Saturday, January 31, 2015

Miriam Angel falls down the Rabbit Hole



I fell completely down the Rabbit Hole this week.  
Welcome to Wonderland.  
If you see Alice, give her my best.

Instead of working with my image of Mary Jane Kelly 
(I have been tinkering with it for weeks - 
decided it was best to let it simmer for a while), 
I found that my mind kept coming
 back to Miriam Angel.

I went back to the internet and poked around 
a little more.  I found an in depth article 
from 1887 about the trial which went into more 
of the specifics and particulars of the case.  
I did learn that Miriam Angel was indeed married 
and she was killed in the morning after her husband 
left for work, but that is about all we 
learn about Miriam herself.

The article does a nice job of covering the trial, 
so if  you are interested, just click HERE.

There are several discrepancies between this article 
and some of the other sources that I have found.  
The names of Israel Lipski's employees are 
slightly different in this article and he is 
referred to as a maker of walking sticks 
whereas, elsewhere, he has been called 
an umbrella salesman.

Since Lipski claimed that his two employees were 
really the perpetrators of the horrific crime, 
I would be interested to know what paths 
their lives followed after Lipski was executed. 
 If they were the thieves and rapists that Lipski 
claimed, I would expect that they would 
commit further crimes, but I haven't seen any 
references to this anywhere on the internet.

Of course, it has been 125 years.

Still, I always come back to the nitric acid.  
Why did Lipski buy it?  At different times, 
he said he intended to use it to stain wood.  
Later he said that he intended to drink it 
to take his own life.  It was the method used 
to kill Miriam Angel.  Lipski never satisfactorily 
explains why his two employees would 
have possession of the acid instead.

I keep coming back to that little bottle which brings 
my mind instantly to Alice and Wonderland.  
Add in the questionable umbrellas and there is only one
 direction to go - straight down the rabbit hole!

I had a strange compulsion to make this piece. 
 It felt a little insensitive to the memory of 
Miriam Angel and her child, but it has been 
125 years.  Sorry, Miriam!

Two pieces in and I still cannot get the case out of my head.  

Be warned that more Miriam Angel is to follow.


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