Did Anderson Know

[Natalie Severn]

Chris, The main thrust and meaning of Anderson"s words is exactly the same in the 1910 Blackwoods Magazine article as in Anderson"s 1910 autobiography "TLYOML".
Here I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the editor of The Jewish Chronicle,Greenberg ,who having read Robert Anderson"s 1910 Blackwoods Article wrote in the Friday edition of The Jewish Chronicle 4 March 1910,
" In The Communal Armchair.An Aspersion upon Jews.
Police "Theory" Again.By Mentor

".......a more wicked assertion to put into print without a shadow of evidence,I have seldom seen."
Mentor [alias Greenberg,] Editor of Jewish Chronicle.
Moreover, the fact that his words and sentiments are totally corroborated by the Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police in his 1910 autobiography indicates to me that there was never any "evidence",
Smith was there,on the scene,he MUST have known. So was Inspector Reid----see Stewart Evans"s posting above.

[Chris]

Natalie

You cited the phrase "definitely ascertained fact" as being somehow important to your statement that Smith "accused Anderson of lying". What I was pointing out is that that phrase was absent from the version of Anderson's memoirs that Smith was responding to.

But probably I'm being naive in thinking it would be helpful to get the facts straight.

[Natalie Severn]

Oh No.Please let us get the facts straight Chris.
Smith in his autobiography refers to Anderson"s claim that "he knew where the Riper lived."Smith states categorically that HE DID NOT.That NOBODY KNEW.That the ripper "HAD THEM ALL BEAT" and that nobody knew then or twenty years later[ie 1910 when he and Anderson were writing their prospective autobiographies,Anderson"s first in serialised form in Blackwoods Magazine,earlier in the year.There were clearly no definitely ascertained facts about who the ripper was or where he lived .That was clearly BS.

[Chris]

Oh No.Please let us get the facts straight Chris.
Smith in his autobiography refers to Anderson"s claim that "he knew where the Riper lived."

The thing is he doesn't, though.

Smith makes the statement "I have no more idea now where he lived than I had twenty years ago" in a part of his memoirs he says he wrote before he had seen Anderson's Blackwood's article.

Obviously Smith disagreed with Anderson, but to say he was accusing Anderson of lying - or to suggest that Anderson could have sued him for libel - on the basis of something Smith wrote before he had read Anderson's memoirs is plain silly.

[Natalie Severn]

The thing is he doesn't, though.

Smith makes the statement "I have no more idea now where he lived than I had twenty years ago" in a part of his memoirs he says he wrote before he had seen Anderson's Blackwood's article.

Obviously Smith disagreed with Anderson, but to say he was accusing Anderson of lying - or to suggest that Anderson could have sued him for libel - on the basis of something Smith wrote before he had read Anderson's memoirs is plain silly.

Please dont say my posts are silly or I shall start insulting your posts.

Now,can you please explain what Smith meant when he called Anderson"s remarks "reckless".....it is you who are attempting to mislead !
Smith wrote several pages in his autobiography ,which I do not have to hand but can obtain, one of which contained a blistering attack on what Anderson said about his Polish Jew claims ,leaving no doubt in the reader"s mind that " Anderson "had misled people in an unforgiveable manner in his recent [1910] autobiography,"The Lighter Years of My Adult Life".
I can get the book from the Library and post his actual words-and most certainly will as this is of crucial import here.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

There are important differences between Anderson's Blackwood's article [Spring 1910] and the book version of TLSOMOL [Autumn 1910].

The most important is that the book version makes no mention of the suspect being caged in an asylum, or that the witness was a fellow-Jew.

Read it for yourself. Here is the pertinent text from the book version. Italicized words appeared in Blackwoods but not the book. Emboldened words are unique to the book.

"However the fact may be explained, it is a fact that no other street murder occurred in the "Jack-the-Ripper" series.1 The last and most horrible of that maniac's crimes was committed in a house in Miller's Court on the 9th of November. And the circumstances of that crime disposed of all the theories of the amateur "Sherlock Holmeses" of that date.

"One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type ; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice.

"And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that "undiscovered murders" are rare in London, and the "Jack-the-Ripper" crimes are not within that category. And if the Police here had powers such as the French Police possess, the murderer would have been brought to justice. Scotland Yard can boast that not even the subordinate officers of the department will tell tales out of school, and it would ill become me to violate the unwritten rule of the service. [The subject will come up again, and] So I will only add here that the "Jack-the-Ripper" letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist.

[The following paragraph was originally a footnote]

"Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to [provided that the publishers would accept all responsibility in view of a possible libel action]. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will merely add that [when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum] the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; [but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him] but he refused to give evidence against him.

"In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute.

"1 I am here assuming that the murder of Alice M'Kenzie on the 17th of July, 1889, was by another hand. I was absent from London when it occurred, but the Chief Commissioner investigated the case on the spot [and decided that] it was an ordinary murder, and not the work of a sexual maniac. And the Poplar case of December, 1888, was a death from natural causes, and but for the "Jack the Ripper" scare, no one would have thought of suggesting that it was a homicide."

Regards,

Simon

[Chris]

it is you who are attempting to mislead !

If you are accusing me of posting something misleading, you'd better quote precisely what you're referring to, and then either back the accusation up or else withdraw it.

[Stephen Thomas]

Whether Anderson was lying or not, there is one constant factor in the many statements by the 'JTR was never caught' crowd of police officials which is that none of them expresses the remotest concern that an uncaught JTR could start up again anytime. From 1894 onwards, JTR is always a 'past tense' person to these people. This all reminds me of the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch.

[Scott Nelson]

Whilst we are playing the 'who heard first what' game, no one had heard of these exchages until first discovered by Nick Connell over ten years ago whilst writing our book The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (2000), in which book they were first published. My how you have changed over the years Scott.

I cited that reference in the essay. I don't think I've changed very much.

[Natalie Severn]

[QUOTE=Chris;120727]If you are accusing me of posting something misleading, you'd better quote precisely what you're referring to, and then either back the accusation up or else withdraw it.[/QUOTe

Is that some kind of threat?

[Scott Nelson]

Sir Henry Smith rubbishes every claim Anderson makes about the police knowing who the ripper was and emphatically denies that any policeman,from either the Met or the City of London,knew in 1888 or twenty years later when Blackwoods published Anderson"s claim.

Look at the Introduction to H.L. Adam's The Trial of George Chapman. You will see that Henry Smith, along with Anderson, is listed as among those who thought they knew the identity of the Ripper. Mind you, this was written some years after 1910, when the two men may have shared further information.

[Chris]

Is that some kind of threat?

Please don't try to turn this around and make me out to be the villain of the piece. You accused me of misleading people. I am asking you either to back that up or to withdraw the accusation.

By the way, a transcript of the relevant chapter of Smith's memoirs is available here:

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.constable.html

If you follow that link you will see that - as I said - all the statements by Smith that you referred to in the post I was responding to, are in the part of the chapter that precedes the following sentence:
Since this chapter was written my attention has been drawn to an article in Blackwood's Magazine, of March this year - the sixth of a series by Sir Robert Anderson - entitled "The Lighter Side of my Official Life."

[Stephen Thomas]

Come Dancing

By the way, a transcript of the relevant chapter of Smith's memoirs is available here:

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.constable.html

[/I]

Ah so. A good fellow but not strictly veracious

[Natalie Severn]

Please don't try to turn this around and make me out to be the villain of the piece. You accused me of misleading people. I am asking you either to back that up or to withdraw the accusation.

By the way, a transcript of the relevant chapter of Smith's memoirs is available here:

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.constable.html

If you follow that link you will see that - as I said - all the statements by Smith that you referred to in the post I was responding to, are in the part of the chapter that precedes the following sentence:
Since this chapter was written my attention has been drawn to an article in Blackwood's Magazine, of March this year - the sixth of a series by Sir Robert Anderson - entitled "The Lighter Side of my Official Life."

I fully recognise that the 1910 "slightly earlier" serialised form of "The Lighter Side of My Official Life" was very slightly different from the later that year book form.This in my view was Anderson trying to hastily cover his tracks over his accusations about the Jewish Community of Whitechapel and the storm they had caused from the editor of the Jewish Chronicle.
Whatever,the crucial matter is this:whether it was at the beginning,the middle or the end or even scribbled down in endpaper doodles at the back of the book "a la Swanson",my point is simply, that the Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police,Sir Henry Smith,in some parts stated and in other parts implied that what Robert Anderson was saying about knowing where the ripper lived,who he was and who his people were was all a lot of poppycock!In other words made up nonsense.
Viz Quote from book:
"Surely Sir Robert cannot believe that while the Jews,as he asserts,were entering into this conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice,there was noone among them with sufficient knowledge of the criminal law to warn them of the risks they were running?
Sir Robert talks of The Lighter Side of My Official Life-----there is nothing light here; a heavier indictment could not be framed against a class where conduct contrasts most favourably with that of the Gentile population of the metropolis." end quote.

[Natalie Severn]

Look at the Introduction to H.L. Adam's The Trial of George Chapman. You will see that Henry Smith, along with Anderson, is listed as among those who thought they knew the identity of the Ripper. Mind you, this was written some years after 1910, when the two men may have shared further information.

I have HL Adam"s 1929 book here from the library on "The Trial of George Chapman",Scott.
In it Adam appears to think it possible that Chapman was Jack the Ripper.But I have never understood that Henry Smith thought this, I must admit.Certainly in 1910 ,which is long after Chapman"s trial,he made no mention of having any idea of who the Ripper was.Perhaps he did share information later, a possibility I guess, and they both considered a different suspect.