The GSG - Did Jack write it? POLL

[Ben]

The evidence pointed in the same direction at that time as it has done since; towards a flipable coin.

So you're saying that the police officals I referred to had no personal views on the matter at all - despite those views being on record - but were forced to pretend they did out of a desire to impress the public?

[Fisherman]

Whoa, Ben - I have to hand it to you. Thatīs two times I have subtly hinted at the value of not putting words in my mouth, but that did not stop you, did it? Once again, you tell me what I am thinking and saying, and once again, you are wrong.


"So you're saying that the police officals I referred to had no personal views on the matter at all"

Nope. I am saying that they all displayed personal opinions on the GSG, just as I am saying that they grounded those opinions on unsubstantiated gut feeling. Just like you do. And I. And everybody else who has a go at it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

According to what is known, the apron piece was not seen where it was found until over an hour after Kate was found..despite 2 officers traipsing by the location in the interval.

Thats loads of time to discover what happened in Berner Street, if, as many believe, he lived in the immediate area.

PC Long (who was one of those traipsing officers) seems not to have known too much about any murder, Mike. If he - a policeman - didn't, then we've absolutely no guarantee that Jack had heard of Stride's death, unless we assume that he was responsible for it. It's because of this that any suggestion that Stride's murder "influenced" the graffiti should be seen as a circular argument, and is another good reason why we should treat the two "halves" of the Double Event separately, as far as it's possible to do so.

[perrymason]

Hi all,

Thanks for addressing my posts Sam and Fisherman. Heres my rationale for linking the message with the apron, and it goes into something smezenen said. He thought that Jack would have gone out prepared to take organs from the crime scene. I do too. I think the apron piece was as makeshift a carrier as he could find in Mitre Square, and I think his planned use of his own handkerchief went sideways when he had to remove feces from his hand due to his own error....severing Kates colon section.

Why I think the message and writing are linked is becasue I believe Liz Strides murder was not Jacks work, but someone either on the club premises that night only, or as a regular. I think they did intend to blame Jack...as Fisherman pointed out, with that "another woman"line... and I think Schwartz's story is to provide a suspect that is certainly not from the club. Eagles claim that the front door on Berner was locked means that BSM could not have come from the club front door....and Lave and Eagle combined assure us that the yard was empty when they were in it. Hence, BSM cannot be from inside the club.

The killer of Mitre Square lives in the East End, and the commotion that goes on after Kates murder drags us again to the East End by that apron drop means there were people on the streets likely passing word of the murder or murders.

"Jack" knows he wasnt in Dutfields Yard, he knows the clubs reputation, and in sarcastic fashion, casts the guilt back upon the Jews and signs his posting with the apron piece.

Best regards all.

[Tom_Wescott]

Of course Jack had heard of Stride's death, you silly Chetcutis. He's the guy who killed her.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Sam Flynn]

Of course Jack had heard of Stride's death, you silly Chetcutis. He's the guy who killed her.

... see what I mean?

[Ben]

Nope. I am saying that they all displayed personal opinions on the GSG, just as I am saying that they grounded those opinions on unsubstantiated gut feeling.

Bad poker players justify numpty calls, raises and folds on the basis on "unsubstantiated gut feelings", Fisherman.

The better ones base their decisions on odds and percentages.

I have no doubt that the three aforementioned police officials came to the conclusions they did because they believed that's where the evidence pointed.

[perrymason]

Of course Jack had heard of Stride's death, you silly Chetcutis. He's the guy who killed her.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

To me Tom, associating Liz Stride with Jack the Ripper is as safe as assuming fish and whales are the same species because both swim in the ocean.

We are talking about roughly a single square mile of streets, lanes and alleys arent we? The amount of people that resided within it notwithstanding, thats a relatively small area of city space. Why couldnt he have learned of Liz Strides death if he was back in the East End over the 60 plus minutes he has available between the murder and the apron being found?

If he lives in a lodging house like some believe he could have dropped off his loot in a bolt hole and returned to find the tenants talking to one of their own who just came in from Berner Street about Liz. The street people alone would pass the news along. And he need not even hear of it until after the little organs are tucked away for the night...maybe some 45 minutes after the murder.

"The Juwes are not the Men that will be blamed for nothing" written on a night when Jews were blaming an unknown killer who mutilates women.... for a murder that involves a single cut and no mutilation on their property while 28 or more Jews were in attendance.

Cheers Tom

[smezenen]

Hi Smez,

First off, there's really no compelling reason to think that the organs were excised with "surginal efficiency". I'm also uncertain as to why he would need to bring a container with him when there were free rags secreted about the victim's person for that very purpose. Indeed, the fact that he removed a segment of Eddowes' apron suggests rather strongly, to me at least, that its intended function was that or an organ-wrapper. That's not to eradicate the possibility that it doubled up as a hand and knife-wiper once he got to Goulston Street.

Best regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,
My comment about surgical efficiency was intended to convey that he did it quickly and is in fact backed up by statements from the examining authorities. Dr. George Bagster Phillips stated that Jack did in under a quarter of an hour what would take the better part of an hour for him to do on the operating table. let me also qualify my statement as follows:

1-removing organs requires one to cut into the body which is what surgeons do thus we have the word surgery and it derivatives, one of which is surgical

2-Time is a quantifiable property that can be used to gauge efficiency. Less time taken to accomplish a task being more efficient than more time taken.

Using these 2 pieces of logic we can judge that the removal of organs is surgical in nature and when done by one person in 15 minutes is much more efficient than the removal of the same organs by another person in 60 minutes.

Using DR. Philips statement we can therefore say the killer of Catherine Eddows removed her organs with surgical efficiency.

Also, if there where rags secreted about the person of his victims, why would he need to cut off a piece of her apron? Unless we are suggesting that he intended to cut a piece of her clothing to use as a wrapper in which case it would be a rag but not one that is secreted which I take to mean hidden. There is also no guarantee that a woman will be carrying a hidden rag large enough to hold all the things he intends to take so if he didn’t bring one then, yes, maybe he has to use the apron piece to carry his loot. But now we have the issue of what happened to the organs when he dropped the apron piece? Did he put them in his pocket? fi so why did he need the apron piece if he can carry them in his pocket. Does he carry them down the street in plain sight? Very risky for someone who doesnt want to get caught. Or did he take them home then come back to drop the rag? why not jsut throw it in the trash and not risk being discovered with it. Taking all these questions into account it’s more than just a little likely that he would carry his own container/rag for the organs he plans to take. Also up to this point in the murders Catherine Eddows is the only victim that has any mention of fecal material observed in the crime scene reports. So this is MAYBE the first time he has cut into a bowel that contains feces and has gotten it on his hands (I say maybe because it could have been there in victims before Eddows and just not mentioned). This not being something he has planned for makes him take the apron piece to clean himself. This would also explain why he didn’t take pieces of clothing from other victims. He didn’t need rags before and would have carried one with him after.
Now back to the original question, did jack write the GSG? I would use the previous arguments about his planning to point out that if he wrote the message then he planned to do so from the start. Otherwise why would he just happen to have a piece of chalk in his pocket? He wouldn't have it unless he planned to write something. If he planned to write something why write something so cryptic and obviously miswritten (the double negative) why not just write what he wants to say plain and simple. Also why write it in Goulston Street? If he planned to write it then he wanted it to be seen. Wouldn’t it be more likely to be seen if it was written in Mitre Square. It’s my opinion that the rag was thrown into a dark doorway with the intent to hide it not as a marker to link a miswriten cryptic message to a murder blocks away. I don’t think he even seen.
Of course this is all dependent on Jack being a cunning and thorough planner and not just a mentally sick killer who attacked at random.

[smezenen]

"Jack" knows he wasnt in Dutfields Yard, he knows the clubs reputation, and in sarcastic fashion, casts the guilt back upon the Jews and signs his posting with the apron piece.

Best regards all.

Regardless of weather or not he killed one or both women, in order for Jack to write a chalk message on a wall would require Jack to have chalk. Why would he have chalk? Unless he already planned to write something he wouldn't. If he was carrying a piece becouse he planned to write something then why didnt he write it in Mitre Square. He may have gone home to get a piece after hearing of the Stride murder but the police are by this time looking for the killer of 2 women and any man walking alone down the steets in East End would be suspect. Being caught with the blood/feces stained cloth would be just as damning as a signed confession. So why go back out with it?

[FrankO]

Rather than a "guess", it's more reasonable to surmise that they came to the conclusion that the GSG was ripper-authored because that's where they felt the evidence pointed...

Hi Ben!

If I may be so bold as to butt in, the way I interpret the available information isn’t necessarily that Warren, Arnold & Swanson came to the conclusion that the Ripper wrote the graffito, but rather that:
1. the graffito would likely be interpreted as anti-semitic by the (Gentile) public, as Warren & Co themselves seem to have been inclined to do.
2. if linked to the Ripper case, which Warren apparently thought likely if the graffito wouldn’t be erased, the Gentile public would likely blame the Jews for the murders and cause a riot, because such was the tension between Gentiles and Jews at that point in time.

I have little doubt that Warren was influenced in his decision to have the graffito obliterated by Bloody Sunday and the death threats he’d received as a consequence of it. Also, the police had no choice but to consider the possibility that the graffito was written by the Ripper.

All the best,
Frank

[Fisherman]

Ben tries:

"I have no doubt that the three aforementioned police officials came to the conclusions they did because they believed that's where the evidence pointed."

...that evidence being? The murderous leaning of the text? The lingering smell of a killer in the doorway? A report, since gone missing, that a neighbour had sold a man with a bloody knife a piece of chalk in Houndsditch earlier that evening?

If you can show me that there was more to go on than the message and the apron, letīs see it. If you can show me any report, any article, any memoirs speaking about any sort of clue tying the two objects together using some sort of factual evidence, letīs get it up on the table.

If not, letīs realize that there was a discussion going on in 1888 along the lines:

-What do you think?
-I dunno. You?
- Couldnīt say.
-Itīs the darndest thing, ainīt it?
-Yep.
-Well, it WAS in the same doorway as the apron, right?
-That it was.
- But was it not blurred and old?
- Yes it was.
- No, it wasnīt.

That would contain the main bulk of the information that grounded the gut feeling they were working with.

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

1. the graffito would likely be interpreted as anti-semitic by the (Gentile) public, as Warren & Co themselves seem to have been inclined to do.

No, the result of interpreting the graffito would be anti-semitic behavior because it appeared to be written by a Jew, in a Jewish area, and was possibly a statement of Jewish solidarity. If the statement was anti-semitic, there's no way in hades it would create some sort of rioting against the Jews.

Cheers,

Mike

[Ben]

.that evidence being? The murderous leaning of the text? The lingering smell of a killer in the doorway? A report, since gone missing, that a neighbour had sold a man with a bloody knife a piece of chalk in Houndsditch earlier that evening?

That was Fisherman having a bash at sarcasm, ladies and gentleman.

He has my sympathy for the effort, but I hope he doesn't try it again.

Yes, the police may have connected the apron with the message courtesy of their shared location. That wouldn't be an unreasonable deduction, and I daresay they are more clued in to the extent of graffiti in the district than you are. However, and I speculate, they may have believed that the Jew-referencing message tied in with other indications of Jew-implicating antics on the part of the killer on the night of the double event. If you want to have an argument about that all over again, there is a relevant thread for it, and it isn't this one.

But let's not invent silly conversations that purport to come from police officials and pretend that it constitutes an accurate reflection of the manner in which the police went about appraising the evidence. That's just gauche and immature.

Hi Mike,

If the statement was anti-semitic, there's no way in hades it would create some sort of rioting against the Jews.

But Warren believed it would, and he also believed it was written by a gentile attempting to discredit the Jews.

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Frank!

If I may be so bold as to butt in, the way I interpret the available information isn’t necessarily that Warren, Arnold & Swanson came to the conclusion that the Ripper wrote the graffito

Two statements from Warren indicate a belief, on his part, that the message was both ripper-generated and intended to implicate the Jewish community. On 13th November, he opined that the murders were "evidently done by someone desiring to bring discredit upon Jews and socialists", and when speaking of the GSG on the 6th November, observed that it was "evidently written with the intention of inflaming the public mind against the Jews".

Rightly or wrongly, it appears that some of the most senior police officals were of the fairly strong conviction that the message was ripper-authored, rather than simply entertaining it as a possibility.

Best regards,
Ben