Why disguise the fact that JtR was educated?

[Shaggyrand]

As I recall a Chief Inspector Swanson report cited in Letters from Hell said the GSG handwriting did not match Dear Boss. I don't think GSG is anything more than an interesting piece of set decoration. It would be wholely unique for a killer to stop immediately after a murder to leave a message in a spot like that. Not next to the body or all the close by. Writing it between the two murders doesn't hold for me either, if we're talking about a serial killer. Having to leave a body unfinished to the extent that he/she needed to immediately find another victim but takes time out for a message that doesn't have any connection to the killings? Doesn't work for me. Could it have been written before the Stride murder? That might be a bit more possible and the only way that I could see JtR actually being its author.
How far was GSG from Stride's location compared to Eddowes?

[curious4]

Hello Shaggyrand

Can't remember where exactly I read this but as I remember it was connected to the fact that the writing had been wiped out. If Swanson says that the writing did not match, it sounds as though someone had said that it did.

Will try to find the reference.

Best wishes
C4

[Harry D]

As I recall a Chief Inspector Swanson report cited in Letters from Hell said the GSG handwriting did not match Dear Boss. I don't think GSG is anything more than an interesting piece of set decoration. It would be wholely unique for a killer to stop immediately after a murder to leave a message in a spot like that. Not next to the body or all the close by.

Seeing as a bobby could've come around the corner at any second, I would assume the killer didn't want to hang around the murder scene longer than he needed to. After ducking into a doorway to clean himself up or whatever, he felt safe enough to scrawl his little message and left the bloody apron there as proof he wrote it.

[Shaggyrand]

That still doesn't work. Serial killers have left messages by their victims, some do that. He knows he's going to be chased and possibly caught at any moment. So he's going to stop, clean himself up, drop the apron and write the first things that comes to mind with a painfully incriminating bit of evidence at his feet or in his pocket? If GSG actually said anything, maybe. It's just a purposefully misspelled bit of hate that lacks any context or any reference that is repeated anywhere else in the case.
Isn't it far more likely that she/he took it, did their best to clean up on the move & just tossed it in the first convinent spot with no one near? Of course there were probably a metric butt ton of other spots it could have been dumped but it seems more likely to me than any other idea.

[RivkahChaya]

I think the writer of those three letters, if we accept it is the same person, is more likely dysgraphia/agraphia than dyslexia/alexia. While it's common with dyslexia, they aren't the same and are different conditions being effected by different parts of the brain. Since it's thought that the author probably wrote multiple drafts it fits. Many dysgraphics have handwriting that is illegible with early drafts while they are still sorting their thoughts but it can greatly improve the more copies they make. It also would explain the change in the handwriting's look from Dear Boss to From Hell, he/she simply wrote fewer copies.

I can testify that different parts of the brain control handwriting, language skills, and general manual dexterity. My brother and I both have poor handwriting, and his is really abysmal, but we both are good spellers, polyglots, and he is a professional artist, while I am a pretty good amateur cartoonist. Also, I worked for many years as a sign language interpreter, and I'm a pretty fair juggler. Seriously, our handwriting is bad. Mine looks like I have a motor skills problem, and his looks like a six-year-old's.

I don't think either of us has anything wrong with us. I think we're just on the very low end of normal. My point simply is that penmanship doesn't correlate with other language skills.

And FWIW, when I taught Hebrew school, I had a student who was dyslexic, and had gone to a special school for dyslexics for a couple of years, and really worked hard (I had 12-year-olds, so she could read fairly well when I had her, but she always took a long pause before beginning when called on to read, and her mother told me she couldn't really read reliably until she was eight or nine). She had beautiful handwriting.

Seeing as a bobby could've come around the corner at any second, I would assume the killer didn't want to hang around the murder scene longer than he needed to. After ducking into a doorway to clean himself up or whatever, he felt safe enough to scrawl his little message and left the bloody apron there as proof he wrote it.

But why decide he wanted to sign his work, but then be so cryptic and just leave the apron, taking a chance it would blow away, or the police would fail to make the association? why not sign the GSG "From Hell," "Jack the Ripper," or "The Guy Who Just Killed That Woman in Mitre Square"?

[RivkahChaya]

That still doesn't work. Serial killers have left messages by their victims, some do that. He knows he's going to be chased and possibly caught at any moment. So he's going to stop, clean himself up, drop the apron and write the first things that comes to mind with a painfully incriminating bit of evidence at his feet or in his pocket? If GSG actually said anything, maybe. It's just a purposefully misspelled bit of hate that lacks any context or any reference that is repeated anywhere else in the case.
Isn't it far more likely that she/he took it, did their best to clean up on the move & just tossed it in the first convinent spot with no one near? Of course there were probably a metric butt ton of other spots it could have been dumped but it seems more likely to me than any other idea.

I've never been able to get a satisfactory answer on how common graffiti was in Whitechapel in 1888. If you threw dart at a map, and then went to that spot and dropped a rag there, and followed its drift for, say, five minutes, what are the odds it would wind up near a graffito? If the odds were anywhere upwards of 25%, I'm prepared to say "coincidence." Unless the GSG were the ONLY graffito in all of Whitechapel, or, graffiti was exceedingly rare, say, once every eight or 10 blocks in any direction, I'm not ready to see the writing as the work of the person who dropped the apron.

[Shaggyrand]

I can testify that different parts of the brain control handwriting, language skills, and general manual dexterity. My brother and I both have poor handwriting, and his is really abysmal, but we both are good spellers, polyglots, and he is a professional artist, while I am a pretty good amateur cartoonist. Also, I worked for many years as a sign language interpreter, and I'm a pretty fair juggler. Seriously, our handwriting is bad. Mine looks like I have a motor skills problem, and his looks like a six-year-old's.

I don't think either of us has anything wrong with us. I think we're just on the very low end of normal. My point simply is that penmanship doesn't correlate with other language skills.

And FWIW, when I taught Hebrew school, I had a student who was dyslexic, and had gone to a special school for dyslexics for a couple of years, and really worked hard (I had 12-year-olds, so she could read fairly well when I had her, but she always took a long pause before beginning when called on to read, and her mother told me she couldn't really read reliably until she was eight or nine). She had beautiful handwriting.


But why decide he wanted to sign his work, but then be so cryptic and just leave the apron, taking a chance it would blow away, or the police would fail to make the association? why not sign the GSG "From Hell," "Jack the Ripper," or "The Guy Who Just Killed That Woman in Mitre Square"?

Many dyslexics have amazing handwriting. Also, I did not mean to imply there was something wrong with being dyslexic or anything. If Someone got that, I apologize sincerely. Personally I am have moderate dyslexic dysgraphia and severe dyscalculia. It's big fun.

[Harry D]

But why decide he wanted to sign his work, but then be so cryptic and just leave the apron, taking a chance it would blow away, or the police would fail to make the association? why not sign the GSG "From Hell," "Jack the Ripper," or "The Guy Who Just Killed That Woman in Mitre Square"?

That's asking me to do the impossible - get inside the head of the killer. Why does the message have to make sense or have some grand meaning if it was written by a madman? On the night of the 'double event' we have several witnesses who see the victims with men shortly before their deaths, all of them Jewish. Then after the second murder a piece of anti-semitic graffiti is found by a piece of physical evidence. For all I know it could've been one big coincidence owing to the fact that these murders happened in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood but that's why I'm so ambivalent on the GSG. Sometimes I think it was genuine, sometimes I don't.

[GUT]

Welcome Shaggyrand.

[Shaggyrand]

I would think graffiti happening only every 8 to 10 blocks would be a great underestimate. It would almost have to be more common. I wonder if there's a graffiti per block estimate from New York, Rome, Paris or any other major hub city at the time, even better if divided into neighborhoods, and it could be used as a basis to estimate from based on population in similar socioeconomic circumstances.

[GUT]

Hello GUT



I believe the GSG handwriting was said to resemble the handwriting in the "dear Boss" letter.

Best wishes
C4

G'day C4

My problem with that is GSG is described as being in "a goos schoolboy hand" not a description that I'd apply ton"Dear Boss".

[Shaggyrand]

Just with a quick search I've found several references to graffiti becoming something of a problem in the 1880s. Along with the rise of corporate branding and public toilets. The oldest surviving piece in London dates from the 1880s. References to provincial police reports of graffiti becoming more common. If anyone has handy access to them, I can't find the relevant sections online, the works most cited appear to be:
J. Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (2001)
Brunton, Evil Necessities pg 193
Alison Young, Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination (2014)

Also- Hello, GUT and everyone else. Thank you for the welcome.

[Wickerman]

I don't know any other reason for the word "Boss," though-- I don't buy this one, but I don't know why that particular word, which does seem an unusual choice. I heard a theory that it's an Americanism, and the hoaxer was American (or JtR was). The word may be more common among Americans, but as far as I know (and I've read a lot of books written in the late 19th century), it doesn't mean anything other than the plain meaning; it's not a form of address like "Dude," or "Comrade," or "Guv'nor." (And I can't swear Brits really say that last one.) So whoever the writer expected would get the letter, the writer thought of as a boss, or superior, somehow.

Although we adopt this tendency label expressions like "Boss" as Americanisms, some of them originated in England, they have just gone out of fashion.
A good number of years ago I was researching Mathew Hopkins, aka The Witchfinder General. I came across an article which discussed a handful of 'Americanisms' that originated in East Anglia & Norfolk and in common use in the 17th-18th century, "Boss" was one of them.

[RivkahChaya]

Although we adopt this tendency label expressions like "Boss" as Americanisms, some of them originated in England, they have just gone out of fashion.
A good number of years ago I was researching Mathew Hopkins, aka The Witchfinder General. I came across an article which discussed a handful of 'Americanisms' that originated in East Anglia & Norfolk and in common use in the 17th-18th century, "Boss" was one of them.

If "Boss" isn't a UK term, what is the common term for a work supervisor? If I walked into a room and said "Who's the boss?" would no one know what I meant? how would a UK English speaker express the same thing?

While we're on the subject of what is this in the UK, what is "spotted dick," and what do you call what we call "braces," which is to say, orthodontic appliances?

[GUT]

If "Boss" isn't a UK term, what is the common term for a work supervisor? If I walked into a room and said "Who's the boss?" would no one know what I meant? how would a UK English speaker express the same thing?

While we're on the subject of what is this in the UK, what is "spotted dick," and what do you call what we call "braces," which is to say, orthodontic appliances?

Spotted dick will normally be a pudding with raising, can also be a Dalmatian dog, (might be a dreadful disease though).

Braces are .... Braces