'it was nice' Observation

[Adam Went]

Just as a by the by: It was not Cornwell herself who analyzed the letters, the various inks, and the watermarks. She's hardly qualified to do any of this.

NO! Really? And here I was with images ingrained in my mind of Cornwell in the character of Kay Scarpetta in her little lab with the white coat on, analysing all sorts of potions, chemicals and concoctions trying to figure out the ink pigment values of a variety of Ripper letters, and studying watermarks and the various degrees of loop in the letter G, with a portrait of Sickert hanging above her work station which she looked up at in frequent intervals and said "I'll get you, you bastard..."

Sarcasm off.

Did it not occur to you that if i'd read Cornwell's book and been aware of the tests that were carried out on the letters, then I would know who, where and when had carried out said tests? Honestly, Maria, sometimes I wonder if you're here only to try and take the piss out of all of us.

For your benefit only then - the studies which were carried out on the various Ripper letters and which were reported and published in the book written by Patricia Cornwell. That is, "Portrait Of A Killer".

Cheers,
Adam.

[mariab]

Just as a by the by: It was not Cornwell herself who analyzed the letters, the various inks, and the watermarks. She's hardly qualified to do any of this.

[Adam Went]

Tom:

I also apologise if there was any confusion. I don't mean to deny that handwriting analysis didn't exist in the Victorian era at all, of course it did, but compared to the analysis that can be done today (as much as I hate to say it, look at Patricia Cornwell's analysis of the letters, the various inks, watermarks, etc as a 21st century investigation) it was indeed "primitive" - you mention that it's an interesting point about whether handwriting was compared to a suspect, and I agree with you that it's an interesting point which should have been done. But even if they did - who would they test? As has already been said, there was so many suspects, many of whom couldn't even write in the first place, that it'd be impossible to find where to begin. I would welcome any evidence that shows that it was in fact done or at least attempted by the police in 1888, but at this stage, i'm not aware of any, and I think as much as anything else that is an indictment on the fact that the police in 1888 were not comfortable or familiar with using methods like that - or they deemed it a waste of time as they believed the letters were probably hoaxes anyway and wouldn't lead them to the killer. Surely FH holds the key here as the most likely communication to be from the killer.

Maria:

See my response to Tom and my post on JTR Forums. If you could keep the discussion to one or the other forums topics, at least as far as responding to me goes, that'd be great.

Cheers,
Adam.

[mariab]

Completely agree with all what Chris George said (wrote), esp. that the “From Hell“ letter features quite a different handwriting from “Dear Boss“/“Saucy Jack“. In my suspicion, the former 2 might have been a journalist's concoction, while “From Hell“ plus kidney might have been produced by a couple of WVC leading members. Possibly.
The notion that all “Ripper“ letters came from the killer is obviously completely unrealistic and ridiculous (how could it be otherwise, in such a publicized case), but I don't think that anyone apart from Patricia Cornwell has ever entertained this notion!

I've only perused Letters from Hell and SY investigates, but plan on studying them very carefully in August, after coming back from my next travels. Both books are in too HUGE a format to consider carrying them along on a trip...

PS.: I'm not comfortable with Adam calling handwriting analysis a “primitive“ investigative method. Call it “old“, but not “primitive“! It's still being used very capably today both in academic research and in police investigations, and for the latter, not just for ransom notes. Many people even consider fingerprinting “primitive“ compared to DNA analysis, and yet fingerprinting is often more helpful that DNA analysis in police investigations – as it's easier to get full readable prints than a really relevant DNA sample. Many “old“ methods and contraptions still work fine today. Just look at matches, which in many cases work better than a lighter!

[ChrisGeorge]

PS.: I too see a similarity between the “Dear Boss“ postscript and the “Saucy Jack“ postcard. When I'm back from my next travel I really want to take some time to finally REALLY study Letters from Hell and SY investigates.

I believe most people accept that the 25 September 1888 Dear Boss letter and the Saucy Jack postcard came from the same person. But the Lusk ("From Hell") letter is quite different and likely came from a second individual. Studying Letters from Hell though really opens your eyes as to the huge numbers of different writers who must have been involved in creating this widely varied correspondence, in all types of hands and in all types of medium. To mix metaphors, once you get away from those several missives that most people are aware of, the Dear Boss letter and Saucy Jack postcard and the Lusk letter, it really is a slippery slope.... literally as if you are on an ice floe. There are no certainties in that situation and the notion that all such letters came from the killer starts to seem totally unrealistic and ridiculous.

Chris

[Tom_Wescott]

Hello Adam,

Sometimes you're not quite clear in your wording, and your earlier post seemed to me to suggest that you were saying there wasn't much use of handwriting experts in the LVP. I merely used Le Grand to illustrate the opposite. If that's not what you were suggesting, then I apologize. I can name examples of handwriting comparison with the Dear Boss/Saucy Jacky missives, but the only one that comes to mind with the FH letter is its comparison to the Box of toys postcard by the members of the WVC and the Evening News paper, who concluded they were in the same hand. But compared to an actual suspect? That's an interesting question. You would think it would have been.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Adam Went]

Tom:

Le Grand is an entirely different kettle of fish than the JTR case, though I know you would like to believe otherwise. He is only one man, one suspect. That makes it easy to analyse handwriting samples. During the Ripper investigations the police had hundreds of suspects and no real genuine one - and half of the ones they did have probably couldn't write anyway.

I'm not saying that handwriting analysis didn't exist, because it did, along with many other primitive forms of investigative policing - but in criminal cases I believe it was still quite rare, and, since this is what we're discussing in the first place, I know of no genuine attempts at linking up the FH handwriting with any of the 1888 suspects' handwriting.

Are there any other real reasons why the writer would want to disguise his handwriting? As I said before, the only reason I can think of is that he was trying to make it legible.

Cheers,
Adam.

[mariab]

Handwriting experts have existed through the entire human history, and they have been used both in artistic (as in identifying if a manuscript or music score is authentic) and in criminal investigations.
People might be surprised to hear that in musicology, my own field, we are still identifying autograph scores (by Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi) simply by structure analysis and by identifying the handwriting. Of course we look at the water marks, but many people, esp. in the mid 19th century, are using the same kind of paper. Thus the identifying factor for a source (be it music or text) in most cases is the handwriting.

I'm not sure nor have I time to look this up right now, but I'm under the impression that handwriting experts are still allowed in court today. I think they were involved in the trial in the Ramsey case (while the proceedings of that trial in Boulder, Co. are not open for the public), while lying detector tests are NOT allowed in court in the US.

PS.: I too see a similarity between the “Dear Boss“ postscript and the “Saucy Jack“ postcard. When I'm back from my next travel I really want to take some time to finally REALLY study Letters from Hell and SY investigates.

[Tom_Wescott]

Adam,

Handwriting experts were often called to trial. I learned this in researching Le Grand, who got his butt thrown in prison largely on the testimony of a handwriting expert! Personally, I don't have a ton of faith in that myself, and far less in handwriting analysis. When I say I believe I know who concocted the FH letter, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with handwriting comparison.

In the days before DNA, even if by virtue of some absolute miracle/fluke they managed to find the author of From Hell, how do they prove that the letter writer is also the killer? Certainly he would have been in a lot of hot water but it doesn't conclusively prove that he was the killer.

This is true, but then I'm not arguing that the FH writer was Jack the Ripper, you are. The fact that he couldn't be proved JTR has nothing to do with the fact that he'd want to shield his handwriting.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Adam Went]

Wolf:

Would you agree with the statement that out of all the Ripper letters, if we are choosing the one which should be deemed the most likely to be genuine if any are, "From Hell" would top that list?

Personally I feel From Hell is more likely to have been from JTR than the Goulston Street Graffito.

Tom:

As with fingerprinting, the knowledge may have existed in 1888 but it was seldom used, barely understood and certainly wasn't involved in the JTR case. In the days before DNA, even if by virtue of some absolute miracle/fluke they managed to find the author of From Hell, how do they prove that the letter writer is also the killer? Certainly he would have been in a lot of hot water but it doesn't conclusively prove that he was the killer.

If anything, the letter writer may not have naturally had a very legible hand and was trying hard to make his writing legible at the start of the letter and slipped towards bad habits by the end.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Tom_Wescott]

The only concern I would personally have is a pretty basic one from a logic point of view, and that is why the killer would find it necessary to hide his true writing style in the first place? In the days before such letters could be properly scientifically analysed, with hundreds of other letters bearing the name of the killer or purporting to be from the killer pouring in to various individuals and departments, what could he achieve by falsifying his writing style?

I'll have to strongly disagree with this. There were a handful of men in London who were 'experts' at handwriting comparison, which is not the same at all as 'analysts' who try to create a 'profile' about the writer. Considering that the 'From hell' author would have been aware of the hundreds of placards that went up with Dear Boss and Saucy Jack on it, asking the public to identify the handwriting, I'd say the FH writer had damn good cause to disguise his handwriting! I also think Mike's suggestion is not a bad one in that he's pointing out that perhaps the writing towards the end of the letter is more natural than at the beginning. In the case of Dear Boss, the letter is written in a false hand, but the post script matches the Saucy Jacky postcard, and these are quite casual, suggesting the true handwriting of the author.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. As most of you might know, I strongly believe the From Hell letter originated from within the Vigilance Committee, and like Wolf, I'm not at all convinced that the kidney came from Eddowes.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Wolf,

Hence, my earlier assumption that the From hell letter came from the killer. I guess I'm intrigued by this particular letter, because the author decided not to send it off to a newspaper. Assuming it was a hoax, I wonder if Lusk was chosen because he had recently made the paper for starting up the vigilante committee.

Mike

Hi Mike

I'm not particularly convinced by the fact that the letter was sent to Lusk. Weren't the hoaxers who were sending the letters.... and I think we can agree that the majority of the letters were not sent by the killer.... looking to send their missives to wherever they would get the most reaction? Trying to outdo each other?

All the best

Chris

[mklhawley]

Hi Wolf,

Hence, my earlier assumption that the From hell letter came from the killer. I guess I'm intrigued by this particular letter, because the author decided not to send it off to a newspaper. Assuming it was a hoax, I wonder if Lusk was chosen because he had recently made the paper for starting up the vigilante committee.

Mike

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Really the only reason that the ‘From Hell’ letter is even considered to be authentic is the inclusion of the kidney. However, given the medical evidence, supplied by the doctors who actually examined it, the kidney was not likely to have come from the body of Catharine Eddowes and was most likely a hoax. No one, besides Major Henry Smith, seems to have taken it seriously. If you are trying to figure out who hoaxed the letter then that’s one thing but if you are suggesting that it can be used as evidence to prove some suspect (presumably Tumblety) was the Ripper then you’re barking up the wrong tree since it can’t be proved to be genuine and there is evidence to prove that it was a fake.

I do know Scotland Yard had been comparing letters with suspects (Assistant Commissioner CID Anderson requesting handwriting samples from San Francsico and Brooklyn in the case of Tumblety in November 1888), so there was some activity around this.

Scotland Yard were not looking for samples of Tumblety’s handwriting. In the case of San Francisco it was Chief of Police Crowley who, after reading about Tumblety’s supposed connection with the Whitechapel Murders, contacted Sir Robert Anderson and told him that he could supply samples if Anderson wanted them. Probably just being polite Anderson asked Crowley to send them. What Anderson was going to do with them is unclear since apparently no one at Scotland Yard considered any of the letters to be genuine. As for Brooklyn, Anderson did contact Police Chief Campbell about Tumblety but there is no mention of any hand writing samples to be sent to London so I don’t know where Mike has got this from.

Wolf.

[Adam Went]

Hi Mike,

It is interesting, but as you say, circumstantial at best as they had a limited number of suspects at the time and some of them couldn't write anyway. IMO there's no doubt that many of the letters were written by the same individual or a group of individuals all in on the cause, including some of the more infamous ones (Dear Boss / Saucy Jacky for instance), but it was difficult then and is still difficult now to narrow it down any more than that.

Cheers,
Adam.