Mitre Square: Take Two?

[Tom_Wescott]

If we're talking only about the phrase itself, I think Martin Fido's theory about its meaning is reasonable: someone may have bought a faulty item from a Jewish vendor from the nearby market, and taken it back to the vendor for a refund, which the vendor refused to give. So the customer wrote the graffito, meaning that Jews won't accept responsibility for anything when he said that they "won't be blamed for nothing". That we have no evidence that the writing was there before the murders is what makes me question the theory, not the meaning of the words. I don't see why writing it small or just above ground level points toward the Ripper writing it. I can't really assess the significance of the apron being right under the graffito, because I don't know how common graffiti was in the Whitechapel area at the time.

Very little of what Martin Fido hypothesizes in his book is reasonable, and his ideas about the writing is among the more laughable suggestions.

Other discussion in this thread about the 9 month gap between the Kelly and McKenzie murders and your previous statements about not believing in coincidences got me thinking again about a point I've made in the past. Even if we count the C5 plus Tabram and McKenzie all as being Ripper murders, the Kelly murder is the only one that took place inside, and also the only one that didn't happen in July, August, or September. The murders that occurred outside all occurred in a warmer part of the year than the one that occurred inside. Is that a coincidence? If not, that might partly explain the 9 month gap between Kelly and McKenzie. Most of the period between those two murders was during a part of the year where the Ripper was wanting to murder inside, if at all, and that greatly limited his opportunities.

Not a bad idea! I would mention that Coles was also killed in cold weather, but if we're excluding her, then you have proposed an idea worth keeping in mind.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott