Duval Street: A 'New Friend With An Old Face'

[Dave James]

Duval St

Hi all,

A quick Google came up with this for the date of the name change -
Dorset Street, London - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_Street,_London
Dorset Street was situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London, .... Dorset Street was renamed 'Duval Street' on 28 June 1904.

Hope this helps

[Gary Barnett]

Hi all,

A quick Google came up with this for the date of the name change -
Dorset Street, London - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_Street,_London
Dorset Street was situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London, .... Dorset Street was renamed 'Duval Street' on 28 June 1904.

Hope this helps

Thanks, Dave. That would tie in to Wynne Baxter's comments in Dec., 1904.

[Robert Linford]

Mrs Edith Eleanor (Ellen) Dresch nee Field did have a daughter Edith who would have been 22 at the time of the murder. According to one Ancestry tree Edith was in the workhouse in 1901. In 1909 Mrs Dresch said she hadn't heard from her daughter for two years. I don't know what became of Edith but since Mrs Dresch gives herself as having had 14 children, of which only six survived by 1911, and since only 4 of them are on the census form, it remains to be seen if Mrs Dresch still considered Edith to be dead by 1911.

[Robert Linford]

It seems Edith was baptised in the workhouse in 1901 as Ellen Dresch.

[Gary Barnett]

Robert,

Are they the family from Clerkenwell - father Charles a carpenter/box-maker?

Gary

[Robert Linford]

Yes Gary, painters' labourer, box maker, labourer.

[Gary Barnett]

Yes Gary, painters' labourer, box maker, labourer.

Is he the 18-y-o cabinet maker son of Geo in 1881?

[Gary Barnett]

I 'borrowed' these next two photos of Duval Street in 1960 from Casebook where they were posted by Rob Clack (hope that's OK).

[Gary Barnett]

[Gary Barnett]

And another one from the same source:

I think I'm right that the doorway in the photo is the same one through which Billy Maher and his two confederates gained access in 1897 (i.e. no. 20, the house that mysteriously avoided the 1891 census).

[Robert Linford]

His 1885 marriage shows him as 23, occupation fancy cabinet maker, same as his dad George.

[Gary Barnett]

His 1885 marriage shows him as 23, occupation fancy cabinet maker, same as his dad George.

Fancy that.

[Robert Linford]

Re Mrs Dresch, if it's true that she hadn't seen her daughter in two years, then knowing how young women down on their luck could turn to prostitution, complete with name change, Mrs Dresch may have wanted to view the body to assure herself that it wasn't her daughter.

[Gary Barnett]

Re Mrs Dresch, if it's true that she hadn't seen her daughter in two years, then knowing how young women down on their luck could turn to prostitution, complete with name change, Mrs Dresch may have wanted to view the body to assure herself that it wasn't her daughter.

Yes, Rob, I don't get the feeling this was just morbid curiosity.

Even after the deaths of the 'Lords' (the men who were blamed for nothing) bad things happened in that street. It was somewhere the desperate and the vulnerable ended up. The only way the likes of Crossingham and McCarthy could have improved the situation would have been to shut up shop.