"low-class Jews"

[Roy Corduroy]

Good evening Jonathan,

The fact that they do not mention each other...

Do they have to?

Each wrote something about the Ripper murders, enough to fit the bill.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

I agree.

What is more, a self-serving interpretation which makes Anderson look a whole lot better about a case for which he received -- arguably -- very unfair criticism from both the press and the government.

That clincher element, the positive witness identification, does not appear before 1910 -- is not even hinted at!

I am not sure that it is fully appreciated how much Macnaghten goes out of his way to debunk his ex-boss in his own memoirs, eg. there was no slam dunk witness. Yes, there was a chief suspect but he had never been 'detained' in an asylum, and he was unknown for the duration of the investigation.

Whether Druitt was the fiend or not, Macnaghten is certainly using him as a strick with which to pound Anderson.

This 'cold war' has been missed, I argue, by secondary sources because the trashing has been done according to the reticent rules of Victorian gentlemanly civility.

But it is there nonetheless. The fact that they do not mention each other is a striking reflection of their mutual loathing.

[Chris]

Would Macnaghten really do that if there had not been such an extraordinary, breakthrough moment as a witness positively identifying 'Jack the Ripper' -- and the latter giving the game away by confessing with his guilty, facial gestures, as at least Swanson seems to claim?

I agree that it's difficult to believe there could really have been a positive identification without Macnaghten and others getting wind of it. I think it's more likely that the witness said he couldn't swear that Aaron Kozminski was the man he had seen, and the rest is interpretation on Anderson's and/or Swanson's part.

[jason_c]

Exactly so. But any evidence that has disappeared cannot by used by later generations to confirm or deny any theory. I think I am standing on pretty firm ground in saying that there was no evidence at the crime scenes implicating a Jew. I don't think they could possibly have kept that quiet. Certainly the Ghoulston Street graffito got out quickly enough.

The first eyewitness to see a victim with her possible killer was Long. She used the term "foreign". That is one piece of evidence. In fact it was one of the first major clues the police received for what was to become the canonical five.

Later the police would keep Hutchinson's foreign looking suspect description quiet.

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

A large dose of hindsight indeed!

When do you think he acquired that hindsight? Did it take a couple of months, or years, or even decades?

I guess I am asking when you think Anderson discovered that his sectarian 'diagnosis' was proven to be absolutely correct?

For before Fido found Aaron Kosminski, writers like Cullen, Farson and Rumbelow (in 1975) had assumed that Anderson must have meant Pizer, and the witness who bottled out aginst him, partly because Anderson implies that the events about which he writes in 1910 all took place at the end of 1888 or beginning of 1889.

Nowhere does Anderson ever appear cognizant that Aaron Kosminski -- if that is whom he meant -- was sectioned not after mere 'weeks' on the prowl, but years later.

So, when did this hindsight first arrive?

Macnaghten, Anderson's deputy obessed with the Ripepr case, and frustrated at missing out on the initial 'reign of terror', must remain completely ignorant about this positive identification.

How?

After all, Mac knew about 'Kosminski' and his chronic masturbation, his being removed to an asylum, and he had a better grasp that this 'suspect' was probably still alive in 1894, not 'died shortly after' being sectioned as Swanson scribbled.

In his own account of 1914, and knowing what Anderson had written four years previously, Mac admits that the un-named Druitt did not come to police attention -- or his attention -- until 'some years after' he killed himself.

Rightly or wrongly, Macnaghten puts himself in opposition to Anderson regarding the 'definitely ascertained fact' about a Polish Jew. Nowhere in those 'some years after' does this hindsight arrive to Anderson, about which his deputy shares, or agrees with.

Quite the opposite.

Mac judged the 'certain facts' which did arrive about a fellow Gentile Gentleman to be a much more compelling 'conclusion'.

Even if he was mistaken about Druitt, the point is Macnaghten is a source who diametrically clashes with Anderson's claim of a positive identification of a Polish Jew suspect (and he is not alone).

In his account for the public and posterity, under his own knighted name, Mac judged 'Kosminski' not worth mentioning even to debunk.

Would Macnaghten really do that if there had not been such an extraordinary, breakthrough moment as a witness positively identifying 'Jack the Ripper' -- and the latter giving the game away by confessing with his guilty, facial gestures, as at least Swanson seems to claim?

[Chris]

To be frank, I haven't read it. I wouldn't presume to judge. If you have a link for me I'd like to see it.

I don't think it's available online, so all I can give you is an old-fashioned reference - Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 140.

[Errata]

Do you mean you think Swanson was lying in his report to the Home Office, which described the search?

To be frank, I haven't read it. I wouldn't presume to judge. If you have a link for me I'd like to see it.

[Errata]

There may have been a great deal of evidence which has not survived the 122 years since the crimes. So to say unequivocably that any conclusion was not based on evidence is highly questionable in my view.

Best wishes,
Steve.

Exactly so. But any evidence that has disappeared cannot by used by later generations to confirm or deny any theory. I think I am standing on pretty firm ground in saying that there was no evidence at the crime scenes implicating a Jew. I don't think they could possibly have kept that quiet. Certainly the Ghoulston Street graffito got out quickly enough.

I think (personally) that the phrasing of it makes evidence unlikely. If Anderson had evidence, I would think he would say that instead of saying that Jews were known not to give up their people to Gentile justice. Thats my opinion.

I tend to look at this something like a prosecutor. If cops bring in evidence obtained illegally, and the prosecutor cannot use it, it might as well not exist. If evidence is lost, they have to pretend it doesn't exist. They have to find another way to prove their case. There may be missing evidence. There may even be missing evidence that is not alluded to in any reports or notes that survive. But I can't use what I don't have against a suspect or a theory. Which does not mean Anderson didn't have it, but if he did he couldn't use it either, since he didn't arrest anyone for the crime.

[Chris]

I mentioned earlier that I am pretty sure there was no house to house search in Whitechapel as stated.

Do you mean you think Swanson was lying in his report to the Home Office, which described the search?

[Steven Russell]

There may have been a great deal of evidence which has not survived the 122 years since the crimes. So to say unequivocably that any conclusion was not based on evidence is highly questionable in my view.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[Errata]

So, the slant is the same, but it is based upon suspicions due to the make-up of the populace. It may be an erroneous conclusion, and a bit too judgmental, but it isn't necessarily racist.

Mike

I don't that it it is racist. It is prejudiced, which is different however the words may be used interchangeably. Some serious prejudging is going, and we as humans HAVE to do that or we would never get anything done. Our society is simply to large to judge every person based on their individual merits. So I don't fault anyone as a human being for doing that, although like anything else there are more and less acceptable ways of doing that.

It strikes me as an absolutely toxic trait in an investigator, but sociologically speaking we know more now than we did then, and that may have been considered an acceptable practice. To the best of my knowledge, Whitechapel was not primarily Jewish. It was where the majority of low class Jews lived, but they did not make up the bulk of the population.

I mentioned earlier that I am pretty sure there was no house to house search in Whitechapel as stated. I think here was a directed one, and I think it was directed at Whitechapel's Jewish sections. And the real question is why. Why search the Jewish sections and not others? Why say "we are looking for a Jew" as opposed to "We are looking for butchers" or "We are looking for people with private entrances".

In other words, why were they looking at a "race" of people (Jews) as opposed to a kind of people (Men with access to a place to change or something)? Why did they decide that the criminal had to be a Jew, when there was no evidence of it being a Jew? None of the victims were found clutching a Star of David or some such. Which isn't to say it couldn't be a Jew, but the crimes themselves yielded no evidence of that. I honestly don't know the answer, but if the evidence doesn't suggest it, then prejudice does. I mean, they decided that the man had to be a raving lunatic, and we know that it is unlikely given both the high profile of the local madman, and the general disorder of the raving sort of insanity. A totally understandable conclusion, but likely a wrong one.

I don't think we will ever know why they picked Jews. Or if it was due to malice, misunderstanding, bad previous experience, or a logical choice based on untrue stereotypes. But it wasn't based on the evidence. So while these conclusions are historically significant, I don't think we can use them as any kind of smoking gun.

[Chris]

Do you believe that the story which Anderson published in 1910 is what he believed, regarding Ripper the case, in 1888?

As in, the four points you laid out in the previous post. Are they what Anderson believed in 1888 at the height of the murders?

No, not necessarily. I'm just trying to interpret the line of argument he produced in 1910. I think that might have been influenced by a large dose of hindsight.

[Chris]

Chris, your conclusions are sound, but the areas that were searched and the people questioned probably had a very high percentage of low-class Jews. Let me paraphrase a bit:

(The areas being searched are full of low-class German Catholic immigrants)

It is a fact that people of that class are reluctant to give up one of theirs to Anglican justice. We came to the conclusion that the murderer was a low-class German because of the reluctance of the people to give us any information. It had to be that they were hiding something.

I still think there has to be a differentiation between "low-class Polish Jews" and other groups for the argument to be logical. And doesn't Anderson's use of the phrase "remarkable fact" in itself imply that he considered this something unusual?

That's an interesting point about the proportion of Jews in the search area. As an illustration I took the map showing the proportions of the population that were Jewish in 1899 (from C. Russell and H. S. Lewis, The Jew in London published, 1901; the dark blue areas were more than 95% Jewish, the dark red less than 5%)

http://www.movinghere.org.uk/search/catalogue.asp?recordID=56004

and roughly added the boundaries of the search area taken from a post by Monty:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=95001&postcount=5

In the light of the "immediate vicinity" remark I thought it was worth adding the positions of the five previous murders.

[The Good Michael]

But I read Anderson's narrative as follows:
(1) The murderer obviously lived in the "immediate vicinity" of the murder sites.
(2) He was obviously either living "absolutely alone" or being protected by the people he was living with.
(3) During the house-to-house search the police had investigated [and eliminated] every man in the vicinity who was living alone ("every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret").
(4) Therefore the murderer must have been protected by those he was living with, and hence the conclusion that he was a "low-class Polish Jew" - because low-class Polish Jews in the East End will not give up their own to Gentile justice.

The logic only works if Polish Jews are unique in that respect. If most of the population shared that characteristic, Anderson's narrative would provide no explanation at all for his conclusion that the murderer was a Polish Jew.

Chris, your conclusions are sound, but the areas that were searched and the people questioned probably had a very high percentage of low-class Jews. Let me paraphrase a bit:

(The areas being searched are full of low-class German Catholic immigrants)

It is a fact that people of that class are reluctant to give up one of theirs to Anglican justice. We came to the conclusion that the murderer was a low-class German because of the reluctance of the people to give us any information. It had to be that they were hiding something.

being from low class Germans who were kicked out of Bosnia, I take no offense in that conclusion.

So, the slant is the same, but it is based upon suspicions due to the make-up of the populace. It may be an erroneous conclusion, and a bit too judgmental, but it isn't necessarily racist.

Mike

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

Let me ask you something.

Do you believe that the story which Anderson published in 1910 is what he believed, regarding Ripper the case, in 1888?

As in, the four points you laid out in the previous post. Are they what Anderson believed in 1888 at the height of the murders?