Kate Eddowes - Balladeer?

[Matt Hood]

Am I right in thinking that the only evidence that exists that línks Catherine Eddowes to gallows ballads is a newspaper article that says she and Thomas Conway used to sell them? And there is no evidence at all that she and/or Conway actually wrote them?

[Gary Barnett]

Am I right in thinking that the only evidence that exists that línks Catherine Eddowes to gallows ballads is a newspaper article that says she and Thomas Conway used to sell them? And there is no evidence at all that she and/or Conway actually wrote them?

Hi Matt,

As far as I’m aware, there is no contemporary report that mentions either of them writing or selling ballads. The idea seems to have originated in an article which appeared in 1995 in a rather odd publication called The Black Country Bugle.

Gary

[Robert Linford]

I found one :


He climbed upon the gallows
His face was set and grim
The noose was tightened round his neck
And that was the end of him

[John Savage]

Thanks Robert.

You hum it and I'll play it.

Rgds
John

[Gary Barnett]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7sinEPUWnDc

[Gary Barnett]

My guess would be that, having discovered that Eddowes’ cousin had been hanged for murder and was the subject of a gallows ballad, the Black Country Bugle author reverse-engineered Eddowes’ and Conways’ attendance at the execution and Conway’s authorship of the ballad. HR goes one step further by imagining that Kate had a hand in its creation, and that has since been developed even further into Kate having been a successful ballad writer.

[Matt Hood]

And we're the ones who take suspect sources at face value? Numpty.

[Gary Barnett]

And we're the ones who take suspect sources at face value? Numpty.

In fairness, HR does echo Jarrett Kobek’s reservations about the reliability of the Bugle’s account. But that doesn’t stop her from naming one of her chapters The Ballad of Tom and Kate and implying that Kate had a hand in the writing of the Robinson Ballad. Her reasoning is that the personal tone of the ballad would fit with it having been written by a relative of the hanged man.

The fact is that the tone of the ballad is traditional, and some of the actual words can be found in other gallows ballads which were not written about a cousin of Kate Eddowes.��

[Robert Linford]

By my calculations, Kate must have been half way through writing her 3rd Symphony when Jack struck.

[Gary Barnett]

By my calculations, Kate must have been half way through writing her 3rd Symphony when Jack struck.

The same thing had happened to him earlier that night.

[Robert Linford]

If you add in Kelly's singing, Jack was not a music lover.

[Gary Barnett]

If you add in Kelly's singing, Jack was not a music lover.

They say the blind have acute hearing.

[Robert Linford]

And can be dangerous when they start swinging their batons.

[Gary Barnett]

And can be dangerous when they start swinging their batons.

Or, in the case of Kos-types, their seedy bloomers.

[Robert Linford]

Or a religious nutter : remember, there are a lot of baguettes in the Bible.