John Anderson

[R. J. Palmer]

The cook John Anderson could be the John Anderson IDed by the authorities during their investigation. I don’t know that Brame mentioned Anderson was also a fellow cook.

Here’s a possible match on the ship Catalonia. He’s listed under the 1st Pantry Stewart as some type of Stewart and there’s a signature that looks like Johan.

https://www.ancestry.ca/discoveryui-...=successSource

I couldn't make your link work but I think I was looking at the same entry last night and agree that this is probably the same John Anderson, ship's cook, from Uppsala Sweden as listed in the 1881 census and elsewhere. In 1881 he was near Merseyside and the above has him in Liverpool, so it might well work.

The handwriting is appalling, but I think it says "steerage steward," so he's the low man on the totem pole.

steerage steward.jpg

It does fit Brame's account insofar as his suspect worked as a ship's cook in 1888, but later signed on as an AB seaman. It would be interesting to confirm if he was the same JA with secondary syphilis in 1892, though that Anderson is listed as an MS--which I take to be midshipman. Syphilis can be latent for some months or years after the initial infection, so it is not impossible that someone with an outbreak in 1892 was infected in 1888 or earlier if we want to go the full nine yards.

Thanks for the posts.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

The cook John Anderson could be the John Anderson IDed by the authorities during their investigation. I don’t know that Brame mentioned Anderson was also a fellow cook.

Here’s a possible match on the ship Catalonia. He’s listed under the 1st Pantry Steward as some type of Steward and there’s a signature that looks like Johan.

https://www.ancestry.ca/discoveryui-...=successSource

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

I agree we’re looking for Swedish Dane or a Danish Swede, and someone suffering from advanced syphilis.

Frank Anderson spent 5 months in the Dreadnaught Seaman’s Hospital in 1892 with a necrosis. He also was in for two weeks in 91 with a hydrocele.

[R. J. Palmer]

Brame could be a Roslyn D'Onston character - a total fantasist. Then again, couldn't he be someone trying to tell a truthful story and/or believable one while hiding a particular indiscretion? How about desertion and drunkeness? It's the same as any one trying to tell what really happened that doesn't include him murdering or robbing someone.

If you are inclined to give credence to the story, here is someone that might be worth looking at. He is Swedish, though, and not Danish.

There is a sailor named John Anderson, born Uppsala, Sweden in 1861, who is in the Dreadnought Hospital in March/April 1892 suffering from secondary syphilis, which would fit Brame's story.

John Anderson Dreadnought.jpg
John Anderson.jpg



He is likely to be the same John Anderson who is listed on a vessel in Chesire in the 1881 census, described as a "ship's cook" (his place of birth is also Uddevalla, but spelled incorrectly) which is another potential match.

He seems to be the same bloke who was bouncing around Hull in the early 1880s. Presumably his English would have been pretty good by the 1890s.

He may be hard to pin-down, because there was at least one or two other sailors named John Anderson, born Sweden around 1861, that shows up in the records.

[R. J. Palmer]

It might be of interest that the Annie Speer made more than one voyage to Iquique, Chili. There is a long article in Lloyd's List on 14 October 1893 describing a court case where the master was successfully prosecuted and fined for grossly overloading the ship with nitrate of soda during a similar voyage in April 1892.

Here's the first section.

Annie Speer 1893.jpg

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

Brame could be a Roslyn D'Onston character - a total fantasist. Then again, couldn't he be someone trying to tell a truthful story and/or believable one while hiding a particular indiscretion? How about desertion and drunkeness? It's the same as any one trying to tell what really happened that doesn't include him murdering or robbing someone.

Brame says in the Post 9 article (although the words are faded) that Anderson was sent to the hospital "immediately upon arrival". Then "not long after" Anderson "left the ship", Brame "was taken ill and had to be sent over to the hospital" where he was placed in the next bunk.

Obviously, it couldn't have been too long after Anderson left the ship and went to hospital in Chile since the voyage to and from England was, at my count, about 102 days which is about record time. That doesn't give him much time to get sick during the offload and onload, much less recuperate and get back onboard which obviously didn't happen since he says he shipwrecked with the signed confession on the way back.

With a history of desertion, isn't it likely that he just jumped ship in Chile and eventually got sick and ended up in hospital with Anderson? Then isn't it possible he shortened the story to make it look like he had time to get back on board the ship or didn't get ill for over a whole year before getting back on a British ship. I think those are about the only alterations or omissions he'd have had to make to cover himself.

Brame is quoted as saying he was placed in "a bunk" rather than a bed. This book published the year they arrived says the Iquique hospital was a collection of wooden huts.
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/...e&pg=PA390&pri ntsec=frontcover

[R. J. Palmer]

I went further own the Brame rabbit-hole last night. Interesting family. The father was a surgeon (evidently in the Army at one time) but seems to have died without too much of an estate. One of Brame's younger brothers ran off to America at the age of only 15 and ended up a heavy-drinking cook in, of all places, Great Falls, Montana, under the alias "Thomas Gray." Why he used a poetic alias is uncertain.

Another brother moved to Australia where he committed suicide after the death of his wife. The mother and at least one half-sister stayed in Suffolk and gave music lessons. Another brother was an assistant to a fish-monger.

Brame himself seems to have had quite a bit of wanderlust and joined both the U.S. and the British Armies. There are some records at fold3, but I can't access them.

[R. J. Palmer]

Charity 2 is actually the name or designation of the cemetery. I had cemetario translated as remarks because I thought it said commentario.

So far I have all the hospital deaths in Charity Two and a home death in Charity One. I need to go through more samples though.

Ah, thanks for that.

It will be recalled that Brame's "John Anderson" story was making the rounds in August 1896.

Less than a month later, September 10, 1896, James Brame, 49, "cook," born Lowestoft, Suffolk, so obviously the same guy, is admitted to the Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital from Liverpool.

His complaint is listed as "alcohol" and it looks like he was convalescing for a full 18 days. I'm trying to determine if he was also the James Brame convalescing in a hospital in Mobile, Alabama a few years later.

Brame is starting to strike me as a sort of second Robert D'Onston Stephenson character.


Brame 3.jpg Brame 4.jpg

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

I'm not sure either one of them is a very convincing match for the man described by Brame, and the 'Charity Two' designation (in the Johanes Anderson record) is a little strange for someone supposedly working for a British company. RJP

Charity 2 is actually the name or designation of the cemetery. I had cementerio translated as remarks because I thought it said commentario.

So far I have all the hospital deaths in Charity Two.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

Ancestry has Brame in the Poor Law House near the end so he would want to cash in somehow.

I thought the newspapers were the ones guilty of embellishment and using Brame’s personal particulars for Anderson’s. But it’s an interesting possibility you raise of Brame projecting himself onto the Anderson figure maybe to the point of lying.

[R. J. Palmer]

In some of the longer renditions of the 'John Anderson' story, Anderson supposedly trained as a surgeon in the U.S. military (the Navy) and this is where he supposedly learned the medical skill that allowed him to commit the Ripper murders.

I find this detail interesting, because one can find quite a lot about the man accusing Anderson, James Everard Brame, on Ancestry.com. He is a real person, born in 1847 in Suffolk, and his father really was a surgeon.

In 1870, there was a 'James E. Brame' born England in 1847, so undoubtedly the same guy, who enlisted in the U.S. army. He is listed as a 'druggist' and soon afterwards he deserted somewhere in New York City.

It makes me wonder if Brame was using slightly altered details of his own biography and projecting them on to 'Anderson.' He--not Anderson--was the enlistee, and it was the Army, not the Navy. He was a trained druggist, not a surgeon.

Brame also seems to have deserted from the ship "Wellington" in New York City on 11 August, 1883. He spent a lot of time in hospitals, which is an element of the 'John Anderson' story.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

One ship that James Brame might have left Chile and been shipwrecked on is the British ship Glenmorag that left Chile and/or Callao, Peru and wrecked in Washington on March 18, 1896. Two crew died.

http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ma...96-03-03).html

The North-Eastern Daily Gazette of August 24, 1896 said that Brame had just arrived back in England on that date.

[Howard Brown]

That was Kramden...Ralph Kramden.
Believe it or not, tonight Nina and I just watched the Honeymooner Lost Episodes from 1951 ( pretty drab. IMHO) on Tubi.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

Mark:
It's no biggie, but it's Cranford NJ. not Cranston. Cranston is in Rhode Island

I'm definitely not thinking of RI. Maybe the Honeymooners....

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

It will be remembered that James Brame said he joined the Annie Speer in Shields in "October 1894". He was only about a month off.

The Annie Speer sailed from Sunderland on Sept 1, 1894 and arrived in Antofagasta, Chile on Dec 10. (The Standard and Morning Post, Newspapers.com)

So according to the story, Brame had a written confession signed Jack the Ripper and lost it in a shipwreck. So he couldn't have gone back to England on the Annie Speer because it didn't wreck and he'd have had the confession and taken it straight to the English press.

It appears he did take ill like Anderson and both were left behind in Chile. That much we can surmise for certain if the story is true.

Then if Johannes Anderson is John Anderson and Brame was there until Johannes died in 1896, they would have been there just over a year. I doubt they were recuperating in hospital the full year so Anderson could have taken a residence and a landlubber job and been supported with a charity benefit.

Brame would then have shipwrecked sometime in 1896 on the way to the United States where I believe he told his story since he got a nickle or a dime for it.