If heritage advocates don?t scream too loudly over the Queens Ave. building targeted by Shmuel Farhi?s wrecking ball, there?s likely a very good ? or, at least, very grisly ? reason.
City politicians will likely decide in November whether to let the real estate magnate raze the building at 199 Queens, near Richmond St., to build what he pledges will be a $50-million mixed-use tower.
Council?s heritage advisers have OK?d Farhi?s plan ? and one of London?s most passionate history buffs has no doubt there will be little fight to stop the demolition on heritage grounds.
Why?
Because a push to underscore the historic value would no doubt focus on its single most significant event: it was where officials in 1879 found the body of Kate Gardner, believed to have been the first victim of a budding serial killer some consider a Jack The Ripper suspect.
?It would be the height of poor taste? to promote that, said heritage activist Joe O?Neil. ?If . . . My Sister?s Place or something like that wanted to move in and name the house after Kate Gardner that would be different, but to just say this should be a heritage house because of a murder would be offensive.??
Gardner, a pregnant, 21-year-old Tecumseh House Hotel worker, was found dead behind the house at 199 Queens on May 3, 1879. Also backing onto that spot was the Dundas St. office of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, an abortionist.
Though a London jury found Gardner died ?from the effects of chloroform,? they did not name a suspect. But many in London eyed Cream ? who skipped town for Chicago, where he committed at least one murder and was jailed in 1881.
The Ripper-Cream link (which O?Neil and many serious historians doubt) hinges on when the deadly doctor was released from jail. Official records say it was 1891, three years after the never-found Ripper stalked London, England?s Whitechapel area and killed five prostitutes.
Some wonder, though, if he got out earlier and was back in England in 1888 for the infamous killing spree many believe must have been committed by a doctor.
This much is certain: Cream was back in England in 1891 and 1892 and was convicted and hanged for killing four prostitutes. (He claimed ?I am Jack . . .? just as he was hanged.)
Angus McLaren, a University of Victoria professor who wrote about Cream?s England crimes, doubts he was the Ripper. But in a 2004 interview he told The Free Press: ?There was probably a copycat aspect to (Cream?s) killings in the sense that the notion of killing prostitutes must have been very much in the air? post-Ripper.
Back here in London, O?Neil says he could see no heritage advocate using the Gardner death to help preserve Farhi?s building at 199 Queens.
?I don?t know anyone in the past who has used an infamous murder to justify (saving) any sort of historic site.?
Farhi has pledged to build a $50-million structure that would include ground-floor commercial space, several stories of residential units and many levels of what he calls much-needed parking.
patrick.maloney@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/patatLFPress
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Source: http://www.lfpress.com/2012/09/27/heritage-designation-at-199-queens
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