The GSG - Did Jack write it? POLL

[Jon Guy]

Hello

Three points regarding the GSG.

Firstly, no occupants of the building confirmed the writing was there previously.

Secondly, despite all the anti-semitic writing in the area the police were determined to have it erased.

Thirdly, the message is written in lower case, as in a message rather than a statement.

[perrymason]

Hi all,

It is surely significant to this question..... how many Jewish people lived in the immediate area in the Model Homes and would use that entranceway? That writing was supposedly so inflammatory that it was considered risky to leave it intact throughout the morning while they investigated for the first time with actual daylight. Why...because in their own words it would cause a riot.

I cannot for the life of me see that message as being a clearly derogatory statement towards Jews, but since they did.... and felt it was prudent to erase what may have been a huge clue in the Eddowes investigation at least, it would be contrary to their thinking to imagine that writing was on that location during daylight hours.

Which would suggest that they might think the same of dusk timing as to dawns. Meaning......if they were correct in assuming the message would be seen by Jews very negatively, then it was probably not there before nightfall that Double Event night.

Now its not just grafitto that was written on walls, as Sam and others suggests, its grafitto that concerns Jews in some way that was written after dark on the same night of 2 murders in the immediate area with Jews being the primary witnesses at both locations,.... after the 80-90% of the Jews residing in the Model Homes might have missed it. So when did the Model Homes residents get in? Some of the ones that got home between 8 and 1am should have noticed it if it was there.....were they interviewed and asked that question?....who came home the latest at that location, and was anything noticed when entering the laneway off Goulston?

We know of many Jews in the area that night that were out past midnight.

The more you break this down the shorter the likely lifespan of the writing gets. If the Police were not incompetent and correctly profiled and assessed the risks of that message being seen by the resident Jews, then it was probably written after dark Saturday night. If it was written after dark, it was likely with the aid of a light source.

Now you have "general" grafitto written in secret in the dark within hours of the apron piece being found by it, maybe less if residents walked through that archway until midnight,....direct evidence linked to a murder that night....with the content of the message suggesting the evasion of blame by Jews.....who are the predominant ethnic group in the nights witness pool, and who owned the land a second, first in the sequence, murder was committed.

Cumulatively, there is a strong case for dismissing the messages lifespan to as little as 6 hours or so. Coincidentally?..... again?

How many "coincidences" in these cases are ignored....Harvey just happened to miss seeing Kate being killed, Pearce just happened to be sleeping very soundly that night, apparently Liz was seen assaulted just before being found dead, Long and Cadosche accounts overlap on timing, Harveys and Watkins almost do too....so do Laves and Eagles,...a second man comes across a first man near a victim and both leave the body to be found by a 3rd man,....victims 4 and five used variations of the same name the night they are murdered,......

Not all are misread coincidences.....but this GSG and apron issue may well be.

Best regards all.

[FrankO]

Secondly, despite all the anti-semitic writing in the area the police were determined to have it erased.

Hi Jon,

As far as we can tell, only Arnold and Warren were determined. And Warren was the one who ultimately decided to have it erased. He may very well have done so with Bloody Sunday and the death threats he’d received in consequence of it in mind.

Furthermore, I don’t believe the decision to erase is an indication that the police necessarily believed it was written by the Ripper. Tension between Gentiles and Jews was intense enough as it was, so Warren didn’t need any more tension.

All the best,
Frank

[Sam Flynn]

Firstly, no occupants of the building confirmed the writing was there previously.

As far as we know, Jon, nobody was asked, and none of the residents are on record as voicing an opinion one way or another. Bear in mind that oppressed immigrant minorities - Jews especially - can be notoriously reluctant to "make a fuss".

Secondly, despite all the anti-semitic writing in the area the police were determined to have it erased.

Because it was found in conjunction with a calling-card left by the Ripper, in the form of Eddowes' apron, perhaps?

Thirdly, the message is written in lower case, as in a message rather than a statement.

I can't see why a message shouldn't be written in capitals, nor why a statement couldn't be written in lower-case for that matter.

[Sam Flynn]

Furthermore, I don’t believe the decision to erase is an indication that the police necessarily believed it was written by the Ripper.

Even if it were, then at best it only indicates that the police believed as much - it can't be taken as supporting the idea that the Ripper actually wrote it.

[FrankO]

Because it was found in conjunction with a calling-card left by the Ripper, in the form of Eddowes' apron, perhaps?

Good point, Gareth. I meant to include that in my previous post, but, in the end, forgot to.

[FrankO]

Even if it were, then at best it only indicates that the police believed as much - it can't be taken as supporting the idea that the Ripper actually wrote it.

And another good point!

[perrymason]

Frank and Sam,

I see you both ignored my post that points out the probability that if they assessed the "risk" potential of an ambiguous message correctly, the message would then most probably have been written after dark Saturday night.

So, which is your belief....that the killer from Mitre Square merely drops his apron section where he finds the message that so happened to have been written that same night, containing the words Jews and Blame, on a night when Blame is a key question and Jews figure most prominently......or that he dropped the apron without seeing the writing?

Remember, ONLY this night relies on Jewish witnesses for all the last sighting details both at Berner and at Mitre, and only on this night is a Jewish Organizations private property the site of a murder that is suspected linked to Jack. And also that we dont know when the apron was placed there either...only that it wasnt found or seen there 30 minutes prior to its discovery.

Best regards gents

[Jane Welland]

Hi All

I take your points, all of them. Still not convinced it's incidental.

Sam, your 1:50 (not definitively,as you say) is very well reasoned. And if the apron fragment had been found in the company of a graffito which did not look rather like it might be connected, then I'd be more inclined to be convinced. It may very well be possible, and indeed plausible in theory, to suggest statistically that finding the apron with a graffito in the area would not necessarily infer a meaningful connection.

Except this one does seem to have one, doesn't it? That's my problem with coincidence in this case.

Yes, I guess the killer could have come across the graffito, written randomly by A.N. Other - or even not randomly, exactly, but because A.N. Other decided independently that The Juwes (generic) were to blame (for what? There are several options).

And finding this splendid graffito thought to himself 'Ah! How Opportune! I shall leave this little scrap of bloody apron here so as to implicate them further!' Or even that he didn't even notice, and the whole thing is one of Fate's little jests.

But I'm not really sure I believe that. I think, even if I cannot say definitively exactly how (there are several options - again) that there is a connection there.

Jane x

[Jon Guy]

As far as we can tell, only Arnold and Warren were determined. And Warren was the one who ultimately decided to have it erased. He may very well have done so with Bloody Sunday and the death threats he’d received in consequence of it in mind.
Furthermore, I don’t believe the decision to erase is an indication that the police necessarily believed it was written by the Ripper. Tension between Gentiles and Jews was intense enough as it was, so Warren didn’t need any more tension.

Hi Frank

Warren was determined enough to insist it was erased before it could even be photographed. He had the knowledge that the message had no connection with the apron or murder, and similar graffiti was common to the area. As did P.C. Long who put it in his notebook when he saw it. Why would the local Jewish community go nuts at something so innocuous and prevalent?

[Monty]

Its not the Jewish community that would have gone nuts Jon.

Monty

[Sam Flynn]

Frank and Sam,

I see you both ignored my post

I hadn't actually noticed/read it, Mike. I didn't ignore it.

that points out the probability that if they assessed the "risk" potential of an ambiguous message correctly, the message would then most probably have been written after dark Saturday night.

I can't see how a post-hoc risk assessment would affect the likelihood of a previous event happening in a certain way. Such things are usually confined to the quantum realm.

So, which is your belief....that the killer from Mitre Square merely drops his apron section where he finds the message that so happened to have been written that same night.

We don't know it was written the same night. Even if it were, that does not mean it was written by Jack.

containing the words Jews and Blame, on a night when Blame is a key question and Jews figure most prominently.

Why, in particular, was "blame" a "key question" that night as opposed to any other night? On another tack - when, in the 1,850 or so years since Christ had been crucified, had the Jews not been blamed for something-or-other?

or that he dropped the apron without seeing the writing?

He may have seen it, or he may not - it's immaterial, if (as I suspect) it was just "there". Further down the street, or around the corner, there might well have been chalked messages saying "Apples 2d a pound", "Cheap hats", "Albert ♡'s Sarah" or "Shop at Hymie's". Would we be so enamoured of the GSG if Jack had happened to drop his payload at one of those locations?

Remember, ONLY this night relies on Jewish witnesses for all the last sighting details both at Berner and at Mitre

Something Jack might well not yet have known - still less cared about, when his life was "imperilled every moment" he lingered on those streets (to paraphrase).

and only on this night is a Jewish Organizations private property the site of a murder that is suspected linked to Jack.

No - it's only with posterity, and with a fertile imagination, that such linkages are made. The whole area was densely populated with Jews throughout the Autumn of Terror. How many times does one have to point this out?

[Jon Guy]

As far as we know, Jon, nobody was asked, and none of the residents are on record as voicing an opinion one way or another. Bear in mind that oppressed immigrant minorities - Jews especially - can be notoriously reluctant to "make a fuss".

True, Sam, it`s a shame we don`t know if Hunt and Halse asked the residents about the GSG when they were making enquiries in the building.

Because it was found in conjunction with a calling-card left by the Ripper, in the form of Eddowes' apron, perhaps?

But if such graffiti was prevalent in the area the local Jewish community would know this so no big deal. Was this sort of graffiti really that common, Sam?

I can't see why a message shouldn't be written in capitals, nor why a statement couldn't be written in lower-case for that matter.

Perhaps, but I rarely see lower case graffiti, in neatly written lines. Not the supposed arty stuff, but the general idiot scrawls. If I may borrow one of your analogies, I bet the graffiti artist who writes f##k the Pope
does not use lower case.

[Jon Guy]

Its not the Jewish community that would have gone nuts

I`ll grant you the locals were not as civilised as the local Jewish community, Monty, but even they would have known that the chances of the rag been found by such graffiti was high.

[Sam Flynn]

But if such graffiti was prevalent in the area the local Jewish community would know this so no big deal. Was this sort of graffiti really that common, Sam?

I can't imagine why it shouldn't have been, Jon. Put it this way, I can't see that Spitalfields in 1888 would have momentarily suspended the tradition, stretching back millennia, for the common man to voice his opinions by writing on a wall.

Perhaps, but I rarely see lower case graffiti, in neatly written lines.

Yet it certainly exists, nonetheless. Besides, the boundary between a "statement" and a "message" still isn't all that clear to me.

I bet the graffiti artist who writes f##k the Pope does not use lower case.

He might do, though. I just don't see it as axiomatic that sectarian graffiti somehow has to be in capitals.

As an aside, I don't think that people were actually taught to write in block capitals back then - nor that they'd have had much use for them. These being the days of the copybook, "proper" writing etc.; the era before crosswords, and before cheque-books had become widely familiar to the common man. This consideration in itself may have a bearing on matters, if I'm right.