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Arbitrary Selective Rejection and Acceptence of Coincidences

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  • Arbitrary Selective Rejection and Acceptence of Coincidences

    Since I read Martin Fido's “The Crimes and Trials of JtR” (1994) and Robert Houses 'Scotland Yards Prime Suspect', I have always been inclined to look at Kozminski as the most likely candidate. Yet recently I have changed my mind.

    In some respects one has to accept that there is a case for Kozminski given he was a suspect and we have contemporary sources stating as much at later times in their memoirs. Yet why was he a suspect?

    Swanson suggests that the investigators were watching Kozminski and that shortly after he was taken to an asylum where he died. House suggests that in the post-MJK search of houses Kozminski was identified as a candidate and watched. I don't have Fido's book anymore but if I am right Fido's explanation is like the above and that JtR stopping after MJK coincides with this. Yet no one says why exactly Kozminski was being watched...

    Swanson contradicts everyone who claims no one saw JtR by saying Kozminski was identified by a PC at a seaside home in Brighton. Modern views that JtR was seen seem to agree with Swanson. It appears Lewende was used as a witness right up until Sadler but there is some who view Schwartz as the witness.

    What I am trying to get around is still why was Kozminski being watched? Swanson says its specific (Kozminski's Brother's house). Yet Robert House alludes to mass searches after the murder of MJK. We know from the files that investigators had many people on the ground watching other people and places. Kozminski was Jewish mentally ill with some vices with an incident several years later of brandishing a knife. Yet if Kozminski wasn't put away until years later, how could that be said to coincide with MJK being the last victim?

    I believe Fido resolves this by finding another Jew David Cohen who coincidentally was put in an asylum at the same time. I believe House decides that Kozminski was in and out of an asylum to explain this. It isn't a bad explanation, but Kozminski doesn't seem to be a violent person and the only reason to suspect him is because he is a mad Jew who went to an asylum around the time MJK died.

    The thing is, why watch Jews? If anyone lists all the witness accounts they can see that there is minimal mention of Jews. I would suggest that Hutchinson's detailed claim was what put investigators onto Jews much like the Wearside Jack hoax. Now imagine a Wearside mentally ill person with some vices who gets committed and the Yorkshire Ripper murders stopped. That's all they got on Kozminski it seems. Someone who matched an early profile, was a Jew and happened to be captured, along with others, within the search net as a contender. Everyone can't be watched. So they selected the mostly likely candidate. A mentally ill Jewish person with some sexual deviance. That's it.

    To throw doubt on this is Swanson with his seaside identification, but so much is either garbled with him and or lost in the original files that we have a PC who won't dob in another Jew. So we bend some stuff here and there and we get the Jewish Lewende/Schwartz identifing a Jew. That works. Yet neither man claimed to have seen a Jew and even worse for the Kozminski hypothesis is that Schwartz was actively sworn at by the person with Stride who used an anti-semitic slur. Then we have the GSG and bloody apron which takes on the shape of an anti-Jewish sentiment. Fido rejects Stride as a JtR murder and the GSG. They are coincidences to him.

    House accepts Stride as a Ripper suspect. He explains the racial slur as one Jew to another and gives some reasons for thinking this by referencing some Jew vs Jew slur matches at the time. He is somewhat silent on the GSG and just tells the story from an agnostic perspective. However the straighforward conclusion from accepting Stride and GSG is that JtR isn't a Jew but someone using anti-semitic communication. It just can't be Kozminski if we accept that.

    The point is this. It is logically wrong to arbitrarily reject Stride and the GSG as a coincidence and then arbitrarily accept the coincidence of a mentally ill Jew going to an asylum around the time of the last murder. Yet this is exactly what seems to be case even with the contempory investigation.

    The way the Swanson's witness identification makes sense to me is if an identification took place and the witness couldn't identify the suspect and the investigators felt that the witness was being untruthful and wouldn't dob in a fellow Jew, a jew who fit some sort of jewish mentally ill sexual maniac profile. Basically whoever was in charge of the Kozminski investigation seems to have been heavy on this idea of him being the killer. Swanson seems to have gone to lengths to get onto this case about Kozminski by writing up notes in books that refer to him. Does this not suggest that maybe Swanson had a pet suspect, that it was Kozminski, that he bent the truth in his witness testimony account to try and bring some closure to it all (i.e - he KNEW it was Kozminski so said what he did about the witness identification?).

    So what I believe is that today it is as logically wrong as it was back then to arbitraily fit the evidence to the suspect by treating factors as a coincidence and using coincidence as a factor in placing guilt. I don't think this is hypocrisy, but more along the lines of not maintaining the same lines of reasoning throughout.
    Last edited by Batman; 01-05-2015, 02:19 PM.
    Bona fide canonical and then some.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Batman View Post
    So what I believe is that today it is as logically wrong as it was back then to arbitraily fit the evidence to the suspect by treating factors as a coincidence and using coincidence as a factor in placing guilt.
    Yes, but careful about making assumptions. Your post is full of them.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Batman View Post

      Swanson suggests that the investigators were watching Kozminski and that shortly after he was taken to an asylum where he died. House suggests that in the post-MJK search of houses Kozminski was identified as a candidate and watched. I don't have Fido's book anymore but if I am right Fido's explanation is like the above and that JtR stopping after MJK coincides with this. Yet no one says why exactly Kozminski was being watched...
      If Kosminski "had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies" i think that would at least partly explain why he was being watched.

      As far as i know there is no source for this characterization of Kosminski either.

      Comment


      • #4
        How do we know that police on the ground were specifically looking for or watching Jews, whether mentally ill or not? Thanks to the destruction over the years of 9 tenths of police documentation we don't know (at least before Hutchinson's statement) who they were targeting.

        The unconfined mentally ill, butchers and medical students seem to be among those groups given special attention, understandably, but as for others, Irish fenians, for example, there are shadowy references but not a lot of details.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Scott Nelson View Post
          Yes, but careful about making assumptions. Your post is full of them.
          I don't doubt it but they are followed by deduction. If you see an error of fact you are welcome to discuss it.
          Bona fide canonical and then some.

          Comment


          • #6
            You suggest that Swanson bent the truth to fit evidence to his pet suspect to "bring closure to it all"? Um, you do know I hope that Swanson's notes were written in a book in his own private collection. The notes were never meant to be seen by anyone. If he really wanted to bend evidence to fit his theory and profit from it, he could have published his memoirs. You say "whoever was in charge of the investigation". That would be SWANSON. If he had chosen to publish a book, it would have carried more weight than any other contemporary book on the case.

            Swanson is also not the only officer to talk about following Jewish suspects or specifically, A jewish suspect. In the most detailed case, a Jew was tailed for several months, KNEW he was being followed, and was eventually institutionalized. Putting 2 and 2 together, this suspect was most likely Kosminski.

            I don't think its abitrary at all to take seriously the word of a man who likely knew more about the investigation than any other person in history. What I find funny and presumption are many modern researchers who think they know more 125 years later than the head man on the ground at the time.
            Last edited by Pontius2000; 01-08-2015, 11:52 AM.

            Comment


            • #7
              He may have indeed known more... At one stage.

              I don't believe he wanted to sell any story. The closure was for himself I would think.

              However his recall is flawed. We do know better than what he wrote. He is wrong on several points. His story needs modification to make any sense and it is still worryingly strange.

              Or do you think he is stating actual facts? I bet you he requires significant modification and rightly so.
              Bona fide canonical and then some.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Batman View Post
                He may have indeed known more... At one stage.

                I don't believe he wanted to sell any story. The closure was for himself I would think.

                However his recall is flawed. We do know better than what he wrote. He is wrong on several points. His story needs modification to make any sense and it is still worryingly strange.

                Or do you think he is stating actual facts? I bet you he requires significant modification and rightly so.
                G'day Batman

                Please tell us just exactly where

                He is wrong on several points.
                And do we really

                know better than what he wrote.
                125+ years later, or do we just think we do?
                G U T

                There are two ways to be fooled, one is to believe what isn't true, the other is to refuse to believe that which is true.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Pontius2000 View Post
                  You suggest that Swanson bent the truth to fit evidence to his pet suspect to "bring closure to it all"? Um, you do know I hope that Swanson's notes were written in a book in his own private collection. The notes were never meant to be seen by anyone. If he really wanted to bend evidence to fit his theory and profit from it, he could have published his memoirs. You say "whoever was in charge of the investigation". That would be SWANSON. If he had chosen to publish a book, it would have carried more weight than any other contemporary book on the case.

                  Swanson is also not the only officer to talk about following Jewish suspects or specifically, A jewish suspect. In the most detailed case, a Jew was tailed for several months, KNEW he was being followed, and was eventually institutionalized. Putting 2 and 2 together, this suspect was most likely Kosminski.

                  I don't think its abitrary at all to take seriously the word of a man who likely knew more about the investigation than any other person in history. What I find funny and presumption are many modern researchers who think they know more 125 years later than the head man on the ground at the time.
                  But we know there were several other "head men" who came out and said the police didn't have a clue as to the identity of the killer. Head men who were in a position to know !

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by GUT View Post
                    G'day Batman

                    Please tell us just exactly where
                    I recommend starting with the Swanson subforum on here. There are several threads, even one started by Evans about this very topic. Or get any of the top selling books from Rumbelow, Begg, Fido, House etc. I don't think it would serve a purpose to rehash it out here.... in fact the Dissertations have plenty of reasons why modifications need to be made to Swanson's notes in his book.

                    I don't feel I have said anything inaccurate at all in my original post here. My interpretation of Swanson's note isn't far-fetched at all. I mean others did exactly what he did. Had their own pet suspects and named them as their Ripper of choice. Others rejected the Jewish insane asylum hypothesis.
                    Last edited by Batman; 01-08-2015, 04:21 PM.
                    Bona fide canonical and then some.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Trevor Marriott View Post
                      But we know there were several other "head men" who came out and said the police didn't have a clue as to the identity of the killer. Head men who were in a position to know !

                      www.trevormarriott.co.uk
                      Tell me who had higher rank than Swanson while at the same time having their feet on the street and their nose right in the middle of the investigation.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Batman View Post
                        I recommend starting with the Swanson subforum on here. There are several threads, even one started by Evans about this very topic. Or get any of the top selling books from Rumbelow, Begg, Fido, House etc. I don't think it would serve a purpose to rehash it out here.... in fact the Dissertations have plenty of reasons why modifications need to be made to Swanson's notes in his book.

                        I don't feel I have said anything inaccurate at all in my original post here. My interpretation of Swanson's note isn't far-fetched at all. I mean others did exactly what he did. Had their own pet suspects and named them as their Ripper of choice. Others rejected the Jewish insane asylum hypothesis.
                        Several of the people you named are the very ones who think they know more now than Swanson did then, and they're mistaken. Swanson had access to a mountain of information that will never again be available. So I think it's ludicrous and arrogant to suggest that modern researchers can know more. And that's not to take anything from the work they've done. All the genealogy work and connections facts through newspaper writings etc is great. But it can in no way rival the fact that Swanson had firsthand access to suspects, witnesses, and evidence.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I think 'ranking' isn't going to help here. What we have are a team of investigators whom after the Whitechapel Murders had finished, at some stage in their lives, seem to have settled on a suspect or a short list of them. That's all. They were also retired and not answerable to anybody (at least not like while working on the case).

                          We also know that for most of them, their recall isn't great and often conflicts with their own official reports. You know what I mean? It is people contradicting themselves etc and others.

                          So what do we do? Do we dismiss the actual case records (which is hopelessly incomplete) or do we accept their non-contemporary views? It's a hard call in some respects, but I think most historians would opt for the actual case records and contemporary accounts.

                          For example, maybe people who accept Swanson's suspect as the killer have no problems tying this up with Henry Cox and his surveiilance. Cox said there wasn't a shred of evidence against this man but he was seen to have accousted some women a few times.

                          Then there was also Sergeant Stephen White who did a ton of walking for the Whitechapel investigators. He was the one who interviewed Paker (and as far as I remember falsified his story).
                          Bona fide canonical and then some.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Pontius2000 View Post
                            . So I think it's ludicrous and arrogant to suggest that modern researchers can know more.
                            I think you are omitting several factors here. There is Swanson on the ground who knows just as much if not more than Abberline in 1888.

                            Then there is Swason who retired in 1903 writing in a book that was published in 1910 so could only have written that stuff 22 years after the events at the bare minimum right? That's two decades after the events making Swanson 62.
                            Bona fide canonical and then some.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              The funny thing is, even if Swanson wrote his Marginalia at the earliest time possible, rather than a little later, his suspect wasn't dead. Swanson said "....and died shortly afterwards"

                              Kozminski died 9 years after that book was published.
                              Bona fide canonical and then some.

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