Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[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]

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]

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.'

[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

[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

[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.

[jmenges]

If you wish to discuss this with Paul I'm sure he will be happy to discuss it on podcast..Which as we know is his preferred media.

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

[Ben]

Hi Roger,

I've no doubt that a hefty number of serial killers harbour personal arrogance and a desire for recogniiton, social or otherwise. We've just heard from JTR "copycat" Derek Brown who sought notoriety from emulating his Victorian counterpart. But not everyone is capable of realizing those lofty amibitions, and serial killers are demonstrably no exception. Berkowitz and Bundy may have harboured pretensions, and they may well have been endowed of intelligence that belied their mential jobs, but the pretensions alone didn't serve to elevate their actual status in life, which, like the majority of serial killers, was relatively lowly.

Klosowski may well have spruced up his attire by the mid 1890s when he was impersonating Americans and using aliases, but at the time of the murders, there's little to suggest that he was anything more than an impoverished immigrant who couldn't speak English. The point being that having aspirations (whether they be social, financial or whatever) isn't quite the same thing fulfilling them, and in the poverty-stricken East End of 1888, there's no reason on earth for assuming that our man belonged in the latter catergory.

With reciprocal good wishes,

Ben

[rjpalmer]

(Referring to Tumblety) "A desperately unconvincing Ripper candidate"

Hi Martin F- I’m in a somewhat precarious position, because I am --at the same time-- both greatly impressed by your insights into serial murder and confused by what I feel is your startling lack of insight into Francis Tumblety.

Of all the police supsects, he’s the only one that actually adheres to your own definition of the serial-murderer: a man from an inadequate social background who, nonetheless, had a bizarrely exaggerated need for social prestige, and thus, egged on by his personal pathology and narcissism, rose through the ranks through crimiinal exploitation.

We’ve been hearing on a fairly regular basis from AP Wolf, Wolf Vanderlinden, Ivor Edwards, Chris George, Dan Norder, etc. etc, what a dreadful ‘candidtae’’ Tumblety supposedly is, but with few exceptions, these fellows are all advocates of the outdated ‘lustmord’ theory, which, to their way of thinking, eliminates homosexuals.

With repect, all I think this really indicates is how outdated mainstream Ripperologists are in their thinking, as if they are --almost to a man---stuck in the superficial psychology of the early 1980s. Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Athens at Seton Hall?

I'm sorry, but anyone seriously - seriously - arguing that modern serial killers are working class and blue collar, whereas Victorian serial killers are posh and middle class really does need to research their topic in more depth. Notorious Victorian murderer and mutilator Joseph Vacher was the son of an illiterate farmer. Klosowski - working class. Deeming - working class.

Thanks for the lecture, Ben, but unfortunately I’m well beyond the standard cliché interpretations that --no doubt-- you are gleaning from American-style shockumentaries about “serial murder.’ It’s not so much where the men came from---it’s where they ended up. Was Tumblety a peasant or a wealthy man? Bad Question. He was neither and both. His essence was a clash between the two selves. Vacher, Klosowski, and Deeming were all irrepressible social-climbers, who had precisely the same exaggerated social pretensions as Bundy and Berkowitz and Sutcliffe. What is different is the respective cultures from which they sprang, and that is what ultimately determines where the murderers in those cultures came from and where they ended up and how they reacted. Mudgett, Cream, Smith, etc. etc. All their biographies are basically the same. So, too, with Tumilty. He merely looks like a bad suspect because so many mainstream Ripperologists have suckled at the unproductive paps of Krafft-Ebing. That, someday soon, will likely change. But probably not on the internet.


All best wishes to you and Martin Fido.

Roger P

[Natalie Severn]

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.
So presumably it referred to Aaron Kosminski.We know that Aaron was admitted to Colney Hatch in 1891,but we dont know what he was doing,between 1888 and 1891 , ie apart from walking the dog in Cheapside in 1889 .We know that because there is a newspaper cutting of that event that records it. So it seems he was not "incarcerated" at this juncture - unless he was on some kind of "day release" programme!
However we hear from Anderson that at some point post the murders,a "low class Polish Jew" ,was taken to the Policeman"s seaside home,with difficulty, and ID'ed by a 'fellow Jew".
It might be worth us finding out whether this Jewish witness, belonged to that class of Jewish person that Anderson alleged were into "shielding their own from gentile justice"-in this case, concealing a dangerous criminal such as Jack the Ripper---but ,Anderson states, only if they were "low class Polish Jews. If our witness indeed was from this class of people as defined by Anderson, then Anderson"s "definitely ascertainable fact" about the" low class Polish Jew" he identified as "The Ripper" may simply be a matter of Anderson"s [perceptions/prejudices] of what he decided were "FACTS" about methods employed by "low class Jews" .It may all simply amount to a matter of Anderson"s " perceptions" or "prejudices" of how Anderson"s definition of "low class Polish Jews" , behaved in Whitechapel in 1888 regarding the law of the land.
Is it possible that what actually happened down at the seaside home was that Anderson"s Jewish witness "demurred" and when he refused to "play ball" and "identify" the suspect Anderson perceived that as the man not wishing him to face the noose aka gentile justice? Did Anderson simply have an "Ah Ha!"moment and confuse the man"s reluctance to express certainty about his suspect"s resemblance to whoever it was, with a refusal to let the suspect face gentile justice?

[Stewart P Evans]

Omission

I'm sorry but that again is opinion. I have read Martins posts carefully and he seems to argue the pro's and con's of Andersons character. Surely this Pro camp is a creation of your making, not theirs?
Pirate

Please explain the omission of all the references that militate against Anderson being missing from the Fido/Begg books. A point that has been noted by many others - not just me!

Also, they have only responded to anything on these points when, like now, they have been unable to avoid it. Two leading authors told me years ago that they had alerted the two authors of the A-Z about points that they had omitted but still they failed to appear in later editions.

I haven't created pro- anything - I am promoting even-handedness and I do not like the word 'camp' in this context. The two of them are probably not aware that most leading authorities in the field recognise their bias. And it's not me who first used the word 'Andersonites.'

[Stewart P Evans]

Obviously

And it looks like you are in agreement that, we simply don't know.
So again it is difficult to judge whether or not Anderson new the Name Aaron Kosminski in 1992.

Obviously I don't know what question was asked. I did not suggest that I did, I merely asked why Anderson had said nothing whatsoever indicative or supportive of his 1910 'definitely ascertained fact' together with points that occurred to me, which others may agree or disagree with. What I can tell you is that by 1992 Anderson had been dead for many years.

[Jeff Leahy]

What makes you think that I'm 'edgy'? Mention of some of the nonsense in which you have engaged in the past?

That is an opinion. However the information that I have provided is invariably factually correct

I haven't set up pro and anti anything - and I'm sure that I do not have that much influence with the readers of these threads. I have been trying to provide information that has been notably omitted in the past by both Martin Fido and Paul Begg in their published writings.

As you well know Stewart you are one of the most influential posters on casebook. And I don’t believe that I have ever not recognized or respected the contributions you have made.

True I have given my opinion along the way, but it's a free country and I'm entitled to that, others may agree or disagree as they wish.

Exactly and that is simply what I am doing.

I have mentioned pro-Anderson people because that is what some are.

I'm sorry but that again is opinion. I have read Martins posts carefully and he seems to argue the pro's and con's of Andersons character. Surely this Pro camp is a creation of your making, not theirs?

I do not set such great store in him as do Messrs. Begg and Fido. But I hide nothing and try to give more information for others to look at. I don't like the word 'camp', one which was historically applied by Paul Begg in the case of the 'diary', and I thought 'pro-' was more apposite.

The subject would be pretty dull if there weren't differences of opinion. I have very much enjoyed the contribution you and Martin have made on these threads over the last few days.

So Paul, I mean 'Pirate Jack', we are unable to take meaning much from Anderson's words in the 1892 article, as we don't know exactly what question was asked. That's strange, I'm sure I've seen Paul speculate in the past. And we can at least say that Anderson did not communicate to this interviewer any knowledge of a solution and that Anderson thought they were the insane acts 'of a maniac revelling in blood.'
Anyway, don't worry about the badge, I've changed my mind.

Again Stewart you are jumping to conclusions that do not exist. If you wish to discuss this with Paul I'm sure he will be happy to discuss it on podcast..Which as we know is his preferred media.

In the mean time I will continue in my preferred media and do my Ripperology with a camera.

Each to there own.

However all this is distracting from a very simple question about the question Anderson was responding too.

And it looks like you are in agreement that, we simply don't know.

So again it is difficult to judge whether or not Anderson new the Name Aaron Kosminski in 1992.

There, that was pretty painless

Pirate

PS Shame about the badge, i though t I might set up a little side line. i could do Stewart Evan ones too.

[Robert]

There's nothing for it, Stewart : you're going to have to write a book on Anderson. If we can have Chris and Rob's research in one volume, and your Anderson material in another, then that would be a good way forward.

[Stewart P Evans]

Pro-

Stewart I’m not certain why you’re being so edgy. It is after all you that seem to have set up a pro, and presumably, an anti Anderson camp.
I’m not on anyone’s side however I think it reasonable if you’re constructing something on the subject to ask ‘Exerts’ in the field, difficult questions.
Which I feel is reasonable to ask both the pro and anti Anderson camps.
The point I have raised is perfectly reasonable.
You have made a post and said look what Anderson has said, it must mean something?
I don’t think we can draw too much from Anderson’s statement without knowing exactly the context of the question he was responding too.
Too some extent it’s like the face in the window some people can see on another thread…..you see what you want to see.
Pirate
PS If you PM me your address I’ll try and sort out a badge.

What makes you think that I'm 'edgy'? Mention of some of the nonsense in which you have engaged in the past?

I haven't set up pro and anti anything - and I'm sure that I do not have that much influence with the readers of these threads. I have been trying to provide information that has been notably omitted in the past by both Martin Fido and Paul Begg in their published writings. True I have given my opinion along the way, but it's a free country and I'm entitled to that, others may agree or disagree as they wish. I have mentioned pro-Anderson people because that is what some are. I do not set such great store in him as do Messrs. Begg and Fido. But I hide nothing and try to give more information for others to look at. I don't like the word 'camp', one which was historically applied by Paul Begg in the case of the 'diary', and I thought 'pro-' was more apposite.

So Paul, I mean 'Pirate Jack', we are unable to take much meaning from Anderson's words in the 1892 article as we don't know exactly what question was asked. That's strange, I'm sure I've seen Paul speculate in the past. And we can at least say that Anderson did not communicate to this interviewer any knowledge of a solution and that Anderson thought they were the insane acts 'of a maniac revelling in blood.'

Anyway, don't worry about the badge, I've changed my mind.