The Goulston Street Graffito
Soon after the discovery of Kate Eddowes's murder in Mitre Square, a chalk message was discovered by Police Constable Alfred Long, it was chalked on the brickwork surrounding a doorway to the Wentworth Model Dwellings in Goulston Street.
This is how the doorway looked at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders.
PC Long told the inquest that he discovered a piece of cloth that had blood on it at 2:55 in the morning of Sunday, September 30. The cloth had not been there at 2:20.
After noticing the cloth, he then noticed the chalk message. He couldn’t say whether the chalk message had been there when he had passed the spot earlier.
He searched the stairway and then was sufficiently concerned that he took the cloth to Leman Street police station and so found his place as a supporting character in the Jack the Ripper mystery.
Did Jack the Ripper leave a chalk message?
There was and is speculation that Kate Eddowe's killer, having performed the butchery on her, calmly cut a piece of her apron to carry with him in order to wipe the blood off his hands and knife.
He then carried it for about a quarter of a mile from Mitre Square to Goulston Street, where he dropped it in a doorway at the Wentworth Model Dwellings.
On the brickwork above the piece of cloth, PC Long noticed a message written in chalk.
At the inquest PC Long said:
There were words written on the wall. ‘The Juews are the men who will not be blamed for nothing’. 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”
The Daily Telegraph on the 12th of October - 12 days after the murder - reported that City of London Police Detective Daniel Halse reported the message as: ‘The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing.’ The ‘not’ was in a different place.
In fact, there were three different versions:
‘The Juews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’ - PC Long.
‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’ - Chief Inspector Swanson
‘The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing’ - DC Halse.
City of London Police detectives heard about the find, and because the piece of cloth appeared to be cut from the apron of the victim who had just been murdered in the City of London Police district, some of their detectives went to check out the message.
Daniel Halse decided the message was important enough to alert his boss. It was decided that a photographer should be found so a permanent record could be made of the message. Daniel Halse then remained next to the message to ensure that nobody could remove it.
Sir Charles Warren and the chalk message.
However, before the message could be photographed, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, arrived, and under his orders (and some say by his own hand), the message was removed. Sir Charles Warren claimed that the message had to be removed because it could set off an antisemitic riot.
Was Jack the Ripper a Freemason?
Now, it was pointed out that this chalk message could have been an important clue in a murder case. The message could have been hidden and placed under police guard until the photographer arrived. The fact that Sir Charles Warren ignored this and had it removed so quickly has led to a theory that involves the Freemasons.
Sir Charles Warren was a high-ranking Freemason, and some believed that he had it removed because he saw that a fellow Freemason had written the message.
The clue, it is claimed, is in that odd spelling of the word Jews - Juews. It is said that that is the way the word Jews is spelt in Masonic history.
Hiram Abiff - First Grand Master
Masonic history is very old. It goes back 3,000 years to the first Grand Master, Hiram Abiff.
Hiram Abiff, it is claimed, designed and oversaw the building of King Solomon’s great temple in Jerusalem. Three men murdered him. They were captured, and the story goes that their chests were ripped open and their insides pulled out and placed over their shoulders.
A disembowelling which is similar to that performed on Jack the Ripper’s victims. Especially in the case of the second victim, Annie Chapman, and the fourth victim, Kate Eddowes.
And, of course, Kate Eddowes was murdered in Mitre Square. ‘Mitre’ and ‘Square’ are two important shapes in the Masonic ritual. And she had two upside-down ‘V’ shapes cut beneath each of her eyes. That shape is the shape of an important instrument in Masonic lore: the compass.
They All Love Jack by Bruce Robinson
For those who want to learn more about this theory of conspiracy in high places and the Freemason connection to the murders, then the book to read is They All Love Jack by Bruce Robinson.
Bruce Robinson, the director of the film Withnail and I, spent 15 years in dedicated research to produce the book described by The Guardian as ‘a bloody good read’. It is fascinating. It is also long, over 800 pages!
Why did the killer need to remove a piece of Kate Eddowes’s Apron?
There is no solid evidence supporting the theory that the killer of Kate Eddowes was the person who dropped the cloth in the doorway or wrote the message.
If, as is claimed, the killer used the cloth to wipe the blood off his knife and hands, why did that take him from Mitre Square to Goulston Street to carry out that simple task?
And given that PC Watkins checked Mitre Square at 1:30 and discovered Kate Eddowes's body just 14 minutes later at 1:44, the killer was under a serious time constraint.
The mutilation carried out in this murder was the most extensive of all but one.
Only the fifth victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was subjected to a more horrific attack. But Mary Jane Kelly was murdered in her own home. For the first time, the killer was operating in a private room behind a locked door so he could take his time.
So we have to ask if the killer wanted to clean himself up, why did he need to spend time cutting a square of cloth from out of her apron?
Why not simply spend 10 seconds wiping his hands and knife on the intact apron?
Why leave the murder site carrying a piece of incriminating evidence?
We also need a convincing explanation as to why this killer, who it was believed had just killed two women, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes, in less than an hour, clung on to this bloody cloth for nearly an hour.
Police Constable Alfred Long was quite sure the cloth was not in the doorway when he passed at 2:20 a.m. City of London detective Daniel Halse, who also passed the doorway at about 2:20 a.m., said he didn’t see any piece of cloth.
This means if it was the killer who dropped it, he was wandering the streets very close to where he had just committed his second murder for nearly an hour. And wandering those streets at the very time that the police were scouring the same streets.
It’s faintly possible that it happened that way, but it’s not certain, so we are all allowed to suggest an explanation as to how the cloth appeared after 2:20 am and before 2:55 am
The piece of cloth we are told was cut from Kate Eddowe’s apron. Now, at 8:30 pm on the 29th of September, Kate had been found helplessly drunk and taken to Bishopsgate Police Station. At 1 am, she was released.
Kate Eddowes
She’s been lying in a cell in a drunken stupor. The doorway in Goulston Street is about an 8-minute walk from Bishopsgate Police Station. She steps inside the doorway for privacy and, feminine hygiene being what it was in 1888, she takes her piece of cloth, lifts her skirt and cleans herself.
The police surgeons pointed out that there was no way of knowing if the blood was human or animal blood, so they certainly had no way of knowing if it was arterial or menstrual blood.
She drops the cloth and then walks for 5 minutes up to a quiet, dark corner of Mitre Square.
The cloth remains inside the passage that leads to the stairway, out of sight of the police officers who are passing along Goulston Street.
Then, sometime after PC Long passes by at 2:20 am, a resident entering or leaving sees the filthy cloth and kicks it toward the entrance to the building, ready for PC Long to see it at 2:55 am.
It’s possible. What’s your best explanation?