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I am posting the New York Times article from March 20, 1910 that comments on Anderson's Blackwoods assertions. I am only including the text from the paragraphs related to the Ripper, as the rest of the article largely discusses "the question of the disposal of the criminal insane" in a broad sense.
New York Times, March 20, 1910
The Truth at Last About Jack the Ripper
London Police Had Him in their Net
But Couldn't Convict Him— Problems
of the Criminal Insane
Sir Robert Anderson, for more than thirty years Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of the British Government, and head of the Detective Bureau at Scotland Yard, has at length raised the veil of mystery which for nearly two decades has enveloped the identity of the perpetrator of those atrocious crimes known as the Whitechapel murders.
Sir Robert's revelations, in an article over his signature in one of the leading London reviews for the current month, and supplemented by a letter from him printed in the London Times, effectually disposes of the popular stories ascribing the outrages to a peer, now dead, who despite his great wealth had rendered himself an outcast by his vices and eccentricities, or to a man, untitled, but of birth and breeding, who after manifesting unmistakable signs of mental disorder had suddenly vanished from his accustomed haunts in London, eventually to die in a madhouse.
Sir Robert establishes the fact that the infamous "Jack the Ripper," as the unknown slayer had been dubbed by the public, and at whose hands no less than fourteen women of the unfortunate class successively lost their lives within a circumscribed area of the East End of London, was an alien of the lower, though educated class, hailing from Poland, and a maniac of the most virulent and homicidal type—of a type recorded, by reason of its rarity, in medical treatises, but one with which the world at large is not familiar.
Sir Robert describes the house to house search for the man in the district in which all the murders were committed: how the police investigated the case of every man within that area whose circumstances were such that he could go and come, and get rid of his bloodstains in secret: how by these means the suspect was caught, and how, although the authorities were able to prove beyond a doubt his identity, they were, nevertheless, unable to secure legal evidence sufficient for his conviction.
But the most important point of all made by Sir Robert is the fact that once the Criminal Investigation Department was sure that it had in its hands the real perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders, it procured from the Secretary of State for the Home Department a warent committing the man for detention "during the King's pleasure" to the great asylum at Broadmoor five or six years ago".
Consigned to Broadmoor.
"Jack the Ripper" was consigned to Broadmoor by virtue of a warrent of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, acting in the name of the sovereign, and not by means of any judicial process".
The power of committal is a prerogative of the crown. But the perpetration of any abuse of these royal 'lettres de cachet" (such as was in vogue in the days of the Court of Versailles when the Kings of France were able to consign to lifelong captivity in the Bastille nobles guilty of no other offense than that of having spoken slightingly of the monarch's fair favorite of the hour) is guarded against by the fact that it is the Secretary of State who signs the warrant of committal, and that he is responsible in his, as for all his other official acts, to Parliament.
If I call attention here to the manner in which the English Government dealt with the case of Jack the Ripper, it is because the question of the disposal of the criminal insane is one of the most absorbing problems of the hour...
New York Times, March 20, 1910
The Truth at Last About Jack the Ripper
London Police Had Him in their Net
But Couldn't Convict Him— Problems
of the Criminal Insane
Sir Robert Anderson, for more than thirty years Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of the British Government, and head of the Detective Bureau at Scotland Yard, has at length raised the veil of mystery which for nearly two decades has enveloped the identity of the perpetrator of those atrocious crimes known as the Whitechapel murders.
Sir Robert's revelations, in an article over his signature in one of the leading London reviews for the current month, and supplemented by a letter from him printed in the London Times, effectually disposes of the popular stories ascribing the outrages to a peer, now dead, who despite his great wealth had rendered himself an outcast by his vices and eccentricities, or to a man, untitled, but of birth and breeding, who after manifesting unmistakable signs of mental disorder had suddenly vanished from his accustomed haunts in London, eventually to die in a madhouse.
Sir Robert establishes the fact that the infamous "Jack the Ripper," as the unknown slayer had been dubbed by the public, and at whose hands no less than fourteen women of the unfortunate class successively lost their lives within a circumscribed area of the East End of London, was an alien of the lower, though educated class, hailing from Poland, and a maniac of the most virulent and homicidal type—of a type recorded, by reason of its rarity, in medical treatises, but one with which the world at large is not familiar.
Sir Robert describes the house to house search for the man in the district in which all the murders were committed: how the police investigated the case of every man within that area whose circumstances were such that he could go and come, and get rid of his bloodstains in secret: how by these means the suspect was caught, and how, although the authorities were able to prove beyond a doubt his identity, they were, nevertheless, unable to secure legal evidence sufficient for his conviction.
But the most important point of all made by Sir Robert is the fact that once the Criminal Investigation Department was sure that it had in its hands the real perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders, it procured from the Secretary of State for the Home Department a warent committing the man for detention "during the King's pleasure" to the great asylum at Broadmoor five or six years ago".
Consigned to Broadmoor.
"Jack the Ripper" was consigned to Broadmoor by virtue of a warrent of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, acting in the name of the sovereign, and not by means of any judicial process".
The power of committal is a prerogative of the crown. But the perpetration of any abuse of these royal 'lettres de cachet" (such as was in vogue in the days of the Court of Versailles when the Kings of France were able to consign to lifelong captivity in the Bastille nobles guilty of no other offense than that of having spoken slightingly of the monarch's fair favorite of the hour) is guarded against by the fact that it is the Secretary of State who signs the warrant of committal, and that he is responsible in his, as for all his other official acts, to Parliament.
If I call attention here to the manner in which the English Government dealt with the case of Jack the Ripper, it is because the question of the disposal of the criminal insane is one of the most absorbing problems of the hour...
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