The word JUWES

[Shaggyrand]

Intriguing. Why, in the conspiracy-minded seam of Ripper suspects, has Wynn Westcott never been fingered? His biography has him plucked and ready for the pot for a conspiracy theory:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wynn_Westcott

Westcott has been pointed at a couple times. My favorite version says that Westcott and the original Inner Order were driven insane over the course of a few years by a demon. Here- I dug up the link because its too great to not share.

http://www.keen.com/CommunityServer/UserBlogPosts/Crystal_of_Light_and_Love_5/Who-Was--quot-The-Real-Jack-The-Ripper-quot/115442.aspx

Proof Pierre?

Come on now, GUT. You know better than to ask. Answering that would be telling and we can't have any of that now, can we?

[Rosella]

I notice it was a female demon who was supposedly haunting Westcott! I believe he left some papers on the occult and Golden Dawn in a Hansom cab one day, and so was outed!

[Pierre]

Proof Pierre?

Hi,

I prefer to call it scientific evidence since this is not a court room. I.e. the case is closed so what we can possibly talk about is more or less valid and reliable evidence.

I would say that the evidence that I happen to have for the hypothesis that the Whitechapel killer wrote the GSG is very interesting. It consists of three independent sources. These sources are not previeously known in this case.

The point of my statement that I believe he did write it is that when you know some aspects of his life, the meaning of the text becomes absolutely clear. So if I´m right, we will soon all know the meaning of it.

Regards Pierre

[Jeff Leahy]

Perhaps he simply couldn't spell very well...'because jew's is hard to spell'? yours jeff

[packers stem]

Probably one of the most often seen words in the area... Spell blamed and nothing wrong then maybe a literacy argument could hold water

[Jeff Leahy]

Probably one of the most often seen words in the area... Spell blamed and nothing wrong then maybe a literacy argument could hold water

It would certainly hold water if English was the writers second language and he was translating from Yiddish... The double negative suggests this does it not?

Perhaps he simply meant the 'jews will no longer be blamed because they are blamed for everything'

i.e. it was a justification for what he was doing. Baring in mind that the sweater system was being blamed for many of the Eastend's troubles, not only by the resident population but also the exploited new arrived jewish population...

Dec 1889 'I goes by the name of Abraham because Kozminski is hard to spell'

Monroe: 'A hot potato'

Yours Jeff

[S.Brett]

Hello!

I am a German and when I imagine that the Ripper was a German and he wrote the graffiti it could have the following meaning:

The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed (Die Juden sind die Menschen, die man nicht verantwortlich machen wird)

for nothing (für "NICHTS")

Nothing = Worthless, Useless, Scum, Waste = Prostitutes

Prostitutes= Gentile, not Jewish

In terms of that Jewish people dispose the rubbish of the Gentiles and the Jewish people will not be blamed for it by the Gentiles. It is okay, the killer always does what is right.

Btw.:

German/ Englisch; "If" is often confused with "when" (and vice versa).

Karsten.

[Errata]

It would certainly hold water if English was the writers second language and he was translating from Yiddish... The double negative suggests this does it not?

Yours Jeff

There is a tendency to sort of doublespeak in certain Jewish communities (mine included) but it doesn't come from Yiddish. It's a verbal tic more than anything, in order not to offend or get in trouble. It comes from life in the Pale. And Jews who come from other communities don't do it.

But it is verbal. Not written. And it might be habit, but it is not unconscious. It's used on outsiders or tricky situations in the community. That "tone" if you will would not be written out. And it would not come from translating Yiddish, which doesn't have the double negatives you might expect to find because of the conversational habits of it's speakers. I'd look elsewhere for the other tongue if you think this is a translation gap. The circular speaking habits of Jewish communities come from other influences. Not Yiddish.

Though if you asked my grandmother she would blame the language gap every time. But she was born and raised in the US, and English was her first language, so she was using it as an excuse to say awful things without sounding awful. And now I do it too sometimes when I'm in trouble. I fall into those speaking habits to confuse and buy time. And I get away with it because I am Jewish, and it's expected because people have seen Woody Allen movies. But it's a ploy. And I don't even know Yiddish.

[Shaggyrand]

I notice it was a female demon who was supposedly haunting Westcott! I believe he left some papers on the occult and Golden Dawn in a Hansom cab one day, and so was outed!

It's always a female demon that leads men and their secret societies astray.

[Michael W Richards]

It would certainly hold water if English was the writers second language and he was translating from Yiddish... The double negative suggests this does it not?

Yours Jeff

Jeff,

The double negative might also be translated as "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed..." without good reason.

Its my opinion that the author of the GSG may well have been referring to the Berner Street crime. If that's the case, then why is the apron section also there...you might ask. Well, its very possible that the apron was left there over an hour after the murder, since previous passers by the area did not see anything in that spot. "It was not there" the PC answered to a direct question about it regarding his pass at 2:20am. Which could mean that the apron section might have been left to accentuate the idea that Jews may have been involved in the Stride murder...since over 90% of those model homes were occupied by Jews, some perhaps either members of the Club or relatives of a member.

[Jeff Leahy]

There is a tendency to sort of doublespeak in certain Jewish communities (mine included) but it doesn't come from Yiddish. It's a verbal tic more than anything, in order not to offend or get in trouble. It comes from life in the Pale. And Jews who come from other communities don't do it.

But it is verbal. Not written. And it might be habit, but it is not unconscious. It's used on outsiders or tricky situations in the community. That "tone" if you will would not be written out. And it would not come from translating Yiddish, which doesn't have the double negatives you might expect to find because of the conversational habits of it's speakers. I'd look elsewhere for the other tongue if you think this is a translation gap. The circular speaking habits of Jewish communities come from other influences. Not Yiddish.

Though if you asked my grandmother she would blame the language gap every time. But she was born and raised in the US, and English was her first language, so she was using it as an excuse to say awful things without sounding awful. And now I do it too sometimes when I'm in trouble. I fall into those speaking habits to confuse and buy time. And I get away with it because I am Jewish, and it's expected because people have seen Woody Allen movies. But it's a ploy. And I don't even know Yiddish.

My understanding is that German and Yiddish are very similar but i speak neither

I'll post further on the subject tomorrow 'Rob House' clearly makes a more Definitive answer, it is late here and i have grown tired

Many thanks as always

Yours jeff

[Jeff Leahy]

Good Morning Errata

Frankly like many ripperologists I have always dismissed the Graffiti

To some extent its convoluting wording lends it meaningless.. So i've always considered the apron the important clue as it supports Jacks direction back towards whitechapel.

But recently I've reconsidered Jacks route. Far from the arc away from Mitre Square and though the back streets what if the watchman report is correct and the killer took the quickest route from mitre sq back past Aldgate station and left the whole length of Goulston street....?

Rob house writes in prime suspect: Commissioner Warren believed that the graffito was 'evidently written with intension of inflaming the public mind against jews' but admitted that the wording of the message was difficult to interpret...

'The idiom does not appear to be English, French, or German' he wrote, 'but it might possibly be the idiom of Spain or Italy'

RB: In short, Warren thought the author of the Graffito was someone whose native language was not English.

Personally my study of serial killers tends me to believe that they don't leave messages or communications by and large, but there are acceoptions to the rule...Colin Ireland for instance phoned the police...

And without doubt Rob House goes on to point out the connections between Goulston Street and the Sweater system might give the graffito a very different meaning taking Kozminski's obvious problem with spelling into account

Yours Jeff

[Errata]

Good Morning Errata

Frankly like many ripperologists I have always dismissed the Graffiti

To some extent its convoluting wording lends it meaningless.. So i've always considered the apron the important clue as it supports Jacks direction back towards whitechapel.

But recently I've reconsidered Jacks route. Far from the arc away from Mitre Square and though the back streets what if the watchman report is correct and the killer took the quickest route from mitre sq back past Aldgate station and left the whole length of Goulston street....?

Rob house writes in prime suspect: Commissioner Warren believed that the graffito was 'evidently written with intension of inflaming the public mind against jews' but admitted that the wording of the message was difficult to interpret...

'The idiom does not appear to be English, French, or German' he wrote, 'but it might possibly be the idiom of Spain or Italy'

RB: In short, Warren thought the author of the Graffito was someone whose native language was not English.

Personally my study of serial killers tends me to believe that they don't leave messages or communications by and large, but there are acceoptions to the rule...Colin Ireland for instance phoned the police...

And without doubt Rob House goes on to point out the connections between Goulston Street and the Sweater system might give the graffito a very different meaning taking Kozminski's obvious problem with spelling into account

Yours Jeff

I dismiss it as well.

But I was merely pointing out that whatever the cause of the circular language in the writing was, it was not a translation problem from Yiddish to English.

There's actually three separate dialects of Yiddish, one based on Polish (sort of) one based on Lithuanian (sort of) and one based on a kluge of Western European languages from German to French. That dialect had died out by this time. So everyone in Whitechapel who new Yiddish knew either Polyish or Litvish. And would not be able to understand the other I might point out. But neither dialect is circular.

The sort of "Well I wouldn't exactly say no, necessarily" that is sort of prevalent in some Jewish communities instead of saying "Yes." that is learned behavior, not a linguistic snafu. Yiddish doesn't support double negatives any more than English does. The choice to use a double negative comes from either ignorance or conscious choice. And that would be the same if his mother tongue were English, Yiddish, Spanish or Russian.

The wording didn't come from the mother tongue. It's not an indication that the writer spoke Yiddish. It's an indication that the writer was either uneducated no matter his mother tongue, or that he chose the double negative on purpose.

The writer might have been Jewish with Yiddish as his first language. What do I know? But it wasn't a Yiddish translation error that made him phrase it the way he did. It was something else.

[curious4]

Hate to say this, but could it be simply that the writer couldn't spell?

Best wishes
C4

[Errata]

Hate to say this, but could it be simply that the writer couldn't spell?

Best wishes
C4

Sure, it's just an odd misspelling, which is why it's intriguing. Juws, sure, Jues why not? but Juwes is like if he couldn't spell and decided that if he was going to be wrong then he was going to be spectacularly wrong. Make sure there was no chance of him being right.

And there are those people. I'm married to one. He couldn't spell conscious so he wrote "konshus" just to really spite the unspellable word. Even muttered over it "That'll teach you". But I'd like to think that's a rare character trait. Or for all I know it's common to punish difficult words by grossly misspelling them. God help us.

Point is that there are easy ways the misspell things, and hard ways. Juwes is a hard way, not a natural and fully understandable way. So of course people suspect intent. It might not be significant. Probably isn't in fact, so really it's just a guy who managed to get the spelling of an easy word all kinds of turned around. It's just so odd. It's the oddity that's compelling. If he had spelled it "Juws" it wouldn't be at all interesting.