the Goulston St Graffiti

[lynn cates]

JI

Hello DD. The lunatic pork butcher, Jacob Isenschmid, was taken into custody September 12, 1888. He went to the Grove Hall lunatic asylum. For more information:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=4590

Cheers.
LC

[waterloo]

use of chalk

Again apologise for being new and a not fully up to speed. It seems that the discussions always go very deep. Yes they need to but could I ask a basic question about the GSG. Am I correct in thinking that the letters were only three quarters of an inch to one inch high. Writing that in chalk would be almost impossible certainly on a brick surface. The only chalk I can think of that would produce a fine enough line would be taylors chalk used to mark cloth before cutting. This type of chalk has a sharpened edge which would allow writing in a good style. I think there was something in the reports of the writing being in a decent style.

Waterloo

[Abby Normal]

I am entirely unsure of the graffito's authorship. There's simply no way at this removed time we will ever really know who wrote it. It's plausible the killer wrote it, for whatever reason; it's plausible he had nothing to do with it.

I will say this much: if the Ripper wrote it, then it would shore up in my mind that Elizabeth Stride was a Ripper victim. Given that one of the victims that night was murdered near a predominantly Jewish institution, and the apron of the other left next to a piece of doggerel mentioning the Jews, it's almost too easy to imagine that, for instance, the killer was trying to frame the constituents of the International Working Men's Educational Club.

In fact, it would explain a few things about the event involving Israel Schwartz to me. If the man he saw quarreling with Stride was the Ripper, and if that man yelled out an apparently antisemitic epithet like "Lipski" (here apparently referring to Israel Lipski the murderer), he may well have been trying to suggest that Israel Schwartz himself was the Ripper. Leaving Eddowes' apron next to the graffito would in that case merely be an attempt to reinforce that suggestion.

This, however, is all just speculation, contingent on the Ripper being the author of the Goulston Street Graffito, and if he did not have a hand in it the idea falls apart entirely and strains my own credulity posing it. However, so does the idea that everything in the Ripper case is just a massive, indefinable and unknowable coincidence.

To summarize my opinion: if Eddowes' killer wrote it, he also killed Stride and the 'Double Event' is confirmed. If he did not write it, then it's all up in the air.



We must be careful to apply the principle of parsimony in this as in all things. While I agree with you that it's entirely possible that the graffito was part of an attempt by the Whitechapel murderer to frame the socialists of the Working Mens' Educational Club (though I don't think it's proven), there's no need to posit a conspiratorial motive behind such an act. Any killer with a modicum of intelligence is going to take whatever opportunity he can to shift suspicion away from himself. I can easily believe that the killer happened on Stride by the Club by accident and took her there, and then, after reflection some time later, decided to write the graffito and plant the apron to cast aspersions upon the innocent socialists. He needn't have been a spymaster to do that, bent on interfering with the domestic policies of the British Empire; all he'd need was the will for self-preservation and a bit of understanding about the passions and prejudices of the English masses in his age.

In fact, as I think on it, the Ripper needn't even have written the graffito himself to have such a motive. If he came across it while fleeing the scene of the Eddowes murder and there was light enough for him to have read it, he could easily have dropped her apron there anyway. All that I believe to have been required for this thought to flicker through his darkened mind is that he also be the killer of Elizabeth Stride.

Hi DD

In fact, it would explain a few things about the event involving Israel Schwartz to me. If the man he saw quarreling with Stride was the Ripper, and if that man yelled out an apparently antisemitic epithet like "Lipski" (here apparently referring to Israel Lipski the murderer), he may well have been trying to suggest that Israel Schwartz himself was the Ripper. Leaving Eddowes' apron next to the graffito would in that case merely be an attempt to reinforce that suggestion.

Or also trying to throw the police off his trail by blaming jews after he KNEW he had been seen by a jew(s) in Schwartz (Stride) and then Lawende and companions (Eddowes).

[caz]

Apologies Caz,

I must have misread your posts over these past 10 so years.

Sarcasm doesn't become you, Monty.

But yes, there are only two options here. You have either completely misread my posts if you thought you saw a 'must be Jack's work' anywhere, or you are doing your best to make me sound dogmatic and closed-minded, when I merely entertain it as a very reasonable possibility. Either way it's rather disappointing, as I thought you were better than that.

...I'm curious to see what the typical Victorian Whitechapel graffito looked like...

My turn to be sarcastic now, Maria.

Your typical LVP graffiti artist would deface walls with messages that were schoolboy neat, legible and reasonably coherent, if not totally unambiguous, using complete sentences of around a dozen words. This form of communication was so commonplace that the GSG example would not have been looked at twice if only that damned apron piece from Mitre Square hadn’t ended up near it.

Not the large, shapeless one or two-word nonsensical or sweary scrawl we might see today, in an assortment of languages, the length and breadth of Goulston Street, motivated not by any desire to communicate, but by pure vandalism.

My Occam's razor is obviously getting blunt, because it's telling me that the simple option here is not the coincidence of two antisocial characters independently targeting the same entrance within a short timeframe, with different antisocial acts, played out for different antisocial reasons (although for Monty's benefit I'm not ruling it out as it's all perfectly possible and well within the laws of physics). It's asking me why I should not consider just the one antisocial devil, behaving incredibly badly in mysterious and reckless ways, his highly exceptional murders to perform. Truly this man was a piece of chalk short of a tailor's toolcase.

Even further removed from my Occam's razor would be the scenario whereby Jack is making good his escape from Mitre Square, and is still carrying the revolting apron piece when he passes along Goulston Street, notices the observation about 'Juwes' and thinks to himself "Ah, the perfect spot to dump this 100% incriminating piece of kit".

It reminds me of a similar argument elsewhere, that involves Stride being killed by some other throat-cutting murderer, but Jack being close enough to the scene to have heard about it, prompting him to dash off a quick ripping in the City. Such is the resistance to one horrible man roaming these streets and putting one finger up to society's rules of behaviour, that it has come to this. Occam's razor allows him to be right there in the thick of things (it doesn't really have much choice) but wants the dirty work to be shared around nicely.

Love,

Caz
X

[mariab]

Caz wrote:
This form of communication was so commonplace that the GSG example would not have been looked at twice if only that damned apron piece from Mitre Square hadn’t ended up near it.
But what documentation do we have about Victorian graffiti (in Whitechapel or elsewhere)? Anything in the literature, or even in the newspapers (the latter, obviously, post september 30, 1888)? I don't recall Jack London (or Dickens) mentioning graffiti in London, but I might have overseen it.

[mariab]

Sorry, I mean, other reports in the newspapers besides The Times of september 20, 1888 quoting the Hanbury Street graffito of “15 more to go“. (Which I'll read soon.)

[Jane Coram]

Hi Maria,

I don't think I'm treading on Caz's toes here, (sorry if I am Caz!) but I can think of one example of contemporary graffito, that might have slipped under the radar a bit, as it's a throwaway reference in one newspaper report.

The day after Polly's inquest, Jimmy Mumford said that he went into work at Barber's slaughteryard and someone had scrawled on the gates, in chalk -

'The murder was done here.'

Okay, that's just one bit of graffito, but better than a kick up the bum with a hobnail boot.

Hugs

Janie

xxxxx

[Fisherman]

Caz:

"Occam's razor allows him to be right there in the thick of things (it doesn't really have much choice) but wants the dirty work to be shared around nicely."

Ehrm, chalking an uninterpretable message on a wall is hardly "dirty work", Caz. It is - and was - a very common thing to do, and normally the owner of the house scribbled on would be a lot more upset by it than the homicide department of the local police.

I think that Monty´s pic of Berner Street is interesting in the context we are discussing. On it, we can see that the dark window shutters on the two windows closest to the camera are scribbled on. Window number three has opened shutters, and so we cannot tell if they too were decorated with chalk on the backsides. But I think that it would not be an unexpected thing. In fact, there is every chance that there was chalked messages and drawings on each and every dark space on that house.
And if there was, and if Jack had passed that house, a number of years and blocks away, how relevant would it be to couple the chalk to the apron in such a case?
What do we know of the adjacent doorways in Goulston Street? Do we have it on record if they were chalked on or not?

In a sense, I like your reasoning about the neatness in which our particular graffiti was written, and I can see why you read the Ripper in to that particular treat. But equally, I think that it can be reasoned that it goes the other way: if it was the Ripper that wrote it in that dark doorway, it would be very hard to see what he did. And under such circumstances, most writers will enlarge the letters to make them legible, not diminish them. And if the Ripper was on flight from Mitre Square - and we know he was - then why not go for just the two or three words ("death to jews", "I kill Jews", "Killed by a Jew" etc), and then get the hell out of there. Why meticulously scribble a lengthy message, when you know that each extra second may treat you to a free tour to the gallows?
Why not draw an arrow, pointing to the apron on the ground and binding message and apron together?

It was a message written by somebody who had a little time on his or her hands, and it was reasonably written in light conditions that allowed the writer to form a round schoolboy hand, carefully moving the piece of chalk over the surface. And it was a message that commented on one of the issues that would have been most debated at the time it was written - the role of the Jews in society. Though we cannot even tell whether the message was positive or negative to the Jews, we do know that it commented on them. We do not, however, know that it did in any way comment on or allude to any crime or violence in any form or shape. And to be honest, any killer with a claim to move on to posterity for what he did, would have made a lousy effort if "The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing" was all he could come up with.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Maria:

"what documentation do we have about Victorian graffiti"

How often do you discuss the ideological meaning of todays graffiti on house walls with your friends? How often do papers and tv comment on it? As long as it´s everyday, common chalk graffiti, we do not take much notice of it, do we?
Of course, today some graffiti is considered art and much is written on that. But in 1888, it was considered rubbish, and afforded very scant interest, by the look of things. There will be no scientific or art-related works from the time, concentrating on the phenomenon, just as there will not be anything in the papers. The only reasonable way to take a look at it, would be to look at old photos, and even in that department, I think that most photographers will have chosen other motives than walls riddled with graffiti.

The best,
Fisherman

[mariab]

Hello Fisherman,
as it happens, I'm one of the people who consider (“modern“) graffiti as art. And I totally read it, especially when travelling.
Fisherman wrote:
There will be no scientific or art-related works from the time concentrating on the phenomenon, just as there will not be anything in the papers.
But you see, there's been at least 2 graffitos on Hanbury Street and Buck's Row with direct reference to the murder(s), as brought up here by Monty and Jane Coram. And I'm sure there must have been more. It can't hurt to search for more graffiti and try to establish if the “cryptic“/syntactically obtuse and semitic-related style of the Ghoulston graffito was typical or an exception in Victorian Whitechapel. (Plus, Monty's Berner Street 1909 photo is not too late. Pity I can't really see the text here, as it's too tiny.)

To Jane Coram:
Thank you SO very much for the reference! I wonder if the inscription “The murder was done here“ was perhaps meant to direct the crowds to the murder site on Buck's Row?
Might I also add that I recently very much admired your so stunning portrait of Frances Coles (which is so beautiful, it might be almost too flattering)?

[Rubyretro]

I agree with both your replies Fish..

The only way that I might differ is that I think that the killer chose that doorway to throw the apron bit in, because it was a building inhabited by mainly jewish occupants.

I also admit at least the possibility that JtR wrote it -but if he did, it was well before the Double Event.

[lynn cates]

shave?

Hello All. Would I be considered a terrible boor if I were to point out that Ockham's Razor (better: "The Principle of Parsimony"), much adverted to in this thread, is defined, not on empirical objects or events, but rather on ontological categories?

Entia non multiplicanda sunt, sine necessitate.

Cheers.
LC

[c.d.]

Hello All. Would I be considered a terrible boor if I were to point out that Ockham's Razor (better: "The Principle of Parsimony"), much adverted to in this thread, is defined, not on empirical objects or events, but rather on ontological categories?

Entia non multiplicanda sunt, sine necessitate.

Cheers.
LC

Ain't it the truth.

c.d.

[mariab]

Morning Lynn,
no offense, but I'm willing to bet that not more than 20% of the readers of this thread will comprehend what on earth you're talking about. And I happen to disagree with you, as I'm convinced that the principle of Ockham's Razor can be used empirically.
I also notice that you're already frantically sharpening your knifes for your upcoming Stride experiment... (A good advice: Don't sharpen too much!)

[c.d.]

20%???? I can't even figure out if it was English.

c.d.