Chalk users

[Steven Russell]

This is rather a negative observation, I'm afraid, but I asked myself who would have used chalk in 1888. I came up with:

Teachers,
Tailors,
Bookmakers,
In fact virtually all shopkeepers and market traders,
Schoolchildren.

My point is that virtually everyone would have had access to chalk and would have been used to writing with it. Therefore, in terms of the GSG, there is no way that the use of chalk can be used to narrow down its potential authorship.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[K-453]

Teachers

Two murders were committed in immediate neighbourhood of boarding schools.

[Steven Russell]

Two murders were committed in immediate neighbourhood of boarding schools.

But that means nothing since virtually the whole populace would have had access to, and experience with chalk.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[Lechmere]

Schools run by the School Board rather than boarding schools.

[Ben]

I agree, Steve.

Chalk was accessible to almost everyone, including those who played darts in the local pub.

[The Grave Maurice]

Or a snooker player or (my favourite answer when this issue comes up every two or three years) a gymnast. Chalk was ubiquitous. Trying to figure out who might have had a bit handy is not going to help us much.

[drstrange169]

Given the close proximity of market stalls, bits of chalk would surely be easily found in the street. Certainly children seemed to have free access to it, judging by contemporary photographs.

[Hunter]

Exactly Dusty... the market stalls.

If I was to propose that the killer might have written the message, I would venture that this was a very good spot to find a piece of chalk and then, get an idea for some mischief.

Of course, anyone else could do the same thing. I don't think that whoever wrote it, necessarily carried chalk with them.

[Adam Went]

What about builders/carpenters/general tradies?

A lot of them still use chalk for marking out measurements, etc even in 2011....

Having said that the chalk is only relevant if the Goulston Street Graffito is in fact connected to the Eddowes apron, which in my opinion it is not.

Cheers,
Adam.

[waterloo]

I have mentioned this before but I think it is quite significant. Apparently the GSG was written very small. In fact so small I cannot believe that it would be very easy with chalk. I think it was somthing like one and a half inches high. Get a rule and have a look. Anyone excited by the murder and pumping oxygen round there blood would surely have written in large letters. As another thought I know that taylors chalk has a very thin edge for detailed marking of clothes for cutting. If the GSG was very neat then perhaps this type of chalk was used. It certainly could not have been rough playground chalk.

[Jonathan H]

Adam & Jonathan

I agree with Adam, and the secondary source/school of thought which has long argued that the graffiti is probably not by the killer.

My point on another thread was not that chalk = a teacher = Druitt, but rather that Macnaghten, in 1894 and 1898, had a concern with not leaving any bread crumbs which could lead to Druitt, and so he excluded the graffiti (eg. the 'Aberconwy' version of Druitt was not quite there yet, and so Griffiths altered 'family' into 'friends' for the same reason. The importance of that tiny detail cannot be over-estimated).

By the safe distance of 1914, Mac was determined to refute the loathed Anderson -- neither mention each other by name in their memoirs -- and so Mac, arguably, now deployed the anti-Semitic graffiti (the only clue left behind by the murderer!) because it suited his polemic of exonerating the murderer as a Jew, and that there was no Jewish witness, and that hard-working Jews that night acted as loyal citizens, or British subjects (Lawende's quick glance, let alone Israel Schwartz's pell mell flight leaving a Gentile harlot to her fate to some thuggish client, conveniently no longer recalled by a police chief famous for his incredible memory.)

[kensei]

Dare I mention it- Patricia Cornwell in her prosecution of Sickert pointed out that another type of person likely to be carrying chalk would be an artist. (I don't think it was him though.)

[Malcolm X]

This is rather a negative observation, I'm afraid, but I asked myself who would have used chalk in 1888. I came up with:

Teachers,
Tailors,
Bookmakers,
In fact virtually all shopkeepers and market traders,
Schoolchildren.

My point is that virtually everyone would have had access to chalk and would have been used to writing with it. Therefore, in terms of the GSG, there is no way that the use of chalk can be used to narrow down its potential authorship.

Best wishes,
Steve.

very true, but you are also highly unlikely to find it lying in the street in pitch blackness...... or even to recognise it, it would be soaking wet and covered in dirt, plus very hard to write with whilst soggy.

written small = calm, in control and very calculating, the killer was not in a mad rush

[Hunter]

My point on another thread was not that chalk = a teacher = Druitt, but rather that Macnaghten, in 1894 and 1898, had a concern with not leaving any bread crumbs which could lead to Druitt, and so he excluded the graffiti (eg. the 'Aberconwy' version of Druitt was not quite there yet, and so Griffiths altered 'family' into 'friends' for the same reason. The importance of that tiny detail cannot be over-estimated).

Jonathan,

He wrote the man's name in both versions. In the official one, he didn't ask for, nor could he expect to receive anonymity on Druitt's part if the document was used to challenge Race and the Sun's claims about Cutbush. Writing the man's name is a bigger 'bread crumb' than leaving out a reference to the GSG because it might implicate a teacher... which he probably didn't even know that Druitt was.

[Phil H]

There is no reason to believe that the file copy of the Macnaghten memorandum would EVER have been used publicly.

Thus the names, Kosminski, Ostrog and Druitt would have remained confidential.

It is niave to believe that the Home Secretary (or any other Minister) would have answered a question in such terms in the House. What Macnaghten had done was to give anyone who needed it officially the background or supporting information to say something along the lines of:

"We/the police are aware of at least three other men who are more likely than Cutbush to ahve been JtR..."

So I do not believe that Druitt's name would have become public knowledge.

I remain convinced that the memorandum was simply and solely a "note for the file".

Phil