Cracked Eggs and Chicken Soup - A Memoir of Growing Up Between The Wars. Norman Jacobs
in the East End of London of the 1920s and 1930s, and when I wake it takes me a few moments to remember where I am. I have been wondering about the old places – are they still there? Would I recognise the streets and houses any more? So I made up my mind to take a trip down memory lane. And what a trip it was, and what memories it brought back.
So there I was … revisiting Petticoat Lane, standing on the corner of Toynbee Street and Commercial Street. And suddenly I was flooded with memories of a little boy, Ikey Jacobs. Instantly Toynbee Street melted into Shepherd Street, Brune House gave way to the streets I had loved so well as a child. Seventy years started to evaporate and I, being that little boy, was back in my beloved Spitalfields.
Times were hard then, the Great War had not been long over and memories of it were still vivid for the vast majority of people. Poverty lurked in every street, pouncing on this family or that family at its whim. Politicians talked of ‘A land fit for heroes to live in’, but that was a hollow mockery unless of course you were a rich hero; the poor variety had a hard struggle to survive, most old soldiers we knew were maimed, blind, shell-shocked or just too ill to work. Even the able-bodied found jobs hard to come by after the full employment of the war years and general demobilisation of the armed forces.
We were one of those poverty-stricken families, a Jewish one, living in the East End. There were eight of us children, our dad more out of work than in it, Mum worn ragged, no money to speak of and Mosley’s anti-Semitic Blackshirts putting the fear of God into us. Yet somehow we coped through those years of hardship between the wars.
My story as told to me by my parents actually starts even further back in time so let me take you back to 1888, the year the spectre of Jack the Ripper haunted those very same streets of Spitalfields that I was to grow up in and yes, in spite of everything, come to love …
ISAAC JACOBS
JACK THE RIPPER AND JACK JACOBS, 1888–1915
Pulling her black shawl tight around her slender shoulders, Carrie hurried out of the front door of the buildings into the damp, dark East End air. The time was just coming up to midnight on a foggy November night. The mist was swirling around the gas lamp and she could just make out the deadened sound of a horse-drawn hackney carriage clip-clopping along a nearby street. Suddenly out of this eerie atmosphere a tall man, immaculately dressed in morning coat and top hat, appeared as if from nowhere.
‘What’s a young girl like you doing out on a night like this?’ he demanded.
‘My mama’s in labour. I’ve got to fetch the midwife.’
‘How old are you?’
Carrie puffed herself up and replied, ‘Seventeen,’ although she was, in fact, just twelve years old.
‘I’ll walk with you to the midwife,’ said the man. ‘It’s not safe for a young girl to be out alone at night in Whitechapel with Jack the Ripper still at large.’
Carrie shivered. Although she was trying to be brave, she was grateful to the man, and just nodded.
The walk took them along deserted streets through some of the worst, most poorly lit slums in London. Carrie was used to the mud and filth on the ground but several times was startled by strange sounds that in the still of the night conjured up all sorts of terrors for her but which mostly turned out to be stray cats. Suddenly, she heard a rustling just by her foot. As she looked down she saw something move in the dark and realised it was a large black rat which jumped out of a puddle of water and scurried off down the road. Carrie let out a loud scream and turned, throwing her arms round the man for protection. He took her hand and she gripped it tight for the rest of the journey. Somehow Carrie felt completely safe with this man by her side and together they continued their journey with no more incidents. At last they reached the midwife’s house. ‘We’re here,’ said Carrie.
‘All right,’ said the man. ‘You’ll be safe now.’ Carrie let go of his hand and said, ‘Thank you.’ The man tipped his hat and nodded. Then he said something that made Carrie’s blood run cold, ‘You be sure to tell your mama when you get back home tonight that Jack the Ripper looked after you and walked you to the midwife.’ With that, the man disappeared back into the mist and was gone. Carrie’s heart was pounding as she knocked on the door. Was he really Jack the Ripper? He must have been or why would he have said he was? Had she been that close to a gruesome death? But no, the man had been so kind to her and had protected her. It was very confusing.
Her thoughts trailed away as Hetty Solomons, the midwife, opened the door and ushered her in. ‘Come in, come in, bubbeleh, is it time already?’ she said. ‘I thought your mama would be ready to drop soon. Just let me get my things together.’ Carrie wondered whether she should tell her about the strange man who had escorted her tonight, but decided not to. Very soon they were on their way back.
Several hours later, the midwife delivered Carrie’s mother another baby girl, the tenth child born to Isaac and Clara Levy. The date was 23 November 1888 and that baby was my mother, Rebecca Levy.
She was born in what were called the Model Dwellings on the corner of Wentworth Street and Goulston Street. The same block of flats where, less than two months earlier, the legend, ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’ was scribbled in white chalk on the stairwell above a dirty, bloodstained piece of apron. Where had this bit of cloth come from and what had happened to provoke this rough graffiti? The blood-soaked piece of cloth was proved beyond any doubt to belong to Catherine Eddowes, who just an hour before it was discovered had been the fourth victim of Britain’s most notorious serial killer. Apart from anything else, it was proof that Jack the Ripper knew Wentworth Dwellings well. Had my Aunt Carrie really met the man who had carried out this horrible and shocking deed? And was she lucky to have escaped with her life? Everything that happened in this part of London at the time was overshadowed by the spectral phantom popularly known as Jack the Ripper but somehow our family always felt it had a close connection to this ‘apparition from Hell’.
And as if that wasn’t enough there was one further connection to Jack the Ripper as my great-uncle, Jacob Levy, my grandpa’s brother, has been mentioned in some books as a possible Ripper suspect, even the prime suspect by some authors! It was thought that the description of a man seen talking to Catherine Eddowes just before her murder, fitted Jacob perfectly and, given his previous history and his intimate knowledge of Wentworth Dwellings, there seemed every likelihood that it could be him. This previous history was that he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment back in 1886, but was declared insane and instead sent to the Essex County Asylum. He was later released, but in 1890 was again committed to an asylum, this time the Asylum for General Paralysis of the Insane at Stone in Kent. Observations during his term there included testimony from his wife, who complained that he almost ruined their butcher’s business: ‘He also feels,’ she added, ‘that if he is not restrained he will do some violence to someone; he complains about hearing strange noises; cries for no reason; feels compelled to do acts that his conscience cannot stand; and has a conscience of a feeling of exaltation.’ His wife also revealed that he had formerly been a shrewd businessman and that ‘he does not sleep at nights and wanders around aimlessly for hours’.
At 7.52 p.m. on the evening of the 29 July 1891 Jacob finally died at the asylum from ‘Paralysis brought on by the serious sexually transmitted disease syphilis’, indicating the possibility of liaisons with the Aldgate/Whitechapel prostitutes. Nothing was ever proved of course, but our family was certainly interwoven closely with the whole Jack the Ripper saga.
Mum grew up in the Dwellings with an ever-expanding number of siblings – there were still two more to come – until, when she was twelve, she lost her father, my grandfather, to bronchitis, pulmonary tuberculosis and exhaustion – at least that’s what the death certificate said. Shortly after this, at the age of just thirteen, she left school and went to work in Toff Levy’s cigar factory.