Anderson at the London Institute, 1904

[Chris]

The Otago Witness (New Zealand), 28 December 1904, reports a recent lecture given by Anderson at the London Institute (no doubt copied from a London newspaper, though the source is not stated).

After recounting a typically idiosyncratic proposal for "professional criminals" to be treated as lunatics and detained in asylums at his Majesty's pleasure, the report adds:
"The Whitechapel murderer, known as "Jack the Ripper," was, said Sir Robert, undoubtedly insane, and was ultimately confined within an asylum."

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=OW19041228.2.41

This comes reasonably early in the sequence of Anderson's pronouncements, though he had already referred to the murderer being "safely caged in an asylum" in The Nineteenth Century, in February 1901. The word "ultimately" may be seen as significant, considering that Aaron Kozminski was not committed to Colney Hatch until more than two years after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.

[lynn cates]

rethinking Aaron

Hello Chris. Bravo!

I think that one word could represent a significant reexpressing of Sir Robert's earlier discussion on Kosminski.

Cheers.
LC

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

I totally agree with your previous post that the word 'ultimately' suggests some kind of significant interval between the Kelly murder and the suspect's incarceration, which perfectly matches the medical records on Aaron Kosminski.

I believe that Aaron Kosminski is one of the major suspects in the Ripper mystery, though I -- for what it is worth -- subscribe to the theory that his existence was not learned about by senior members of Scotland Yard until after his incarceration in Feb 1891.

Kosminski was an excellent suspect; local, sexually deranged, unemployed, attacked his sister with a knife, suspected by his own family -- but found too late.

For example, had Scotland Yard really known about him earlier they would not have pushed so hard in Feb 1891 to nail Tom Sadler for both the Coles murder and the previous Ripper murders too [they flunked on both].

Sadler was a Gentile and a sailor, but ALSO middle-aged and burly -- and yet they frantically wheeled in Lawende, not for an evidentially fairer line-up but a one-on-one 'confrontation'. That Lawende said 'no' is hardly surprising [and left a bitterness in Swanson which would evolve, I believe, into the 'Seaside Home' myth]

This knowledge about Kosminski as the Ripper, gained some time between Sadler's release in March 1891, and the writing of the official version of Macnaghten's Report in Feb 1894, was not shared with the detectives in the field, or those who had already retired [why would it be?]

This is why Abberline in 1903, quite understandably, dismisses the 'Locked-up Lunatic' theory because he mistaknely thinks it is a tabloid invention/exaggeration. In fact, this Polish-Jew was the chief suspect, rightly or wrongly, of no less than the Head of CID and the operational head of the Ripper police hunters.

I would also like to point out that whilst Macnaghten, either deliberately or mistakenly, redacts police suspicion about Kosminski back into the Ripper hunt of 1888 to 1891 -- and backdates the suspect's incarceration to the much less embarrassing date of March 1889 -- he is the one source who seems to know [in the 'Aberconway' version of his Report] that Kosminksi was still alive in the asylum, in 1894.

Arguably this knowledge by Macnaghten, of Kosminski's true status [eg. alive, and not safely dead], may be as late as 1898 if that is when he actually wrote, or rewrote, the suspects' section of his Report to show to Major Arthur Griffiths. The filed version of his Report would not have impressed, as it contained glaring and ludicrous uncertainties about what another suspect, M J Druitt, even did for a living? In this, perhaps later version, one beefed up to show a crony, Kosminski now has a fictitious police witness -- to further strengthen the suspicion against him.

Of course, we know that this is really the German-Jewish trader, Joseph Lawende, and that he saw a young Gentile-looking man dressed as a sailor. Macnaghten, either deliberately or mistakenly, has pulled the witness and suspect inside-out by reversing their ethnicity.

Though this may have been an attempt to deflect attention away from young, Gentile Druitt -- who generically strongly resembles 'Jack the Sailor' -- it does contain a kernel of truth about Aaron Kosminski too: that he was young.

Macnaghten's other literary mouthpiece, George Sims, writes in 1907 that the damning argument against the Polish-Jew suspect being the Fiend is that he was out and about for too long after the Kelly atrocity.

This also seems to hint at accurate knowledge, by Macnaghten, that Kosminski was NOT committed soon after the Kelly murder, and furthermore that he did NOT die soon after incarceration [AND that he was young].

Anderson, I believe, had already begun claiming, as early as 1895, that the Polish-Jew suspect, presumably Kosminski, was incarcerated and then soon after expired. The 'Swanson Marginalia' makes the same inaccurately wishful claim -- and even seems to have Kosminski responsible for the Frances Coles murder too?! [this is the giveaway that Swanson's failing and frustrated memory is fusing the Sadler-Lawende debacle with Kosminski's incarceration, and then his belatedly coming to their attention as a top suspect.]

All this was wishful thinking on the part of Anderson and/or Swanson as desk-bound Anderson's source, yet their old age flailing should not obscure that Kosminski was very likely to have been the Ripper.

This succession of 'errors' by Macnaghten, Anderson and Swanson are to bury that one fact; that Kosminski came too late to police attention for them to even be able to do an interview with him.

That word, 'ultimately', maybe a tiny, inadvertent expression/admission of this acutely painful reality, a reality later altered by the passing years to be more acceptable for both private and public contemplation.

Though of course other explanations are certainly possible too, including that it means nothing at all.

[tnb]

Jonathan,

I think you are correct in divining a 'split' somewhat between those officers engaged on the case at the time (Swanson, Anderson etc) and ageing by the time their 'opinions' were voiced, and those who came after, such as Macnaghten, who would have had better access to developments post 1888, but - crucially - also lacked the experience and insight of the contemporary investigation. As myself, yourself and others attempted to show on the 'Dr Bluitt' thread, it is quite likely that Macnaghten certainly went around his clubs and social circle liberally 'revealing' his opinions to a certain few; in exchange for popularity, attention, prestige? - we do not know. Anderson appears to have been a much more guarded sort, however even he, it would seem, could not resist dropping the odd 'I knew the answer, you know' hint when tempted. The supreme irony of his line about how Scotland Yard officers do not tell tales in The Lighter Side... coupled with the teasing hints that immediately follow it, has been pointed out many times before. This excellent snippet found by Chris seems to bear out my long-held suspicion that he was, in truth, at it as much as the rest of them. Even though Swanson didn't publish his own memoirs, he could not resist annotating his former colleague's with his own thoughts.

However I cannot help but wonder if Anderson (and similarly Swanson) would really have been so well informed as you seem to believe by, in this case, 1904. Obviously there would still have been contact with officers still on the force, and no doubt the odd social occasion (he had only retired 3 years previous) where it is easy to imagine talk amongst fellow 'old timers' turning to 'the one that got away', but would he necessarily have been privy to all the latest ins-and-outs? Swanson's confusion about the Sadler case seems to suggest that even before he retired he had begun to find himself somewhat out of the loop.

In my reading the hunt at the time of the murders was very much for an outwardly 'foreign' looking, likely Jewish, suspect; partly due to prejudice and a belief (or desire to believe) that an English Gentile could not commit such crimes (which I seem to remember being voiced by someone on the investigation, or was it one the Drs at an inquest? I am sure someone will refresh my memory) and also fed by Mrs Long's convenient description of the 'dark' and 'foreign' man seen with Annie Chapman. This widely circulated nugget of information snowballed to such an extent that it led, in part,, to the arrests of at least two innocent Jewish men, Isenschmid and Pizer. It also, in my opinion, contaminated the 'memory' of a number of witnesses who came after Long. But that is for another thread.

My point is - even by 1904 Anderson, and by the time of the Marginalia Swanson, appear to have still been somewhat wedded to this theory. In actual fact, if we look at the suspects implicated more or less immediately post 1888, we see a much greater proportion of Gentile suspects - Sadler, Grainger, Druitt - and to return to our previous discussion, I believe Sims' and Robinson's spreading of various forms of the 'mad doctor' theory shows that Mcnaghten was spreading this, his own 'pet' theory (via Farquharson), around his club pals. To me at least it seems that the investigation (rightly or wrongly) had moved on from the Jewish angle to a more 'English' suspect by this point. If Anderson (as I see it) was largely ignorant of this, which he appears to be by still giving provenance to the 'foreign jew' theory, then I think it extremely unlikely that he was up on the latest discoveries regarding Kosminski's incarceration.

I personally do not believe Anderson is alluding to any SPECIFIC suspect in the Institute lecture, as after all he was speaking to an audience who could not possibly have shared the reference. They did not know and could not prove if he massaged the facts somewhat to make a tidy conclusion, which I believe is what he was doing here. 'I believe all professional criminals should be detained as lunatics...if we had done so then Jack the Ripper would have been stopped, as he ultimately was'. It supports his argument, it peaks the audience's interest, and it gives just a hint of further revelations. Thus no doubt going a long way to ensuring further such engagements. And why not? If he believed his point, why not make it as best he could.

The problem with moulding the statement to fit Kosminski is that it seems to suggest that, as I have said above, such a policy would have averted the Whitechapel crimes, ie. Anderson's 'Jack' was already known to the police, which so far as we know Kosminski was not - that is the meaning of 'ultimately'; ie. 'In the end, but tragically too late'. If this wasn't the implication then I see no way in which the sentence fits into his broader argument.

Let's not forget that Anderson also took the opportunity to try to lay the blame for the murders at the door of yet another, but entirely different, 'foreign Jew' suspect (Chapman) when the opportunity presented itself. He was, I am afraid, showing every sign of increasingly desperate clutching at straws. Retired, his whole career more or less defined by one failure, (I have suggested) marginalised by his former peers...sometimes it's hard to let go.

[lynn cates]

something new

Hello TNB.

"Let's not forget that Anderson also took the opportunity to try to lay the blame for the murders at the door of yet another, but entirely different, 'foreign Jew' suspect (Chapman) when the opportunity presented itself."

I completely missed that one. I know Abberline thought this, but was unaware of Dr. Anderson's doing so. This is significant and requires some rethinking.

Also, I know that Chapman (SK) was Polish and tried to pass as a Jew at one point. I was unaware, however, that he was Jewish.

The best.
LC

[robhouse]

Chapman was not Jewish, and Anderson (as far as I know) never claimed Chapman was the Ripper.

Wow.. this thread really is fascinating. It makes me wonder just how far the whole "confused memory" theory might go. I had though it may have reached the furthest extent as far as suggesting absurd and convoluted theories, trying (desperately) to explain away Anderson's rather simple and concise statements. But apparently not.

RH

[tnb]

Fair cop. Got Abberline and Anderson mixed up, begginer's error and all that. Not that I mean I don't realise they're very different people, just that in my mind Abberline's fingering of Chapman got muddled up with Anderson. Sorry.

Chapman did indeed try to pass as a Jew, and to my mind I think most people in the East End at the time (and believe it or not I do know a little about what I'm talking about) who came into contact with him would have thought him such, whether he was saying so himself or not.

I still think there are some valid points in my post but obviously I have fatally undermined them by not checking back my facts and allowing my theorising to run away with me. I do not think I appear desperate to prove any point or another, Rob, as I do not have a particular suspect 'axe' to grind; absurd and convoluted...perhaps.

Again, apologies. In my six months or so seriously looking into the case and posting on here I would like to think I have made some little contribution and shown myself to be a somewhat decent thinker. Clearly my mistake has 'offended' a couple of more senior members - I can be a pretty sarcastic person myself so I can't blame Lynn or Rob for that. I will now take a break from the site, or at least from posting, until I can meet up to people's standards. It may do me some good. Shame, but I do not really feel like posting any more right now.

Tnb.

[lynn cates]

clarification

Hello TNB. No offense taken; no sarcasm intended.

I thought it remotely possible that you had some new information. After all, Dr. Anderson kept a letter, which some think implicated Druitt. This, even after backing Kosminski (or, as Fido says, K-something-ski).

I agree that SK could be presented as Jewish without stretching credulity. We know he posed as Jewish for awhile--amongst certain other races/nationalities.

Cheers.
LC

[Jonathan H]

Yes, it was Abberline, not Anderson, who thought it was Chapman in 1903.

I thought you must be wrong-footed on that one. Easy to do of course.

It's such a labyrinth.

By 1895 Anderson was telling Major Griffiths of his 'theory' that the Ripper was a madman whose hideous career was 'cut short' by being committed to an asylum.

Actually, if Kosminski was the Fiend he stopped killing for two years.

By 1910 Anderson is claiming that his theory is a fact.

That's a contradiction, one easily explainable; people as primary sources become less reliable as they age. For example, they want things they suspected to be true. They try and justify themselves.

Napoleon's memoirs are just shameless on this front. Accodring to him he never srated a single war, not one. It was his foreign enemies who opposed the reforms of the French Rev. This is true, but also a self-serving exxageration, to put it mildly.

Have you seen the mean-spirited, self-serving fiction which Sarah Palin is foistering in her book at the moment? Fictional because she, as a primary source, can be measured against other primary sources, in this case emails, which strongly suggest that she is remembering events as she wants them to be -- a version which inevitably make her look better.

Everybody does it to varying degrees.

It is rare, very rare, for an aging primary source to do what Bob McNamara did, in 1995's 'In Retrospect', and write with painful candor that he was tragically wrong about the Viet Nam War.

In fairness to Anderson he does not, in published form, make the mistakes of Swanson in his private scribbles. Anderson does not claim that the Polish Jew is dead [which he wasn't], and he does not claim that the identification took place at the Seaside Home.

But he also does not deal with the Sadler debacle of 1891. In his memoirs it does not exist. He gives the impression that the un-named Polish Jew suspect was contemporaneous with the Ripper investigation, perhaps as early as Dec. 1888.

Again, that's to be expected by a source writing in a non-official, autobiographical document, under their own name, which is going to be biased towards themselves. Of course it is.

Swanson, inadvertesntly no doubt, gives the game away that memories are fading to the point of measurable self-serving inaccuracy.

He claims that there were no other murders of this kind after Kosminski was permanently incarcerated. Well, there was: Frances Coles days later.

He claims that the suspect is dead. He wasn't and had nearly another decade of life to endure when Swanson made these annotations.

He claims that a Jewish witness identified Kosminski but refused to testify against a fellow Hebrew.

There is absolutely nothing in surviving records which point to such an event.

Nothing.

Certainly not Macnaghten, who was very aware of Kosminski and wrote the earliest surviving mention of this suspect -- at least that we have -- and he has nothing whatever to say about such an extraordinary moment [he does, however, in 1898 create a Bobbie eyewitness who never existed, which I think also lodged in Swanson's memory who 'corrected' this error from a police witness into a witness-at-a-police locale].

But there is the Lawende non-identification of Tom Sadler in 1891, which involved witnesses being questioned at the Sailor's Home [aka Seamen's Home]. He was Jewish, though the suspect was not. We also have Lawende again being wheeled out and saying 'yes' to William Grant Grainger in 1895.

Therefore, I do not find any of this theorising of suspect fusion -- by Evans and Rumbelow -- to be convoluted at all. It's just my opinion, for what that is worth, but I find this theory elegant and revelatory.

The argument against the Evans/Rumbelow 'Sailor's Home' would have some precarious footing if Anderson and/or Swanson mentioned the Sadler hunt, and therefore clearly differentiated as two separate events, and two separate suspects.

They do not.

Where I part company with Evans and Rumbelow is that they see Kosminski as perhaps fatally undermined as a major suspect by this theory of a fading, self-serving memory confusion on the part of Swanson, who fed this exaggrated nonsense to his desk-bound boss.

I think, however, that if you strip back the 'Seaside Home' myth what you are left with is still an extraordinary suspect in Aaron Kosminski.

I find it is a straight line through the disparate, fragmentary sources.

After the Coles-Sadler debacle of 1891, information came to the attention of senior police [my guess is Macnaghten] about a Polish Jewish family who had committed their member, terrfied that he was not only violently insane -- but Jack the Ripper.

Sometime between 1891 and 1894, Macnaghten discussed what he had learned with Swanson who was very impressed, who passed this onto Anderson who was also very impressed. For reasons I won't go into here Macnaghten did not share their excitement, preferring the suspicions of the Druitt family.

Yet Kosminski is arguably a much more plausible suspect than Druitt. He lived near the scene of the crimes, he was sexually dysfunctional, intermittently mad, and threatened his own sister with a knife no less. A family usually does not want their member to be a serial killer who could bring down upon their heads a raging mob, or the authorities, or just the public shame.

Yet something about their Aaron totally freaked them out, and they spoke the unspeakable. This family theory [I am inferring from the silky way Macnaghten writes this in his Report: 1894 version] somehow made its way to the upper echelons of the police, completely bypassing the cops in the field.

Since Kosminski was already committed there was nothing the police could do to really check on the family's theory. Perhaps Macnaghten was sent down for a quiet chat with family members. It would have been inappropriate to go anywhere near Kosminski in the asylum, and politically dangerous too.

In Feb. 1894 the Cutbush potential-scandal suddenly loomed.

Macnaghten decided to include Kosminski on his list [and so he should, since it was the chief suspect of his superior] but could not remember Kosminski's first name? Nothing was ever written down about him and so there was no way of checking. Swanson could not recall -- and so the first name, glaringly and embarrassingly, is not in either version of the Macnaghten Report [or the Swanson Marginalia].

From 1895, Anderson and Swanson began talking in public about their [un-named] chief suspect. For reasons I won't go into here this activated in Macnaghten a need to divert the public away from the [un-named] Kosminski towards his chief suspect [the also un-named] Druitt. He did this not by a vulgar, hard-to-control press conference [at least not until 1913] but by showing the 'draft' version of his Report to reliable pals and writers: Griffiths and Sims -- and pehaps Richardson too

By 1903, with Macnaghten sitting behind Anderson's desk, the un-named Druitt, totally unrecoverable inside the 'Drowned Doctor' shell-game, was ascendant in Edwardian culture, and forever in popuklar culture until the Royal mythos of the 1970's.

Yet, Anderson, perhaps quite justly, refused to go along. It really was Kosminski who was the best bet to be the Ripper.

What clouds all this is Anderson's bitterness towards the Kosminski family for not coming forward sooner [eg. how about the two years Aaron was walking around perhaps a ticking time-bomb] and so, in his fading memory, he blamed a certain class of low-life foreign Jews for protecting this suspect.

Swanson flails even more, in a source whose severe limiatation is that it was for nobody's eyes but his own. So he can write what he pleases. There is no accoutability here, not even public knowledge -- until 1987 -- that this vital, tantalizing primary source even existed.

Swanson, in the 1900's, having read Major Griffiths, and perhaps Sims -- and knowing their source is Macnaghten, that insufferably pushy, Ripper-hunter wannabe -- his memory, by 1910, completely collapses into embittered confusion, even recrimination.

He's right, that there was no 'Drowned Doctor' being efficiently pursued by his team, yet he adopts from this myth the lovely idea of a safely dead suspect.

There was no police witness to Catherine Eddowes, talking with a young Polish Jew before her murder. Instead, Swanson furiously scribbles, creating a mishmash of half-recalled events from 1891 to 1895.

It was a treacherous Jewish witness who was ['confronted'] with the suspect [actually Sadler] who said 'yes' [actually about Grainger] and then 'no' [back to Sadler] and this all happened at the 'Seaside Home' [the phonetic cousin to 'Sailor's/Seaman's Home'].

I argue, nevertheless, that Anderson, briefed by Swanson, being so self-servingly trying to beef up the evidence against Kosminski [why not publish publicly?] is a genuine expression of real, senior police frustration about a real chief suspect.

All these senior police buried the fact that Kosminski came to their attention too late. In old age, Anderson and Swanson express their anger at the man's family by projecting it onto a Judas witness, and an entire ethnic underclass.

'Ultimately' is a perhaps tiny glimpse of this evolving, simmering frustration.

[Johnr]

A Fascinating Theorising Thread...

I agree with Robhouse, this is an increasingly fascinating thread.

As for' tnb': Fear not! Your explication and extension of Jonathan's theorising is both concise, refreshing and - to my mind - logical. Sure, you got the 'Chapman was a Jew' bit wrong, but even with that, I am sure a lot of people would have bundled Chapman in with so many other East End locals as
potential Rippers.Though Anderson didn't.

As for Jonathan, well done Old Bean! Your latest lengthy salvo clarifies a lot of your earlier surmise into pure gold distilled.

Logical, but oh my!, that Macnaghten comes across as a greater schemer than the shifty Christian, Sir Robert Anderson.Can this be so?

I would be interested to learn where you think James Monro's few (official )comments on JTR fit into this involved landscape?

Monro's seven page report on the Coles murder to Home Secretary Mathews,
dated 11th September, 1889 ( see page 546 of Evans & Skinner's
"The Ultimate JTR Sourcebook") differentiates the Coles murder from the Dorset Street (Kelly) murder by the former's lack of "furious mania" and "influence of frenzy".

Does Monro's use of these telling (and indeed accurate) words, suggest a subscription to the Macnaghten "would not have survived sanely after the Kelly murder because of its obvious insane nature" scenario?
JOHN RUFFELS.

[Jonathan H]

Thank-you, Johnr, for your kind words.

Via historical methodology, in articles and posts, I have been proposing a new Macnaghten.

Far from being a know-nothing bumbler, he was the 'Honourable Schoolboy' who moves across the late Victorian/Edwardian years with a very clear and successful Ripper agenda -- in my opinion.

I think he knew everything about Montie Druitt [and Kosminski for that matter] right down to his cricket scores. He manipulated everybody: the Home Office, his literary pals, his loathed superior, the public, and brazenly admitted destroying critical evidence against Druitt. Why not? It was his possession, his prize, not Scotland Yard's, because he alone had laid the phantom to rest, not them.

On the one hand Macnaghten cunningly shielded the Yard from a libel suit with the impenetrable 'Drowned Doctor' profile. On the other hand, he forced the 'better classes' to face the unpalatable truth; the Ripper was 'one of us'.

Part of this beautifully symmetrical fix is that it blocked Anderson from ever, in public, denouncing the myth of the Blackheath Jekyll/Whitechapel Hyde by making him also 'Tumbletyesque'.

In private, Littlechild blew the whistle on this 'Dr D' scam to Sims in 1913; yes, there was a contemporaneous, middle-aged dodgy medico -- but he got away. Macnaghten, via Sims, had inverted this debacle into the nearly successful police chase of the mad English doctor, almost practically to the edge of the Thames. But if Anderson opens his trap about this nonsense it might backfire and rip open the Tumblety scab -- 'Dr T'.

So he didn't.

Then Macnaghten has the cheek, in his 1914 memoirs, to blithely admit that this suicided Super-suspect was unknown to police until years too late. The Ripper was omnipotent; a 'protean madman', an East End Nero, who pushed aside worthies of state in his maniacal, bloody wake.

It is very late here in South Australia, and I have just returned from my students' Final Year Graduation ceremony. I will reply about Monro tomorrow.

Cheers Jonathan