john, this letter, purporting to be from our friend was discovered only recently, I think thats its a good chance that its a fake. What is your opinion, can you see evidence of Bury, or any other contempory suspects here.

Regards Steve.

BTW, text reads.

17th sept 1888.
Dear Boss.

So now they say I am a Yid when will they ever lern dear old Boss. You an me know the truth, dont we. Lusk can look forever hell never find me, but I am rite under his nose all the time, I watch them looking for me and it gives me fits HA HA! I love my work and shant stop till I get buckled, and even then watch out for your old pal Jacky.

Catch me if you can, Jack the Ripper.

Sorry about the blood, still messy from the last one, what a pretty necklace I gave her.

This is the famous Lusk letter, sent to the head of the Whitechapel vigilance committee, Mr George Lusk, Who is mentioned in the 17th Sept letter, reproduced in the first post. Anyone see any similarties, General tone, handwriting, spelling mistakes, etc. Sorry, I am not allowed to post this attachment in its present size, If I reduce it any further it will be useless for comparison purposes. Please ignore this post. Steve.

Stephen, is the Lusk letter otherwise known as the letter from hell? If so I have a copy. I'm looking at above, I have some initial thoughts and will post next day or so.

John, yes its better known as "From Hell" and begins "Mishter Lusk Sor" be interested to hear your thoughts.

Stephen, I've been looking at these letters, turning them this way and that way and reading up on the case.

I can see the enduring interest. There's more to it than meets the eye. It seems to parallel the JFK mystery in complexity and trails.

I've been resisting being drawn in too many directions and have focussed on about 17 odd supposed Ripper missives.

The most important MAY be the graffiti.

If one does a statistical analysis of the letter frequency (which can be used as a kind of 'finger print') of the two versions of the graffiti one finds they are EXACTLY similar.

This 'finger print' is one of the only consistent feature that one can use to crossreference to other writings. Some letters stand out as being distinctly different. Others have similarities. And in turn others have similarities to this.

Grammar etc is another feature not dependent on the actual writing itself. Others no doubt have reached conclusions here. Handwriting and grammar and tone is altered within one person depending on how much lauadanum or booze is in the system, quite apart from mood swings and mindsets of the psychopathic schizophrenic brain damaged etc.

Over all I think there is a possibility that some of the letters I've looked at are from the same person*. Graffitti, Hell, Lusk, New, and the boss letters (2), plus the so far unseen to me : the address letter. (based on statistics and lettershapes. However, different people on different education learn different styles. One of the police memos therefore could be from the ripper??)

One person I've got reason to consider is J. Levy.What do you think of him? Do any authenticated writings of his survive?


*clarification. : Not all from same , but some are similar to others and there is some overlaps particularly if one takes in to account the different persons that may reside within one body, deliberately or otherwise. A puzzle to be sure.

John, time very short at the moment, I will reply more fully later today. Just to answer your question, as far as I am aware no extant examples of Levy's handwritting exist. I take it you mean Jacob Levy, the manic Aldgate butcher? more latter. Steve.

I should be very interested to know why Joseph Levy might be of any significance as regards the 'Jack the Ripper' correspondence. The 17 September 1888 is a patent modern hoax that emerged in 1988. (Significant year perhaps?)

I suppose the Levy referred to is not Joseph, but Jacob, a recently introduced name to the case from the directory and census records and never a known suspect.

Stewart, first allow me introduce myself. My primary interest is the JFK assassination. The Ripper interest is a recent one (weeks). So my background knowledge is very patchy.

Re: Levy.

I make assumptions and then see how they fit in with things. In this way I follow trails and jump to another as something comes up.

So, I took the letter where the supposed Ripper is proclaiming an intention to give himself up. Apparently then had second thoughts and redacted name address etc.

This letter has two sides.

When one looks at the back one can see that the writing on the front has not bled through.

The knife 'photo' and the redacted areas have.

This is written with a pen and ink (quill?). : Dip...write ...run low...dip etc.

The ink is usually dry fairly quickly. It may be blotted as well. Probably it's written in soft light conditions. candles, Gas, Lamp. The human eye in dark conditions does some interesting things. The 'red cones' tend to shut down, which is why for example a red rose viewed at night can look deep black, why emergency lighting at night is often blue. So, a red ink may look black at night. Or in candle light at least a very deep red.

When one takes the rear of the page one can see that the redacted areas show through. This ink was applied after the rest of the writing. (It was then partially overwritten in the lower right). The area covered by the intitial writing would make the paper at this area less absorbent.

This means that to some extent on the rear the redaction bleeds through differently where there is no writing. On the front the area that has not bled through would present a different quality as well.

________________


If one takes the rear and flips it to a mirror image of itself so that when one lines up, resizes and rotates the rear to match the front, one gets a view of these different qualities.

If the rear view has areas where ink has not bled through as much, then these areas would be a negative of the area seen from the front where the density would have multiplied.

So: superimposing these two images and making one negative and making one slightly transparent and doing some enhancement it is possible to discern a few letters.

The J repeats on both signature areas. The room available for the letters, and the slanting of the redacted shape PLUS the faint portions of letters makes me look for a suspect with a short name that starts with J. The name J. Levy fits the bill.

_____

Here's a front on view of a 3d map of this using the front and rear view of the lower signature with what to me looks like components of letters. I've airbrushed purple into the image where it looks to me like letters are.

[attachmentid=3739]

The 'J' is also there in the other 'coffin' shape.

Hello Stewart, nice to hear from you. how is the new book going? Like you, as I indicated in my first post I believe the letter to be a modern fake. John's method of analysis is in my view almost unique, and has born fruit in his work on the Kennedy assassination, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with.

Regards, Steve.

Stephen. I can't offer my opinion if fake or not. The timing of it is curious. It seems a bit of a mish mash of other letters. A full color, high res. pic would help.

Another thing. I wonder if something has been said anywhere about what appears to be writing on the 'kelly phot' bed head board?

John, In the Mayrick diary a photo of poor Mary reveals two letters written on the wall to her right side, the letters appear to be F & M, diary supporters claim they represent "Florence Maybrick" and were written by James Maybrick as a criptic clue to the true nature of the murder. However the photo appears to be heavily cropped and enhanced. I am not aware of any writting on the actual bed head. Steve. John I have tried to attach a small copy of the photo, but once again I am being told that I am exceeding my limit, any idea whats going on?

Some thoughts on this:

IF there was writing on the head board it may have been in blood. Once it had dried it may have matched the brown of the wood.

The compelling horror on the bed may have been sufficient to divert attention from some faint writing.

Again a photo from an angle with the horror in the centre may not have been sufficient sans any on the spot descriptions to notice any writing.

There seems to be a pattern to the head board wood, is it a known timber? Walnut, Oak? Veneer?

There seems to be a patch of different quality about where one would expect hair grease from resting head.
___________________________


If one takes the bed board, corrects for perspective, straightens and resizes, applies a bit of gamma and enhancement there APPEARS to be writing. Here are some suggestions. It may very well be just wood patterns. It may be old writings. I knew someone who used to scribble a note on bed head every once in a while.

Body fluids, (or any fluids for that matter) once applied with finger, shimmers in light. Once dried is hard to distinguish. (write oh windscreen of car with just finger and see in different light conditions)

Anyway here it is for comments:

[attachmentid=3746]


PS. none of the writing makes sense to me, except possibly 666 but that interpretation is stretching it.

I am a bit confused here as to which letters we are talking about.

The 17 September 1888 letter pictured at the start of this thread is undoubtedly a modern hoax.

The first known letter in the 1888 police file is the 24 September 1888 letter which is unsigned but has a couple of coffin shapes and a knife shape drawn on it.

The first letter that gave the name 'Jack the Ripper' was the 'Dear Boss' letter posted on 27 September 1888.

The 'From hell' or 'Lusk letter' was received on 16 October 1888 and had no name appended, merely finishing 'signed'.

The 'Maybrick diary' is a modern hoax.

Forget any ideas of Fs, Ms or anything written on the wall.

John, what is the source of the images you are working on?

Stephen, the book is progressing slowly.

Best Wishes,

Stewart

Stewart, Like I said , I'm very much a newbie, so expect some stupid sounding questions at times. Just by the 'sound' of it the 'new' letter seems a hoax. You state with certainty it is a hoax. It would be good to see what reasons there are for this? If it's too much to go into, perhaps a link to appropriate discussion or essay?

The letter I talk about re the 'Levy' post is from a pdf file from "Learning Curve
Education Service workshops".It's the one with the coffin shapes and knife shape. Of the coffin shapes , the one referred to in my post is the one at the bottom of this letter. When down loading the pdf I didn't note the website I found it on. The header image of the 'learnong curve' organisation is remeniscent of the look of the 'casefile' site, so it may be from there.

The image of the head board is the top left portion of the head board from a high resolution photo from the 'casebook' forums.

Regards, John

John,

I don't regard any of your questions as stupid, I just think it's great to see 'a newbie' (as you describe yourself) with such a genuine curiosity and considered opinion taking an interest in the subject.

Regarding the 'new' letter, i.e. the one dated 17th Sept 1888, please take it from me that it is not worth pursuing and it is not the one that you were writing about anyway. The one you are referring to is the 24 September 1888 letter that is the earliest dated letter in the police files. Ergo, it is a genuine 1888 letter but, almost certainly, it is not from the killer but from a Victorian hoaxer. I wonder where the Education Services Workshops obtained the image from? I shall take a look at their site.

I have taken a look at the headboard shot, using a magnifying glass, but cannot see anything other than the grainy flaws due to the poor quality of such an old photograph.

Best Wishes,

Stewart

John,

I've taken a look at the Education Service Workshops which is a new site added by the National Archives. The photographs they reproduce of the various letters are pretty poor quality with bad pixellation, therefore difficult to work with.

It's an interesting site, but they really should have had someone putting it together who knew the subject - watch out for the errors!

Stewart