The Goulston Street Apron

[Phil H]

Most women in 1888 would surely be reasonably skilled with a needle. It was a necessary skill even (or particularly) in the poorest households and was probably passed down the generations, mother to daughter. Most - if not all - of the victims had known better times and run households/raised children. We have no need to consider sewing machines, really.

They had to darn socks and stockings (if they had any) and repair shirts and other clothing.

Hemming a garment, especially one in a lightweight cloth, would not, I believe, have been a difficulty.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

They may have been sold that way, or--since skirts were long--some women could use an apron to cover her entire skirt and some women couldn't and had to settle for an apron that only covered the top 3/4 of her skirt. Aprons were definitely sold in the markets ready-made. My uncles had a cart in all the local markets selling pinafores and they had a nice little sweat shop in their rented rooms where their five sisters made them... This was in the 1918-27 or so period, so later than the murders but not by lots.

My great-grandmother had a treadle sewing machine that she'd gotten second hand sometime in the 1920s, for very cheap, because everyone who could afford one was getting a motorized one, but I'm here to tell you that the difference between sewing by hand, and using a machine with a treadle is huge, and if one wanted to be a professional seamstress or tailor, I'm sure the investment in one paid off very quickly. The apartment where my grandmother lived had electricity, but it was fitted after the fact, with iron tubes that had wires in them snaking down to one light fixture, which also had an outlet, and it was very easy to overload it and blow the fuse, so my great-grandmother continued to use the treadle machine, and she could take it apart, clean and oil all the parts, and put it back together, because it was very simple, so even though she got an electric Singer sometime in the 1950s, if it ever broke, she had to have her husband take it out for repairs, and so she brought out the old one. After my great-grandfather died, she went back to using the treadle machine all the time, but by then, all she ever did were small repairs and alterations.

I make a broomstick skirt in a few hours, so I imagine very practiced people making aprons could churn them out. If they were just half-aprons, with no bib, then they did not need buttons, and button holes were something that I think still had to be sewn by hand. I do them on a machine with an attachment that takes all the work out of it for me. I can't personally sew one by hand, other than a really sloppy one.

FWIW, though, hemming an apron by hand would not take all that long, but it's also possible that doss-house attendants had sewing machines, and perhaps would lend them or rent them. I recall reading that the attendants often took in laundry during the day, so maybe they did repairs on clothes as well.

[Chava]

So even by modern standards, while Eddowes wouldn't be tall, she wouldn't be unusually short. I know quite a few women who are 5-even. The mean height in a poverty-stricken area 125 years ago was surely less than it is now. So what height would a woman's apron be made to fit? Or maybe they were sold unhemmed.

They may have been sold that way, or--since skirts were long--some women could use an apron to cover her entire skirt and some women couldn't and had to settle for an apron that only covered the top 3/4 of her skirt. Aprons were definitely sold in the markets ready-made. My uncles had a cart in all the local markets selling pinafores and they had a nice little sweat shop in their rented rooms where their five sisters made them... This was in the 1918-27 or so period, so later than the murders but not by lots.

[curious4]

Useful evidence

Hi All,

What useful evidence as to the identity of the Mitre Square murderer could the LVP cops have hoped to glean from the graffiti and apron piece found in Goulston Street?

Regards,

Simon

Hello Simon,

I suppose on the face of it, not much, apart from the fact that the piece of apron is the only thing we can be sure the killer touched not found by the bodies. We can't even be sure that he/she left it in Goulston street. It seems likely though. The graffito was said to resemble the handwriting in one of the letters the police received, but that doesn't prove anything, unless the police had some idea of who the letter writer was. As so much is missing from the police files, we can't rule anything out, except that wiping it off was considered a huge mistake by some police officials.

At the time, not much, today it would have proved very important. And perhaps in another hundred years - nano techniques and so on. I learned to write with an iron-nibbed pen and got quite a lot of the ink on me and it follows that in that process some of me got into the ink. Future cold case maybe?

Best wishes,
C4

[Abby Normal]

Hello Abby,

"Like"

C4

Hi c4
Thanks!

[RivkahChaya]

Neither. It would have been second hand. Maybe third or fourth. The only way someone of her means gets white apron is either through entering into service and then stealing the apron when she left, or secondhand, through a charity or a used clothes stall.

Making it implies that she could afford white cloth, which she couldn't. Nor could she have afforded to buy it new. Everything else she wore was secondhand, I bet the apron was as well. And she wouldn't have altered it, because without the extra material she wouldn't be able to patch it with any finesse.

I was thinking should would have made it from a torn bed sheet, or something, not from, as the expression goes, "whole cloth," but I guess acquiring it second hand would be easier. Treadle operated sewing machines had been around for a while, so a mass produced apron was probably something that could be bought rather cheaply to begin with, because there were shops that sold uniforms for domestics, and those were off-the-rack.

As far as Eddowes being short, though, I don't know that she was terribly short for her time and place. The mean height for women in the US when I was around 30 (1997) was 5'4, and the median and mode were both 5'5, or one may have been 5'5 1/2. I'm 5'5, and I always thought of myself as short, because I'm short among the women in my family, which is why it's so memorable.

So even by modern standards, while Eddowes wouldn't be tall, she wouldn't be unusually short. I know quite a few women who are 5-even. The mean height in a poverty-stricken area 125 years ago was surely less than it is now. So what height would a woman's apron be made to fit? Or maybe they were sold unhemmed.

[Errata]

Well, wait, did Eddowes walk into Walmart-UK, and buy an apron, or did she make it herself? if she made it herself, then we can be pretty sure it fit, and probably used the minimum of fabric required to make it "stylish," or whatever (albeit stylish back when it was new, which doubtfully was recent), to save money.

Neither. It would have been second hand. Maybe third or fourth. The only way someone of her means gets white apron is either through entering into service and then stealing the apron when she left, or secondhand, through a charity or a used clothes stall.

Making it implies that she could afford white cloth, which she couldn't. Nor could she have afforded to buy it new. Everything else she wore was secondhand, I bet the apron was as well. And she wouldn't have altered it, because without the extra material she wouldn't be able to patch it with any finesse.

[RivkahChaya]

If it was meant for one man only, why does it say "Jews" and "the men". And If it was personal or for someone specific, why didn't the writer just write something like "cohen is a swindler" or "dont buy from Levi" or " Sam koski is an evil jew'?

If it's part of a longer exchange, it makes sense; it could mean something like "typical Jew," if it's a response to something like "Cohen swindled me, and won't admit it even after I went back and confronted him with evidence."

Although, I'm not sure that's exactly what it is addressing. "Not for nothing" is an expression I hear a lot, because it's the English version of "Nisht garnisht," and it's not a simple double negative. What it means is "With good reason."

The Jews will be blamed "not for nothing," means that the Jews will be blamed "with good reason." The transposition of the "not" makes me think that it was written by a gentile who was making fun of a Yiddish accent and didn't get the expression quite right, not that he was using the double negative that was (and is, I think) used in the East End. That double negative is used for emphasis, and ends up meaning "The Jews won't be blamed."

Anyway, we have two parts of the phrase: "The Jews are the men," and "not be blamed for nothing."

The first part is a reiteration of the subject for emphasis, which is another characteristic of Yiddish. If it's in response to something, it could, as I said, mean something like "The guy you just mentioned is a typical Jew," but we don't know. The second part, I'm pretty confident, means "blamed with good reason."

So, what I'm getting at, is that if someone had previously written something like "Cohen swindled me. Don't buy from him." Then someone else wrote "I never buy from Jews, they're all cheats," and finally someone else, in an attempt to mock a Yiddish accent, wrote what essentially means "Typical Jew-- there's a reason no one trusts them."

[RivkahChaya]

Not exactly one size fits all, but there's an art to it. I've used a bunch of different styles of aprons for various costumes. And I can easily make any length or width apron fit, but I honestly can't tell you how.

Well, wait, did Eddowes walk into Walmart-UK, and buy an apron, or did she make it herself? if she made it herself, then we can be pretty sure it fit, and probably used the minimum of fabric required to make it "stylish," or whatever (albeit stylish back when it was new, which doubtfully was recent), to save money.

Let's just remind ourselves that this is a guy so unworried about being caught that he killed in bottle-neck situations where, if he was discovered, he would have been either apprehended or lynched.

His demeanor may have changed before and after the killings. He could have been like a hungry person who doesn't think much about stealing food, but then after he eats it, and isn't hungry anymore, starts to worry about less immediate problems, like getting caught.

[Errata]

By the way Chava, Pulaski, Tn. So it's not really surprising once you know the history of the town, and who invades to march one or twice a year. I'm actually ridiculously pleased it doesn't happen more often, all things considered.

[Errata]

If it was meant for one man only, why does it say "Jews" and "the men". And If it was personal or for someone specific, why didn't the writer just write something like "cohen is a swindler" or "dont buy from Levi" or " Sam koski is an evil jew'?


-A large(and easily visable) portion of apron is found DIRECTLY below the writing
-The killer had been disturbed by jews that night and the writing references jews
-The writing and apron was not there the first time the PC walked past, meaning the time frame supports the idea the killer took sometime to cleanup, drop off the knife and trophies and get some chalk.
-Many police at the time and afterwards beleived it was written by the killer
-the grafitti being written on the doorway of a new building inhabited mainly by jews support the idea that the grafitti had never seen the light of day as someone living there would have surely wiped it off-meaning the grafitti was probably written that night.
-no other mention of other grafitti in the immediate area(or rags for that matter) is mentioned by any one-meaning the coincidence of finding said apron/writing together as just random makes it more improbable
-History has taught us that serial killers exhibit just this sort of behavior
-The "riskiness" of leaving the apron and writing the grafitti is nothing compared to what the killer was used to getting away with.

As to the first part, quite frankly ambiguous is a lot scarier than specific. And most graffiti other than that which adorns bathroom walls is ambiguous. The swastika is still one of the most prominent icons in graffiti, and while it's meaning is perfectly clear it is not specific. I had "Jew Bitch" scratched into my car when I was 16, but it didn't address me by name, nor was it signed. And there was an ad taken out in the paper when I was a teenager lecturing about the dangers of mongrelizing the races, but it was directed at a very specific couple. Vague is pretty ordinary.

As to the rest, I pretty much have to order it the way you did, so
1: We don't know that. Surely it was found within a couple of feet of the writing, but I would only trust an arrow drawn pointing down to the apron to know for sure it was a purposeful arrangement.
2:We don't know that the killer was disrupted by Jews. We don't know if he killed Stride, whether he didn't mutilate her for a reason, if he was interrupted, and if so by whom?
3: They may have been there. I can think of a dozen ways he doesn't see it. Also, 1/3 of London is chalk, so half the rocks out there are chalk. It doesn't take long to find.
4:They did. They also thought masturbation caused insanity, so just because they thought it doesn't make it so.
5: It was the Sabbath, so while it might not have been there for a week, it could have been there as early as sundown Friday and still have been there.
6: It could just as easily be that no other graffiti was mentioned because graffiti isn't remarkable. And even the text of this graffiti would seem to be unremarkable except that it had a Ripper victim's apron near it.
7: There is nothing common to all serial killers. Not even psychopathy. Most serial killers have zero contact with the public as a whole. Those who do leave some kind of message range from a signed confession to messages so complicated and inexplicable we still don't know what they mean. There is nothing typical about serial killer warnings. And the presence of other serial killer warnings has no bearing on whether or not another killer will leave one.
8. True.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

What useful evidence as to the identity of the Mitre Square murderer could the LVP cops have hoped to glean from the graffiti and apron piece found in Goulston Street?

Regards,

Simon

[curious4]

"Like"

If it was meant for one man only, why does it say "Jews" and "the men". And If it was personal or for someone specific, why didn't the writer just write something like "cohen is a swindler" or "dont buy from Levi" or " Sam koski is an evil jew'?

You cant use the apparent ambiguousness of the message as pointing it not being from the killer because you can make the same argument if it was not from the killer. Why would anyone write graffiti ambigous? why would anyone write grafitti small?

However,As i said before, if there were more deep seated reasons why the killer wrote it like that-as in he was pissed off at being interupted by jews that night and/or disliked jews in general and/or wanted to blame them than that may be why it appears ambiguousness to us now, but of course could have made perfect sense to the killer at the time.

To me it seems you have to do more logistical cartwheels to disassociate the apron from the grafitti than vice versus.

-A large(and easily visable) portion of apron is found DIRECTLY below the writing
-The killer had been disturbed by jews that night and the writing references jews
-The writing and apron was not there the first time the PC walked past, meaning the time frame supports the idea the killer took sometime to cleanup, drop off the knife and trophies and get some chalk.
-Many police at the time and afterwards beleived it was written by the killer
-the grafitti being written on the doorway of a new building inhabited mainly by jews support the idea that the grafitti had never seen the light of day as someone living there would have surely wiped it off-meaning the grafitti was probably written that night.
-no other mention of other grafitti in the immediate area(or rags for that matter) is mentioned by any one-meaning the coincidence of finding said apron/writing together as just random makes it more improbable
-History has taught us that serial killers exhibit just this sort of behavior
-The "riskiness" of leaving the apron and writing the grafitti is nothing compared to what the killer was used to getting away with.

Hello Abby,

"Like"

C4

[Abby Normal]

That's why I say the graffito gets us nowhere. Maybe he wrote it. Maybe someone else wrote it. Maybe he was down on Jews and wanted to blame them. Actually if this was the case, he must have lived close by the GST because otherwise there were tons of other places he could have chalked that graffito. So maybe that's its evidentiary value. But the apron isn't ambiguous at all. That is one serious piece of evidence. The only piece of evidence in the entire bloody case!

I disagree that the graffitti "gets us nowhere".
I would rather say that the grafitti is a potential clue and should be regarded as such.

[Chava]

You cant use the apparent ambiguousness of the message as pointing it not being from the killer because you can make the same argument if it was not from the killer. Why would anyone write graffiti ambigous? why would anyone write grafitti small?

That's why I say the graffito gets us nowhere. Maybe he wrote it. Maybe someone else wrote it. Maybe he was down on Jews and wanted to blame them. Actually if this was the case, he must have lived close by the GST because otherwise there were tons of other places he could have chalked that graffito. So maybe that's its evidentiary value. But the apron isn't ambiguous at all. That is one serious piece of evidence. The only piece of evidence in the entire bloody case!