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Goulston Street

Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Miscellaneous: Goulston Street
 SUBTOPICMSGSLast Updated

Author: Jon
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 02:21 pm
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Hi Chris & all.
If anyone has mentioned this before then my appologies but any quick perusal of the German language would make one aware that such words as "Juwe", "Juwen", "Juwer", "Juwem", and more importantly "Juwes" are common spellings even today.
Which is not to say that a German Jew wrote the grafitto but that foreign influences often become adopted in our English language. Take for instance "tonite", an innocently adopted spelling I see every day.
Far too much is made of this word :(

Regards, Jon

Author: Stan Russo
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 02:30 pm
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Dan, and Chris,

I am, of the simple opinion that the spelling of 'Juwes' was what was intended. This does not need to mean that the murderer was a Mason, in fact it points in the opposite direction, that he wasn't a Mason.

The Lusk Letter, in my opinion, is purposely misspelled to mock an Irish accent. There is a specific reason for this and I don't feel that 'JTR' purposely misspelled 'Juwes', or misspelled it by mistake. This is my opinion, and Warren's erasure seems to back up the notion that the word 'Juwes' did have a Masonic meaning.

Where common sense states that 'JTR' did not write the Goulston Street Graffito eludes me. A tangible piece of evidence was found directly under the written message. It seems to me that suggesting the murderer did not write the message is a real leap. Could it have happened that way? Of course. Was it likely, considering that in such a small doorway on one of a number of side streets, 'JTR' decided to discard the torn piece of apron in that walkway, which falls right under the message? No, it is logically not likely, when considering that 'JTR' didn't have to remove the apron in the first place. It takes a longer time to cut off a piece of her apron, than to wipe his knife clean on the apron in Mitre Square. That reality eludes people.

Criticise my theory. That's okay. That's what these boards are for, to discuss these topics. Just seems a little strange to do it before you have even read what the theory is. That's okay Dan. Like I said before, you are in the majority on this one.

STAN

Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 03:35 pm
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Hi, Jon:

I am not an expert in the modern-day German language but it looks to me as if in current usage the German words for Jews and Jewish are "Juden" and "Judisch." The spellings you are indicating, "Juwe," "Juwen," "Juwer," "Juwem," and "Juwes" are found in older German texts from the middle ages, which can be found on the web.

All the best

Chris

Author: Jon
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 04:19 pm
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Hi Chris.
A quick sift on Google shows a 15th century text with many of the words above.
http://www.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~p1ges/quellen/hr1_6/hr_1_6_418.html

Then modern listings with the specific use of "Juwes".
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/7/31/15130/7321/183
and then a list concerning Jewish Nazis, or "DA JUWES NAZIS".
http://diaboramon.tripod.com/familytreegenealogysite/id6.html

The word Juwes has carried through to modern times. I spent some time studying German a few years ago and the person who was helping me with his language explained that the language used today is greatly different than what was spoken before the turn of the century.
But, as you see even "Juwes" is used today in no way connected with JtR.

Regards, Jon

Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 04:32 pm
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Hi, Jon:

I believe you are citing the same medieval text I cited. However, both of the other sites you mention are English language sites which can hardly be deemed to be authorative on the use of "Juwes" in Germany today or in 1888.

In any case, I have e-mailed German-speaker Christian Jaud who worked with me on reviewing the English translation of the German Nazi pamphlet "Der Teufel Von Whitechapel" by Soltikow for Ripper Notes to get his input on this question.

All the best

Chris

Author: Jon
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 04:49 pm
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Chris.
The English sites are exactly what is required.
Whoever wrote the G.S.G. was, presumably, English. Or at least we are not claiming that the person was obviously German or obviously Jewish.

An English speaking person wrote the G.S.G. (as evidenced by the rest of the spelling) and used a spelling for the word "Jews" which is still used today (incorrectly) by English speaking common people.
Is that not the point of this excersize?, to present an example of usage of the term "Juwes" for Jews by laypersons used to the English language?.

Not as a German would spell it nor as a Jewish person would spell it but by an English speaking person using a possibly slang or at least incorrect spelling in Victorian England and as proof we see exactly the same incorrect usage today.
I thought that was the point.

Am I confusing you?
No-one claimed the author of the G.S.G. was a German scholar.

Best Regards, Jon
Are we on the same track? :)

Author: Warwick Parminter
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 05:15 pm
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No Stan, it's much quicker to cut a piece of cloth and walk quickly away, wiping your hands as you go, rather than stay squatting by the body, wiping your hands on her clothes, especially you can perhaps hear police footsteps approaching,--and they are going to come to directly where you are.
Rick

Author: Warwick Parminter
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 05:21 pm
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No Stan, it's much quicker to cut a piece of cloth and walk quickly away, wiping your hands as you go, rather than stay squatting by the body, wiping your hands on her clothes, especially if you can perhaps hear police footsteps approaching,--and they are going to come to directly where you are.
Rick

Author: Stephen Hills
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 05:49 pm
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Dan

It seems there is not only the misspelling of jews as juwes that you feel is the most likely explanation, but from the testimony of others (which I have not verified but which I accept as correct) that jews is or was spelt juwes in Germany. I hope now also that you accept that juwes is (and has been for some centuries) the masonic reference to the three murderers of Hiram Abiff. Given the number of references (non JTR specific) it would be hard to refute. That now proven, I think we can open debate about who wrote the message and which meaning of juwes was intended. Want to kick off with your theory Dan.

Regards

Cromo

Author: Dan Norder
Tuesday, 15 October 2002 - 06:44 pm
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I don't accept that Juwes is an actual Masonic reference that has been used for centuries because I still haven't seen any references that go back more than a decade or two. But I'm not going to bother trying to refute that it existed, as I don't find it at all relevant. If you want we can all just assume for the sake of argument that you are right on that point.

We've got Juwes as: A) a misspelling for Jews, B) Juwes as a foreign word for Jews in an area with a number of people from foreign countries, or C) Juwes as a reference to characters in a Masonic tale that act like the popular medieval concept of Jews (and likely to be the origin of the term if it was historical) by killing the founder of the religious group.

Then there's: 1) the killer wrote it, 2) he didn't write it but saw it and left the apron there on purpose, or 3) he didn't know it was there at all and accidentally dropped the apron, or 4) the apron was moved there by someone else.

Mix those options any which way and none of the results give much significance at all to "Juwes" being written in chalk in that location.

Trying to run with a theory that only fits the two out of twelve potential explanations is pretty pointless. Now you can say that some of the explanations are more likely than others, but I think the two that involve the killer knowing the (assumed) Masonic term would be two of the least likely out of the set.

Dan

Author: Chris Jd
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 01:42 am
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Hi all, hi Chris T.,

I obviously don't know who wrote the GSG and I have no idea about Masons.

But the word "jew" in German is "Jude", "jewish" is "jüdisch", a female jew is a "Jüdin".

The words "juwe", "juwen" and the like you find in old texts ( e.g. 15. century ) mean "you" or "your".

So if "Juwes" should mean "jews", I think anyone could have misspelled it, could be german or dutch, russian or anybody.

The point is, to my knowledge there is no use of "Juwen" or the like in todays German language.
That counts for 1888 as well, as the major changes in language were long before.

That of course doesn't mean that somebody can't dig out an obscure dialect in a single little village somewhere in Germany, where people speak that way. But I'm only writing that to be on the save side with my statements. I doubt it, but you never know.

But "Juwe(n)" is definitely not "proper" and "official" german.

best regards

Christian

P.S.: The old "juives" story: Shouldn't that be with an "f", "juifs"?

Author: John Dow
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 08:21 am
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Warwick Said: "No Stan, it's much quicker to cut a piece of cloth and walk quickly away, wiping your hands as you go, rather than stay squatting by the body, wiping your hands on her clothes, especially you can perhaps hear police footsteps approaching,--and they are going to come to directly where you are."

Particularly when the victim suffered form Brights disease. See all those saggy bits of skin in the post mortem pictures? One of the symptoms of Bright's Disease is abdominal swelling, caused by a build up of very unpleasant fluids. I imagine Jack would have been somewhat smelly after Kate's murder and wouldn't have wanted to hang around any longer than necessary.

At least it would have allowed him to escape without being approached - no one would want to go within a hundred yeards of him.

Author: Jon
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 10:14 am
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Hi Christian
Yes, the word for a person of Jewish decent or extraction in modern German is 'Jude', no-one is disputing that.
What I was attempting to explain, by way of suggestion, was that the word "Juwes" was part of the German language for several hundred years, and this is apparent, it needs no in-depth research.
Without suggesting what the word means it is important to establish if the word existed, and it did.

The influx of European Jews into the East-end of London is well documented, which includes, obviously Germans & German Jews. It is not, therefore, difficult to see such a word being adopted by English speaking East-enders as a phonetic pronunciation for the word "Jew".

So, we have the people who use the word "juwe(s)" living in the East-end in the Victorian period, and had been for hundreds of years. What we might be interested in is because the pronunciation of this word is akin to "you" and that is as near as need be to the pronunciation of the word "Jew" in the English language then it is not a stretch of the imagination to see one replacing the other in the coloquial usage of the East-end.

The minor point I was interested in was "is this word being spelled that same way today, by some?".
And, to my surprise, we have two instances of someone in our modern times actually making a somewhat political statement and writing...

"Right, it's the juwes!"
And also....
"The juwes are clearly the single most influential group in the USA."

Those meager examples were given in the two sites I posted previously.
What I was doing was offering a suggestion that even today the spelling of "Juwes" for "Jews" is still alive and well, even though we may like to believe "it does not exist because it is not in any official German or English dictionary".

Dictionaries do not always represent the real-world of phonetic expression, in fact dictionaries take many decades to become updated and cannot possibly represent every single coloquial expression around the world.

What also surprised me was the single usage "DA JUWES NAZIS", which just may indicate that even in Germany today there is a coloquialism retained where the pronunciation of the word "Juwes" is (wrongly) used when refering to Jewish people.

I hope that clarifies my limited intent.
Best regards, Jon

Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 10:20 am
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Hi, Jon:

I don't think we are misunderstanding each other at all.

You stated:

'If anyone has mentioned this before then my appologies but any quick perusal of the German language would make one aware that such words as "Juwe", "Juwen", "Juwer", "Juwem", and more importantly "Juwes" are common spellings even today.'

But, as you have seen, Christian Jaud confirms that those words are not used by Germans to refer to the Jews. I will concede that, yes, an English speaker might misspell it that way, but reference to German texts leads us nowhere contrary to what you said in your post quoted above. The use of "juwes" in the graffito would seem to be then either "Jews" misspelled or a reference to the Masonic "Juwes."

All the best

Chris

Author: Chris Jd
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 10:38 am
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Hi Jon,
Chris T's message above explains it far better than I could write it.

Please see that the word "juwe" or the like was used in "Mittelhochdeutsch", that means between the 12. and the 15. century. That's too long ago to be kept in 1888. Especially as it has and had nothing to do with jews, but with "You" or "Your".
"Jude" was "Jude" in the old German language already.
The "Juwe(n)" from Mittelhochdeutsch has since changed to "Euer" or "Euere" or "Ihr", "Ihre" ( You(r)).

Off course the writer of the GSG could've been German or jewish. But "Juwes" doesn't indicate that. He could've been German or jewish because he could have been anybody.

By the way, this Juwe-German - discussion was already here in March 2002 with David O'Flaherty.



best regards

Christian

P.S.: One question I have as well: "DA JUWES NAZIS": In what context is this used? I don't understand that, it doesn't sound German. Maybe dutch?

Author: Jon
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 11:37 am
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Hi Christian.
I think you are contesting the word "juwes" because it did not means "Jewish people". I agree, but that is not the point of my poste.
It's the pronunciation of the word, not the meaning, that I am pursuing here.
It's because it 'sounds' like Jews, not that it means Jews.

The pronunciation of this word, as you state is like "ewe" or "euwe". The word was found in a undereducated region of the East-end (Goulston St.) in the context that appears as if written by someone more fluent with the English language.
My suggestion is that it is a loan-word from Europe, likely Germany. The origin is not important but it is the misuse of the word "juwes" for "Jews" which is important.

Your response does not allow for the fact that even today, people are using the same word "Juwes" for "Jews". No mention of JtR or Mason's, in fact the usage was totally unconnected with anything we are discussing.

The usage is still alive, and that, I think, is the issue. This goes along way to establish that in the G.S.G. we are only looking at a misuse of the word.
I cannot remember anyone else previously producing any evidence that the word "Juwes" is still being used today for "Jews", but as I show, it is.
No Mason's, no German-Jewish graffiti, no complex anagrams. Just a possibly German, certainly foreign, loan-word, misapplied in connection with reference to Jews, then and now.

Best regards, Jon

Author: Chris Jd
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 01:39 pm
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Hi Jon,

well, whatever.

But:
"I cannot remember anyone else previously producing any evidence that the word "Juwes" is still being used today for "Jews", but as I show, it is."

Juwes may still be used for "Jews" but certainly not in Germany. The example you showed was uneducated English.

I personally think it is a bit far-fetched to say, that a word could come from a certain language, just because a similar sounding one was in use 400 years ago, and - on top of that - in a total different meaning / different place in syntax.

Let's a agree to disagree.

Being German I can imagine lot's of ways the English language can be misspelled. :-)
Especially by Germans.
My personal classic example is "Leicester".
Germans who have never seen that word would most certainly write "Lester" or "Laster". (Hi Monty, sorry)

Ok, I can see a point in the possibility that uneducated Germans might spell the "dshuhs" -sound as "juws", "jouws" or similar.
We'll never know.
But the reason lies in the difficulty of English spelling /speaking, not in the fact, that a word like it existed 400 years prior to that.
Dutch, Polish, Russians might have the same problems.

Viele Grüße

Christian

P.S.: I really meant that question about that "DA JUWES NAZIS"! This is never German. Where did you find that and how was it used? I certainly don't understand it!

Author: Robin
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 08:24 pm
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Hi All,

Bit of a cheek this, but would posters to this thread mind making a quick visit to the 'Another Plod Down Goulston Street' thread and taking a look see at my question about 'Juwes/Jewes' being a nickname?

Perhaps you know the answer.

Many thanks,

Robin

Author: Jon
Wednesday, 16 October 2002 - 09:38 pm
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Hi Christian.
When you say....
"Juwes may still be used for "Jews" but certainly not in Germany. The example you showed was uneducated English."

Thats exactly what I am suggesting, uneducated English.
Ok, you do not like the suggestion that it may be a borrowed word from the German (Juwe="you"=Jew) from purely a phonetic perspective.
Fine, I accept that.

Earlier I got the impression from both yourself & Chris G. that if the word "Juwes" could not be found in a dictionary (German or English) then it doesn't exist.
In attempting to find confirmation that it does exist we must look, not at the scholarly world but among those who are not so fortunate. We must look among people who were not educated in College or have a degree in linguistics.

Just a rudimentary search on the net provides several instances of the usage of that word and in each case the site or the context is 'working class', to put it mildly.
If we are looking for a person who represents the equivalent of a working class East ender who may have wrote the G.S.G. then we should look in the correct places.

Here is an email from a child...

Hi!!We are the pupils of Yeshivat Nechalim,Naale 'å(or Yuvel).Now we are in 12 class.We need help.Our grup is 16 pupil.10 of them are not Juwes according to Halaha and our Rosh Yeshiva is goin to throw out our group to the terrible Pardes Han. If you can give us some piece of advise write me:Scholkin@zdnetmail.com.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1181/geobook.html

A quite innocent usage of the word by a Hebrew child no less.
The usage is either through innocence or ignorance, but it is still used today.

Now as to your question, re DA JUWES NAZIS.
I posted the site earlier and I have no clue as to how correct the usage is.
The site is supposed to be a Geneology site but when you read some of the abusive text I have to wonder. But, as I said earlier, we must look for the usage of "Juwes" in the 'undereducated' environment, and that for sure was one.
BOUT DA JUWES NAZIS appears to have been a title to a thread.

regards, Jon

Author: Chris Jd
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 01:51 am
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Hi Jon,
I think our opinions are closer than it may seem, maybe we misunderstand each other. Sorry if it is that way. In case it's not:

Re phonetics: The words coming from the ancient "juwe" are nowhere near pronounced as "jew":
"Eure" -- oire (as in "oi" - brit. short for hey you ;-)
"Ihre" -- eare (as in "ear")

Noone on the street of Whitechapel remembers juwe pronounciation after 500 years. I'm almost certain that even the mittelhochdeutsch "Juwe" ( meaning "you") wasn't pronounced with a "you.." sound at the time (12.-15. century) - That is if I remember correctly what a friend who studies the old german language ( a cunning linguist so to speak :-) has told me. If you wish I'll ask him again.

So indeed I exclude the phonetic reason.
But a simple SPELLING mistake could be true.
But, and that's the point, that doesn't indicate a german and/or jewish origin of the writer. So we don't know where to look for him.

best regards

Christian

P.S.: Had a look at this "Da juwe..." - link. What a sick site.

Author: Caroline Morris
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 07:49 am
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Hi Chris (George),

You wrote a while back:

‘Certainly there is evidence to suggest that the writer of the Lusk and Openshaw letters, possibly one and the same person, knew how to spell, but chose to write a number of words in those letters as if they were illiterate. E.g., in the Openshaw letter, writing "Ospital" and "Devle" while on the envelope writing "Pathological Curator" with no problem.’

I have tended to agree that the Openshaw letter looks like it was written by someone pretending to be a poorly educated Cockney. But I’m not sure that the correct spelling of ‘Pathological Curator’ actually supports this opinion or goes against it. A poor speller, while not thinking to check ‘Ospital’, would be less likely to have tackled ‘Pathological Curator’ from memory, almost certainly copying it from somewhere and therefore getting it right. But if the writer was dumbing down deliberately, we might have expected to see something like ‘Paffalogicle Curaiter’ on the envelope, and that would have been a bit more of a give-away in my view.

If the writer – whether a hoaxer or the killer - did deliberately misspell stuff, this is obviously his idea of how to best portray the ripper – as poorly educated. Likewise, if Jack wrote the graffito, and ‘Juwes’ was a misspelling of Jews, it’s possible that he did it deliberately, adding the double negative, simply to give the desired effect of a Cockney with imperfect spelling. The fact that he didn’t write ‘nuffink’ may just argue against it.

On balance, there’s not much to choose between a poorly educated Cockney, and someone only pretending to be one. Equally, since he had no problem with the other words, ‘Juwes’ for 'Jews' was quite possibly a conscious or unconscious insult, on the part of an otherwise good speller, that simply reflected the writer’s dislike/resentment of these people on 'his' territory - it’s a common enough phenomenon. ‘Mishter’ Lusk has a similarly insulting ring to it, and this type of taunting insult (to the Jews as well as to George Lusk) could apply whether or not either writer was Jack.

Love,

Caz

Author: Timsta
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 09:43 am
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Caz:

Don't have the reference to hand, but I believe Openshaw was described as 'Pathological Curator' in one or more of the newspaper reports of the time. I also seem to remember some discussion revolving around whether or not this was his correct job title, and whether therefore this tended to indicate that the writer of the letter had probably gotten the information (and presumably hence the spelling) from press reports.

Perhaps one of our resident press report gurus can comment further.

Regards
Timsta

Author: Vicki
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 10:09 am
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Chris Jd,
I would like to comment on your post:
"The words "juwe", "juwen" and the like you find in old texts ( e.g. 15. century ) mean "you" or "your"."

The graffito having been written in a Jewish area, would a Jew recognize the spelling, as meaning "you"? As "You are not the men to be blamed for nothing"


Vicky

Author: Robert Maloney
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 11:21 am
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Perhaps Jack was a Dutch Jeweller? Jeweller in Dutch is...Juwelier:-0))))))))))))))))

Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 11:24 am
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Hi, Vicki, Timsta, Jon, Chris Jd, and Caz:

Christian, first of all, thanks for your informed input on the use of terms to refer to the Jews among German speakers.

Vicki, you make an interesting point that "juwes" could be taken to mean "you" except for the fact that if that was the case the graffiti would make even less sense than it does now, "The you are not the men who will be blamed for nothing." Do you see what I mean?

Timsta and Caz, you both make an excellent point that the writer of the Openshaw letter could have written the address and Openshaw's supposed title, as given in the newspaper, directly from the press reports, which could explain why that is not misspelled compared to the contents of the letter. This is a point I had not thought about and I congratulate you both for thinking through the process to reach that conclusion. Timsta, I believe it was Dr. Thomas Ind who said that "Pathological Curator" was not Dr. Openshaw's correct title. So this is an indication, as you say, Timsta, that the title is taken from the newspaper rather than from inside knowledge of the doctor's title at the London Hospital.

Jon, I think rather than thinking, as you seem to be implying, that "juwes" was a simple misspelling, thre is room to think that if the inscription was written by the killer, it was deliberately misspelled that way.

I do think there is, as Tom Wescott and I have discussed, room to think that the writer of the Lusk and Openshaw letters was a playactor, writing in a joking manner in the Lusk letter in mock Irish dialect and in the Openshaw letter in pseudo Cockney. The Cockney double negative in the graffiti, if that was written by the killer, could be part of the same pattern--along with the misspelled "juwes" matching the mispelled "knif" of the Lusk letter, the "devle" and "ospital" of the Openshaw letter. Another thing I have been thinking about D'Onston, who as I stated got the placement of the writing on the wall wrong, saying that it was found above Kate Eddowes body in Mitre Square in his December 1 article: He was careful to write to the City Police not Scotland Yard in his letter of October 16, so he had been following the case closely enough to know that the Mitre Square murder was in the jurisdiction of the City Police not on Met territory. There is also the aspect of the graffito that it appears to have capital "T's" throughout, and D'Onston does have a curious way of making some of his "T's" look like capitalized letters, in the middle of a sentence. This aspect is noted in the Mammoth Book of JtR.

Best regards

Chris George

Author: Chris Jd
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 11:48 am
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Hi Vicki,

"...would a Jew recognize the spelling, as meaning "you"?"...

Not unless he was 500 years old I'm afraid.
And considering the living conditions in the East End and the National Health Service at the very beginning ( not that it's much further now...)
I doubt it.

;-)
Christian


P.S.:
Chris T,
I liked that sentence "Jon, I think rather than thinking, as you seem to be implying, that "juwes" was a simple misspelling, thre is room to think that if the inscription was written by the killer, it was deliberately misspelled that way."

had to THINK about it. :-)

Ever thought about new lyrics for Aretha Franklin? ;-)




Author: Timsta
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 02:39 pm
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Chris:

Hate to add fuel to the D'Onston fire, but his habit of capitalizing T's in the middle of sentences is also visible in the transcripts contained in Melvin Harris' "The True Face of JTR".

Regards
Timsta

Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 03:45 pm
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Hi, Timsta:

The issue that I have though with the contention that D'Onston always capitalized his "T's" as stated in the Mammoth Book is that study of his writing shows that the seeming capped "T's" are within the words not at the start of the words, as in "The men.... That...."

Chris

Author: Timsta
Thursday, 17 October 2002 - 05:14 pm
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Chris:

I also have a suspicion that capitalizing words was none too uncommon back then, either, especially in 'informal' English.

Regards
Timsta

Author: Jim Leen
Friday, 18 October 2002 - 11:24 am
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Hello Everybody,

Do we neccessarily have to assume that "Juwes" is Pan Germanic in origin? I have seen examples, implying Judaism, on Spanish sites. Similarly, why stop at Juwes = Jews. Could the writer not have been trying to express the word Jewish, for example?

English, the way what she is spoken, is an astoundingly stupid language. In a nice way of course. The grammatic rules, pronounciations and spelling can be awkward even for native speakers with a half decent education.

Go into many shops and witness signs bearing phrases such as "new potatoe's" or "ten items or less" and wonder at the rules of English.

And finally, since I know I'm wandering, at the risk of sounding facetious, what if Juwes was nothing more than a surname?

Thanking you.

Jim Leen

Author: Chris Jd
Friday, 18 October 2002 - 12:17 pm
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Hey Juwes,
don't make it bad
take a sad song...

Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Sunday, 20 October 2002 - 04:59 pm
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Whatho Monty,

Thanks for your rather kind remarks after my thoughts about street lighting. I am sorry I haven’t written before but I have not viewed the boards for quite some time. Furthermore I have been inhibited by the Magpies being unable to win at home. But, at last, two past the Cobblers on Saturday and now all’s right with the world. Three good points!

In the meantime much has been written on the positions of street lights. It would appear the nearest light source was some 20 feet away. Taking into account the experiments I mentioned before, I would suggest this would not throw enough light onto the wall for our friendly author to write his deep thoughts at night.

To see the effects of more “modern” gas lighting, that is lighting with a mantle and not just a flare, I suggest you visit the Park area of Nottingham where the largest collection of gas lights in Britain are still working. The Park is not a public park with band stands, flower beds and the like but an area built for Nottingham’s rich in the mid 19th century; there are some beautiful pieces of Victorian architecture there by local architects T C Hine and Watson Fothergill. The effect of gas lighting can really be appreciated and I would suggest it may still be difficult to write such graffiti as “Notts County for the Cup” without the help of a torch.

After you’ve had a squint at the gas lights, you can nip round the corner a have a pint in the oldest pub in the world: the Olde Trip to Jerusalem. Which leads us to Juwes; perhaps they were brewers.

Cheers, Mark

Author: Monty
Monday, 21 October 2002 - 11:08 am
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Mark,

Been to the "Trip" many a time. A mate of mine used to work at the 'olde labour exchange' near the Evening Post so we used to nip in when I made my occasional working visit that way.

I havent been around the Park area at night though, curses.

Im trying to get a little understanding into the lighting at Mitre square. If you check out the Bulls eye lantern thread you will see a post from Mike Rainey which was a great help. I would be grateful for your input if you have any.

Im going to put a little work on the lighting situation at Goulston street tonight, you know, just to get an idea of how light it really was.

My kind words were also honest ones. Im not really into the meaning of the word 'Juwes' but rather interested on how they could have gotten there. I know it seems obvious but its the little things that interest me. So I shall leave those who worry about the meaning whilst I worry about the how.

Remember to join me on the Bulls eye lantern thread !!

Monty
:)

Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Tuesday, 22 October 2002 - 05:33 pm
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Whatho all,

I am taking Monty’s suggestion and following him to the bulls eye lantern page but am I doing the right thing?

Will I be happy or will there be other posters there ready to insult me?

And those that in the shadows in the big top hat flashing the shiny ?

Author: ALAN SMITH
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 11:57 am
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In "From Hell" by Bob Hinton, he states that an officer at the scene in Goulston Street observed that the LARGEST of the letters on the wall was about 1 inch high. Is this true? If so why is so much time devoted to this subject.

Here we have a policeman on a dark and wet night in the smoggy, grimy, 19th century east end, with poor street lighting stating that he is certain that chalk marks one inch high or smaller were not there when he passed OUTSIDE THE ENTRY.

If his colleague's evidence about the diminutive lettering is true, then this evidence would quite rightly be laughed out of court.

Alan

Author: ALAN SMITH
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 04:25 am
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Just double checked. The officer claimed the largest of the writing was LESS THAN AN INCH in height.

Alan

Author: Chris Jd
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 04:45 am
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Hi Alan,
to my info the capitals were 3/4 inch, the rest in proportion.
3/4 inch should be 19 mm, right?
Quite small indeed.

Christian

Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 03:16 pm
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Hi, Christian and Alan:

That is one of the things that surprised me when I began researching the case and finding out the true facts of the case, that the lettering in the graffito was quite small. I suppose we are used to seeing the movie scene in which the graffito is emblazoned large on the wall, often at a corner in the street or so on, which does not in the least reflect what really occurred.

All the best

Chris


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