Etched In Brick
A defense of the Goulston Street Graffiti as evidence...
How Brown
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One of the many contentious points and possibly one of the only clues left by the Ripper in the Whitechapel Murders is the Goulston Street Graffiti, found on 30 Sunday,1888,by P.C. Alfred Long at 108-119 Wentworth Model Dwellings, shortly after the body of a victim, Mrs. Catherine Eddowes,was found several streets away in Mitre Square. P.C. Long, the first officer on the scene, found a piece of Mrs. Eddowes’ apron immediately below a cryptic message written on the black brickwork at a height of approximately 48 inches down to perhaps 36 inches high from the ground...
This chalk written message has been the subject of many a debate as to its relevance if written by the Ripper and if in fact it was written by Jack The Ripper at all.
Briefly....lets look at some reasons people do not believe the GSG was Ripper-written.
On a couple of websites devoted to the Ripper case[ JTR Forums.co.uk and Casebook.org], there exists,from what I’ve seen, a resistence to the idea that the GSG was written by the Ripper because of some of the following:
1. The anti-GSG person has a Jewish suspect in mind and it would be very unlikely that a Jew would write a message such as the GSG.
[ exception to this rule: Mr. David Radka and the A?R theory. He has a Jewish suspect and unless he’s changed his mind,did express his belief in the GSG. ]
2. The anti-GSG person believes in an essentially illiterate suspect being the Ripper, who wouldn’t write the GSG,or at best,someone incapable of writing a message such as the GSG.
3. The anti-GSG person believes that despite not being around to see the graffiti in 1888, they know better than those who were there. The whole thing doesn’t settle well with this type.
4. The efforts and actions of the police and Sir Charles Warren,albeit considerate of potential altercations, were done out of overreaction and were only safety measures....nothing more.
5. Since the second word of the 12 word phrase has had at least 7 different interpretations, the sentence cannot make sense to us and if it did make sense, it only made sense to the fabricator.
6. Graffiti of this type was common and omnipresent in the East End. The GSG was just another graffiti..
7. Since other clues or bits of evidence are rare as hen’s teeth in the Whitechapel Murder skein, the possibility that a written message would finally occur after 5 possible murders by the Ripper before another tangible clue was found then or in subsequent years is far fetched.
Respectful of these arguments,its not the intention of this article to try and change anyone’s thinking. The article’s real intention is to look at why people don’t believe in it and see why some of us do. Well....maybe change a few minds,to be honest...
Lets start with a major-league Ripperologist’s own words and one who is either undecided or one of the anti-GSG cadre..Stewart Evans.
In his great book,co-written with Keith Skinner, Letters from Hell, Mr. Evans [ or Mr. Skinner possibly,] stated that had the Ripper simply dropped the piece of apron from Mrs. Eddowes, in the next entranceway, another cryptic message may well have been examined and scrutinized.
With all due respect to these scholars, it wasn’t left at another entranceway. The aforementioned statement in that book may be merely an objective dismissal of the GSG at best, because in the scheme of things, to these scholars among many,there’s nothing we can do about it now after the fact. In that they are absolutely correct.
On a message board within the past few months, Caroline Morris made the observation that had Long simply picked up the apron or given the apron piece to a superior and then in unison simply left that site without remarking on what the anti-GSG mindset claims or feels was a non-clue...then that would have been the end of it.
With gratitude to Caroline for bringing up this logical idea, aren’t we glad the Police didn’t ?
Regardless of your view, here are some facts and ideas about the GSG to mull over. Hopefully, the time machine that I am working on will be completed soon,so that I may take Neil back to Goulston Street to show him where he has gone wrong. It ain’t easy pointing out when my friend has gone off the track, but its worth it in this case. A trip to the Big Smoke would do us both good anyway.
As with almost everything Ripper-related in the Whitechapel Murders, divisions even among those who agree that the GSG is valid are evident.
A majority of people of those that are in the pro-GSG camp believe that this 12 word message blames the Jews of the East End for something...job displacement... Klezmer music blasting at 2 A.M.....socialists and anarchists...foreigners with a foreign language.....different looking..., the list goes on. In any event,it’s for something that they are blamed. Recently, Mr. Robert House added another explanation,that was featured in the last Ripperologist, issue 58. I recommend purchasing a copy and reading that fine story on Aaron Kosminski for his views.
Even the sentence construction is cause for confusion,since there are five variations.
The first...”The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing..” is the one recalled by Detective Daniel Halse.
The second is “The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing..” –Chief Swanson’s summary report.
The third is “The Juews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing...”–P.C.Long in an October 11th deposition.
The fourth is “The Jews are the men that won’t be blamed for nothing” from Sir Henry Smith [ found within, From Constable to Commissioner,p.153 ]
and the fifth from Sir Robert Anderson which states....The Jewes are not the men to be blamed for nothing..” This after 22 years from the time of the crimes, in 1910, which is a “definitely ascertained fact” [ sorry, Sir Robert...] to a daily paper. Anderson was not even in the country at the time of the Double Event. It may be worth remembering that the two eyewitnesses to the GSG, Long and Halse, along with Inspector Swanson’s recollection, are united in the fact that the letter “U” is the accepted second letter,despite the two ways the word believed to be there is written.....Juwes and Juews.
In fairness,its also worth remembering that despite two policemen writing down what they saw....they wrote something slightly different in each of their respective views !!!
So before we get lost in the maze of Juews and Jewes and Jews, lets look at this chart of the 6 examples of the Second Word,one of which is in French :
1. Halse----------Oct. 11----J u w e s
2. Long-----------Oct. 11----J u e w s
3. Doctor Hermann Adler–in reply to Warren--- J u e w e s
4. McWilliam [ Inspector]–report to HO,Oct. 27---J e w e s
5. MacNaughten—from memory–--------- J e w s
6. Roslyn D’onston Stephenson–------ J u i v e s 7. Foster’s comments regarding location of GSG—J u w s
A further division between pro-GSG’ers is the time when this graffiti was written. Some have theorized that the message was written prior to Mrs. Eddowes murder and quite possibly,Mrs. Stride’s murder which of course,occurred prior to the Mitre Square tragedy on the same night.
Avoiding this plausible,yet possibly more risky, concept that the Ripper had written it at an earlier hour of that Saturday when more people, who would have definitely had an opportunity to see the fresh graffiti and would probably have responded with the knee jerk assumption that the second word referred,if not correctly spelled, “Jews”,and probably removed it [ as the police did ], we won’t concern ourselves with the time it was placated.
Despite the numerous variations of the 12 word sentence [ and the two lesser heralded 11 word fabrications ], it’s the content of the sentence that remains more of a mystery than its construction.
One suspect,Roslyn D’onston Stephenson,in case you were unaware,wrote to the City of London Police on October 16th, a fortnight and two days after the message was discovered,and kindly “explained” to the police that they were not interperting the Second Word properly. This letter, which emanated from the London Hospital where “Sudden Death” was recuperating from nervous exhaustion,would not be the only time our erudite polymath would appear on the scene to correct the misinterpertation of the word. In the front page article,no less,of the Pall Mall Gazette,of December 1st,1888, Stephenson wrote “The Whitechapel Demon’s Nationality: and Why He Committed The Murders..”. In the article,he elaborates rather at length on the second word. One is reminded of Shakespeare’s phrase...”methinks the lady doth protest too much...” in reading the story. Could he have been too informative about the second word and possibly been the author himself ?
We can all probably agree that the decision to remove the GSG by Sir Charles Warren upon being informed by Supt. Arnold as to the assumed syntax referring to Jews was the right one. The state of mind in the East End in the thinking of these policemen was at critical stage...one more “ Leather Apron” may have unleashed violence in frightening proportion.
So lets look back at the brief list of reasons that those who deny the relevance of the GSG have to offer....and offer our side of the story....
1...Certainly a Jew who had been schooled in London and one who was not a recent arrival could have placed the message there. Most of the Jewish suspects or at least the most prominent, [Cohen [ of whom I understand spoke nothing but Yiddish...correct me if I am wrong ] and Kosminski,were not the sort of persons we usually envision leaving messages,nor commit crimes of this proportion. Nevertheless,we might want to leave those points as they are for another day. It’s probably safer to say that a native-born Jew could certainly write the GSG.
2. This is a matter of opinion,rather than fact,that the Ripper was illiterate. Nothing to prove to this type of naysayer. Thats their prerogrative...
3. It’s a prerogative that many people take,that the GSG isn’t that important. A common sense assessment says that if the police went to that much trouble about it...it meant something. The police were there...and none of us were.
4. This is true. The actions of Warren and the police were justified ,because they saw things differently in 1888 and the GSG as a potential clue. Many people lament that the GSG should have been photographed. Perhaps Warren felt by simply transcribing it down on paper,they had “enough” to work with. I hope they didn’t translate any other case’s clues or messages as poorly as they did with this case ! It may have also been as equally frustrating to us,as well as those in 1888, to try and interpret what the message meant even with a photograph. The only guarantee is that the actual sentence construction would have been a mystery no more.
5. Its actually irrelevant if anyone makes or made sense of it,now or then. Whats relevant is that it appeared to be relevant,at that time and was treated as a clue,albeit a misunderstood one,not to mention botched in the transcribing.
6. There is no reference anywhere at any time, by any police official,journalist,or anyone else back in 1888 to corroborate the assumption that the Wentworth Building had graffiti on or within it and furthermore,either building to the left or right of the Model Dwellings in addition, on the night of 30 September, 1888....period. To say that it did is not true. In fact,its become somewhat etched in brick...er, stone, that there were. Certainly graffiti in the East End existed..but none of it proven to be present at the address in question.
7. No one can say for certain that any other clues weren’t overlooked,if in fact,there in the first place. Graffiti at the scene of a murder isn’t a common practice. However,in this instance,the GSG was found side to side, so to speak, with a definite concrete bit of evidence...Mrs. Eddowes’ apron.
The apron could have been deposited on one of the possible routes that the Ripper took from Mitre Square to Goulston Street. It wasn’t. Somehow it wound up underneath a graffiti that was freshly made at the Wentworth Building.
Instead of winding up on...
1. Aldgate High Street
2. Houndsditch Street
3. New Goulston Street
4. Wentworth Street
5. Middlesex Street
6. Gravel Lane
7. Stoney Lane
8. Harrow Lane
9. Duke Street
......it wound up on Goulston Street.
En route from Mitre Square to Goulston Street,the apron was used quite possibly for cleaning the Ripper’s hands and/ or knife from the carnage dealt to Mrs. Eddowes. Thats understandable.
However,it doesn’t take 10 minutes to wipe off one’s hands or knifeblade, especially since pristine conditions couldn’t be expected if on the move. Thats one thing we know the Ripper was doing that night...he was definitely on the move to Goulston Street, back into the center of Whitechapel.
Considering the time from the murder to the discovery of the apron piece [ approx. 70 minutes ], it is stretching the imagination to say the least that a rat...a dog...or even the wind would blow the rag to that precise location. The Ripper could have dropped it anywhere....but he didn’t,did he? Even the notion,with all due respect,that the Ripper ripped off the apron piece to serve in a hygienic capacity,as Mr. Des McKenna postulated a few years ago,is speculation. Why wait until this point...under the freshly scribed graffiti....to relieve one’s self ?
The only thing we know,after all this....is this:
The apron piece was found underneath a freshly written graffiti and that the Ripper was the last human being to have had his hands on that apron piece....rats and dogs and pussy cats and a hurricane level wind notwithstanding.–--
Lets look at the map on display here for a moment. It’s the escape route from Mitre Square to Goulston Street.
From the first step toward Goulston Street, the Ripper had numerous opportunities to write a message on the various buildings en route from Mitre Square. Which route he took is open to speculation.
What isn’t speculation is that he had time to drop the apron and write the message on any of the aforementioned streets.
Here are the three reasons that I feel that the message was left on the Model Dwellings on that night and not on St.Botolph’s Church,for example....otherwise,we may have been discussing the St.Botolphs’s Church Chalked Correspondence,or some such title as that.....but we aren’t.
While no one can even today after 116 ½ years decipher the message’s meaning without a degree of conjecture, perhaps we can understand the reason why the message was placed where it was or rather, selected, to be at that spot. The first reason is the easiest...the rain..... It rained that Saturday night in the East End. Theoretically,even with more available time to apply a message on the side of any building in Mitre Square,the chances that the Ripper could have found a dry wall or writing surface to leave the message upon may not have existed. Chalk does not apply to wet surfaces,as you well know. Evidently,he either knew this,attempted a wall-writing,or had planned the GSG for another location. In any event,the rain was more likely than not a factor in the Ripper’s selection of another site for the message.
The second reason is the distance from Mitre Square to a secure spot sufficient in distance from the murder spot in order to write the message.
The Ripper could have possibly placed a message and left the apron along with it at any of the other traveled streets,which were closer to Mitre Square than Goulston Street was. There had to be one surface available along the way for him to write upon,the rain notwithstanding,such as the inside of another doorway,possibly up on Houndsditch Street.
The Ripper, in my opinion, decided to go this extra distance for the extra time it would afford to construct his message and in a legible hand...with the rain possibly contributing to his decision.. Halse mentions the legibility of the graffiti as many of you know. Few graffiti or messages throughout history,if any,have ever had someone discuss the quality of a message as Halse did.
At the Wentworth Building, the Ripper’s neatly constructed message took 30 to 45 seconds to fabricate. An old article in Ripperologist that I put together discusses the mechanics of writing three or four different messages. The longest to perform,a legible and easily understood message,took 30-45 seconds on several attempts on my part. The second word,a persistent point of confusion in the graffiti,could still be misunderstood even after I had told people what I had just written. I feel strongly that the subsequent differences of opinion by the police in their transcription occurred precisely because it was the easiest word to misread. The police on the spot were as prone to making mistakes as anyone else and when faced with the task of transcription,simple made a mistake that people in the 21st Century do likewise. In addition,the two eyewitnesses with their slight differences in spelling probably make the other variations irrelevant. The others,like Anderson and Smith,were based on what the reporters or editors of their newspaper articles and memoirs wrote down. We don’t know for certain if it was a mistaken spelling by the editors or reporters and overlooked by Anderson and Smith either....or if it was as they think they remembered it in the final analysis. The GSG was not the central idea of either Anderson’s article or Smith’s memoirs, which may have been a reason why it wasn’t treated with the importance I’m doing here.
I estimate that the Ripper had at least 115 feet of space/distance from any other persons to complete the graffiti without being detected. Thats how far someone can walk at a moderate pace in 45 seconds...at least.
So thats another reason why I believe the Ripper went to write the GSG as far away from Mitre Square as he did...the distance from murder site to freedom to write. The third reason is the illumination.
Recently, a request as to the available,non ambient lighting was answered [ April 2005 ] on a message board by Mr. Robert Clack and “Mephisto”,as well as a response by Mr. Frank Van Oploo. There was a source of light that shone on the set of 5 buildings that comprise the Wentworth Building “complex”. This light was on the corner of New Goulston Street.
I think that in this case of the available lighting,the probability is more likely than not,that the lights were in operation on the night in question. Nowhere have I seen any mention as to the absence of lighting that night and in particular,around 3 A.M. when P.C.Long came across the apron piece. Lights are “supposed” to be working on city streets and the only time we notice them is when they are not. The photo that Mr.Clack provided and Mr. Mephisto’s and Van Oploo’s comments on them have been most helpful in this matter.
It appears that sufficient light was available to write a graffiti on the inside of the building from these lights. Knowing that it rained earlier and around the time of another murder [ Stride’s over on Berner Street...], it may have been cloudy, too cloudy, that any ambient moonlight that was possibly present was how the Ripper was able to see what he was writing on the wall. Of course,he may have carried a box of matches too....
A further speculation is that the message was left here,irrespective of lighting or distance,because the building housed a lot of Jews and the message is assumed to say “Jews’ in its unusual and varied spellings. This may be true also. I’m not sure if there were any other buildings that “housed’ Jews in such a predominant fashion, en route from Mitre Square,but there may have been.. Nevertheless,its a ‘good” reason to think that it was placed at the Wentworth as any.
Lets look at the photo below and allow me to explain the markings.....
The photo is marked to show height and in particular,the door jamb.
The message was more than likely placated to the right of the door jamb on the black facade to the right of the word “door jamb”. The reasoning for my statement is that had anyone come up upon him while writing it,he could have scurried up the stairwell unseen. With his back to the street, he would have placed himself in a risky position from three directions. Not only being visible by someone coming south from Wentworth or anyone coming north from the direction of Whitechapel High Street,but also from New Goulston Street behind him. A bit risky,even for a risk-taking killer. Not to forget that it had rained previously that night and the front of the buildings all along Goulston Street were probably too wet or wet enough to discourage a wall-writing....
Like many other Ripperologists,I believe that the intentional deposit of the apron was an act of “connectivity”,similar to the removal of a piece of a victims’[ a cab driver ] shirt by the American Zodiac Killer of the 1960-1970's. In that case,the piece of apron was sent on to the press to verify who killed the unfortunate cab driver.
In conclusion,allow me to summarize:
1. Location- Selected primarily for rain on surrounding buildings in Mitre Square which prevented an easier association of intended message and disposal of apron....distance: If the rain wasn’t the reason,then distance from the murder in Mitre Square to a site that was dry was....... and for lighting: Lights on Goulston Street and the corner of New Goulston St. that did supply light for the 108-119 address and possibly ambient moonlight.
2. Condition- Halse was a witness to the GSG. To me,he is the best witness that was there due to one important factor. Of all the people who had the opportunity to assess the GSG,he and he alone mentions its’ “freshness” and,not to forget,its size.... Exactly what is “fresh” in regard to a graffiti ?
Remembering the rain that had fallen that night, not only would any other graffiti that might have been around been affected,but the description of “fresh” is not how an average graffiti or one irrelevant would be described. “Fresh” is current...its newly placed...its not oxidizing from light...its not smeared from shoulders or knees or by hands in an attempt to erase it. Halse is, in my mind,the most observant of all the witnesses known to have seen the GSG,and to me again,is the only “expert” on the GSG if that title can be given to any of the police present that night.
3. Content- The GSG has a message that remains buried with its author....end of story. All else,from the two attempts by Roslyn D’onston Stephenson to anyone elses’ ideas,are conjectures for now. It remains to be seen if other similar graffiti are written in syntax such as this one was. We’ve all heard the examples of a child possibly being behind this graffiti...a miscreant midget...or an anti-Semite with the sand to go to the Wentworth Model Dweliings and leave a message such as this [ while having to crouch to get that last line in there....]. If so,then when? That day? Remember that it had to occur before the rain and on the inside of this well-tenanted building.
4. Perception- It takes a large degree of cycnicism to dismiss the police efforts that September night. Something made them feel or rationalize that the GSG was a legitimate clue. We that say no do so to either be objective in the extreme or out of the previously mentioned pre-concieved notion that “our” suspect didn’t have it in him to leave a message. None of us were there....the police were. Halse is so sharp that he doesn’t make a “ballpark” assessment of “one inch” to the actual height of the lettering of the GSG. He states “3/4ths” of an inch,the way a trained eye to detail does. He refers to it as “fresh”...again,not the way a graffiti-as-clue is usually referred to...His evident interest in the GSG,all the while NOT mentioning any other graffiti present is telling. None were mentioned....
5. Connectivity- The odds that someone or something else besides Jack the Ripper being responsible for leaving the large piece of apron extracted from Mrs. Eddowes original apron are astronomical and somewhat amusing. We have heard of large rats dragging it from another spot to that spot....dogs...the wind [ highly unlikely,as wet objects don’t move that well when displaced to an already wet ground...] or that it was a random I Ching rag-toss that coincided with the graffiti’s location...
6. Comparitively- The idea or belief that other graffiti were present at the Wentworth...on any of the 5 buildings...or specifically near the GSG is unproven. The idea that the GSG’s syntax is not unusual is specious and has never been shown in duplication in any other graffiti by anyone intent on disproving its authenticity. So Neil....put that in your clay pipe and smoke it !
