Talk:Goulston Street graffito

Name?
Who coined the name Goulston Street graffito? As clearly it is being used inaccurately as the word graffiti is used as a mass noun. It is used because it is the impossibility of quantifying the graffiti. Each letter of each word which is in each sentence is arguably a graffito, hence that is why the whole is known simply as graffiti. The use of graffito is rather bloated and obtuse. And is obviously being used incorrectly.

Misspelling
I think a semi literate person could misspell Jew, as a literate child I misslelled it as, "Jue". A word pronounced that way can be spellt many different ways in English and ignorant people/children can make mistakes. Proxima Centauri (talk) 11:43, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Sugden wrote in his book on Jack the ripper that "Juwes" was the way that "Jews" was spelled by the Church in the days of the Ripper murders. I disagree that the mispelling suggests the author of the graffito was semi literate.--Aslamthelion (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * What matters is what reliable sources say. We cannot conduct our own analyses.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 21:06, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

1. Philip Sugden's book is considered very reliable as a source on Jack the Ripper and he mentioned this might count against the theory that Jack the Ripper was a foreigner, and that he was literate in British English of the time.

2. I wasn't offering my own analysis (not sure where you got that from, but it wasn't from what I wrote.) --Aslamthelion (talk) 21:45, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Meaning
I understand that the neighbourhood where the graffito was found was predominantly Jewish. I suspect that the graffito was originally a Jew's lament - "The Juwes are the men that will be blamed for nothing" and it had been there for some time, causing no offence. At a certain time the word "not" was inserted, perhaps by the killer, changing the meaning entirely into an attack on Jews. Akld guy (talk) 09:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum claim origin - predates Stephen Knight?
I would note that it says here that "Author Stephen Knight suggested that "Juwes" referred not to "Jews", but to Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum... and then adds that "There is no evidence that anyone prior to Knight had ever referred to those three figures by the term "Juwes". The latter point is cited to Paul Begg's 2003 Jack the Ripper: The Definite History. However the cited date for the Knight source is 1976. Yet the claim was made explicitly in the 1973 BBC docudrama series Jack the Ripper where it is stated as fact early in the third episode by the character John Watt. I know the series was a precursor to Knight's work, but my understanding was his research followed the programme and he was not involved in researching and writing it. The credited writers were Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd who then wrote a factual book based on the series. Thus it would seem that the earliest documented use of the claim was 1973 and not by Knight. I don't have a copy of Begg's book to hand, so I am not clear if he actually says this, but whatever the case it would seem that someone (presumably Jones and Lloyd) prior to Knight had made the claim. Dunarc (talk) 20:21, 3 September 2023 (UTC)