Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[fido]

We seem to be managing interesting cross-purposes, each posting something which is intercepted by the other's next post.
Oh dear!
I can't make the quotations from previous pages stick in the reply box. But go back to the beginning of this thread and notice Stewart's case for opening it: some sensible questions about how we are to rate Anderson's views, but also some very clear insinuations that he was not telling the truth. Natalie screams in over the top with some half-knowledge of Anderson and a lot of opinion: Rob has to correct her; Stewart is silent, but soon posts a number of quotations from or citations of Anderson, without clear comment, but evidently intending to insinuate that he was dishonest, and being so accepted. When I enter the scene he starts by suggesting he's read plenty about Anderson and doesn't need to read any more. He throws advice to some one else somewhere to read more. But when I indicate that I've read a good deal more by and about Anderson and his cultural environment than he has, I'm told that Stewart doesn't need to do this because of his experience in the school of life!
The thread contains a good many examples of Sir Oracle laying down the law, too. And optimistically cites an unnamed head of the FBI who was more polite about Stewart than I am which is, apparently, not surprising. Well, I've never spoken aggressively to Stewart in the flesh, nor he to me. The way we address each other, and he writes about me when I'm not reading the boards, are an example of the danger many people have noticed aout the internet: it aint good for courtesy and controlled debate! I don't really have to bother about accusations of rudeness from someone who calls my arguments squirming and wriggling, and who has stamped off the boards in a tantrum when he's been answered (not by me) in his own brusquely dismissive terms.
He also cites Phil Sugden as agreeing with him, and states erroneously that he is the most capable - (it wasn't that adjective, but I can't go back and look or I'll lose this reply) - historian in the field. well, that simply isn't so. Charles van Onselar is far and away the greatest historian to have entered the Ripper lists, even though for interesting reasons he has proposed a somewhat preposterous candidate. And van Onselar rates Paul Begg and Philip Sugden the best current narrative historians of the Ripper . He takes more quotations from Begg than from any other source on the Ripper. He takes takes them both to task for scholarly pusillanimity in suggesting the Ripper case may never be solved - something Stewart has declared, ex cathedra, is definitely the case. Van Onselar also remarks that Begg's and Sugden's work complements my original work. He certainly doesn't endorse Phil's implicit attack on it, let alone his preposterous suggestion that Anderson's marks were geriatric self-deception!
Now, I don't like the use of the boards for ill-willed exchanges. I'd rather manage the kind of courteous disagreement I find easily possible with - well, people as far apart fom each other as How Brown and Ivor Edwards! But if Stewart insists on attacking my objectivity and insinuating that he being honest, I apparently must not be, I can promise him I'll give as good as I get. If he can show how the sentences here and sentences there he quotes against Anderson fit into a larger picture derived from an examination of Anderson's overall cultural background I'll be happy to reopen discussion. I've survived withou ever receiving any apology from Stewart for his monstrous attack on me a few years ago when he alleged that he knew I was very dangerous. (Gosh! How exciting! I'd neve heard anybody suggest that before, and I'm sure Chris and Septic Blue and Natalie don't think this clapped-out old Andersonian is dangerous!) But the tone of the debate is up to Stewart. Yes, although I didn't name him, thnking it more polite, I certainly do think he qotes sentences here and there without showing a persuasive total picture. Yes, I think his and everyone else's failure to address the Christianity that was central to Anderson's life limits the value of their observations on Anderson. And unless anduntil he has made some examination of Anderson's Christianity he is in no position to allege that my citation of it as relevant to Anderson's veracity is biassed or unobjective.
All the best,
Martin F

[fido]

Oops! My mistake! I thought I was answering your previous post, Stewart.
I see you are still sparring.
Well, let's stick to the point. Your books are not in question. Nobody objects to the life of Reid; everybody values immensely the Sourcebook. Neither it nor the Letters from Hell are the type of book which lend themselves to bias. Nor have I ever, that I can remember, published an attack on your theorizing in the Tumblety book, though one reader when it came out asked me, "Who isd this man who pretends to respect your work, but tries to rubbish it all he can?"
I have never gone around saying that you lack objectivity or competence. But I find that you have constantly been casting aspersions on mine - sometimes by name, sometimes by vague references to "Kosminskiites". I don't go around telling people what yur thinking is in words that are dismissive of it. You have been doing this, I find, quite a bit as far as I'm concerned. And because your books are generally uncontroversial you think you can pretend that your entries on the boards are equally objective? Statements like "Nobody knows and nobody ever will know who Jack the Ripper was" go beyond bias: that's prophecy, not history or scholarship! Your postings are a wonderful mix: some good and balanced; some sensibly informative; some in the offensive voice that says "I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my mouth let no dog bark!"
Now let's stick to the point here. you accuse me of bias because I say my studies show me that Anderson's type of Christianity, and the way it was recognized by others and practised by his peers, is quite incompatible with a certain type of lying. You say I'm wrong. I ask what you have read about Anderson's religious beliefs and practices. You say nothing. You don't need to. You have a lot of experience in life.... Eh??
I say that John Douglas, one of the two policemen who have inteviewed and interrogated more serial killes than anyone in the world, has reached certain conclusions. You say you know what's wrong with the FBI approach because you once found the body of a serial killer's victim... Eh??
You have a wise posting somewhere uging someone you disagreed with to read as much as they can by and about the person under dispute befor uttering an opinion. But here??
We have, I guess, a new scholarly principle: when Stewart knows more than somebody else his knowledge trumps their opinion. When he knows less, his opinion trumps their knowledge!
Don't try and veer away from the question of your scholarship and the bases of your knowledge. Tell us the historical basis of your certainty that Anderson's Christianity makes no difference to his veracity. Show us your understanding of the difference between having the probity of your political activities challenged by a political opponent, and making up silly lies and distortions about your career. Read some more Anderson and read up about Victorian evangelicals, and then come back and challenge what we've said.
Tell us what your policing experience has shown you to be faulty in the FBI methods of examining unsolved murder cases - as it applies to the Ripper case, since John Douglas's views on this case are the only ones that concern us here. Let's have some scholarship and not a lot of aggressive assertions.
All the best,
Martin

[Chris]

Natalie and Chis, for example, seem restricted to the negative attempts to discredit Anderson's vearcity and (heaven help us!) the genuine nature of the marginalia.

How many times do I have to repeat that it is not the genuineness of the marginalia that I am questioning, but Martin Fido's insufferable rudeness and arrogance towards those who suggest that they should be properly evaluated rather than taken on trust?

As for the claim that I am seeking to discredit Anderson's veracity, that's a complete mystery to me. Perhaps Martin Fido is confusing me with somebody else.

As a matter of fact, most of my efforts over the last couple of years have been directed towards trying to get the basic facts about Aaron Kozminski and his family right. But obviously that kind of thing is beneath Martin Fido's notice.

[fido]

Good post, Stewart. I would only wonder why you constantly attack Paul's and my position and never, as far as I can see from having now trawled through the suspects and police officers boards, gone into the attack against anyone else except AP Wolfe, (with disastrous results on the Littlechild boards which degenerate into angry wrangling, which I gather you feel he started in another place and worsened with a seriously offensive posting). Nor, I think, do you ever indulge in such elaborate and, to my mind, convoluted theorizing as that proposed in Scotland Yard Investigates to try and prove that the answers to the problem of the Seaside Home Paul and I postulate are unacceptable. And apart from AP Wolfe, I don't think you name other people disparagingly, which I fear you have done rather often as far as Paul and I are concerned.
You have a good post in another place, too, which states that it is essential to read as much as possible about and by any historical character whose personality one wishes to assess; and this is exactly my position vis-a-vis our respective standing on Anderson. I do not feel that you offer sufficient reading around him to show that my conclusion "He might have been wrong. He was always opinionated" needs redressing. If other people have used my work to claim that Kosminski was the Ripper, I cannot help that. I've never claimed that he was or said that Anderson must have been right. I said and say that he seems, from a historical point of view, far and away the best witness, and his claims are in some ways and to varying extents supported by the remarks of Macnaghten and Swanson. Apart from those who find Abberline more persuasive, I am not aware of anybody who proposes a positive alternative. Natalie and Chis, for example, seem restricted to the negative attempts to discredit Anderson's vearcity and (heaven help us!) the genuine nature of the marginalia.
All the best,
Martin

[Stewart P Evans]

Unqualified

When yu hear of aserious newbie asking whether the Swanson marginalia could have been forged, your honest answer should be, "Certainly not. I wondered about that too, and full and thorough investigation has shown that they are genuine." To suggest that there is a doubt worth letting anyone spend time trying to prove they are fake or tampered with is as much use as suggesting a scholarly examination of the genuine nature of a well estabished classic whose ascription is not doubted.
Martin F

Just as I am unqualified to pronounce that the Swanson annotations are a fake, I am likewise unqualified to pronounce that a "full and thorough investigation has shown that they are genuine." Why? Well first off there has never been a full and thorough investigation and the fault for that must lie with those involved with the presentation of it in 1987/88.

Had there been a full and thorough investigation the questions I have raised now would not be waiting for an answer and there would be no debate. It is pointless to compare these notes with published works their mere nature, scribbled notes in a book, means that any questions about them should have been answered back in 1988. They signally weren't. I have even asked for the exact date that Jim Swanson tried to sell them to the News of the World and whether the newspaper representatives actually saw the notes or took a copy of them. No one seems able to answer even that query.

When such importance is being placed on these notes, proper documentation and history should have been established at the time. It, apparently, wasn't. I have answered anyone who has asked me the question to the effect that I am not an expert and I am unable to pronounce them as indisputably genuine. If pressed I should tend towards them being genuine but with caveats. These caveats I have fully explained. This, in my opinion, is as honest as one can be about this.

[Stewart P Evans]

Postulate

Sorry, Stewart, you are claiming to utter as a historian. The school of life doesn't get you anywhere at all in understanding personalities from a different cultural background until you have absorbed that background and can determine the extent to which it will make the person under consideration different from those you have met in your own time and place. You haven't done this, ergo I cannot recommend anyone to pay much attention to your opinions about the nature of Anderson's truthfulness.
Martin F

I spent decades at the 'sharp end' of police work and dealt with dozens of criminals from many cultural backgrounds. I don't want to get personal here but I leave others to judge between us on the strength of what we have written on the subject. Of course the best qualified historian in this field, Phil Sugden, fails to agree with you too, so I'm in good company.

You fail to heed your own words, you 'postulate other writers' thought processes'. You have no real knowledge whatsoever of my experiences, qualifications, what I have or haven't done and so on. You are judging me on the basis of me not agreeing with what you think and the conclusions that you reach. It is also rather significant to me that many more people seem to agree with me on my conclusions about Anderson rather than following your line. But perhaps, like me, they are part of the great unwashed who simply fail to comprehend the finer points understood by high-flying scholars such as yourself.

Interestingly I have before me a letter from a Ripper author who was horrified that you tried to sway him to your way of thinking before his book was published.

[Stewart P Evans]

Objectivity

So why the ceaseless attempt to say that Paul Begg and I are biassed, partisan, and incpable of reading the evidence? I have the sneaking suspicion that it's because our accusers know that the evidence for giving Anderson's testimony the highest historical priority is in fact so strong that it weakens other fields they might wish to pursue.
All the best,
Martin F

There is no 'ceaseless attempt' it is merely, as I have stated, getting the balance right and presenting and even-handed picture. Your 'sneaking suspicion' is unfounded and I have no 'other fields that I wish to pursue.'

Any Ripper author is at his weakest when trying to prove a case for his chosen suspect. Ergo it is child's play to tear apart any theory - for every theory lacks hard evidence and is, ultimately, beyond proving. Ripper critics are at their best when attacking a suspect-based theory - for at the core of any such theory is mere opinion, hypothesis and personal interpretation. This much must be obvious and we therefore see Martin attacked on his Cohen theory, Phil Sugden attacked over suggesting Chapman as the best Ripper and me attacked over my Tumblety writings. It's all very easy to do.

But I have not carried out any Tumblety research since the mid 1990s and have not published anything on him since my first book. True I might respond when I perceive erroneous or false reasoning in attacks on the theory, but I know very well that the identity of the Ripper cannot be proved and I have no plans to pursue another suspect-based book. I never try to push Tumblety onto anyone and I am well aware of all the contra-arguments.

I was reading about this subject as early as 1961 and researching the case from the mid-1960s. Druitt (from 1965) and Kosminski (from 1988) were my preferred suspects. As the years went by I learnt more and more and became acquainted with the leading authors and researchers. I did not acquire the Littlechild letter until 1993. So for the first 32 years of my Ripper interest I had never heard of Tumblety. Since writing the book in 1994/5 and updating it in 1996 I have done no research on Tumblety nor have I published on him.

No suspect-based book can be without bias, subjectivity and selective use of press reports. That said there is no invention or false information in the book, although, obviously, our opinions, interpretation and hypotheses are open to challenge. But our Tumblety publication is now 12 years in the past and all my books since are objective reference works with no suspect bias. And since then research has advanced a long way and much more is being found with the availability of digital searching.

My Ripper research since 1996 has been objective, without bias, and unhindered by any agenda. Should I find any new information on Anderson I would reveal it whether or not it supported his honesty or otherwise. Likewise should I find information supporting the idea of Kosminski as the Ripper I would share that also. Honesty must also be a high priority of any Ripper historian as well as objectivity.

[Chris]

Who are these academics whose opinions you have experienced, Chris?

The ones I came into contact with when I was an academic myself, naturally.

[fido]

Who are these academics whose opinions you have experienced, Chris? What were they uttering about anad who did you find offered better opinions?

For those who don't know who John Douglas and Luigi Cancrini are, the former was head of the FBI Psychological Profiling unit (actually known as Criminal Identification Analysis) and like his predecessor, the section's founder Robert Ressler, he travelled all over America interviewing convicted serial killers to establish, if possible, just what sort of people they were,a nd whether any common psychological characteristyics could be observed. He also developed great expertise in drawing conclusions from scenes of crimes, and from any original writing by criminals that could be analysed. Luigi Cancrini was Professor of Forensic Psychoogy at the University of Bologna who made a careful study of the Ripper case, and concluded that the suppressed rage and violence in this man would ultimately lead him to suicide. You may find a number of other people who agree with me in one way or another, but whose qualifications are unknown to me, on the David Cohen board. I cited these two whose expertise seems to me to go beyond "lessons from the university of life".

Actually it was Stephen Knight's blank entry that led me to start the long slow pursuit of this woman. I'd forgotten that he gave the name Rose Mylett, but as Stewart well knows, Knight, if he did know anything about her, neither put it in his book nor kept any notes on her that have survived.

Pat on the back - squirm - wriggle? Stewart, Stewart - I see why you feared fireworks in a podcast. Witout a leg to stand on in argument you have to resort to mildly offensive language.

Sorry, Stewart, you are claiming to utter as a historian. The school of life doesn't get you anywhere at all in understanding personalities from a different cultural background until you have absorbed that background and can determine the extent to which it will make the person under consideration different from those you have met in your own time and place. You haven't done this, ergo I cannot recommend anyone to pay much attention to your opinions about the nature of Anderson's truthfulness.

And on Milton and Beethjoven, I imagine you're playing dumb to escape an argumenet you've lost. Let's put it simply. When yu hear of aserious newbie asking whether the Swanson marginalia could have been forged, your honest answer should be, "Certainly not. I wondered about that too, and full and thorough investigation has shown that they are genuine." To suggest that there is a doubt worth letting anyone spend time trying to prove they are fake or tampered with is as much use as suggesting a scholarly examination of the genuine nature of a well estabished classic whose ascription is not doubted.
All the best,

Martin F

[Chris]

We're talkjing about scholarship ...

Well, you are certainly talking a lot about "scholarship".

But in my experience of academics, the ones who talk longest and loudest about their own expertise are usually the ones least worth listening to. The real experts have the self-confidence to argue the case on its merits, rather than trying to intimidate others by constant reference to their own supposed scholarly superiority.

[Stewart P Evans]

What does Stewart know about sexual serial murderers that displaces the rather inforomed opinions of Dr Luigi Cancrini and John Douglas?
Martin F

For those who don't know of John Douglas and Dr Luigi Cancrini they are a couple of people who agree with Martin's general reasoning over the type of person the Ripper was.

[Stewart P Evans]

1976

(Perhaps I should pat myself on the back by noting that this discussion could hardly have happened if I hadn't, with some considerable effort, tracked down the Rose Mylett story. Previously she only existed in Ripper literature as the mysterious "Lizzie Davies" on the Scotland Yard files.)MNartin F

Looks like Stephen Knight got there 11 years before you, this from his 1976 book Jack the Ripper the Final Solution -

[Stewart P Evans]

Pat on the Back

I have to state again, that Anderson's pressure on the medical profession to reach the conclusion he wanted, and his pointblank refusal to accept a decision that went against his opinion was something I took into account and mentioned in my first discussion of him 20 years ago. There is nothing surprising about his refusing to change his mind in his memoirs, and the "manipulation of the facts" ten years later is not quite that: it's a pig-headed refusal to accept that the overwhelming medical evidence pointed against his and the discovering officer's belief that on-site evidence (presumably footprints) showed no sign of a struggle. "Anderson could have been wrong. He was always opinionated." What's wrong with that conclusion? Where has anyone got any evidence to suggest that he would make up a story almost out of whole cloth to bolster his reputation. He was wrong about Rose Mylett in my opinion: he might equally have been wrong about the Polish Jew. But in both cases he believed what he was saying. He was not lying. (Perhaps I should pat myself on the back by noting that this discussion could hardly have happened if I hadn't, with some considerable effort, tracked down the Rose Mylett story. Previously she only existed in Ripper literature as the mysterious "Lizzie Davies" on the Scotland Yard files.)
MNartin F

Squirm and wriggle all you like Martin, it's there in black and white and we can all read. You do enjoy those pats on the back don't you, even if you give them to yourself - is that an 'unmentionable vice'?

[Stewart P Evans]

Fbi

Stewart - sorry - I've just seen your posting admitting to have done no work on the way people like Anderson's minds worked. Saying that you know people who disagree with my conclusions doesn't assist your case unless you can find some who have studied Anderson's central interest in life and the way it affected his behaviour. And I note with interest your belief that your involvement in a sexual murder case outweighs John Douglas's research and interviewing very large numbers of sexual serial murderers.
All the best,
MNartin F

I have a very good idea of how Anderson's mind worked and in the 'school of life' I would venture to suggest that I have seen more than the average person and am as well equipped as you in making an evaluation of how Anderson's mind worked. And I'm not blinkered. A few years back we had the head of the FBI serial murder unit spend a weekend with us and we discussed the case. He was a lot more complimentary about me than you are. But, I guess, that is to be expected.

[Stewart P Evans]

Really?

Off-topic?
Nope. We're talkjing about scholarship, and want to be shown how spending time investigating the genuine nature of the Swanson marginalia differs as a useful schilarly exercise from investigating the authorship of Paradise Lost or a Beethoven symphony.
All the best,
Martin

Oh, really? All a bit lost on me then as I lack scholarly training and any real knowledge of Milton or Beethoven.