Let's Discuss the Openshaw Letter!

[SirRobertAnderson]

As the David Cohen thread has gotten active again thanks to Scott Nelson's article, I reread some posts from five (!!) years ago and was struck by this exchange...Just one of those little Maybrick things that you read and the hairs on the back of your neck tingle.

I'll return to Cohen later (I'm marking final essays this weekend). But in the meantime, I don't know how or whether I can open a new thread: but this non-Cohenesque point might interest people, and I'm sure How will give it a proper home if he deems it worth it.

A student's essay I have just marked quotes from Newbell Puckett's Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (Montclair NJ: Patterson Smith. 1968) the following verse:

Did you ever see de devil wid his iron handled shovel,
A-scrapin up de san' in his ole tin pan?
He cuts up mighty funny, he steals all yo' money
He blinds you wid his san'. He's tryin' to git you, man.

The metrical and syntactical similarity of the first two lines to the verse ending the Openshaw Letter is striking, not to mention the identical first eight words. It might be just an extraordinary coincidence, but the possibiity that one of the hoax letter writers had heard this American folk rhyme seems to me more probable than that the Openshaw verses travelled to the cotton fields of Mississippi or Louisiana.
Another possibiity is that there was a range of popular doggerel rhymes starting "Did you ever see the devil, with his..." and going on to describing him as "A-doing" something" with something. I'd be interested to know if anyone has heard of any other
Martin Fido

To which Caz responded:

Hi Martin,

It does seem that there was more than just one source that could have inspired the sender of the funny little Openshaw verse.

Just as well, otherwise some silly person might have taken this letter seriously and imagined that the sender must have had occasion to travel to those cotton fields on business.

Love,

Caz
X

[SirRobertAnderson]

And from the most learned of Roberts....

That's a striking similarity, Martin.

This is from http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/U.htm :

Did you ever see the devil with his wooden spade or shovel,
Did you ever see the devil with his tail cocked out?
The potatoes were so big that the devil couldn’t dig,
So he ran through the fields with his tail cocked out!


Robert

[Chris G.]

Hi Robert, Robert L, and Caz

As we know people in Victorian times were much more familiar with poetry than are people today, so no doubt the letter writer was basing their rhyme on a particular old rhyme or poem. The Cornish rhyme that has been mentioned before might have been the basis, or some other rhyme that was familiar to the writer and no doubt others living at the time.

All the best

Chris

[Paul Kearney A.K.A. NEMO]

We must have followed the same train of thought or search terms because I was also reading that the other day Robert

It did catch my eye that there was reference to south US shanty type songs whereas I think up until now it looked like a Cornish (from Cornwall) ditty (or was it from Devon?) that probably inspired the Openshaw letter

[Chris G.]

We must have followed the same train of thought or search terms because I was also reading that the other day Robert

It did catch my eye that there was reference to south US shanty type songs whereas I think up until now it looked like a Cornish (from Cornwall) ditty (or was it from Devon?) that probably inspired the Openshaw letter

Hi Nemo

There's a thread from 2008 over at Casebook to which Martin Fido, Stewart Evans and others contributed and that discusses the rhyme. See

Openshaw Letter

All the best

Chris

[Anna Morris]

Another discussion of the Openshaw letter but I don't find it compared to the Lusk letter.

[Jay Hartley]

Another discussion of the Openshaw letter but I don't find it compared to the Lusk letter.

Little late to the party on this one.

I absolutely believe that the Openshaw letter was written by the same person who wrote the 'From Hell' letter. The attempt to disguise language with odd mis-spellings once again appears.

For someone who has an inability to spell 'Microscope', he spells 'Pathological Curator' on the envelope perfectly.

Probably because he actually wanted the letter to reach it's destination.

[D.J.Adams]

Openshaw had recently taken over as Pathological Curator and was therefore the Boss of the previous curator.
Here is his microscope ......

Same person was Mary Ann Kelly's Vestry Board Medical Officer circa 1868 and treated Nichols and Eddowes for Rheumatic Fever from December 1867.
Married an Irish lass when he was ~ 20.
Probably treated Chapman for TB.
Hip Lip Lizzie had a genetic disease that was another of his specialities .

[Anna Morris]

Some bright author could take all those details and come up with a new JtR suspect, Dr. Openshaw. Did he have interactions with Dr. Gull, perhaps?

Concerning the very beginning posts, I would assume the verse would be taken from a version from the UK. Southern American songs, music and dance were heavily influenced by early settlers from the UK, including Scots and Irish. (A number of years ago I theorized that some forms of dance descended from Irish dance and someone harshly told me there was no connection. Now these connections are widely accepted.)