, aided by the continental reports, and the Jewish press themselves, could have made a bigger deal than what it actually was...if it amounted to anything at all.

A.P.

I really don't want to sound like a ball buster. Yet, you and I can read the same reports and I cannot understand how you can misrepresent the 1889 event on Berner Street to such an extent...as if we are reading two entirely different stories.

Israel Sunshine, Julius Barnett, Emanuel Snapper, and others, also spoke to being in the crowd, and being assaulted by the defendants without any provocation.

This isn't the "savagery" you were referring to at the bottom of the post on that little dust storm was it ? A group of Socialist Jews lumping up non-Socialist Jews?

[A.P. Wolf]

How, in the LVP at that time, there were the 'old' Jews and the 'new' Jews, and not much love between 'em, that is true, but I used the incident at the IWEC in Berner Street for that very reason, for it didn't take much for the police to burst in and start knocking a few 'new' Jews about, but they would have hesitated before doing the same with the 'old' Jew, for they sat in Parliament and the London Council that controlled the police.
At the Battle for Trafalgar Square the 'new' Jew fought the police whilst the old 'Jew' signed up as special constables.

And Sam the very point I make is that supposedly professional people in the media and medical sciences were behind the urban myth of the Jewish blood ritual, and were promoting such a myth right slap bang in the middle of the worst violence the British nation had ever seen served out to Christian women, murderous assaults and killings that were being committed in one of the most densely populated areas for the newly arrived Jews coming from the very areas mentioned in the blood ritual urban myth.
Unlike you I see this as clear and deadly propaganda designed specifically to influence the Christian man of the street in Whitechapel into taking some kind of direct action against the Jews in the area.
The reports I quoted do show that the most senior Jews of the capital were mightily concerned that such direct action could come about through such reports of blood ritual in the media... this fear is echoed by the more civilised of the newspapers.

[Howard Brown]

Here we go again....more of the same ideology over the facts !

Quote One:

At the Battle for Trafalgar Square the 'new' Jew fought the police whilst the old 'Jew' signed up as special constables.

Read this...from the socialist pus pockets themselves....many of whom were not Jewish. In fact, the facts are that thousands of non Jews participated in Trafalgar Square's get together...rendering the subtle inference you give of this being a Jewish orchestrated affair null and void.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUbloody.htm

Quote Two :

but they would have hesitated before doing the same with the 'old' Jew, for they sat in Parliament and the London Council that controlled the police.


By the way, do you notice that you are now stating that the "Old Jews" were part of the cadre that controlled the Police ? What gives ???? An anti-Semitic police force "controlled" to some degree by Jewish wire pullers ????

Quote Three :

"but I used the incident at the IWEC in Berner Street for that very reason, for it didn't take much for the police to burst in and start knocking a few 'new' Jews about.."

Oh...so assaulting people in the street ( Jews by the way) if one is a socialist Jew excludes them from the normal procedure conducted by the police ? The victims were Jews who weren't socialists. They were assaulted by Diemshutz and Kozebrodski first.

[Howard Brown]

"He ( Ritter), his wife, and the Christian Pole, Stochlinski, were imprisoned for four years while the several trials were proceeding, and the unhappy Christian peasant who was accused of being the actual perpetrator of the crime, died during this long confinement..

...............unhappy Christian peasant who was accused

............actual perpetrator

..............Christian peasant


actual perpetrator

Dig ?

[A.P. Wolf]

I'm perfectly aware, How, that the majority of socialists at Trafalgar Square were not Jews, but I was attempting to show the subtle distinction between the 'old' and the 'new' Jew, and Trafalgar Square illustrates that marvelously.
You of course are reading the incident at the IWEC from a police point of view, and as I said this issue was raised in Parliament, and it is because of this that I prefer to take the middle view and do feel that the police were paying these boys back for Trafalgar Square, and yes they were aided by non-socialist Jews in their task, but at the end of a long and hard day the police truncheons still bashed a Jewish head.

[Howard Brown]

So...an anti Semitic police force hires on men who happened to be Jewish...how about that :whistle:

You're taking the what....the middle ground? Good one A.P. Thats pretty funny. I suppose you overlooked the first part of that article where the pacifistic socialist Kozebrodski and Friedman dragged the one dude into the passage of the club.

Since most if not all the individuals inside the socialist shithole were Jews, it stands to reason that anyone who got a few smacks in the head would be Jewish. They probably deserved a smack in the head if they tossed their hands up to the cops anyway. Thats what happens when you assault the law...regardless of whether you have a phony ideological worldview such as socialism or not.

So the police ,according to your inference here...went along with the throng of people who berated the Socialists and were there the whole time,eh? Because if not, then where do you get the idea that the non-socialists "aided" the police if the non socialists and the socialists fought before the cops were alerted ? Do you actually suggest that the police wanted this sort of trouble to occur in the first place on Berner Street ?

And you say I'm partisan on this issue ?

Hardly. I have no dog in the fight. I don't particularly care for socialists or leftists....but thats not what we were discussing...what we like or don't like.

Lets stick to the facts. Where is any of this indicative of anti-foreigner behavior on the part of the police department ?

[Howard Brown]

A.P. or anyone else...

I have no idea why the thread became "locked'.

Please resume with my apologiies.

[Pilgrim]

The half-century after 1871 did not witness the creation in Britain of an 'Irish community'. Despite their persistently low social status, Irish settlers adopted patterns of residence, religious practice, political participation and criminality which do not suggest a segregated population locked together in defensive ethnicity. Integration into British working-class life, a process encouraged by the multiplication of persons of Irish decent rather than birth, did not entail proletarian solidarity but merely reorientation of factional conflict. Irish and British workers found some common ground in their shared fear and dislike of the Jewish immigration of 1870-1907, when intake was restricted under the Aliens Act (of 1907). As a midwife recollected of London's East End:

'It used to be a street occupied by poor English and Irish people. In the afternoons you would see the steps inside cleaned, and the women with their clean white aprons sat in summer times inside the doors, perhaps at needlework, with their little children about them. Now it is a seething mass of refuse and filth... They are such an unpleasant, indecent people.'

The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939, (http://books.google.no/books?id=q6PwHF6FUYUC&pg=RA1-PA27&lpg=RA1-PA27&dq=whitechapel+irish+immigration&source=bl&ots=W0Vs5n9PXE&sig=GoHhAK_aUfhaFpufhPhA7-0i0uQ&hl=no&ei=0WMAS8q4CtDi-QbT5qn3Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=&f=false)pp. 44-45. (http://books.google.no/books?id=q6PwHF6FUYUC&pg=RA1-PA27&lpg=RA1-PA27&dq=whitechapel+irish+immigration&source=bl&ots=W0Vs5n9PXE&sig=GoHhAK_aUfhaFpufhPhA7-0i0uQ&hl=no&ei=0WMAS8q4CtDi-QbT5qn3Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
By Roger Swift, Sheridan Gilley

~~~

A pogrom* in 1904 destroyed the viability of Limerick city's small Jewish community which had built up since the 1880s. By 1904 the community consisted of about 25 families who worked as shopkeepers and peddlers travelling around Limerick and the neighbouring counties, selling merchandise, such as religious pictures, cheap jewellry and clothes from door-to-door on a weekly payment system. This small community came under periodic anti-semitic attack from the 1880s. For example, on Easter Sunday 1884 the house of the family of Lieb Siev came under attack by a crowd of about one hundred people when it became known that they had slaughtered a chicken that morning, in accordance with Jewish law, to celebrate the end of the Feast of Passover. The attack was also fuelled by the knowledge that some Jewish traders had not closed their shops on St. Patrick's Day. This date was not a public holiday at the time but was perhaps the date in the Irish Catholic religious calendar most closely associated with 'Irishness'.

The vulnerability of the local Jewish population to anti-Semitic violence at the time was noted in the Limerick Chronicle which on 3rd May 1884 stated: 'It needed but the cry so often heard in other cities - that the presence of the Jews was a standing insult to Christians - to light the torch of persecution'. This concern about the potential eruption of latent anti-Semitism into overt hostility against the Jews was subsequently realized in 1896 in Killaloe Co Clare, about twenty miles from Limerick, when an anti-Semitic sermon on the Cruxifixion led to attacks upon Jewish peddlers from Limerick. As reported in the Limerick Chronicle on November 2 1892: 'The few Jews who came there as usual on business, instead of meeting with customary friendly greetings, where in some instances, shunned like lepers, in others beset by a wild infuriated mob.'

The 1904 pogrom in Limerick was initiated by Fr Creagh, the leader of a Catholic organisation, the Arch-Confraternity of the Holy Family, which had significant power within the city. The Arch-Confraternity was a mass-organization of Limerick lay Catholics - it had a membership of 6000 in 1904 - established by the Redemptorists, a religious order of missionaries who played a key role in 'devotional revolution' which modernized Irish Catholicism along sectarian lines during the nineteenth century. Redemptorists were travelling revivalist missionaries, similar to Methodists, who staged religious events or 'missions' in the areas they visited, designed to renew religious fervour and enthusiasm. They promoted an emotional intensity in communities which could foster religious devotion but also intolerance, sectarianism and, in 1904, anti-Semitism.

Racism and social change in the Republic of Ireland, pp. 42-43.
(http://books.google.no/books?id=Q8us1So7oaQC&pg=PA43&dq=ireland+nineteenth+century+catholic+anti-semitism&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)By Bryan Fanning

~~~

*It can seem the British police were playing much the same role in this case as they did in Whitechapel. It should be noted that this event was not a true pogrom, in the ordinary sense of the word -

In view of the rising tension in the city, County Inspector Hayes called personally to see Rabbi Levin on the morning of 18 January. Levin was out, so Hayes left a message asking the rabbi to provide him with a written account of the position in which the Jews now found themselves. Upon his return, Levin wrote to thank the police: 'there is hardly any incident worth complaining of, except insults and abusive language given us to which we are no aliens'. But a boycott was in operation against the Jews:

'Those of us who trade on the weekly payment system are literally ruined, I am informed that they hardly collect 10% of their usual collection, and as for selling goods that is out of the question, not one shilling's worth of goods having been sold by them for the last forthnight in the city of Limerick.'

Jews in twentieth-century Ireland: refugees, anti-semitism and the Holocaust, (http://books.google.no/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=limerick+pogrom&source=bl&ots=zUJP7fBgS_&sig=7IvM3nbV4EWOoI5O4hVq5roMXzs&hl=no&ei=6GYAS4DTOYPa-QaqvZDLDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false)p. 33. (http://books.google.no/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=limerick+pogrom&source=bl&ots=zUJP7fBgS_&sig=7IvM3nbV4EWOoI5O4hVq5roMXzs&hl=no&ei=6GYAS4DTOYPa-QaqvZDLDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
By Dermot Keogh

[Roy Corduroy]

Roy, praise be that I've never spoken plain English in my life, eh?

First of all, thank you for the reply, AP, and yes I know you have your own way of expressing yourself and I'm down with that.

You'll be aware that I talk here not of a mainstream public relations exercise on behalf of the Metropolitan police force of London through the good offices of Anderson, Warren or the like,

Good, then we agree the police were in 1888 were not whipping up frenzy against Jews, or any group for that matter. The police were doing their job investigating a crime spree.

but rather I talk here of the bobby on the beat and how he enjoyed whacking a socialist head, and even better when that head was wearing a skull cap.

This is the Socialst Club affair. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the actions of the police in regard to the Whitechapel Murder file investigation.

I talk of identity parades to identify a killer in which twelve Jews stood in line and the witness was asked to point to the suspect. Blimey! It was a Jew after all, the witness picked out a Jew!

Violenia. "Inspector Canaby, placed about a dozen men, the greater portion of whom were Jews, in the yard" A perfectly legitimate identity parade, as Howie pointed out. Inconclusive because although V IDed Pizer, he could not ID Chapmen at morgue. But taken in context, there were hundreds of men questioned and some taken into custody. Hundreds of leads followed This one not adding up to the big deal you make it out to be. And as I said in my post the Police publicly cleared Pizer. Hello.


Later, when dust settles, the police chiefs can allow their clear prejudice to shine forth, 'of course I can reveal that the killer was a low class Polish Jew'; 'the only witness that could identify the killer was a Jew and you know how these johnny foreigners stick together'; and so on and so forth. So without a scrap of evidence, without the merest shred of factual material, Scotland Yard bait the Jew and another urban myth is born,

Hello again. As I said, these were private memoirs and private jottings. What is the point of me posting something if you don't read it?

and then carried forward by authors and researchers who really should know better than to blame the bogeyman.

I see you've toned this down. Well good on you. The word bait no longer appears, which in this context ain't crickets or worms.

Roy

[Howard Brown]

Thanks for that Roy...I got sidetracked today with a lot of "cookie" problems, which I think was the reason the thread became locked down. I also had to do more converting in regard to attachments, if not with A.P.

A.P.

Permit me to just give you my brief overview of this thread so far and with all due respect to your acumen of the Case...which is considerable...if not your reconstruction of events as they really transpired and representation of the people involved.

In my view....and with the facts to back them:

1. The facts,not my worldview or desires, argue a bad situation in the East End for virtually all working people regardless of stripe or origin. I see the police being harangued by the Press, who capitalize on the murders in more ways than just financial ones as in increased sales. They become considerably more influential in terms of their impact on public thought on a specific social problem: Murder in the East End...and we still see that today. Its why we are bickering to some degree on the issue.

2. The facts, not my worldview or desires, see the police, despite whatever tenets they held near and dear as men off duty, being remarkably restrained and under control primarily because of the way Charles Warren operated. This man was no "Bull" Connor in Birmingham in 1963...or Mayor Daley in Chicago in 1968. He went by the book and expected his men to do so as well. Newspapers, perhaps begrudgingly, praised the efforts if not the ability to apprehend the Ripper and we both know there are references to that.

3. The blood libel which is alluded to or referred to specifically in the Daily News of October 5th is the area we drifted from in our little duststorm before. I do not believe that this idea...if ever held to any degree or regard on the street beyond a whisper ... had any impact whatsoever with the man on the street in Whitechapel. While the article does seem to suggest that people may have mouthed the dreaded term blood libel, it has yet to be proven by any documentation that an act of violence resulted from this vile concept being available in the East End.

4. The facts, not my worldview or desires, are that are no specific anti-foreigner activities or conflagrations appear in the documents we have at our disposal at this point in time and that the police, despite your worldview, are not known to have singled out any ethnic group that did not originally hail from the British Isles. Using Berner Street's 1889 fisticuffs as an example of anti-foreigner activities sanctioned or accepted by the police is a poorly reconstructed version of events since the battle began with Jews battling Jews and not some pitched battle between one ethnic group and the police.

5. The presentation you have offered of the police using identity parades to single out Jews is preposterous, plain and simple and frankly beneath you.... If a red headed man assaults a woman, are we to believe that men with different colored hair are going to stand in a lineup with just one guy with red hair? You know way better than that A.P. and thats an example of your ideology taking the reins away from finding facts.

6. While cases in Continental Europe which you have brought up from time to time...and I thank you for that,make no mistake.....seem to indicate a less than reasonable mentality among those who lived in the regions where certain murders involving Jews occurred, the same does not hold true for Britain and Britain's track record speaks for itself in regard to how its immigrant communities were treated, not necessarily liked,hugged,loved,or anything else.... but how they were treated. Its no accident that most Jews who left Eastern Europe went to Britain. In Europe, the Anti-Semite movement was on the rise in the 1880's.

7. I wish to continue discussing this issue of how some myths such as blood libel...have become accepted in media portrayals of the WM. They flat out and unequivocably did not reach the point where people hid under their bedcovers. Yet, you are helping perpetuate that myth...not based on facts...but on ideology.

We're adults A.P....and please never fear or be concerned with disputing what I say in whatever tone you wish. I know that in the scheme of things that we are a lot closer in how we think than different or on opposite sides of the Case in the whole on the overwhelming majority of issues that will surface in the years to come.

Yer pal

How

[Roy Corduroy]

And again, Howie, remembering the starting point of the thread. All we are doing is debunking one line in a movie attributed to Warren, while speaking to Sherlock Holmes.

Nonetheless, your thread is a worthwhile exercise. It airs it out.

Roy

[Chris G.]

Hi Folks

The writings of Dr. Paul Knepper of the University of Sheffield are apt to the discussion of East End socialists and anarchists and the threat they were thought to pose to the establishment. In fact, I approached Dr. Knepper to write an article for Ripperologist. Unfortunately he is too busy to write such an article for us at the present time but hopefully in the future. Here's the abstract from his article "The Other Invisible Hand: Jews and Anarchists in London Before the First World War," Jewish History, Volume 22, Number 3, September, 2008:

"In the decades before the First World War, London worried about anarchist outrages, and particularly, about Jews said to instigate them. Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888), an attempt to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich Park (1894) and the Houndsditch murders (1910)/Sidney Street affair (1911). Jews were a visible population in the East End, and editors, MPs, and police authorities offered Jewishness to explain the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of anarchist violence. Jews were also thought to have the capacity to become invisible, ‘outsiders’ who could pass for ‘insiders’. In the radical press, and fictionalised accounts in novels such as Conrad’s The Secret Agent, the image of the Jewish anarchist became that of agent provocateur paid by police to infiltrate and undermine the movement. Jews were said to operate behind-the-scenes, manipulating the economy and political structure. The invisible hand of the market and the invisible hand of anarchism were attached to a Jewish body."

Further thoughts of Dr. Knepper and co-authors on the Ripper case and Jewish socialists/anarchists can be found in Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance, and Restorative Justice: Effects of Social Technologies by Paul Knepper, Jonathan Doak, and Joanna Shapland, available on Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=bq4FwIpp4RoC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=Knepper+Berner+Ripper&source=bl&ots=Z9PXcRrzc4&sig=l6ODEcawssRCEZDIyvmNkgGe9q8&hl=en&ei=E5QAS86KKs7VlAezgvmHCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false). The book contains some interesting thoughts about and by Sir Robert Anderson, e.g., p. 86, where Anderson is quoted as writing that "It is plain that our criminal population would be appreciably reduced if the criminal aliens were expelled from our shores." (1903). This makes for interesting background to Anderson's 1910 assertion that it was "a definitely ascertained fact" that the Ripper was a Jew.

Chris

[Roy Corduroy]

Thanks Chris,

Here's the abstract from his article "The Other Invisible Hand: Jews and Anarchists in London Before the First World War," Jewish History, Volume 22, Number 3, September, 2008:

" Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888),...

Being like we are, wouldn't we like to see the documentation for that.

Roy

[Chris G.]

Thanks Chris,

Here's the abstract from his article "The Other Invisible Hand: Jews and Anarchists in London Before the First World War," Jewish History, Volume 22, Number 3, September, 2008:

"In the decades before the First World War, London worried about anarchist outrages, and particularly, about Jews said to instigate them. Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888), ....

Being like we are, wouldn't we like to see the documentation for that.

Roy

Of course the operative word is "rumoured", Roy. :)

Chris

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

Lets get back to the subject matter, shall we ? I thought you might like to discuss your view on how serious or how widespread that Daily News article of October 5th, 1888 went in the East End....

Then we can talk about another condition or two within the Case that I consider a myth...and maybe even get to one that you think is worthy of mention.

Lets do it and don't be shy,old guy.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, with pleasure, but I think it important to note that the story of the Jewish blood libel was of a International, and National, press interest in 1888 right through from early September till late December... so not just local and not just the East End. My impression is that the story would have had an enormous impact anyway on the local population of the East End, simply because they had been invaded by the very people that many newspapers were claiming murdered and mutilated Christian women and children... now add to that poisonous brew the murder and mutilation of five Christian women in their very midst and you have a powder keg with Jack as its lively fuse.:kev:

[Howard Brown]

:kev::kev::kev:

Oy....Harris,Lawende and Levy ( shown above kvetching like there ain't no tomorrow) are sure happy to hear that,old bean. :tea:

This is good news. I thought you might have wanted to make an Exodus, but my gut instinct said no way you would quit. Thatsagood....

I would dispute how serious of an effect the article in the Daily News ( What page number, by the way, A.P ? ) had in terms of street violence. The Chronicle we can forget about since it was read overwhelmingly by people who happened to be Jewish.

THATS the main area of interest I have... did the brief reference result in any known violence which could be attributed to that comment in any way ?

Back to you...and any/everyone else.

[A.P. Wolf]

Well, How, I thought this report did show that there appeared to be a reactionary influence in the local population of the East End to the reports of Jewish blood libel.

Manchester Guardian
4 October 1888

THE Whitechapel murders are so unparalleled in their horror that the wildest theories are afloat as to their perpetrator. The fact that there is a considerable Jewish population in the district has led to the revival of some the anti-Semitic slanders that have so strange a vitality. The Vienna correspondent of the Times has made himself responsible for the repetition of certain charges made during the notorious Cracow murder trial. "There is no doubt," he says, "that the man was innocent; but the evidence touching the superstitions prevailing among some of the ignorant and degraded of his co-religionists remains on record, and was never wholly disproved." The particular superstition here referred to is an atrocious form of the "blood accusation." We have on several occasions shown the baselessness of this mediaeval fable. Dr. DELITZSCH, Dr. CHWOLSON, our own Professor THEODORES, and many others have exposed the charge of human sacrifice which credulity, at once ignorant and cruel, has brought against the Jews. It has been a favourite weapon in the hands of the persecutor. When Christianity was a young society surrounded by a hostile pagan world, its disciples were charged with sharing in obscene and murderous rites. The same accusations were brought by the "orthodox" against the "heretics" of the early and middle ages. These falsehoods formed the chief pretext for the long, bitter, and deadly persecutions of the Jews by which mediaeval Christendom were disgraced. They have reappeared in recent years in such cases as the Tiaza Esslar trial. If the anti-Semites were not for the most part ignorant fanatics, they might be reminded that they are merely reviving the cruel falsehoods originally invented by the heathen in their struggle against the inroads of Christianity. Dr. HERMANN ADLER, and Dr. M. GASTER have each written to the Times protesting against this revival of the blood accusation. There is, of course, no justification in the "Talmud" for the charge. "I can assert without hesitation," says Dr. ADLER, "that in no Jewish book is such a barbarity even hinted at. Nor is there any record in the criminal annals of any country of a Jew having been convicted of such a terrible atrocity." It would add to the danger of the situation if the powerlessness and inability of the police so far to arrest the Whitechapel monster were to lead to any recrudescence of the anti-Semitic prejudices amongst the panic-stricken people of the East End. It is the duty of all who have the opportunity to protest against the false scholarship and false witness upon which the Judenhatze has to rely.

[Howard Brown]

A.P....and anyone else for that matter:

Look at this statement:

" The Vienna correspondent of the Times has made himself responsible for the repetition of certain charges made during the notorious Cracow murder trial."

This refers to the Viennese reporter who was responsible for saying something in the first place.

And then to this one...notice the emboldened words:


" It would add to the danger of the situation if the powerlessness and inability of the police so far to arrest the Whitechapel monster were to lead to any recrudescence of the anti-Semitic prejudices amongst the panic-stricken people of the East End. It is the duty of all who have the opportunity to protest against the false scholarship and false witness upon which the Judenhatze has to rely.

Clearly A.P..... this paragraph above shows that there had not been any problems yet .

Now do you see what I mean ? Now do you see that the reference to blood libel didn't create any noteworthy problems with any sort of documentation to show it had ?

Its a nice piece of preventive medicine as I said before.

[A.P. Wolf]

Well, How, what about we look at it as a sequence of events then?
Let's start here.
1 - 6th September 1888 - The 'Star' runs with the story of the 'crazy Jew' being sought by the police and populace in connection with the Whitechapel Murders.
2 - 9th September 1888 - Lloyd's Weekly reports strong anti-Jewish feelings in Whitechapel.
3 - 11th September 1888 - The 'Star' runs with the story of Jewish 'blood libel', and connects it to the Whitechapel Murders. On the same day the 'Daily News' runs with the same 'blood libel' story.
4 - 14th September 1888 - a writer in the Evening News calls the East End Jews the 'poisonous refuse of the continent'.
5 - 15th September 1888 - The 'East London Observer' reports a 'riot against the Jews in Whitechapel'.
6 - 2nd October 1888 - The 'Pall Mall Gazette' runs with the 'blood libel' story, and then over the next month, eight other major newspapers carry the story, very often twice.

Waddya think? :deadhorse:

[Howard Brown]

A.P.

What do I think ? I think that you present a nice and much appreciated time line but that it lacks one thing: Actual references in the same newspapers which demonstrate violence transpiring from their own bylines. You'll have noticed that not all of the papers in London carried articles of this vein. I sure did.

I think you will have trouble showing where the libel produced any sort of outbreak in any newspaper ....Newspaper articles can be and often are instrumental in the provocation of street violence... yet, where is this in the literature, old bean ?

Show where these articles...such as this one from the Star on Sept. 11th, produced a fracas on the street.

Its without doubt that no one needed these articles in the first place to demonstrate their prejudices. Considering that these prejudices were likely of being manifested more frequently since Leather Apron appeared on the scene, its remarkable that no one was killed as a result and from where I sit, this blood libel issue was nowhere near what you or the film character claimed they were, which is precisely my point. That this libel as well as other unrelated conditions have been accepted without "thinking" about them. I have. I see nothing at all to state with definitiveness that Jews suffered one iota of more discomfort than they already would have with the libel story floating around.

Back to you...i'll see ya tonight.

Shalom.

THE JEWS AND THE MURDERS.
What a Jewish Correspondent says of Their Horror of Blood.
If the panic-stricken people who cry "Down with the Jews" because they imagine that a Jew has committed the horrible and revolting crimes which have made Whitechapel a place to be dreaded know anything at all of the Jewish horror of blood itself, they would pause before they invoked destruction on the head of a peaceful and law-abiding people. Of course, there is little danger of our having in civilised London a recurrence of scenes enacted in the East - in Greece, in Turkey, and in Asia Minor! It is only in recent years that the scandalous superstition known as the "blood accusation" has been exploded by the light of inquiry. Some years ago, in the countries mentioned, many a Jewish Community was plundered, outraged, and massacred to satisfy a bloodthirsty mob eager for revenge, because a Christian had been discovered dead in a field or on the banks of a river. It was thought by the rude population that the Jewish festival of Passover necessitated

A HUMAN SACRIFICE,
and that in order to propitiate their God the Jews seized a Christian and put him to death. Greedy Turkish officials, it was proved on inquiry, fostered this remarkable theory in order that they might share in the general plunder, and that they did so is without doubt. That they connived at and even instigated the death of Christians in order that the hue and cry might be raised, is not without the range of possibilities. The Turk, in his rapacious moments - and they are not few - is not over-conscientious as to the means he employs to gratify his passions.
The murder record of all countries has but to be examined to demonstrate here how remarkably exempt from the crime of homicide are the Jewish people. The horror of even the sight of blood may be traced throughout ages, and its origin may be found in the Bible itself. That "The blood is the life" is so perfectly and persistently before the Jews that they soak their butcher-meat in water before they will prepare it for cooking, and Jews have been seen to shrink from tasting the red juice that runs from a succulent beef-steak in process of cutting it. Since the return of Jews to England in 1649, only

TWO JEWS HAVE BEEN HANGED
for murder, Marks and Lipski, and taking into consideration the origin of many of the poor wretches who fly to this country from foreign persecution, this is a very remarkable record. That the beast who has made East London a terror is not a Jew I feel assured. There is something too horrible, too unnatural, too un-Jewish I would say, in the terrible series of murders for an Israelite to be the monster. There never was a Jew yet who could have steeped himself in such loathsome horrors as those to which publicity has been given in The Star. His nature revolts at blood-guiltiness, and the whole theory and practical working of the Whitechapel butchery are opposed to Jewish character.


One convicted Jew per century is a pretty good record.

[Chris G.]

THE JEWS AND THE MURDERS.
What a Jewish Correspondent says of Their Horror of Blood.

Source, Howard?

C

[A.P. Wolf]

Way back in 1993, Robert F Haggard felt the link, even when you don't today, How.

'
THIS PERIOD represented a culmination of tensions between West and East. By the autumn of 1888, "the respectable classes were obsessed with fears of class conflict and social disintegration[;] coming so fast on the heels of the West End riots, the Jack the Ripper murders fed the flames of class hatred and distrust."44 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#44) The fact that Whitechapel was situated at the western edge of the East End, next to the important financial district of London, made the killings seem even more ominous. The horrifying crimes of the Whitechapel murderer condensed the vague fears of the West End about the brutality, immorality, and destructiveness of the East into one mysterious entity. While many in the West End viewed the crimes as a logical result of conditions in East London, the reaction of the East End was marked by anti-semitism, xenophobia, and hostility towards the police, intensifying social divisions which already existed.
The Metropolitan Police had vast powers available to solve the Whitechapel murders. It could investigate "every pawnshop, every laundry, every publichouse, and even every lodging-house in the huge area of London in a couple of hours."45 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#45) Furthermore, there was a great willingness on the part of the people of the East End to aid in the capture of the killer. Thus, a contemporary noted that "arrests were made by the score, principally of people of a low class who inhabited the locality where the murders were committed."46 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#46) The scope and lack of focus of police activity can be clearly seen in a report sent to the Home Office on 19 October 1888 by Chief Inspector Swanson. He noted that 80,000 handbills had been distributed, house-to-house searches conducted, 2,000 lodgers questioned, and inquiries made of sailors on the Thames, Asians in London's opium dens, Greek gypsies, and cowboys from the American Exhibition. Furthermore, "three hundred people were questioned as a result of communications from the public . . . seventy-six butchers and slaughterers."47 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#47)

By an examination of the sorts of people who were suspected of committing the Whitechapel murders, one can get a sense of the racial prejudices and class tensions that were very much a part of Victorian life. The police and press exhibited a strong suspicion of foreigners and Jews from the beginning of the investigation. One writer commented in 1891 that Whitechapel "harboured a cosmopolitan population, chiefly Jews, many of whom were decent hardworking folk though others were the very scum of Europe."48 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#48) There was a widely held suspicion that Jews were involved in the killings. The coroner, Mr. Wynne Baxter, described the killer as using "Judas-like approaches"49 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#49) and Will Cross, the carter who found the sexually-mutilated body of Mary Nicholls, supposedly pointed at the nearby Jewish cemetery and said that the murderer was "probably [I]Page 9
some sneaking Yid who wouldn't pay for his fun."50 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#50) On 10 September 1888 the Manchester Guardian reported that "all are united in the belief that [the murderer] is a Jew or of Jewish parentage[,] his face being of a marked Hebrew type."51 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#51) Sir Robert Anderson, the Head of the Central Intelligence Division, was adamant in his memoirs that the killer was a Polish Jew.52 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#52)

Several other examples can be cited to illustrate London's preoccupation with the Jews. The London Times published several articles from their Vienna correspondent during the first week of October 1888 on the 1884 trial of a Galician Jew charged with the mutilation of a woman near Cracow. On 2 October another report from Vienna stated that one method for a Jewish man to atone for the sin of sexual relations with a Christian woman was to kill and mutilate her. Hermann Adler, a London Rabbi, responded to these charges by stating that "in no Jewish book is such a barbarity even hinted at. Nor is there any record . . . of a Jew having been convicted of such a terrible atrocity . . . [things were bad enough] without the revival of moribund fables and the importation of prejudices."53 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#53)
On the night of the murder of Catherine Eddowes, 29 September 1888, an officer found a chalk-written message on a wall in Goulston street near the spot where a fragment of the victim's apron had been dropped by the murderer.54 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#54) The message, "The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing," was erased on the express orders of Sir Charles Warren. Superintendent Arnold in his report to the Home Office explained that "a strong feeling existed against the Jews generally . . . I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot."55 (http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/haggard2.html#55) '

[Chris G.]

Way back in 1993, Robert F Haggard felt the link, even when you don't today, How.

Sorry fellows but I think you are both suffering from not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Howard will not admit, seemingly, that the story of the blood libel had some part to play in the Whitechapel murders. Just because he does not see evidence of it "on the streets" as reflected in newspaper accounts.

And yet AP is bringing forward enough evidence I think to show that stories of blood libel did play a part in the case, and might have been held and believed in the darkest hearts of some Englishmen. Shudder the thought.

This reminds me a bit of the controversy going on over at Casebook on whether it is "Sor" or "Sir" in the Lusk letter. Aaaaaaargh. Some people will not admit it, even when. . . . :doh:

C

[A.P. Wolf]

'the forest for the trees.'

The only difference being, Chris, that How is using a four stroke chain saw whilst I employ a pen knife.
:smash:

[A.P. Wolf]

And while I'm at it, and still sober... I have been taken to task on this thread for claiming that the Metropolitan Police Force of London was riddled with anti-Jewish sentiment, so for those who doubt I'll let Sylvia Pankhurst speak on the subject of the 1917 pogrom carried out by that force on the Jews of Whitechapel - and just see what these boys are like when they take their kid gloves off.

'
On Friday night strange things took place in Whitechapel. Two young milliners, Misses R and A C, who had been to the Imperial Cinema at the King’s Hall, Commercial Road, came out to find themselves in the midst of a throng of people, who were being hustled and pushed this way and that by masses of police and some Australian soldiers. A number of motor lorries filled with men and boys were drawn up in the road.
The girls saw a lad pause, as if in surprise, to look into one of the lorries, and then saw him seized by police and bundled in. The police were catching at any men they saw and pushing them roughly into a billiard club next door to the picture palace. The girls walked on: police seemed to be everywhere, and just past New Road they saw the police dragging men out of a restaurant. A police inspector roughly pushed Miss R C. “Oh don’t push!” she protested, whereat he struck her on the face, bruising her at the side of the eye.
“You swine, to hit my sister!” cried Miss A C, whereat the Inspector struck her to the ground. “Charge them!” he called out to a constable. The girls were dragged off to Lemon Street Police Station, which was thronged with men and boys. There the girls were searched and put in a cell lighted only by grating.
At 11.45 pm they begged the woman searcher to tell their parents where they were, and again when they were charged at 12.15 or 12.30 they pleaded with the officer who received the charge to send a message to their home. One of them called to an inspector who was passing the cell, “Do my parents know?” whereupon he shut the grating and left them in the dark.
The distracted father went from place to place, from police station to hospital, searching for them. On arriving he was at first told they were not there and only learnt of their presence on a second visit at four am. At six am they were released to him and ordered to appear in court next day, where they were fined £2 each for insulting behaviour. “Four pounds out of the family! Two puns were all I earned last week! To strike me, and then make me pay for it!” protested Miss C.
But all over Whitechapel similar things were h
appening. Miss B—, a girl of 20, coming home with her father, aged 46, and her brother, aged 16, to their tobacconist’s shop in the Commercial Road, suddenly found her father dragged away from her. “Why are you taking my father?” she protested. The policeman twisted her arm, and flung her aside. Then she saw that her brother had disappeared. Her father was kept till twelve pm; her brother till 4pm.
A man ran out of his house in his shirt-sleeves on hearing a noise of shouting. He was bundled into a motor lorry.
Miss C, of Elder Street, Norton Folgate, on her way home, was held up by the crowd which had gathered outside Commercial Road Section House. Quite suddenly and without warning she was pushed off the pavement by a policeman who used foul language and in endeavouring to get out of the crowd she was again assaulted and insulted by a man whom she took to be a policeman in plain clothes.
Restaurants and clubs were raided; men were seized by the road side, and dragged from trams and buses. Some were dragged either by policemen or driven in motor lorries to Lemon Street Police Station or to the Section House in Commercial Street. Some were hustled into clubs and restaurants, either for examination or detention until they could be removed to the Police Station or Section House. Some men who showed papers were allowed to go free, but in what seems to have been by far the larger number of cases those who arrested them refused to look at their papers until several hours later.
In Whitechapel the number of men and boys detained is estimated to be from 1,200 to 1,500 or 2,000. Some put the number as high as three or four thousand. Yet only nine men were charged in Court as absentees, and only four were handed over the Military Authorities.
Middle-aged men and boys under sixteen years were taken. Some of the lads were young enough to cry, and one bald-headed man who said he was a grandfather was beaten by several policemen and was bleeding at the mouth. In the Section House especially, men and boys were crowded together in dark rooms scarcely capable of containing the numbers that were forced into them, and treated with wanton violence.
Mr S G, a discharged soldier, of Kingsland Road, was at the St Mary’s Temperance Club in the Whitechapel Road when the police entered at 10.30pm. He at once went up to the inspector, telling him that he was a discharged soldier, and offered to show his papers. The inspector brushed him aside with a threat that something would be done to him if he were not quiet, and handed him over to two constables who put the “arm-lock” on him and took him to the Section House. At 11.45 his papers were examined by an officer, and he was allowed to go at 12.45.
Mr J G, another discharged soldier, of Shoreditch, was taken at the same place. He also volunteered to show his papers, but the police refused to look at them. He was taken to the Section House, and put into a crowded room. He was told by an Australian soldier who was at the door to “push back”. Mr G said: “It is impossible; there is such a crowd behind me.” The soldier hit him in the stomach. A policeman standing by the soldier took out his truncheon, and hit Mr G on the shoulder; he was then dragged from the crowd, and handed over to a police-sergeant. The sergeant threw him into a cell. Mr G was discharged two hours later.
An Australian soldier took off his coat, and offered to fight anyone in the room. A discharged soldier, who was there under arrest, said, “You are a disgrace to the uniform you are wearing.” Whereat the soldier knocked him senseless.
Mr P, yet another discharged soldier taken at the same place, showed the discharged badge which he was wearing, but was told that he might have bought it, and was detained for some hours afterwards. His brother, aged 15, was kept till four am at the Section House.
A father who took his son’s papers to the Section House was asked his age. He answered, “Forty-seven”. “Come in then; in you go!” was the reply and he was dragged inside.
All Whitechapel is astonished and dismayed. The lads and girls are indignant, the older people speak with a melancholy disillusionment.
Mrs S and her husband are Russians, they keep a shop in the City, but live in Whitechapel. Mrs S said: “I could never had imagined such a thing would happen. They seized on men walking quietly along and all were so frightened they got in as quickly as they could, or went with the policeman so quietly, you might have thought they were organised! The police took boys of 15 — kids, you know.” She went to the Section House to inquire after her husband, who was arrested. The police refused to give her any information, but she saw one of them hit a little boy, who cried bitterly.
Mr S, a kindly, serious man, said that men who had been examined at the Section House were re-arrested by other constables before they go to the corner of Commercial Road. “It is a very bad system,” he said sadly, “to or three hundred men in a room and if one of them only wants to look out, the policemen bang him on the head.”
Not only was Mr S arrested, but his two brothers.
Mr H S saw many acts of violence in the street. A man was knocked down by the police, and the man’s brother protested that he suffered from fits, but the police kicked him as he lay there. A Russian, who was arrested said, “I came from Paris, and I have to go back there tomorrow”. A policeman seized him by the throat and said, “If I had my way, I’d have all your throats cut.”
Mr H S was himself arrested. He saw about 60 boys crowded into a cell so tightly that they could scarcely move: some fainted. A constable immediately took him by the throat and struck him, but another, looking at the book, admitted that it had been stamped. Then a constable seized H S by the arms and using him as a battering ram thrust him far in amongst a crowd of men packed into a small, dark, filthy room. The police kept striking the men at the door, and calling: “Get back, you swine; get back or I’ll murder you!” as the men within struggled for air.
Upstairs there were only 12 or 14 men in a large room. “And they imagine such things will make us fight for them,” he said. “I will not fight, and kill other men. I want to fight no one. If they pass a law to force Russians into the Army I have my business here, my wife is an English girl, but I will go to a neutral country and if they will not let me go they may taken me and shoot me: that I cannot help, only I will not fight. In Russia there is no law for objectors: they are shot.” He spoke earnestly, with sometimes a little flickering smile and one felt that, just so, with his head held erect and refusing a bandage for his clear eyes, he would stand to wait the shots.
Mrs E, a restaurant keeper, said that police and soldiers suddenly entered her premises and ordered that no one should move. At first she thought that a robbery or murder must have been committed. They dragged men and boys in from the street, kept them prisoners for a time, and then dragged them away. “Had my boy to go?” she said, afraid, “he is only 16”. The policeman told her to be silent. She never saw anything like it, except in Russia under the Tsar’s government and never there on such an extensive scale.
A correspondent writes that one of his friends was returning home when a constable arrested him. On the way to the station the policeman said: “Are you a Jew? You look like one.” “No” replied the prisoner: “you can see my registration card” The constable answered “Oh never mind; as you are not a bloody Jew I don’t think I shall detain you after all.” Says our correspondent: “Such an example of rank anti-semitism is worthy of old Tsar-ridden Russia!”'

[Howard Brown]

THE JEWS AND THE MURDERS.
What a Jewish Correspondent says of Their Horror of Blood.

Source, Howard?
________________

The Star, September 11th, 1888. ***************************


I have been taken to task on this thread for claiming that the Metropolitan Police Force of London was riddled with anti-Jewish sentiment, so for those who doubt I'll let Sylvia Pankhurst speak on the subject of the 1917 pogrom carried out by that force on the Jews of Whitechapel - and just see what these boys are like when they take their kid gloves off.-A.P.

I will set up a thread for that and do try to find something from 1888, okay ? Lets not go all over the g0ddamned place.

This Pankhurst story is irrelevant to the issue. Absolutely incompatible with the WM.


1917 Pogrom in Whitechapel ?

Thats once more an over exaggeration A.P.... Had the victims of that event been Irish, you wouldn't use that sort of overexaggerated term "Pogrom'. Typical embellishment to suit an ideological background and not the reality of that situation....
*****************************

Chris....I have no trouble seeing what sort of interpretation of facts A.P. employs in regard to the blood libel that barely made a ripple.

Not one report of anyone being injured as a result from that old wives tale..
Not one police action to rescue citizens from mobs with blood libel on their lips that we know of.
Only a handful ( And thanks to A.P. for putting up reports found on a place I seldom go to anymore and which I was in error about as I already said ) of reports on the libel and mostly less than alarming in the first place.

I'm off to set up a thread for discussion on the police, A.P.....put that last bottle in the fridge.

[A.P. Wolf]

How, you may be right, in that it might prove impossible to find isolated incidents in the press or courts relating specifically to a reaction on the part of the man on the street to the blood libel accusations in the press.
However these accusations were in no manner or form 'wives tales', they were in fact highly dangerous and speculative propaganda that built on the foundations of an urban myth firstly generated within English society in the 17th century. At that time this urban myth led to the mass slaughter of innocent Jews within the kingdom.
There is no doubt in my mind that the people propagating this urban myth in the press in 1888 were hoping for a resurgence of those bloody times.
That they didn't get their bloody massacre is more likely the result of a good public relations campaign by the long established city of London Jews, rather than the good will of the Metropolitan Police Force of London.

[A.P. Wolf]

Sara Robinson, writing in 'Blood Will Tell...' had something to say about the blood libel accusation of 1888:


'[4] Blood libel accusations died out in Western Europe during the sixteenth century, but resurfaced again
in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. The peak years of these accusations were from 1880 until the
eve of the First World War. From the trial at Tisza-Eszlar in 1882 to the trial of Mendel Beilis in 1911,
accusations about blood libels were highly publicized all over the world. Although it seemed that Jews had
few friends during this period, the British press came staunchly to their defense. This did not mean,
however, that the country that had originated the blood libel in the twelfth century had outgrown its
superstitions by the nineteenth century, a fact that becomes obvious when one looks closely at the media
treatment of a series of grisly murders in London at the end of the nineteenth century (Langmuir, 318;
Holmes, Anti-Semitism, 54; Holmes, “Ritual Murder,” 103-4).
[5] In the fall of 1888, the East End of London was terrorized by the murders committed by Jack the
Ripper. Jack’s victims were not merely murdered, but disemboweled as well, suggesting the handiwork of a
skilled butcher. The public’s knowledge that Jews required ritual slaughterers for their Kosher meat,
coupled with the setting of the murders in the East End, where the majority of London’s Jewish community
lived, led to the logical but politically dangerous conclusion that Jack the Ripper might in fact be Jewish.
Jews were already embroiled in controversy over the way they practiced ritual slaughter. It had become
standard to stun animals before killing them, which Jewish law prohibited. Proponents of stunning argued
that killing animals the way Kosher butchers did fostered insensitivity and brutality in men -- as was perhaps
being demonstrated by Jack (Judd, 123-4). At a time when Jews in Eastern Europe were accused of ritual
murders, even enlightened England was willing to believe that its Jews were bloodthirsty killers (Gilman,
Jew's Body, 112; Walkowitz, 199; Strack, 153).
[6] Jack’s supposed description, printed in the newspapers (Fig 1.), was: “dark beard and moustache, dark
jacket and trousers, black felt hat, [and] spoke with a foreign accent.” When newspapers printed an
imagined portrait of Jack, however, they included an extra trait; a stereotypically Jewish, hooked nose
(Gilman, Jew's Body, 113, 115). A high proportion of the suspects interrogated by police were members of
the Jewish community and as a result, several anti-Jewish riots broke out in the East End at this time
(Gilman, Jew's Body, 113).

[Howard Brown]

There is no doubt in my mind that the people propagating this urban myth in the press in 1888 were hoping for a resurgence of those bloody times.-A.P

There's every doubt in my mind that that comment has any basis in reality whatsover.

Lets drop the issue and move on, if you don't mind.

See you over in the police thread.