Goulston Street: The Quest for Jack the Ripper

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Aldgate (Metropolitan, Circle);Aldgate East (Hammersmith & City, District);Bethnal Green Rail (London Overground);Whitechapel (District, Hammersmith & City, London Overground) Chrisp Street Market (Monday to Saturday) This is also known as Globe Town market. The area was established in 1800 to provide for the growing number of silk weavers living in Bethnal Green. The compact diamond space that hosts the market remains busy and popular In fact there had been no mention of Eddowes cut apron until the body was being stripped in Golden Lane mortuary, it may not have been obvious that she was wearing an apron until the body was at the mortuary. Shadwell (DLR, London Overground);Whitechapel (District, Hammersmith & City, London Overground) Parking For instance, P.C. Alfred Long stated the portion of apron was not there at 2.20am when he passed Wentworth Model Dwellings in Goulston Street. This statement has been questioned by many who point out that seeing as how the portion of apron was taken from Eddowes in Mitre Square, and the murder had been committed between 1.35-1.44am. Then the discovery of this piece of evidence at 2.55am, approx 1500ft and 3 streets away raises serious concerns. Why a gap of over an hour?

One hour free parking spaces (specific bays identified by a sign plate) are available for shoppers on market days. The idea that Eddowes’s killer hid just inside the stairwell entrance and dropped the apron right next to the writing is plausible – at least, not beyond possibility. It would have been an ideal location for the killer to clean himself up. Especially when taking point 6 (position of the writing) into consideration, the coincidence is there… and not too far fetched. The entrance provides adequate shelter and seclusion. Not too close to the murder scene, yet not too far either. Putting it simply, it’s the ideal spot for a killer to pause briefly. At the Wentworth Building, the Ripper’s neatly constructed message took 30 to 45 seconds to put together. An old article in Ripperologist that I put together discusses the mechanics of writing three or four different messages. The longest to perform, a legible and easily understood message, took 30-45 seconds on several attempts on my part. The second word, a persistent point of confusion in the graffiti, could still be misunderstood even after I had told people what I had just written. I feel strongly that the subsequent differences of opinion by the police in their transcription occurred precisely because it was the easiest word to misread. The police on the spot were as prone to making mistakes as anyone else and when faced with the task of transcription, simply made a mistake that people in the 21st Century still do. In addition, the two eyewitnesses with their slight differences in spelling probably make the other variations irrelevant. The others, like Anderson and Smith, were based on what the reporters or editors of their newspaper articles and memoirs wrote down. We don?t know for certain if it was a mistaken spelling by the editors or reporters and overlooked by Anderson and Smith either... or if it was as they thought they remembered it in the final analysis. The GSG was not the central idea of either Anderson’s article or Smith’s memoirs, which may have been a reason why it wasn’t treated with the focus being done here and in other debates about it. They 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.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. Also, The Daily Telegraph, Oct 2nd, '....while throwing a light upon the movements of the murderer after he quitted Mitre Square, an important piece of evidence was obtained yesterday. When the body was examined there was a piece of white coarse apron still attached to it. The missing portion was discovered yesterday in Goulston Street....' Obviously, the small portion of apron was simply overlooked by P.C. Long on his earlier pass along Goulston St. or at least that is a more satisfactory explanation 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...'

In fairness to Sir Charles Warren, many of those who saw the graffito commented that it looked faded, as though it had been there for some time. Since the available evidence suggests that the ripper asphyxiated his victims before carrying out his repellent mutilations, their hearts would have all but stopped beating by the time he cut their throats and thus he would have avoided the arterial spurt that would have resulted in him becoming heavily bloodstained when he cut the carotid artery.If you have blood-stained hands, and you wipe them on a cloth you dont easily wet the cloth, but only badly stain it. Blood is not wet like water and does not soak in as easily, so if the portion of apron was wet with blood then something may have been leaking into the cloth for a few minutes to make it that way. 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...' 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. The idea that anti-Semitic graffito would be erased immediately is a valid one. However it is an assumed, not an ascertained fact. Apathy or misunderstanding of the writing’s meaning may have resulted in the writing not being erased straight away. It could have been there for many hours and possibly a day or two. 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.

Those that do believe it is a relevant clue connect it to multiple theories. This reasoning fits in with the narrative of a conniving, scheming killer who purposefully taunted police. The most famous interpretation, originated by Stephen Knight, is that the graffito was a puzzle-piece in the royal conspiracy. “Juwes” was a not a misspelling of “Jews” but rather a reference to Masonic canon. Another is that the Ripper was not Jewish, but wrote an anti-semitic message to throw police off his trail. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think his hatred wasn’t just directed toward women, but toward the neighborhood immigrants as well. There is also a court area on St Stephen’s Road serving fresh bread, pastries and hot food options. On the third Saturday of the month there is a retro-feel extension to the market too. Location Also, Sir Henry Smith, though heavily critisized for being inaccurate in some statements, was at least known to be present for this report: 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]. Given the events of a few weeks previous, Warren was probably justified in his belief that erasing the message would spare innocent Jews from becoming the targets of avenging gentile mobs and he probably made the right judgment call based on the information immediately available to him.Since there was no way of keeping it hidden from these crowds, the Metropolitan Police were convinced the result might be a full scale riot against the Jews. The honest truth is that we will never now know the answer to this puzzling question. THE GOULSTON STREET GRAFFITO IS DISCOVERED 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. The only thing we know, after all, that the apron piece was found underneath a freshly written graffiti and that the Ripper was the last human being to have had his hands on that apron piece, notwithstanding rats and dogs and pussy cats and a Phil-Hutchinson-level wind; St How’s 1, verse 1. 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.

Having murdered Catherine Eddowes, on the 30th September 1888, the Whitechapel Murderer fled eastwards from Mitre Square and headed into the East End of London where he left a clue in a doorway in Goulston Street, a short walk away from Mitre Square. WHY HE WENT EAST? This historic market runs along Whitechapel Road. Crossrail will see the area become a major interchange and transportation hub. And the borough’s new Town Hall and civic centre will be in the redeveloped Royal London Hospital. This will boost the market’s high footfall even more. Illustration of Sir Charles Warren inspecting the Goulston Street graffito. Published in The Illustrated Police News 20 October 1888 You must book your one hour free session using the RingGo app or calling the number on the sign plate (16 spaces) Watney Market (Monday to Saturday)The Roman’, as it’s known, is a road on the oldest known trade route in England. And it’s an old-style market that with a full range of items on offer. You can browse clothing stalls, household items, toys, makeup and jewellery. Now we have a better idea of why P.C. Long stated quite firmly at the inquest '...I passed that spot where the apron was found about 2.20am the apron was not there when I passed then' 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.