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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 May 25, 1999
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Letters: General Discussion:
The Goulston Street Graffito:
Archive through May 25, 1999
Author: Christopher-Michael
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 02:26 pm |        | Just for the sake of argument, I should say that even though I seem to have come up with the idea, I didn't mean to seriously suggest that the Goulston Street nonsense was written by a child. I was referring to Halse's supposed inquest testimony in "Leather Apron," where he is reported as saying that the writing was to be found on the black dado of the doorway, and that said dado was only about four feet high.
Coupling that with the bit about "the good schoolboy hand," you can see where a less reasonable person than myself might start theorising about a murderous mite prowling the Whitechapel streets. What I was trying to say was that IF Halse is being quoted reasonably accurately, then the writing MAY have been no more than four feet from the ground, which is an odd place for a grown adult to scribble on (although I've seen enough graffiti in my day to know that sheer difficulty in location never stops anyone).
I don't know. I don't have the relative HO files, and my transcript of the "Telegraph" is only up to October 3. Poor Katy Eddowes hasn't even been identified yet, so we're a while away from Halse. Still, I shall keep an eye out and let you know what the papers say.
CMD |
Author: Christopher George
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 02:41 pm | | Hey Edana et al.:
Who is saying the graffito was not written in script? It WAS written in script. For an example of the way the Goulston St. graffito may have looked, see the illustration in Stephen Knight's "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution." As related by Donald Rumbelow, the writing was taken down in the notebook kept by P.C. Alfred Long, the police constable who discovered the piece of Catherine Eddowes' apron and the graffito. Knight reproduced a version of how the graffito may have looked in script but Rumbelow points out that what Knight shows "is a copy of a copy" and may not be exact. Paul Begg can best tell us, but I believe Long's notebook has been long lost. In Knight's illustration, the word "The. . ." begins the first and second lines as laid out and thus may be capitalized for that reason, and "Will" begins an indented third line, and "be Blamed" is on the fourth line, with "for nothing" not capitalized as the fifth and final line. As Rumbelow states, because the version Knight shows is a second-hand transcription, this may not have been the actual layout. In any case, to answer your question, Edana, until our own century, capitalization could be quite arbitrary, as I know from my own work with War of 1812 era manuscripts, so the odd capitalizations in the graffito are not unusual for a person writing in the nineteenth century.
Chris George |
Author: RLeen
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 02:43 pm | | Hello All,
I am no doubt of a more mature vintage than Edana and I can well remember graduating to "joined-up" writing around the age of ten. Similarly, I also recall being tutored in grammar from an early age, thus I feel that the person who wrote the message would also have been aware of grammatical rules, i.e. placement of capitals. My point remains that writing was a rare skill in that area, at that time, and further, CDN is a blind because the writer definitely used English as a second language.
Exclusively for Karoline,
I can appreciate your point of view with regard to this topic and I would appreciate another posting which further illuminates the notion that the graffiti has nothing to do with the killing.
Trusting that I am not getting more oblique, irrelative, and long-winded but satisfied that I recognise the irony within a lot of other messages.
Rabbi Leen |
Author: D. Radka
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 04:46 pm | | Karoline,
You mention above that you have a book on the case. Can you tell me its title? I'd like to read it. Thank you.
David |
Author: D. Radka
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 04:50 pm | | IMHO, the reason for the unusual capitalizations in the graffito was because the writer was flipping his bird as he wrote it. How would you like to be writing graffito, an illegal act, on a public building in a busy street immediately after having killed two people, with a kidney in your pocket? Wouldn't do much for your penmanship, I don't think. He wanted to book out of there right quick.
David |
Author: Alex Chisholm
Monday, 24 May 1999 - 09:44 pm | | Evening All
As education has been mentioned, I thought it may be useful to note that the Education Act of 1880 made provision for the compulsory, full-time, elementary education of all children between the ages of five and ten. Of course changing ingrained habits - particularly where such change could drastically effect fragile household economies - was a relatively slow process, and by 1895 only 82% of registered children were known to be in regular attendance. (Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, vol. 3)
There was also a significant distinction between 'Elementary Education', principally for the working class poor, and 'Secondary Education', largely the preserve of the middle and upper classes at 'Public' and Grammar schools. So which form of education would be most likely to produce the 'good schoolboy hand' referred to?
Christopher-Michael, old mate, I take the hints, the 4th Oct will be winging its way to you in the next day or two.
Best wishes
alex |
Author: RED DEMON
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 03:27 am | | Hello Everyone!
First of all, I hope that when I said the graffito was written in double-negatives, nobody took it to mean that I thought an uneducated ruffian was the writer. Neither do I think it is an educated man trying to sound uneducated. IF the message was by the Ripper, then it most likely is referring to the singing Jews at the Stride murder site. If that's the case, then much thought could not have been put into the message written, as in the interim from when Stride was killed and the message written, Jack had spent his time frantically running from the cops, finding his next victim, offing her, and frantically running again...
What I think is most probable is that the graffito WAS written by the Ripper, and that he was an educated man who was simply frazzled by a flurry of emotions that none of us can understand, unless, of course, some of us are serial killers fleeing from the police on foot! I believe it was a jumbled mind trying to convey the message at hand.
TO CHRIS GEORGE...Yeah, yeah, yeah...I'm assuming...Yeah, yeah, yeah...No evidence...THERE'S HARDLY ANY EVIDENCE IN THIS CASE!!! HELLO!!! If we were to ONLY discuss evidence, and not theories, the interest in this case would have died LONG ago. There certainly wouldn't be this interesting or as educational of a message board. A lot of people find my postings of interest. They can see the things in them you can't. The logic, for example. I, personally, after looking at the evidence, think that the logical conclusion to the graffito is that it DID come from the Ripper. I haven't heard a strong enough argument for it having NOT come from the Ripper to change my mind. To capsulate the case for it having come from the Ripper, here we go...
The message just happened to be written directly above the bloodied piece of Eddowes' apron, THE ONLY UNQUESTIONABLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE IN THE CASE... The message, at least to some, appeared to be freshly written. It was of an anti-semitic nature (or at least would have appeared to the Jews to have been so, as 'Jews' was misspelled), therefore wouldn't have remained there a minute in the daylight without having been erased (the police obviously agreed with this sentiment, as they erased the message before the public could see it)...There's a logical reason behind the meaning of the message that directly relates to the events of that night (see numerous postings above). You want PROOF, Chris? I want to see the proof that Jack DIDN'T write it.
And as far at my 'assumption' that the Ripper was taking the apron piece to later mail with a letter, I never stated this as a 'fact', only as a possibility. Are you saying that it is not a possibility? Now THAT would be assumption... He very well may have taken it simply as a souvenir. Maybe he DID cut himself and took it to nurse the wound on the way. These are all valid possibilities. But the FACT is that he did take it, and left it in Goulston Street (unless you want to dredge up the tired chestnut of a dog dragging it to it's final location).
And, for your information, I had the idea of Jack taking the apron piece for mailing BEFORE I read the ZODIAC book. To repeat...BEFORE I read the ZODIAC book. I guess that was more 'assumption' on your part, Chris.
Now, Chris, I'm ready for you to tell me why it is you think the Ripper DID NOT write the graffito. I gave the basic argument above, in the simplest nutshell fashion for why I think he did. I want you to make the strongest argument you possibly can. If the Ripper DIDN'T write it, then you should be able to produce the stronger of the two arguments. I would like everyone to put all bias aside and read the two with a fresh, open mind. Even bring an uninformed outsider in to give a fresh perspective. This should be interesting. I, for one, am willing to have my mind changed. As I've been forced to state many times before...I seek THE TRUTH. That is the appeal of this case to me.
Okay, Chris, your turn...
Yours truly,
RED DEMON |
Author: Caz
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 03:35 am | | Hi All,
My system is a bit sluggish thismorning, I keep getting cut off in my prime, but I'll try to get a quick word in here.
Great info, Alex. I would imagine our scribbler, if educated in England, was one of your latter cases, maybe educated at one of the 'Board' schools. As you suggest, school attendance among the regular cockney speakers of the area, at one of the working class schools, particularly your typical graffiti artist of 1888, would probably have been poor. They certainly would not have enjoyed being commanded to learn writing skills, but sooner have played truant to earn a few pennies at the butcher's shop or pub etc. (Some things don't change :-))
Therefore I still think, as Karoline endorses, that our man could have been a non-cockney hoaxer of some sort, whether of 'foreign' origin (I hate that expression) or not, remains to be seen.
Oh, and the reason I mentioned Lewis Carroll was that I was looking at the Victorian section of my daughter's Writing and Printing project for ideas, and came across a couple of Alice postcards with examples of his writing from the original manuscripts. One can't really avoid Alice when you have a daughter :-)
Good luck with the book anyway.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Karoline
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 03:52 am | | Hi all -
David - The book I mentioned was my new biography of Lewis Carroll (nothing to do with JTR, but still VERY good and easily available through Amazon!) Although Peter and I are presently working on a masterly solution to the case, provisionally entitled 'The Cabal!' It promises to be a blockbuster.
Rabbi L: Thank you for appreciating my views, but I have to admit I feel less qualified to pronounce here than Chris George, CMD or Alex - they'll all tell it better than me. But:
The logical first premise is to assume that the apron and writing aren't connected (because most random occurences aren't), and then to see if that first premise can be proved or disproved. If it can't be disproved (and I don't think it can), then we must assume, in the absence of further evidence, that the two events are not connected. This doesn't mean we have proved they aren't connected, it means that at present the balance of probability suggests that they probably aren't.
That's where I'm coming from anyway. I'm not too sure if it's the same type of logic that Red employs above, but I've no time to chat about that now. Boy to take to school
Karoline |
Author: Guy Hatton
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 04:45 am | | I seem inadvertantly to have sown the odd seed of confusion with my point about education above. Karoline asks why the "good schoolboy hand" precludes the possibility of a non-English writer. Without attempting to claim conclusively that it does such, I would draw on my own experience to suggest that the particular style of script points to a writer who had at least been resident in England long enough to have received their basic education in an English school, rather than abroad. If you have the opportunity, look at the handwriting style of somebody taught in, say, a French school, or a German one. They are quite distinct from the English copperplate style. Had the writing style indicated a "foreign" hand, I think it likely that some comment would have been made by the investigating officers at the time.
I therefore think it reasonable to assume either a "native" as the graffitist, or somebody who had arrived in England from abroad at a very early age. For this reason, I would also suggest that Rabbi Leen is over-stating his case by claiming that the writer definitely used English as a second language. It remains a possibility, but is not, in my opinion, proven. |
Author: Edana
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 08:44 am | | Oh..oops...somehow I got the impression that the graffito was not written in script. Now that I know better, I'm even more ticked off that it was scrubbed off before being photographed. Mia Culpa.
Edana |
Author: Edana
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 08:50 am | | ...and, thanks CG for the info. I can understand how capitalization would be much more arbitrary when writing in script....I do it myself on the rare occasions I actually put pen to paper. Interesting discussion!
Edana |
Author: Christopher George
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 08:52 am | | Good morning, RED:
Well, first you yourself started the Zodiac and friends board so it was logical to think that you were coming from your reading of the Zodiac case and applying it to the Ripper case.
In regard to the proximity of the piece of apron to the graffito, Karoline Leach stated, "The logical first premise is to assume that the apron and writing aren't connected (because most random occurrences aren't). . ."
We have established that Whitechapel was full of Jewish residents. Whitechapel was also full of graffiti. This piece of graffiti happened to be by the scrap of apron that had belonged to Catherine Eddowes. And no I do not think a wandering pooch likely carried it there. I have no problem with the concept that the Ripper himself dropped it there. The problem comes when you consider that the Ripper in his flight, in his panic, in his probable blood-stained condition, would take the time to bend down, because the graffito was low, and chalk a message on the wall, in the dark. Could the graffito have been there for some considerable time, put there in daylight, before the apron was dropped? The odds are that it probably was there before the apron arrived, because there would have been nothing to draw attention to it before the apron was placed next to it. It is the proximity of the two that makes them SEEM linked. But are they necessarily?
My problem comes when you say that you think the Ripper had originally intended to chalk the message on the wall next to Eddowes' body, and that the graffito is linked to the letters. On what basis do you think he would have chalked it in Mitre Square? He had time enough in Mitre Square to carry out the mutilations. He had time enough to remove a kidney for God's sake. But not enough time to chalk a message you said he intended to chalk there?
Where is there wording in the letters that is anything like the wording in the graffito that would enable us to credibly link the two? On what basis do you think he intended to mail the piece of apron with a letter? In my opinion, he wanted to dispose of the scrap of apron. He wanted to get rid of it. And so he did. The piece of apron WAS definitely left by the Ripper. The graffito MAY have been written by the Ripper. BUT we cannot be certain. The police removed the graffito because it appeared to be anti-Semitic and was found next to a piece of evidence from the case, but even they could not be certain it was written by the killer.
Chris George |
Author: Ashling
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 08:53 am | | Hi y'all. Great discussion.
ALEX: Please check out the "Research Resources - can U Help?" board. I posted a URL which gives info on increased education prior to 1870. My take on the situation is that the people able to read & write, even among the poorer classes - totalled a higher number than most posters here realize.
Thanks for posting your info - it gave me a starting point to find out more.
CHRISTOPHER T. GEORGE: I went to bed last night thinking, "Why do reports keep referring to the Goulston Street 'writing' if the words were printed?" Lo & behold - you post the answer before I can even ask the question here. Thank you!
It makes it easier to understand the conflicting reports on the spelling of "Jews." My genealogy dabblings show wildly different ways of writing the same letter of the alphabet ... so different that years later, family tree seekers hire experts to decode signatures.
GUY: Good points. I agree totally about different countries teaching different styles in their schools ... just read about a case where it took an expert years to figure out the T in a woman's signature was really an A.
Take care,
Ashling |
Author: Christopher George
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 09:48 am | | Hey RED:
To add to my last point, I mean you no animosity. I certainly do think your posts have value, and welcome your contributions to the discussion. I just would caution you not to draw conclusions on insufficient evidence. Yes this is a case in which the extant evidence is conflicting, but as we all know there have been numerous Ripper theories expounded on shoddy or manufactured evidence. With those words of caution, I welcome your thoughts and your contributions to the dialogue.
Chris George |
Author: RLeen
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 01:45 pm | | Hello All,
The reason why I think that the writer used English as a second language is because of two disparate strands of logic.
Firstly, the writer may have been a Jewish resident of the dwellings simply serving a notice of defence on behalf of his people. If this was the case I think that the message would read thus;
"The Jews are the mench who will not be blamed for nothing."
In Yiddish, a decent, trustworthy person is a mench. If this was the actual message, and let's remember several officers took notes of the writing yet there is still two opposing schools of thought as to which version is correct, it subtly alters the sub-text from a bragging, enigmatic scribble to a frightened denial. A denial of Jewish connection (the shochet anyone?) and frightened from anti-Semitic actions, a factor so tangible that Sir Charles Warren actually feared for the safety of the inhabitants of the dwelling if the graffiti remained.
In this manner, the double negative would also make sense because the message has now become a statement of tacit pride in the form of;
"We Jews refuse to be blamed for deeds which we did not commit!"
Now, as to my firm belief that English is a second language, well I won't bore anyone by going into great grammatical detail. However, some of the polyglots among you may notice that the sentence translates perfectly into French. Similarly, Jewish in French is spelt juives, which could easily be mistaken as juwes.
Therefore, and if you are still awake, I feel that the writer was probably a French immigrant from Nances.
Trusting I have not overstayed my welcome
Rabbi Leen.
P.S. I recently produced a small sketch of the Wentworth Dwellings doorway on MS-Paint. If anyone without a photo of the said location wishes to view my sketch I will e-mail it along. |
Author: Christopher George
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 02:17 pm | | Greetings, Rabbi Leen:
You may be interested to know that Ripper suspect Roslyn D'Onston Stephenson wrote to the police on October 16, 1888 giving it as his opinion that the writer of the Goulston Street graffito was a Frenchman. He said that the script word interpreted as "Jewes" actually read "Juives," the French word for Jews, and that the dot over the "i" was missed by the police looking at the graffito with their lamps. This theory of D'Onston's was subsequently published in an unsigned article that appeared in the "Pall Mall Gazette" of December 1, 1888.
Rabbi, I for one would be interested in your I recently produced a small sketch of the Wentworth Dwellings doorway on MS-Paint that you have offered to send. Please kindly send it to me at chrisdonna@erols.com. Thanks!
Chris George |
Author: Karoline
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 02:19 pm | | Rabbi - you've certainly not outstayed your welcome, and I think you make interesting points about the convoluted grammar; is it the good old cockney double-negative, or is it the awkward phrasing of someone used to a different grammar-style?
I'm not really a polyglot (hardly a uniglot really), but I know a man who is, and he tells me 'Juives' is the feminine form, ie it means 'Jewesses'. 'Juifs' is masculine. Is this maybe an important difference? It seems very hard to make some reference to lady-jews fit anything to do with the ripper, doesn't it?
K |
Author: Christopher George
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 02:57 pm | | Hi, Karoline:
Yes, indeed, you are correct, the feminine form of the French word for Jews is 'Juives' and the masculine word is 'Juifs.' All the same, Dr. Roslyn D'Onston Stephenson, writing in 1888, made the point that the spelling 'Juives' was used to mean Jews generally. But then D'Onston, who was an alcoholic, also wrote that he thought the graffito was written on the wall in Mitre Square.
Chris George |
Author: Christopher-Michael
Tuesday, 25 May 1999 - 05:10 pm | | I must thank Karoline for her vote of confidence in my abilities to present a case; personally, I thought her post on random occurrence to be much more cogent than anything I could say.
Somewhere in the archives of this board I made a post about my confusion over the apron and writing. I'm too lazy to go searching (and my computer isn't all that powerful), so I will try to recap here. But first, some print excerpts relevant to the discussion:
Roslyn D'Onston Stephenson wrote to the City of London police on October 16, 1888. Part of his letter read:
"Try it in script. . .[n]ow place a dot over The Third upstroke (which dot was naturally overlooked by lantern light) and we get, plainly, The Juives which, I need not tell you, is the French word for Jews.
The murderer unconsciously reverted, for a moment, To his native language."
In the December 1 edition of the "Pall Mall Gazette," Stephenson expounded on this letter in an article titled "The Whitechapel Demon's Nationality: and Why He Committed the Murders." His argument was an expanded version of the above, with Stephenson determining from "Juives" and the grammatical construction of the graffito that the Ripper was either French or spoke French natively. He also complemented by assuring readers that "in France, the murdering of prostitutes has long been practised, and has been considered to be almost peculiarly a French crime." (pp. 111-115, "The True Face of JTR" by Melvin Harris)
Martin Fido, on p. 52 of "The Crimes, Detection and Death of JTR," offers this assessment of the message:
". . .consider what the message says, and how it might be interpreted if we never imagined that it had anything to do with the murders. It was chalked on the wall of a tenement building occupied almost entirely by Jews, so it was probably intended as a gesture of hostility to the neighbourhood; perhaps to specific occupants of Wentworth Model Dwellings.
And what do the words mean? With the dialect double negative taken into account, surely "The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing" is tantamount to saying "Jews are people who will not accept responsibility for anything they have done." It sounds like the exasperated racist generalization of some Gentile who feels he has just come off badly or been cheated in a deal with a Jew. And on going back to complain, he has been blandly dismissed without the Jew accepting any responsibility. . .[this] provokes the Gentile to think, "Jews are people what won't take the blame for nuffink they've done!" And he writes it up on the wall as a relief to his feelings."
So, with that out of the way. . .
The difficulty with the apron and graffito (which, for simplicity's sake I shall lump together as "Goulston") is that we know they existed together at a synchronous point in space and time, but we cannot definitively expand beyond their existence to their meaning.
The filthy swatch of apron came from poor Catharine Eddowes. We know this. It ended up in/nearby the doorway of Wentworth Model Dwellings. We know this. It may have been dropped there by Eddowes' murderer. That is almost certainly true, but we can't prove it beyond the shadow of doubt. There were some few lines of graffiti on some portion of the doorway of said buildings. We know this - although we do not know how long the writing had been there. Those four pieces are all that we have, and all we can logically justify using to present a case either for or against Goulston being the Ripper's work.
In the Home Office files, Sir Charles Warren mentions that the writing was on the "open jamb of the doorway," and makes no mention of Eddowes' apron. Chief Inspector Swanson's special report says that PC Long "found in the bottom of a common stairs. . .a piece of bloodstained apron and above it Differently spelt written in chalk the words 'The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing'. . ." Long's own report says that he "found a portion of an apron covered in blood lying in the passage of the door-way. . .Above it on the wall was written in chalk 'The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing'. . ."
(all taken from HO 144/221/A49301C; I have finally located my Eddowes files)
So from the beginning, the apron and writing were joined together, and presented as parts of a whole by the police. The question before us - was and is this perception justified?
We must begin by asking how old the writing could have been. Swanson described it as "blurred," although he never saw it. Halse thought it was fresh. As Halse saw it before his superiors came on the scene, it might be argued that it was fresh and only became blurred after being clucked over by the mandarins of the police. The relevant point has also been raised as to how long a piece of obviously anti-Semitic scribbling (for no-one ever considered it otherwise) could survive in its location, especially if it was as easily seen as Warren makes it appear. We are, I think, justified in thinking the writing was recent; most probably no older than late afternoon of September 30.
Now the more problematic questions: did the Ripper write this? Did he see it earlier and file it in the back of his mind? Did he just throw the apron down by wonderfully marvelous chance? Each of these is a relevant question, and none can be absolutely proved. So what is the "balance of probability," as Karoline says?
Modern writers on the Ripper consider Goulston to be our only valid clue as to the Ripper's home, believing he was returning from Mitre Square towards Dorset Street. If he came back this way, did he head out in that direction earlier in the day - either trolling for a victim or just wandering about? Did he glance and see "Juwes" written in Goulston Street? He might have, but consider what storing this in his mind would mean; the Ripper would have to make sure that whomever he killed that night (assuming he was able to find a victim at all) would die in a location with Jewish associations that was still convenient enough for him to pass by the graffiti and leave a piece of "evidence," all without being caught. That is, I think, almost a bit too clever, and we might well label it "unlikely."
So did the Ripper clean his knife on the apron and then throw it down at the first opportunity? He may well have, but saying that he did raises another question: why did he never seem to need a piece of cloth before? Nichols, Chapman and Stride had nothing torn away from their clothing, and the Ripper may well have wiped his blade clean on them (it being rather suicidal to walk about with a bloody knife or piece of bloody cloth tucked in the pocket of your dittoes). Why the difference with Eddowes? Did the Ripper want her apron swatch for another reason; and if so, what could that have been? To preserve as a trophy? To send or display somewhere as proof of who he was?
This leads us then to the next question: was the apron put deliberately under a piece of graffiti chalked by the Ripper himself? In view of the above, this would seem to be the more likely possibility, and yet I confess myself uncomfortable with it. What is it supposed to mean? Is it a confession, an accusation, a cry for recognition?
And if penned by the Ripper, how could he be sure the police would find it? Long, after all, testified that he didn't see the apron at 2.20am, but did see it at 2.55am. Most of us do not think the Ripper wandered about the streets for over an hour before disposing of Eddowes' apron, and that it was already in Goulston Street at 2.20am. What if Long or Halse had never seen it at all? Come the morning, an affronted resident of WMD might have woken up, angrily rubbed out the writing and kicked the apron off to the tender mercies of Whitechapel rats. All of the Ripper's cleverness would have come to naught.
And again, consider the timeframe we are dealing with. Elizabeth Stride has been murdered, and word is slowly beginning to make its way around the police. Eddowes has just been slaughtered, and the Ripper knows not only that her corpse is likely to be discovered at any moment but also that he, as a solitary man during the middle of the Whitechapel Murders (albeit in a period of relative quiescence), will very likely be stopped and questioned by any policeman he comes across. Would he really spend precious moments that could be used to escape fumbling with chalk and matches to create a baffling word picture that might be overlooked for days? It seems very unlikely.
So at the end, while it seems probable that Goulston was the Ripper's work, I find enough doubts in my own mind to keep wondering.
Sorry to have rabbited on; I am a windy bastard sometimes.
As ever,
Christopher-Michael |
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