Goulston Street: The Quest for Jack the Ripper

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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 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 2am, socialists and anarchists, foreigners speaking 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, which was featured in the latest Ripperologist, issue 58. I recommend purchasing a copy of that issue and reading Mr House’s fine story on Aaron Kosminski for his views. We are respectful of these arguments, and it’s not our intention in this article to try to change anyone’s thinking. Our real intention is to look at why people don’t believe in it and why some of us do; well...maybe change a few minds, to be honest... A Home Office minute sheet (30th October 1888) stated that the word Jews was spelt 'Jewes' as opposed to 'Juwes'. [6]

This is done to preserve the anonymity of the people in that area, as some postcodes cover a very small area, sometimes a single building.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 graffiti? Remember 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, newly placed, not oxidizing from light, not smeared from shoulders or knees or by hands in an attempt to erase it. Halse is, to my mind, the most observant of the witnesses known to have seen the GSG and, to me, the only ‘expert’ on the GSG, if that title can be given to any of the police present that night. The fourth, ‘The Jews are the men that won’t be blamed for nothing’, is found in Sir Henry Smith’s From Constable to Commissioner, p153]; We can all probably agree that Sir Charles Warren’s decision to remove the GSG upon being informed by Superintendent Arnold of 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 a critical stage. One more ‘Leather Apron’ fiasco might have been enough to turn the already simmering ‘Boiling Pot’ of the East End into an explosion of unparalleled street violence. The police interviewed all the residents of 108–119 Goulston Street, but were unable to trace either the writer of the graffito or the murderer.

Certainly a Jew who had been schooled in London and who was not a recent arrival could have placed the message there. Most of the Jewish suspects, or, at least, the most prominent, Cohen [who I understand spoke nothing but Yiddish; correct me if I am wrong, dear editor] and Kosminski, were not the sort of persons we usually envision leaving messages, or committing 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. So, here we have it, on the jamb of the open doorway, which also indicates the location of the large piece of apron, being below the graffiti, at the foot of the jamb, and just as noticable to anyone passing along the sidewalk.

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, though not correctly spelled, to ‘Jews’, and probably removed it [as the police did], we won’t concern ourselves with the time it was placed. Walter Dew, a detective constable in Whitechapel, tended to think that the writing was irrelevant and unconnected to the murder, [15] whereas Chief Inspector Henry Moore and Sir Robert Anderson, both from Scotland Yard, thought that the graffito was the work of the murderer. [16] Interpretation [ edit ] Now would a piece of anti-Semitic writing last long on a building occupied mostly by Jews? First you have to ask if it could be seen and, if so, could it be understood? My own honest opinion is that it wouldn’t have lasted long, but the possibility that it was written that Saturday during daylight hours and survived till Long found it should not be dismissed out of hand. Another question is who could be bothered to do this act of removal? Again, a possibility that apathy played a part is not too far-fetched. Also to be considered is the fact that Whitechapel, like any inner city area then and now, had a fair amount of graffiti. To state that the writing found in the stairwell was a one-off for the area is erroneous. To state that, since no other piece of writing was reported, this chalked writing was unusual is a valid point; my response to that, however, is that there is no report stating this. Nothing exists which says that the writing was indeed the only piece of writing found throughout the whole building. Basically, I can use the same argument as a counter argument. You must book your one hour free session using the RingGo app or calling the number on the sign plate (43 spaces) Related services Since the second word of the 12 word phrase has had at least seven different interpretations, the sentence has been rendered entirely too obtuse to make sense of it in 2005.