The GSG. What Does It Mean??

[The Grave Maurice]

Gee, that takes me back. I loved that show. For those of you who don't get the Butler-Blakey reference, have a butcher's at this. And there are some excerpts available on YouTube.

[Leighton Young]

I have a theory that the term Juwes reffers to the passages in both the gospels and the book of revelations that say something along the lines of "cursed are they that call themselves jews and are not for they have made for themselves a Synagogue of satan" or something along those lines, i dont have a bible with me at the moment because i am at work... i'm working on a theory that's not been looked into before with a suspect that's not been mentioned yet either.. its all very exciting ha ha ha..

[joelhall]

my personal theory.

the word juwes is a very common one from medieval english literature. it appears in works such as piers plowman (sic), a allegorical poem which scholars & critics regard as one of the greatest early works of english literature.

from the article regarding this on wikipaedia:

19th–20th Centuries

With its old language and alien worldview, Piers Plowman fell into obscurity until the nineteenth century, particularly the latter end. Barring Rogers, after Crowley, the poem was not published in its entirety until Thomas Whitaker's 1813 edition. It emerged at a time when amateur philologists began the groundwork of what would later become a recognized scholarly discipline. Whitaker's edition was based on a C-text, whereas Crowley used a B-text for his base.

With Whitaker an editorial tradition truly began in the modern sense, with each new editor striving to present the "authentic" Piers Plowman and challenging the accuracy and authenticity of preceding editors and editions. Then, as before in the English Reformation, this project was driven by a need for a national identity and history that addressed present concerns, hence analysis and commentary typically reflected the critic's political views. In the hands of Frederick Furnivall and W. W. Skeat, Piers Plowman could be, respectively, a consciousness-raising text in the Working Man's College or a patriotic text for grammar school pupils.

Piers Plowman has often been read primarily as a political document. In an 1894 study, J. J. Jusserand was primarily concerned with what he saw as the poem's psychological and sociopolitical content--as distinct from the aesthetic or literary--in a dichotomy common to all modern humanistic studies. Four years later Vida Dutton Scudder compared the poem with socialist ideas from the works of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and the Fabians.

Introduced to the emerging university programs for English language and literature, Piers Plowman helped round out the English literary canon.

joel

[Leighton Young]

that is very interesting indeed.. thank you so much for that.. whenever you read books on the subject they always say that the term JUWES is not found anywhere else outside of ripper law..
I want to read this book and see what it's about.... do you think that the medieval context of the word has any significance?

[joelhall]

well given we know it was written in a scholarly hand, along with,

'In the hands of Frederick Furnivall and W. W. Skeat, Piers Plowman could be, respectively, a consciousness-raising text in the Working Man's College or a patriotic text for grammar school pupils...J. J. Jusserand was primarily concerned with what he saw as the poem's psychological and sociopolitical content...Vida Dutton Scudder compared the poem with socialist ideas from the works of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and the Fabians.'

there was nearby socialist groups, jewish groups and of course other working mens organisations in this deprived part of the capital. there were demonstrations, etc. no doubt jewish young men of the previous settlers would be educated within their new homeland too.

my own personal belief is that this could play a part, as the message is a defiant one, not one taking a stab at jews.

in piers plowman the juwes are blamed for putting christ to death. the word also appears in chaucer works.

course this is just a theory of mine, but i think it was written by an english born jewish socialist.

[joelhall]

this is an example of the use of the word. there is to be a joust, with jesus (ihesus).

the narrator asks 'who shal iuste with ihesus? iuwes or scribes?' (that is who he sees)

he is told by abraham 'nay... the foule fende - and fals, dome & death'

but it appears will (the narrator) is not stupid in asking his question, as just as the joust is expected to begin, jesus is ambushed into his trial by the jews:

'thanne cam pilatus with moche peple - sedens pro tribunali
to se how doughtilich deth shud do - & deme her brotheres righte.
the iuwes and the justice - ageine ihesu thei were
and al her courte on hym cryde - crucifige sharpe'

(emphasis added as taken from the language of allegory by maureen quilligan).

i cannot recall where chaucer makes use of the words, but ill look it up as soon as im able to

joel

[Sam Flynn]

So we're looking for a Middle-English scholar... that should narrow it down

[joelhall]

haha not quite.

it seems it was a text useful for its allegories, along with the canterbury tales, used in schools (albeit grammars or those which had a means to teach it), and its thought by left wing supporters and those appealing for social change, though whos not to say a scholar of course didnt write it?

however, it at least documents the use in english of this spelling outside of ripper-related study.

[Sam Flynn]

but it appears will (the narrator) is not stupid in asking his question, as just as the joust is expected to begin, jesus is ambushed into his trial by the jews:

'thanne cam pilatus with moche peple - sedens pro tribunali
to se how doughtilich deth shud do - & deme her brotheres righte.
the iuwes and the justice - ageine ihesu thei were

i cannot recall where chaucer makes use of the words...

...it seems to be Langland, Piers Plowman, quoted in the book you mention by Maureen Gilligan. Interestingly, in the same text, Langland also spells Jews as "iewes" on more than one occasion. In this etext version, the spelling is uniformly "Jewes" throughout.

[joelhall]

...it seems to be Langland, Piers Plowman, quoted in the book you mention by Maureen Gilligan. Interestingly, in the same text, Langland also spells Jews as "iewes" on more than one occasion. In this etext version, the spelling is uniformly "Jewes" throughout.

it is piers plowman, see post #483

[caz]

Hi All,

I very much doubt that the killer lived in Goulston Street, whether he wrote the message or not. But he could have been living quite close, and wanted rid of the apron just before reaching his road or may have nipped out again to dump it after getting home, stashing his knife and trophies and cleaning up.

Chalking a message at that point would have been the far safer option, and also neatly puts paid to all the objections based on him being in mid-flight, in an incriminating state and also in a state of high anxiety.

A November edition of the Pall Mall Gazette reminds us that the writing was found on the wall in Mitre Square, directly above the victim's body! Just shows how quickly inaccuracies creep in and potential myths are born.

Hi Sam,

Ex suspect D’Onston thought the same thing, didn’t he?

In English, and of course in American English common speech, the double negative is used for emphasis. For instance I came home from a hard day's work recently and my wife wanted me to go out somewhere. I said, 'I'm tired and I don't want to go anywhere'. When she tried to insist I then said 'Look, I'm NOT going NOWHERE'. David, please imagine that that you are a frenzied disemboweller with a dead lady's kidney in your pocket. Would you stop to write a chalk message on a wall (in tiny lettering) that included a double negative that actually meant a positive?

Hi Stephen,

Are you saying that the sort of person who thinks nothing of risking a frenzied disembowelling in a public place in a heavily populated area and making off with the dead lady’s kidney and a large piece of her smelly apron could never be reckless or irrational enough to write something on a wall, if the idea appealed to him for whatever perverse reason? I know you are not alone in your thinking by any means. But I just can’t put anything past this bugger, considering his known behaviour. The argument that he didn’t leave messages at other crime scenes doesn’t really work, because this wasn’t a crime scene and he didn’t drop other victims’ aprons anywhere either, but we know he did in this case.

The double negative in your example, used for emphasis, still means that you were not going anywhere. Applied to the message, and assuming a Jewish author, its meaning would be: ‘We Jews don’t want the blame for anything’ (apart from perhaps their inability to spell Jews ), and with your added emphasis: ‘Look, we will NOT be blamed for NOTHING’, which comes off a lot more arrogant and unreasonable than a genuine complaint about Jews being singled out for unfair treatment.

The simple anti-Semitic sentiment: ‘The Juwes don’t want the blame for anything’, which then becomes with added emphasis: ‘The Juwes will not be blamed for NOTHING’ does stay truer to the actual writing on the wall.

But I wouldn’t rule out intentional ambiguity because a double meaning works almost too well here: ‘The Jews will not be blamed for nothing’ (ie shall remain blameless) can so easily be turned with great effect into: ‘The Jews are precisely the men who will be blamed, and it won’t be for nothing’ [because a bloody apron in the entrance to their building will see to that].

Heck - it wasn't even signed! You'd think that if he was going to leave a cryptic message in small print, a 3D-chess knight's move away from the apron, he'd want to make it clear that "Jack woz 'ere". A crude drawing of a knife would have done, an arrow pointing to the apron, or even some sort of "mark of Zorro" - but nothing! Just a boring bit of graffiti, in a small, neat hand.

Faulty logic, Sam, old bean. Jack may have just come from a frenzied disembowelling session with organs and pinny in tow, but he surely didn’t think he needed to sign a message when simply dropping half of his victim’s pinny made it pretty clear that he was there. The argument that the pinny might never have been retrieved and associated with him is fair enough, except that it was, so we can only guess how high he would have rated the chances of that happening, on a scale of ‘could go either way’ up to ‘bound to be, in the circumstances’. If his perception was that the coppers would soon be on the lookout for the missing apron half and could hardly miss it where he left it, he wasn’t far out, was he? In fact the finder was indeed a policeman and he picked it up before he knew it was missing from the most recent crime scene.

If the killer did write the message, it must have been for the hell of it, to stir up trouble with the residents or passers-by, or to keep ‘the enemy’ guessing, because it’s a no-brainer that he could have made it crystal clear in a hundred and one different ways that the same man dropped the pinny and chalked the message if that had been his intention.

I can see the potential for cruel sarcasm here: ‘The Juwes will not be blamed’ (or the neat and legible, proudly philosophical: ‘We Juwes can hold our heads up and state for the record that we are spotless - and I am unanimous in that’ works even better here, courtesy of Mrs Slocombe ), and blow me down if there’s not a dirty old apron grinning evilly up at the little statement of simple truth with ‘I beg to differ’ writ large in murdered female blood and guts.

Doesn’t quite come off if Jack signs the whole tableau, does it? It would be more of a Laurel and Hardy act:

“Me? Steal from the cookie jar? How could they think such a thing, Stanley? Now if that doesn’t take the biscuit!”

“It sure does, Ollie. You have the crumbs on your chin to prove it.”

[“Another fine mess etc etc….”]

So I’m afraid I can’t agree with you here:

Hi How,

My issue revolves around the fact that the graffito's words aren't changed by the presence of the rag. If the words of the graffito aren't changed by it, then neither can its meaning be.

The apron was present in the doorway. That's true whether Jack wrote the message or not, and it's a "constant" - irrespective of whoever one believes was the author of the graffito. That being the case the apron, what was smeared on it, and how it got there, is irrelevant to any discussion about the meaning of the GSG itself.

It might be irrelevant, but t’ain’t necessarily so, Sam. Your mind is jammed in ‘unconnected’ mode, otherwise I’m sure you would see that logically, the meaning of one could be defined - or refined - with the help of t’other, if that’s how Jack says it ought to be. He’s the only one with the authority to say yay or nay.

Love,

Caz
X

[Stewart P Evans]

Never

But no one knows, or ever will know, if the killer wrote the chalk message or not. All we have is opinion and speculation - as witness these interminable debates.

[Sam Flynn]

It might be irrelevant, but t’ain’t necessarily so, Sam. Your mind is jammed in ‘unconnected’ mode, otherwise I’m sure you would see that logically, the meaning of one could be defined - or refined - with the help of t’other, if that’s how Jack says it ought to be. He’s the only one with the authority to say yay or nay.

Whether by Jack's authority or not, Caz, the meaning of the message is not affected one way or another by the presence of the rag - anymore than than the meaning of a modern day graffito would be altered by a piece of tangerine peel which may, or may not, have been dropped by the graffiti writer.

[Jon Guy]

the meaning of the message is not affected one way or another by the presence of the rag

But it is Sam. I`m not saying that the killer wrote the message, but, just by chance the one thing that the local Jewish community were getting the blame for during Sept 88 was the murders.

[Sam Flynn]

Hello Jon,

But it is Sam. I`m not saying that the killer wrote the message, but, just by chance the one thing that the local Jewish community were getting the blame for during Sept 88 was the murders.

My point is simply that the presence of a piece of cloth doesn't change the meaning of the message one iota. For example, as I write this sentence, there is a can of NASA "Moon Soup" on the shelf behind me - does its presence change the meaning of this post? Of course it doesn't. Ditto a piece of dirty rag on the floor of WMD couldn't possibly change the meaning of the GSG, whoever wrote it.