Why disguise the fact that JtR was educated?

[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.

[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]

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]

Welcome Shaggyrand.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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"?

[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.

[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.

[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

[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]

My biggest problem is which of the hundred, nay thousands, of letters do we attribute to him.

We focus on four, "Dear Boss" "Saucy Jack" "Lusk" and the GSG, with maybe "Yarmouth" getting a mention now and then, or even Dr Oppenshaw the hundreds of others need to be explained too.

Hello GUT

I would put those three letters plus the "threatening" letter in the category of most likely to have been written by the killer, mainly because it seems that the police at the time did so. And also because somehow they ring true to me. Now that "Letters from Hell" has come up I feel compelled to reread it to see if anything changes. Obsessive compulsive, me.

As I have said before, I believe the deterioration in the handwriting reflects his worsening mental state, but that doesn't have to be the case.

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

Best wishes
C4

[Pcdunn]

Is the "double event" post card the main reason Stride was considered a victim? Personally, I find the arguments against her being a victim pretty compelling. Was she considered a Ripper victim as soon as the body was found, or did the "double event" missive put the idea in people's heads? Is it possible that she was initially considered a victim, but once Eddowes' body was found, doubts about Stride set in, and then once the "double event" card was received, she went back on the victim list, but no one thought to reconsider her again when doubts about the letter began?

The newspaper reports from pretty early on after "the double event" seem to think the two murders were by the same hand, and I get the impression the police believed this as well. Maybe the postcard streghened this idea, but I have not read of any evidence that Stride wasn't considered a Ripper victim in contemporary times.

[curious4]

Handwriting

Hello Shaggyrand

That's certainly an interesting point and would account for the differences in the handwriting.

Best wishes
C4