Month: September 2017

Strains of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” from “Pirates of Penzance” wafting through my brain, Mom and I started out on a multi-day, small group trip out of London to Devon and Cornwall.  Our first stop was the village of Avebury in Wiltshire.  While Stonehenge is separated from the public (you can walk around it but not in it), the Avebury henge consists of three Neolithic stone circles in and around the village.  You can go up to the stones and touch, pat, caress and fondle them, if you so desire.  Watch where you are walking, however, as there are loads of sheep in most of the areas where the largest stones that are still upright are found.

There is also a pub in the midst of these circles, so you can have a spot of lunch, a pint, or a dram all while surrounded by what has been referred to as the largest megalithic stone circle in the world.  The Red Lion Pub was converted from a 16^th century farmhouse.  It is built around an 86 foot deep well (now covered with glass and used as a dining table).  Quaint indeed.

Next was Wells Cathedral, which was built from 1175 to 1490, replacing a church that had been built in 705.  A unique feature of this cathedral is the St Andrews Cross Arches.  They look really modern, but were created in 1338.  A story about this cathedral took place during the English Civil War.  Sir Walter Raleigh’s nephew, also called Walter Raleigh, was the Dean of the Cathedral at the time.  He was under house arrest in the deanery when he refused to surrender to his jailer a letter he was writing to his wife.  Really ticked off, the jailer ran him through with a sword.  He died six weeks later and was buried in an unmarked grave in front of the Dean’s stall.  So all subsequent Deans have trod over his grave when going to their seat in the quire.

As we continued on to Plymouth, we went by Glastonbury Abbey and Glastonbury Tor (which were part of the King Arthur legends and which I later visited), plus made a short stop at Buckfast Abbey.  The abbey was built over 30 years by six monks who began in 1907.  The abbey that had been there before had been destroyed by Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16^th century.  The new abbey was quite an accomplishment for just six monks in any age.

When we got to Plymouth, we found that our hotel was on the edge of the Hoe.  This suspiciously named location is simply a public park that overlooks the sea.  Back in 1588, when Sir Francis Drake was mayor of Plymouth (he had been so since 1581, though I have to admit that I find it difficult to believe that he would settle in one place for that long), the legend is that he and his men were playing a game of bowls on the Hoe when he was informed of the arrival of the Spanish Armada.  He reportedly said something to the effect of, “there is plenty of time to finish our game and still defeat the Spaniards”.  This delay allowed the wind and tide to change in his favor.  Sounds like he was being smart instead of being a braggart.

Plymouth also saw the arrival of Pocahontas in 1616 and the departure of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620.  The steps they now show to tourists as the Mayflower Steps weren’t in existence at the time.  The edge of the port was further into the town.  One of the most likely candidates for the actual steps lies between a couple of buildings and ascends from a street.  Not the most glamorous of locations.  The official steps still descend to the water and have a little monument above with Doric columns and such.  I took a photo of the steps that were thought to be the real ones.

We stayed in Plymouth for a few nights and used it as our base to explore the area.  We visited Mevagissey and Fowey in Cornwall.  Fowey was where Daphne du Maurier lived.  She was the novelist who wrote Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn (among many others) and the short story “The Birds”.

We also went to Marazion, from which we could see St Michael’s Mount (a miniature version of Mont St Michel in France).  I was very disappointed that we couldn’t visit St Michael’s Mount.  At that point I had not yet been to Mont St Michel either.  Both places fascinated me — remote fortresses out on the pinnacle of an island which could be reached on foot only during low tide.  Both were originally abbeys that were dedicated to the archangel Michael.  St Michael’s Mount became property of the king of England during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1500s.  It was granted to the Earl of Salisbury and then sold to the St Aubyn family in the 1600s.  So the building now is a private home.  The island (pre-abbey/castle) is the legendary home of the giant in “Jack the Giant Killer”.

Penzence was another trip out from Plymouth.  When Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzence” was written, placing pirates in Penzence was considered to be a joke as Penzence was a very peaceful resort town that had never had any pirates.  It was a lovely setting, as much as I could see of it.  Cornwall had very heavy fog that day, which made it impossible to see much beyond the shore.  Land’s End, our lunch stop that day, was completely engulfed in fog.  Land’s End is the southern-most tip of Great Britain and normally has great views of the surrounding sea.

The following day we set off for Dartmoor, where we were still plagued by heavy fog.  It did bring the right atmosphere for imagining The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for the novel was a story about a man in the 17^th century who was supposed to have been a “monstrously evil man” and sold his soul to the devil.  When he died, a pack of phantom dogs came and howled at his tomb.  Subsequent nights he often was seen leading the baying pack across the moors.

We didn’t see Baskerville Hall (or any of the supposed candidates for the setting), but in that fog, we couldn’t see much of anything.  I’d like to return to Dartmoor sometime on a clearer day.  I would have to say it was quite atmospheric, however.  This time I am using “atmospheric” to mean “spooky”.  Dartmoor is full of tors (hills topped with outcrops of bedrock, which in this case was granite), rivers, and bogs.  So, in places where the fog was a somewhat wispy, the place still appeared very foreboding.  Then there was the prison.  Dartmoor Prison was built in 1809 to hold French and American prisoners of war.  It became a criminal prison in 1850 and still is.  As we went by the prison, all we could see was the main gate.  I had to leave it to my imagination as to what the actual prison looked like.

Enroute to London, we made a lunch stop at Exeter Cathedral.  It had been founded in 1050 and the present building was completed around 1400.  Since it doesn’t have a tower in the middle like a lot of cathedrals, it has the longest uninterrupted medieval vaulted ceiling in the world.  This is the point in a tour when you sometimes hit what the British tour directors call the ABCs — “not Another Bloody Cathedral (or castle)” when the tour group has become complacent regarding all of the cathedrals and/or castles they have visited and don’t even care about viewing another.  I will admit to having that happen to me with cathedrals, especially if they have all been pretty similar.  But I’ve never met a castle I didn’t like, plus they have pretty much all been different.  I even took one tour (which I will write about in the future) that was almost entirely of castles — multiple castles in a day.

Our last stop before London was Shaftesbury.  This was the site of the former Shaftesbury Abbey, which was founded in 888 by King Alfred the Great and destroyed in 1539 by King Henry VIII.  The old center of town is situated on a high promontory overlooking the Blackmore Vale.

This was Hardy country.  The novelist Thomas Hardy set several of his novels in the area.  There was a jumble sale (similar to a garage sale or flea market) going on in the City Hall.  I ended up getting a couple of old figurines that were small enough to pack in my carryon.

The main thing that I did was to have a chat with a woman who had a couple of Miniature Schnauzers there with her and I had been away from mine for about three weeks at that point.  One of her dogs had a lot to say (not barking, but other sounds that Schnauzers sometimes make as their form of talking).  Mine was also a pretty talkative dog, so I was entertained by watching dog and human converse.  Before leaving town, we had a cream tea at King Alfred’s Kitchen, which was in a 13^th century building with very low ceilings (a tall man in our group came close to beaning himself) just a short walk down the street from City Hall.  When we got back to London, we headed for home the next day.

Next time we begin an 18-day trip to Italy.

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” — William Shakespeare

I became a teenager at the age of nine.  This was because I had a next door neighbor named Susie, who was thirteen.  Despite our age difference, she took me under her wing and taught me about what was and wasn’t good in music.  One group in the great category was The Beatles.  I had to agree with her and continue to agree with her on that one.  This was a girl with taste.

So, at the age of … well … uh … let’s just say adulthood, I joined the leader of a Beatles walking tour at the Marylebone Train Station in London at 11:20am on a Saturday in 1997 for what I thought was supposed to be a two hour tour.  It ended up being a three hour journey through central London and St John’s Wood.

Some of the opening scenes of “A Hard Day’s Night” had been filmed at the Marylebone Train Station, including the phone boxes.  We then moved to various other locations, such as the flat where the “Two Virgins” photo was taken, the registry office where Paul & Linda and George & Patti were married, the EMI offices building (empty, but still recognizable), the former Apple clothing shop, the restaurant from “Help”, and Jane Asher’s father’s home (where Jane & Paul had lived for three years).  Then we hopped on the Tube at Baker Street and went out to St John’s Wood.  This was the location of both Abbey Road Studios and the famous crosswalk where the album cover was photographed.

Since this was a real street with real traffic on it, trying to recreate the photo was at one’s own peril.  I just took a quick photo of the crosswalk when no traffic was coming and felt good about that.  Others were really struggling trying to get a photo of themselves in the crosswalk without getting killed doing it.

Thoroughly satisfied by this guided walk, I hopped back on the Tube and took it to the Embankment.  Problem was, I was too dumb to realize that, once I had left central London, additional charges were added to the fare.  So it was a different price to go back to Embankment from St John’s Wood than to go from Baker’s Street to St John’s Wood.  When I got to Embankment, I couldn’t get out of the station.  My ticket was wrong.  So I went to the window for help.  They didn’t count my being foreign and not understanding how it worked as an excuse, and charged me £10 for not having the right fare.  That was the most expensive Underground or Subway ride I’ve ever had.

Back in 1970, an American actor named Sam Wanamaker began a quest to have a replica of the Globe Theatre built as the original had been built and as close to where the original had been as possible.  The original had been built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and demolished in 1644 by Cromwell’s people who believed theatre to be the work of the devil.  But then, there are always narrow-minded people around in just about any age.  It took until 1997 before the new theatre was completed and opened to the public with a production of “Henry V”.  The roof is the only thatched roof permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666.  As with the original, the center of the theatre is open to the sky, so they only perform plays in the summer.

The first Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, as they call it, was Mark Rylance.  He’s the fella who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the movie “Bridge of Spies”.  My mom and I had the privilege of meeting him when he brought the troupe from Shakespeare’s Globe to the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis with a production of “Twelfth Night”.  We were able to have a very nice conversation with him.  I’ve seen him in two more plays — “Peer Gynt” and “Nice Fish” — and have watched the rest of his career with great interest after that.  He is one very talented actor.

The theatre was not quite yet completed when we visited it and took a tour.  They were using the same building methods as back in the 1500s.  The part that wasn’t finished was where the stage was located.  I took several photos of the construction.  There was a small group of about a dozen people touring the theatre in addition to us, but there were just five in our group.  I really enjoy smaller groups when touring something because the tour becomes more of a conversation and less of a lecture.  In larger groups it can be difficult to get a question in edgewise, especially if you have one or two people determined to monopolize the guide (usually to ask questions about the same information they have already given us — sorry, my curmudgeonly side is showing).  After our tour, we had lunch at the Anchor Pub.  There has been a pub on the site for 800 years, although the version that Shakespeare himself would have frequented was gutted during the Great Fire of 1666.

The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 and was moved to its present location in St George’s Fields in Southwark in 1936.  The building had been the Bethlem Royal Hospital, aka Bedlam.  I thought that was pretty fitting.  Some of the greatest insanity that exists on earth is often the cause of wars.

Bethlem Royal Hospital had been founded in 1247 and shifted its location several times through the centuries.  At first, it was a regular hospital.  But once it began receiving the insane in 1377, it continued to receive more and more until it was exclusively a psychiatric hospital by 1460.  This was when it became known as Bedlam (a corruption of Bethlem, which is in turn a corruption of Bethlehem).  The building now housing the Imperial War Museum was its location in the 19^th century.

The exhibits are quite interesting, including tanks, artillery, and a great collection of planes.  They have the remains of the Messerschmitt that Rudolph Hess flew from German to Scotland during World War II.  He was the Deputy Fuhrer and supposedly wanted to negotiate a peace contract.  He was arrested instead.  He was tried at Nuremburg after the war and given a life sentence.

The museum also houses a few artifacts from the Lusitania, which was a ship that was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I, killing over a thousand civilian passengers.  There is a trench experience from World War I where you can get an idea of what it might have been like in the trenches.  They also have a Blitz experience from World War II where everyone is seated in a bomb shelter while sirens sound and you can hear the bombs going off overheard.  Then you leave the bomb shelter and see the destruction all around.  That one was quite effective.

When we left the museum and headed to Westminster Bridge, we unexpectantly passed the home of William Bligh, the commander of the Bounty at the time of its mutiny in 1789.  The next day we left for a tour of Devon and Cornwall.

Near the town of Maidstone in Kent, sits a beautiful castle on an island in a lake.  This is Leeds Castle.  There has been a castle on this site since about 1119.  But the current castle, although it looks old (it was built in the Tudor style) mainly dates to the 19^th century.

A lot can happen to a castle over the years.  Some are destroyed by fire.  Some are bombarded by cannons.  Some simply disintegrate from neglect.  None of these things happened to Leeds Castle.  But it was constantly being rebuilt and remodeled by various owners.  Fortunately they all were quite wealthy and could afford to lavish their attention on the castle.  So the results are spectacular.

King Edward I (that major castle builder in Wales) acquired the castle in the 13^th century.  It became a favorite of his and his wife, Eleanor of Castile.  Windsor, the Tower of London, and Leeds were their three main castles in the south of England.  Back in the day, kings kept moving from one castle to another around the country to keep themselves constantly in front of their subjects.  They had to do it to keep control over their kingdom.  If, like the early kings after William the Conqueror, they also had territories in France, they were back and forth between France and England like yo-yos.  As much as I love to travel, I don’t think that sounds like a lot of fun.  Always moving.  Always looking over their shoulder.  Never able to just stay put, relax, have fun.

They had retinues of hundreds of people they had to house and feed (and pay) who traveled with them, including hoards of knights, musicians, ladies in waiting, servants, and any Dukes, Earls or other people they wanted to keep their eye on.  I suppose that’s one reason why Shakespeare had Henry IV say “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”.  Of course, Henry had taken the crown from Richard II and had him murdered, so he was well aware of how dangerous the throne could be.  That still didn’t stop him from taking it from his cousin, though.

When Henry VIII came along, he used Leeds Castle for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.  That’s the era that the castle mainly evokes now, but with modern plumping and electricity.  There is also a swimming pool.

In the gatehouse at the time we visited in 1997, was a museum dedicated to dog collars.  The castle’s shop also had pottery figures of dogs what were very well done.  We ended up getting two of them.  The one I have is still the nicest dog figure I own.

From Leeds Castle, we went to Canterbury to have lunch and visit the Cathedral.  My watch had decided to die.  Not just the battery, but the whole thing fell apart.  So we needed to purchase a new one for me between lunch and the Cathedral visit.  As it happened, there was a shop across the street from the café where we had lunch.  I still have the watch.  It has lasted much longer than the one it replaced.

Canterbury Cathedral was originally founded in 597.  After a fire in 1067, it was rebuilt from 1070 to 1077.  The Cathedral was very important and the Archbishop of Canterbury was the most important ecclesiastical position in England.  King Henry II appointed Thomas Beckett to the position, believing that his old friend would just rubber stamp whatever the king wanted.  No such luck.  Beckett had his own mind and conscience and did what he thought was right whether the king agreed or not.  This made the king very frustrated.  At one point he said something to the effect of “who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Well, about four of his knights took him quite literally and murdered Beckett there in the cathedral.

Now you would think that Henry II would have learned to curb his tongue after that.  But no.  He was constantly stirring up the pot with all of this sons — Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John — plus his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (who he kept imprisoned for much of their married life).  Every last one of them ended up at war with him at one time or another and constantly plotting against him (and one another).

After Beckett’s death, Canterbury became a place of pilgrimage for people who wanted to honor the slain archbishop.  He was interred in the cathedral and a shrine was built directly over the tomb.  When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and destroyed shrines after splitting with the Catholic Church when he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, Beckett’s shrine was removed.  This was in 1538.  Henry VIII also summoned the long dead (murdered in 1170) archbishop to court to face charges of treason.  When he didn’t show up, Henry declared him guilty by default.  I don’t know.  I think it would have been cool if the nearly four hundred years dead ghost of Beckett had shown up.  But I don’t think that was quite Beckett’s style and I’m sure he had better things to do.

Also at Canterbury Cathedral is the tomb of the Black Prince, which was what Edward III’s eldest son (also named Edward) was called.  He was next in line for the throne, but he died about a year before his father of some sort of illness.  His son, Richard, took the throne at the age of nine and became King Richard II.

The Black Prince’s tomb is pretty cool.  There is an effigy of him in full armor (in black) and his other accoutrements are hanging above the tomb.  Actually the ones above the tomb are reproductions as the originals are much too delicate and are displayed in a glass case on the wall.  He died in 1376.  As I’ve mentioned before, several of my ancestors have been knights, in service to various kings and other royalty.  One of those knights served the Black Prince and was killed at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.  Although a strong victory for the English forces, it didn’t do my ancestor much good.  Nevertheless, I gave the Black Prince’s effigy a little pat.

Our last stop of the day was Dover Castle, which was founded in the 11^th century.  During the Napoleonic Wars, a complex of barracks tunnels was created beneath the castle.  Then, during World War II, these tunnels were converted into an air-raid shelter and then a military command center plus a hospital.  There are roughly three miles of tunnels in the chalky cliffs.

Despite the song saying, “I’m looking over the White Cliffs of Dover,” I was not interested in walking over to the edge and taking a look.  Not a fan of heights.  Later, when we went into the town below, I was just fine with looking up at them.  Very impressive and quite beautiful.

We headed back to London to spend a few more days there exploring until we set off on another multi-day adventure to Devon and Cornwall.  Next up — The Beatles, the Bard & Bedlam.

On the day of the “Legal Inns of Court” walking tour, we were to meet up with our female guide at the Holborn Tube (Underground) Station.  Instead we found a large man with a booming voice.  Replacing our guide (who was ill) was a retired City of London police officer named Donald Rumbelow.  He was considered at that time to be one of the best Ripperologists (an expert on Jack the Ripper) around.  He had written a very thoroughly researched and knowledgeable book on the subject, which I had read.  I was planning on taking his Saturday night “Jack the Ripper” walking tour later that week.

We had a relatively small group for the “Legal Inns of Court” tour, so we were able to ask plenty of questions.  He was very conversant about everything he was showing us and quite personable as well.  Mom and I were glad we had him for the tour.  He also charmingly told my Mom that he would look out for me on the Jack the Ripper tour as she didn’t plan to go.

Our first stop was Gray’s Inn.  Anyone who wants to be a barrister in England or Wales must belong to an inn of court.  There are four — Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, and the Middle Temple.  Gray’s Inn dates back at least as far as 1370 and includes Sir Francis Bacon, William Cecil, and Thomas Cromwell among some of its prominent members.  At one point, it was the largest by membership (when Queen Elizabeth I was its patron).  But, after the English Civil War, during which the entire process of being educated as a lawyer and being “called to the bar” was suspended, became the smallest.  Shakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors was first performed there at the Inn’s hall.

To study law, one could attend Oxford or Cambridge or one of the Inns of Chancery.  The only surviving example of the latter is Staple Inn which dates from 1585.  Each Inn of Chancery was tied to a specific Inn of Court.  The students here would go on to Gray’s Inn to actually practice law.  The side of the main building that faces the street is half-timbered, while the side that faces the courtyard is brick.  Some solicitors have offices here.

The difference between a solicitor and a barrister is that the solicitor is the lawyer who handles legal matters outside of a courtroom, while the barrister is the lawyer who argues the case before the court.  Normally a person would hire a solicitor.  Then, if a barrister is needed, the solicitor will refer the case to the barrister.  There is a really good, on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller with both barristers and solicitors called “The Escape Artist”.  It has been broadcast on PBS in the States.

Next we paid a visit to Lincoln’s Inn.  This is the largest by physical size.  It is thought to date back to 1310.  John Donne, William Gladstone, Sir Thomas More, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair were all members of Lincoln’s Inn.

For many, many years there was a tradition that unwanted babies could be left in the undercroft of the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn — no questions asked.  These children were all given the last name of Lincoln and placed in orphanages until they could be adopted or came of age.  Many families in the USA who think they might be descended from Abraham Lincoln might actually be descended from a baby abandoned at Lincoln’s Inn.  I have the name “Lincoln” in my family too and have found no connection to Abraham Lincoln.

The Inner and Middle Temples were next.  Until their abolishment in 1312, the Temple area belonged to the Knights Templar.  Both the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple became Inns of Court in roughly 1388.

The Inner Temple contains the Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar in 1185 and contains the effigies of some of the knights and the bodies of several more.  I have several knights in my family ancestry and some joined the Templars later in their lives (after having been married and fathered children).  I am aware of three that were buried at Temple Church.  The Inner Temple Gateway that leads from Fleet Street to the church has been there since the Templars built it, but was rebuilt in the 1600s and again in the 1700s.

The garden in the Inner Temple was where William Shakespeare set the start of the War of the Roses when the House of Lancaster selected a red rose and the House of York selected a white rose.  I wonder if that really happened or if he was just using poetic license.  I think it was the latter, but it is more romantic to think it might have really happened that way.  Whatever way it actually happened, they did have those roses as their symbols.

The first production of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night was performed in Middle Temple Hall in 1602.  Sir Francis Drake was also feted there after defeating the Spanish Armada.  The hall survived the Great Fire of 1666 as well as the London Blitz so remains unchanged from when it was built

The last stop on the tour was the Royal Courts of Justice building.  The criminal cases are tried in the Old Bailey.  The Royal Courts of Justice contains the High Court and the Courts of Appeal for England and Wales.  The public can view cases there.  So Mom and I did just that for the fun of seeing everybody in their robes and wigs.

After touring all of this legal real estate, we decided to join “The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes” walking tour the next day.  While it covered Covent Garden, the Lyceum Theatre, Maiden Lane, the Opera House, and the Sherlock Holmes pub (on Northumberland), it disappointingly did not include the Criterion (where Holmes and Watson met), 221B Baker Street (the Sherlock Holmes Museum), the Charing Cross Hotel or Old Scotland Yard.  The guide still managed to tell many of the tales of what happened where, so it was an entertaining, though not thorough, tour.

Since Mom wasn’t up to running around Whitechapel in the dark, I went off to Tower Hill Tube Station to join the Jack the Ripper walking tour alone.  Our guide, despite having a very large number of people on the tour, remembered me from a couple days earlier, kept his promise to my mom, and took me under his wing.  I stuck to him like glue.  I wanted to make certain that I didn’t miss a thing.

A couple of the murder locations, such as Hanbury Street (Annie Chapman) and Mitre Square (Catherine Eddowes) hadn’t changed at all since 1888.  Two others, Berner Street (Elizabeth Stride) and Buck’s Row (Mary Ann Nichols), had changed their street names, but still looked quite spooky in the dark of the night.  The one location where I really had to use my imagination was the last murder (Mary Jane Kelly).  The street (Dorset Street) and the cluster of buildings (Miller’s Court) no longer existed.

In Goulston Street, which was where a piece of a bloody apron was found with some graffiti written on the wall above, some of the neighbors apparently weren’t too happy about the tour as they opened their windows and blasted loud music out of them.  Rumbelow’s booming voice could still be heard, however, and he finished with what he wanted to show us there before moving on.

In addition to the murder sites and Goulston Street (which also hadn’t changed much), we were taken to a building that had been a doss house at the time.  A doss house was a pay-as-you-go rooming house.  This doss house was near both Miller’s Court and the Ten Bells pub.  The pub has been associated with two of the victims (Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly).  It has also been thought that perhaps the Ripper himself had a few drinks there.  Across the street is Christ Church Spitalfields, which is a very large, very nice church.

At the end of the tour (after visiting the Ten Bells), we all trooped down Commercial Street to where it intersected with Whitechapel Road to take the Tube back to wherever we came from initially, which in my case was the Embankment Tube Station.

Back in 1888, when those murders took place, there wasn’t much opportunity for a woman with no education or skills to be able to support herself.  Women were expected to be married or be supported by a relative.  But some women were abandoned by their husbands and/or abused by their husbands.  Or maybe their husband died.  There were also women who became addicted to alcohol or drugs.  For some of them, the only way to survive was prostitution.  For that way of life, many of them lost their lives — not just the victims of Jack the Ripper.