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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » General Discussion » Was Macarthy still landlord of Millers Ct in 1909 « Previous Next »

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Nelly
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Posted on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 1:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

First of all I would like to say that this casebook and all it's different theories are excellent.If what I'm about to say has been brought up before then I apologise,but having read most of this a couple of things spring to mind.
It appears to me that there has to be more than one murderer involved,firstly because the 'M O'is different from the first four to what was supposed to be the last.It is difficult to believe that Jack who operated quickly and out doors with plenty of escape routes would then put himself in the position of operating in a small room in a dead end alley,overlooked by other appartments and with only one way in and one way out.Being confronted in the vicinity or seen would have been too risky.

Secondly in 1909 there was a second murder at Millers CT,where a young woman had her throat slashed.Although 21 years later,for a small alleyway this is one hell of a coincidence.

So my question is, was Macarthy still the landlord then.Obviously if he was it would not mean he had anything to do with the murders but is does establish a different link.

One other small point,why did Macarthy refer to Mary Jane by other names including Davis, Stride and Mcarthy?Seems he had an intimate knowledge of her background.

Could this be a pervy landlord who preyed on his female tenants for sex? Did he use the Ripper events as cover to get rid of Mary Jane for whatever reason?
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Steve Laughery
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Posted on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 6:57 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Nelly

Great post! Some interesting points!

I'm no expert (just an enthusiast), but my impression is that the East End was a very rough part of town; and, from what I've read, some contemporaries thought of Dorset Street as the meanest of the mean. While the number of murders in London 100 years ago was remarkably small (to an American), it doesn't surprise me that there were two violent murders in the same "blind" court off a tough street in an "out of the high-rent district" part of a big city in just over 20 years. I'm actually kind of surprised there weren't more.

I'm anxious to see if anyone out there knows who the landlord was in 1909. How about other crimes? Were those the only two muders in Miller's Court's history?

Steve
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Robert J. McLaughlin
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Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 8:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

John McCarthy still owned his shop in Duval Street (formerly Dorset Street) on July 02, 1909, when Kitty Ronan was murdered at No. 20 Miller's Court. The police files on the Ronan murder no longer exist according to Maggie Bird of New Scotland Yard when I inquired about it several years ago. Andy Aliffe wrote an interesting article on the Ronan murder that can be found here at the Casebook: http://casebook.org/dissertations/rip-kit.html

McCarthy did not die until 1934, so it is conceivable that he owned the property until the time of its demolition in 1928. The Spitalfields Market expansion was approved in 1920. McCarthy had extensive holdings in Duval Street and would have understood how lucrative the property would be. Along with his property in the East End, McCarthy also had a financial interest in the South London Music Hall. His estate upon death amounted to £15,667 13s 9d. Quite a bit of money for a man born of his station. It tells me that he was a motivated businessman, and he wanted success beyond the dreary hovels of the East End. He was an ambitious self-made man in a time and place where this was difficult to achieve.

I have never subscribed to the theory he accepted sex from his tenants, or that this was the reason he allowed Kelly to fall 29 shillings behind in the rent. If he wanted sex, it was safer to get it elsewhere than on his own doorstep. He doesn't strike me as the type who would open himself up to blackmail, or the indelicate situation of his wife viewing his activities. Engaging in the type of behavior you suggest would have jeopardize McCarthy's upward mobility. The financial success and appearance of respectability he attained during his lifetime is more tangible and concrete than theorizing thay he preyed on the local prostitutes.

But you are right about one thing: two murders in a small court, one above the other, twenty-one years apart, is one hell of a coincidence. One more murder in Duval Steet occured in 1960, when a man named Selwyn Cooney was gunned down outside a local pub.

All the best,

Robert
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Robert Clack
Inspector
Username: Rclack

Post Number: 244
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 5:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi all

There was also the murder of Elizabeth Roberts, by her sister Kate Marshall on 26th November 1898 at 26 Dorset Street.
Kate Marshall stabbed her sister in the breast with a shoemakers knife during a quarrel.

All the best

Rob
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Chris Michetti
Detective Sergeant
Username: Pl4tinum

Post Number: 124
Registered: 2-2004
Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 3:09 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

If McCarthy was that shrewd of a businessman perhaps he was willing to kill a tenant who wouldn't pay her rent so that he could rent the place to someone who would. Some drug dealers kill without a second thought when they dont get their due...
Chris
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Richard Brian Nunweek
Chief Inspector
Username: Richardn

Post Number: 797
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 3:35 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Chris,
Even my imagination, and speculation, does not reach that far.
It is my opinion, he felt sorry for kelly, also he knew that she albeit by prostitution, would possibly be in a position, to pay some of the rent, infact it is not inconceivable that he may have been in contact with kellys parents, who promised that they would send money if only he would be patient a while longer, whilst there was danger on the streets,
Who Knows?.
I would say he was a man of compassion, at least until the killer was apprehended.
Richard.
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Lisa
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Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 7:22 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Robert

You mentioned Macarthy's financial interests in a London music hall, I read somewhere that he was a personal friend of Marie Lloyd.

Regards
Lisa
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Robert J. McLaughlin
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Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 6:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Rob,

Additionally, a prostitute named Mary Ann Austin was stabbed several times in Crossingham's (35 Dorset Street) by a customer in 1901, and died in London Hospital as a result. Wensley was one of the detectives who worked on the case.

Are there any more murders we may have forgotten?

Robert

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Andrew Gable
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Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 2:55 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I think the most disturbing fact in that article is that three years later, 13 Miller's Court still had bloodstains in it, and beyond that, that people continued renting it. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised... Shows a lot about the condition of Whitechapel that a dingy room with that much evidence of what occurred there was still in demand as a residence.
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nelly
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Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 8:07 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

If Mcarthy was such a shrewd business man,it seems surprising that he would let someone fall so much behind on the rent without kicking them out.

We may on the surface see an upwardly mobile type with a wife and other business interests but there are plenty who specialise on being squeaky clean on the outside,whilst on the inside lies something entirely different.

Just a theory,but what if he'd already had sex with her and she was already holding him to ransom?
Sure with his money he could have got any prostitute but of course shrewd business people are loath to waste their money on something they could get for free.

He may of actually really fancied her.Does anyone know what his wife looked like?

She might have been a real minger!
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Robert Clack
Inspector
Username: Rclack

Post Number: 247
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 5:58 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Robert

I would be very surprised if there isn't any more murders in Dorset Street. I knew about Kate Marshall because Sergeant Stephen White(he was Inspector at the time of her murder)was connected with the investigation.
How is your book coming along? I am still waiting with eager anticipation for it.

Hi Nelly

Andy and Sue Parlour have a theory that Mary Jane Kelly was related to John McCarthy. And that would explain the rent arrears.

Hi Lisa

Marie Lloyd use to frequent a public house around the corner from John McCarthy, and all his daughters were in show business because of her.
A small point perhaps but according to a friend of Mary Kelly, Lizzie Allbrook was told by Mary that she had a relation on the London Stage.

Rob
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Brian W. Schoeneman
Inspector
Username: Deltaxi65

Post Number: 321
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 11:46 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Stan Russo and I spoke about the McCarthy/Kelly connection - I don't know if it can be proven, but it makes a lot of sense as to why the rent would have been allowed to go that long in arrears.

Lodgings were so hard to come by and so sought after, McCarthy would never have (in my opinion) allowed such a steep debt - a month or more worth of an average man's wages - without a darn good reason.

B
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Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris

Post Number: 1237
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 7:02 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Found this comment from an article dated 10 June 1914 which shows that Miller's Court was inhabited until near that time.

mill1914
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shelley wiltshire
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Posted on Sunday, July 18, 2004 - 7:40 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

It is rather sucpicious that a shrewd businessman like McCarthy would have Mary Jane's rent go that far in arrears, i can understand the suspision that he may well have been related to her, perhaps through Marriage, Mary may have been married to a brother or cousin of McCarthy's, on the other hand it shouldn't always be assumed that he might have taken a fancy to her or got caught in a sexual relationship with her, has anyone thought that the child that keeps being mentioned that lived with Mary, some say a boy, that that wasn't the sexual preference of McCarthy and that Mary knew about it...sick as it may sound, this is the reality of some men, some men prefer young men or even boys and in victorian times peodophiles didn't exist on record because children weren't protected, until a bill later on i think it was 1889 said that a girl of under 16yrs couldn't be shipped overseas for sexual immorality, and that was it! it was perfectly ok at home for either boy or girl at any age!
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Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne

Post Number: 1430
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 5:40 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

G'day,

Here's something I found in document for 'Harper's New Monthly' Magazine January 1894, on a website about Victorian London:

'One night an inspector of police woke fifty of these men in McCarthy's lodging-house on Dorset Street, off the Commercial Road, to exhibit them and I felt as though I had walked into a cage with the keeper. They lay on strips of canvas naked to the waist, for it was a warm, close night, and as the ray of the policeman's lantern slid from cot to cot, it showed the sunken chests and ribs of some half-starved wrecks of the warves, or the broad torso of a "docker", or a sailor's hairy breast market with tatooing, and the throats of two men scarred with long dull red lines where some one had drawn a knife, and some of them tossed and woke cursing and muttering and then rested on their elbows, cowering before the officers and blinking at the light, or sat erect and glared at them defiantly, and hailed them with drunken bravado.
"The beds seem comfortable," I said to McCarthy, by way of being civil.
"Oh, yes, sir," he answered, "comfor'ble enough, only it ain't proper, after paying twopence for a bed, to 'ave a policeman a-waking you up with a lamp in your face, It 'urts the 'ouse, that's wot it does." He added, gloomily, "It droives away trade."'


Unless this writer was relaying a coversation from his memory, it would seem as though Miller's Court lost so many tennants after Mary Kelly's murder, that it went back to being a shed for the poor 6 years after it.

Here's a link to that article:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/population/londoners.htm

LEANNE
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 2879
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 4:14 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Leanne

Thanks for posting that. I must say, twopence sounds a bit cheap - I thought the going rate was fourpence.

Robert
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Donald Souden
Inspector
Username: Supe

Post Number: 266
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 8:33 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Leanne,

What makes you think the lodging house in question had anything to do with Miller's Court or the shed? Thanks to some research posted earlier this year by Fiona Rule [General Discussion/Census Data & Research/Dorset Street in 1888] McCarthy was clearly a man on the make and already leasing two large lodging houses in Dorset Street.

Everything in the interesting article you posted makes it clear the incident happened in an actual lodging house in Dorset Street, not the shed mentioned in the newspaper story of dubious veracity.

Don.
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Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne

Post Number: 1432
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 7:08 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

G'day Don,

OK, let's think about that for a minute. The text above says: '..on Dorset Street, off the Commercial Road'. Miller's Court was near the end of Dorset Street, closest to Commercial Road.
It was directly opposite Crossingham's Lodging House. Does any have any ideas on this?

LEANNE
A T.V. can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer!

(Message edited by Leanne on August 30, 2004)
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Robert J. McLaughlin
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 5:25 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Leanne,

The writer is not referring to Miller's Court. It must be remembered that McCarthy had other holdings in Dorset Street. He owned three houses at No's 37, 38, and 39, leased the Common Lodging House at No's 11-12, and leased a large, four-storey Common Lodging House at No. 30. It is probably the latter building that the writer is talking about.

Cheers,

Robert

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