The Writing on the Wall: Misconceptions in Perception

On the morning of the 30th of September 1888, at about 2.55 am a piece of a woman's apron, wet with blood and fecal matter was discovered in the entry leading to the staircase of 118-119 Wentworth Model Dwellings. It appeared to correspond with the missing part of a recently murdered woman's apron at Mitre Square. She was the second murder of the night. Above the apron was written in chalk:

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"The Juwes are
The men that
will not
be blamed
for nothing"

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Upon discovery it was agreed by the police that the graffiti must be removed to prevent a riot. Whitechapel, London was the home to over 100,000 Jewish immigrants, many of them refugees from the recent pogroms in Eastern Europe. Already there had been contentious murmurings as to the identity of the "Whitechapel Murderer" and it had become common currency that the "Jews" were behind it. The writing was recorded as write and a sponge and water obliterated the suspected scrawl of a serial killer that held the East End in horror and would become the greatest unsolved series of killings ever, bordering into the mythic realm of memory.

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But why should the automatic reaction to the graffiti infer that it was anti-Semitic and an attempt to pin the blame on the Jews? Any reading of so-called 'ripperologists' all point to the significance they try to imprint to both the time of writing and whether it is actually the work of the killer. I have never come across a study on the actual text, and by this I mean, a sincere one that took into account both the issues implied in the text and exactly what kind of man would risk capture and scrawl a note to the "world".

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"Jack the Ripper" has been described as everything from a psychopathic sadist to a social reformer, from the lowest insane imbecile to the highest in the land. Any attempt to place a truth on the perspective of an uncaught killer is lost in idle speculation sometimes of the most absurd kind. As mankind we should be able to learn from patterns that develop subsequently to any problem that raises its head. Since the Whitechapel murders the type of killer that "Jack" was has become a source of hostile debate and cliched racked psychology. Any suggestion that the ritualistic elements to the "Jack" killings hold the key to the kind of man he was usually are downgraded to the most pulpiest of narratives.

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Besides his victims and the way their bodies and valuables are displaced there is not much we can infer about "Jack" except the obvious from the gall with which he committed his crimes. But the writing is full of evidential leanings. We can surmise first that this is a man who wants to tell us something, be it through his murders or through a politically charged set of words. Not wishing to put the horse before the cart one can wonder if the foresight to write the graffiti is in reality a cover for a subconscious state of mind that refuses to believe in the horror of the crimes they have committed. By legitimising one succumbs to meaning...