Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Stewart P Evans]

Respect

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.
Martin F

Apology and acceptance out of the way I do feel that when any insulting or aggressive posting takes place an unnecessarily combative tone enters the debate. I have now re-filed a stack of material that may have caused an unnecessary amount of upset had I posted it.

I have great respect for Philip Sugden both as a historian and as a friend. That, of course, does not mean that I agree with everything that he conjectures or opines. I should not think that any two authorities on any given subject agree to such an extent. But I have the greatest respect for his work in this field and we both agree on a preferred top suspect for the Ripper which is neither Chapman nor Tumblety. I have found his book to be the most accurate written on the case and the errors that I detected in it were imports from other author sources and he was misled as in the example cited by Martin where the report in question actually originated with Warren, was mainly written by an amanuensis, and was directed to Assistant Commissioner A. Carmichael Bruce who was handling Anderson's paperwork duties at that supervisory level in Anderson's absence. Indeed, the first marginal annotation on the report is Bruce's. However, Martin is quoting from Phil Sugden's old (first) edition and not the corrected new edition of his book in which this erroneous statement does not appear.

What Martin has stated in his post does not cause me to change my opinion of Anderson one iota. Nor does it change my agreement with Philip's assessment of the bias of the A-Z. It is for others to read all that is available and published and draw their own conclusions. But I think that Philip's words that 'there is, or ought to be, room for honourable disagreement amongst scholars' are true and should be heeded by all. It does appear to me, though, that some scholars reach their own conclusions, decide that they are right, and then are unable to accept any criticism of their work.

What I have often stated is that I am not out to destroy Anderson or his reputation. But I am in the business of presenting the fullest amount of relevant material available to the reader and student of these crimes, thus giving an even-handed and balanced view. Signally, crucial material that militates against Anderson, and affects any assessment of the worth of his writings, has been omitted from Martin's published work, despite the fact that Martin is aware of this material. Now this is fact - not my opinion, the citations do not appear in Martin's work, it is an act of omission.

I am not at war with the A-Z, its authors, or anyone else. I have some very find memories of time spent with Martin dating way back to 1989. And he was one of my guiding lights when I ventured back onto the paths of Ripperology after a short hiatus. In fact cut out all the Ripper crap and both he and Paul are great company and Martin has a very broad spectrum of knowledge which would have anyone listening in awe. But as far as Ripperology goes I believe that I have read more than anyone, bar none, and I have much material that will never see the light of day. And that is not a teaser, it is material that is better left unseen. What authors in this field should realise is that there are no icons, no single fountain-head of knowledge and no all-knowing authority - and if you set yourself up on a pedestal you will soon be knocked down. As I get older I seek Ripperological solace with very dear friends, older and wiser than I, friends like Richard Whittington-Egan, Don Rumbelow and Phil Sugden. They are honest and dispassionate and I consider myself very lucky to know them.

[caz]

Hi Mike, Ben, RJ, All,

Some of the recent posts highlight the difficulty of making too much of general population statistics to guess which section of society was most probably 'hiding' (in any sense of the word you like) the man responsible for the ripper murders.

Ben argues for a local Gentile ripper, on the grounds that there were more of them than local Jews. Mike then points out that he was dividing the locals by ethnicity, making Polish Jews outnumber all other groups like the Italians, Irish, Cockneys and so on. But I promise that if I find that women outnumbered men in the area I won't be arguing that the ripper was more likely to be a Jill than a Jack.

Whoever the murderer was, he comes from a tiny minority of (predominantly) men, who indulge in violence for its own sake, but appear sufficiently 'normal' when they are not indulging to get away with it on several occasions without being stopped. I cannot therefore see how the social grouping such a man is most likely to come from can be decided using statistics on race, religion or even class, in the area where he selects his victims, especially if that selection is not random, but influenced and motivated by the desire not to be caught (ie if he only picks on highly vulnerable women, in private or semi-private locations, and late at night or in the early hours).

I can see how Anderson's mind worked, regarding the elimination of anyone living in the immediate area who had his own privacy, leaving him only with men who lived with others who, as he thought, would have to have known his guilty secret and - crucially - been prepared to keep it, even while 'bruv' was still popping out at night to indulge.

The later 'identification' of Anderson's low class Polish Jew would still have confirmed (in his own mind at least) that the basic reasoning had been sound, if only he had not gone further than 'local scumbag of whatever hue, whose family doesn't care what he gets up to at night and turns a blind eye when he comes home bearing all the signs of scumbaggery'. Even if you could put it down to statistics, and show that local low class Polish Jew families significantly outnumbered their Irish, Italian or Cockney equivalents, therefore the scumbag family involved was most likely a low class Polish Jewish one, it would not excuse Anderson for his comments, because he didn't claim that he had made them on the basis of statistics. He implied it was on the basis of low class Polish Jews being generally scumbaggier than members of other groups, which would have been impossible to prove on statistical grounds and hard to defend on any grounds.

However, if racism had been 'institutionalised' at the time, in a self-conscious way, would Anderson not have thought it and acted on it without dreaming of actually coming right out and saying it? I wonder if he was more naďve than anything else, for not appreciating that he should have kept his mouth shut on this one. Would a senior policeman in the seventies have dreamed of announcing: "Naturally we had to dig a few blacks in the ribs to get to the one who did it. They were refusing to talk to us so we knew we were on the right track, and he's now safely behind bars, so everything's tickety-boo"?

Love,

Caz
X

[Cap'n Jack]

There is that, Caz, and as ever nicely done, but I think Anderson was just extremely well disinformed when it came to the subject of the 'lower' classes.
For my understanding of the East End Jews of the LVP was that they were extremely litigatious; and spent a great deal of time in their local police stations accusing and cross accusing one another of various misdeeds and alleged crimes.
They don't appear to have been wary of the police at all, as is evidenced by the mountain of testimony given by Jews in the Whitechapel Murder investigations.
And I think this to be the rub.
That a minority population exposed to clear prejudice by the police and other organisations do not desert the the police and other organisations, they utilise the organisation like everyone else... for it is the police and other organisations that desert them, as is evidenced by this clip from the Old Bailey LVP:
'MAX PIENTKA , tailor, 2, Westmoreland Street, Marylebone. On January 31 this year I was at 23, Woodstock Street, Oxford Street, and prisoner called on me. He asked me if I would like to be insured, and said he was agent of a fire insurance company. I told him to call later, and on February 2 he called again, and I said I would insure. He asked me if I would like to insure higher than Ł100. I said that was sufficient for me, and then I handed him 2s. 6d. He asked me if I was a Jew, because the first Scotch company don't take any Jews.'

[caz]

Hi RJ,

You quoted me thus:

‘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?’

You emphasize the word 'they,' as if to remind us there was clearly no unity of opinion among members of the Metropolitan police...

...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.

I was indeed emphasising your own ‘they’, to make that very point, but mainly to invite you to say how many (if not who) you would include in this group who may have had the same damn good idea about the killer’s identity, and were hoping like hell they could prove themselves wrong (so they would presumably not have to admit to something unpalatable that they might otherwise have to do?).

I’m still unclear as to where you were going on this, but your posts intrigue me enough to want to find out.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t actually say that Anderson did take out the damn good idea for walkies, because you didn’t actually say what the idea might have been. I was trying to coax it out of you, to get to the ‘whole point’. Hence my question.

Are you suggesting that the damn good idea was not the low class Polish Jew that Anderson DID take out for walkies, and that was just a very ill-advised cover story - for a quack they lost when he flew away and quacked about it, perhaps?

You can keep your responses cryptic if you like. But you can’t then blame me if I stab in the dark at possible solutions and come up with a duck.

Love,

Caz
X

[fido]

Dave - I have said in postings elsewhere that Anderson's pig-headed determination to have a medical conclusion on Rose Mylett endorsing his own opinion, and his obsessive restatement of this opinion in his memoirs 22 years later, are indeed a part of the picture which has led me to say for 20 years that he was opinionated and would not shift once he had made up his mind: recently I posted the hyperbole that he wouldn't change if the angel Gabriel came down and controverted his evidence. I have never suppressed this failing, but taken it into account with other things which dedicated Anti-Andersonians rarely reprint or refer to. (Philip Sugen is unusual in showing clear respect for them when he notes that he was "a competent police chief, respected and valued by many of his colleagues." It is impossible for me to judge whether those who dismiss Anderson's type of Christianity as irrelevant, or something they have considered and find compatible with his supposedly twisting or inventing facts to bolster his professional reputation, have in fact looked at writings by Anderson and (say) Spurgeon and Booth, or considered the careers of Barnado, Fr Williamson, the Barnetts, Moody & Sankey, or Charles Carrington. (Americans might like also to consider William Jennings Bryan). It is very importabt to see these people and not the likes of Aimee Semple Macpherson or even Billy Sunday, let alone Jonestown or soome present-day Elmer Gantry as forming the moral climate in which Anderson lived and moved and against which his decision that it would be corrupting to belong formally to any church must be assessed. I suggest that I have in fact looked in greater breadth and depth at the ideological bases of Anderson's life - and must say at once that I don't find them or the late Victorian evangelical ethos at all attractive; but I certainly do find that they concur with his generally verifiable statements to indicate that he (and, in fact, Sir Charles Warren and James Monro) were more likely to be reporting accurately and without embroidery of the facts as known or [mis]understood by them than, say, Major Smith or the much more likeable Macnaghten. And I have to say over and over again, I see no need to revise the opinion "Anderson may have been wrong. He was always opinionated," which has stood in print over ny name for 20 years.

Stewart - as you say, the printed sources are available - many of them thanks to your indefatigable labours - and anyone can look at them and compare them. In my previous posting I thought it fair to compare what the A-Z concluded about Anderson before Philip Sugden had written on him, as it would be unreasonable to require him to have anticipated a revised ending that took into account what he and others had written. But his fully revised piece, with the same last sentences quoted above, still omits all mention of the fact that Anderson had first expressed his belief publicly in 1901, long before blue devils of retirement and geriatric self-deluded wishful thinking might be inferred. And Swanson's alleged formation of his theory in 1895 is rel;egated to an endnote where it is likely to be missed; an endnote, too, which describes Swanson's erroneous belief that Kosminsky had died in Colney Hatch prior to 1895 while scrupulously avoiding any mention of the fact that this fact is uniquely true of one poor Polish Jew from Whitechapel - David Cohen - who had already been described ass probably confused with Kosminsky before anybody but Jim Swanson knew anything about the marginalia. It is one thing to disagree wiht me: quite another to evade my views and the facts they rest on by behaving as though they simply weren't in thepicture at all.

Our revised conclusion to a piece which cited Sugden's and Melvin Harris's anti-Andersonian publications, though overtly demurring from Phil's demonstrably erroneous postulation of geriatric wishful thinking, may well be the piece which persuaded a thoughtful prvious poster that the A-Z freally is biassed in favour of Anderson. It runs: "Anderson may have been quite wrong. But persistent attempts to disprove his statements by denigrating his character are almost on a par with the outdated game of abusing and dismissing the police as a whole (and Warren in particular) in order to allow irresponsible theorizing from some other source." A-Z, 3rd revised edition, 1996).
Agreed, this expresses an opinion quite strongly. But with all due respect I think it is manifestly more cautious than "Anderson and Swanson had come to inhabit a world of wish-dreams. And together they transformed a armless imbecile, sheltering within the walls of Leavesden, into the most infamous murderer of modern times." (The Complete History, revised paperback edn, 2002, p.423.

But I do not need to insist on this. The references are available, and everybody can, will and should read the full passages through for themselves, and form their own opinions.

All the best,

Martin
With all good wishes,

Martin F

[Stewart P Evans]

Theory

But his fully revised piece, with the same last sentences quoted above, still omits all mention of the fact that Anderson had first expressed his belief publicly in 1901, long before blue devils of retirement and geriatric self-deluded wishful thinking might be inferred.at all.
Martin
With all good wishes,
Martin F

Anderson's theory that the murderer was 'a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum' was first aired publicly in 1895 in the Windsor Magazine (see below).

Anderson's 1901 claim that the murderer was 'caged in an asylum' appeared in The Nineteenth Century issue of February 1901 (see below). Both of these fall a long way short of his 1910 pronouncements of a 'definitely ascertained fact' and, although no mention was made of a Polish Jew, it is fair to assume that it relates to the 'Kosminski' of Macnaghten's 1894 memorandum.

So we see the theory of 1895, the 1901 mention simply as the killer 'caged in an asylum' but in 1910 it is added to and identified as a 'poor Polish Jew' and becomes 'a definitely ascertained fact.' Definite signs of a mere theory being established and later confirmed as fact - but signally with no supporting evidence whatsoever.

[Stewart P Evans]

Cohen Theory

Whilst Martin cannot accept Aaron Kosminski as the murderer, Martin's Cohen theory is roundly rejected by Paul Begg who says, "The confusion hypothesis depends on the Metropolitan Police not knowing the name of 'David Cohen', but research has shown that they did know his name: he was charged at the Thames Police Court under the name Aaron Davis Cohen, and the police knew enough about him to know his age, that he was unmarried and had no family, and that his occupation was that of a tailor..." and "On top of all this, there is abundant evidence that the police of all ranks, including Anderson and Swanson, continued to believe that the Ripper was at large long after Cohen's committal and death." That sounds pretty conclusive.

[Chris]

And Swanson's alleged formation of his theory in 1895 is rel;egated to an endnote where it is likely to be missed; an endnote, too, which describes Swanson's erroneous belief that Kosminsky had died in Colney Hatch prior to 1895 while scrupulously avoiding any mention of the fact that this fact is uniquely true of one poor Polish Jew from Whitechapel - David Cohen - who had already been described ass probably confused with Kosminsky before anybody but Jim Swanson knew anything about the marginalia.

Isn't it ironic, though, that while you berate others for suggesting that Anderson was confused, your own theory requires an almighty confusion on Swanson's part?

If I understand correctly - and I must admit I've never found the Cohen/Kaminsky/Kozminski theory easy to understand - you suggest that well before 1910 both Swanson and Anderson had concluded that Cohen was the murderer.

Yet when Swanson came to comment on Anderson's description of the identification of Cohen - you would have us believe - Swanson inexplicably says the suspect's name was Kosminski, and describes how he was watched at his brother's house - which obviously fits Kozminski but not Cohen. That's despite the fact that you assure us that "everything recorded about Kosminsky suggested that he couldn't possibly have been the Ripper".

Why on earth should Swanson have suddenly regurgitated this irrelevant information about the non-suspect Kozminski from more than 20 years before, if both he and Anderson had a long-standing conviction that Cohen was the murderer? It makes no sense.

[Dave O]

Thank you for the reply, Martin--much appreciated.

Dave

[fido]

As I have long suggested, Chris, I take it that Swanson' confused and in one respect inaccurate notes point to the truth because I noted Swanson's saying that the City police watched Kosminsky. This I took to be probably true. I had even earlier (before we knew anything about Swanson's notes) postulated that the Met saw to Cohen's confinement though they were not sure of his name and knew of no relatives (Cohen's changing forenames between the court and the infirmary; his records listing no known relatives; the fact that living Cohens know their surname was foisted on ancestors by immigration authorities who couldn't be bohered with long middle-European names) and Anderson and a few others sooner or later decided that he was the Ripper (a recent posting somewhere of a memo or recollection referring to "those who knew" confirms my impression that "need to know" restrictions meant some information was held by senior or very senior officers only. And long before the margnalia mergeed I had noted correcly that Swanson, not Abbeline as almost all writers before 1987 averred, had been in charge of the case as far as ordinary coppers were concerned). Meanwhile the City had been watching Kosminsky - covertly on Met territory (just as the Met had probably used the City's witness covertly to identify their suspect). Don Rumbelow told me when the Swanson marginalia first emerged that in a case this prestigious both forces would cheerfully have poached on each other's territory. And after Kosminsky had been confined, somebody in the Met learned about the City's poor Polish Jew from Whitechapel who went into Colney Hatch, and assumed this was the same person. Since the City had watched him at his brother's house, they knew the name (again, as Don pointed out to me), and so the Met accepted this piece of the jigsaw, accidentally confusing the man who they knew had died with the man who would live until 1917.
Swanson's notes simply ARE confused by anyone's standards. Even in accepting Paul Begg's arguments for Kosminsky as a major suspect, Cosgrove-Muerer, to his frustration, kept insisting, "But Swanson said he was dead". (Cohen, of course, ws the ONLY Whitechapel Jew to die prematurely during the period). Interestingly, over on How's board people who have never seen my argument are asking some of the questions it answers - can one believe that Kosminsky's family took him for treatment with his hands tied behind his back? No, but Cohen was definitely delivered to Colney Hatch under restraint (his records say so) and may well have been restrained when delivered to the Infirmary, as he threw himself on the floor on arrival, and only stasrted trying to tear the place apart later.
A very good question that no one seems to ask is, "Why wasn't the Commissioner told?" I mean, they might keep it from Abberline or even Littlechild (though he seems to have known what Anderson thought), but surely not from the Commissioner. Well, if Cohen was the suspect, the Commissioner was Monro, and he was quickly out of office and keeping mum about the difficult case for the rest of his life. And I doubt whether he agreed with Anderson. If Kosminsky was the suspect, then the Commissioner was Bradford, and one would expect this to be filtering down along the "Commissioner" level of belief as relected in Warren's and Home Thompson's recollecions. But there one finds instead something that seems to derive from Macnaghten's Druitt ideas.
I've no difficulty in accepting that Anderson didn't firm up his conclusions until later: Swanson's 1895 belief coupled with the writing Stewart notes above suggests that they were starting to get fixed by or around that time, when, I suppose, it became clear that the murders really had stopped, and it was time to go back and see which of the earlier serious suspects was most likely. And around then (or a little earlier), Macnaghten, looking at the files and somehow muddling a lot of details of Druitt (if he was on them, which I suspect he was) plumped for Druitt. Anderson and Swanson plumped for the Polish Jew who, as Macnaghten's reference to his visual similarity suggests, had been given some sort of witness identification, and who they now believed wrongly was the man called Kosminsky who had been followed by the City Police.
I have never asserted that because Anderson believed or came to believe it it must be true. I have always said that Anderson was the most reliable historical contemporry witness naming a suspect, because his opportunity to know details was at te highest level, and nothing in his writing or record suggests that he would have been lying (as almost everyone said he ws before 1987, without having studied him at all!) and therefore his suspect must be given priority. Thus far Paul Begg agrees with me. Then I observe that Kosminsky is impossible, and suggest that the proposal I had already put forward before I even found Kosminsky, that Cohen was Anderson's Ripper suspect, and had somehow inexplicably become confused with a Jew called K-something-sky, was confirmed by the later diiscovery of the Swanson margnalia. Paul demurs that if i'd found Kosminsky first I'd never have gone looking for anyone else, which is quite true. I should have rested on the lauresl of all I had discovered, and contentedly joined Don and Paul and Stewart as an expert commentator who is declining to suggest that any known suspect was the Ripper. Don protests that the explanation for Swanson's confusion must be simpler - and I agre that I wish it were, and invite anyone to put forward a hypothesis that covers as much of it. American Police officers, familiar with ovelapping jurisdictional competition find it extremely convincing rather than over-complicated. Stewart, I think, is trying to say it must be wrong because Anderson is far from a perfect historical witness. Well, of couse I agree with that. But the reason for taking him seriously is that all the others are so much worse except for Littlechild and Abberline. And their proposals fall to the ground because their candidates are as or more unconvincing than Kosminsky. I don't object to Tumbletonians and Chapmanites unless they set up elaborate arguments to suggest that Anderson and Swanson are so unreliable that their testimony must be set aside in favour of Abberline or Littlechild. In Abberline's case, we have a witness with as many drawbacks as there are to RA and DS - and Philip Sugden, while following Abberline, is forced to a Beggian conclusion : "This is the best historical candidate, but I don't really think he did it." Tumbletonians have a witness about whom I at least don't as yet know enough to compare him with the other officers. I hope to learn a lot more from Alan Sharpe this weekend. And a desperately unconvincing Ripper candidate (though I agree at once, that as in the cases of RB, DS and MM, at least one senior officer with more information than I had enough information to think him a very promising suspect).
And if anyone can PROVE to me that Cohen couldn't have been the Ripper, I shall delightedly join the Olympian group of "experts' who say, "Well, at present nobody knows, but here are the proposals under investigation, none of whom seems right."
All the best,
Martin F

[fido]

Oh, in response to Paul's observations (cited by Stewart) about the data on Cohen's records which psulsays the Met "knew". I cannot fathom how anybody knew anything about a raving maniac babbling in Yiddish, with no known relatives or witnesses (like Jacob Cohen in Kosminsky's case) to give testimony about him. Aaron Davis in police hands in the morning becomes David in the same police hands in the evening of the same day. Cohen - the constant - is not necessarily the real name of any immigrant to whom it is attached... of course it's postulation, and until the emergence of the Swanson marginalia it might indeed be regarded as thin. But then there appear these notes saying Kosminsky who lived with his brother in Whitechapel(true of Kosminski), but not Cohen died in the asylum having been taken into incarceration under restraint (true of Cohen, but not Kosminsky). At this point Paul's assertion that the details recorded on Cohen's asylum and infirmary papers must all have been accurate information known to the Met looks a lot shakier, and to me at least is very far from conclusive.
All the best,
Martin F

[Chris]

On a separate question, one thing that has always puzzled me is Macnaghten's statement about Kozminski that "he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889". As far as we know, Aaron Kozminski wasn't.

I can understand somebody getting a date wrong, but what I can't understand is why Macnaghten should have thought Aaron was committed to an asylum before he joined the force, if in reality Aaron was brought to the attention of the police and investigated while Macnaghten was a senior police officer.

[Jeff Leahy]

But as far as Ripperology goes I believe that I have read more than anyone, bar none, and I have much material that will never see the light of day. And that is not a teaser, it is material that is better left unseen. What authors in this field should realise is that there are no icons, no single fountain-head of knowledge and no all-knowing authority - and if you set yourself up on a pedestal you will soon be knocked down. As I get older I seek Ripperological solace with very dear friends, older and wiser than I, friends like Richard Whittington-Egan, Don Rumbelow and Phil Sugden. They are honest and dispassionate and I consider myself very lucky to know them.

Stewart are you saying you have moved to the darkside?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfibSaDHrM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gvqpFbRKtQ&feature=related

Have you finally gone over? have you left us Stewart?

What is this mysterious evidence you keep hinting at?

Are we, the posters of casebook, unworthy to see this material?

What mysterious evidence are you hinting at???

Are you using the ‘force’ or are you now ‘Evan Vader’ ?

Most concerned

Pirate

[Jeff Leahy]

PS Martin

For those of us that suffer from dyslexia..would you please, please put gaps in your paragraphs before some of us keel over with epileptic fits.

Ta Pirate

[Jeff Leahy]

On a separate question, one thing that has always puzzled me is Macnaghten's statement about Kozminski that "he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889". As far as we know, Aaron Kozminski wasn't.

While this statement is undoubtedly true...is there not also the possibility..given what is known about the condition of schizophrenia, TODAY.

That Aaron could have been going through, 'Psycotic episodes'

Perhaps he went 'in' and 'out'

And, as yet we have found NO evidence...

Martin did after all, miss Aarons record at first..and let me say I find Aarn kosminski far MORE convincing as a Ripper suspect than 'Cohen'.

Kosminskite.