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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » Police Officials » General Discussion / Other Police Officials » Jewish Policemen « Previous Next »

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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4802
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 3:53 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi all

I believe that there weren't too many Jewish policemen in the City Police or Met at the time of the murders. I thought I'd open a thread so that any we find could be listed.

I think I found a policeman living in a synagogue near Mitre Square, but I can't remember his name. It's on the Boards somewhere.

Here is a possible : Jabez Munday, living Clapham in 1881. I haven't found him in 1891, but the national archives have his pension records dated early 90s.

Apologies if he's come up before.

Robert
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Chris Phillips
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Cgp100

Post Number: 1311
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 4:20 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert

Do you have any particular reason to think this Jabez was Jewish, apart from his name?

I would have thought Jabez, as a Biblical name, would have been used reasonably commonly by Victorian Gentiles. (For example, Druittists will know about Jabez Druitt of Mile End, perhaps a distant relative of Montague.)

Chris Phillips

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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4803
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 4:52 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Well I'm jiggered! You're right, Chris. I've just searched by forename alone, and there was a steady population of about 5000 Jabezes from all over the country.

I forgot how religious the Victorians were!

Also, this particular Jabez seems to have been the son of an agricultural labourer, so I guess he's gone from a possible to an improbable.

I should of course mention Chris George's PC Brown.

Robert
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Scott Nelson
Detective Sergeant
Username: Snelson

Post Number: 143
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 5:15 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Possibly City PC James Harvey (mother's side?) Another question, where was Harvey about one minute before he walked to the end of Church Passage and saw and heard nothing? Did he see someone emerge from St James Place, but not think anything unusual at that time?
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 2409
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 5:24 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

You could always try Cutbush, Robert.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4804
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 5:39 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Scott, I've often wondered whether Harvey's dismissal was related to his having seen something and not mentioned it till it was too late. He was dismissed roughly the same time as Long, July 89.

AP, do you think Uncle Charles was partly Jewish?

Robert
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 2410
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:17 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

A small part of me says that the Cutbush family were Belgian Jews who came over whenever the Belgian Jews came over.
It is easy to be seduced into thinking that they were old Irish, from Cutbush town, but hey, Robert, how many old Irish families do you know that were anti-Catholic?
From the south I mean.
The Belgian clockmakers had the escapement movement three hundred years before Grimthorpe.
Or was that a hundred years?
The devil to the brandy.
Riot. Hyde Park.
Lipski.
October 19th 1887.
The term was used to describe a coward.
A full year before it was used to describe a coward when Liz was murdered.
Bed.
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Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe

Post Number: 686
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:25 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert,

Among those 5,000 was there possibly a Jabez Wilson? A pawnbroker whose hair was of a particularly vivid red hue?

Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4806
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:30 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

What, you mean the one living next to a bank, Don? He was out on census night copying the Encyclopedia Britannica, wasn't he?

Not all Obadiah Slopes were Jewish, either.

Robert
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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Chief Inspector
Username: Mayerling

Post Number: 799
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 7:43 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi all,

Just remember how S.H. calmed down Mr. Wilson the pawnbroker - he pointed out all the wonderful information he picked up regarding subjects beginning with the letter "A".

Maybe John Clay, the fourth smartest man in London, knew who was Jack the Ripper.

As far as I know the best recalled "Jabez" from Jack's period was the former Mayor of Croyden, and Liberal M P, Jabez Balfour. As far as I know he was not a relative of Arthur Balfour (future Prime Minister and author of the "Declaration"). No, Jabez Balfour was a millionaire crook and scoundrel. He was a leading figure among Nonconformists, and he set up four or five corporations which were supposed to help his fellow religious members get cheap and affordable houses. Instead the "Liberator" group became real estate developers on a huge scale. It all came tumbling down in 1892, and Balfour fled with his money to Argentina. He was forcibly brought back by Chief Inspector Fred Froest of Scotland Yard in 1895, and would be sentenced to fourteen years in prison for his frauds.

But Jabez Balfour was a Nonconformist, not a Jew.

As for Dr. Obadiah Slope, please reread Mr. Trollope's BARCHESTER TOWERS - Dr. Slope was a descendant of TRISTRAM SHANDY's physician, Dr. Slop.

Best wishes,

Jeff
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Olivier P.M.G. Donni
Sergeant
Username: Olivier

Post Number: 39
Registered: 9-2004
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 8:01 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Scott,

Have you any particular information which makes you believe that PC Harvey was Jewish. Or, it it simply the conclusion you draw from Sir Anderson's statements?

Olivier
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John Ruffels
Inspector
Username: Johnr

Post Number: 432
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 8:17 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello Robert Charles L.,
No doubt you are aware of The Blacksheep Index and Police Index at lightage.demon.co.uk?
This will enable you to scroll through a huge list of Police Officers based in Great Britain from the 1850's.
A rough check told me more Jewish policemen seemed to have been mentioned in the press in the 1900 onwards, period. Names I spotted were:
"P.C. Abrahams (Metro J Divn) Presentation 1911"
"Sergeant Ambrose Anker,(Metrop. X divn)assault 1896".
" P.C.Joseph Ash, City, Presentation, 1888"
"P.C. Cohen (Metrop No.Y381)Evidence, 1877"
" Insp. Nathan Thompson Lee,(Metrop. V/T/H)1894-9"
I do not know for sure if these were Jewish. Just a wild guess. However, you can trawl through it.
Two other lists you are no doubt aware of:
\newurl {www.policememorial.org.uk)
and see the site for the Metropolitan Police Service Book of Remembrance.
Hope this helps. You might already be aware of these sites, but just in case...
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4807
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 12:53 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thank you, John.

I don't know if I'm right on this, but I think there's a bit of ambiguity as to what constitutes Jewishness. Whereas a Gentile regards a person with both parents Jewish as being Jewish, and a person with one parent Jewish as being half Jewish, yet I believe the Jews themselves regard a person as Jewish if the mother was Jewish (even if the father was not) but a person whose father is Jewish but whose mother isn't, as being not Jewish at all.

Or have I got that the wrong way round?

Robert
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Christopher T George
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chrisg

Post Number: 1616
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 2:44 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Robert

The situation is complicated, as explained on the website "Who Is a Jew?"--

"First, traditional Judaism maintains that a person is a Jew if his mother is a Jew, regardless of who his father is. The liberal movements, on the other hand, consider a person to be Jewish if either of his parents was Jewish and the child was raised Jewish. Thus, if the child of a Jewish father and a Christian mother is raised Jewish, the child is a Jew according to the Reform movement, but not according to the Orthodox movement. On the other hand, if the child of a Christian father and a Jewish mother is not raised Jewish, the child is a Jew according to the Orthodox movement, but not according to the Reform movement! The matter becomes even more complicated, because the status of that children's children also comes into question."

Robert, I hope this helps, even if it might have confused you further! There is also the question of whether Jewish beliefs on this question might have changed any since 1888. My hunch is that basically it is the same as back then.

Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 4808
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 3:41 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thanks Chris. Yes, a very complicated question but one which Anderson with his background in Biblical scholarship would have been equipped to tackle, I suppose.

Robert
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E.E.
Unregistered guest
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 2:01 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Robert, this is correct. Following Jewish religious law, you are Jewish if your mother is jewish (even if the father was not). A person whose father is Jewish but whose mother isn't, is not Jewish at all.

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