Home office report

[Jonathan H]

To Pirate

Some people can't take 'yes' for an answer, as I mentioned Paul Begg in exactly the capacity you scold me for not doing?!

Plus historians take a dim view of the kind of trendy forensic hocus pocus your're hustling, especially medical diagnoses of people this long gone -- leaving behind only scanty medical records from another era.

Or is it that you can't take it, pal. That historical arguments might be just as legit about other suspects, and that is the real moment of horror for you?

The horror of uncertainty, of contingeny, of the provisional opinion -- the regular travelling companions of the historian.

[Jeff Leahy]

I hope you take off those rose tinted spectacles before they let you loose behind a camera

No, they've stuck me in edit (again) all week, so you will probably have the pleasure of my company while not following the tennis

Pirate

[Trevor Marriott]

Yes very amusing Trevor but the reason Aaron Kosminski is discussed more than any other suspect is simply because which ever theory you support or prefer you usually recognise that the leading suspect that you require to discredit and knock off the top spot, inorder to do so, is AK.

And protagonists of AK can stick to the facts like the marks on Eddow's face without inventing games on naughts and crosses.

Pirate

I hope you take off those rose tinted spectacles before they let you loose behind a camera

[Jeff Leahy]

Some people here confuse legal and forensic evidence with historical evidence.

They think that we have to prove a chain of evidence from the crime scene to the suspect for anything to be vaild -- in 2011?!

Again, that's an area for lawyers and police, not historians -- and the latter science is all that is left to us, like it or lump it.

.

Well its here that I disagree with you most strongly Jonathon.

You seem to be claiming that historical sources and analysis of a few surviving documents are the only thing that can tell us anything about Jack the Ripper. Which is a very blinkered view point.

There are all soughts of people in all soughts of fields that can shed light on Jack the Ripper.

Possibly one of the most knowledgable and under rated people in the feild are people like Stan who study other serial killers there methods and practices. or Colin Roberts who looks at spaces and statistical data. Or perhaps authors like Paul Begg who's specialized area is the Historical background social and political of the period.

Actually the only thing we really know about Jack the Ripper would be the marks ,cuts and bruses he left on his victims, Sam Flyns specialized area. Or perhaps the space and environment the murders were commited in tell us more about the sort of man JtR was?

But the idea we can only base our reasoning about the identity of Jack the Ripper on historical sources is just wrong. All they do is point us in the direction of a few potential suspects...

Its only then that the real business of balancing everything together can start.

Yours Pirate

[Jeff Leahy]

Macgnathen and Anderson Abberline dismiss themselves !

I do not sit here having to justify anyhting connected to my favoured suspect as you put it. I have said all along I merley persent the facts and offer explanations based on those facts. It is then up to the public as to whether they are accepted or rejected.

But it seems that all those who favour Kosminski and some of the others have to keep justifying their reasons for doing so continuolsy on here doesnt that tell you something, clearly they dont concur with those who champion those suspects.

If the evidence which you seek to rely on was so good surley people would readily accept it and not keep questioning it.

Time to give Kosminski a rest there is more chance of the blind man with one leg who sat outside The ten Bells everday being involved in these murders than Arron Kosminski.

.

Yes very amusing Trevor but the reason Aaron Kosminski is discussed more than any other suspect is simply because which ever theory you support or prefer you usually recognise that the leading suspect that you require to discredit and knock off the top spot, inorder to do so, is AK.

And protagonists of AK can stick to the facts like the marks on Eddow's face without inventing games on naughts and crosses.

Pirate

[Jonathan H]

Some people here confuse legal and forensic evidence with historical evidence.

They think that we have to prove a chain of evidence from the crime scene to the suspect for anything to be vaild -- in 2011?!

Again, that's an area for lawyers and police, not historians -- and the latter science is all that is left to us, like it or lump it.

Kosminski:

Of course he is a viable suspect.

A local madman, with time and youth on his hands, he was named by the operational ahead of the case -- in a private document where he had nobody to please but himself -- and strongly alluded to by the admniistrative head of the case. The latter in a public doument with his name on it. He was also named by another significant police figure though he prefered, perhaos for idiosyncratic reasons, somebody else. Even if the witness identification is a self-serving memory muddle -- a very contentious opinion -- then the suspicion could still have started with the very poeple who knew him, and who lived with him.

Druitt

Of course he's a viable suspect.

A senior police administrator, from the upper classes, known to be obessed with the case, and a hands-on smoothie and deft establishment player, went to great lengths to propagate a fictionalised outline of this figure to the public -- via prominent writer-cronies. In the one Ripper document for the public, with his name on it, he conceded that this suspect was entirely posthumous. In the extant record we can glimpse that the notion of this man being suspected began among his family and partisan circles in his home county. Why on earth would they suspect him if the evidence was not perceived to be deavsating?

Tumblety

Of course he's a viable suspect.

A senior policeman from 1888 named him in a letter, in 1913, to a famous journalist, the latter who had propagated the wrong deviant doctor according to the retired chief. Contemporaenous press accounts on both sides of the Atlantic show him to be a hot Ripper suspect, at last initially. He gave an hilariously bombastic and yet incriminating interview once safely absconded. A Ripper detective was sent to Canada to find out more about his background. The police seem to have seen the end of the Ripper murders as coinciding with his departure, rather than, for example, the much later incarceration of the Polish lunatic.

Some could throw Chapman into the mix too, as he was named by a critical field detective as being the fiend.

Of course, none of them might be the fiend. What we have is the methodology of evaluating sources for their biases, values and limitations.

That is why I (albeit alone here) favour Druitt over the other two because Mac choosing the suspect who was from his own class, race and religion -- and hopelessly, lengithily deceased -- goes against the expected bias. It also goes against the chief's character; which was always to see the best in people, especially a fellow chappie who was a champion cricketer ('that remarkable man ... most fasicnating of criminals') and get them off the hook. Especially if it was going to embarrass his beloved Yard. Not with Druitt. Disgusing him as Henry Jekyll was the best the Old Etonian could do for the Oxonian maniac.

Despite the stale nonsense I have to wade through here it is a perfectly legit historical interpretation of contradictiory data.

But then so are the best arguments for the other two prime police suspects as put by writers of the calibre of Begg and Evans and Rumbelow and Palmer, and so on.

What's with all this despair and acrimony?

Why can't we just accept that you always have to juggle several balls in the air with the Ripper mystery, not because the sources are so weak but because they are all so strong.

Favouring one over others (they can't all be 'Jack') becomes a matter of marshalling the best argument, until another vital piece of the jigsaw turns up.

[Trevor Marriott]

As do you Trevor. You have your own favoured suspect. Its therefore natural that you dismiss MacNaghten and Anderson while favouring Smith.


.

Macgnathen and Anderson Abberline dismiss themselves !

I do not sit here having to justify anyhting connected to my favoured suspect as you put it. I have said all along I merley persent the facts and offer explanations based on those facts. It is then up to the public as to whether they are accepted or rejected.

But it seems that all those who favour Kosminski and some of the others have to keep justifying their reasons for doing so continuolsy on here doesnt that tell you something, clearly they dont concur with those who champion those suspects.

If the evidence which you seek to rely on was so good surley people would readily accept it and not keep questioning it.

Time to give Kosminski a rest there is more chance of the blind man with one leg who sat outside The ten Bells everday being involved in these murders than Arron Kosminski.


.

[Jeff Leahy]

I must also ask another question then about Major Smith and The City Police.

How come there are no city records showing all this work that they are supposed to have put in watching Kosminski etc .

Now that would be a coincidence if that like all the met stuff was also "lost" or "stolen" as you suggest would it not.

As I said before its to easy to say all the relevant documemnts etc were lost or stolen. If they were lost or stolen how come other stuff has survived. After all,the only records there could have been are on a par to what we have now from the very contentious police officers memoirs that ABCD were likely suspects.

I dont doubt that at some point Aaron Kosminski,Thomas Cutbush came to the notice of the police as a result of them being involved in incidents where knives were used, as did many other people during the period of the murders. Ostrogg was mentioned because it was suggested he was a mad russian doctor and at some point the police thought that a doctor could have been behind the murders.

All of this shows the naievety of the police and the fact that as major smith said they didnt genuinley have a clue and they were simply clutching at straws.

The above names would have no doubt been entered in a similar register to that which Special Branch still have. This register has not been retained so it cant help us sadly.

The special branch registers as we know do contain new ripper material. It may not tell us who the killer or killers were but may go along way to telling us who it wasnt.

Because of the way Special Branch were operating and because they were using more experienced men I would have bet that if anyone could have assisted with the investigation then it would have been them with their vast network of informants. So we will have to wait and see if the tribunal are in our favour.

Well quite simply we know the stuff existed, because police officers like Cox and Sagar tell us so..

So unless your suggesting they made it up...it has been lost or destroyed.

And I think it miss leading to suggest that the special branch files are that, missing files...when what you actually have are ledgers and references to missing files. Records of transfer of files that no longer exist...

But obviously we'll wait and see if you have anything genuinely new. Any aditional information can only help increase our knowledge

Which after all is what we would all like

Pirate

[Chris]

How come there are no city records showing all this work that they are supposed to have put in watching Kosminski etc .

Now that would be a coincidence if that like all the met stuff was also "lost" or "stolen" as you suggest would it not.

A certain amount of City CID records from the 1880s have survived and are at the LMA, but there is virtually nothing relating to the Ripper investigation (only a couple of stray reports on Oswald Puckridge). Obviously there would have been a large amount of paperwork on the case at one time, but it hasn't survived.

[Trevor Marriott]

As do you Trevor. You have your own favoured suspect. Its therefore natural that you dismiss MacNaghten and Anderson while favouring Smith.


.

I must also ask another question then about Major Smith and The City Police.

How come there are no city records showing all this work that they are supposed to have put in watching Kosminski etc .

Now that would be a coincidence if that like all the met stuff was also "lost" or "stolen" as you suggest would it not.

As I said before its to easy to say all the relevant documemnts etc were lost or stolen. If they were lost or stolen how come other stuff has survived. After all,the only records there could have been are on a par to what we have now from the very contentious police officers memoirs that ABCD were likely suspects.

I dont doubt that at some point Aaron Kosminski,Thomas Cutbush came to the notice of the police as a result of them being involved in incidents where knives were used, as did many other people during the period of the murders. Ostrogg was mentioned because it was suggested he was a mad russian doctor and at some point the police thought that a doctor could have been behind the murders.

All of this shows the naievety of the police and the fact that as major smith said they didnt genuinley have a clue and they were simply clutching at straws.

The above names would have no doubt been entered in a similar register to that which Special Branch still have. This register has not been retained so it cant help us sadly.

The special branch registers as we know do contain new ripper material. It may not tell us who the killer or killers were but may go along way to telling us who it wasnt.

Because of the way Special Branch were operating and because they were using more experienced men I would have bet that if anyone could have assisted with the investigation then it would have been them with their vast network of informants. So we will have to wait and see if the tribunal are in our favour.

[jason_c]

Well he is as reliable as the others why would he say they didnt have a clue what mileage could he have gained the answer is none.

Where as all the others had hidden agendas.

As do you Trevor. You have your own favoured suspect. Its therefore natural that you dismiss MacNaghten and Anderson while favouring Smith.


.

[Jeff Leahy]

The Manchester Guardian observed that Smiths tone became " a little incoherent" when he wrote 'of blunders of the headsd of the MET, especially Sir Robert Anderson"

The yorkshire post commented on the books subtitle, pointing out that smith never served a day in the ranks and that his position and subsequent promotions were achieved by favour.

Shall I go on? Washing hands etc....lol

Smith was not a serious policeman ..Swanson was...

Pirate

[Trevor Marriott]

Your not really going to quote Major Smith, the most unreliable source in the whole case, at me, surely?

I wonder if he read Cox and Sagars reports?

Pirate

Well he is as reliable as the others why would he say they didnt have a clue what mileage could he have gained the answer is none.

Where as all the others had hidden agendas.

[Jeff Leahy]

And of course we must not forget good old Major Smith of The City of London Police in his memoirs he stated the police did not have a clue as to the identity of the killer or killers.

He mentions nothing about any suspect or suspects nor does he mention anyhting about the so called watch kept on Kosminski by the City police.

So who is lying Major Smith or Anderson,Swanson,Abberline,Macnaghten.

I know where my money is going if it becomes a betting heat

I doubt in any event the city police would have been keeping watch on a house or someone from within another police force, and besides why would they keep watch on him there had been no murders when he was supposedly looked at by the police.

Your not really going to quote Major Smith, the most unreliable source in the whole case, at me, surely?

I wonder if he read Cox and Sagars reports?

Pirate

[Trevor Marriott]

They appear to contain factual errors...

Ho9wever throwing the baby out with the bath water has never made much sense to me.

Pirate

And of course we must not forget good old Major Smith of The City of London Police in his memoirs he stated the police did not have a clue as to the identity of the killer or killers.

He mentions nothing about any suspect or suspects nor does he mention anyhting about the so called watch kept on Kosminski by the City police.

So who is lying Major Smith or Anderson,Swanson,Abberline,Macnaghten.

I know where my money is going if it becomes a betting heat

I doubt in any event the city police would have been keeping watch on a house or someone from within another police force, and besides why would they keep watch on him there had been no murders when he was supposedly looked at by the police.