"Skewering The Ripperologists" Bad Women Podcast- Hallie Rubenhold

[Paul]

Kate’s Education

It was apparently Eliza Gold who provided the information that Kate attended the Dowgate Charity School, which I believe was located in Swan Lane, in the City. That’s a long old schlep for a little girl from Bermondsey. HR paints a pretty picture of her doing so, crossing London Bridge wearing the blue and white Dowgate uniform ‘she had stitched herself’. (Really? Where did she get that information from - Aristotle Tump?)

Dowgate is important to the myth because music was taught there - unlike, presumably, any other girl’s school in London. :-) Stripped of her Dowgate musical education, there would only be a vague reference to Kate being ‘fond of singing’ to support the claim of her being a talented chanteuse.

I can’t remember (if I ever knew) where the information that she had also attended St. John's Charity School, Potter's Field, Tooley Street came from.

Interestingly, on one of the two Wandsworth prison records we discovered a few years back (see link), it was said that Kate read and wrote ‘Imp’(erfectly). Naturally, that snippet of information wasn’t allowed entry to ‘The Ballad of Tom and Kate’ chapter of The Five. And I suspect it doesn’t get a mention in the podcast either. How literate was the ex-Dowgate pupil?

The fact is we don’t know how literate or musically gifted Kate was, and there’s no contemporary evidence that either she or Tom Conway even sold ballads, let alone composed and performed them. There’s more evidence that the other 4 of the 5 were prostitutes.


https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...dsworth-prison

I believe I found one of the prison records and Robert found the other. (?) Debs transcribed them and added the info that the infant with Kate in 1877 was Frederick. We were very nearly drummed out of the Ripperology community for showing an interest in the victims. ;-)

The lives of the victims had been looked into back in the 1990s and 1980s, even before that, but the old school Ripperologist didn't see any point in anything unless it had a direct bearing on the identity of the murderer. Some people still say, of ten with a strange pride, that they don't give a tinkers about where lamposts and bollards were located, or whether Mrs so-and-so lived at nu ber eighteen or fifty-one, but those of us with historical inclinations admired such work.

[Debra Arif]

Our posts overlapped.

Yes, she probably got all the info from CB.

My reason for raising the prison records was just to highlight the ‘imperfect’ note.

I was just wondering if Hallie had in fact seen the 'instruction' ref in the original or CB version which was later corrected to read and write 'imperfectly' (by me) in one entry for Eddowes.

[Gary Barnett]

Did I misunderstand you, Debs? Were you asking whether she’d independently seen the records or whether she’d seen them on the boards?

Our posts overlapped.

Yes, she probably got all the info from CB.

My reason for raising the prison records was just to highlight the ‘imperfect’ note.

[Gary Barnett]

Does she quote numbers you hadn’t already quoted in March, 2018?

Did I misunderstand you, Debs? Were you asking whether she’d independently seen the records or whether she’d seen them on the boards?

[Debra Arif]

Does she quote numbers you hadn’t already quoted in March, 2018?

No, looking again I gave the two reference numbers in post #21
By post # 25 four days later, I had corrected the details that actually belonged to Ann Holder i.e. 13 previous convictions etc.
and 'instruction'

[Gary Barnett]

Although I had mentioned Frederick's 1877 birth (Eddowes 4th child) in several posts around both forums, the thread you linked to above, Gary, was the only time (to the best of my knowledge) that I mentioned Frederick in relation to the Wandsworth prison records as being the infant that accompanied Kate to prison.
This information about Frederick accompanying Kate to Wandsworth was credited to me in Hallie's book.. But Hallie also gives a reference number for the Wandsworth prison records for Kate so must have seen them for herself?

Does she quote numbers you hadn’t already quoted in March, 2018?

[Debra Arif]

Although I had mentioned Frederick's 1877 birth (Eddowes 4th child) in several posts around both forums, the thread you linked to above, Gary, was the only time (to the best of my knowledge) that I mentioned Frederick in relation to the Wandsworth prison records as being the infant that accompanied Kate to prison.
This information about Frederick accompanying Kate to Wandsworth was credited to me in Hallie's book.. But Hallie also gives a reference number for the Wandsworth prison records for Kate so must have seen them for herself?

[Gary Barnett]

Kate’s Education

It was apparently Eliza Gold who provided the information that Kate attended the Dowgate Charity School, which I believe was located in Swan Lane, in the City. That’s a long old schlep for a little girl from Bermondsey. HR paints a pretty picture of her doing so, crossing London Bridge wearing the blue and white Dowgate uniform ‘she had stitched herself’. (Really? Where did she get that information from - Aristotle Tump?)

Dowgate is important to the myth because music was taught there - unlike, presumably, any other girl’s school in London. :-) Stripped of her Dowgate musical education, there would only be a vague reference to Kate being ‘fond of singing’ to support the claim of her being a talented chanteuse.

I can’t remember (if I ever knew) where the information that she had also attended St. John's Charity School, Potter's Field, Tooley Street came from.

Interestingly, on one of the two Wandsworth prison records we discovered a few years back (see link), it was said that Kate read and wrote ‘Imp’(erfectly). Naturally, that snippet of information wasn’t allowed entry to ‘The Ballad of Tom and Kate’ chapter of The Five. And I suspect it doesn’t get a mention in the podcast either. How literate was the ex-Dowgate pupil?

The fact is we don’t know how literate or musically gifted Kate was, and there’s no contemporary evidence that either she or Tom Conway even sold ballads, let alone composed and performed them. There’s more evidence that the other 4 of the 5 were prostitutes.


https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...dsworth-prison

I believe I found one of the prison records and Robert found the other. (?) Debs transcribed them and added the info that the infant with Kate in 1877 was Frederick. We were very nearly drummed out of the Ripperology community for showing an interest in the victims. ;-)

[Paul]

Hallie Rubenhold doesn't seem to have a fixed set of values. She damns Ripperologists, yet her book, her podcast, the opera, the so-called alternative walks... all sell themselves on "Jack the Ripper".

[Gary Barnett]

I am surprised, though, that HR associated herself with the opera, which had the unfortunate (pun unintended) title of ‘Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel’. The rather flamboyant costumes worn by the performers, their tightly-laced waists and emphasised and exposed bosoms, owed more to the Hammer Horror portrayal of the victims than to the sad reality.

The Camden New Journal wasn’t too impressed:

“Watching this opera ought to make you angry. But the story is so limply told, with childlike virtue-signalling and every operatic cliché in the book, it doesn’t.”

Lesley Garrett as Kate Eddowes is the one in purple in the photos.

[Gary Barnett]

No surprise there.

[Michael Banks]

HR makes an appearance outside Wilton’s here.

I honestly can’t imagine Lesley G undertaking ‘intensive research’ into Kate’s life.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.e...ey-garrett/amp

"What I love about Catherine is that she loved to write ballads," says Lesley, "and she was in fact a well-known balladeer in her day.

"At that time, balladeers would go to public hangings to sell their ballads about the person being hanged."

Lesley came across a ballad Catherine wrote about Charles Robinson, who was hanged in 1866 in Wolverhampton for killing his sweetheart, Harriet.

"Catherine was a good songwriter and clearly literate and musical," explains the popular soprano. "At the time she wrote that ballad she was with an Irishman called Tom Conway, living a pretty destitute life, sleeping in barns and living hand-to-mouth.”

Fortunately for her she just happened to be carrying a copy of her book when the photograph was taken.

[Gary Barnett]

HR makes an appearance outside Wilton’s here.

I honestly can’t imagine Lesley G undertaking ‘intensive research’ into Kate’s life.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.e...ey-garrett/amp

"What I love about Catherine is that she loved to write ballads," says Lesley, "and she was in fact a well-known balladeer in her day.

"At that time, balladeers would go to public hangings to sell their ballads about the person being hanged."

Lesley came across a ballad Catherine wrote about Charles Robinson, who was hanged in 1866 in Wolverhampton for killing his sweetheart, Harriet.

"Catherine was a good songwriter and clearly literate and musical," explains the popular soprano. "At the time she wrote that ballad she was with an Irishman called Tom Conway, living a pretty destitute life, sleeping in barns and living hand-to-mouth.”

[Gary Barnett]

I did access a site that listed the articles when I was looking for the Kidney Kate one a while back. Can’t remember the details now. There are sufficient errors in the KK one to call it’s overall reliability into question. Kate working in Spitalfields market, Stride being killed at 10 o’clock etc.

I think HR may have taken her lead from Jarett Kobek when she expressed her doubts about the article’s accuracy, but she carried on regardless constructing the myth.

[Chris Phillips]

I was just wondering that myself. I have an annual (1995) that contains the Kidney Kate piece. There’s nothing on Robinson in that but the Bugle was founded in the 1970s. I think there’s a website that lists their various issues and what was in them.

The Wikipedia article on the Bugle links to http://www.blackcountrybugle.co.uk/ but that now forwards to the Birmingham Mail website.

Some of the old website can be found through the Wayback Machine at archive.org. At one time there used to be a searchable database of articles, but of course the archived version doesn't work. At another there used to be a browsable archive of old articles, but the copy at archive.org is incomplete. But quite a large proportion were about old murder cases.

It seems quite likely that there would have been an article on Robinson, and if so it might provide some useful background on the Eddowes article and its reliability.