Our society is built around Decency. I pass through our city’s streets each day and see the majority of my fellow English people regardless of their stature within our great society acting with proberty and good will towards others. Yes, there are many poor who struggle to make ends meet but the charity of our churches will help most while others will be supported by the workhouse.
This is our city at daytime but the night reveals the limits of the Decency that our society has driven. I follow city fathers through the cloistered alleyways of London. These are the paragons of society who I would hope to be out seeking to uphold the decency of society in the gaslight hours. Instead I see theft, the deliberate reposession of property from the poor, evictions and the intentional misuse of poor people by those who should know better.
Worst of all, in our great Christian city I find that there are ladies of ill virtue parading the streets in full view of the Constables that are supposed to uphold the dignity of our society within its laws. I see them providing their services to gentlemen of parliament and to gentlemen of the cloth. This flies in the face of all that the Christian church has taught me is Decent. If I can’t trust the law, the church or Parliament to maintain Decency then I must do it myself for the good of our society.
Tonight I removed one of the blemishes on our city permanently – a professional lady ( I use the term loosely) – and in a manner that I hope will discourage her kind. I will move to eradicate the temptations until the Law does its job to remove these evil people from the street and restore Decency to our community…
I will continue to deal with this issue as long as I am able… Jack
Images from Finchley 
with a photo slide show:
the streets of London
by Ralph McTell
Fritz – I love Ralph McTell so a big thanks for the link:-) Not sure how his songs would have changed if he lived in Victorian London. Probably one of the most underated British musicians. ps – this is one of the most regularly copied songs by choirs. I suspect there around 50 versions out there. And most of the people listening to the choir version don’t actually know who it is by. More exposure for Ralph McTell please 🙂
I’m a huge McTell fan too….thanks for the posting…
hi Martin,
you inspired me to post an article about LONDON:
http://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/london/
I hope you’ll like it …
What a coincidence, A week ago I was going through all my old songs etc and found this ‘Streets of London’ so i started practicing it again.. like Ralph Mctell a lot.. and your post to match. Or I should say I enjoyed your post and Ralph Mctell to match…;)
I’d go with Ralph McTell every time… No evidence suggests that Jack could play the guitar! Thanks for popping through Gerry
Like 😉
Decency: such an undervalued quality in these times. Newsagents and billboards hover on its edge, and I struggle to explain what my children see. Our moral compass is a little out of whack, I think.
I would agree with you Kate. I was looking for a D for FrizzText’s challenge and Diesel would have been just a little too easy. A journey through various options somehow got me thinking of long dead criminals and Jack the Ripper – it’s funny how thought processes sometimes result in us going off at a tangent. So I wound up with this fictional view of what may have driven Jack to do what he did. Somehow it has connected with the present too!
Martin, I can almost hear Jeffrey Archer writing this! Plus ca change . . .
As for Ralph McTell and his sublime “Streets of London” – goosebumps!
Hi Patti – I like to catch my audience on the hop sometimes… 😉 Normal service will be resumed very soon as the Footie season is already upon us!
Very interesting post. I’m used to seeing posts from you about football and transportation (especially buses) with fantastic pictures. This departure from the norm is very thought provoking. Interesting message.
Hi faceinacrowd – thanks for popping in. I’m not sure I intended it as a message, just a piece of fiction to fit the challenge. But it seems to have struck a chord!
So appropriate to our times too, nothing changes, or does it? With arrests of newspaper people involved in indecency perhaps we are becoming more intolerant of such behaviour …. and Streets of London is one of our old favourites too, a wonderful clip thanks to frizz! Thought provoking post 🙂
Hi Christine, I didn’t consciously link it to our modern world when writing. I guess the issues of Victorian London are still with us even with Halogen Lighting!
What a departure from soccer and trains, buses, and cabs! I breathed a sigh of relief that it’s signed “jack” . . . and not “Martin.” 😉
Hi Nancy – I especially tagged it as fiction because there is a lot of pressure on our Police to up their ‘case solved’ stats and you never know! 😉
Whoa! You caught me good and proper —
And of all the suggestions for the motives of JTR, this (which I’ve never seen before) is one of the most plausible —
Well done.
Thanks Judith 🙂 I don’t think we’ll ever know what his motives were – in fact we know so little about him that I would venture to say that we can’t even be certain that ‘Jack’ was a man! The vast majority of theories suggest a sexual motive – almost certainly because that sells newspapers. I thought I’d try something different 🙂
chilling words does anyone have the right to take a life so cruel as this even if they are a lady of the night my little ozzy the nipper is getting bigger so will protect me from this evil world have fun xxjen
Thought I’d take a little walk on the darkside for a change Jen 😉 Look after yourself 🙂