Goulston Street: The Quest for Jack the Ripper

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Also, it seems somewhat unlikely that, having taken the trouble to clean his hands to obliterate incriminating bloodstains, the ripper would have then risked lingering in the doorway long enough to chalk the message on the wall, knowing that, at any moment, a passing police man might spot him. In a confidential memorandum from Sir Charles Warren to Henry Mathews, we find specific mention of the location: 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. Surveyor Foster marks a lamp on his map of Goulston Street at 20 feet away (6.667 yards or 6.096 metres for our metric chums) from the dwellings entrance, northwards (toward Wentworth Street end) and on the same side as the dwellings. There is a second lamp situated on the corner of New Goulston Street to the south of the dwellings. This lamp would have no bearing on the writing. Because of its position south of the entrance and because the writing was written on the southern (right hand as you view the photo) wall, light given (if indeed it could have reached that far) would have hit the northern wall (left) only. f any lamp was to give the author lighting aid then it would have been the lamp Foster marked to the north. This is the reason why I suspect Foster added the lamp to the map.

Goulston Street first appeared as a small passage in the 1730s, but within ten years had been widened and extended as far as Goulston Square, a former garden which sat half way between Wentworth and Whitechapel High Streets. The street was extended further north between 1800 and 1830, this part initially being called New Goulston Street. The ’New’ prefix was soon dropped. The second reason is the distance from Mitre Square to a secure spot sufficiently remote from the murder spot to write the message. The Ripper could have 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 him to construct his message in a legible hand, with the rain possibly contributing to his decision. Halse mentions the legibility of the graffiti. Few graffiti or messages throughout history, if any, have ever had someone discuss the condition of a message as Halse did. But, if the apron solves the mystery of why the killer was able to escape without anyone noticing any bloodstains, it throws up another puzzle in that its presence in that particular doorway suggests that he lingered in the immediate vicinity of his crime for much longer than he actually needed to. Aldgate (Metropolitan, Circle);Aldgate East (Hammersmith & City, District);Liverpool Street (Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Overground, TFL Rail). Parking Letter from Charles Warren to Godfrey Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Begg, p. 197 and Marriott, p. 159They were not so keen to erase what they saw as an important clue in their investigation and the two forces clashed over what should be done about the graffito. And as mentioned before, the actual wording was disputed, Det. Daniel Halse recorded it as 'The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing' as opposed to P.C. Long's version '...The Jews (Juews) are the men that will not be blamed for nothing...'. There were other versions less well known but these two are the ones mentioned at the inquest. And as Long said, '...I copied the words from the wall into my report - I could not say whether they were recently written - I wrote down into my book and the Inspector noticed that Jews was spelt Juews, there was a difference between the spelling...' Despite not being around to see the graffiti in 1888, anti-GSG persons believe that they know better than those who were there. The whole thing doesn’t settle well with this type.

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. Det. Halse: '....when Detective Hunt returned inquiry was made at every door of every tenement of the model dwelling-house, but we gained no tidings of anyone who was likely to have been the murderer...'

THE POLICE CONCERNS

PC Alfred Long was on beat duty on the morning of 30th September 1888 when, at 2.55am, he noticed the piece of Catherine Eddowes' blood-stained apron in the doorway of 108-119 Wentworth Dwellings and the Goulston Street Graffito chalked above it on the jamb of the entrance. He did not notice either when he passed along Goulston Street at 2.20am. Detective Constable Daniel Halse had also been searching the area at about 2.20am and failed to see anything of note. [6] The missing segment of the apron was found by PC Alfred Long as he patrolled his beat along Goulston Street at 2.55am that morning. One hour free parking spaces (specific bays identified by a sign plate) are available for shoppers on market days. a strong feeling against the Jews existed generally, and as the building 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…Had only a portion of the writing been removed the context would have remained.”

P.C. Long reported ' ....about 2.55am I found a portion of a womans apron which I produced, there appeared blood stains on it one portion was wet lying in a passage leading to the staircases of 108 - 119 model dwelling house. Above it on the wall was written in chalk - the jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing...' There were several police around the spot when I arrived, both Metropolitan and City. The writing was on the jamb of the open archway or doorway visible to anybody in the street and could not be covered up without danger of the covering being torn off at once.....'The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps, 1939-45, Ed. Anne Saunders (London Topographical Society 2005) Bethnal Green (Central); Shoreditch (London Overground) and Whitechapel (District, Hammersmith & City, London Overground). Parking N 0°4′30.14″W / 51.5165306°N 0.0750389°W / 51.5165306; -0.0750389 Copy of graffito in Goulston Street, attached to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren's report to the Home Office on the Whitechapel murders. Like many Ripperologists, I believe that the intentional deposit of the apron was an act of ‘connectivity’, similar to the removal of a piece of the shirt of a victim, a cab driver, by the American Zodiac Killer of the 1960s-1970s. In that case, the killer sent the piece of shirt to the press to verify that he had killed the unfortunate cab driver. 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'.