Time-gap between Eddowes murder and Goulston Graffito

[Sam Flynn]

I don't think that graffiti ever saw the light of day. Surely one of the Jewish inhabitants would have rubbed it out the moment they saw it.

I tend to think the Jews were above all that. After the persecutions they have suffered as a people, why respond to crazy christian scribble. Rub it out and there will be more, let it alone and you show it does not affect you.

Couldn't agree more, Jon. That, and/or a tendency to keep a low profile and not complain.

[Sam Flynn]

This is understandable if the graffiti could be seen by anyone passing (as Warren stated), but not understandable if the graffiti was deep inside the tenement out of sight of the street.

That was what Warren wrote in an internal memo, several weeks later. The impression conveyed at the time, by both Long's and Halse's testimony, militates against that. Besides, a graffito "in the passage" could easily have been visible from the street (especially to a market trader setting up stall on the pavement) without its being on the very "jamb" of the entrance.

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn:

That was what Warren wrote in an internal memo, several weeks later.

If it had been on the jamb, and if Warren had claimed that it was on "the wall of the building", it would be easier to understand how such a lacking and incomplete information emerged; the jamb is sort of part of the wall.

The other way around, I find it a lot harder to accept a mistake on Warren´s behalf. When somebody SPECIFICALLY nails that a message on a wall was "on the jamb of the open archway or doorway visible to anybody in the street", I find this very hard to sidestep.

It is a very precise determination of where the writing supposedly was.

In Halse´s and Long´s case, the wordings about where the items, writing and rag, were, are a lot more imprecise and totally open to different interpretations. You will have noticed that this is so!

Isn´t this a case of either the writing being on the jamb of the archway or Warren being wrong?

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

If he wrote the graffito - to pick up on an earlier (counter)argument offered by Wickerman - why didn't he write it sooner? Why are we talking about a graffito in Goulston Street, and not a graffito in Creechurch/Stoney/Gravel Lane? I'd suggest that, in line with my "4 points" earlier, he needed to put a couple of blocks' distance between himself and the police.

Not that I believe he wrote the graffito but, if he did, the same broad arguments apply as those that support the "early apron drop" scenario.

And I don't believe he wrote it either. That adds another complication to the simplified "normal" human pattern. I do believe he knew about it it.

Mike

[Fisherman]

The perhaps best pointer to Warren being right about the writing being on the jamb is how the message was divided into five lines. Warren´s report has the message:

The Juwes are
the men that
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing

The longest portion of this message is the top one, containing 11 letters.

It was said that the letters were about 3/4 of an inch high, meaning that we will have an estimate of approximately the same for the width of them.

3/4 of an inch is around 19 millimetres. Eleven letters will make a grand total of 209 millimeters, thus.

There will also be the spaces between the letters to consider. Normally these spaces will be a bit smaller than the letters themselves, whereas the space between words will be a bit larger.

There were eight spaces between the letters, If they were, say, ten millimetres wide, then we must add 80 millimetres to the 209, giving 289 millimetres.

There were two spaces inbetween words, perhaps amounting to thirty millimetres a piece. So we need to add sixty millimetres to the 289, and we get a final score of 349 millimetres.

A normal brick would have been around 190 millimetres, according to information on the net. The jamb was two bricks deep. That makes 380 millimetres. Then we should add e seam of concrete between the two bricks, a seam of perhaps 15 millimetres, giving a total depth of 395 millimetres.

So where do we end up? We end up with a line that was 349 millimetres, written on a jamb that allowed a 395 millimetre area to write on. This leaves 23 millimetres of space on either end of the line.

If the killer did write on the jamb, then splitting the message into these five lines make emionent sense to me.

It makes a whole lot less sense to divide the text into five lines when you have a metre and a half to write on. In that case, you could - and probably would - just stick with the one line. Unless you wanted the letters bigger, in which case the larger area would offer a lot of space to write on nonetheless.

The jamb, however, would only allow for small letters, if the message was not to be divided into very, very many lines, making the text a lot harder to read and forcing the writer to either begin writing very high up - or to end up lying down, completing the message.

I think this is the real key to the question. I hope those who are in favour of simple solutions - Occam´s razor and all that - will agree.

The best,
Fisherman

PS. I know that an "l" is not 19 millimeters wide. For example. I trust the principle will be very understandable nevertheless.

[pinkmoon]

If our killer had written the goulston street message why didn't he mention anything about the two women he had just murdered?By taking time to write this message he increased his chances of been captured so that message must have been important to him but he creates doubt it's from him by not mentioning the two murders.

[Fisherman]

If our killer had written the goulston street message why didn't he mention anything about the two women he had just murdered?By taking time to write this message he increased his chances of been captured so that message must have been important to him but he creates doubt it's from him by not mentioning the two murders.

I sometimes argue "who knows what is going on in the mind of a deranged killer?"

This is one of those times when that argument works to my disadvantage.

I totally agree with you that the message is seemingly completely unrelated to the murder series!

The best,
Fisherman

[GUT]

G'day Fisherman

I think you are a bit high in your estimate of same width as height, I just measured some of mine and it is .5 to .75 of the height over a line.

Having said that I agree with the conclusion you reach.

I must add that I would not be surprised if the police overestimated [overstated?] the risk of those in the area seeing it from as distance.

[GUT]

G'day Pinkmoon

If our killer had written the goulston street message why didn't he mention anything about the two women he had just murdered?By taking time to write this message he increased his chances of been captured so that message must have been important to him but he creates doubt it's from him by not mentioning the two murders.

Makes sense to me, unless it meant something to him that we just don't get.

[Fisherman]

GUT: G'day Fisherman

I think you are a bit high in your estimate of same width as height, I just measured some of mine and it is .5 to .75 of the height over a line.

Yep - that´s why I added my PS.

Having said that I agree with the conclusion you reach.

Thanks! It´s a conclusion that is hard to esacpe to my mind. Not to other people´s minds, though, as you will no doubt shortly see...

I must add that I would not be surprised if the police overestimated [overstated?] the risk of those in the area seeing it from as distance.

An interesting thought. The police would have been very wary of matters like these, since there was already an inflamed situation. I think that Warren was probably correct in thinking there was an imminent danger of people turning on the jews when the equation of the killings, the rag and the text was solved to people´s contention. It would probably not be the correct solution, but it would be impossible to avoid having somebody arrive at it nevertheless.

The best,
Fisherman

[GUT]

G'day Fisherman

An interesting thought. The police would have been very wary of matters like these, since there was already an inflamed situation. I think that Warren was probably correct in thinking there was an imminent danger of people turning on the jews when the equation of the killings, the rag and the text was solved to people´s contention. It would probably not be the correct solution, but it would be impossible to avoid having somebody arrive at it nevertheless.

That's what I was rather clumsily saying. They were so worried that a 5% chance was too much of a risk.

[pinkmoon]

solved it!!!!!!

Just a quick one boys and girls but "Juwe " is an actual surname so could there have been any "Juwes" living in the area at the time.

[Fisherman]

Just a quick one boys and girls but "Juwe " is an actual surname so could there have been any "Juwes" living in the area at the time.

That´s been checked, Pink - it seems like a hundred years ago, now ... I know that it was found that somebody namned Juwe made a sea journey from Britain somewhere at the approximate time of the Whitechapel scare, but that was about all. No near connection could be established.

The best,
Fisherman

[pinkmoon]

That´s been checked, Pink - it seems like a hundred years ago, now ... I know that it was found that somebody namned Juwe made a sea journey from Britain somewhere at the approximate time of the Whitechapel scare, but that was about all. No near connection could be established.

The best,
Fisherman

Cheers anyway back to the drawing board .

[Sam Flynn]

By taking time to write this message he increased his chances of been captured so that message must have been important to him but he creates doubt it's from him by not mentioning the two murders.

Indeed; in fact, it doesn't mention murders at all, and its overt message is evidently one of simple-minded, and semi-literate, racism. If Jack were active in the East End now, it would more than likely refer to "Packy's" [sic].