Did Anderson Know

[Jeff Leahy]

Just to add to that, that Secondary Dementia seems to have been used to the condition modern psychiatrists refer to as ‘Burn Out’. This is a state where the patient becomes completely with drawn from reality and is unaware of what is happening around them.

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/reprint/96/7/361.pdf

This paper has some interesting stuff. Not least that terms varied from asylum to asylum. By 1891 the term ‘Dementia praecox’ was sometimes used to infer patients suffering from symptoms similar to what we today call schizophrenia.

But in general the term Dementia meant something different in 1890’s to the way it is used today.

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

Rob,
With respect the symptoms we read about in the notes from his doctors and care workers over the years ,can just as easily be applied to those of a person suffering from dementia.While it is true that aggressive behaviour can be a symptom of dementia and Aaron's notes suggest one incident of aggressive behaviour ,there isnt a single reference or any sign whatever of the " violent psychosis"-past or present, which one might expect,if we are saying Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.
In actual fact,then as now,Aaron"s Leavesdon notes match -and to the letter- a case of dementia as described by his doctors.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Just to add to that, that Secondary Dementia seems to have been used to the condition modern psychiatrists refer to as ‘Burn Out’. This is a state where the patient becomes completely with drawn from reality and is unaware of what is happening around them.

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/reprint/96/7/361.pdf

This paper has some interesting stuff. Not least that terms varied from asylum to asylum. By 1891 the term ‘Dementia praecox’ was sometimes used to infer patients suffering from symptoms similar to what we today call schizophrenia.

But in general the term Dementia meant something different in 1890’s to the way it is used today.

Pirate

No it didnt. Aaron"s case notes closely match,symptom for symptom dementia"s current definition in The Merck Manual of Medical Information.

PS Jeff---that is exactly what is of such significance here---NONE of the doctors referred to the term dementia praecox with regards to Aaron----though they would have if that is what they thought he had.

[Ben]

Hi Norma,

I'm not a supporter of Kosminski's candidacy as you know, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss him on the grounds that his medical notes contain no reference to "violent psychosis". Firstly, it's far from proven that Jack the Ripper was a sufferer of any form of psychosis, and secondly, we know that other violent serial killers have lived out their post-criminal lives in asylums without ever being violent.

Best regards,
Ben

[Jeff Leahy]

This is still buying into Martin Fido’s incorrect assumption that Jack the Ripper would behave in a violent manner at all times. The only time that schizophrenics become dangerous is during ‘psychotic episodes’ and then only under certain environments and circumstance, usually today alcohol. So Aaron’s behavior need not have been violent at all, even if he had committed the murders, the environment that caused them may not reoccur. This assumption is simply OUT OF DATE. Modern thinking on schizophrenic behavior is no longer in the dark ages Norma. And I think my brother knows the difference between Schizophrenia and dementia, it is after all his job to diagnose such behaviour.

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

Quite right Ben,but that is not what I am disputing.I have worked in the Art Therapy unit of a large psychiatric hospital.Doctors, had they examined Jack the Ripper ,for risk assessment to staff,ie if they had him in their care in a hospital setting,would let it be known among staff that a murderer was among their patients.
Moreover, Jack the Ripper would not have been described,at the age of 25,just two years after killing and disembowelling a series of women,as "HARMLESS" or "NOT A DANGER TO OTHERS"!
The notion is ridiculous,absolutely ridiculous honestly.

[Natalie Severn]

This is still buying into Martin Fido’s incorrect assumption that Jack the Ripper would behave in a violent manner at all times. The only time that schizophrenics become dangerous is during ‘psychotic episodes’ and then only under certain environments and circumstance, usually today alcohol. So Aaron’s behavior need not have been violent at all, even if he had committed the murders, the environment that caused them may not reoccur. This assumption is simply OUT OF DATE. Modern thinking on schizophrenic behavior is no longer in the dark ages Norma. And I think my brother knows the difference between Schizophrenia and dementia, it is after all his job to diagnose such behaviour.

Pirate

With due respect,your brother is not a psychiatrist either Jeff.Nor,crucially has he conducted either a psychiatric examination of Aaron Kosminski or a monitoring assessment.That,after all, is what would qualify a person to label and define the illness Aaron suffered from.
We have in this case only the diagnosis of those Doctors who did see him and monitor his condition and their diagnosis was not dementia praecox but Dementia and Secondary Dementia with no prognosis of dangerous behaviour----just "Harmless to others"written on his file.

[Jeff Leahy]

With due respect,your brother is not a psychiatrist either Jeff.Nor,crucially has he conducted either a psychiatric examination of Aaron Kosminski or a monitoring assessment.That,after all, is what would qualify a person to label and define the illness Aaron suffered from.

Qualified, but not practicing, as he is currently Head of Social services for a large area in the UK. He is on call to deal with mental health problems, supporting the police, and is on the 'coal face' as they say, and well able to point me in the right direction of the latest expert opinion and developments on such issues. But yes he'd probably totally agree with you on the second point. I could supply him only very limited information, as you well know. he certainly would not commit himself without examination, he can only give opinion, with caveats.

We have in this case only the diagnosis of those Doctors who did see him and monitor his condition and their diagnosis was not dementia praecox but Dementia and Secondary Dementia with no prognosis of dangerous behaviour----just "Harmless to others"written on his file.

He was a schizophrenic Norm, its a no brainer.

Yours Jeff

[Stephen Thomas]

There is an inscription in the front which has been read as "To Donald with very good wishes from Fred".
http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.p...3&postcount=88

I could perhaps provide photos of Swanson's two houses mentoned in that link. Does anyone have information on where he lived before he moved to Brixton?

[robhouse]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539549/

"If mania and melancholia roughly equated with manic episodes and depression respectively, and dementia was at least somewhat related to the modern term schizophrenia, we would expect the age of the first episode to be similar to those of today.
...


By the 1870s large 'lunatic' asylums such as St Lawrence's were well-established. From our examination of the admission register we could not discern exactly what differentiated the principal diagnoses, mania, dementia and melancholia. In 1849 Ray3 was probably right in stating 'No one can be sure that by monomania, melancholia, moral insanity or many other terms, he understands precisely what his neighbor does'. By the 1870s, mania and melancholia had changed from being general terms, defining overactivity and underactivity, to mood-related diagnoses4 clearly akin to today's mania and depression.5 However, the fact that 71% of patients admitted to an asylum in Buckinghamshire6 were diagnosed with mania compared with 28% in Bodmin suggests that terminology was used differently around the country.

Use of the term dementia is more confusing. By the 18th century dementia described a state of acquired intellectual deficit, at any age and of any cause.7 So a young adult with serious head injuries, for instance, might have been labelled as having dementia. The label was also applied to severe psychotic illnesses, which were thought of as dementing processes—hence Kraeplin's 'dementia praecox', the forerunner of schizophrenia. However, the term dementia praecox was not coined until 1891, 20 years after the period studied here. By the end of the 19th century there was a tendency to confine diagnosis of dementia to patients with loss of cognitive ability. Senile dementia was not described until the turn of the century. The term dementia also had a behavioural connotation: Henry Munro,8 writing in 1856, stated that 'dementia should always be applied to a passive rather than an active state'. Our impression of the Cornwall records is that the term applied to a huge variety of cases, including both patients with cognitive difficulties from any cause and psychotic patients who were not behaviourally overactive enough to be described as manic. Irreversibility was also becoming part of its meaning by the 1870s, so chronic psychosis would presumably have been so labelled.

The data on age of first attack are consistent with bipolar disorder9 and schizophrenia. The very young age at first episode of dementia resembles modern data for schizophrenia; the cases presenting in later life may have been senile dementia or acute medical illnesses presenting as confusion."

[Natalie Severn]

No definitive test exists,even today, to diagnose schizophrenia.A DOCTOR makes the "diagnosis" on the basis of a comprehensive assessment of the person"s history.So how on earth can we here, never having even met Aaron Kosminski,or having had proper access to his case history,ever think we are in a position to offer a diagnosis of schizophrenia?Moreover the suggestion that Kosminski suffered from paranoid schizophrenia is not backed up by his case notes. The casenotes that we have, largely through the work of Martin Fido, reveal that doctors ,were confident enough to consider that he was not a danger to others and a person with paranoid schizophrenia can become a danger to others,especially before we had the acquisition of drugs to control that illness.But Kosmisnski was considered harmless.In fact the diagnosis of his illness was " Dementia "[Colney Hatch 1891]and "Secondary Dementia",as the illness progressed[Leavesdon 1894].
He could have suffered from a type of schizophrenia,I admit, but its very unlikely that it was the type of schizophrenia-paranoid schizophrenia, that could have spawned Jack the Ripper and would have alerted staff to a "potentially " dangerous patient.

[robhouse]

Natalie,

First of all... you post things, then when I reply quite directly to what you posted... you avoid it, and start talking about something else. Second, you have now posted some variation on "he was not a danger to others" I think about 500 times. I think we have got it... also, you have posted your whole Major Smith, Abberline thing about the same number of times re: Anderson... Ditto.

Where exactly are you getting the diagnosis of dementia at Colney Hatch? Did you even bother to read what I posted?

The admission order lists :

FORM OF DISORDER: Mania
SYMPTOMS OF DISORDER: Incoherence

"He declares that he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so and eats out of the gutter for the same reason. "

You are saying that you think this does not sound like schizophrenia? Is that correct?

[Stewart P Evans]

Parnellism and Crime

...
Lets jst get this clear:
There were two series of article published in The Times. One, called ‘Parnellism and Crime’, tried to implicate Charles Parnell in the terrorist activities of the Fenians/IRB. It was this series of articles which included the letter forged by Pigott which suggested that Parnell supported the Phoenix Park murders. This series of articles was written by a Times journalist named John Woulfe Flanagan.
There is no evidence that Anderson had any connection with these articles. Anderson wrote a relatively innocuous series of follow-up articles called ‘Parnellism and Crime – Behind the Scenes in America’, which made no accusations against Parnell, but was about Fenian/IRB activities and conspiracies in America and was intended to alert conspirators that their plans were known, and to prevent intended outrages in London. Anderson’s articles did not cause the Parnell Commission, Flanagan’s did.

... Anderson did find himself in trouble with the Parnell Commission, but it wasn’t for writing the articles in The Times; Henri Le Caron had elected to gives evidence at the Commission for The Times and had requested from Anderson the return of letters he had written to him. It had been agreed with Anderson that the letters were to be “deemed private”. Anderson duly let Le Caron have the letters and for this he found himself in serious hot water, especially with Sir William Harcourt, and the spineless Henry Matthews was even prepared to throw Anderson to the wolves, it being argued that the material constituted “the secret papers of the Home Office”.
... [/B]...
Many thanks Jeff

The series of articles in The Times in 1887 tends to get a bit glossed over and does not appear to have been addressed properly. It's a fairly complex subject and I have to confess to being no expert on it.

However, its importance in Ripper circles is the light it casts on Anderson's character and the intensity of his anti-home rule feelings. It drove him, in 1887, to contribute to the series of articles in The Times on 'Parnellism and Crime' which led to the setting up of the Parnell Commission the following year - the start of said Commission coinciding with the onset of the Whitechapel murders, no doubt distracting Anderson's attention in no small way. Anderson was totally wrong, in view of his official status, to write the series of articles in 1887. He was also stupid to reveal that he did in 1910.

As everyone knows, Anderson's involvement in the articles was not publicly known at the time of the Commission, but in 1910 the ageing Anderson caused uproar and no small amount of consternation in government circles by revealing his responsibility for some of the articles that led to the setting up of the Commission. One can only assume that Anderson felt safe in making this admission all those years later - presumably to make his memoirs more sensational and increase his own importance. He nearly lost his pension as a result.

Surely this shows Anderson to be almost reckless in his passion to further his beliefs and boast of the importance of his own role. He was also forced into claiming that in 1887 he had Monro's tacit permission to write the articles, something which Monro emphatically denied. Was this another 'Anderson fairy tale' (to use the words of 1910)? It has been claimed that Anderson didn't really do anything wrong - but I am afraid that he did.

[harry]

Thanks for that information Chris.Perhaps 'Fred' met and discussed the book with Swanson,and 'Fred' became aquainted with the Kosminski connection..Obscure possibilities maybe,but perhaps information was passed to 'Fred's' descendents,if any.Of course the family name would need to be known for enquiries to be made in that direction.There is one 'Fred' who would be known to Swanson,Frederick Aberline.

[Natalie Severn]

Rob,
I am saying that the conviction you and others have,that Aaron Kosminski suffered from Paranoid schizophrenia is totally without foundation.
I am asking,time and again,how,without a doctors diagnosis,without ever even having met Kosminski,you can assert that he did suffer from paranoid schizophrenia when every word ,phrase and medical diagnosis supports a different diagnosis.
I am saying,because it is a fact,that as this person who you believe was Jack the Ripper had been placed in Colney Hatch or Leavesdon for a period of nearly 30 years from the age of 25,he would have been very unlikely to have been described by the doctors as simply having "dementia" and "secondary dementia"and his medical records being left like that and ABOVE ALL the very fact that doctors would have dared risk their reputation and the lives of the staff and other patients, by stating that he was "NOT a DANGER to others".It is honestly inconceivable.
I have known,worked with and read about people with paranoid schizophrenia
whose episodes of psychosis had and could cause harm and danger to others.
As long as they took their drugs,only developed in the last 50 years approx.,they could live without experiencing violent psychosis,but in 1891 right through to 1919 there were no such drugs available.
I will give you an example of a tragedy that happened in the hospital where my mother worked as an Art Therapist.It happened in approximately 1980.
A man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia but under medication to control it ,had been going to his woodwork class,in the adjacent room to my mother"s art class, under medication,for 6 -8 years.Under medication he was able to function reasonably well .Because of his progress,he was allowed a home visit for a particular occasion.His family had assured the institution that his medication would be supervised .However his family awoke on the second day of his home visit to find the man"s wife dead,her head had been severed by an axe from the garden shed.
This case illustrates the risks to the community involved in allowing a person suffering from the violent form of paranoid schizophrenia to be relied upon to take their medication.As that medication to control the illness ,was not even developed during the time Aaron was alive,and restraint,of the violent episode, was by solitary confinement and straight jacket ,it is inconceivable that Aaron would have been described by his doctors as "harmless" and "not a danger to others".Moreover,there is no indication in his surviving casenotes that cover his admission ,that he was considered any kind of danger then,or at any time in his long stay at Leavesdon.
So Rob,presenting me with medical tracts using terminology no longer extant, about various mental health conditions, and suggesting they mean the doctors had diagnosed Aaron Kosminski"s illness as that of "paranoid schizophrenia" is a pointless exercise.You are not his doctor,you have not assessed his illness ,you cannot form a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia when his doctors state he was considered,by them,in their diagnosis,to be harmless and his 30 record supports their 1891/1894 diagnosis.