Anderson - More Questions Than Answers

[Jeff Leahy]

And Pirate Jack, I've tried to use shorter paragraphs, and hope they come out properly separated.

All the best, Martin F

Hello Martin

Many thanks for your kind consideration. Although we have never met I feel as though we have, given the warm reverence you are often given in conversation by many of your old friends.

I gather in conversation yesterday that you share my love of boats. Any time you are in England and would enjoy a cruise down the river Medway with an old Pirate you will be more than welcome.

I'd just like to add how impressed and inspirational your posts have been. I must admit in the past my posts have on occasions gotten bogged down in semantics’ and petty confrontation. I will try and follow your example more closely in future.

Yours Jeff

[Jeff Leahy]

Good morning Stewart

The mention of this appalling sequence of still undiscovered crimes leads to the production of certain ghastly photographs.

Surely this is the commentators opinion (‘undiscovered crimes’) not Andersons.

Still ‘undiscovered crime’ is not a phrase expressed by Anderson who simply says:

“there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders”

The fad or theory might have been ‘Parnell’ or that it was a ‘lover’ like Barnet or Kidney. Or that it was a doctor collecting organs.

Of course we don’t know the exact question. But why would he volunteer information that he was not asked for?

Especially when the case is still open and on going.

He hints at the truth. But keeps his full theory close to his chest.

Pirate

[Rob Clack]

I thought it was interesting that in Anderson's autobiography, he said Mary Kelly was the last victim and assumed Alice Mckenzie was murdered by someone else. So why no mention of Frances Coles? If his suspect was Aaron Kosminski then he would have known he was locked up about a week before she was murdered. He could easily have just ignored this for his book but Swanson in his notes?

Rob

[Stewart P Evans]

Unsolved

Good morning Stewart
The mention of this appalling sequence of still undiscovered crimes leads to the production of certain ghastly photographs.
Surely this is the commentators opinion (‘undiscovered crimes’) not Andersons.
Still ‘undiscovered crime’ is not a phrase expressed by Anderson who simply says:

“there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders”

The fad or theory might have been ‘Parnell’ or that it was a ‘lover’ like Barnet or Kidney. Or that it was a doctor collecting organs.
Of course we don’t know the exact question. But why would he volunteer information that he was not asked for?
Especially when the case is still open and on going.
He hints at the truth. But keeps his full theory close to his chest.
Pirate

I certainly don't need you to interpret wording for me. I did not say that 'undiscovered crimes' were Anderson's words. I said that the reporter was discussing them in that context. And, indeed, they were unsolved crimes.

You will note that I carefully explained my meaning and raised the question as to why Anderson hadn't stated his belief that the killer had had his 'hideous career cut short by committal to an asylum', a theory that he was happy to air in 1895. I also don't disagree that his words cannot be construed as being at odds with his later proclamations. Although, as I have explained, they more easily fit with the development of a mere theory in the early 1890s that becomes a 'definitely ascertained fact' in 1910.

Please read and understand things before you address them.

[fido]

Pirate Jack - I'd thoroughly enjoy a cruise down the Medway. Don't let me try and catch a mooring buoy for you, though. My average loss of boathooks is one for every attempt to catch a buoy. (Only average, because I can lose them in other ways, too).

I don't thinnk I need to add anything to your comments on Harry's intervention, and the clay pipe evidence posting. (Oh, and Paul has told me he does in fact know you and is working on a project with you - but of course that doesn'tt excuse the prtence that you are his mouthpiece which, if anything, I'd have called evading the issue with red herrings and innuendo. Naturally, as Paul is someone I profoundly disagree with on many issues, and repect very much nonetheless, it wouldn't worry me if you weer speaking for him or echoing his opinions. But he would certainly have told me if this were the case.

Stewart: the punctuation issue refers exclusively to the "undiscovered crimes" piece. There is no reason to suppose one way or the other that the term had been brought up in the conversation since, of course, I agree that it is a commonplace inaccurate way of describing an unsolved crime - just as "we failed to catch" is a commonplace inaccurate way of saying "failed to bring to justice a perpetrator whose identity we knew."

I agree entirely with whoever it is who objected that the details of the ID are missing: I think it is common ground with everyone that Swanson's talk of taking a suspect with difficulty to the Seaside Home and then letting him go is very unsatisfactory and sounds like an event unique in the annals of policing! Quite simply, none of us understands it and attempts to argue a scenario (like Stewart's in Scotland Yard investigates) are inevitably convoluted and (like any interpretation of Swanson's notes) have to use a good deal of hypothesis.

Well, it seems that the inordinate amount of time I've had to spend in the past explaining that Sir William Harcourt, no matter how celebrated a Home Sectreray he was, was a strong political opponent of Anderson's and a noted political bruiser, so that his remarks have to be treated with caution has worked. At least we're not getting those brought up over and over again as tehy used to be by Melvin Harris.

But isn't it something of a smokescreen that Stewart keeps posting quotation after quotation and averring that an answer to each separate repetition of Anderson's must be made, or I'm evading or - heaven help us! - pursuing red herrings? He accused me of lack of objectivity in saying that Anderson's type of committed Christianity meant that he would not have put garuitous lies about the Ripper case in his autobiography. I have laid out the sort of background and source material on which I base this, and carefully compared my earliest conclusion about Anderson, and two A-Z editions' conclusions about Anderson with Philip Sugden's. I haveasked Stewart to show where there is lack of objectivity in that, and to correct my misimpressions. The answer? Stewart was a policeman with great experience of life. He owns - (has he read?) - theological books by Anderson. He knows more about Anderson than anyone else. And here are a lot of cuttings which have no bearing whatever on the question of Anderson's veracity or mendacity, but which Stewart believes show that Anderson came very late to his Polish Jew ID belief; I think show that it may have hardened in his mind as time went by and nothing emerged to contradict it; and Paul Begg thinks don't show anything of any importance at all except that Anderson's thknkng was formed at some point early in the 1890s, even though it wasn't expressed as a crystalline conviction until 1910.(At which date Anderson was NOT geriatric according to his granddaughter!)

I start to feel like Anderson himself, being battered by Major Smith with his bull-in-a-china-shop assertion that he knew more about the murders than any man living; an irrelevant charge that Anderson was being recklessly antiSemitic, and a concomitant bow to political correctness by calling what appears to be Lawende a kind of hybrid German rather than, simply, another Jewish immigrant!

Where is Stewart's case for saying that a belief in Anderson's general veacity based on familiarity with his avowed ethos is unobjective?


Apologies to Druittites for my failure to include him in my first "prime suspect" list. We don't know what it was that made him so important in Macnaghten's mind; we don't know enough about him to write him off (and the schoolmasterly interference with little boys of which I suspect him is, unlike Tumblety's gynophobia and interest in youths, quite compatible with strong heterosexual urges), so I actually list him as my second strongest suspect, after Cohen but before Kosminsky.

And now essays have started coming in for me to mark, and so I must leave this fascinating discussionwith regret.

All the best,

Martin F

[Stewart P Evans]

Won't Wash

Stewart: the punctuation issue refers exclusively to the "undiscovered crimes" piece. There is no reason to suppose one way or the other that the term had been brought up in the conversation since, of course, I agree that it is a commonplace inaccurate way of describing an unsolved crime - just as "we failed to catch" is a commonplace inaccurate way of saying "failed to bring to justice a perpetrator whose identity we knew."
Martin F

I think I have covered the piece that appeared in Cassell's Saturday Journal in 1892 as far as I need to. Readers will have to draw their own conclusions on that debate.

Martin quotes "we failed to catch" and puts his own interpretation on it that it is "a commonplace inaccurate way of saying 'failed to bring to justice a perpetrator whose identity we knew'". This is absolutely mind-boggling. Does he actually believe this? I might agree that it may be interpreted in that context but to say that this is what it actually means is simply bad reasoning.

When I was a police officer we sometimes experienced a series of crimes, usually a series of burglaries, where the offender was not caught, and we had no idea who he was. And we used to say that "We failed to catch that burglar in the town last year (or whenever)", which was a fact, but it didn't mean that we also knew his identity. Sorry Martin it just won't wash.

However, the point here is not that Anderson said "we failed to catch", what he actually said was, "...our failure to find Jack the Ripper..." Or does that mean "failed to bring to justice a perpetrator whose identity we knew." C'mon Martin, pull the other one.

[Dan Norder]

We’ve been hearing on a fairly regular basis from AP Wolf, Wolf Vanderlinden, Ivor Edwards, Chris George, Dan Norder, etc. etc, what a dreadful ‘candidtae’’ Tumblety supposedly is, but with few exceptions, these fellows are all advocates of the outdated ‘lustmord’ theory, which, to their way of thinking, eliminates homosexuals.

Time after time you claim it's outdated but keep ignoring that it's definitely not. It's the current modern accepted understanding of serial killers. The things you claim about such killers, by contrast, seem like they were snatched right out of the 1700s. You're whole goal in looking at criminology and psychology seems to be to toss out anything that disagrees with your Ripper theory and grasp madly at any outdated or fringe idea ever spouted by anyone you can pretend knows something about the topic so that you can use it to try to justify the person you want to believe killed a bunch of prostitutes 120 years ago.

And, on top of that, there are still tons of other reasons Tumblety makes a very poor suspect besides the fact that he was homosexual, and those have been explained time and time again on the threads actually about Tumblety. Don't try to use an Anderson thread to push more deceptive information concerning Tumblety.

[Stewart P Evans]

The Globe

The following interview with Anderson appeared in The Globe of March 7, 1910, as a result of his article in Blackwood's -

[Jeff Leahy]

I certainly don't need you to interpret wording for me. I did not say that 'undiscovered crimes' were Anderson's words. I said that the reporter was discussing them in that context. And, indeed, they were unsolved crimes.

If by unsolved crime you mean that no one was bought to justice, thats cool.

You will note that I carefully explained my meaning and raised the question as to why Anderson hadn't stated his belief that the killer had had his 'hideous career cut short by committal to an asylum', a theory that he was happy to air in 1895. I also don't disagree that his words cannot be construed as being at odds with his later proclamations. Although, as I have explained, they more easily fit with the development of a mere theory in the early 1890s that becomes a 'definitely ascertained fact' in 1910.

Now it is you that is speculating. Why didn't Anderson tell the journalist about his theory? and you are speculating that the 'caged asylum' theory he vioces in 1895 wasn't formed in 1892? We don't know that?

There are surely many reasons why Anderson might not have said that he had a perfectly plausible theory in 1892.

To speculate: Perhaps he didn't want to raise any difficult questions at this point or perhaps he didn't wish to raise questions he wasn't at liberty to answer at this time. Anderson was still in office, the suspect had never been charged. Anderson may not have trusted the journalist (some people don't) Perhaps Anderson didn't trust the people coming to him with 'Fads and theories' Either way its all just opinion and speculation.

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

Anderson says "there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders"

Can we not make an assumption that the question had something to do with "Fads and Theories"

What do you say to peoples 'Fads and Theories" ?

Anderson produces a photo and says look at this....

It is clearly the act of a 'maniac revelling in blood'

Is this not completely consistent with the murders having been committed by Aaron Kosminski?


Pirate

NO,it most definitely is not consistent with anything currently known about Aaron Kosminski.
There is no evidence that Aaron Kosminski was violent,throughout the entire 30 years he was held in an asylum.
There is no evidence that he liked to "revel in blood" either.

There are reports that he didnt like to work, wash or eat at table and that he believed he was being "guided" by a "universal instinct".We know his mental health deteriorated over the years but at no point do any of the records that have surfaced indicate that he was violent or interested in bloodshed.Staff seemed at pains in fact ,to point out he was harmless.

He took a dog for a walk in Cheapside in 1889, so at this point was not," incarcerated" either.

Can we stick with what we know from records please,rather than engage in such wild speculation about this person?
Thanks
Norma

[Stewart P Evans]

Drivel

Now it is you that is speculating. Why didn't Anderson tell the journalist about his theory? and you are speculating that the 'caged asylum' theory he vioces in 1895 wasn't formed in 1892? We don't know that?
There are surely many reasons why Anderson might not have said that he had a perfectly plausible theory in 1892.
To speculate: Perhaps he didn't want to raise any difficult questions at this point or perhaps he didn't wish to raise questions he wasn't at liberty to answer at this time. Anderson was still in office, the suspect had never been charged. Anderson may not have trusted the journalist (some people don't) Perhaps Anderson didn't trust the people coming to him with 'Fads and theories' Either way its all just opinion and speculation.
Pirate

No, you are 'postulating the thought processes of others.' I did not speculate that the 'caged asylum' theory, as you put it, was not formed in 1892. In fact, I asked the question as to why Anderson should not have voiced it - a totally different thing. I did indicate, of course, that failure to mention it was supportive of a particular theory evolving.

I did state the counter that he may not have been able to describe it at that time (for whatever reason), some time ago, I always allow for all possibilities - something that you appear incapable of. Of course it's speculation and opinion, have I ever said it wasn't. Please read and internalise the content of past posts before coming on here with more drivel.

[Jeff Leahy]

NO,it most definitely is not consistent with anything currently known about Aaron Kosminski.
There is no evidence that Aaron Kosminski was violent,throughout the entire 30 years he was held in an asylum.
There is no evidence that he liked to "revel in blood" either.

There is no evidence that he did not 'revel in blood' at some point. Indeed if you speculate that Aaron was 'Jack the Ripper' it seems pretty likely that he 'reveled in blood' on at least six occasions. Aaron’s apparent lack of violence once 'in- prisoned' is consistent with what we know of Schizophrenics.

There are reports that he didnt like to work, wash or eat at table and that he believed he was being "guided" by a "universal instinct".We know his mental health deteriorated over the years but at no point do any of the records that have surfaced indicate that he was violent or interested in bloodshed.Staff seemed at pains in fact ,to point out he was harmless.

He took a dog for a walk in Cheapside in 1889, so at this point was not," incarcerated" either.

Can we stick with what we know from records please,rather than engage in such wild speculation about this person?
Thanks
Norma

Surely speculating about what Anderson did or did not know in 1892 is what we are all doing?

Pirate

PS Any chance of a Podcast with the Norder? now that would make interesting listening

[Stewart P Evans]

Enjoy

You know, I was just beginning to enjoy myself, then this clown 'Pirate Jack' turned up...

[Natalie Severn]

Martin,
Anderson appears to have made quite a few enemies actually,quite apart from Harcourt ,Jenkinson ,Smith etc.
Not only that but History suggests that it was the 1910 "Blackwood"s magazine articles" and later autobiography of "Robert Anderson",not the 1910 autobiography of "Henry Smith" that drew criticism for its " boastfulness".
"Boastfulness" was the term used by Winston Churchill then Home Secretary.He accused Robert Anderson of "gross boastfulness,"[and a lot worse] excused only by ,"the garrulous and inaccurate indiscretion of advancing years.....I have thought it my duty to call on Sir Robert Anderson to restore documents which are the property of the public".[House of Commons 21 April 1910]
---------[apparently Anderson sometimes engaged in the" pilfering" of certain important public documents -----------!]

[Jeff Leahy]

You know, I was just beginning to enjoy myself, then this clown 'Pirate Jack' turned up...

I think this post should be over on the pub talk section Stewart..its not anderson related. Its more clownish.