Jack the Ripper identified...

[Rosie Knees]

Originally Posted by Olde Crone

Interesting article, Asa, thankyou.

As one of the commenters points out, if it WAS Aaron thingy, then he wasn't the person who wrote the Ripper letters because as a Polish Jewish immigrant he spoke only broken English, his native tongue was Yiddish and if he could write at all it would have been in Cyrillic script, not an assured hand of written English.

Also interesting - if rather worrying on a purely personal note! - the shawl was not a shawl, it was a ****** pashmina!

OC

[Michael]

Polish is written in the Latin alphabet (with the addition of a few extra accented letters), although since Poland was occupied by Russia at the time he might have had Cyrillic forced on him... either way, fluent English seems pretty unlikely. The spelling of the Ripper letter is somewhat strange, but the grammar is fine - suggesting either the usual variations in 19th century spelling (other people on here will probably know more about that than me), or someone who actually spoke perfectly good English but was misspelling words deliberately in order to give the impression the killer was illiterate.



If the letter was indeed a hoax, though, its style provides no clue at all to the identity of the murderer!

The verdict from one DNA expert is pretty much the same as that which most of us have reached on here: "can't be sure until their work has been more thoroughly checked" - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...e-9717036.html

There's a rule of thumb in science that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to back them up - announcing that you've solved a mystery which has had everyone else stumped for 100+ years is certainly an extraordinary claim, and the evidence Edwards is offering appears to be some distance short of being considered extraordinary.

[Olde Crone]

His native tongue was Yiddish though, not Polish, if we want to split hairs.

By the time this claim has been thoroughly discredited (if it ever is) they will have sold more than enough books for it not to matter one way or the other!

OC