Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Chris]

I now ask you,dear Nats...name another of the " several serious police suspects whose common denominator was being a "low class Polish Jew".

Incidentally, Pizer wasn't really a "Polish Jew" himself - he was born in the City of London, of a father who was a Polish immigrant - but one who had arrived at least 40 years before the mass immigration of the 1880s - and a mother who was English-born (as was her mother).

[Chris]

Well Chris,he was the first of several serious police suspects whose common denominator was being a "low class Polish Jew"and who were either detained[Pizer]- without any evidence whatsoever by the police-or watched 24/7 ,by police, for "suspicious activity"- [such as speaking to a prostitute -City suspect ] or ID"ed while sectioned - and completely unfit -presumably still mentally very ill, -at a seaside home for the police and so it went on---and goes on.......and on

The fact that several of the police suspects were Jewish can hardly be taken, in itself, as an indication of antisemitism on the part of the police. Considering the large Jewish population of the area, it would be amazing if there had been no Jewish suspects.

We do know why Pizer was arrested - it was because he was alleged by prostitutes to have blackmailed and assaulted some of their number. We're not in a position to judge the strength of those accusations, but we do know that the police very quickly established that Pizer had an alibi for the murder of Nichols, released him and gave him an opportunity of asserting his innocence at the inquest.

As for the others, we don't know what reasons the police had for suspicion against them. Of course, Harry Cox doesn't say his suspect was kept under 24-hour surveillance because he had spoken to a prostitute - he just recounts an encounter with a prostitute that he witnessed while watching him.

Regarding the "identification" of Aaron Kozminski, it seems you're more willing to take the Anderson/Swanson account at face value than I am. But in any case if Swanson is right the identification did not take place after Aaron was committed to the asylum (and the fact that Anderson excised the "caged in an asylum" claim from the book version of his memoirs tends to support that). And if there really was significant circumstantial evidence against him, I really can't see that the police could be blamed for trying to identify him, whatever his mental condition. If they had sent him to trial and had him hanged, it would be a different matter.

Really, this all seems incredibly thin as support for an accusation of "institutional antisemitism".

[Howard Brown]

Pizer was known as Leather Apron and wasn't such a nice guy in reality.

That he was picked up by Thicke has nothing to do with his ethnicity. It had to do with information that he, Pizer, had been threatening local prostitutes.

Ludwig was picked up and wasn't a Jew. He remained in jail for some time until after the Double Event. He was German.

Issenschmidt was nuttier than a sheisshaus rat. He was Jewish. He was exonerated. He wasn't picked up because he was Jewish either. Two doctors,Cowen & Crabbe, went to the police and informed them of their views on Issenschmid. Then,lo and behold, Issenschmid admitted to being "Leather Apron" to a few women in Holloway. Whatta nudnik !

I now ask you,dear Nats...name another of the " several serious police suspects whose common denominator was being a "low class Polish Jew".

One will do. Thanks.

[Natalie Severn]

Well Chris,he was the first of several serious police suspects whose common denominator was being a "low class Polish Jew"and who were either detained[Pizer]- without any evidence whatsoever by the police-or watched 24/7 ,by police, for "suspicious activity"- [such as speaking to a prostitute -City suspect ] or ID"ed while sectioned - and completely unfit -presumably still mentally very ill, -at a seaside home for the police and so it went on---and goes on.......and on

[Chris]

I reckon a Polish Jewish shoemaker named John Pizer could give you chapter and verse for Monday 10th September 1888---and the activities of every policeman in the met for over a week were rushing in that direction!

I don't understand. Can you explain in what way you think the behaviour of the police towards Pizer was antisemitic?

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie, is the irony intended?

Despite your ire for Anderson, exactly the same thing can be said of 9 out of 10 'serious' students of the Whitechapel murder case, and 19 out of 20 American 'profilers'--- all of whom invariably incorporate --often with aggression--the same conventional wisdom that the Ripper was a local working-class non-entity. Hence the soft parade of rude boys from the hood: Hutchinson, Barnett, Bury, Richardson, etc.

What, precisely, is the difference between Anderson's 'diagnosis' and an F.B.I. 'profile?' The difference seems negligible; just one is tauted as politically incorrect, the other as science.

Lets face it RJ, there can be no science as late in the day as this. Just easy targets.
But Robert Anderson went rather further than most in suggesting that the local Jewish community were "shielding the killer from justice" and therefore enabling him to continue with his murderous activities .Thats what gave deepest offence ,not so much that a mentally ill person ,who may have happened to be the ripper, may also have been Jewish.

[Natalie Severn]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there wouldn't have been antisemitic individuals within the police force.

I think it's more a question of whether antisemitic behaviour by police officers would have been generally viewed as acceptable within the force. That's what I would be sceptical about accepting without evidence.

Chris,
I reckon a Polish Jewish shoemaker named John Pizer could give you chapter and verse for Monday 10th September 1888---and the activities of every policeman in the met for over a week were rushing in that direction!

[rjpalmer]

So no,Anderson was most definitely not accusing anyone from the middle classes.

Natalie, is the irony intended?

Despite your ire for Anderson, exactly the same thing can be said of 9 out of 10 'serious' students of the Whitechapel murder case, and 19 out of 20 American 'profilers'--- all of whom invariably incorporate --often with aggression--the same conventional wisdom that the Ripper was a local working-class non-entity. Hence the soft parade of rude boys from the hood: Hutchinson, Barnett, Bury, Richardson, etc.

What, precisely, is the difference between Anderson's 'diagnosis' and an F.B.I. 'profile?' The difference seems negligible; just one is tauted as politically incorrect, the other as science.

[Chris]

There seems to be a consensus here among certain people that there was neither institutional or personal racism in either Robert Anderson or the Victorian Police.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there wouldn't have been antisemitic individuals within the police force.

I think it's more a question of whether antisemitic behaviour by police officers would have been generally viewed as acceptable within the force. That's what I would be sceptical about accepting without evidence.

[Natalie Severn]

I think it important here to explain what I mean when I say that Anderson"s assertions arise simply from prejudice or anti semitism or racism if you like.
There seems to be a consensus here among certain people that there was neither institutional or personal racism in either Robert Anderson or the Victorian Police.I have been asked to provide instances of it as though it were like a two times table.Well it aint like that at all.
We are talking institutional power within a system.The statements Robert anderson made about a "low class Polish Jew" being Jack the Ripper and being harboured by his people, who by definition ,are also "low class Polish Jews ",can be seen as linked to his statements about the "degraded " women "of a certain class "who were the victims of Jack the Ripper".Their respective oppressions,and specifically their poverty and powerlessness, were symbiotic.
So no,Anderson was most definitely not accusing anyone from the middle classes , the Rabbis ,the Sweat shop owners ,the factory owners with one or two of whom he had managed to establish a reasonably cordial relationship .Rather his prejudice was firmly targeted at the recently arrived Eastern European Jews who attended those pesky clubs like the ones in Berner street and who found themselves at the point of their arrival exploited and oppressed and therefore in struggle about their working conditions, and poverty. Demonstrations and agitation about their starvation wages,the appalling factory and sweat shop conditions ,had led them into direct conflict with the law,with Robert Anderson"s power base, just as women "prowling the streets after midnight" led the prostitutes of Whitechapel into conflict with the law and Robert Anderson"s power base.The two are linked and its no accident that the two were targeted by Robert Anderson.
But its quite wrong to see racism/anti semitism as some sort of body of thought or holistic ideology.Its much more complex.It changes its contours according to changes in the advance of certain sections of that community viz the more prosperous Jews at the time were less likely to bear the brunt of anti semitism than the recently arrived "destitute" ones.

[Cap'n Jack]

I've already been to Broadmoor, RJP, didn't care for it much, the billiard table was only half-size, and they never buttered the currant buns.
As you'll know I'm more of a Mountgay man.

[rjpalmer]

Follow that garden path carefully, Old Boy, or you'll end up in Broadmoor instead of Mountjoy Square.

RP

[Cap'n Jack]

Greetings RJP...where you been? Riting a book, or a wrong?
As you'll know, old boy, me belief is that all that nonsense from ol' Scotland Bard was now't but disinformation, cleverly designed to do exactly what it does today, confuse and baffle us, and lead us down any garden path to end in a maze cleverly constructed by the master of mazes.
You would be amazed.

[rjpalmer]

Hi RJ,

How many in Scotland Yard might have been in on this damn good idea?

I must admit I can’t see why they would be so troubled all the while it remained only a damn good idea. Damn good ideas can be kept out of harm’s way as long as nobody feels the need to parade them as definitely ascertained facts. That's when they have the potential to do harm, surely?

So do you think they were also hoping like hell that Anderson would not decide to take this damn good idea out for walkies one day without belt, braces and a damn good reason?

Good questions by Caz, and I think this runs to the heart of the matter.

I can certainly understand why 'mainstream' students of the case are skeptical of anything approaching a 'conspiracy theory,' but I personally feel that the historical record is being seriously misread --and has been for years---and that there is substantial evidence that a small number of senior officers at Scotland Yard all suspected the same man, who, however, was never named openly, but just sits their like a hole in the conversation.

You emphasize the word 'they,' as if to remind us there was clearly no unity of opinion among members of the Metropolitan police. Quite true, and conventional wisdom points out that these opinions were so varied as to look like utter choas: Macnaghten plumping for Druitt; Anderson for an unnamed Jew; Abberline for Klosowski; etc., etc But, that said, these divergent opinions are complex and have to be studied in the context they were given if we are to discern the full conversation.

Let me give you one example.

Inspector Edmund Reid. Here is a bloke who is one of the strongest arguments that the Met had 'no idea' who the Ripper was. Reid said --again & again without hesitation--that the Ripper was not known, and that the opinions in print were bunk.

The fly in the ointment is that Reid was not a member of Scotland Yard. He was the local inspector in H-Divison. Unlike our wise friend here, Stewart Evans, I've never worked in the police, so I have to step aside and accept his advise on these topics, but, that said, I've worked in a corporation and I think I have some insight into how the hierarchy of these instituitions work. The men with the blue-collar family backgrounds (and I'm one of them) always give short shrift to the opinions of the men at the Central Office. Their argument is that they are the ones who do the footwork, and the ones that know their districts. The last thing a man like Reid is going to admit is that the educated, public schooled, pencil pushing blokes at Scotland Yard could have known something about the case that he didn't. Meanwhile, the record shows that much of what Reid beleived about the case was utterly inaccurate.

In reality, --and having worked at a corporation--Redi's blue-collar viewpoint is simply too simpistic to be true. There certainly ARE times when things become apparent to those at the adminstrative level that aren't apparent to the men on the 'beat.' So I think Reid's denial really tells us very little about the suspicions at Scotland Yard; it tells us more about l'esprit du corps of Reid and the H-Division men like him.


Oh, and by the way, I think you’re misreading Anderson, Caz. He never DID ‘take it out for walkies.’ That’s the whole point. Sadler, Kozminski, and Cutbush tell us quite alot about the Francis Coles investigation. They tell us nothing about the events of 1888. What is obvious to me is that much of the chit-chat of the senior officers amount to nothing more then wishfulfillment, where they are taking the events of 1891 and transposing them backwards as if they had some relevance to the investigation they botched in 1888. Anderson is clearly doing this; nearly every single word he ever published in relationship to the Ripper case can be traced back to a specific criticism made about his investigation in print. Reid is but one example. Reid scoffed at the “Sherlock Holmses” who said they had solved the case; Anderson responds by saying “It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to....” Anderson is DIRECTLY responding to Reid. What is happening is a conversation --in print-- between a Divisional Inspector and a Senior Officer at Scotland Yard and their respective insights into police work and the Ripper investigation.

But the important thing is what ISN'T being said.

[rjpalmer]

Roger, Littlechild did not talk of 'moral certainty', he merely gave his opinion - "to my mind" - which does not carry the certainty and dogmatism of Anderson's comments. Littlechild is to be commended for this.

Stewart -- Sorry. I agree with you and should have been more clear. I was not referring to the Littlechild Letter; I was referring to the inteview with Littlechild (first mentioned, I think, in your first book) where he discusses the difference between 'moral proof' and 'legal evidence'---which, of course, is precisely the same point later adopted by Rbt. Anderson, who then applied it to the Polish Jew suspect. We don't know that Littlechild was referring to the Ripper case when he made the remark, but I find it provocative that Anderson later used it in that context.