Juwes

A still from the 1978 movie 'Murder by Decree', which depicts the word "Juwes"

The word Juwes reportedly appeared in chalk graffiti on a wall in the Whitechapel district of London following the killing and mutilation of Catherine Eddowes on September 30, 1888 as part of the Jack the Ripper series of murders.

Various police at the time could not agree on whether the word in question was spelled Juwes, Juews or Jewes, or perhaps some other variant. There is no evidence that any of them believed it was anything other than a misspelled reference to Jews from a semi-literate writer. The newspapers had widely reported that the police were at the time looking for a Jewish suspect nicknamed "Leather Apron" and most suspected this message was a reference to that. Some people do not believe the killer had anything to do with the graffiti in question and point out that the building upon which it was found was the residence of several members of that faith and could have merely been anti-Semitic scrawlings unrelated to the case.

Proposed Masonic connection

Author Stephen Knight claimed that Juwes is a word in Freemasonry to refer to Jubelo, Jebula and Jebulum, the three killers of Hiram Abif, a legendary figure in Masonic ritual.

Although some sources after Knight have repeated this information, this idea has been rejected by most experts. There is no verifiable reference that anyone prior to Knight had ever referred to those three figures by the term.

Knight made his claims about the word Juwes as part of his argument that the Ripper killings were committed by a royal conspiracy with the help of Freemasons in the police. Most of the factual claims of his book have been disproven by other authors and this theory is not accepted by the vast majority of authors and scholars. Knight went on to write a book, The Brotherhood, which set out to claim the Freemasons were involved in any number of other conspiracies. Academics and Freemasons dismiss the book as inspired by anti-Masonic bigotry.

References

The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook by Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner, ISBN 0786707682, is a solid reference devoted to known facts instead of theories. Evans also has other books on the topic, including one advancing his own suspect.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight, ISBN 0586046526, is the book that started the myth about the case.
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, ISBN 0786702761, is widely held to be one of the best on the topic.

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