Theater Reviews

[Gary Barnett]

I read about Croote on the thread that you posted a link to Gary. There’s still a Bilston market which I’ve been to many times but it’s nowhere near what it used to be. My grandfather used to go there sometimes from Tipton where he lived just buy meat. Nothing like that these days. Bilston Street which was mentioned a lot is also much changed of course and is now part of the Metro route.

A Whitechapel knacker named Nicholas Shippy got married in Tipton and my ggg grandfather was his best man. In 1881, Shippy was living with Henry Tomkins in Manchester. There was also a boxer named The Tipton Slasher I seem to recall.

The main Wolverhampton knacker was a man called Leach/Leech and he operated out of Townwell Fold. Shippy worked for him for a while. On one occasion Shippy was sent out to buy some candles for use in the knacker’s yard at night and he was waylaid by a prostitute who stole the candles. On another occasion he bound the muzzle of Leach’s dog and set his own dog on it. Then there was the time he burgled a pub and stole a ham…

[Gary Barnett]

Leach was prosecuted for moving diseased horses on a public road from Liverpool to Wolverhampton and subsequently opened a yard in Newton Heath, Manchester, where the local authority was notoriously lax in respect of public health matters. Nick Shippy’s family had lived in and around Winthrop Street (then little North Street) as had my family, in the 1840s/50s. My family moved to Wolverhampton/Bilston first and then after Shippy’s father, also a knacker and also called Nicholas, died he (nasty Nick Jnr) moved first to Bilston, where I believe he worked for a knacker named Robertson and then to Wolverhampton to work with Leach. My family also worked for Robertson.

The Barnetts moved back to London (Islington) around 1860 and worked as knackers in Belle Isle for 50 years or so. For the first 10/12 years they were there the Tomkins family were also in Belle Isle. However, in 1872/3 William Tomkins was convicted of stealing horse (one account says cow) fat from John Harrison and sent to prison. On his release he moved his family to Newton Heath where they remained until 1887/8 when they returned to London - Whitechapel this time.

William Tomkins and at least two of his sons, Henry and Thomas, were in Whitechapel in 1888, all horse slaughterers, so presumably all working for Harrison Barber which since 1886 had been the only horse slaughtering firm allowed to operate in Metropolitan London. William Tomkins drank himself to death in 1888, one of Thomas’s children died over the weekend of the ‘double event’ and another died a year or so later. Henry Tomkins died in 1891, jus a few days before the murder of Frances Coles. What remained of the Tomkins family had returned to Manchester by at least 1893.

[Mark J D]

... There was no singing apart from a couple of choruses of “my old man,” as they were changing scenes...

Howlingly anachronistic, that, since the song dates from *1919*...

-- Anyone know of any good/bad songs that would have been chronologically accurate? We need to improve this aspect of Whitechapel-related drama...

M.

[Gary Barnett]

Howlingly anachronistic, that, since the song dates from *1919*...

-- Anyone know of any good/bad songs that would have been chronologically accurate? We need to improve this aspect of Whitechapel-related drama...

M.

Have a look at post 4 on this thread:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/persons-of-interest-or-actual-suspects/walter-sickert/25814-bessie-bellwood

[Michael Banks]

Howlingly anachronistic, that, since the song dates from *1919*...

-- Anyone know of any good/bad songs that would have been chronologically accurate? We need to improve this aspect of Whitechapel-related drama...

M.

Good spot. I hadn’t considered that. I assumed that the song was older.

[Michael Banks]

I was going to suggest that they could have used Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay as Georgia Brown sung it in A Study In Terror. According to wiki it was first recorded as being performed in 1891 although a man called Sayers said that he hadn’t actually written it but he’d heard a black singer called Mama Lou sing it in the 1880’s in a brothel.

Also according to Wiki Knees Up Mother Brown dates from the 1800’s but that’s as specific as it gets. I thought that was a later too.

Come Into The Garden Maud fits the bill. I prefer the Motörhead cover version though.

[Mark J D]

I was going to suggest that they could have used Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay as Georgia Brown sung it in A Study In Terror.

I did tut when I saw that being sung. A bit too much of a stretch, I thought.

I can't remember what they had in the Michael Caine thing (it was a long time ago); but I do recall there being a song whose dates checked out...

M.

[Michael Banks]

I did tut when I saw that being sung. A bit too much of a stretch, I thought.

I can't remember what they had in the Michael Caine thing (it was a long time ago); but I do recall there being a song whose dates checked out...

M.

I can’t remember the song in the Michael Caine thing. I remember a pub scene or two but thats it. It was on tv the other day but I didn’t watch it.

[Mark J D]

... I can’t remember the song in the Michael Caine thing...

Jack the Ripper (TV Mini Series 1988) - Soundtracks - IMDb

M.

[Michael Banks]

Of those 5 I’ve heard of 2 but I can’t recall them in the 2 episodes though they obviously were in the programme.

[Gary Barnett]

I nabbed this from the STC’s Facebook page.

Unless there was a rewrite at some point, it would seem that Dave Morris got the idea of Kate being a writer of ballads long before Hallie R toyed with it.

I had to smile when I read this:

‘… we could sell a thousand sheets before anyone checks the facts.’