Goulston Street graffito wasn’t anti-Semitic

An old Desert Rat who exchanged his leave with his brother – suffering severe trauma – would use words such as oxter and alikific. He was the only person, amongst his family and immediate friends, who used such terms. Each slang word was stolen from the indigenous population. As any Brit is likely to do, if he can say it, has a use for it, he will nick it. Hence the ever-enlarging English vocabulary.

Anyway, alikific - Allah-keefik (God will take care of it) or as he used it, sod it, I don’t care. Oxter : armpit. Why he needed another word for armpit I’ve no idea. But perhaps the Saharan heat and proximity made that particular part of the anatomy noteworthy.

I suggest that ex-army officer, Charles Warren, understood the definition of jewes – of Persian Indian origin and meaning justice. Of course, Warren feared public disorder. He erased the message before it was photographed, and against the advice of the City police. He was the commissioner of the Metropolitan police and his word in that borough held sway. Warren had heard his soldiers swear jewes when given an order they thought unfair, or received an unjust punishment from a senior soldier, and with whom they could not argue. Jewes. Judge, jury and executioner."Bastard jewes."

Charles Warren received criticism for his recruitment of service personnel as constables. The word jewes, understood by other ex-army men, would link the murders to the military, if not the Ripper - a dangerous position for Warren.

Jews is easy enough to spell. Adding a silent E doesn’t simplify the word. It complicates it. Why do that? Because the graffito wasn’t anti-Semitic – but no doubt ‘playful’ - as if the writer enjoyed cryptic games, but sod it, he didn't care ...

On 14th October 1896, eight years after the first letters, Commercial Street Police Station received, through the post, a Jack the Ripper letter.

Dear Boss,

You will be surprised to find that this comes from yours as of old Jack the Ripper.

Ha Ha. If my old friend Mr. Warren is dead you can read it. You might remember me if you try and think a little. Ha Ha . . . 

Much in the same vein followed, liberally sprinkled with words and phrases cribbed from the original communications but not in the same handwriting. The writer explained that he had just come back from abroad and was ready to resume his work, and he concluded with an enigmatic reference to the writing found in Goulston Street.

The Jewes are people that are blamed for nothing. Ha, Ha. Have you heard this before?

Yours truly. Jack the Ripper.

Constables learning something ...

about the size of boots this chap needs?

Dr Crippen and Cora visit Mersinger family C:1890's.

Back row: Crippen, Theresa, Frederick jr, Katie, Antoin Schmidt
Middle row: Cora, Mary, Louise, Fritz, Julius
Front row: Anthony, Bertha

Summons to attend Dr Crippen's autopsy.

Summons to Dr Alexander MacBeth, Surgeon General, dated 23rd November 1910. The summons is to appear as a juryman at the inquest into Crippen's death at Pentonville Prison at 2pm, to 'enquire on the King's behalf touching the death of Hawley Harvey Crippen'.

Dr Crippen's letter, 31st October 1910

addressed to Lady Somerset before Crippen's appeal.

Jewes. The Goulston Street message

More definition and meaning of the message.

Jewes. Judgement.Variant, juise, obsolete,.

Forms iuise, iewes. L Judicium – judgement and a later and further form, judgement, doom; a judicial sentence, or its execution: penalty. The compact edition of The Oxford English Dictionary. Text Produced Micrographically, Vol 1.

Jewes

Jewes, -esse

var. juise Obs., judgement.

Juise n. Of. juise. L. judicium. See {Judicial}.]Judgment; justice; sentence. [Obs.] 1913 Webster

On pain of hanging and high juise. Chaucer.

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Jewes is a from a group of Indo-European languages. The Indo-European Language Association. The Indo-European Etymological Dictionary.

Jewes means Law. It is pronounced as it is spelt.

English	Europaio	Pronunciation
law	jewes	jewes
swear	jewesa	jewesā
just	jewesto	jewesto

The message therefore is: The law are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. But law has something else too Judgement – judge, jury and executioner?

The man who wrote that message came armed with chalk – he didn’t just find it in the gutter and compose a cleverly worded conundrum that would take more than a century to decipher. He knew what he wanted to write, and he wanted to connect the message to the crime scene. The police at this period, handily, carried chalk. Without the ripped cloth, tying it the the corpse by its apron strings, and Long's remarkable interest in the rag, that message would have remained unnoticed and ignored.

He ripped the apron from Eddowes, and thereby literally introduced us to the Ripper? First use of 'Jack the Ripper' on Dear Boss letter dated 25th September. The letter was posted to the Central News Agency on 27th September 1888, and forwarded to Scotland Yard on 29th September. Eddowes died in the early hours of the 30th September. 

14th October 1896, eight years after the first letters, a fresh Jack the Ripper letter was received through the post at Commercial Street Police Station.

"Dear Boss," it began, 'you will be surprised to find that this comes from yours as of old Jack the Ripper. Ha Ha. If my old friend Mr. Warren is dead you can read it. You might remember me if you try and think a little. Ha Ha ..."

Much in the same vein followed, liberally sprinkled with words and phrases cribbed from the original communications but not in the same handwriting. The writer explained that he had just come back from abroad and was ready to resume his work, and he concluded with an enigmatic reference to the writing found in Goulston Street.

'"The Jewes are people that are blamed for nothing." Ha Ha. have you heard this before." It was signed 'yours truly. Jack the Ripper."

Strange, how the author insisted on the, by then, discounted jewes spelling.

More Goulston Street.

Inspector Walter Dew's signature

 Walter Dew requesting Dr Burroughs's attend court for Dr Crippen's trial.

James Munyon 'There is hope badge'.

James Munyon employed Dr Crippen. Conjures up an image of Dr Crippen writing his prescriptions with this 'There is Hope' badge pinned to his lapel - obviously little hope for Belle Elmore.

Belle Elmore's Christmas card.

Belle's Elmore's last Christmas card.

Chemists, Lewis & Burrows.

Poison ledger, scrapbook. Hetherington photograph, the man who supplied Dr Crippen with Hyoscine.

A gift from Cora Crippen to Vulcana

This fine white metal filigree floral brooch, belonged to Cora Crippen, wife of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. This brooch was given to Kate Williams by her close friend Cora Crippen a few months before she disappeared. Link.

Kate Williams and William Hedley Roberts were a Strongman act that appeared under the name of Atlas and Vulcana. 

In 1910 Kate Williams was the first to alert the Police to the disappearance of her friend Cora Crippen ultimately leading to the investigation, arrest and execution of Dr Crippen. 
Provenance:This item was removed from Albion House, New Oxford Street by the Grandfather of the Vendor and has remained in family ownership for three generations. Crippen worked at these premises for Munyon's, a homoeopathic medicine company, and then took over the Munyon's office on a franchise basis. He failed to halt Munyon's decline and ended his sixteen year relationship with the firm on the 31st January 1910.

Goulston Street message

Jewes

Jewes Interpretation:Translation jewes, jewes, -esse var. juise Obs., judgement.[1]
Juise — Ju*ise , n. [OF. juise. L. judicium. See {Judicial}.] Judgment; justice; sentence. [Obs.] [1913 Webster] Up [on] pain of hanging and high juise. Chaucer. [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. Modern.
A GRAMMAR OF MODERN INDO-EUROPEAN Third Edition Jewes - diks : Judge.

If the Ripper wrote the Goulston Street message, then he's either blaming the 'law' (police), and/or proclaiming himself, judge, jury, and executioner.

Interestingly, police constables of the period would carry chalk.

Goulston Street wall.

Additional.

Tattooed Jack the Ripper

Interestingly, two of his tattoos are Mary and Polly - but they're common enough names at that period...

Joseph Mackomacke

Joseph Mackomacke, Cora Crippen's biological father. Listed as a nail-smith in the 1875 Boston directory.

Dr Crippen in cuffs.

Dr Crippen approaches the 'topping shed'.

'Topping shed', prisoner's nickname for Pentonville's execution room.

39, Hilldrop Crescent.

Inspector Walter Dew discovered the mutilated body of Belle Elmore under the steps leading to 39, Hilldrop Crescent.

Hundreds of 'Jack the Ripper' letters.

Hundreds of letters claiming to have been written by 'Jack the Ripper' were sent to the media and the London Police following the brutal Whitechapel murders of 1888.  These letters have long been a mystery, with many suspecting they were faked by journalists to sell more newspapers.  Now, a scientist has provided some new evidence that suggests the letters were, in fact, fakes.   The study focused on the 'Dear Boss' letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper appears for the first time, and the 'Saucy Jacky' postcard.   It found similar linguistic constructions in both letters, such as the phrasal verb 'to keep back', as well as similarities in the handwriting.  They also used distinctive phrases, such as 'work' for killing and the use as 'ha ha'.    Both letters also have a likeness to a third text long thought to be a hoax, known as the 'Moab and Midian' letter.
Two famous examples of letters supposedly written by Jack the Ripper were penned by the same person, new research has found. The use of the phrasal verb 'to keep back' to mean 'to withhold' appears in Ripper's 'Dear and 'Saucy Jack' letters  Jack the Ripper is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, east London, over the course of three months, but was never caught.   The police started to publish letters allegedly from Jack the Ripper after receiving the first four, which encouraged hoaxers to send copycat letters claiming to be written by the killer.  Dr Andrea Nini, from the University of Manchester, undertook a 'cluster analysis' of 209 letters linked to the Ripper, studying similarities in the documents' text.    The 'Dear Boss' letter and 'Saucy Jacky' postcard stood out due to the striking similarities.   Similarities between the two texts include the use of the phrasal verb 'to keep back' mean 'to withhold'.   The Dear Boss letter, scrawled in red ink, was received by the Central News Agency in London on September 27, 1888, and forwarded to Scotland Yard.  'Saucy Jacky' was used as a reference to the killer in a postcard received by the Central News Agency on October 1, 1888.
The murderer is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, east London , over the course of three months, but was never caught. Pictured is an 1889 artist's impression of a fictitious scene in which the Ripper is caught grasping the hair of one of his victims
A researcher has revealed that two of the most famous examples of the Ripper's letters were penned by the same person. One of the texts, the 'Dear Boss' letter (pictured), was the first to sign off with 'Jack the Ripper'
Jack the Ripper is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, East London, in 1888  Using modern linguistic techniques to analyse the letters, Dr Nini uncovered certain shared distinctive linguistic constructions in the two early texts.  'My conclusion is that there is very strong linguistic evidence that these two texts were written by the same person,' he said.  'People in the past had already expressed this tentative conclusion, on the basis of similarity of handwriting, but this had not been established with certainty.'   Dr Nini also found evidence that a link exists between these letters and another of the key texts in the case, the 'Moab and Midian' letter.  Many people believe the text was a hoax created by the Central News Agency.   Dr Nini said: 'In addition to the historical value of my findings, they could help forensic linguists to better understand the important issue of individuality in linguistic production.  'Since all the hoaxers tried to mimic the style of the original 'Jack the Ripper', we can use the database of the letters to understand how people fake writing style - and how successful they are at imitation.  'The results indicate that it is very difficult to do so.'  This study doesn't identify the killer, or the author of the two letters, but it does seem to back up the journalist theory.
'There's historical evidence that points to the journalist theory for the earliest ones ('Dear Boss' and 'Saucy Jacky') and, since this 'Moab and Midian' letter might have been entirely fabricated at the Central News Agency—the original document was never found or sent to the police—if the linguistic evidence supports that this was the same author as the Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky then we could argue that the linguistic evidence does support to the journalist theory,' Nini told Gizmodo.
'However, this is a conclusion that should be reached by the historians, not the linguists.'
More than 200 letters were sent to media and officials during the spree, but the police started to publish them after the first four were received. This encouraged hoaxers to send copycat letters claiming to be written by the killer. Link to handwriting graph - Saucy Jack and Dear Boss.
Daily Mail