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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through March 10, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Catherine Eddowes:
The Goulston Street Graffito:
Archive through March 10, 2001
Author: John Omlor
Wednesday, 07 March 2001 - 03:54 pm |        | Hi again, everyone,
Perhaps I was asking more than I knew.
All I was really wondering was how many recorded versions of the graffito are there? I know there are several variations in the spelling of "Jews" and I know the word "not" moves around. And I have seen on these boards speculation that the writing may be read, following the lines of the letters or the arrangement of the words on the bricks, as saying something completely different -- and of course we are always at the mercy of the clerk's hand in transcribing deposition and Inquest testimony. So I was just curious as to how many versions of the sentence are currently up for consideration.
Do we, say, have less than five possible variations of what appeared on that wall?
I ask this out of genuine ignorance.
--John |
Author: Jade Bakys
Wednesday, 07 March 2001 - 04:06 pm | | Hi John
I think there are just two, with the word 'not' in different place like you said. In the program last night what I found strange was when they showed the writing on the wall, it read: 'The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing', however when the commentator read it out he said it the way I think it is supposed to be read: 'The Juwes are the men that will not will be blamed for nothing. I think Jon identified four or five ways of the Jews spelling. I think two versions of the whole sentence though, but there could be more, I have only come across two.
Hope this helps |
Author: John Omlor
Wednesday, 07 March 2001 - 04:44 pm | | Thanks Jade,
I think this might have been the repeat (on Discovery Channel in the US) of the show we were discussing on the "ATTENTION: Jack The Ripper On History Channel Tonight!!!!!" board earlier this week (the one that ridiculously blurred out Catherine Eddowe's breasts on her re-stitched up mortuary photo, even after showing gruesome, lingering, detailed close-ups of the Kelly crime scene photo...). And I think I *do* recall that the announcer doing the voice over read the words one way and the dramatic-recreation they put on the screen (with the words scrawled largely across a much-too-big slab of wall in two lines of announcement) actually read the *other* way. What a wonderfully perfect, if unintentional, little performance of the problem!
For anyone interested: suppose for a moment that the graffito had nothing whatsoever to do with the murders or the apron piece or Jack. Given the two possible constructions of the sentences, just what might the graffito have meant? What would a chalk scribbler have been trying to shout to his public in that little space on that wall? Given Martin's observations about the state of literacy and the number of people living there for whom English was already a second and even third language, what was our author, even if he or she was just a vandal, trying to say? I'm not sure that the possible answers to this question are as clear as they first might appear. But, then again, I'm not at all sure what the sentence means, in any case.
Curse our grammar.
--John |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Wednesday, 07 March 2001 - 10:50 pm | | I do hope that Jade will grace the boards again
with her contributions to our investigations here.
Now, I wanted to thank Martin and Tom for trying
to at least consider the question I opened up.
Let me explain this a little more in detail.
I wrote a two page essay in a volume called WHO WAS JACK THE RIPPER? that was published in 1996 by Grayhound Books. I did not suggest any
candidate for the identity of Jack the Ripper,
but wrote about the Goulston Street graffiti, and
tried to discuss it's possible origins. There was
(as far as I knew) only one instance of a similar
type of clue in a murder case - but it was fictional, not fact. In December 1887, Beeton's
Christmas Annual published the first Sherlock
Holmes' story (A STUDY IN SCARLET). Conan Doyle's
story has a murder of one Enoch Drebber, and the
body is found near a wall with the letters "RACHE"
on it. There is a debate between Inspector Lestrade and Holmes, whether the letters spelled
"RACHEL" or the German word for "revenge" (of course Holmes is correct).
Now, I discovered, in a book by a man named
Arthur Lambton (ECHOS OF CAUSE CELEBRES) that
Conan Doyle admitted that the RACHE/RACHEL clue
was based on an 1882 case. In 1882 a policeman
named Cole was killed in Dalton, England, when
tangling with a burglar. A chisel with the letters "R" "O" "C" "K" was found nearby. Eventually, closer examination of the chisel
showed the letters "O" "R" "R" "O" "C" "K" were
on it, and those were the name of the killer who
owned the chisel, Thomas Henry Orrock. Conan
Doyle reversed the clue: instead of a word
masking part of a name, Lestrade thinks the
writing on the wall of "R" "A" "C" "H" "E" masks
an incompleted name, "R" "A" "C" "H" "E" "L".
[By the way, Conan Doyle loved this clue trick.
In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" in THE ADVENTURES
OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, the letters "a" "r" "a" "t"
turns out to be not for "a rat", but part of
"Ballarat" in Australia.]
I can't claim to have total knowledge of all the
cases of murder ever committed, but from my
knowledge of criminal history I recall that there
was only one case prior to 1888 (a real case)
where a writing was found. In 1845 a Mr. De La
Rue was found murdered in Hampstead Heath. Next
to his body was found a letter, from a woman,
warning De La Rue her brother was threatening to
be revenged on him for ruining her. However,
the police eventually discovered that De La Rue
was murdered by a friend of his named Thomas
Henry Hocker, who robbed him. Hocker left the
letter near the body to confuse the police, and
make them look for a non-existant brother and
sister. Hocker was executed.
I concluded that, given that the novel was published some nine months before the Goulston
Street Grafitti appeared, which had that peculiar
double term of "Jews" or "Jeuwes" or "Juwes" in
it (like "Rache/Rachel"), the Ripper probably
was aware of the novel, and used that trick.
I also ended the article asking the question I
started on this thread - if my idea is too far
fetched, could any other actual case be found
prior to September 29/30, 1888, where 1) a cryptic
writing of graffiti was found on a wall near a
murder sight; and 2) having that dual word trick.
If you can find it, please let me know! |
Author: Tom Wescott
Wednesday, 07 March 2001 - 11:48 pm | | Jeff,
That last post is probably the single most interesting thing I've read on this board since I've been back. Totally original and indeed possible as I believe the Ripper was an avid reader, and allowed the things he read to slip into his writings, on purpose no less. Alas, as interesting as your theory is, I do not think it likely. I suppose I'm just not given to anagrams or their like. It could very well be worth further research, though. In all, if this is evidence of how your mind works, I can tell I'm going to enjoy your presence on these boards.
Caroline,
I too was captivated by your statement containing 'friends never quite made'. Did you lift that from a book? If not, you should certainly put it in one.
Matthew Branigan,
I love your sense of humor! Stick around, it gets better than this, I promise!
Ed,
What's the color of the crack you're smoking?
Jade,
What exactly is your definition of 'going'? 
Simon,
WASSUP!
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott
P.S. In the past I've made what I believe to be rather compelling arguments for the graffiti (what the hell is 'graffito', anyway?) having come from the Ripper, yet haven't heard a compelling argument for it having come from someone other than the Ripper, although that's the prevailing viewpoint. Would somebody care to offer one? |
Author: Matthew Brannigan
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 04:43 am | | Tom,
Thanks for the compliment. In answer to your question, graffito is the singular form of the word grafitti. Prior to reading it on this board, I can't even remeber the last time I saw or heard anyone use the singular, most people just say "grafitti."
Matt |
Author: Tom Wescott
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 10:47 am | | Matt,
Thanks for setting me straight on that. I'd never heard the word 'graffito' prior to getting involved in the Ripper case. It all makes sense now.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 12:34 pm | | Hi Tom,
I didn't knowingly lift my words from a book, but I can't really believe that anything I write is truly the product of original independent thought - there are just too many influences around which can fill up the brain's filing cabinets with nonsense or otherwise. Hope you were captivated in a pleasant and positive way anyway. :-)
Love,
Caz |
Author: Martin Fido
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 03:37 pm | | Jeff,
In re the Orrock case: the chisel with the letters ROCK burned on the handle was not deliberately left by the murderer as a clue: it was abandoned with the rest of the tools Orrock had intended to use for breaking into the Baptist chapel he proposed robbing in Ashwin Street, near Dalston Junction. You can still see the little parapet overlooking the basement windows where Orrock proposed breaking in, and behind which he dropped his tools when Pc Cole interrupted him. (The church is - or was when I visited it fifteen years ago - now Shiloh Pentecostal). The letters were burned into the handle for identification purposes by Mrs Preston of City Road when Orrock left it with her for grinding, so they weren't an apparently 'deliberate' clue left by the murderer. (Incidentally, he wasn't caught for four years, and when he was, a significant second piece of evidence against him was a bullet found in a tree on Tottenham Marshes where his friends confirmed he had been practising with his pistol before he killed Pc Coles. When I first heard of Orrock as 'a Victorian burglar who killed a policeman' I imagined the Punch idea of a fat unshaven middle-aged thug. It is salutary to remember that Orrock was 17 when he committed his crime and 21 when he was hanged for it. The criminally dangerous age of the young male is an age when he is often barely out of adolescence.)
By contrast, Thomas Hocker was very deliberate indeed in forging the letter he planted on his friend Eugene De La Rue as a false clue. Both of them had an extensive carnal acquaintance with prostitutes and servant girls in the Camden/Euston/Hampstead Road vicinity, and used to get up to three-or-more-in-the-bed fun at the then Sir Oswald Mosley's town house with the maids when the ancestor of the Fascist baronet was out of town. Neither Hocker nor De La Rue had any intention of being trapped into marriage by pregnancy, so it seemed quite feasible that Eugene should have been carrying a letter addressed to him under one of the pseudonyms he used in his love life and suggesting that one 'Caroline' urgently needed to meet him to discuss her interesting condision. Hocker's motive was simple theft. He was the son of a poor shoemaker, and unlike De La Rue (a music teacher) could not really afford the cut-price gallants' swagger life style the two affected. De La Rue, incidentally, was of the family whose name may still be seen on playing cards.
So neither case, I sugest, is really on all fours with the Ripper case where supposedly - or should one say just possibly - the killer himself could have left an ambiguous comment on his actions or his sense of responsibility for them.
John - I suggested a meaning for the words years ago: 'The Jews are men who won't take responsibility for anything'; and postulated that, lying in the direct vicinity of Petticoat Lane and Wentworth Street markets, and written on the doorway of a tenement largely occupied by Jews, it could easily be the frustrated comment of an emptor who hadn't taken the advice 'caveat' and regretted something he'd bought from a Jewish vendor, only to find there would be no refund or replacement. Richard Whittington-Egan liked this interpretation.
Matthew - If the local newspaper went phut and all air and shipping communication was temporarily cut off from a small island beyond the reach of television, would you say 'Mainland radio is now the only news media accessible to the islanders'? There were many graffitti in Whitechapel, but only one graffitto on the Goulston Street doorway. OED only offers '-i' as the plural form of the singular substantive which constitutes its entry.
Martin F |
Author: David M. Radka
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 04:01 pm | | nominative singular form = graffitus
nominative plural form = graffiti
ablative singular form = graffito, as in "written in graffito"
Shees!
David |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 05:22 pm | | Martin,
Very nice. I hadn't heard that one in my head when I read the words, but your explanation is impressive and convincing and, now that you suggest it, I can hear the way in which your sentence might be written into the words on the wall by someone whose first language used a slightly different syntax. I'm still new to all of this and had not come across this reading of yours or else I read it in one of your books and did not remember it. Thanks.
Of course, the "be blamed for nothing" in the sentence might also lead us in the direction of a sort of local-supportive sentence that is trying to suggest that the Jews will refuse to take the blame for something that is not their fault -- they won't be blamed for having done nothing; they won't be blamed, for they have done nothing, etc.... I think we tend to think of the graffito first as an expression of anger or an attack -- but it could also be a statement of resistance or support (graffiti is also used in this way, -- on the NYC subway system, for instance). This, of course, is in no way is meant yet to suggest the graffito is Ripper-related. There were certainly plenty of things the Jews were regularly being blamed for in any number of publications and debates, and plenty of reasons to resist being scapegoated.
But I like yours better. There are, of course, as several posters have already suggested on these boards, more than a few other ways just to read the grammar of the sentence. And the problem becomes much more complicated once we allow the crimes back into the discussion.
It is a fascinating reading challenge. The words remain for us only as an erased trace. But they become insidious, like that particularly troublesome piece of graffito someone once mentioned having seen on the wall of a building in New York. It said,
"Do not read this."
--John |
Author: E Carter
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 07:29 pm | | Jon, page 158, remember this concerning Benjamin Feigenbaum, who, as you will remember was brought up as a Hassidic Jew, as was Will Wess,: He was of medium height with broad shoulders and gesticulated as he spoke. He started out by saying that every religion was an absurdity and that the notion of god was impossibile.
To one accusation, in the church times that Jack the Ripper was a Russian Anarchist, he replied; Such homage from the holy spirit!What the almighty watchdog, Charles Warren, could not discover--The Whitechapel Murderer--the holy ghost has revealed!
Fishman William, J, East End Jewish Radicals.Duckworth Books, could an anarchist have scribed the text. This is a Very good book. But neither wrote the grafitti!ED.
Look at SS Belgenlan Antwerp to New-York, 1884. Then again at the graffiti. |
Author: E Carter
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 07:39 pm | | Benjamin Feigenbaun arrived in the East End in 1888 from Antwerp, left for America in 1991, some years later applied for naturalization in the U.S. The application was denied,look at his application in ancestry.com.
ED. |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 08:20 pm | | Dear Ed,
I think some of the posters are a wee bit lost at this point,Ed .I assume they were working together
as 'Jack', hence all the schleppen?
Esra Myro |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 09:28 pm | | Dear Ed,
Before you reach the Thrice Greatest...can you please disassociate yourself from both the lunatics called Davidoz and Rosemary. It may help your theory have a fair (but horrified) hearing.
Respectfully yours,
O.Y.Ran ! |
Author: Tom Wescott
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 09:30 pm | | Martin,
As to the graffito, you suggest that it was an anti-semitic message by someone whose first language wasn't English. Considering that the two primary sects of residents in that area were English and Jewish, and the writer of the graffito certainly wasn't Jewish, what nationality do you propose he was? I still think it was an Englishman (the Ripper) saying 'The Jews are not to blame' disguising himself in the same way he did in the Lusk letter, and ridiculing the police and public for their most recent theories as he did in the 'Dear Boss' letter. I'm curious, though, from your standpoint...If neither a Jew nor an Englishman wrote it, who did?
As to their Whitechapel being graffiti-ridden, how do we know? In all the pictures of Whitechapel with the people leaning out of doors and up against walls I've never seen a shred of graffiti. Also, if the vast majority of Whitechapel residents were indeed illiterate, who was writing it?
Rosie-Palms,
That's not a very clever anagram of your name.
Special Ed,
What were you doing at ancestry.com, trying to find out how much chlorine is in your gene pool?
John,
If a jew wrote the message and knew how to spell words such as 'blamed' which would not be one of the first words learned by someone taking on a new language. then they would certainly know the English spelling of their own race/religion and would have probably left the message someplace that was inhabited primarily by the English as he would have been preaching to the choir with fellow jews. The message truly only makes sense having come from the Ripper.
Caz,
You underestimate yourself.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 10:40 pm | | Hi Tom,
You write:
"If a jew wrote the message and knew how to spell words such as 'blamed' which would not be one of the first words learned by someone taking on a new language. then they would certainly know the English spelling of their own race/religion and would have probably left the message someplace that was inhabited primarily by the English as he would have been preaching to the choir with fellow jews. The message truly only makes sense having come from the Ripper."
Something troubles me about the movement of this paragraph from premise to conclusion. Even if I grant you the premises -- that a Jew would not spell the name of their race the way (whichever way) it appeared on the wall, and that he would not put up such a remark in his own neighborhood, where there would be mostly Jews to see it (And neither of these things seem to me self-evident, by the way. Graffiti often preaches to the choir. Wandering around ethnic neighborhoods in New York City quickly reveals this to be the case, or even here in Tampa where there is a small anti-Castro Cuban exile community and where, in their neighborhood, there is often supportive anti-Castro graffiti which, I guess you might say, preaches to the choir; and the variations on the spelling either on the wall or established at the time in the language(s) seem anything but settled within the current scholarship) -- but even granting these premises, it seems to me that it is an invalid leap of logic to slide from them directly to "The message truly only makes sense having come from the Ripper."
I trust there are steps here that you have left out assuming we know them. Because your conclusion, if taken literally, would mean that there is *no way* for these words to be read such that they "make sense" or communicate a reasonable message, unless they were written by "the Ripper." How could this possibly be the case? What sort of sentence would this have to be such that the only way it could "truly" make any sense is if it were written by the Ripper -- that is, if it were written by anyone else, it would make no sense? This seems to me a linguistic impossibility. I cannot imagine an utterance or a written text that would only make sense if it came from one specific author to the exclusion of all others. I can imagine many that would be false unless they came from one specific author, for instance: "I am John V. Omlor." But there is a difference between being false and not making sense, I think. "I am John V. Omlor." makes sense as a sentence regardless of whether the person who writes it is John V. Omlor. If you write it, it is not true, but it makes sense -- you are claiming to be someone named John V. Omlor. But an utterance or text which *only* made sense if it was uttered or written by a specific author would have to be, by definition, utterly nonsensical unless that author was made known, and clearly, as we can see elsewhere on this Board, there are several ways to read this sentence such that it at least "makes sense." In fact, it seems to me that the problem with our sentence in this case is not that it does not mean anything or make any sense, but that it has, perhaps, too many possible meanings. It's meaning has, by this time, come to exceed its intention. Consequently, I am not sure I understand how you can legitimately move from the claims you make in the first sentences of your paragraph to the conclusion you reach in the last.
But perhaps I am being dim here, and missing an obvious implication. Your rhetoric suggests you have proven something, but I am not sure I see the proof. I suspect part of the problem arises from what the word "truly" is being allowed to do in the sentence. It is not clear to me if there is a difference between making sense and "truly" making sense. If that difference is that it only "truly" makes sense if one knows the author, then you are using the word "truly" to establish your conclusion without actually making your argument. In effect, you end up proving only that the graffito only "truly" makes sense if you know that it came from Jack, therefore it must have come from Jack. But here again, the premise does not follow from the conclusion in any way but a tautological one. I'm sorry if this sounds nit-picky, but I think it pays to be careful when making arguments such as this, because what we decide will have serious consequences for how we treat this writing. I am not arguing that the Ripper did or did not write these words, or that that they must have been meant in support of the Jews or as an attack; but merely that several readings seem at least possible, at least to "make sense," and that the responsible thing to do is to consider the words in multiple possible contexts and social scenarios and the possibility of multiple scenes of writing and reading. I'm not sure that your paragraph successfully does this before it announces its conclusion.
Again, I'm sorry if I've missed something here.
--John |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 10:41 pm | | I am sorry Martin, I thought I had made it clear
that the chisel was dropped accidentally during
the struggle between P.C. Cole and Orrock, not
that Orrock had purposely left at the scene.
Though given the amount of intelligence Orrock
showed, he would have thought it would have been
brilliant to do so. You are right about the other
evidence too. However the murder of Cole was
on 1 December 1882. His trial was 19 - 20 September 1884. Orrock was executed on 6 October
1884. It was less than two years. By the way,
Orrock's defense team included the young Edward
Marshall Hall.
When I brought up Orrock, it was to show where
Conan Doyle found that curious clue about the
word where letters are missing and the remaining
letters are the key to different interpretations.
Conan Doyle takes the "R" "O" "C" "K" clue, and
transforms it into the "R" "A" "C" "H" "E" or
"R" "A" "C" "H" "E" "L" clue in A STUDY IN SCARLET, and he uses the clue as a graffito on
the wall near a murder. It is fictional, and
it was within a year of a real graffiti that
might be similar to it (depending on that word
"J" "E" "W" "S" or "J" "U" "W" "E" "S" or
"J" "E" "U" "W" "E" "S" or "J" "U" "I" "V" "E"
"S").
I was looking for an actual case where a graffito
with a cryptic message was near the dead body
of a murder victim. I never found it. The closest was the Hocker business, and it was a
written letter. By the way, I never heard of
De La Rue's family in the card business, but
I wonder if the family is from the Channel Islands.
It is an interesting theory of yours that the
graffito could have been on the wall for a long
time before the murder night, but that leads to
a small problem. If it was on the wall
a long time, the police (including P.C. Long)
would have noted it being there before the night
of the murder. They would have mentioned that
fact at the inquest ("Yes there was this old
piece of writing on the wall,about the Jews, that
has been there for years."). Warren could still
have ordered it being erased, but it would have
behooved the authorities to admit it was older
than the night of the double murder, and so
unrelated to it. The Ripper could have noted
the graffito and decided to use it, dropping the
piece of apron near it. But why that particular
graffito? Given the more open spirit of anti-
Semitism in the East End in 1888, there were
probably many examples of anti-Semitic doggerel
and slurs on many walls. Why that one?
By the way Tom, thank you for your kind remarks.
It does deserve further research, and I invite
anyone who can think of anything to suggest it
to me, or look into it themselves. I happen
to agree with you about anagrams, especially
after the book about Lewis Carroll. Curious
theory that. |
Author: Martin Fido
Thursday, 08 March 2001 - 11:51 pm | | Tom and John - I have never suggested that the graffito-writer's first language was not English. I suggest that he used the cockney double-negative as an intensified negative rather than a self-cancelling positive.
David - Your Latin is plausible, except that the spelling would be 'graphitus -i -o'. Your Italian is execrable.
Martin F |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 06:10 am | | Hi Martin,
Sure, I can certainly understand that. I'm not sure why I mentioned the second-language thing in my post supporting your original idea that,
"it could easily be the frustrated comment of an emptor who hadn't taken the advice 'caveat' and regretted something he'd bought from a Jewish vendor, only to find there would be no refund or replacement."
Of course, there is nothing in your suggestion that would require the writer to have a language other than English as his first -- and the double-negative for emphasis is a particularly easy to hear, for me anyway, when I say the sentence out loud.
Sorry for the misreading. Of course, your own scenario about the frustrated customer remains possible, even with a non-native speaker.
Also, it should be mentioned, literacy is not always an either/or state. It often occurs in degrees. I suspect that this makes all sorts of scenarios for the event of this writing possible.
If, incidentally, the sentence *was* written by the same hand that dropped (either intentionally or otherwise) the piece of apron, that only seems to me to multiply the possibilities; since one would then have to formulate some sort of specific explanation for the relationship between the item that remained (torn from remains) and the words that are too quickly erased. Given the nature of this relationship between these two problems (one a fragment, a piece of textile with a history, and the other an erased and problematic text), the situation would, I suspect, likely become *less* clearly given over to a specific interpretation or account of events, not more.
But it's very early here and it's possible that I am not making sense.
--John |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 07:08 am | | Martin,
but surely it didn't need to have been a double negative? I can't see anything wrong with it myself. It was written on a Jewish occupied building, and it was likely written by Jewish person. If that was the case then this person was complaining about the Jewish Race of people being blamed for something they had not done,-ie, "we haven't done anything,we are not to blame". Maybe the writer was alluding to the numerous bad feelings that were around in the Eastend at that time,--blamed on Jews. Maybe it was a particularly religious Jew who was wanting to emphasize that it was Romans, not Jews who had crucified Christ. I don't think the writing was anything to do with the murder in Mitre Square.
Regards Rick |
Author: Martin Fido
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 07:20 am | | Dear Rick,
No, my suggestion certainly doesn't 'need to have been' at all. It is only a conjecture.
And Dear John,
Regarding the same hand dropping the apron, Walter Dew had some astringent remark to make about the Ripper having better things to do than hang around writing damfool messages while the police rapidly filled the neighbourhood. They've always semed to me convincing - indeed, allowing for natural lapses of memory (which testify, really, to his honesty) Dew has always seemed to me one of the most useful of the contemporary witnesses recording memories.
All the best,
Martin |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 08:32 am | | Dear Martin,
The Dews are the men...:-)
Dear John,
Graffito, apron, street names...maybe more to this than meets the eye?
Dear Tom,
O.k. But I told you so!
(Most amusing but mostly confusing, cried Alice.)
Rosae Rym. |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 08:43 am | | Hello Martin,
I seem to have caught you at home,J.What do you think about the Ripper having ever written anything at all? Personally I think he would have regarded that as taking away his mystery. He supposedly wrote,"I kept some of the real red stuff to write with, but it went thick, like glue". Yet in Mary's room, not a word, and it would have been so easy, just dip in his finger and write!I don't know how my writing sounds to you, I hope not to criticize anybody,-- do you think that frustration comes into these murders? homicidal frustration? Then in Mary's case, that frustration boiled over into frenzy, not a frenzy where he danced round the body slicing at this and that, but if I can put it like this, a controlled frenzy, where he did everything to Mary's body that he perhaps never intended to do to the previous victims, even if he had had the chance.
Best Regards Rick |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 08:53 am | | Hi Rick,
As a somewhat ghoulish aside, I was just reminded, reading your words about the "controlled frenzy," of one of the things that has always eerily fascinated me the most about this case: the actual, required physical movements and the feeling of the knife in the hand as it cut open and cut out. It remains, to me, such an alien idea, those feelings, those sensations. Hell, I couldn't even get the peanut butter to spread evenly on my toast this morning.
--John |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 10:04 am | | Thanks for the smile John, you and me seem to have common thoughts on the actions of Nov 8.88,
sorry I spoiled your breakfast.
All the Best Rick |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 10:05 am | | Hi Tom,
I know precisely what you meant - that I underestimate my own ability to come up with original independent nonsense.
I may be stoopid, but you can't catch me out when it comes to subjects like nonsense. 
Hi John,
I agree about the difficulties we have if we accept that Jack dropped the piece of apron then wrote his message. If he intended to give out a message, you'd think he'd intend for it to be understood by someone at the time, and not for us lot, over a 100 years later, to still be trying to work out the basics, and coming up with as many interpretations as there are interpreters!
Unless, of course, his mind was so disturbed that he assumed, because his message was crystal clear to himself as he wrote it, in his neat schoolboy hand, that no one could possibly fail to see what he was driving at - in fact, a bit like my posts. 
My favourite pointless notice is:
Please do not remove this notice
Love,
Caz |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 10:35 am | | Hi Caroline,
And another, a colleague of mine has posted on his door, reads simply,
"Do not throw stones at this notice."
Delightful and insidious, since, of course, the idea of throwing stones at the notice would never have otherwise occurred to you, but once you read it, you can't help but think about throwing stones at it.
I doubt Jack ever sought to pose such a reading problem. He is, probably, not to blame for nothing. 
--John |
Author: Martin Fido
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 11:50 am | | Hi Rick,
No, as I suspect you suspect, I don't think the Ripper wrote anything at all, either on walls or on paper. But that, too, is only an 'I think...' - worth more than the opinion of anyone who has only read contemporary tabloid stories about the Ripper, but no more than that of anyone else who has made a serious study.
Martin |
Author: David M. Radka
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 12:16 pm | | Martin,
Thanks for the Latin lesson--I haven't had one since high school!
Did the Romans have the phi letter? I thought only the Greeks did.
Best Wishes,
David |
Author: Tom Wescott
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 02:28 pm | | John,
Your response to me was quite exhaustive (and exhausting!) but you are correct that was far too positive in my conclusion. What I should have said was "To my mind, the graffito makes the most sense having come from the Ripper'.
To Martin,
I understand the sentiments of both Walter Dew and yourself, although I must also add that the Ripper probably had better things to do than kill women on the street under the noses of policemen, in Eddowes' case calming knicking each eyelid, and think that he wouldn't get away with it. However, he did do those things, and he DID get away with it.
To Catherine,
Actually, there was no double-entendre in my message to you. Believe it or not, I was actually being nice!
To all,
You ask why would the Ripper leave a message that isn't immediately clear in it's message, but shouldn't the same question be asked of any person leaving that message? We know two things for certain...1. There was a piece of graffiti above the bloody apron, so someone wrote it there and had a motive for doing so. 2. The meaning of that graffiti is very much open to debate.
So, if you are willing to accept that someone other than the Ripper took the time and risk of leaving an anti-semitic message in the doorway of a jewish tenement where at any moment a resident could walk by, and didn't take the time to make sure his message was clear, then you should be able to accept that the Ripper could have done the same thing. I should point out that we have no proof an anti-semite had stood in that doorway recent to the discovery of the apron, but there is a piece of evidence that suggests the Ripper had.
As to the message being clear to the Ripper's mind (assuming it was him) at the time he wrote it, but not to everyone else, that is highly possible. That happens on here all the time, only last week between Martin and myself, for instance. If you believe, as I do, that Liz Stride was a Ripper victim, then just a couple of hours before he would have written the graffito (assuming it was he who wrote it) he killed a woman while standing under open windows where a party of dozens of singing jews was taking place, and was possibly interrupted by a jew. He was also reading in the papers how jews had become primary suspects in the killings. He was watching his 'work' being attributed to 'Leather Apron' and jews in general and had just left a corpse in a yard belonging to jews. It doesn't seem unlikely that they would be on his mind. On the other hand, if you had a person filled with hate for the jews risking himself to leave a hateful message (as indicated by the misspelling of 'jews') then you might expect the message to be little more 'hate-filled' than it is. Of course, this is just speculation. These are some of the reasons why I believe the Ripper wrote the graffito, and I didn't get it from a tabloid.
The idea of a serial killer hanging around to leave messages or do other things that may put himself at risk of being caught does not surprise me at all, as it's happened numerous times, although I can understand why it might not make much sense to Dew as he lived only at the dawn of serial killers. Anyway, that's all for now.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 02:50 pm | | Hi Tom:
You say, "The idea of a serial killer hanging around to leave messages or do other things that may put himself at risk of being caught does not surprise me at all, as it's happened numerous times. . ." Who says it has happened numerous times? I thought we had established that writings left by killers at the scenes of crime are not too frequent, and certainly serial killers writing letters is not too frequent either, though it has happened (e.g., the Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer). However, doesn't the very idea that a killer leaves messages come from this very case? And here we are debating whether or not the murderer left any messages at all. So we are also battling a myth: despite the popular view that Jack wrote letters and messages on walls none of it is proven.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: E Carter
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 03:17 pm | | Firstly,Rosemary, I am not Davidov, but I have seen his postings once or twice.
The best know example of post crime Graffiti prior to the Whitechapel murders was written by an Anarchist in his own blood.
As you will know, on march 1st 1881,a day set aside by Russian Jews for festivity, the revolotionary group Narodnaya Vloga assassinated Tsar Alexander with a bomb. The authorities apprehended the culprits, choosing to blame a Jewess named Jessie Helfman as the principle plotter, when in fact she was no more than a letter carrier for the St Petersberg group. The pogroms that ensued this assassination conveyed thousands of Jews further west to settle in countries including Germany, Holland and Belgium. Numerous also arrived at the London Docks, many of them lived in Whitechapel and Spitalfields during the reign of Jack the Ripper. Other Jewish refugees used London as a staging post before moving on to America. A correspondent for the daily Telegraph opined that the revolutionists who killed the Tsar hoped to create a popular uprising whereby Christian troops would be called to defend the Jews against Christians. The troops would refuse duty, and this might be the begining of a general uprising.
They were trying to agitate!
Several workers employed at 'Der Arbieter fraint' or, who, were members of the International Working Mens Club arrived in this fashion.
The acting chief Rabbi Herman Adler wanted the new arrivals to blend in with the natives, or better still to move on to America. The reason was that their strange rituals and odd language,and the extra strain on the employment market created Judophobia tarnishing the established Anglo-Jewry by association. Hearsay had it that Adler had offered a Yiddish language theatre troupe finance to move on to America. Thus in the wake of the Israel Lipski trial, certain anarchists would fulfill multiple aims by killing street women and blaming it on the Jews. Isolate the Whitechapel Jews by turing the gentile against him, whilst thwarting Addler and directly challenging Charles Warren who was in command.
In 1884 in Chicago only four years prior to the Goulstone Street Grafitti, an anarchist threw a bomb into a group of policeman who were trying to break up a strike meeting. Several anarchists were brought to trial and sentenced to death. But one killed him self before his execution could take place, writing grafitti on the cell wall in his own blood 'long live anarchy'!
Remember, Hutchison and Mrs Long's sighting, Hutchison, stated 'of Jewish appearance'was this a Jew who could not spell the word 'Jew', or one that knew who the Juwes were! And that Warren would also understand the word Juwes ED.
Look at the irony, The Juwes are the men that will not be Blamed for nothing. Tom how did you know? ED |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 04:33 pm | | Hi Tom,
Just one small thing,
You write that one of the things we know is that,
"The meaning of that graffiti is very much open to debate."
And then suggest,
"So, if you are willing to accept that someone other than the Ripper took the time and risk of leaving an anti-semitic message in the doorway of a jewish tenement where at any moment a resident could walk by, and didn't take the time to make sure his message was clear, then you should be able to accept that the Ripper could have done the same thing."
But also, isn't it possible as Rick and I have suggested above, that the graffito is *not* anti-semitic at all, but a statement against blaming the Jews for (various) things? If the meaning of the sentence is indeed open to debate, then that might be one of the possible readings, as Rick has suggested in an earlier post or as I put it in a post to Martin,
"Of course, the 'be blamed for nothing' in the sentence might also lead us in the direction of a sort of local-supportive sentence that is trying to suggest that the Jews will refuse to take the blame for something that is not their fault -- they won't be blamed for having done nothing; they won't be blamed, for they have done nothing, etc.... I think we tend to think of the graffito first as an expression of anger or an attack -- but it could also be a statement of resistance or support (graffiti is also used in this way, -- on the NYC subway system, for instance). This, of course, is in no way is meant yet to suggest the graffito is Ripper-related. There were certainly plenty of things the Jews were regularly being blamed for in any number of publications and debates, and plenty of reasons to resist being scapegoated."
In such a case there would not be quite the same risk for the writer, assuming he hadn't killed anyone lately.
--John |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 05:39 pm | | Dear Ed, Rick, John,
So far, there exists the following possibilities:
There are (1)"Jewes", and (2)"Jews". Now it seems Ed thinks, (2) 'know' (1), and for some reason as yet unspecified, only some of (1)are directed by
some of (2)whose aim...correct me if I'm wrong Ed,
is to move to America and subvert it via the forces of anarchy. Could David Radka own up now!
Os Armery? |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 05:55 pm | | Thanks Tom.
Love,
Catherine |
Author: Tom Wescott
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 08:19 pm | | Chris George,
How many examples do you need? You are correct when you say nothing has been proven, but that could go both ways. The Ripper had opportunity and motive, and the message fits in with his agenda.
John,
Yes, those ideas are possible. It's also possible that Sharon Tate scrawled 'Death to Pigs' on her wall in her own blood before the Manson clan arrived. After all, those Hollywood folks are into some wierd stuff! Technically, since no one witnessed the graffiti being written, any scenario could be possible. I prefer not to waste too much time with those that aren't all that likely, though. Don't get me wrong, I've considered them, but then I've discounted them. I think most would agree that the two most likely scenarios for the graffiti are 1. The Ripper wrote it. 2. An anti-semite wrote it. Is it possible a jew wrote it who couldn't even spell 'jew'? Yes. Is it likely? No. Is it possible a semi-literate English Whitechapel resident who cared more for the plight of immigrants than he did for his own needs wrote it? Yes. Is it likely? No. Is it possible Queen Victoria traveled to Goulston Street by unicycle and wrote it herself while eating mutton-on-a-stick? Yes. Is it likely. No. Do the theories you mentioned deserve considering? Yes, and they've received due consideration and were thrown out long ago by virtually all educated students on the case in favor of examing theories that are far and away more likely. You had already made your point about being open minded, and seem to assume that I've not considered any possibility other than the Ripper having written the graffiti. Nothing could be further from the truth. Truth be told, most of you discount the Ripper's involvement with the graffiti on gut feeling alone, and that is fine with me. I simply don't subscribe to the notion that the Ripper never put pen to paper or chalk to dado. To dismiss all of that evidence would leave too much to coincidence. I've been a sceptic before, but with further research into the Ripper crimes as well as later serial killings, I've come to a few of my own conclusions, one of which being that the Ripper most likely wrote the graffito.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 08:42 pm | | Hi Tom:
I have it on good authority that Queen Victoria could not ride a unicyle. However, if you are talking about Lewis Carroll, he rode one all the time, with the Cheshire Cat on his shoulder. Maybe we should be looking for cat fur???
Chris |
Author: Diana
Friday, 09 March 2001 - 09:46 pm | | | A French-speaking Jewish person could have written it if what it said was Juives. If the Jewish immigrant had not mastered English yet he might not have mastered the spelling. Remember, every language has its own variant spelling of the word "Jew". Example: in German -- Das Juden. So a recently arrived Jewish person whose native language had a different spelling for "Jew" might not have learned the correct English form yet. |
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 10 March 2001 - 12:24 am | | David,
Of course the Romans, being boringly literal minded, used the Roman alphabet and didn't have phi, psi, chi or omega. But they did use the letters ph sometimes when using words derived from Greek. My small Latin dictionary lists 29 words starting ph-, as well as a raft of proper nouns. 'Graphium' also crops up.
All the best,
Martin |
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