Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Stewart P Evans]

Incredible

Stewart,
With regards to an earlier posting today of yours.I noticed that one of the press cuttings quoted Anderson talking about the legalities of ID"s-both how they were performed and what they entailed. Nowhere did he make any reference to the kind of bizarre performance that allegedly went on in the policemen"s rest home by the seaside.
A later posting of yours referred to WHEN this ID might have happened.Well if it happened "post 1888" it didnt happen to David Cohen,thats for certain,because he was already dead by December 1888 ,if I remember correctly.

Norma, I am not sure what you are referring to as you don't refer to a specific post. Cohen was taken before the court on 7 December 1888 charged as a lunatic found wandering at large. Two weeks later he was incarcerated in Colney Hatch Asylum where he died on 20 October 1889.

All I really have to say about the alleged identification appears in my last book and all the indicators are, supposing it to have taken place, that it was an identification by confrontation as opposed to an identity parade. What is described by Anderson and Swanson does not equate with any proper police procedure, especially as an alleged lunatic is involved, and is unsupported by any other source or police source. That such an allegedly difficult identification for such a supposedly important suspect (which of necessity would have involved others) should have remained totally unremarked upon and unrecorded anywhere else seems incredible.

[fido]

Chris – Your point about Macnaghten’s being in situ when Kosminsky was incarcerated, and yet giving a wrong date for it, is so interesting that I can’t think how we’ve all overlooked it for 20 years.

(I spent a long time looking at admissions around March 1889, noting, like Mark King later, the possibility of Hyam Hyams. As for my general asylum search, I looked at all Colney Hatch inmates from 1888 to 1898 ultimately and made notes on all Jewish patients admitted between 1888 and 1890, and all Jewish patients in the other London asylums between 1888 and 1890. These included their places of residence and age, occupation, and any other useful details. What I should have written, of course, is that Cohen was the only Jewish patient from Whitechapel to die prematurely between 1888 and 1895. I can’t actually remember whether any of the old men who died at a natural age were from Whitechapel, and haven’t time to dig out my notes and see).

Your point doesn’t clear up all problems – in some ways it adds new ones. But for me it fits very well with the suggestion that the mysterious Seaside Home ID to which “Kosminsky” was taken with difficulty occurred before Macnaghten joined the force, and he mentally filed the Polish Jew he was told had been looked at by the City Police witness as a strong suspect. If, as I postulated, the information that the Polish Jew’s name was Kosminsky came from the City Police at some later time, Macnaghten and all other Met people who heard it may not have realized that Kosminsky went in as late as 1891: they simply accepted the name and the statement that he’d been living with his brother at some point as facts about the incoherent madman they'd committed as David Cohen.

As I say, not everything is cleared up – notably Swanson’s weird by any standards suggestion that an identified suspect in a case like this was simply released back to his brother and disregarded by the Met, and only watched by the City. (This may well suggest that other people disagreed with Anderson and Swanson that the witness's remarks or demeanour showed that he really had imade the identification he refused to confirm. And, indeed, the reasons Swanson gives for the refusal culd easily be Swanson's guesswork - you see, I am quite willing to do anti-Cohenites' thinking for them. I'm not on a missionary campaign to convet people! We should all be searching for the truth.) But Chris’s observation certainly leaves those who want Kosminsky to be the suspect and Swansons’ notes to describe one set of events all occurring in or around 1891 with new problems, though there may well be ways to hypothetize around them. I look forward to discussing this with Paul Begg

Pirate – I only missed Kosminsky’s infirmary entry. He definitely did not enter any asylum before 1891.

Stewart – A most uncharacteristic error for you to make! Look at the punctuation. Anderson doesn’t say the crimes were undiscovered. The reporter does this as his description of them. And it’s exactly the sort of loose speaking I suggest is probably represented by Anderson’s saying they didn’t “catch” the Ripper. They didn’t bring him to justice: Anderson’s only claim is that he was positively identified. Likewise the crimes were certainly not undiscovered! The criminal was.

Otherwise the Anderson piece says only what other police interviewed by the press tended to say: look at this rabbit warren of overcrowded dark alleys, and you can see why the Ripper was never arrested.

The pieces you’ve printed don’t seem to me to demonstrate anything except that Anderson’s conviction that his early prime suspect was definitely the Ripper grew steadily stronger as nothing occurred to contradict it. This is very different from the geriatric wishful thinking proposed by Phil Sugden and suggested as infecting Macnaghten.

In fact, the proposal that the most plausible Ripper suspect was David Cohen doesn’t in the end rest on Anderson’s veracity or accuracy at all, since the fact that there was a suspect known as Kosminsky is confirmed by Swanson and Macnaghten, (the former confirming that Aaron Kosminsky with a brother in Whitechapel quite definitely attracted the suspicious attention of the City CID). My discovery of Kosminsky, however, uncovered (as Phil Sugden implicitly notes) an extremely unlikely suspect – but one whose name I had already suggested had been erroneously attached to the real suspect, one of the most violent and dangerous patients in Colney Hatch at t.at time. And now Chris’s observation offers further aid and comfort to the notion of the two men being thought to be one.

I don’t by any means suggest that this is the only possible solution, or that the Polish Jew is the only possibility. I always point out to real newcomers asking about everything that Nick Warren, the only experienced surgeon among us, makes a very persuasive claim for the Ripper’s having some anatomical or surgical skill. And this, of course, eliminates almost all of my preferred Cohen/Kosminsky/Tumblety/Barnett/Kidney line of possible suspects, and gives a new selection of Klosowski/Tumblety any other doctors or barber-surgeons who haven’t been convincingly disproved, as I feel Gull has.

With all due respect, I don’t think you really do your case any favours by hyperbolic or facetious statements like “:Martin’s theory is in tatters” or “enter Fido stage left”. Pirate Jack’s simple and straightforward disagreement doesn’t carry the same suggestion of emotional baggage driving the argument. I think many people would prefer you to address the arguments I put forward defending the A-Z’s conclusion against Phil Sugden’s, and, I feel, demonstrating that there is no real lack of objectivity in my work, rather than asserting that you own some Anderson religious works and you have read more about Anderson than anyone else. Have you any comment on the posting in another place which says the writer has just read an Anderson theology book and been amazed by the man’s intelligence, since dedicated anti-Anderson writing had led him to believe the man must be a fool? Could you tell us which parts of Moore-Anderson's life of his parents can be shown to point in the weong directions?

And Pirate Jack, I've tried to use shorter paragraphs, and hope they come out properly separated.

All the best,

Martin F

[fido]

My browser jumped two pages again, so I mised rjp's query. Oddly, I had partly answered it - at least showing I don't discount Tumblety completely. My reasson for finding him implausible is his homosexuality. Gacey, Nilsen, Dahmer, Williams - the well-known jhomosexual killers killed men or boys. I don't know whether teh psychoogist rjp cites has examples showing otherwise. My othe reason is regret taht w know too little about Littlechild as yet to assess him as a witness. His letter shows that he had eroneous ideas about homosexuals being sadists. His memoirs don't reveal his personality at all, and we don't know what his involvement in teh case was, (I hop to learn more this weekend).

I'm sending this as is uncorected, and without polite comments to Pirate Jack (who I cetainly don't know, and whom I've never heard Paul Begg refer to) nor observations on the silly suggestion that Paul and I are remiss in not printing every scrap of anti-Andersonian "proof" the late Melvin Harris could drag up and flourish out of context; because the longer e-mail I'd drafted and was correcting was whisked away by another browser jump, and life, alas is short, and I haven't time to go through it all again.
All the best,
Martin F

[Stewart P Evans]

Statements

Stewart – A most uncharacteristic error for you to make! Look at the punctuation. Anderson doesn’t say the crimes were undiscovered. The reporter does this as his description of them. And it’s exactly the sort of loose speaking I suggest is probably represented by Anderson’s saying they didn’t “catch” the Ripper. They didn’t bring him to justice: Anderson’s only claim is that he was positively identified. Likewise the crimes were certainly not undiscovered! The criminal was.
Otherwise the Anderson piece says only what other police interviewed by the press tended to say: look at this rabbit warren of overcrowded dark alleys, and you can see why the Ripper was never arrested.
The pieces you’ve printed don’t seem to me to demonstrate anything except that Anderson’s conviction that his early prime suspect was definitely the Ripper grew steadily stronger as nothing occurred to contradict it. This is very different from the geriatric wishful thinking proposed by Phil Sugden and suggested as infecting Macnaghten.
Martin F

The statements of Anderson that I have referred to have been illustrated with scans of the actual articles in which they appear. Thus the reader is able to see the full piece for him/herself.

In August 1889 Anderson said "After a stranger has gone over it [Whitechapel area] he takes a much more lenient view of our failure to find Jack the Ripper, as they call him, than he did before." (emphasis mine). So here, in August 1889, Anderson talks of the failure of the police to find Jack the Ripper. Readers may see the whole interview, as I have posted it, and draw their own conclusions.

In the June 1892 Anderson piece I did not say that Anderson said the crimes were undiscovered. I indicated that the interviewer would, obviously, have mentioned the crimes as 'undiscovered' to him. Unsolved crimes were commonly referred to in those days as 'undiscovered' crimes, it was common parlance and many examples can be found. Common sense tells you if the crimes were 'undiscovered', literally not known about, they wouldn't have been talking about them! Anderson himself used the word in the context of unsolved in his own writings.

So accepting that the 1892 interviewer's actual question is not known, and I never said it was, Anderson still states, "There, there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders. It is impossible to believe they were acts of a sane man - they were those of a maniac revelling in blood." And he makes no mention of an offender having been 'caged in an asylum' nor does he add a corrective that the crimes were not unsolved - as clearly the reporter was discussing them with him as unsolved.

Also you still haven't answered the question as to why the 1889 Harding Davis interview with Anderson, and other material, is not to be found in any of your books, nor Paul's for that matter. I am not talking of 'geriatric wishful thinking', I am saying that all the known reports on Anderson, 1892-1910, are compatible with a personal theory developing, over the period of 18 years into a 'definitely ascertained fact.'

[Stewart P Evans]

Unequivocal

Stewart – A most uncharacteristic error for you to make! Look at the punctuation. Anderson doesn’t say the crimes were undiscovered. The reporter does this as his description of them. And it’s exactly the sort of loose speaking I suggest is probably represented by Anderson’s saying they didn’t “catch” the Ripper. They didn’t bring him to justice: Anderson’s only claim is that he was positively identified. Likewise the crimes were certainly not undiscovered! The criminal was.
Martin F

I find this sort of comment by Martin as simply disingenuous, or maybe it's just mistaken. Is Martin confusing (or combining) the articles? The August 1889 interview makes no mention of 'undiscovered' but clearly states that Anderson said, "...our failure to find Jack the Ripper..." This is an unequivocal statement. It cannot be read any other way. In August 1889, nine months after Cohen had been locked up, Anderson is speaking of the failure of the police to find Jack the Ripper.

[Stewart P Evans]

Omitted

... nor observations on the silly suggestion that Paul and I are remiss in not printing every scrap of anti-Andersonian "proof" the late Melvin Harris could drag up and flourish out of context; ...
Martin F

Another apparently disingenuous post by Martin. He is very good at raising red herrings to divert attention away from the relevant point in question.

First he implies that the relevant information he has omitted to supply his readers with, so that they can reach a conclusion based on the full evidence available, was that supplied by Melvin Harris (his arch-foe now deceased) 'out of context' - examples please. This is simply not the case, Melvin was one of those who supplied omitted information, notably the 1895 Windsor Magazine piece on Anderson. But information has been supplied by others including Nick Connell and me.

The very important 1889 Anderson interview by R. Harding Davies, not first located by Melvin Harris, simply cannot be described as 'every scrap of anti-Andersonian "proof"'. It is relevant, important and very telling in respect of Martin's theory. So why has he omitted it, even after he has been made aware of it? In fact it has since been used by his own co-author, Paul Begg, to support the dismissal of Martin's theory.

Also, how can Anderson's own statements be described as 'anti-Andersonian'? I'm still puzzling over that one!

[Stewart P Evans]

Sherlock Holmes

One of Anderson's more appealing traits is the fact that he appears to have been an avid Sherlock Holmes 'fan.' T.P.'s Weekly of October 2, 1903, featured an article by Anderson 'Sherlock Holmes, Detective. As Seen by Scotland Yard.' Here is an extract -

[Stewart P Evans]

Daily Chronicle

In August 1908 the newspapers were full of another high-profile unsolved murder, the Luard case at Sevenoaks in Kent. As a result a Daily Chronicle representative obtained the views of Anderson on crime detection.

It is an important, front-page, piece on Anderson, given the date, the subject matter and, not least of all, the fact that it includes Anderson commentary on the Ripper case of 1888. You will not find this important piece in Martin's book nor in the A-Z, I do not know why, but I do know that the authors were aware of it. For fear of being accused of 'influencing' readers I am simply showing the relevant extract -

[Stewart P Evans]

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

The important Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine article of March 1910 -

[harry]

Surely any theory built around the claim by Anderson,that the Ripper had been identified,should first be supported by evidence of such an identification.
Where did the identification take place?Who was identified,and who made the identification?Who,if anyone, was present at the time.Such small unimportant items seem to have been overlooked,yet they are the very basis of the claim.Without them there is nothing.

Of course I forgot.It is a theory based on historical perceptions,so physical implications take a back seat.They are not neccessary.

So heres a little question.How did Kosminski,or Cohen,or Kaminsky get into Mary Kelly's room.Historically speaking,that is.Perhaps the same way the suspect entered the seaside home.Through Anderon's mind.

[IchabodCrane]

1908 vs The lighter sides

To an unbiased hobby part-time 'ripperologist' like myself, Anderson's 1908 statements about the lost proof (clay pipe and graffito) don't seem to contradict the notion that by that time he was convinced of the guilt of the crazy jewish ripper who was identified according to his recollection, but could not be brought to justice. The 1908 piece makes me feel that Anderson was expressing his disappointment over lost chances to proof that his suspect was the ripper other than by personal identification. Hence I also don't see why it shouldn't be mentioned in books that support a jewish inmate theory.

[Jeff Leahy]

So heres a little question.How did Kosminski,or Cohen,or Kaminsky get into Mary Kelly's room.Historically speaking,that is.Perhaps the same way the suspect entered the seaside home.Through Anderon's mind.

Perhaps they simply put their haqnd through the broken window and entered the room the same way as MJK. Or more simply the same way the other victims met their deaths....They entred as MJK client?

Pirate

[Jeff Leahy]

Is podcasting Paul Begg's "preferred media" when he wishes to discuss something with Stewart Evans?

That's news to me.C'mon Jeff,
JM

Good morning Jonathon

Yes I thought this might turn some heads. As far as i understand, and please note I am NOT a spokesman for Paul you can all ask him his views directly.

He prefers not to post on casebook because it is very time consuming, where as, the podcasts only take up a fixed amount of time each week. He also finds them less confrontational.

I thought it was being 'implied' that Paul was avoiding defending his position on the A to Z. This is NOT the case.

Clearly Stewart is aware that I have been working on a project for some time with Paul and have regular meetings with him. As that project has elements that are relivant to some of the questions raised here, I think it acceptable to raise 'observations' that paul and I have discussed over a cup of coffee. I am merely trying to ascertain the Facts.

However I am not a spokesman for Paul. Like Martin and Paul we have our own differences of opinion about the case. So please if you have any questions directly for Paul please direct them to him personally. I am sure he would be happy to answer any questions which people might like to send to you, Jonathon, with regards to the A to Z.

Best regards

Jeff

PS and yes, I do have high regard for Paul's views and the kind generosity he has extended towards me.

[Jeff Leahy]

So accepting that the 1892 interviewer's actual question is not known, and I never said it was, Anderson still states, "There, there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders. It is impossible to believe they were acts of a sane man - they were those of a maniac revelling in blood." And he makes no mention of an offender having been 'caged in an asylum' nor does he add a corrective that the crimes were not unsolved - as clearly the reporter was discussing them with him as unsolved.

Anderson says "there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders"

Can we not make an assumption that the question had something to do with "Fads and Theories"

What do you say to peoples 'Fads and Theories" ?

Anderson produces a photo and says look at this....

It is clearly the act of a 'maniac revelling in blood'

Is this not completely consistent with the murders having been committed by Aaron Kosminski?

He answers a question about 'Fads and Theories'

Then hints at the correct answer.

Pirate

[Stewart P Evans]

Speculating

Anderson says "there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders"
Can we not make an assumption that the question had something to do with "Fads and Theories"
What do you say to peoples 'Fads and Theories" ?
Anderson produces a photo and says look at this....
It is clearly the act of a 'maniac revelling in blood'
Is this not completely consistent with the murders having been committed by Aaron Kosminski?
He answers a question about 'Fads and Theories'
Then hints at the correct answer.
Pirate

Ah, now you are speculating as to the question asked. But I haven't claimed that it is inconsistent with Anderson's later proclamations. I did raise the question as to what could have been preventing Anderson from claiming that he did not regard the murders as unsolved and that he had a 'perfectly plausible theory' as to the fate of the killer. Surely the most obvious answers to someone coming to him with 'fads and theories.'