Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[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.

[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]

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

[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.

[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".

[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).

[rjpalmer]

J-Division rescued Pizer from an angry mob; H-Division released him from suspicion by disregarding a witness they thought was lying. Hardly a good example of antisemitism in the Met!

[Howard Brown]

Thanks for the correction,CGP. You're right and I should have mentioned that too..

Anyway, in trying to come up with low class Polish Jewish suspects, I'm sort of stumped when it comes to nogoodniks from the year 1888.

Cohen wasn't arrested for any Ripper related offenses to our knowledge, as he was picked up in a brothel raid in December. My kinda guy.

Nor was Hyam Hyams picked up for any Ripper related offenses to our knowledge. He was picked up by Met police in December on unrelated charges.

Neither man was a known Ripper suspect.

Any others?

By the way,CGP, its not important,but Pizer also had an alibi for September 8th, as he was in Mulberry Street and had witnesses to prove it ( to cover his toches on the Chapman murder).

[rjpalmer]

Dear Martin F-

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.

Ah, Martin, I tread here with trepidation, but I have to jump in, because this is precisely the issue I’ve always wished to discuss with you, and perhaps (I meekly suggest) is precisely the point at which your own ‘David Cohen’ theory might be open to question.

With out the least bit of ill-will focused at you (I’ve read your books and posts with great interest and benefit) I’ve always felt that this is why referring to blokes like John Douglas and Dr. Cancrini is less than satisfying in a historical case.

Why is it that we can’t be expected to properly interpret Dr. Robert Anderson without “absorbing the background” of his “time and place,” but, on the otherhand, we are expected to accpet that modern day criminal profilers like Douglas and Cancrini --neither of whom are, as far as I know, experts in Victorian culture--- can somehow give authoratative and an accurate “profiles” of the unknown murderer Jack the Ripper? Are you suggesting that Robert Anderson was somehow a product of his age, but Jack the Ripper wasn’t?

The erroneous belief hiding behind this assumption is that ‘serial murder’ is somehow a biological disorder; on the contrary, it is a cultural one (I think comparative studies in crime rates in different societies proves this). And this, I think, rather leaves fellows like Douglas and Cancrini high and dry.

In short, the two main objection to using F.B.I. profiling in a historical context are: 1) the erroneous assumption that multiple homicide is a biological disorder rather than a sociological one; and 2) the undeniable fact that Douglas and his colleagues based their original thinking on 20th Century examples and then tried to inflict them on “another time and place”--which is precisely what you are suggesting Stewart is doing.

Yet, beyond all this, the main objection I have to John Douglas and his colleagues at the F.B.I. is that, misled by the age-old verbage of Krafft-Ebing, they created a false taxonomy. By using the strictly descriptive attribute of ‘sexual serial murder’ they came to the dubious conclusion that they could then simply start collecting behavioral attributes of ‘sexual serial murderers’ and then create some fail-safe ‘profile.’ This is too simplistic to be scientifically valid, and is precisely why profiles are so often entirely inaccurate and why --without question--- they do no have the legs to travel back to Victorian England.

A good example is the conventional wisdom that the Ripper was a ‘local non-entity” and a “working-class bloke.” This would indeed make great sense to Douglas, because it was a profile that generally agreed with the burnt-out, frustrated, and disenfranchised offenders that he interviewed in 1980s’s America. In Victorian England and America, however, most of the multiple murderers were of a very different type, precisely for the reasons that should be of interest to a historian: because the cultural conditions were entirely different. Usually, the Victorian multiple murderers were from the middle-class, and, indeed, the very next murderer of prositutes in Victorian London (Neill Cream) was a dandified middle-class physician who lived in Chicago----in other words, precisely the sort of bloke the 'profilers' would dismiss as a ridiculous suspect.


Respectfully submitted.

R Palmer

[Natalie Severn]

Chris,
There was plenty of it about, as clearly articulated in the press and it surely doesnt need "spelling out" regarding the institutions of power within the state.
Even the way Cox speaks about the local people in Aldgate reveals a lot of mutual dislike and distrust - his comments about the local Jews being "bad people" who had to be lied to by police and who then "pretended "to be watching out for under age workers----so that they,the police ,could do their round the clock watch of this young suspect about whom the only thing we know for certain is that they actually once spotted him speaking to a prostitute in a not very nice way.
If you want other examples of how anti-semitism operated in these times in the higher echelons of society read Proust on the Dreyfus case.Its a real eye opener on what was ready to crawl out of the woodwork -and did.If you want to know whether Robert Anderson was anti semitic re-read the words of the editor of the Jewish Chronicle in his 1910 answer to Anderson"s assertions ,including Anderson"s attempts to deny it----and read William Fishman only recently in "East End 1888".These people were and are prominent in the East End Jewish Community---they should know

[fido]

Mike - thank you for your very gracious apology - and also for drawing my attention to the danger that I might have expressed myself badly.

Pirate - Paul Begg e-mailed me to say almost exactly the same thing: that Chris is a fine researcher though he will sometimes grab on to a semantic point (such as that even the best provenance doesn't finally prove an artifact to be genuine, even if it leaves little persuasive opportunity for a forger to have got at it) and refuse to let it go.

All the best,
Martin F

[Sam Flynn]

Usually, the Victorian multiple murderers were from the middle-class

Poisoners, perhaps, RJ - although, if true, Kłosowski would seem to buck the trend - but multiple stabbers, stranglers or cutters of throats? And operating in poverty-stricken parts of town to boot?

[Cap'n Jack]

How, 'ere is one:

'Evening News
London, U.K.
1 December 1888


THE EAST END
. ARREST OF THE SUPPOSED ASSASSIN IN BURDETT ROAD.

A man was arrested last night at the Crystal Tavern, Burdett road, Mile End, on suspicion of being the Whitechapel murderer. He got into conversation with a woman, whom he asked to accompany him, but she refused. He afterwards addressed a photographer who was soliciting orders, asking him if he could take some photographs, and using expressions which excited suspicion. He was given in charge. He has given the address "Mr. Stewart, 305 Mile End road," but at the Bow Police station he gave his name as "Ever." He appears to be a Polish Jew.'

How, how can you 'appear to be a Polish Jew'?

[Chris]

Martin Fido

It's not a semantic point at all.

At the risk of repeating myself - your argument is not based on provenance in the usual sense of the word, because the marginalia clearly have no provenance before 1987. It's based on your assessment of the character of the people concerned.

Obviously that's a subjective judgment, and absolutely nothing to do with "scholarship". And it certainly doesn't entitle you to deplore the "obtuse imperviousness to reason" of people who have a different opinion.

But anyway - thank you for your gracious apology ...

[Natalie Severn]

Dear Martin F-




Ah, Martin, I tread here with trepidation, but I have to jump in, because this is precisely the issue I’ve always wished to discuss with you, and perhaps (I meekly suggest) is precisely the point at which your own ‘David Cohen’ theory might be open to question.

With out the least bit of ill-will focused at you (I’ve read your books and posts with great interest and benefit) I’ve always felt that this is why referring to blokes like John Douglas and Dr. Cancrini is less than satisfying in a historical case.

Why is it that we can’t be expected to properly interpret Dr. Robert Anderson without “absorbing the background” of his “time and place,” but, on the otherhand, we are expected to accpet that modern day criminal profilers like Douglas and Cancrini --neither of whom are, as far as I know, experts in Victorian culture--- can somehow give authoratative and an accurate “profiles” of the unknown murderer Jack the Ripper? Are you suggesting that Robert Anderson was somehow a product of his age, but Jack the Ripper wasn’t?

The erroneous belief hiding behind this assumption is that ‘serial murder’ is somehow a biological disorder; on the contrary, it is a cultural one (I think comparative studies in crime rates in different societies proves this). And this, I think, rather leaves fellows like Douglas and Cancrini high and dry.

In short, the two main objection to using F.B.I. profiling in a historical context are: 1) the erroneous assumption that multiple homicide is a biological disorder rather than a sociological one; and 2) the undeniable fact that Douglas and his colleagues based their original thinking on 20th Century examples and then tried to inflict them on “another time and place”--which is precisely what you are suggesting Stewart is doing.

Yet, beyond all this, the main objection I have to John Douglas and his colleagues at the F.B.I. is that, misled by the age-old verbage of Krafft-Ebing, they created a false taxonomy. By using the strictly descriptive attribute of ‘sexual serial murder’ they came to the dubious conclusion that they could then simply start collecting behavioral attributes of ‘sexual serial murderers’ and then create some fail-safe ‘profile.’ This is too simplistic to be scientifically valid, and is precisely why profiles are so often entirely inaccurate and why --without question--- they do no have the legs to travel back to Victorian England.

A good example is the conventional wisdom that the Ripper was a ‘local non-entity” and a “working-class bloke.” This would indeed make great sense to Douglas, because it was a profile that generally agreed with the burnt-out, frustrated, and disenfranchised offenders that he interviewed in 1980s’s America. In Victorian England and America, however, most of the multiple murderers were of a very different type, precisely for the reasons that should be of interest to a historian: because the cultural conditions were entirely different. Usually, the Victorian multiple murderers were from the middle-class, and, indeed, the very next murderer of prositutes in Victorian London (Neill Cream) was a dandified middle-class physician who lived in Chicago----in other words, precisely the sort of bloke the 'profilers' would dismiss as a ridiculous suspect.


Respectfully submitted.

R Palmer

Excellent points about the disparity of attention paid to race and class vis a vis Victorian murderers and the Victorian State [sub category police].