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Although there is little in the facts of the "Ripper" case to support Sir Robert Anderson's assertion about a Polish Jew being the Whitechapel murderer many people believe his account to be true. This belief is based upon Martin Fido's assertion that a study of Anderson's deep Millenarist religious beliefs reveals that it would have been anathema for him to have lied in the interests of self-interest within the pages of a book written for a general readership.
Paul Begg has written that, "What Martin's critics should do is establish whether or not Martin's assessment of Anderson's religious beliefs is correct, whether Anderson did consider it anathema to lie in self-interest and, if he did, whether that supports Martin's conclusion that Anderson was telling the truth about the Ripper." And Martin Fido wrote, "I've only ever been asked one really challenging question about my Cohen-Kosminsky position, and not surprisingly it came from Paul Begg."
Hmmn. While this might not seem to bode well for us lesser mortals, any theological debate would serve little purpose, as it is impossible to discern from someone's religious beliefs whether or not they might lie on any given occasion. It's a complete red herring. So what else can we employ to get at the facts of the matter? There is, of course, the Swanson endpaper notation, but this should be treated with caution as it is probably the most opportune piece of supporting evidence in the history of opportune pieces of supporting evidence. What we need is some sort of factually-based litmus test as to Anderson's veracity.
With this in mind, my curiousity was recently piqued by a later footnote in The Lighter Side of My Official Life, during the reading of which I was struck by the notion that you don't so much read Anderson as try to decode him.
The footnote, spanning pages 279 and 280, follows a romanticized account of Anderson receiving his CB from Queen Victoria in 1896—
Page 279—"In the following year I was offered another honour, which I declined for somewhat quixotic reasons which I need not mention here; and I have ever since regretted that I did so. On the 20th of September, 1897, I had a visit from M. Goremykine (the Russian Minister of the Interior) and M. Ratchkoysky, to express anew the Tzar's appreciation of the Police arrangements for his safety during his visit. And on the following
Page 280—"day M. Ratchkosky called again to offer me the insignia of the Order of St. Anne. I afterwards received a personal token of His Majesty's approval."
We know that Anderson could not have accepted this honour, firstly because in order to be allowed to accept and wear a foreign decoration British subjects had to seek the license and authority of the monarch, as shown by this cutting from The Times, 11th September 1897—
During Anderson's lifetime no announcement of any such permission being accorded him appeared in either the London Gazette or The Times.
Secondly, in the frontispiece of The Lighter Side of My Official Life is a photograph of the newly knighted Anderson in 1901. He is wearing the full dress uniform of the Assistant Commissioner of Police and sporting his KCB insignia and neck decoration plus two other medals.
But he is not wearing the distinctive insignias of the Order of St. Anne—
Anderson being offered the Order of St. Anne wasn't mentioned in A.P. Moore-Anderson's biography of his father, although the book does lend weight to Anderson's final footnote remark that "I afterwards received a personal token of His Majesty's approval"—
"The detectives deputed to guard foreign royalties received many personal gifts. Occasionally their Chief was also remembered in this way, twice by the ill-fated Nicholas II of Russia, the first time when he was Czarevitch [he visited London in July 1893 and July 1894], the gift being a Russian salt-cellar. The second present was a diamond ring of such dimensions that it might fit a super-size thumb. The diamonds with the Imperial monogram made a fine brooch for my mother. The gold ring, reduced to normal size, with the Russian N, II and crown reproduced, I am wearing to-day." [my brackets]
Whilst this might suggest some sort of warm and cosy relationship between the Tsar and Robert Anderson, anyone interested in how Imperial largesse was dispensed should read "Gifts the Czar Left", New York Times, 3rd November 1889. It is also worth mentioning that a 5th July 1893 entry in the Chief Constable's Register records "Three occasional informants re: Czarevitch". This is in addition to an entry concerning three other informants "Visit of Czarevitch—Kraft £1, Rumph £1, Martin £1", but it is not clear if it was Anderson who authorised the payments [see Clutterbuck].
Anderson next pinpoints a specific date—20th September 1897—on which he was visited by two Russian worthies.
A trawl through The Times, New York Times and other newspapers reveals no 1897 visit to London by Russian Minister of the Interior Ivan Goremykin which might have required police protection. Nor do various English, Russian and American political archives turn up anyone of note by the name "Ratchkoysky" or "Ratchkosky" [note the different footnote spellings on each page], someone who must have been of an elevated status in order to be able to offer Anderson the Order of St. Anne, an honour traditionally bestowed by the Emperor or Empress and, occasionally, Russian ambassadors.
Was either "Ratchkoysky" or "Ratchkosky" a typo missed during proof reading—in which case a casual reader might reasonably conclude that one of the two versions was correctly spelled—or is it possible they were two intentional misspellings to thinly veil the identity of Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, Tsar Nicholas II's personal emissary in secret matters and, from 1884-1902, head of the Okhrana's Foreign Bureau in Paris?
Bernard Porter and other intelligence historians tell us there was more than a measure of 'unofficial' cooperation between Scotland Yard and the Okhrana; also that the relationship was fairly ad hoc but frowned upon in certain political circles—although William Melville was fairly chummy with Rachkovsky during the 1890s. So perhaps such a meeting shouldn't completely surprise us.
There have been accusations of Anderson playing the anti-Semitic card in accusing a Polish Jew of being the Whitechapel murderer, which makes this meeting especially curious given the fact that Ivan Logginovitch Goremykin and Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky were the two men most heavily involved in the creation and promulgation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the faked manifesto purporting to detail a massive Jewish world-conspiracy. The Protocols were rumoured to be based upon a pamphlet stolen from the political journalist Elie De Cyon [Ilya Tsion] by Rachkovsky in 1897, the same year as his visit to Anderson in London. It's an interesting coincidence. So is it a further coincidence that Anderson's September 20th 1897 meeting with Goremykin and Rachkovsky took place just three weeks after the close of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basle, Switzerland?
At face value it's a conundrum. However, further investigation adds a measure of factual clarity regarding Anderson's story.
The history of Russian railways records that in 1889 the engineer P.I. Balinsky submitted the design of a metropolitan railway to the St. Petersburg Chief of the City Administration. Nicholas II ordered the setting up of a Special Highly Approved Commission of Ministers, which found the project a necessary one but rejected any financial support. The reason was that the Ministry of Finance was at that moment raising RUR [roubles] 120 million for military loan facilities.
Balinsky decided to go abroad for a subsidy, and in the summer of 1899 left for England together with the officials who accompanied the Minister of the Interior Ivan Goremykin. Balinsky found an opportunity in England to get a subsidy in the amount of RUR 290 million and managed to convince the investors to come to Russia and invest RUR 25 million as a pre-payment.
At the time Sergei Witte was the Minister of Finance and one of the most powerful figures in the Russian government. The negotiation of loans for railway building, trade, and determining the size of naval and military budgets was his responsibility.
Witte's memoirs record the following—
"Before leaving the subject of Goremykin I want to say something about Rachkovskii [sic], the head of our secret police in Paris, and his trip to England with Goremykin in the summer of 1899.
"Rachkovskii had been named to his post by Emperor Alexander III. As our relations with France improved, so did his status, because the French, who had given Russian terrorists asylum, began to take a less kindly attitude towards them, thus helping Rachkovskii. Also, his position was strengthened by the fact that he was a remarkably intelligent man, in fact the most gifted and intelligent police official I have ever met . . . Rachkovskii's position in Paris was strengthened, too, by the insignificance of our ambassadors there, Mohrenheim and Urusov.
"Consequently, Rachkovskii was able to exercise more influence on the course of our rapprochement with France than did our ambassadors: he exercised this influence with the help of our ministers of interior, our palace commandants, and our ambassadors. In what high regard he was held in France can be judged from the fact (which I learned from President Loubet) that when the president had to go to Lyons, where threats had been made against his life, he entrusted the arrangements for his security there to Rachkovskii because he had more confidence in him than he had in his own security force.
" . . . Also travelling with Goremykin were the engineer Belinskii [sic], whose father was a well-known psychiatrist (and later part-time literary figure, part-time police agent), and M.M. Liaschenko, who was to end up in an insane asylum; his father was a cavalry general.
"Well, the members of Goremykin's party made agreements with various English industrial firms, among them an agreement to build a circular railroad on the docks near Petersburg. The "well-known" Tatischev, our financial agent in Paris, reported to me (I filed the report in the archive of the Ministry of Finance) that there had been some improprieties in connection with these agreements and added that he could not believe that Goremykin was aware of them. But a reading of the report indicates that if Goremykin had not had a hand in these arrangements, he was certainly aware of them."
As early as March 1899 there had been rumours of Tsar Nicholas II's dissatisfaction with Ivan Goremykin and that he was soon to be replaced by Sergei Witte. The axe fell whilst Goremykin was in England negotiating the railway loan behind Witte's back. He was sacked in absentia, only learning about it on his return to Russia in October 1899, and as a consequence Balinsky lost his financial support.
How does all of this square with Anderson's footnote?
Firstly, Anderson is out by two years in his alleged meeting with Goremykin and Ratchkovsky on their only trip together to England. Secondly, we have to ask why Tsar Nicholas II would bestow a prestigious honour upon Anderson for protecting Goremykin [this was the purpose of Rachkovsky's presence], a man who at the time was undermining the authority of his Minister of Finance and who was destined for the political wilderness [he later redeemed himself, partly because of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to become Prime Minister in 1906].
So from where could the story have come of Rachkovsky offering Anderson the Order of St. Anne, an honour he "declined for somewhat quixotic reasons" and "ever since regretted that I did so"?
Perhaps its genesis is to be found here, in "Fontanka 16" [the title is the St Petersburg address of the Tsarist secret police], by Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov, published by McGill-Queen's University Press 1999—
S.E. Zvoliansky, an emissary from the department of police, investigated Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky's Paris Okhrana operation, concluding that the Foreign Agency was "among the best (if not the best)" of Russia's security sections, and that all credit belonged to Rachkovsky.
"Zvoliansky helped bring about the awarding of a medal to Rachkovsky, when a report deplored his lack of decoration despite 'fifteen years' of accomplished security work. [In early 1899] Rachkovsky received the Order of St. Anna, third class."
Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky died in 1910, the year of Anderson's memoirs.
These are the historical facts at our current disposal. More will emerge in the future. In the meantime I leave it to you to decode Sir Robert Anderson's footnote and decide its truthfulness.
Regards,
Simon
Although there is little in the facts of the "Ripper" case to support Sir Robert Anderson's assertion about a Polish Jew being the Whitechapel murderer many people believe his account to be true. This belief is based upon Martin Fido's assertion that a study of Anderson's deep Millenarist religious beliefs reveals that it would have been anathema for him to have lied in the interests of self-interest within the pages of a book written for a general readership.
Paul Begg has written that, "What Martin's critics should do is establish whether or not Martin's assessment of Anderson's religious beliefs is correct, whether Anderson did consider it anathema to lie in self-interest and, if he did, whether that supports Martin's conclusion that Anderson was telling the truth about the Ripper." And Martin Fido wrote, "I've only ever been asked one really challenging question about my Cohen-Kosminsky position, and not surprisingly it came from Paul Begg."
Hmmn. While this might not seem to bode well for us lesser mortals, any theological debate would serve little purpose, as it is impossible to discern from someone's religious beliefs whether or not they might lie on any given occasion. It's a complete red herring. So what else can we employ to get at the facts of the matter? There is, of course, the Swanson endpaper notation, but this should be treated with caution as it is probably the most opportune piece of supporting evidence in the history of opportune pieces of supporting evidence. What we need is some sort of factually-based litmus test as to Anderson's veracity.
With this in mind, my curiousity was recently piqued by a later footnote in The Lighter Side of My Official Life, during the reading of which I was struck by the notion that you don't so much read Anderson as try to decode him.
The footnote, spanning pages 279 and 280, follows a romanticized account of Anderson receiving his CB from Queen Victoria in 1896—
Page 279—"In the following year I was offered another honour, which I declined for somewhat quixotic reasons which I need not mention here; and I have ever since regretted that I did so. On the 20th of September, 1897, I had a visit from M. Goremykine (the Russian Minister of the Interior) and M. Ratchkoysky, to express anew the Tzar's appreciation of the Police arrangements for his safety during his visit. And on the following
Page 280—"day M. Ratchkosky called again to offer me the insignia of the Order of St. Anne. I afterwards received a personal token of His Majesty's approval."
We know that Anderson could not have accepted this honour, firstly because in order to be allowed to accept and wear a foreign decoration British subjects had to seek the license and authority of the monarch, as shown by this cutting from The Times, 11th September 1897—
During Anderson's lifetime no announcement of any such permission being accorded him appeared in either the London Gazette or The Times.
Secondly, in the frontispiece of The Lighter Side of My Official Life is a photograph of the newly knighted Anderson in 1901. He is wearing the full dress uniform of the Assistant Commissioner of Police and sporting his KCB insignia and neck decoration plus two other medals.
But he is not wearing the distinctive insignias of the Order of St. Anne—
Anderson being offered the Order of St. Anne wasn't mentioned in A.P. Moore-Anderson's biography of his father, although the book does lend weight to Anderson's final footnote remark that "I afterwards received a personal token of His Majesty's approval"—
"The detectives deputed to guard foreign royalties received many personal gifts. Occasionally their Chief was also remembered in this way, twice by the ill-fated Nicholas II of Russia, the first time when he was Czarevitch [he visited London in July 1893 and July 1894], the gift being a Russian salt-cellar. The second present was a diamond ring of such dimensions that it might fit a super-size thumb. The diamonds with the Imperial monogram made a fine brooch for my mother. The gold ring, reduced to normal size, with the Russian N, II and crown reproduced, I am wearing to-day." [my brackets]
Whilst this might suggest some sort of warm and cosy relationship between the Tsar and Robert Anderson, anyone interested in how Imperial largesse was dispensed should read "Gifts the Czar Left", New York Times, 3rd November 1889. It is also worth mentioning that a 5th July 1893 entry in the Chief Constable's Register records "Three occasional informants re: Czarevitch". This is in addition to an entry concerning three other informants "Visit of Czarevitch—Kraft £1, Rumph £1, Martin £1", but it is not clear if it was Anderson who authorised the payments [see Clutterbuck].
Anderson next pinpoints a specific date—20th September 1897—on which he was visited by two Russian worthies.
A trawl through The Times, New York Times and other newspapers reveals no 1897 visit to London by Russian Minister of the Interior Ivan Goremykin which might have required police protection. Nor do various English, Russian and American political archives turn up anyone of note by the name "Ratchkoysky" or "Ratchkosky" [note the different footnote spellings on each page], someone who must have been of an elevated status in order to be able to offer Anderson the Order of St. Anne, an honour traditionally bestowed by the Emperor or Empress and, occasionally, Russian ambassadors.
Was either "Ratchkoysky" or "Ratchkosky" a typo missed during proof reading—in which case a casual reader might reasonably conclude that one of the two versions was correctly spelled—or is it possible they were two intentional misspellings to thinly veil the identity of Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, Tsar Nicholas II's personal emissary in secret matters and, from 1884-1902, head of the Okhrana's Foreign Bureau in Paris?
Bernard Porter and other intelligence historians tell us there was more than a measure of 'unofficial' cooperation between Scotland Yard and the Okhrana; also that the relationship was fairly ad hoc but frowned upon in certain political circles—although William Melville was fairly chummy with Rachkovsky during the 1890s. So perhaps such a meeting shouldn't completely surprise us.
There have been accusations of Anderson playing the anti-Semitic card in accusing a Polish Jew of being the Whitechapel murderer, which makes this meeting especially curious given the fact that Ivan Logginovitch Goremykin and Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky were the two men most heavily involved in the creation and promulgation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the faked manifesto purporting to detail a massive Jewish world-conspiracy. The Protocols were rumoured to be based upon a pamphlet stolen from the political journalist Elie De Cyon [Ilya Tsion] by Rachkovsky in 1897, the same year as his visit to Anderson in London. It's an interesting coincidence. So is it a further coincidence that Anderson's September 20th 1897 meeting with Goremykin and Rachkovsky took place just three weeks after the close of the First Zionist Congress, held in Basle, Switzerland?
At face value it's a conundrum. However, further investigation adds a measure of factual clarity regarding Anderson's story.
The history of Russian railways records that in 1889 the engineer P.I. Balinsky submitted the design of a metropolitan railway to the St. Petersburg Chief of the City Administration. Nicholas II ordered the setting up of a Special Highly Approved Commission of Ministers, which found the project a necessary one but rejected any financial support. The reason was that the Ministry of Finance was at that moment raising RUR [roubles] 120 million for military loan facilities.
Balinsky decided to go abroad for a subsidy, and in the summer of 1899 left for England together with the officials who accompanied the Minister of the Interior Ivan Goremykin. Balinsky found an opportunity in England to get a subsidy in the amount of RUR 290 million and managed to convince the investors to come to Russia and invest RUR 25 million as a pre-payment.
At the time Sergei Witte was the Minister of Finance and one of the most powerful figures in the Russian government. The negotiation of loans for railway building, trade, and determining the size of naval and military budgets was his responsibility.
Witte's memoirs record the following—
"Before leaving the subject of Goremykin I want to say something about Rachkovskii [sic], the head of our secret police in Paris, and his trip to England with Goremykin in the summer of 1899.
"Rachkovskii had been named to his post by Emperor Alexander III. As our relations with France improved, so did his status, because the French, who had given Russian terrorists asylum, began to take a less kindly attitude towards them, thus helping Rachkovskii. Also, his position was strengthened by the fact that he was a remarkably intelligent man, in fact the most gifted and intelligent police official I have ever met . . . Rachkovskii's position in Paris was strengthened, too, by the insignificance of our ambassadors there, Mohrenheim and Urusov.
"Consequently, Rachkovskii was able to exercise more influence on the course of our rapprochement with France than did our ambassadors: he exercised this influence with the help of our ministers of interior, our palace commandants, and our ambassadors. In what high regard he was held in France can be judged from the fact (which I learned from President Loubet) that when the president had to go to Lyons, where threats had been made against his life, he entrusted the arrangements for his security there to Rachkovskii because he had more confidence in him than he had in his own security force.
" . . . Also travelling with Goremykin were the engineer Belinskii [sic], whose father was a well-known psychiatrist (and later part-time literary figure, part-time police agent), and M.M. Liaschenko, who was to end up in an insane asylum; his father was a cavalry general.
"Well, the members of Goremykin's party made agreements with various English industrial firms, among them an agreement to build a circular railroad on the docks near Petersburg. The "well-known" Tatischev, our financial agent in Paris, reported to me (I filed the report in the archive of the Ministry of Finance) that there had been some improprieties in connection with these agreements and added that he could not believe that Goremykin was aware of them. But a reading of the report indicates that if Goremykin had not had a hand in these arrangements, he was certainly aware of them."
As early as March 1899 there had been rumours of Tsar Nicholas II's dissatisfaction with Ivan Goremykin and that he was soon to be replaced by Sergei Witte. The axe fell whilst Goremykin was in England negotiating the railway loan behind Witte's back. He was sacked in absentia, only learning about it on his return to Russia in October 1899, and as a consequence Balinsky lost his financial support.
How does all of this square with Anderson's footnote?
Firstly, Anderson is out by two years in his alleged meeting with Goremykin and Ratchkovsky on their only trip together to England. Secondly, we have to ask why Tsar Nicholas II would bestow a prestigious honour upon Anderson for protecting Goremykin [this was the purpose of Rachkovsky's presence], a man who at the time was undermining the authority of his Minister of Finance and who was destined for the political wilderness [he later redeemed himself, partly because of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to become Prime Minister in 1906].
So from where could the story have come of Rachkovsky offering Anderson the Order of St. Anne, an honour he "declined for somewhat quixotic reasons" and "ever since regretted that I did so"?
Perhaps its genesis is to be found here, in "Fontanka 16" [the title is the St Petersburg address of the Tsarist secret police], by Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov, published by McGill-Queen's University Press 1999—
S.E. Zvoliansky, an emissary from the department of police, investigated Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky's Paris Okhrana operation, concluding that the Foreign Agency was "among the best (if not the best)" of Russia's security sections, and that all credit belonged to Rachkovsky.
"Zvoliansky helped bring about the awarding of a medal to Rachkovsky, when a report deplored his lack of decoration despite 'fifteen years' of accomplished security work. [In early 1899] Rachkovsky received the Order of St. Anna, third class."
Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky died in 1910, the year of Anderson's memoirs.
These are the historical facts at our current disposal. More will emerge in the future. In the meantime I leave it to you to decode Sir Robert Anderson's footnote and decide its truthfulness.
Regards,
Simon
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