These are readers' responses to the essays of Dennis Stocks -- whenever possible, Stocks' replies to each post will be posted in italics beneath the reader's comments.
1.
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 18:37:59 +0100
From: Matthew Fletcher
I greatly enjoyed reading Dennis Stocks' essays on the Masonic connections in the Ripper case. I was particularly interested in a discovery he cites which Phil Wilshire reported in a recent Ripperana.
Wilshire has noticed that if you replace each letter of JUWES (as in The Juwes are not .. etc) with its predecessor in the alphabet you get ITVDR which is an anagram for DRVIT.
[NOTE: I have not seen the original article so apologies if this is published there already:]
I am surprised that he did not go one obvious step further: Remember that the Goulston graffito was written in a "rounded schoolboy hand" ie lower case and joined up. Suppose, just suppose, that the W was in a U and a V close to eachother. This does not seem an unreasonable interpretation.
We now have: J U UV E S
Giving: I T TU D R - which is a PERFECT anagram of DRUITT!!!
Hey presto! Case closed - Phil Wilshire herebey elected supreme grand master of Druittism for all time.
This is a pretty staggering coincidence ... and an excellent new party trick to put down the Druitt non-believers. I have yet to decide whether I can accept this is just chance ... who knows?
Reply from Mr. Stocks: Wilshire's comment on the Fenian "code" is interesting, but so are the implications suggested by Aliffe in RIPPERANA #8. I would be interested to hear from anyone as to theories regarding the graffito and anagrammatic codes.
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