The GSG. What Does It Mean??

[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]

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..

[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.

[Monty]

Im more inclinde to think Blakey did it....aaaw gawd, made my day that has!

[Fisherman]

This must be the first time ever that we´we touched on the possibility to state that the Butler dunnit!

The best,
Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

A truely momentous day...till Sam invades Georgia.

...I've got my Scarlett o'Hara crinoline, and I'm ready to roll!

[Monty]

A truely momentous day...till Sam invades Georgia.

Monty

[Tom_Wescott]

...I must be losing my touch, Tom

We're all friends here, so your occassional moments of clarity will not be held against you.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[claire]

Hi Ben,
You're probably right, of course. I was just tossing round alternatives on a slow day

[Sam Flynn]

With all due respect, Sam, I'm going to have to agree with you on this.

...I must be losing my touch, Tom

[Tom_Wescott]

We know for certain that the IWMEC was a focus of revolutionary thinking, that it was home to a radical press, had influential speakers give speeches on its premises, and - furthermore - that it had a reputation for these things. The Imperial Club carried no such baggage; indeed, by it's very name it suggests a cozying-up to the monarchy that no radical socialist would countenance in a million years - which, by the way was almost exactly 500,000 times longer than the Imperial Club had been in existence.

With all due respect, Sam, I'm going to have to agree with you on this.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Ben]

Hi Claire,

Just to be clear; I agree that there's no compelling reason to suppose that the killer was any more anti-semitic than the average gentile Eastender. When he wasn't committing murder, it is indeed "perfectly plausible that he didn't give a monkey's about his Jewish neighbours". There is a crucial difference, however, between taking advantage of anti-semitism when it is in one's best interests to do so, and being anti-semetic onesself. When Reg Christie tried - or rather succeeded - in pinning the blame on the hapless Evans, he did so in the interest of self-preservation, not because he harboured any special hatred or dislike for the other man.

Best regards,
Ben

[claire]

Hi Ben,

I agree your scenarios are perfectly plausible. I just pause a little because I have this idea that JtR's sprees were quite discrete from the rest of his activities, and so the idea of anti-Semitic 'seepage' seems less attractive to me as a theory. Of course, my idea completely disintegrates if he actually was an out of control madman (in the classic sense of that term), in which case he'd be scattering shot in whichever direction. But, the apron aside, he didn't seem to, did he?

In any case, gentile-Jew relations in the East End have become the stuff of myth by now...so it's hard to disentangle most East End phenomena from any putative relationship with 'the Jewry.' But if we start to wrest JtR loose from analysis informed by a consideration of these relations, I don't think we're necessarily left with a weaker suite of analytical tools. I still think it's perfectly plausible that he didn't give a monkey's about his Jewish neighbours and worked quite autonomously from them.

[Ben]

Hi Claire,

Further, whilst JtR certainly evaded detection (and, hey, don't we know it?!), this doesn't mean that he wasn't proud of his actions and wanted, in some sense, to have some recognition for them. 'Scapegoating' to a completely different section of society to his own doesn't tally with this.

I respectfully disagree.

It tallies very well.

One can be proud of one's actions and still take advantage of a generic scapegoat if there's one available, especially if sustaining the focus in the wrong direction increased the likelihood of him remaining uncaught and "proud" of his actions for some time to come. There's a difference between pride in one's "work" and incriminating oneself.

The very fact of knowing the location and its connections to one element of the area's Jewish population speaks to me that whoever did the dumping was more likely to either be Jewish or very closely connected to them.

...Or living in very close proxmity to them and acutely aware of their presence in the district. The killer may not have known necessarily which shops were Jewish, but there's a stronger likelihood of him knowing where the Jews congregated in the small hours, especially if he was regularly on the prowl himself at that time.

Best regards,
Ben

[claire]

It occurs to me that if JtR was aware of his apron dump site (and, possibly, the GSG location), then there probably *is* a greater chance that he was Jewish himself. When I lived in Stamford Hill, I didn't have the first clue where to find Jewish anything at all. I'd stumble across the odd thing, but because they meant nothing to my day to day life, I never committed them to memory. The very fact of knowing the location and its connections to one element of the area's Jewish population speaks to me that whoever did the dumping was more likely to either be Jewish or very closely connected to them.

Further, whilst JtR certainly evaded detection (and, hey, don't we know it?!), this doesn't mean that he wasn't proud of his actions and wanted, in some sense, to have some recognition for them. 'Scapegoating' to a completely different section of society to his own doesn't tally with this. The exception to this would be if he felt that the police were sniffing around and getting close(r) to catching him...so what gentile suspect(s) was already in the frame?