Goulston Street: The Quest for Jack the Ripper

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That’s the key to graffiti… the positioning’. Ah, the philosophy of Banksy! For those who may not know, Banksy is an artist. A graffiti artist. A graffiti artist whose work has been shown in exhibitions. Everyone (well, those of you who live in the Bristol and London areas certainly) has seen a Banksy, most without realising it - yet very few have seen the man himself. This is mainly because writing graffiti is illegal. He ghosts in, does his work and ghosts out again. Unnoticed until his deed is detected. Sounds familiar? 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. Also Detective Halse said at the inquest '...about 20 past 2 I passed over the spot where the piece of apron was found I did not notice anything' It may be realised therefore if the safety of the Jews in Whitechapel could be considered to be jeopardised 13 days after the murder by the question of the spelling of the word Jews, what might have happened to the Jews in that quarter had that writing been left intact.

The evidence provided certain clues about the Ripper’s behaviour on the night, which was the same evening Elizabeth Stride had been killed. Having murdered two people in an hour, the area would have been filling with police officers. The positioning of the apron in a doorway to the east of Mitre Square suggests the Ripper must have dropped it while he fled the scene rapidly and was going to ground. Walking past the doorway which led to the staircases of 108 to 119 Wentworth Model Dwellings, he noticed a portion of apron lying on the floor inside the doorway. At the time, Whitechapel was home to a growing number of Jewish immigrants from all over Europe. They were viewed with suspicion because of their often socialist political views, as well as from plain old racial prejudice. A notorious murder case had recently taken place in the neighborhood perpetrated by a Jewish man named Israel Lipski, and his name had turned into a slur against Jewish people. Additionally, John Pizer, another Jewish man and an early Ripper suspect, was almost killed by an angry mob. Superintendent Thomas Arnold of H Division said:The decision to erase the writing did not sit well with the City Police and even Sir Robert Anderson said that the removal of such an important potential clue was an act of crass stupidity [12].

Also, Sir Henry Smith, though heavily critisized for being inaccurate in some statements, was at least known to be present for this report: and the fifth from Sir Robert Anderson, who gives it as: ‘The Jewes are not the men to be blamed for nothing,’ in 1910, 22 years after the crimes, which was [sorry, Sir Robert but this may be another one of your ‘definitely ascertained facts’] discussed in a daily paper. Anderson was not even in the country at the time of the Double Event. It may be worth recalling 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. He then set off to make his own search, heading first for Middlesex Street, from which he turned into Wentworth Street, where he stopped to question two men he encountered, both of whom gave him a satisfactory account of their movements, and so he allowed them to continue on their way. There are two camps regarding the Goulston Street Graffito: one that considers it a relevant clue and one that doesn’t.But both the portion of apron and the graffito pertained to a murder investigation being carried out by the City Police, detectives of which had soon crossed the boundary and were also gathering around the doorway. Once he was certain that he was clean enough, he would have dropped the apron and continued home. WHERE WAS THE RIPPER? 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. They were therefore anxious to erase the message, and to do so sooner rather than later. DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN TWO POLICE FORCES

At the Eddowes Inquest, Detective Halse said '...the writing had the appearance of being recently written...', then in The Daily Telegraph, Oct 12, in response to a question of "why did you say it seemed to have been recently written?" Halse responded, "it looked fresh, and if it had been done long before it would have been rubbed out by the people passing..." Graffiti of all kinds was not unusual, in fact it had proliferated since the murder of Annie Chapman, so there is no reason to think of this as anything special. The graffiti was not emblazoned across the wall as we might expect by a notorious flamboyant killer out to strike fear into the neighbourhood. Halse reported: "There were three lines of writing in a good schoolboys round hand. The size of the capital letters would be about 3/4 in, and the other letters were in proportion"

THE APRON'S SIGNIFICANCE

After the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes in the early morning hours of 30 September 1888, police searched the area near the crime scenes in an effort to locate a suspect, witnesses or evidence. At about 3:00a.m., Constable Alfred Long of the Metropolitan Police Force discovered a dirty, bloodstained piece of an apron in the stairwell of a tenement, 108 to 119 Model dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. By this time the stretcher had arrived, and when we got the body to the mortuary, the first discovery we made was that about one-half of the apron was missing. It had been severed by a clean cut'. You must book your one hour free session using the RingGo app or calling the number on the sign plate (19 spaces) Bethnal Green Market (Monday to Saturday)

I beg to report that on the morning of 30th Sept. last my attention was called to some writing on the wall of the entrance to some dwellings No.108 Goulston Street Whitechapel which consisted of the following words "The Juews are not [the word 'not' deleted] the men that will not be blamed for nothing", and knowing that in consequence of a suspicion having fallen upon a Jew named 'John Pizer' alias 'Leather Apron' having comitted a murder in Hanbury Street a short time previously a strong feeling ['ag' deleted] existed against the Jews generally and as the buildings upon which the writing was found was situated in the midst of a locality inhabited principally by that sect. I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot and therefore considered it desirable that it should be removed having in view the fact that it was in such a position that it would have been rubbed by the shoulders of persons passing in & out of the building. Had only a portion of the writing been removed the context would have remained. An Inspector was present by my directions with a sponge for the purpose of removing the writing when the Commissioner arrived on the scene" [10]. The “anti” group believe the graffito is unrelated to the murder–that the Ripper’s leaving evidence was a coincidence. They say that it was dropped by mistake and whatever was scratched on the wall nearby would have sparked the same questions. Here, the Ripper is illiterate and chaotic, and was only elusive because of Whitechapel’s darkness and his ability to cut victims’ throats before they had a chance to scream. 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. And City Solictor, Mr Crawford: '...as to the premises being searched, I have in court members of the City police who did make a diligent search in every part of the tenements, the moment the matter came to their knowledge....'A Home Office minute sheet (30th October 1888) stated that the word Jews was spelt 'Jewes' as opposed to 'Juwes'. [6] Indeed, the apron tells us how much visible and incriminating blood he would have had upon his person. WOULD HE HAVE BEEN BLOOD-STAINED? Perception: It takes a large degree of cynicism 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-conceived notion that ‘our’ suspect didn’t have it in him to leave a message. None of us was 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 an eye trained to notice 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 was mentioned. The actual wording was under dispute from the very start due to the fact it was erased before it could be photographed.