Discovery of More Anderson Writings

[diana]

I am so excited. For years I have posted on this site, unable to do anything but speculate and theorize based on information found by others.

I have found some writings of Sir Robert Anderson online. In 1906 he wrote a book entitled, "Criminals and Crime". In it he states that Jack was incarcerated in an asylum.

I am fully aware that there are many who are more knowledgeable than I who post here. I cringe at the possibility that this book has been well known for years and I will make a royal fool of myself.

However, even if this book is not a new revelation to those in the know, it's nice for those of us less erudite to be able to see it for ourselves.

Please don't snicker too much if this is old news.

Go to the link and enter "Whitechapel" in the "search in this book" section.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WN0qAAAAMAAJ&dq=Sir+Robert+Anderson&pg=PP1&ots=ae9YDhhJm0&sig=1JlJsDWNcn4EMekhU0umP_hoLkY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP1,M1

[Mike Covell]

Nice find Diana, there is a little bit about the book on casebook here,

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.criminals.html

[fido]

I hate to be a wet blanket, Diana, but Criminals and Crime is one of the three books by Anderson I used and cited in the bibliography of The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper in 1987.
Anderson used very similar wording in a pamphlet he issued around 1901, before he had retired: a breach of protocol which led to some irritable Home Office minutes about his improper practice of publishing information that had reached him through official channels or in the course of his duties.
But it's good to be reminded how much discussion of Anderson is going on which isn't apparently based on very full knowledge of his actual writing.
Don't be disheartened! Much excellent work comes from people who have worked through a lot of general discussion without information. I knew precious little when I began work on the Ripper; and I was lucky enough to be able to devote my full time to it. I really admire people like Adrian Morris and Mark King who make significant discoveries while holding down jobs which make other demands on them.
All the best,
Martin F

[Stewart P Evans]

Criminals and Crime

Anderson's Criminals and Crime: Some Facts and Suggestions is one of the necessary volumes in any criminological book collection. It is quite rare and usually quite expensive. I obtained my own copy some 18 years or so ago.



The main interest to the present audience are Anderson's references to the Whitechapel Murders and the insight his words give to his character and thought processes. As early as pages 3-4 he comments on the murders -

'The peril to the community caused by common crimes, as distinguished from crimes of the first magnitude, will be obvious to the thoughtful. For example, a man who murders his own wife is not necessarily a terror to the wives of other men. A man who kills his personal enemy excites no dread in the breast of strangers. Or again, take a notorious case of a different kind, "the Whitechapel murders" of the autumn of 1888. At that time the sensation-mongers of the newspaper press fostered the belief that life in London was no longer safe, and that no woman ought to venture abroad in the streets after nightfall. And one enterprising journalist went so far as to impersonate the cause of all this terror as "Jack the Ripper," a name by which he will probaby go down to history. But no amount of silly hysterics could alter the fact that these crimes were a cause of danger only to a particular section of a small and definite class of women, in a limited district of the East End; and that the inhabitants of the metropolis generally were just as secure during the weeks the fiend was on the prowl, as they were before the mania seized him, or after he had been safely caged in an asylum.'

[Stewart P Evans]

Further Remarks

Anderson made further remarks relevant to the murders on page 77 -

'No one is a murderer in the sense in which many men are burglars. At least "the Whitechapel murderer" of 1888 is the only exception to this in recent years. And that case, by the way, will serve to indicate the difference I wish to enforce. In my first chapter I alluded to the fact of that fiend's detention in an asylum. Now the inquiry which leads to the discovery of a criminal of that type is different from the inquiry, for example, by which a burglar may often be detected.'

This is an interesting extract for more than one reason.

[harry]

Perhaps these remarks by Anderson suggest that the Whitechapel murders had similar characteristics to a series of burglaries,in his opinion,but required a different method of detection.One might assume that one of the differences he perceived,was the state of mind of the criminal.
It is an interesting extract,and surely will rouse some debate.

[Sam Flynn]

Anderson's Criminals and Crime: Some Facts and Suggestions is one of the necessary volumes in any criminological book collection.

[ATTACH]3410[/ATTACH]

Before anyone asks, the "BernerS Street, W" at which the publisher was based (and which you see on the scan as posted by Stewart) is not the same as "BerneR Street", where Stride was murdered.

[Canucco dei Mergi]

Anderson used very similar wording in a pamphlet he issued around 1901, before he had retired: a breach of protocol which led to some irritable Home Office minutes about his improper practice of publishing information that had reached him through official channels or in the course of his duties.
But it's good to be reminded how much discussion of Anderson is going on which isn't apparently based on very full knowledge of his actual writing.
Martin F

The suggestion here above is I think most important. It is extremely perilous to make any comment and worse to draw any conclusion from what an author states without having a clear idea "and full knowledge of his actual writing."

Overall when what is to be commented is only one or two extracts of a whole book.

I would even add that to comment whatever has been written by an author, knowing his actual writing is not even enough.
One should get aware of the historical and personal context in which the author has written what is to be commented.

I will thus refrain to do that in this case.

But, if you allow me to put a word nevertheless, I find extremely interesting the fact that in more than one occasion Robert Anderson spoke (or wrote if you prefer) on the Whitechapel murders while never but never neither James Monro nor Charles Warren did it.

I can't prevent myself to think about the say: Dog that barks...

Canucco dei Mergi.

[Canucco dei Mergi]

Anderson used very similar wording in a pamphlet he issued around 1901, before he had retired: a breach of protocol which led to some irritable Home Office minutes about his improper practice of publishing information that had reached him through official channels or in the course of his duties.
But it's good to be reminded how much discussion of Anderson is going on which isn't apparently based on very full knowledge of his actual writing.
Martin F

The suggestion here above is I think most important. It is extremely perilous to make any comment and worse to draw any conclusion from what an author states without having a clear idea "and full knowledge of his actual writing."

Overall when what is to be commented is only one or two extracts of a whole book.

I would even add that to comment whatever has been written by an author, knowing his actual writing is not even enough.
One should get aware of the historical and personal context in which the author has written what is to be commented.

I will thus refrain to do that in this case.

But, if you allow me to put a word nevertheless, I find extremely interesting the fact that in more than one occasion Robert Anderson spoke (or wrote if you prefer) on the Whitechapel murders while never but never neither James Monro nor Charles Warren did it.

I can't prevent myself to think about the say: Dog that barks...

Canucco dei Mergi.

[Canucco dei Mergi]

Ouch...it seems that I have incurred in a 'double event' here.
I apologize for not knowing how to cancel one of the two posts; technically speaking my value is near the one of most banking stocks those days: just above zero.
Sorry again gentlemen.

[Robert]

If the "small and definite class" was prostitutes, what was the particular section of them? If the particular section was prostitutes, then what on earth was the small and definite class?

[fido]

The context suggests that the "definite section" is either an accidental tautological anticipation of the reference to the part of London where they worked, or, paheraps more probably, street prostuitutes as opposed to brothel inmates.
All the best,
martin F

[Robert]

Thanks Martin, that way of dividing up prostitutes seems to make sense.

[Chris]

On jtrforums.com, Howard Brown has posted an article from the Westminster Budget of 6 December 1901. This refers to an article by Anderson in "the new Nineteenth Century", in which he 'mentions that "the Whitechapel fiend" of 1888 was discovered in a lunatic asylum.' This sounds new, but unfortunately it turns out to be only a passing reference to his well-known statement in The Nineteenth Century of February 1901, with no reference to a "discovery" in an asylum.

The article (The Nineteenth Century, December 1901, pp. 948-963) is available online here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=o-AaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA952

The relevant passage was later incorporated in Anderson's book Criminals and Crime (1907) and was quoted by Stewart Evans earlier in this thread:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=46149&postcount=5