Why disguise the fact that JtR was educated?

[curious4]

Handwriting

I think it was on this thread the question of the GSG handwriting came up. Looking in "Letters from Hell", Evans and Skinner, I found this from the Pall Mall Gazette: "The witnesses who saw the writing, however, state that it was similar in character to the letters sent to the Central News and signed "Jack the Ripper"...

Best wishes
C4

P.S. Not made up, honest!

[Rosemary]

May as well shut the site down now with this crazy new rule about not makng stuff up.

What theories will we have left to argue over.

Angels on a pinhead, sha 'Ti bébé.

[GUT]

May as well shut the site down now with this crazy new rule about not makng stuff up.

What theories will we have left to argue over.

[GUT]

Uh, I thought we were just making crap up.

And we don't make up crap on this site.

So when does this kick in?????

[Shaggyrand]

And we don't make up crap on this site.

Well... That's me out. Now I'm gonna have to learn something and not just talk smack.

[c.d.]

And we don't make up crap on this site.

Is this a new rule that has just now gone into effect?

c.d.

[Scott Nelson]

And we don't make up crap on this site.

[Scott Nelson]

Simon clearly needed more lessons.

[RivkahChaya]

Uh, I thought we were just making crap up.

[Robert]

Hi Riv

You mean, a lot of Jewish people pronounced it with two syllables?

[RivkahChaya]

His u looked like an e because of the contour of the brick. That's why there was actually some disagreement among the police. The second e was there because a lot of people in the East End actually pronounced the word with two syllables, and he thought that "Jews'" possessive and "Jewes" plural were spelled differently.

The tortured English was an attempt to copy the Yiddish dialect of the people around (so he wouldn't get blamed, because he wasn't supposed to write on the walls); he didn't reproduce it very well, but it was a good try.

Mystery solved.

[Shaggyrand]

Hi Scott

But since Simon was born in Spitalfields, would he have produced such tortured English? And surely he'd have seen the words "Jews' Free School" every time he went to school. Could he have written 'Juwes' or 'Jewes'?

It looks like a deliberate misspelling to me if we assume that the artist is English. Maybe it imitates a spelling that was seen somewhere else.

[Robert]

Hi Scott

But since Simon was born in Spitalfields, would he have produced such tortured English? And surely he'd have seen the words "Jews' Free School" every time he went to school. Could he have written 'Juwes' or 'Jewes'?

[RivkahChaya]

15-year old Simon DeLafuente, a schoolboy and resident in the building. Pupil of the Jews Free School in Bell Lane. He got the chalk from school. He wrote it in response to his father's treatment in a business transaction at the Spitalfields market earlier that same day.

Well, there you go.

[Scott Nelson]

15-year old Simon DeLafuente, a schoolboy and resident in the building. Pupil of the Jews Free School in Bell Lane. He got the chalk from school. He wrote it in response to his father's treatment in a business transaction at the Spitalfields market earlier that same day.