Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Cap'n Jack]

After due consideration, and rereading that A-Z entry on Anderson, I have to nail my colours to Stewart's mast, for it is obvious that the A-Z entry on Anderson is inherently apologetic in nature. In fact I don't care to remember when I last read through such rambling nonsense.
As an example:
'That five successive murders should have been committed without our having the slightest clue of any kind is extraordinary.'
That is Anderson in an official report to the Home Office on the 23rd October 1888 after his return from leave.
'During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-class Jews.'
Anderson wrote that in 1910.
I would say that I prefer the 1888 version which has Anderson without the 'slightest clue'.

[Chris]

After due consideration, and rereading that A-Z entry on Anderson, I have to nail my colours to Stewart's mast, for it is obvious that the A-Z entry on Anderson is inherently apologetic in nature. In fact I don't care to remember when I last read through such rambling nonsense.
As an example:
'That five successive murders should have been committed without our having the slightest clue of any kind is extraordinary.'
That is Anderson in an official report to the Home Office on the 23rd October 1888 after his return from leave.
'During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-class Jews.'
Anderson wrote that in 1910.
I would say that I prefer the 1888 version which has Anderson without the 'slightest clue'.

I think we need to look at the whole paragraph to understand what Anderson is saying:
One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-class Jews*; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice.
[*Changed in the book edition to "certain low-class Polish Jews", evidently in response to the charge of blanket antisemitism.]

He is not really claiming to have had a clue. He's saying it was obvious that the murderer was either living alone or being protected by those he lived with. Then he says, in effect, that all those who were living alone were investigated during the house-to-house enquiry, and that the police concluded that he and his family must be "low-class Jews", because such people would have protected one of their number.

In other words, the conclusion that the murderer was a "low-class Jew" was a deduction from the belief that all men living alone had been eliminated - together with the belief that no other section of the community would protect the killer - and not the result of evidence pointing to a specific Jewish suspect.

This is where Anderson obviously was prejudiced against the Jewish immigrants. If it's true that he had already made up his mind that the murderer was a "low class Jew" in the absence of any specific evidence, then that may explain a lot about Anderson and the suspect he later saw as the justification of that leap of prejudice.

[Natalie Severn]

Chris,Thankyou.
In essence that is my reasoning about this,moreover it is what the editor of the Jewish Chronicle was saying when he totally rejected the prejudiced thinking that led Anderson to his conclusion that Jack the Ripper was a low class Polish Jew.

[The Good Michael]

I don't see ant-semitism here. What I see is a man trying to explain something and the people that he is talking about happen to be lower class Jews. He has reasoned out, or has experienced, or has gained the information that these immigrants tend to protect their own. He would have said the same thing had he been speaking about Gypsies, Italians, or Irish had he the reason to suspect anything. Perhaps he didn't choose his words carefully enough, but this is hardly proof of a propensity to disparage against Jews.
The fact is, we may all protect people that we feel a kinship with. These new immigrants, stuck in a foreign world, and preyed upon by even their own kind, despised for their work ethic, had to look to each other for protection. By pointing this out, Anderson is only stating what he believes to be a fact.

Cheers,

Mike

[DVV]

Agreed Mike,
and by the way, anti-semitism was something very different in 1888. After the second world war, things have completely changed, as awfully expressed by this awful Bernanos'statement: "Hitler has dishonoured antisemitism".

Amitiés,
David

[Chris]

I don't see ant-semitism here. What I see is a man trying to explain something and the people that he is talking about happen to be lower class Jews. He has reasoned out, or has experienced, or has gained the information that these immigrants tend to protect their own. He would have said the same thing had he been speaking about Gypsies, Italians, or Irish had he the reason to suspect anything. Perhaps he didn't choose his words carefully enough, but this is hardly proof of a propensity to disparage against Jews.
The fact is, we may all protect people that we feel a kinship with. These new immigrants, stuck in a foreign world, and preyed upon by even their own kind, despised for their work ethic, had to look to each other for protection. By pointing this out, Anderson is only stating what he believes to be a fact.

The problem is that, as I read it, Anderson is claiming to have deduced that the murderer was a "low-class Jew" from his belief that he was protected by his family - and he is claiming to have reached that conclusion in the absence of any specific evidence suggesting that the murderer was Jewish.

That argument would only work if the Jewish immigrants were unique in a tendency to protect their own. But, as you say, it's a natural human instinct to protect one's own - particularly members of one's own family. If Anderson had simply said "the conclusion we came to was that he was being protected by his family", there would be no difficulty. It's the fact that he deduced from this that the murderer and his family were "low-class Jews" that is the problem.

[DVV]

Anderson's logic relied on "probability", I guess.
Many Jews in Whitechapel, and the poorest of them, those who have more recently settled there, were the more reluctant to go to the police.
Poor Anderson was so certain of his hypothesis.

Amitiés,
David

[Stewart P Evans]

Anderson on the Jewish Murderer

Here is detail of an interview with Anderson carried in The Globe of 7 March 1910 -



Anderson's uncompromising insistence that the murderer was a Jew as a matter of fact seems to lift his subject out of the 'suspect' category into the realms of being the actual murderer. This appears to have been Martin's reading of it back in 1987 when he convinced himself that he had 'found Jack the Ripper.'

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Martin and RJ

Just to comment on your profiling debate. This is an area I have discussed at length with my brother who deals with mental health problems in the Essex area and is ‘on call’ to help the police as such matters arise.

Firstly I’m sure that he’d point you both at the ‘Nature’ -‘Nurture’ debate that has long tasked the luminaries of his profession. And a question to which I know he has given considerable time, research and thought. His conclusions however are inconclusive, and he is always keen to point out that in cases of violent crime no single factor should be sited because it is a combination of influences both internal and external that contribute to out come.

It is interesting that Martin states that many psychopaths (I will add, sociopaths) never become dangerous. And of course as we all know, the majority of Schizophrenics never become dangerous, only around 2% (depending which country you source statistics from) Therefore citing mental health as a reason for murder is somewhat miss leading, there has to be other external and contributory factors that lead to such acts of violence.

In particular my brother has stated the use of other drugs and alcohol as having an exaggerated effect on people suffering mental illness. But we cannot say fore instance that if the Ripper suffered ‘schizophrenia’ that this was necessarily the cause of the murders. It could have been a contributing factor.

And of course Rj is correct. Modern profilers can’t expect their models or experience to be the same as Victorian London in 1888. We are talking about a unique set of social conditions. (Which is why Norma’s argument sort of ties in here).

My brother was keen to point out that it would be wrong to draw parallels between modern cases and cases at that time as he does not have a full understanding of the drugs/alcohol/medication in question. And external influences would be totally different to those of today

He can only draw parallels to his modern understanding. (Interestingly, Druit aside, he would also expect Schizophrenics to be of more danger to themselves and potentially suicidal).

However I must confess that he seemed more at ease with Aaron Kosminski as a potential suspect than he did with Martins homicidal ‘Cohen’ theory.

However the point I am trying to make here is simple whether we are dealing with profilers or dealing with Anti-Semitism both have to be studied in Historical context.

While using profilers to draw generalized conclusions this is far from saying that x will always react as y. Of course it would be foolish to dismiss the experts Martin has cited or the opinions they have given. However rather than saying I believe suspect A may have been JtR because of factor Y, all I think we can really draw from conclusion is that suspect A can not be eliminated because of Y.

Still the profiling and mental state of the Ripper is a fascinating subject that I felt rather frustratingly skipped over in the Aaron Kosminski podcast and perhaps it is something Martin and RJ might consider doing in the future with profilers and mental health experts rather than Jack the Ripper experts?

Anyway this a Sir Robert Anderson thread and people might get annoyed for straying off thread.. Just to comment that judging by the reactions and stimulated thought process going on, it’s great to have people of Martin and Stewarts stature going head to head on such an interesting subject.

Pirate

[Jeff Leahy]

The problem is that, as I read it, Anderson is claiming to have deduced that the murderer was a "low-class Jew" from his belief that he was protected by his family - and he is claiming to have reached that conclusion in the absence of any specific evidence suggesting that the murderer was Jewish.

That argument would only work if the Jewish immigrants were unique in a tendency to protect their own. But, as you say, it's a natural human instinct to protect one's own - particularly members of one's own family. If Anderson had simply said "the conclusion we came to was that he was being protected by his family", there would be no difficulty. It's the fact that he deduced from this that the murderer and his family were "low-class Jews" that is the problem.

Hi Chris

Would not Rob's theory about the Crawford letter give some explination for this? If Anderson were approached by Kosminski's sister would he not have formed a rather more firm conclusion about the Rippers ethnic origin?

Pirate

[Chris]

Would not Rob's theory about the Crawford letter give some explination for this? If Anderson were approached by Kosminski's sister would he not have formed a rather more firm conclusion about the Rippers ethnic origin?

Yes - some kind of circumstantial evidence directed their attention to Aaron Kozminski at some point. But, as I read it, Anderson is claiming that before this he had deduced on general grounds that the murderer was a "low-class Jew":
"... the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-class Jews ... And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point."

[Jeff Leahy]

Fair point, it still strikes me that it's all rather 'chicken and egg'..at what point did suspicion fall and why?

If on Anderson's return he sits at his desk says 'Those jewish chaps, has anyone checked them out?' they do so and discover a suspect.

That might be considered anti-semitic.

However if Anderson returns and says have we any clues? someone says 'yes sir, blood on laundry delivered by a foreign gentleman, Batty street'

Anderson says 'Go check it out' and then events prove him correct.

Well I don't think there is a case for anti-semitism. He's just doing his job.

And unless all the police files ever turn up we will never know.

Pirate

[fido]

Many thanks for the gracious acceptance of my apology Stewart: I'm very glad we're back on the even keel of discussion of the issues.

Now, why does my respect for Philip Sugden's accumulation of data turn to mixed respect for his analysis of it? Let's look at his own analysis of Anderson, which must underlie his feeling that the A-Z is over-apologetic:

"None of this entitles us to dismiss Sir Robert as an arrant liar. A competent police chief, he was valued and respected by many of his colleagues, and he did not invent Kosminski. Why, then, did he write so misleadingly about him? We can but speculate. The irritating sense of importance detected by Churchill suggests part, but only part of the answer. I incline to the belief that Anderson's errors of interpretation stemmed not from a wilful intent to deceive but from wishful thinking....
By 1910 the Ripper murders had slipped into history. In writing their reminiscences, however, public servants naturally have no wish to depict themselves as fools or failures. And a man of Anderson's self-conceit would have found it especially difficult to concede a blow to his personal and professional pride as ignominious as the CID's inability to detect the Whitechapel killer. After all, this was the man who had recklessly boasted, after Polly Nichols' death, that he could personally unravel the mystery 'in a few days' provided he could devote his undivided attention to it.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that Anderson was also deeply galled by public criticism over the case....
Troubed by deafness and an increasing sense of isolation, his days occupied in quiet contemplation of the scriptures, his nights plagues by attacks of 'blue devils', Sir Robert lived out his retirement at his home at 39 Linden Gardens, Hyde Park. He must sometimes have reflected there upon the hectic days at the Yard. And when he did it would doubtless have given him comfort to think, that whatever the world might say, he had laid the Ripper by the heels. Over the years, with the selective and faulty memory characteristic of advancing age, he came to believe it.
In supporting him, Swanson showed that same capacity for self-deception....
Anderson and Swanson had come to inhabit a world of wish-dreams. And together they transformed a harmless imbecile sheltering within the walls of Leavesden, into the most infamous murderer of modern times."
(The Complete History, pp 422.

Now I am claiming no great supeiority as a historian in detecting the faults in this - I myself am responsible for its major error of fact, and it is Stewart who corrected it, pointing out that the letter appointing Swanson officer to collate and pass on the detective information in the case, and boasting that the writer could solve it himself in a few days if he had the time, was not, as I had supposed FROM Anderson, but TO him, and came down (if I remember rightly) from the Commisisoner's Office having been written by the amanuensis A.C. Bruce. This sort of detailed correction of other people's literal misreadings of or misascription of documentary sources is work at which, I think, Stewart has never been equalled. Philip is not to blame for assuming the boast was Anderson's, but one of the important positions underpinning the view of Anderson's empty swaggering has been rmoved.
You will note that Phil still thinks it necessary to assert from the outset that Anderson was not an arrant liar - the position held by almost everyone except Richard-Whittington-Egan prior to 1987, and which I think Stewart approves of my correcting at that point. But he then substitutes flagging memory and geriatric wishful thinking in his retirement in 1910 - a failing which he suggests infected the loyal Swanson. This cannot be excused so easily, as it was already in the public domain and in the A-Z that Anderson's first statements indicating that he believed he knew the identity and fate of the Ripper appeared in 1901. And in his examination of Grainger, while Phil argues strongly for the enquiry's proving that the Ripper case was still open, he is silent about the PMG's observation that Swanson had reached his own contradictory conclusion as early as 1895.

For what it is worth, everybody who wants to accuse the A-Z of bias is completely silent about our caveats on Anderson, one of the strongest of which came under the Grainger entry from the very first edition: "The authors note that if the person believed by the police to have seen the Whitechapel murderer was Anderson's witness, then considerable doubt is cast upon his identification of Anderson's suspect."


In fact the evidence of Anderson's failing memory comes from later in the decade when he mixed up the Penge and Road Hall murders in communication with H.L.Adam.

So looking at Sugden's critique, we note that while he rejects the pre-1987 opinion that Anderson was simply a liar, he retains the pre-1987 alleged motivation, that Anderson was too vain to admit that his department had failed in anything. Yet as far as this case is concerned, the only real boasts of which Anderson appears to be guilty are the claim that one didn't need to be a Sherlock Holmes to see that the murders were the work of a sexual maniac - an opinion with which many people today would still agree; that unsolved murders are very rare and the Ripper case is not one of them - and certainly there always were and are policemen who hold strong beliefs that suspects they could not charge or who won acquittal were in fact guilty, and the police are not at fault for "failing to catch them". And, of coure, there is Anderson's fatuous preening himself on having given orders that the prostitutes were to be told the police would not protect them, after which, whether or not post hoc was propter hoc, there were no further murders. I admit at once we didn't include this remark, largely because it didn't strike us as vital, and maybe, too, because there is no documented evidence as to how this quite extraordinary order was carried out. I myself was (and really am) far more impressed by the characteristic absurdity of his previous suggestion, that all prostitutes should be locked up for their own safety! Just a year after the Miss Cass scandal!! Anderson, one feels, would have jumped at my facetious proposal to cut crime by %50% - 75% by incarcerating all males on their 15th birthdays and not releasing them until they were 30.

But we did, I hope, give a representative selection of the challengiong voices: the Police Gazette doubted whether a bookish Biblical scholar like Anderson had the requisite knowledge of the world to be a good policeman - amusingly rather the argument that Stewart has offered to distinguish between us as historians. We quoted the admirable Bernard Porter's view of Anderson as "an irritating and opinionated man, inclined - as pious people are - to maintain that an action was justified because his moral principles debarred him from committing an immoral one." We examine the "Anderson's fairy tales" accusation, although we didn't have space to go in detail into the reason why using it to support the claim that Anderson of lied about the Ripper in his memoirs would be as misguided as accusing Senator Obama of lying if he were to be elected, forced by the economic circumstances to withhold his promise to decrease taxes for the middle classes, and then a misstatement were to be discovered in his memoirs. Politics produce overstatements and accusations which are really quite a different ball-game from writing reminiscences about non-political matters, and I am delighted that, for all the space he gives to Churchill's remartks in Parliament, Philip Sugden finally comnes to the same conclusion as me: "Anderson was not an arrant liar". I'm happy that he mentions the scriptural studies, which Anderson's granddaughter and the Police Gazette both noted as his central activity. I don't suppose he knew that his granddaughter also said he was very severe and always in command of himself so that she was frightened of him. (I think Sergeant Thick's granddaughter gave a rather similar descrition of him). And Jim swanson said his grandfather kept all his marbles to the end. There really isn't any strong evidence to support the idea of the morbid religiose recluse salving his resentment of past failure with wishful thinking and self-deception and leading Swanson astray. Cautious readers will have noted the amount of "reasonable supposition" which has replaced factual statement in Phil's account.
Of course, most history is supposition based on the balance of probabilities. But I would say that the A-Z both gives a more accurate set of data to be taken into consideration, and then comes to a far more cautious and - (I don't mean the next word to be morally critical; merely a professional description of one way of writing history that I think Stewart and I both approve) - responsible concluson than Sugden's, We conclude "However, despite these problems, the combined testimony of Anderson and Swanson leans heavily towards the identity of the Ripper having been known (but see Anderson's suspect for the problems surrounding even this conclusion). Phil concludes that "Anderson and Swanson had come to inhabit a world of wish-dreams. And together they transformed a harmless imbecile sheltering within the walls of Leavesden, into the most infamous murderer of modern times".

I put it to you, m'lud, that there is no doubt that my wish to continue to redress a balance of opinion unduly adverse to Anderson is well founded.

A gratuitous final note - our responsibility was probably all down to Keith, an outstandingly responsible historian (whence in part, I'm sure, his continuing silence about whatever he's been shown about the Maybrick journal). One sometimes feels he would like to hedge every fact with a "probably..." From his point of view, Paul and I with our love of argument (especially with each other) are great stirrers up of unnecessary hornets' nests!

All the best,
Martin F

[Dave O]

Surely Anderson's actions during the Rose Mylett case are also relevant to an understanding of him? What assessment do they allow us to make about his judgement and character?

1. If his religous beliefs are central to an assesment of his character (a fair point), did they qualifiy him to undertake an external examination of the victim and make a deduction as to her cause of death? What is the value of his scientific opinion?

2. What is the medical basis for Anderson's challenge to Dr. Bond (a lecturer of pathology, and findings in his first examination of Rose Mylett?

3. What are we to make of Anderson's claim to Monro on 11 Jan 1889, two days after the Mylett inquest closed, that Wynne Baxter shared the opinion that Rose Mylett did not die from homicidal violence (see Sourcebook, p 484, end of first paragraph)? A reading of Baxter's summation in The Times of 10 January shows that was plainly not the case--Anderson made an error of fact, quite a glaring one, imo. Possibly it was based on reading the same error made in the Advertiser 10 January (which I understand is in the same file as Anderson's letter to Monro).

Dave

[The Good Michael]

Chris,

Maybe it's the other way around. Perhaps some leads, most notably the GSG and the apron (together or not) caused the police to step up their efforts in the lower class Jew community and with good reason, I'll add, yet they weren't forthcoming with any information. That may have caused him to have a lot of suspicion. It's possible his comments were born out of frustration with not getting anywhere with these folks.

Cheers,

Mike