Israel Lipski

I am grateful to Jeff Bloomfield of London for the additional details which appear in this item.

On 28 June 1887 Miriam Angel was found dead at 16 Batty Street, off Commercial Road. Someone had poured nitric acid down her throat and Dr Hildreth Kay (born in Mile End Old Town) who had a surgery on the corner of Batty St and Commercial Rd was called to the scene.

Both she and her husband, Isaac, a boot riveter, who was also living in the house, had come from Warsaw 10 months before.

Israel Lipski (born Poland) was a lodger in the same house and he was charged with her murder having been found under the bed where she had died.

Although Lipski was found under the bed, and unconscious from apparently taking poison - there was (and still remains) considerable doubt about his guilt in the murder of Mrs. Angel.  He claimed three men forced him to swallow the poison, and he had nothing to do with the murder.  This line of investigation was not well handled by the police (after all, they had a suspect on the site of the crime).  However, it was taken up by William T. Stead, the crusading journalist, in his newspaper The Pall Mall Gazette.

Stead's act was not altruistic.  He was an egotist, and he was trying to flex the muscles of the rather sedate journalism of 19th Century England.  He had done a series on white slavery in London, a few years earlier: "The Maiden Tribute of Babylon".  It culminated in his going to prison for a few months for purchasing an underage girl from her mother - supposedly for sexual reasons.  Stead always treated his imprisonment as a badge of honor and martyrdom.  The campaign did lead to some new legislation against child white slavery.  This spurred Stead on to tackle the divorce laws, and to help a woman, Mrs. Langworthy, who was victimized by her husband behind antiquated laws.  Again Stead had great success. And the circulation of the Gazette rose as well.  Lipski gave Stead a chance to expand "trial by newspaper" against the ultimate in the criminal law.  In reality, despite going to the mat for Lipski, Stead did not like or trust Jews.

He did have his affect.  The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, and the trial judge, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, did review the evidence and consider the new evidence Stead had found against the men Lipski suspected.  As they approached possibly recommending a reduction of the death sentence to life imprisonment, they were told that Lipski had suddenly confessed.

He had made a confession, but it left as many questions as it supposedly answered. Also, it seems to have been pressured on him by a busybody Rabbi, who wanted Israel to confess so that the growing anti-Semitic outbursts in  London would die down.  So, in retrospect, the confession's value seems to be worthless, but it was enough for Matthews and Stephen to drop further efforts to reduce the sentence.

As a result of it, Lipski was hanged in 1887 and soon Lipski's name came to be used as an insulting word.

The best account of the Lipski case is Martin Friedland's THE TRIALS OF ISRAEL LIPSKI.