Goulston Street: The Quest for Jack the Ripper

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Sir Charles Warren stated that "the writing was on the jamb of the open archway or doorway visible to anybody in the street..." [4]. Indeed, the apron tells us how much visible and incriminating blood he would have had upon his person. WOULD HE HAVE BEEN BLOOD-STAINED? If Long and Halse were correct in their assertion that the portion of apron hadn't been there at 2.20am, then the murderer had loitered in the area for anywhere between 35 minutes and an hour, during which time the police were fanning out into the area to search for him, and were stopping and questioning any man they met. There are also some great fashion bargains and other goods available throughout the week along Wentworth Street . Location He had now murdered twice in less than an hour and was, no doubt, well aware that the area would soon be teeming with police officers, each one of them intent on hunting him down and catching him.

There’s no direct link between the writing in the Wentworth Dwellings and the apron and, therefore, no direct link with the murder of Catherine Eddowes. It’s that simple. What? You want more than that? You need a reason and then some? Ok, will do. I guess the best place to start is the beginning. Also, that anti–Semitic feelings were high and the misplaced idea that the murderer was Jewish was common. A blame culture had evolved and the idea that some people wanted to ‘voice’ their anger is not an improbable one.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. 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'. It appears that these lights provided sufficient illumination to write graffiti on the inside of the building. We know that it rained earlier, around the time of another murder [Stride’s, over in Berner Street]. It may therefore have been cloudy, so 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 also have been carrying a box of matches.

The strangest thing of all about the killer's escape from Mitre Square is that he appears to have slipped past several police officers without either being noticed or arousing any suspicion. DETECTIVES ALREADY IN THE AREA 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. 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. 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.After having been to the scene of the murder, I went on to the City Police Office and informed the Chief Superintendant of the reason why the writing had been obliterated. For Scotland, 2011 data is shown (update coming soon, the Scottish census was delayed by a year unlike the rest of the UK).