The Seaside Home: Could Schwartz or Lawende Have Put the Ripper's Neck in a Noose?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

This post - or something like it -was lost in the recent site glitch:

henever I read of the Seaside Home I wonder if it was a slip of the pen or a momentary lapse in concentration and if what was meant was The Sailors' Home. This was on Wells St. There was a police fixed point opposite the entrance so the presence of one or more additional officers might go unnoticed or at least unremarked. Just a thought. A location in Whitechapel does seem rather more likely than Brighton.

Thanks for reminding us.

I remember replying to it with the question: what evidence is there that Aaron Kosminski had the appearance of a sailor?

[Bridewell]

Assumption: That the witness had to be either Lawende or Schwartz. But what if he/she was someone else?

Like McNaghten's "City PC that was (on) a beat near Mitre Square" perhaps.

[Bridewell]

This post - or something like it -was lost in the recent site glitch:

henever I read of the Seaside Home I wonder if it was a slip of the pen or a momentary lapse in concentration and if what was meant was The Sailors' Home. This was on Wells St. There was a police fixed point opposite the entrance so the presence of one or more additional officers might go unnoticed or at least unremarked. Just a thought. A location in Whitechapel does seem rather more likely than Brighton.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Please see my replies below.

- I think we can be certain the ID took place. Anderson and Swanson both refer to it. McNaghten claimed in a draft of the Memorandum that Kosminski strongly resembled the man seen by a City PC near Mitre Square. How did he know what Kosminski looked like? How did he know who he resembled? He must have known about the ID.



Since you mention Kosminski and Mitre Square, I take it you think Lawende identified Kosminski.

Since you claim that Macnaghten knew what Kosminski looked like, I am curious to know how you would explain why no-one, including Macnaghten and Swanson, ever said what he looked like.

Why did they not mention his fair hair?

It would have been a key factor in the identification.

Kosminski's brothers and sister had dark hair.

Here is a man allegedly being shielded from Gentile Justice by his dark-haired relatives; the police have a description of a fair-haired suspect; and when they see Kosminski, he turns out to be the blond sheep of the family, and fits the description of the man seen by Lawende.

His belongings are searched and police find a pepper and salt loose jacket.

And that sets up the identification confrontation.

The question is: why is none of this mentioned by anyone?

The answer is that Aaron Kosminski did not have fair hair and consequently could not have been identified by Joseph Lawende.




- We dont know why Kosminski became a suspect but a mentally unstable foreigner living locally, of low class? threatening his sister with a knife would surely have set alarm bells ringing once reported to Police either by a family member or someone else.




I think we do know why Kosminski became a suspect - and it had nothing to do with his being of low class.

Isaac Kosminski was a freemason.

I am not sure whether you are suggesting that he was a low class freemason.

I see that, like Elamarna, you are suggesting that Aaron may have been reported to the police by a family member.

I would remind you that according to Anderson, whose narrative both you and he are following, Aaron Kosminski's family 'refused to give him up to justice' and 'would not give up one of their number to Gentile justice'.

That hardly leaves any possibility of what you are suggesting - his relatives reporting him to the police - having happened.

There is no evidence that Kosminski came to the attention of the police before his incarceration.

Elamarna claims it must have existed.

I claim that Kosminski must have had alibis for at least some of the murders.

Unfortunately, the evidence of that no longer exists because, unlike Anderson and Swanson, Isaac Kosminski did not leave us any memoirs or marginalia clearing his brother's name - because he had no idea that he had ever been a suspect.

If Anderson told the truth and the Kosminskis refused to give him up to justice, why is there no record of Aaron Kosminski, with fair hair, having been found being shielded by his relatives, and a pepper-and-salt coloured loose jacket found among his belongings?

Kosminski is arrested, his relatives warned that they are suspected of being accessories to murder, and Kosminski is taken to a London Police Station.
But there is nothing about that in any record.

All we have is Swanson's totally unbelievable account of a Londoner witness and Londoner suspect being taken to Brighton, without any explanation offered.

As for Anderson, he stated originally that 'Kosminski' was already in an asylum when the identification happened.

He offered no evidence that 'Kosminski' became a suspect prior to his incarceration: no arrest, no search, nothing.

Kosminski did not become a suspect until years after the murders ended.

He was, like Druitt, an afterthought, a person whose incarceration, like Druitt's suicide, attracted the interest of investigators, but against whom, like Druitt, not one shred of evidence has ever been produced.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Hi Herlock.

Sorry for barging into this dogfight, but I suspect that if the late Martin Fido was here, he would point out that Anderson does not name 'Kosminski' in his book, in Blackwood's, or anywhere else.

It was Fido's belief that after the passing of many years, Swanson had become confused, and two different suspects had blended into one.

You don't have to accept this theory, but perhaps it shouldn't be said or implied that Anderson named Kosminski.

He might also point out that Anderson never mentions a seaside home, let alone the Seaside Home, and gives no hint that the identification took place at such a location.

I did myself some time ago suggest that Swanson's Kosminski is a composite figure based on Druitt and Kosminski, which is why Kosminski dies at the wrong time.

The starting point of this myth is the idea that the murderer was obviously insane and the idea that he must have died soon after the murder of Kelly, both of which ideas are mentioned by Macnaghten.

Anderson and Swanson, by an amazing coincidence, came up with just such a person, except that he died some 30 years later.