Andrews was investigating Tumblety

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

My theory is that Anderson believed that McKenzie was a Ripper vicitm. That got the American suspect off the hook.

Although Anderson specfically denied McKenzie as a Jack victim in his memoir, bits of that case have merged in his fading memory with Kelly (see his 1908 interview-shambles) and the timeline he now adheres to in 1910 is that Kelly was the final victim (which matxhes Tumblety's timeline and not Aaron Kosminski) and that this was known at the time.

I think the murder of Coles in 1891 further confirmed that Dr T was long out of the picture.

Then in 1895, I think, Macnaghten, in his capacity as Anderson's confidential assistant, revealed to his pious, loathed superior that a local man on some kind of list from 1888, 'Kosminski', was much more likely to be Jack than William Grant: a poor Pole who attacked a female relation with a knife, who was masturbating sinfully and furiously after the Kelly murder (eg. his mind shattered) and permanently sectioned and then expiring soon after (around March 1889 -- predating McKenzie).

This fictional variant of Aaron Kosminski is the perfect suspect for Anderson who immediately began telling people about him in 1895, and, although forever removed from justice -- like Tumblety -- this was a much more satisfying tale and self-servingly less embarrassing to the police, and to Anderson, tnan the affluent, wily doctor who got clean away.

Whereas we know from other sources that Aaron Kosminski was not deceased and was not sectioned soon after Kelly, and we know that Macnaghten probably knew both of these exonerating details.

[David Orsam]

Lastly there is the tantalizing primary source discovered by Evans and Rumbelow which shows that Sir Charles Warren, in his last days as Commissioner, awarded commendations to Inspectors Marshall, Littlechild, Swanson and Andrews.

'There is seemingly no prosecution in Dec 1888, or throughout early 1889, that refers to arrests made by [the foursome] Thus whatever case Warren was referring to remains an enigma ...' p. 48

The idea that the commendations to the four above mentioned officers were in respect of an arrest of Tumblety on the 4th November is indeed an intriguing one and would correspond with newspaper reports that he was arrested on suspicion of being the Whitechapel Murderer, then released, then re-arrested on 7th November; although given that he wasn't charged for any murders, commendations might have been a bit premature. However, the reason I am posting is that in all the mentions I have seen of these commendations (from internet searching) no-one ever seems to include the fact there was a FIFTH officer from 'A' Division who was commended for an apprehension on 4th November along with the other four. Even the image from the Police Orders of 27th November which I have seen posted cuts off his name. The full list of those commended for having apprehended a person or persons for offences committed on 4th November is as follows:

Insp. (C.I.D.) Marshall
Ch. Insp. (C.O. C.I.D.) Littlechild
Ch. Insp. (C.O. C.I.D.) Swanson
Insp. (C.O. C.I.D.) Andrews
P.C. (C.I.D.) Mott

Now I know nothing of Detective Constable Mott but wonder whether his inclusion in this list makes it more or less likely that the commendations relate to Tumblety.

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

If these commendations involved Tumblety why weren't Officers Froest and Dinnie on the list?

On 6th November 1888 Inspector Andrews was at Bow Street magistrate court, giving evidence regarding Roland Gideon Israel Barnett, whom he had recently rearrested and would escort to Canada on 29th November.

Regards,

Simon

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Lindsay Clutterbuck, who had found and read the 3 Special Branch ledgers, and who had also read Evans and Gainey's book on Tumblety, stated that the Chief Constable's Register, which covered, in part, work Special Branch had done on the Whitechapel Murders, "does not corroborate their [Evans and Gainey's] theory." This strongly suggests that the commendation for Littlechild had nothing to do with Tumblety and that Special Branch had nothing to do with Tumblety as well.

Wolf.

[Trevor Marriott]

Lindsay Clutterbuck, who had found and read the 3 Special Branch ledgers, and who had also read Evans and Gainey's book on Tumblety, stated that the Chief Constable's Register, which covered, in part, work Special Branch had done on the Whitechapel Murders, "does not corroborate their [Evans and Gainey's] theory." This strongly suggests that the commendation for Littlechild had nothing to do with Tumblety and that Special Branch had nothing to do with Tumblety as well.

Wolf.

Hi Wolf

You are absolutely correct !

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[David Orsam]

Hi David,

If these commendations involved Tumblety why weren't Officers Froest and Dinnie on the list?

I don't want to seem to be arguing that the commendations DID involve Tumblety - I simply don't know - but if the commendations were for an arrest of Tumblety on 4 November for the Whitechapel murders then Froest and Dinnie were not, as far as we know, involved in that arrest, being presumably the arresting officers on 7 November on a misdemeanour charge.

On 6th November 1888 Inspector Andrews was at Bow Street magistrate court, giving evidence regarding Roland Gideon Israel Barnett, whom he had recently rearrested and would escort to Canada on 29th November.

Do we know if he arrested him on 4 November? Because that is the date specifically stated in the commendation.

[David Orsam]

Lindsay Clutterbuck, who had found and read the 3 Special Branch ledgers, and who had also read Evans and Gainey's book on Tumblety, stated that the Chief Constable's Register, which covered, in part, work Special Branch had done on the Whitechapel Murders, "does not corroborate their [Evans and Gainey's] theory." This strongly suggests that the commendation for Littlechild had nothing to do with Tumblety and that Special Branch had nothing to do with Tumblety as well.

Hi Wolf, does that mean that Lindsay Clutterbuck knows what the commendations, or any of them, were for? Or is he just saying that there is no information in the Chief Constable's Register that the officers had any involvement in an arrest of Tumblety? And, if so, would the Chief Constable's Register include that information? (and does it include information relating to all arrests of people suspected of being the Whitechapel murderer?) Any information gratefully received as this is quite an interesting point and if it can be nailed one way or the other I think that would be useful.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi David.

Of the "secret" ledgers found by Clutterbuck, one was titled "Crime Department Special Branch," and stamped on the first page "Criminal Investigation Dept., Chief Constables Office, SPECIAL." This ledger listed correspondence sent to Special Branch by government and other police agencies as well as letters from the general public and indexed reports from Special Branch officers. It also contains an index of people and topics found in the ledger itself.

It offers, therefore, brief (one line) descriptions of SB's daily work and, as it covers the time of the Whitechapel murders, gives insight into aid Special Branch gave to the Met and City Police. Therefore we know that SB DID aid in the Ripper Murders Investigation. However, as Clutterbuck states, there are NO references to Tumblety in the ledger, i.e. Special Branch had no hand in watching Tumblety or arresting him or even, apparently, briefing anyone about him. Littlechild's commendation, therefore, was apparently not connected with Tumblety.

Wolf.

[David Orsam]

Hi Wolf - thank you for that explanation. A lot of questions bubble up in my mind about that ledger and it's not fair for me to ask you them so I'll leave it there.

[mklhawley]

Hi David.

Of the "secret" ledgers found by Clutterbuck, one was titled "Crime Department Special Branch," and stamped on the first page "Criminal Investigation Dept., Chief Constables Office, SPECIAL." This ledger listed correspondence sent to Special Branch by government and other police agencies as well as letters from the general public and indexed reports from Special Branch officers. It also contains an index of people and topics found in the ledger itself.

It offers, therefore, brief (one line) descriptions of SB's daily work and, as it covers the time of the Whitechapel murders, gives insight into aid Special Branch gave to the Met and City Police. Therefore we know that SB DID aid in the Ripper Murders Investigation. However, as Clutterbuck states, there are NO references to Tumblety in the ledger, i.e. Special Branch had no hand in watching Tumblety or arresting him or even, apparently, briefing anyone about him. Littlechild's commendation, therefore, was apparently not connected with Tumblety.

Wolf.

Which conforms perfectly to Tumblety being arrested on suspicion FIRST before Scotland Yard attempted to hold him for gross indecency charges. Special Branch would not have been involved with Tumblety and the Ripper case, because Tumblety was not being watched prior to November 7th. There certainly would have been a Tumblety file in Special Branch, but it would not have been for 1888.

Mike

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Which conforms perfectly to Tumblety being arrested on suspicion FIRST before Scotland Yard attempted to hold him for gross indecency charges. Special Branch would not have been involved with Tumblety and the Ripper case, because Tumblety was not being watched prior to November 7th. There certainly would have been a Tumblety file in Special Branch, but it would not have been for 1888.

Well, there might have been a Special Branch file on Tumblety, we don't actually know. Saying that there "certainly would have" been one is supposition.

What Clutterbuck tells us is that there is NO mention of Tumblety in the ledger. Therefore, Special Branch was not involved with, or even consulted, on him. Apparently they weren't even asked to provide any history or background information. Whatever his status as a suspect, Littlechild and Special Branch were, apparently, not part of the investigation of the "doctor."

Wolf.

[mklhawley]

Well, there might have been a Special Branch file on Tumblety, we don't actually know. Saying that there "certainly would have" been one is supposition.

What Clutterbuck tells us is that there is NO mention of Tumblety in the ledger. Therefore, Special Branch was not involved with, or even consulted, on him. Apparently they weren't even asked to provide any history or background information. Whatever his status as a suspect, Littlechild and Special Branch were, apparently, not part of the investigation of the "doctor."

Wolf.

Hi Wolf,

I agree with that, but we do know Littlechild was in the know and knew about a large dossier. Was he merely in the room and listened to their discussion? Certainly possible.

Mike

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Or he was simply down the pub listening to their gossip. We don't know.

Either way, if Littlechild wasn't involved in Tumblety's investigation, and it now appears he wasn't, then his information regarding Tumblety probably came from someone inside the Whitechapel Murders Investigation. This is interesting because no one inside the investigation, that we know about, touted Tumblety as a major suspect. In fact, most of the major players, who would presumably know much more than Littlechild, offered up their own suspects. No one mentioned Tumblety except for Littlechild, who was on the outside looking in.

Wolf.

[Jonathan H]

The notion that offical records will always provide with you every embarrassing revelation/debacle about an organization--embarrassing in this case because the leading Ripper suspect had got away--is naive at best.

Jack Littlechild was a highly regarded police chief who informed George Sims, the most famous writer of two eras--including on true crime--that there was a dodgy doctor Ripper suspect who was 'believed' to have killed himself. But he was a Yank, and he had been arrested. He does not write that Tumblety was a minor suspect or that he was ever cleared (Littlechild's dismissal of Anderson, nothing like as scathing as that of Sims himself in 1910, arguably refers to 'Dr D' and not the Polish suspect).

The re-discovery of this prime police suspect via Littlechild's letter to Sims, by Stewart P Evans, was one of the great breakthroughs of the entire subject--just not on the message boards of Jack-the-Ripper sites.

Here it is not only debunked (nothing wrong with that, though the counter-argument is terminally weak) but actively despised?!

Even hated? This is what gives you the heebie-jeebies. This need for Tumblety not to have been a Ripper suspect at all, and to have been snugly in a cell during the Kelly murder--a logical absurdity.

Contemporaneous newspapers, mostly in North America, established what an extraordinary suspect Tumblety was for Scotland Yard, and that Inspector Walter Andrews had been sent, apart from dropping off a prisoner, to do a background check on him as the fiend (a file now long gone). That Francis Tumblety had been missed by previous writer-researchers, in the American papers alone where he is a headliner, had arguably hollowed out a comprehensive understanding of the subject until as late as 1995.

"The Lodger" by Evans and Gainey is a brilliant book, one of the reasons for this being that it contains enough historical material for a discerning reader to be able to come to a different interpretation-conclusion, as the best works of history should.

That significant police figures dismissed Tumblety can be explained by the protracted nature of the Ripper murders, e.g. 1888 to 1891. Therefore the McKenzie and Coles murders seemed to decisively clear the American quack, so why ever mention such embarrassing exertions over that swine ever again?

What brought Dr T back into contention, at least for Jack Littlechild in the late Edwardian era, was the 'autumn of terror' propaganda that hopelessly contaminated so many policemen's recollections as to the correct length of the investigation (though not Reid, Wensley or Macnaghten) including Anderson, Swanson, Cox, Sagar, Smith --and Littlechild. For these men Kelly and Coles became merged as the 'final victim', and so it was all over by the Miller's Court tragedy, and known to be over at that time.

With Sims relentlessly writing about a dodgy doctor and a known end to the crimes in 1888 (e.g. the police were about to arrest the mad doctor, but he had killed himself) Tumblety, and his hastily exiting England after having been arrested, inevitably returned to Littlechild's thinking (especially as somebody had told him that the American had commited suicide after making it to France).

Why wouldn't it?

With Sims, a Macnaghten source at one remove, we can also arguably see the shadow of Tumblety in the writer's largest piece of 1907 (apart from Dr. D. being a wealthy, middle-aged recluse with close pals who was about to be arrested) apparently fused with a benign American specimen hunter, perhaps with a dollop of student John Sanders thrown in too:

'There are two theories with regard to the identity of the Ripper. One has everything in its favour, and is now generally accepted by the high authorities who had the details of the various investigations gathered together and systematically inquired into ...

The other theory in support of which I have some curious information, puts the crime down to a young American medical student who was in London during the whole time of the murders, and who, according to statements of certain highly-respectable people who knew him, made on two occasions an endeavour to obtain a certain internal organ, which for his purpose had to be removed from, as he put it, '"the almost living body."

Dr. Wynne Baxter, the coroner, in his summing up to the jury in the case of Annie Chapman, pointed out the significance of the fact that this internal organ had been removed.

But against this theory put forward by those who uphold it with remarkable details and some startling evidence in support of their contention, there is this one great fact. The American was alive and well and leading the life of an ordinary citizen long after the Ripper murders came to an end.'

The second leading theory at the Yard is, allegedly, not the Polish madman (his move to centre stage is purely a modern concept) but an American medico who was strange, and who went on living long and harmlessly after the Kelly murder.

[mklhawley]

Or he was simply down the pub listening to their gossip. We don't know.

Either way, if Littlechild wasn't involved in Tumblety's investigation, and it now appears he wasn't, then his information regarding Tumblety probably came from someone inside the Whitechapel Murders Investigation. This is interesting because no one inside the investigation, that we know about, touted Tumblety as a major suspect. In fact, most of the major players, who would presumably know much more than Littlechild, offered up their own suspects. No one mentioned Tumblety except for Littlechild, who was on the outside looking in.

Wolf.

Hi Wolf,

I would argue against this, although I agree no one touted it. Besides being onboard with Jonathan's post, here's my point. The newspaper report about Anderson's cable to Campbell came from the Associated Press. In 1888, this organization avoided rumor and attempted to stick to the facts. Why? Because they were feeding competitors. Note the report:


The Wahpeton Times, December 6, 1888,

The Very Latest Associated Press Telegrams Greatly Condensed.

Jack, the Ripper, Ubiquitous.

Police Superintendent Campbell of Brooklyn received a cable dispatch from Mr. Anderson, the deputy chief of the London police, asking him to make some inquiries about Francis Tumblety, who is under arrest in England on the charge of indecent assault. Tumblety is referred to in the dispatch in the following manner: “He says he is known to you, chief, as Brooklyn’s beauty.” Tumblety was arrested in London some weeks ago as the supposed Whitechapel murderer. Since his incarceration in prison he has boasted of how he has succeeded in baffling the police. He also claimed that he was a resident of Brooklyn, and this as what caused the deputy chief of police to communicate with Superintendent Campbell. The superintendent gave the dispatch immediate attention and has learned…


Even though Simon is attempting to say the cable did not mention Campbell's request was for the Ripper investigation, he cannot say this, since he hasn't seen the entire cable. This is a report of the cable, but it's from the highly respected Associated Press (Sorry Trevor). The Associated Press Brooklyn correspondent seems to have seen the cable, though, and the request is clearly for the Ripper investigation. Simon claims it's for the gross indecency case, but Anderson involving himself in a misdemeanor case and bothering a US Chief of Police makes no sense. Why would Campbell then give it priority? Besides, information from the US would not help in a case involving four London boys. The elements to convict a gross indecency case is evidence that he committed the crime, which was in London.

This certainly does suggest that in the months of November and December 1888, Tumblety was on the short list. Littlechild recollecting this decades later means it must have been significant enough for him to remember it.

Sincerely,

Mike