Unfortunate or Prostitute ?

[How Brown]

Thread for us to go around and around over whether the women murdered from Emma Smith to Francis Coles were unfortunates or prostitutes...or whether the line is blurred to the extent that both terms are applicable.
*****************

[How Brown]

How would you personally categorize Tabram ?

An unfortunate who had to resort to prostitution or a prostitute ?

Or do you see no real differentiation since those classified in the press and by society in general ( females that is ) as unfortunates were usually prosses and all of those killed by the Whitechapel Murderer or killed on the streets (Tabram included although not on the street) had engaged in prostitution ?

[How Brown]

Let me ask another question or two then...since this thread has been underwhelming so far.

Is there some reason to delineate any of the victims from each other based on the definition of "unfortunate" in the LVP ? It seems to be of ultra importance to some here.

Needless to say, we all have sympathy for the predicaments the women were in and their tragic endings. Yet, it seems that some special significance is being suggested regarding some of the victims that wouldn't be applicable if they were full time prosses.

For example....if someone maintained a position that they felt Tabram was a prostitute and a prostitute alone based on the limited amount of data that we have at our disposal about her at this time ( No charring...cleaning jobs...etc...) and then declared that Stride wasn't a prostitute,but an unfortunate who resorted to prostitution when things got rough.....what is the difference here that I cannot see ?

Why aren't they victims of the same magnitude ?

[Adam Went]

How, IMO, virtually all of the women in the Whitechapel murders series can be summarised like this: Unfortunates, who were forced into prostitution, even if only part-time, in order to survive and supplement their meagre earnings from other odd bits and pieces of work.

Perhaps with 1 or 2 exceptions (Kelly and Coles, the younger, more attactive victims who could make more money from soliciting than their older counterparts), I don't think many of the women would have resorted to prostitution had they been able to hold down full time work and had a solid income.

It's important to remember again here that unlike today, there was no government system to help support those who were not working and destitute - you had to do something in order to survive, and in a lot of cases, this was the only option left to these women.

Many actually saw prostitution as a better option to spending their lives in the servant world of a middle-class family somewhere....

Cheers,
Adam.

[How Brown]

I don't think many of the women would have resorted to prostitution had they been able to hold down full time work and had a solid income.

AW...thanks for the reply.

A point to consider is that all these older women had already crossed the Rubicon ( all over 40, Tabram we might as well call a 40ish woman)...all had substance abuse problems....and had lost any hope either by their own doing or other circumstances of the proverbial "one more chance' at turning their lives around. Frankly, can we say that anyone of them even gave "tomorrow" much thought considering their destitution ? I think some of us might be overlooking how old these ladies were and judging them apart from their superannuation.

Prostitution, therefore, is not an alternative to other means of survival...its the easiest and less strenuous method of surviving as opposed to working 14 hours a day in a match factory or sitting in someone's drawing room and babysitting little Linford Jr. in a teetotaler environment.

By them being painted into or painting themselves into a corner, so to speak, prossing becomes the natural way for an alcoholic woman to survive.

A slice off a cut loaf is never missed. The act of prossing to these women wasn't as if they were asked to do something extraordinary. It was a means to an end they were accustomed to. Their own boyfriends tell us that.

If nothing as spectacular as the Smith murder or Tabram murder is going to wise Nichols up....and if Nichols' murder isn't enough to shake Chapman up....etc...etc...then what would ?

I just find the line blurred at times AW...I don't understand the attempt at delineation made in regard to the victims, whom some feel weren't prosses, yet were out at that time of night, which most non-prosses weren't...

Oh well. I'll drop it because between the shingles I just got recently and these Stride threads, a guy could go nuts.

[JTRSickert]

I think the best way to categorize these classes women is this: all prostitutes back then were Unfortunates, but not all Unfortunates were prostitutes. Here is how i would categorize the victims:

Emma Smith: uncertain, but probably an Unfortunate who did occasional prostitution

Martha Tabram: Unfortunate who was frequent prostitute

Mary Ann Nichols: Unfortunate who whose main income was prostitution ("I'll get my doss money, see what a jolly bonnet I got....I've had my doss money 3 times today, but I spent it all."...Evidently, Polly knew how to turn a few tricks)

Annie Chapman: Unfortunate who probably only dabbled in prostitution. Mainly supported herself via crochet work. May have had 2 regulars, Harry the Hawker and Ted Stanley

Elizabeth Stride: formerly professional prostitute in Sweden, may have only resorted to in London while separated from Kidney, but may have been "popular" in the East End, since it may be that, on the night of her murder, she had several customers and the cachous she had may have been used to sweeten her breath for oral sex.

Catherine Eddowes: since she seems to have been relatively happy with John Kelly, she probably resorted to prostitution less than the others. However, in order to make ends meet, she may have had to turn a trick here and there to get by a little

Mary Kelly: former professional prostitute in brothel in West End and possibly Paris; probably reduced her trade once moved in with Joseph Barnett, but probably went back to doing it full-time after his lost his job the fish market.

[Roy Corduroy]

the shingles I just got recently

I'm sorry to hear that Howie. You have my sympathy. A relative had it and all I can say is - Ouch !

Get Well Soon

Your everlovin cowpoke buddy,

RL Corduroy
365 Swamp Thing Cutoff
Mud Island, Guam 76543

:plane:

[SirRobertAnderson]

Is there some reason to delineate any of the victims from each other based on the definition of "unfortunate" in the LVP ? It seems to be of ultra importance to some here.


..what is the difference here that I cannot see ?

Why aren't they victims of the same magnitude ?

I'll try hard to not stoke the fires of our incipient Stride flame wars.

Sometimes I feel like I am boxing with shadows, not just Jack's shadow, which is bad enough, but with the shadows and gossamers of theories and subtexts that I am just not grasping.

Because if I understand portions of this correctly, it appears that some believe that Jack himself differentiated between these victims. He sought and killed "real prostitutes" who were actively soliciting but passed by the Unfortunates like Death going pass the Israelites' houses that had been marked with lambs' blood.

Problem is that someone else then came by and killed those Unfortunates, which makes things difficult for us sleuths in 2010.

[Cris Malone]

How
I just find the line blurred at times AW...I don't understand the attempt at delineation made in regard to the victims, whom some feel weren't prosses, yet were out at that time of night, which most non-prosses weren't...

Maybe what these women were presumed to be doing on the night of their murders is most relevant. There is certainly a reason for some to question what has historically been the belief that all of these women were soliciting. It ties in with a serial killer; his motive; the vulnurability of such a woman and especially a link that binds these murders together. If you believe in something other than a serial killer, that some of these murders were random, then you must endeavor to break that link of victimology.

The police and the public as well realized how unique these events that had suddenly happened were by the time of the Nichols murder; brutal killings, even by East End standards, with no apparent motive against women of the same class. Their concern turned into panic when only 8 days later, another woman of the same class was found murdered and mutilated in the backyard of 29 Hanbury St.

The fact that these women willingly led their assasin to their place of execution meant to their contemporaries that they were soliciting and would continue to do so, out of desperation, even after the danger was realized.

Then came the double event-


From the Daily News, Oct. 2, 1888-

'These women sally forth night after night, and many times in the night, and all the terrors of the assassin's knife cannot keep them indoors. They take a turn in the streets to earn the money for their lodging, or the money for their gin... The uniformity of personal history in these debased creatures is not the least singular thing about them. They have mostly known better times, if only for the almost sufficient reason that they could not have known worse. They have sunk to their present condition by their own vices, intensified in their effect by the ignorance, the helplessness, the want of all counsel and guidance that constitute their miserable birthright... They go forth as steadily to their bestial toil as the ploughman goes to his labour in the harvest field. They were out last night, no doubt, by the hundred and the thousand, and whenever the murderer wants a new victim, he may be as sure of finding them at their post as of finding rats in a sewer. Their trade is so much a matter of course that evidently the dark and dismal rendezvous that serve his purpose never once excite suspicions in their minds. '

After a six week respite, Kelly is found in her room.

I would ask my modern colleagues this. Were the contemporaries wrong? Do we pretend to know better than they did? Do we have some magical insight that they lacked at the time? Do we have some evidence that they were not privvy to?... Some seem to think so.
I do not.

[How Brown]

Very,very fine post and such a good article to accompany your thoughts there Cris. Thanks for that pal. I should have asked you to present the opening few posts on the thread.

I believe A.P., who remarked on West End gay women on another thread, is suggesting that those who engaged in prostitution in the East End shouldn't be considered prosses.
Adam Went and Raven remarked on social support systems being unavailable at the time,which is obviously true.
Yet...when modern serial killer monsters rack up murder after murder of street prosses today, we virtually never see the word unfortunate in reference to them and the conditions that brought these poor women/girls into that life analyzed like some do about the victims of the Ripper.


******************
Roy..briefly...this disease is the pits. Sadly for Nina, I have to abstain from contact of the first kind for a little bit. She,alas, too has to bear some of brunt of this condition. Up until I got it, I thought it was just some dopey skin rash old people get. Well, this old guy has it and now knows of the severe pain which goes with it. Thanks for the sentiments.
I ain't kidding.... Its like having your ribs on one side crushed by invisible hands.

[Stephen Thomas]

Dear Howard

I'm sorry to hear you have health problems and hope you recover soon.

The word 'Unfortunate' (noun) is a straight Victorian euphemism for 'Prostitute'

Full or part time

[Raven]

Adam Went and Raven remarked on social support systems being unavailable at the time,which is obviously true.
Yet...when modern serial killer monsters rack up murder after murder of street prosses today, we virtually never see the word unfortunate in reference to them and the conditions that brought these poor women/girls into that life analyzed like some do about the victims of the Ripper.

Ah, but Unfortunate was a Victorian euphemism and apart from those interested in that particular period of history or in the Whitechapel murders it wouldn't be used now.
The press these days are mostly only interested in the sensationalist journalism it takes to sell news. Which headline would sell more papers?

PROSTITUTE MUTILATED IN HORRIFIC MURDER!!!!!!!
or
Woman killed in East End street

Also to address life analysis of victims in this period, the WCM victims were analysed retrospectively, and who knows, if there is a series of unsolved murders today there may be students and interested parties in 100 years giving them the same scrutiny.

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

Well I think we need to remember as well here that at some point during their lives, most of the Ripper victims DID hold down work - mostly in domestic service, but whatever, they did have solid work in something other than prostitution during their younger years. Yet, they blew it. I'm not entirely sure of the reasons for this, but one would presume it was because of some sort of dishonesty which the family they were serving didn't appreciate, or they simply walked out on the job.

So in 1888 they might have been forced into prostitution in order to survive, but they had had chances earlier in their lives to make a success of themselves. Annie Chapman in particular seems to have been doing reasonably well for herself there at one stage.

And although social support systems were non-existent in 1888, Liz Stride did milk money out of the Swedish church in England every now and then...

Mary Kelly had her own little room, she didn't live in any ordinary lodging house at the time of her death....although considering the debt she was in, it might not have been too far away....

Anyway, the point is that these women did have some things going for them, and had points in their lives where surely they would not have envisaged themselves being middle-aged street walkers, selling themselves for enough pennies for a drink and maybe a lodging house doss. It really was quite a tragic fall for them.

As horrible as it might sound to say, it is true that for some of the victims atleast....it didn't have to be the way it was in 1888 for them. They were largely responsible for their own demise.

Cheers,
Adam.

P.S. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, How.... :)

[Raven]

Work then could be seasonal as well, such as hop picking in Kent.
Also on a personal level, I kind of agree with the quote attributed to both King Arthur and King Alfred about a virgin walking naked across the breadth of England carrying a purse full of gold and being offered no insult by any man.
No matter what lifestyle choice these women had made, for whatever reason, they were not responsible or accountable for the horrific way they met their demise, a man (or more than one man) with a large sharp knife and a serious personality disorder was.

[How Brown]

Thanks for the well wishes AW and Stephen.

The word 'Unfortunate' (noun) is a straight Victorian euphemism for 'Prostitute'...full or part time -S.T.

I agree with that,Stephen,based on how hard it has been to locate instances of women classified as unfortunates who weren't prostitutes.
I have,however, seen one or two instances of women ( surprisingly,I can't recall a single man being referred to as an "unfortunate"....but perhaps someone else has) being referred to as unfortunates, yet the incidents did not pertain to their active role or participation in fomenting crime or active solicitation. It was in regard,if I am not mistaken, to their deaths or being the victims of crimes.

Dear Raven:

Thanks for that dear.

Here's a curious bit of trivia for you...

You might like to know that I have yet ( and again...if anyone else has seen evidence to the contrary, please share it ) to encounter a headline or article heading with the word "prostitute" between 1866 and 1919 in the Times. There are none from 1888 at all...in the sources I check into.

In addition, in another newspaper repository I frequent, I have found only two articles with the word "prostitute" in reference to a woman & prostitution in the header of the article. One of them is found in its entirety below. The earliest and closest to the WM was from 1879 ( Reynold's Newspaper,February 9,1879) and the other the same year as Francis Coles' murder as follows:

Reynold's Newspaper
Sunday, June 28,1891
http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/Photo%20Thanksgiving/virg1.jpghttp://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/Photo%20Thanksgiving/virg2.jpg






"

[Raven]

It is interesting that the term "Fallen Woman" was used as well regularly in news articles to describe prostitutes in the LVP. You wonder if it is again, the "Veneer" of this period.
There is an interesting, but disappointingly short article here (http://berkshirefamilyhistorysociety.com/journal/Dec2003/Dec2003_Prostitution_and_paramours.htm) about the changing views on prostitution over the ages.
Prostitution was certainly in the body of archive material in the press, although as How points out not usually in the headers or bylines as much.

[Adam Went]

Raven:

No, it certainly doesn't excuse Jack the Ripper in any way for the brutality and horror of his crimes. However, it is true that at some point during their lives, these women had the prospect of a good future - a future where it wouldn't be necessary to sell themselves on the streets in order to pay for a drink and a doss - and for one reason or another, they blew it.

They cannot be blamed at all for what JTR did, but they do have to shoulder some of the responsibility for ending up in the position they found themselves in in 1888....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Caroline Morris]

Hi All,

Late to the party as usual, but here because I was fortunate enough during my absence to avoid any obviously dangerous situations in the real world - such as walking into a lion's cage with the lion in attendance and no ready meal in sight.

A couple of observations, if I may.

Firstly, once a euphemism like 'unfortunate' took hold back then, it would have become rather crucial to make it clear from the context if one didn't mean that the 'unfortunate' person in question was selling sex.

Similarly, who would use the word "gay" these days to describe someone who was merely happy and carefree?

Secondly, the woman with any sense at all and a choice back in 1888, to avoid being outdoors alone late at night after the first week of August (if not after the first week of April) was the one who had the luxury not to cross the ripper's path any time he was out and about with his knife.

The recent speculation that many of the Whitechapel victims were not forced outdoors to seek doss or drink money, at an hour when most of us would hope to have been sound asleep, may soften the view of them as women who carried on selling themselves, even with this homicidal maniac on the loose. But my goodness it makes 'em look like they had nothing between their ears instead, if they are meant to have ventured out alone in the darkness at the height of the scare, for some entirely unexplained purpose in each case, unrelated to meeting any desperate and immediate needs.

Love,

Caz
X

[How Brown]

Dear Caz:

Unless Ellen Holland was a liar along with being a drunk ( twice pinched in the subsequent weeks for "d & d" at the Thames Magistrates Court ), Polly Nichols chose to find a man to bunk with rather than go back with Holland to Thrawl Street. Clearly, and again, if Holland was not prevaricating then Nichols made a pretty bad choice that night and entered history. She clearly had an option....which is what some of the others probably had as well...

Its sort of a unique situation....what you mentioned here,Caz....that if the women who did go out after reading about what happened to their fellow pross-sisters like Tabram and Nichols still decided to be out and about at that time of night with a killer on the loose...it raises the neckhairs on the feminist types who declare emphatically that these women....especially street prosses....had no alternatives. Nichols did.

I get a kick out of people who take this feminist ideology to such an extreme that it paints the women as hopeless and helpless ,featherless and brainless bipeds...when of course they weren't.

Their situations...and they more than anyone else knew what that was....demanded that they straighten themselves up as they got older because of the fact they were older women.
Yet the feminist element maintains that they were cardboard cutouts, all at the mercy of some male, when in fact there's little to prove that from the literature. The victims appear destined to have continued in "the life" regardless of whether they would have become victims of the Whitechapel Murderer.

I consider myself ( for what its worth ) as someone who agrees with some of the feminist diatribe. I agree wholeheartedly that proletarian women were usually looking up at down back in the LVP and their treatment across the board was less than gentlemanly and institutionalized. Yet, whose thumb other than their own were any of these victims held back with ?

[Cris Malone]

From an interview of a missionary woman about the "unfortunates"- Daily News, Oct. 3 , 1888



"The terrible difficulty we have to encounter is that of trying to find them work. We had last year a very touching case of a woman who seemed sincerely desirous of amending, but who was over the age at which they are usually admitted to homes. However, after a great deal of difficulty, we found an opening for her, and she went to the home; but some of these places, I am afraid, are managed too rigorously, and the matrons of them are sometimes wanting in sympathy with their inmates, who find it extremely difficult to submit to the discipline. It was the case with this woman. Accustomed to live entirely without control, she found the discipline of this place more than she could endure, and she left.

We saw nothing of her for a time, but she came to us again, and still seemed sick and weary of the wretched life she led. If she could only find something to do she really would try, but of the 'Home' she seemed to have a positive horror. We could find her no work, and she tried charing and washing, and I believe did her earnest best to maintain herself that way. But it was gradual starvation; often we found she was whole days without a bit of food; and those she lived with say that only at the last extremity did she allow herself to be driven again to her old courses. I am afraid, however, she drifted back, but still she would come to our meetings and listen very earnestly to all that went on, and would borrow from our library books that you would never imagine she would care to read. Often we found that nothing had passed her lips the whole day but a cup of weak tea. She came to a meeting one Tuesday night ill, and scarcely able to stand, and on Thursday she died.

The woman who looks after these mission rooms," continued the speaker, "was another of the same class, and who used to be an associate of the poor creature murdered in Berner-street. She saw her only last Thursday, and she-that is, the murdered woman-said then that she felt all was coming to some bad end."


I will reserve judgement on this piece until I see some other opinions.

[Raven]

The thing I find distasteful is that posterity remembers the victims for only a part of a sum of their whole. These women were more than prostitutes, they were daughters, (in some cases) mothers, friends etc and all had had up's and downs in their lives and even though they were at their most desperate and vulnerable when they met their violent end that any good points in witness statements are glossed over in favour of the bad.
They may have been soliciting, I neither know or care. I am a firm believer in the idea that unless you have walked in another persons shoes, you shouldn't be judgemental. How many of us have been in a position of extreme poverty? How can we possibly know what depths we would plumb if we were faced with an early death due to starvation or hypothermia? Might we have turned to drink, which could be paid for with a lot less money than the cost of a room for the night and kept you warm?
There is no feminist agenda here on my part, I am pasting a copy of a news report in a daily local paper to illustrate how even in death in this day and age we are accorded no dignity.
From The Weston Mercury 30/03/2010
"Schizophrenic dies from heart failure



A SCHIZOPHRENIC with paedophile tendencies who was detained at a mental health home in Weston died from heart failure, an inquest heard.

Michael Farley, aged 64, was taken to Weston General Hospital from Sherwood Lodge mental health home after developing a severe chest infection on December 27, 2008.

The former trainee architect, who was diabetic and a heavy smoker, died just two days later while waiting for results from an x-ray.

Mr Farley, who was single and originally from Bournemouth, had been detained under the Mental Health Act since 1991 after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Doctors also raised concern over the 'paedophile tendencies' of the man, who was at Sherwood Lodge since 2002.

At an inquest at Flax Bourton Coroners' Court, a statement read out by Sherwood Lodge manager Garry Blake said Mr Farley often suffered from his smoking habit.

He said: "Unfortunately Mr Farley was a heavy smoker despite continuous staff efforts to stop him.

"He developed a chest infection at least once each year and he would be referred to GP each time."

On the day he was sent to hospital, Mr Blake said Mr Farley had developed a flu and he was looking pale and struggling to stay steady on his feet.

Doctors discovered he had severe chest infection and gave him treatment whilst conducting further checks.

He died at 7.30am on December 29.

Assistant deputy coroner Maria Voisin recorded a verdict of death by natural causes."

This man was mentally ill and had been in the system for some time, what a "joy" for his family to read headlines like this, but the point is, more people will read the article than if they had left out the part about his proclivities and mental health, it is not mentioned in the article if he was ever actually procecuted for paediphillia, just that he had tendencies toward it.

[A.P. Wolf]

Good post, Raven, my feelings exactly.
I remember Jacko for the electricity of 'Billy Jean', not the chimp or chumps.

[SirRobertAnderson]

I remember Jacko for the electricity of 'Billy Jean', not the chimp or chumps.

Aha ! Precisely the correct analogy !

The memory of Michael Jackson as a musician and artist is one thing; it was irrelevant to those prosecuting him for child molestation.

If you want to ignore the latter that's fine by me, but here we hunt the Ripper. And to do that, we need to know his prey.

[Caroline Morris]

Excellent post Raven. I too have no feminist agenda, never have done - I'd feel exactly the same if any or all of the victims had been male, and possibly killed while hoping for a bit of kindness from a stranger who looked good for it.

The only issue I have had recently is with the suggestion that to believe a victim was possibly one of Jack's is to assume she must have been forcing poor defenceless strangers to pay her for sex and to judge her more harshly than if she had been flogging them fake remedies or bibles.

Conversely, the only way to treat a victim with proper respect is apparently to have her doing anything but the oldest job in the world and to attribute her murder to anyone but Jack. This is the benchmark of political correctness that we are all supposed to aspire to, if we care a jot about the victims and how not to portray them. And I really don't get it, unless there are any cretins around in 2010 who would put a woman accepting money or gifts for sex in 1888 Whitechapel on a moral par with the devil himself.

Pass me the sick bag.

Love,

Caz
X

[How Brown]

unless there are any cretins around in 2010 who would put a woman accepting money or gifts for sex in 1888 Whitechapel on a moral par with the devil himself.

Or with a saint. Works both ways.

Nice posts Raven and Caz and Chris....

[Cris Malone]

As a "living historian" ( someone who portrays people from the past) I learned that although the times, technology and circumstances may change, human nature has not.

We all feel empathy for these women and the fate that they endured. It may be debated as to whether their enviroment influenced their life or it was the choices they made themselves. I happen to believe, as with all of us, its a little bit of both. There are matters in all of our lives that we have no control over and matters that we do. The combination of both is what makes each one of us unique. These women were no different. Most were not delt a very good hand through life and in many respects didn't play it very well either. They learned to survive on their wits and whatever ability they had in the circumstances that they were placed or placed themselves in. Stronger people than they were able to overcome more harsh tribulations. More prominent people than they did just as they did, or worse, and still garnished fame. Unfortunately, their fame was in the horror that was their demise. Whatever their sins, they paid the ultimate price; and on that, I can say no more.

William Nichols- upon viewing the body of Mary Ann Nichols- Echo, Sept. 3:

"I forgive you, as you are, what you have been to me."

His son also identified the remains of his mother.
What would be going through your mind if you were one of them?

[Natalie Severn]

Very True Cris,
And there were many who were dealt a much better hand from the point of view of social standing and material comfort for whom life had become too intolerable to live;beginning with the eminent Dr Bond -topping himself by jumping out of a window ,we also have Druitt throwing himself in the Thames in despair ,Druitt's sister jumping out of a window to kill herself, Charles Cutbush blowing his head off having had an exemplary career as a Superintendent of Police....the roll call goes on and on.
In some ways, as Ap pointed out, the women about whom we write were free as birds....and boy were they a resilient bunch, cracking jokes when they didnt know where the next meal would come from,or the next roof over their heads.
Blessed are the poor, He said...........for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.Lets hope they did!

[Mike Richards]

Like anything, choices dictate the label.

Mary could have sought charwoman work. Liz could have prostituted herself instead of accepting Charwoman work.

The relevance of all this is certainly who had to be out soliciting the night they die, because the Ripper would have little to no chance getting a single woman alone in the dark that Fall unless they were.

If you assume he just ambushed his victims, then you havent addresses the lack of noise or struggle, and the implication that he wound find these women alone in the locations they die in. Where no clients could be chatted up.

Best regards

[SirRobertAnderson]

Liz could have prostituted herself instead of accepting Charwoman work.

Give it a rest.

[A.P. Wolf]

You know, Sir Robert, Mike has actually a good and valid point here.
After all why would a habitual drunken prostitute haul herself out of Whitechapel at the best time of year to go and do the backbreaking work of picking hops in Kent?
Surely it would have been easier on her back?

[SirRobertAnderson]

You know, Sir Robert, Mike has actually a good and valid point here.
After all why would a habitual drunken prostitute haul herself out of Whitechapel at the best time of year to go and do the backbreaking work of picking hops in Kent?


Except the case cited was Stride.

"Liz could have prostituted herself instead of accepting Charwoman work."

Except for Kelly, I don't think any of the C-5 were full time prostitutes. But we have no idea how they felt towards it. I.e. was it a favored way to earn money, or something they did only when there was no choice. I have no idea how one would determine their individual preferences. Stride, having been a full time sex worker at times in her youth, might have had a different take than say, Eddowes. Who knows ?

What matters is

1) What they were doing when murdered

and

2) What Jack thought they were doing.

He wasn't systematically butchering charwomen.

[Mike Richards]

SirRobert, perhaps you could limit your contempt to posts that are up for debate..but in this instance the ONLY people who accepted prostitutes and didnt look on them as scum in Late Victorian London were other prostitutes or their clients, as AP mentioned with Kate, there is another example of an Unfortunate choosing work other than prostitution.

We have the statement from her landlady who hired her that day to clean and spent some time in the pub with her stating that Liz said she had been at work among the Jews in the past 3 months. Why do you constantly ignore evidence that supports comments she was cleaning?

Your attitude towards these women belongs in the middle ages where it came from...perhaps you might try respecting others including the dead, see how that works for ya.

It is YOU who are judging their morality....not me or AP.

Regards

[SirRobertAnderson]

Your attitude towards these women belongs in the middle ages where it came from...perhaps you might try respecting others including the dead, see how that works for ya.

It is YOU who are judging their morality....not me or AP.

Regards

I would suggest you take your time off from the Forums to reconsider why this keeps happening to you.

We'll revisit the ban in a month.

[How Brown]

We have the statement from her landlady who hired her that day to clean and spent some time in the pub with her stating that Liz said she had been at work among the Jews in the past 3 months. Why do you constantly ignore evidence that supports comments she was cleaning ?

Just as a final note regarding this remark above.
I do not know how many times it takes to point out that what Stride said she was doing is not evidence of what she actually was doing.
There isn't a soul here that would trust Stride as far as he or she could throw her. If so, contact me. I have an extra bridge for sale or rent.
And I know that if she approached the doorman at a pending new bistro that one of the thread participants is planning to open, we'd see how fast she'd go from a "saint" to persona non grata.



For all we know, Stride may have been doing a number of things...cleaning but one of them.

[SirRobertAnderson]

Bear in mind what set this off; my statement that

Except for Kelly, I don't think any of the C-5 were full time prostitutes. But we have no idea how they felt towards it. I.e. was it a favored way to earn money, or something they did only when there was no choice. I have no idea how one would determine their individual preferences. Stride, having been a full time sex worker at times in her youth, might have had a different take than say, Eddowes. Who knows ?

If we are at the point where even this is considered debatable, there really is no point to further conversation.