Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Stewart P Evans]

I Did Not Say...

I have just checked the A to Z and can not see the word ‘REPORT’ used anywhere...
I have only been using the word in its general meaning not relating it to a specific format ‘of which I have no knowledge’. However I except that the connotations of the word ‘report’ might be different in the police to how it would be used at say CNN or TWI.
Martin Fido however does allude to a report, but NOT what form that report takes or whether he uses the meaning, as SPE suggests, as a specific styled and worded document..
Pirate

I sometimes think of debates with 'Pirate' as an arduous uphill struggle - with no guarantee of reaching the top.

I did not say that the word 'report' was used in the A-Z entry, in fact if you look back I have already given the relevant wording of the A-Z entry, which you have now repeated. Accepting that the entry tells us that that '...the handwriting has been confirmed as Swanson's by the Home Office document examiner.' we have to accept that published statement as it is given and it seems clear enough. I have never thought there was a proper report made as I know only of a letter from the Home Office examiner received by Paul Begg and which he once waved around on a TV programme as confirmation of the 'marginalia's' veracity. As far as I know the contents of that letter have never been made public.

It is also not a question of "the connotations of the word 'report' being different in the police to how it would be used at say CNN or TWI." Like many words, the word 'report' has more than one meaning depending upon the context in which it is being used. Here we are speaking of it in the context of what a Home Office document examiner wrote. And if that is in relation to his examination of handwriting examples then there is a proper, official format to follow. But, of course, I do accept that a proper report may not have been compiled and that the said examiner was merely giving his opinion in a letter.

You know, I find it very difficult to not be rude in exchanges like this, but I will (I must) control myself. Please internalise what I have written and don't put irrelevant, meaningless and incorrect interpretations on it.

[Stewart P Evans]

Aware

...
The Date 1959 I took from the A to Z and dates to Daniel Farson’s discovery of the Abberconway version of the Magnaughten Memoranda. This contains the first reference I can find to the name Kosminski. And I simply presumed in would have been mentioned in his broadcast (which I have never been able to find) However it does not give a braoadcast date.
But that was my logic for the first time the name was in public domain.
...
Pirate

I am, of course, aware that Farson's broadcast of the finding of the Aberconway version of the 'Macnaghten memoranda', in Farson's Guide to the British, went out in 1959. I know that Druitt's initials, 'MJD', only were given and I was not aware that Kosminski's name was put into the public domain at that time. It certainly was in 1965 with the publication of Cullen's book Autumn of Terror.

[Jeff Leahy]

I have just checked the A to Z and can not see the word ‘REPORT’ used anywhere.

“Paul Harrison’s suggestion that the marginalia may not be genuine is completely unfounded. Their provenance is established beyond a peradventure, and the handwriting has been confirmed as Swanson’s by the home Office document examiner.”

Just ‘the handwriting is confirmed’.

I have only been using the word in its general meaning not relating it to a specific format ‘of which I have no knowledge’. However I except that the connotations of the word ‘report’ might be different in the police to how it would be used at say CNN or TWI.

Martin Fido however does allude to a report, but NOT what form that report takes or whether he uses the meaning, as SPE suggests, as a specific styled and worded document..

It also strikes me that everyone is concentrating on the actual handwriting. However surely that is NOT the only toll by which the documents provenance can be concluded.

After all we have already agreed that hand writing analysis is not an exact science.

Surely Martin Fido’s expertise in Literature would also judge for whether “The way the end notes are phrased” are likely to be the way Swanson would have phrased them? Surely his judgment was not only the actual writing but also “WHAT WAS WRITEN”

Especially as there were other examples of Swanson making Marginalia.

Pirate

[Stewart P Evans]

Martin Fido

Further to Monty's query regarding the Martin Fido 'essay' on the 'marginalia', perhaps a few relevant quotes from the post mentioned may help: "This very characteristic gentlemanliness and honesty typifies the traits that made those of us who met him absolutely convinced that there could be no hanky-panky about Mr [Jim] Swanson: the provenance was absolutely certain as Mr Swanson was pretty sure his aunt had never even opened the book."

"Now add to the time line the fact that the Home Office expert received not one but two pieces to compare with the marginalia. Paul Begg was as cautious as Grey Hunter and insisted on sending a photocopy of the marginalia with a sample of DSS's handwriting for examination. I well remember being called to the telephone in the St Katherine's Dock Yacht Club one night to hear a shocked Paul tell me the marginalia were forged: the Home Office expert said there was not a single point of comparison between the two hands. Now I had seen a great deal of Swanson's handwriting both before and after his retirement, including marginalia in other books and the brief recollections he wrote in a notebook; I also have some postgraduate training in paleography (the deciphering of old hands) and considerable experience of deciphering much more difficult Victorian handwriting than Swanson's (notable Disraeli's scrawl and Dickens's varied fist). I have struggled with "crossed" letters where paper folded to make its own envelope has its message side overwritten at a perpendicular angle to give the space of two pages rather than one. I had no doubt whatsoever that the marginalia were in Swanson's hand, and the provenance was so good that my scholarly training told me this was genuine without a shadow of a doubt. I confidently pronounced the Home Office expert absolutely wrong, much to Paul's distress and concern for my sense and sanity. But he looked carefully at the report he had received, and suddenly realized that he had mistakenly sent in a memorandum by some one else as the supposed example of Swanson's handwriting. When he corrected this he received the positive report from the Home Office, and, to echo the confident Inspector Abberline (retd) you may take my word for it, there isn't the remotest possibility that the Swanson marginalia are forged."

A word of caution should, perhaps, be inserted here. For in Martin's book, and the A-Z, he states that the Packer 'statement' was written by Sir Charles Warren. He confidently writes, "Warren took down the following statement in his own hand:..." and also states "The statement is initialled CW." Well it isn't, as my examination of the Packer 'statement' revealed it was actually initialled 'ACB' and was written by the Assistant Commissioner, Alexander Carmichael Bruce and not Warren.

[Stewart P Evans]

A Report

...
Just to pick up on one other point. I Don’t believe a report has to have a dictated length?
“Whats the weather like today?” Blue Sky with some fluffy clouds, rather Mild.
That’s six words...
Pirate

A report by a Home Office Forensic examiner is a very specific thing, it is detailed, subject to certain disciplines and usually follows a set format.

A simple personal letter stating an opinion on two photocopy samples of handwriting received is an entirely different matter. It is not, and cannot be, a proper report by 'the Home Office document examiner.'

So to simply state that "...the handwriting has been confirmed as Swanson's by the Home Office document examiner" is both incorrect and misleading.

[Stewart P Evans]

The Swanson Marginalia

Guys,
A slight deviation, apologies.
Having just listened to the podcast entitled The Ripper Scribes, recorded on June 30th, 2008.
Towards the end Martin Fido makes a claim, rather boldly I feel, that the Marginalia is the real deal. And he goes to explain that his reasoning can be found in an essay situated on the interenet. Well I cant find it.
Cant anyone point me in the right direction as Id be very interested in his ideas.
Cheers
Monty

Unlike you to deviate Neil...

I think that what you are looking for was a lengthy post (#56) by Martin on 16 January 2006, to be found under 'Swanson, Chief Inspector Donald - 'The 'Swanson Marginalia'.

[Jeff Leahy]

Good morning, trust you are all well.

The Date 1959 I took from the A to Z and dates to Daniel Farson’s discovery of the Abberconway version of the Magnaughten Memoranda. This contains the first reference I can find to the name Kosminski. And I simply presumed in would have been mentioned in his broadcast (which I have never been able to find) However it does not give a braoadcast date.

But that was my logic for the first time the name was in public domain.

And as Chris has correctly elaborated if someone was going to deliberately try a hoax, Kosminski was far from the obvious name to use.

I was replying to a hypothetical scenario put forward by Colin that attempts to explain this, as SPE and Chris are saying, by introducing Swanson telling the children at an earlier time the name KOSMINSKI.

Again I do not easily buy this idea. Parents of the Victorian era (I had Grandparents of this era) didn’t discuss such matters in detail with children, children were to be protected. It also relies on them correctly guessing the rather odd spelling.

Just to pick up on one other point. I Don’t believe a report has to have a dictated length?

“Whats the weather like today?” Blue Sky with some fluffy clouds, rather Mild.

That’s six words.

All the best

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Howard,
The issue that concerns me most here is not so much the suspicious nature of what appears to be a bogus identification but the contradictory statements made by other police chiefs---one at least actually present at the Eddowes crime scene viz City police chief Henry Smith. Both Macnaghten and Smith are emphatic that the Ripper was NEVER identified. Moreover, Henry Smith in his autobiography, published at much the same time as Anderson" in 1910,is outraged at what he perceived as Anderson"s "slur"on the local Jewish community and writes a whole chapter addressing it at length.Smith takes up Anderson"s statement that the Ripper lived in a" low class" area Whitechapel" amongst his own people" who were also "low class Jews" and Smith states categorically that NOBODY knew where the Ripper lived.
Melville Macnaghten,another contemporary police chief and a close colleague of Anderson"s at Scotland Yard, is every bit as emphatic as Smith."NOBODY EVER SAW THE RIPPER" he stated,"UNLESS it was the [beat]PC in MITRE SQUARE---------who Macnaghten is implying may have caught a glimpse of him----no mention whatever of this crucial possible witness being Jewish---only that he was a [beat]PC in Mitre Square.Macnaghten writes this in his own autobiography,"Days of My Years "--- that is FOUR YEARS AFTER Anderson stated his "definitely ascertainable fact" [of knowing who the ripper was] in his 1910 autobiography,"The Lighter Side of My Official Life"!!!!

I take your points Howard.You may be right,but as Stewart points out the important issues to address here are surely the DIFFERENCES in the PENCIL mark and HANDWRITING between the Marginalia and the end notes and why they were missed in the first place.

As for speculation, why couldnt one of Swanson"s descendants have written in the details ----perhaps to show off to one their close friends that their uncle or grandfather had "identified" Jack the Ripper?After all ,one,quite elderly grandson of Anderson"s, did go to the News of The World as soon as he spotted what appeared to be a definite note on an "identification" in 1981---why couldnt a younger,even more spirited nephew or niece have "filled in the notes at the back" [years before they were rediscovered by Jim Swanson] with what they had heard on the grapevine at home ?
Lets not forget either that quite a number of distinguished men -----such as Dr Thomas Stowall, the eminent surgeon and colleague of Gull"s son -in- law Dyke Acland, came out with some rather "outlandish" statements in their time.Anderson and his descendents wouldnt have a monopoly here on suspicious finds thats is for sure.
Best Wishes

[Stewart P Evans]

Hypothetical

And I believe that was still the case until the publication of Martin Fido's book in September 1987.
And although that book brought to light the records relating to Aaron Kozminski, I think I'm right in saying that it didn't mention Anderson's claim that the witness who refused to testify was Jewish - made in Blackwood's Magazine but omitted from the book version of his memoirs. Instead, Fido suggested that the witness who refused to testify was an unnamed City of London PC (p. 208).
In the book by Wilson and Odell published the following month, the statement about the witness being Jewish is included in a concluding section on "Facts and Theories" (p. 104), but not in the main body of the book, where the authors adhere to Rumbelow's view that the suspect was Pizer and the witness was Violenia/Violina (p. 173). (This book appeared in the same month as Charles Nevin's article on the marginalia; in fact I don't know which appeared first.)
It would be remarkable if someone setting out to fake the annotations in 1987 had made precisely the same point as Anderson in his previous Blackwood's article, even though that point had gone unnoticed by all previous Ripper authors.

Wasn't it 1965, not 1959, that the name 'Kosminski' entered the public domain?

I think that one of the main thrusts of Colin Roberts' contention was that Swanson himself verbally passed on his knowledge of the case to his son. Hence the fact that if the annotations had, in part or full, been made by a son or grandson then that would account for the inclusion of the information that you cite (i.e. Swanson had told them).

This, of course, is simply a hypothetical scenario and it is not one that I am suggesting was the case.

[Chris]

Actually between 1959, when the name kosminski was first in public domain, and 1981, it was considered by most Ripper authorities of the time, that Pizer was Anderson's suspect.

And I believe that was still the case until the publication of Martin Fido's book in September 1987.

And although that book brought to light the records relating to Aaron Kozminski, I think I'm right in saying that it didn't mention Anderson's claim that the witness who refused to testify was Jewish - made in Blackwood's Magazine but omitted from the book version of his memoirs. Instead, Fido suggested that the witness who refused to testify was an unnamed City of London PC (p. 208).

In the book by Wilson and Odell published the following month, the statement about the witness being Jewish is included in a concluding section on "Facts and Theories" (p. 104), but not in the main body of the book, where the authors adhere to Rumbelow's view that the suspect was Pizer and the witness was Violenia/Violina (p. 173). (This book appeared in the same month as Charles Nevin's article on the marginalia; in fact I don't know which appeared first.)

It would be remarkable if someone setting out to fake the annotations in 1987 had made precisely the same point as Anderson in his previous Blackwood's article, even though that point had gone unnoticed by all previous Ripper authors.

[Stewart P Evans]

Speculation

Like it or not, and I don't, speculation is unavoidable when considering circumstances such as these. And speculation will always give rise to the greatest disagreement and debate.

However, sensible speculation should always be based on facts and accurate assessment of what is acceptable as the historical record of the subject under consideration. This is a rather complex subject and debate is never helped by those who fail to get their facts right and who are working from an agenda of preconceived ideas. A few comments in the foregoing should, perhaps, be considered.

It was stated that "...neither reports have been published in full." Fine, but are there two reports? Whilst Dr Davies has prepared a full and proper report giving his assessment of the annotations, having examined the originals carefully, I am not so sure that this is the case with R. Totty. I am aware there is a personal letter of opinion, but I have never heard of, nor seen, a report.

We have seen a poster state, "...I am totally convinced that Donald Swanson wrote the marginalia." That is fine, that is his belief. However, should there not always be the room for flexibility and the allowance that such a statement as that usually leads to a closed mind on other options, hence the fact that most people would say '...probably wrote the marginalia.'

The statement is also made that "...no one on planet earth have read the reports because, self evidently, they have never been published in full." Such a sweeping and positive statement simply cannot be true. Despite the fact that nothing of whatever R. Totty had to say, be it a report or merely a letter, has been published we do know that Paul Begg has certainly read it. Dr. Davies' report has been seen, to my knowledge, by several people and probably by Paul Begg also. Indeed I would hazard a guess that it (or part of it) will be included in the new A-Z.

But, when all is said and done, the relevant point is not so much that the handwriting, or part of it, may not be Swanson's (however remote such a possibility may be) but that important differences between the marginal annotations and those on the rear free endpaper were missed back in 1988 and the notes were accepted at face value.

Having been revealed within the last nine years, these differences are now being considered and appear to show that the endpaper notes may have been made at a much later date than the marginal notes. This, of course, brings with it the possibility that the writer had become ill or infirm, with reduced mental capacity and memory. This, in turn, could account for apparent errors and oddities to be found in the second set of notes.

[Monty]

A plea

Guys,

A slight deviation, apologies.

Having just listened to the podcast entitled The Ripper Scribes, recorded on June 30th, 2008.

Towards the end Martin Fido makes a claim, rather boldly I feel, that the Marginalia is the real deal. And he goes to explain that his reasoning can be found in an essay situated on the interenet. Well I cant find it.

Cant anyone point me in the right direction as Id be very interested in his ideas.


Cheers
Monty

[Howard Brown]

Excuse me Nats...

Being as neutral as possible on this whole issue...other than totally rejecting the idea that this identification was a mere anti-foreigner "usual suspect" set up...... and someone with no dog in the fight...

How do you or I know whether or not if it was Swanson that was present at the identification of the suspect...,,, with SRA nowhere in sight...and that Swanson merely corroborated (with the footnotes) what he himself told SRA about the details of this identification ? Where's it say that one way or the other in the literature, Nats?

How do we know that someone else who attended the identification on behalf of the police department with the two officials nowhere in sight... didn't tell Swanson first...who then told SRA...who (SRA) then goes on to write about the identification first...who then authors an autobiography....Swanson reads his copy...gets to the identification part of the book....and then makes some notes ?

How do we know that someone who attended the identification didn't tell both of the officials what went down according to that individual's interpretation of events...and that SRA first wrote about it with Swanson following suit with the footnotes ?

There's a few variables I think that get overlooked in this entire affair as far as who did what first and if either man was actually present. Enough so to keep this aspect of the Case going for another 121 years......

Whether or not the notations are legitimate is an issue I'm not qualified to comment on...obviously.. My only concern is that we haven't explored the possibility that Swanson was present and only corroborating what he or someone else told SRA....and we have things assbackwards .

If it is assbackwards, then is it not possible that SRA was actually merely reflecting upon what his colleague had told him, first in Blackwood's and then in his biography ?...without dropping his name ( Swanson's) into the mix? Just like he didn't drop Kosminski's name into the mix.

[Jeff Leahy]

, both of these institutions stating he was NOT dangerous.

You mean rather like Peter Sutcliff?

Police Chief Macnaghten though definitely thought Druitt a better suspect for Jack the Ripper----
........so much for Police Chief Anderson"s "low class Polish Jew" as the preferred police candidate for JtR or for that being any kind of "definitely ascertainable" fact!

Actually between 1959, when the name kosminski was first in public domain, and 1981, it was considered by most Ripper authorities of the time, that Pizer was Anderson's suspect.

That is why Colins scenerario cleverly allows for the name Kosminski to enter the time frame of a possible hoax at a much early time. Of course it also suffers from the problem that the name kosminski must have come from DS Swanson in the first place.

There is of course another solution that has been put forward by the wizard of Oz which bests you both.

However, the basic fact remains that the two experts who have examined the Marginalia have both concluded 'it was probably written by DS Swanson"

If you would like to take me up on my bet, I guess around two or three thousand should cover it

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

That throws a slightly different light on the matter Chris.However,the mismatch of both pencil lead and letter slant ,with the purple leaded end notes supposedly "identifying the ripper" suggests to me a bit of hanky panky having taken place of one kind or another!
Nor should it have come to anyone in the Swanson"s family as any kind of great surprise that Kosminski"s name was known to Swanson -a number of his relatives may well have read Anderson"s 1910 book,"The Lighter Side of My Life"----and he was Swanson's boss for many years after all.
So yes I guess Kosminski was held onto as a suspect by Anderson and Swanson for both of whom the mere thought of a person they referred to as a "low class Polish Jew" and who they knew had indulged in "self abuse" was sufficient to ring loud alarm bells.
This alleged masturbatory practise is noted on Kosminski"s Colney Hatch admittance forms and was very clearly a complete anathema to all three of these senior Victorian policemen and very likely appeared to them a sufficient crime in itself to warrant swift admission to the loony bin and thereafter to have become a seriously strong suspect for Jack the Ripper.
And lets not forget either that Kosminski was actually NAMED by Macnaghten in 1894 ie long before the discovery of the marginalia by Swanson"s grandson in 1981 and I believe the name is said to have been circulating among certain of Macnaghten"s friends such as George Sims etc. In fact poor old Kosminski was even described in 1894 by Macnaghten as having "strong homicidal tendencies"-----a statement which stands in very stark contrast to the statements on hospital notes by Kosminski"s doctors and other medical practitioners at Colney Hatch and Leavesdon, both of these institutions stating he was NOT dangerous.

Police Chief Macnaghten though definitely thought Druitt a better suspect for Jack the Ripper----
........so much for Police Chief Anderson"s "low class Polish Jew" as the preferred police candidate for JtR or for that being any kind of "definitely ascertainable" fact!