No known suspect pre 1895 was Jack the Ripper

[Trevor Marriott]

Its not an excuse Trevor, its a fact. The suspect files are incomplete.

I deal in facts, that's why I do not hold to a suspect unlike some, who rely on News clippings and....and....and...

You, and Phil, have completely misunderstood the context of the memoranda. It was never written with the intention on laying down the major suspects at all.

And I agree, it should not be held as the 'Holy Grail'. I suspect Macnagten felt the same.

Monty

I know that it wasnt written for that purpose, but because of what it contains it has quite wrongly elevetad Kosminski to as some describe "Prime Suspect". I have no doubt that because of the incident with his sister he was "looked" at and following his incarceration he became a suitable "patsy"

I think the starting off point is the MM and Mcs motives for including the names that he did now we have more than one patsy, none of which were really in any position to protest their innoncence or aware of what was being wriiten in police files.

[Chris]

According to the same official that named Kosminski at some time between 1910 and 1924, in 1895 he said the Ripper was dead. Kosminski was alive in 1895. Therefore, whomever Swanson was talking about in 1895, it wasn't Aaron Kosminski.

To be a bit more exact, Swanson's views were reported in a newspaper article as follows:
"The theory entitled to most respect, because it was presumably based upon the best knowledge, was that of Chief Inspector Swanson, the officer who was associated with the investigation of all the murders, and Mr. Swanson believed the crimes to have been the work of a man who is now dead. Latterly, however, the police have been busy investigating the case of William Grant Grainger, ..."

It's interesting that Swanson's theory actually seems to be placed in the past, in contrast with the current investigation of Grainger.

Of course, logically there are two possibilities here, assuming the report to be accurate:
(1) Swanson's theory concerned someone other than Aaron Kozminski, and
(2) Swanson's theory concerned Aaron Kozminski, whom he mistakenly thought was dead.

[Trevor Marriott]

In that respect, would you say the new evidence you've found is more conclusive than Phil's argument above, less conclusive, or about the same?

Wouldnt you like to know

[Monty]

You may have no doubt about that Trevor, and I must honestly say I cannot counter it.

However Kosminskis name is there, so is Druitts, and neither can be wholely dismissed at this precise moment.

Monty

[Chris]

Wouldnt you like to know

Mildly curious, that's all.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Monty has spelled it out very clearly. There is no KNOWN evidence to show that Kosminski was a suspect in the JTR murders.

You can rubbish away as much as you like.. The recent and very noticeable push over the last year trying to push the Kosminski name, on film, in book form and now the recent discovery of 24 year old letters, discovered 10 years after the man died, still proves nothing..because, as Monty says.. there is no police evidence in the files.

Kosminski was not suspected of being JTR at the time of the murders based on what there is. It's simple. Show us the evidence. Hard police evidence. If not, go to newspapers and find some there. You wont find any more than an un-muzzelled dog.

With the 125th coming up and the charge gaining momentum, better discoveries had better be found before Kosminski mounts any throne as top suspect.

kindly

Phil

[Trevor Marriott]

You may have no doubt about that Trevor, and I must honestly say I cannot counter it.

However Kosminskis name is there, so is Druitts, and neither can be wholely dismissed at this precise moment.

Monty

I am more than happy in my investigation to mothball both of them along with Tumblety and others to numerous to mention.

[Chris]

You can rubbish away as much as you like..

Thanks for your courteous response, Phil.

[Monty]

Again,

To clear up yet another misleading remark attributed to me by Phil.

Monty is saying that there is no evidence for or against Kosminki as being the killer for certain (as with any suspect)

Monty is also saying that there may be evidence out there which would highlight, or dismiss Kosminski, of which we may not be aware of. This with the fact some suspect files are missing.

Now Monty says, with respect and calm, for Phil to stop being cute. It doesn't suit him.

Monty

[Phil Carter]

Well, we've had the old chestnut about files missing, and that applies both ways, for and against.

We've had the old chestnut that you can't rely on newspapers,, that works both ways too.

We've had the putting down of any person who misunderstands everything.

We've had the derision at the thought that anybody could possibly dare to think different than what we are supposed to accept.

All known methods of confirm nor deny, disperse and confuse.

We have the sarcasm about to enter the arena, and probably the mickey taking too.

Its like an old record. Scratched, worn out and in desperate need of a remake.

kindly, and amused by the predictability of the same methodology of some...

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Monty,

We have the sarcasm about to enter the arena, and probably the mickey taking too.

as the posts crossed..

Predictable..or what?

amused

Phil

[Trevor Marriott]

Again,

To clear up yet another misleading remark attributed to me by Phil.

Monty is saying that there is no evidence for or against Kosminki as being the killer for certain (as with any suspect)

Monty is also saying that there may be evidence out there which would highlight, or dismiss Kosminski, of which we may not be aware of. This with the fact some suspect files are missing.

Now Monty says, with respect and calm, for Phil to stop being cute. It doesn't suit him.

Monty

But what you cant prove is that there ever was a specific file referering to Kosminski so in view of that it is wrong to say there may be or there ever was such a file for it to go missing

[Phil Carter]

Hello Trevor,

We mustn't let FACTS like that come in the way of a theory... it spoils the oil in the wheels of the non-stop, must be kept going, ever-pushed Merry-go round.

Time for bed said Zeberdee! Boing!

kindly

Phil

[Trevor Marriott]

Hello Trevor,

We mustn't let FACTS like that come in the way of a theory... it spolis the oil in the wheels of the non-stop, must be kept going, ever-pushed Merry-go round.

Time for bed said Zeberdee! Boing!

kindly

Phil

I am off to bed now in the knowledge that I can rest easy I am sure you can do the same, not to sure about others

[Jonathan H]

To Monty

You keep saying that Macnaghten did not lay down major suspects [in the official version] of his 'Report', as if it is an established fact.

It is not. It is a theory.

I can understand why you take this line, but it is only an interpretation and arguably not a strong one.

Yes, it is an official document of state and it does state that M. J. Druitt, 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog are unlikely and yet are better suspects than Cutbush -- if that makes any sense?

On the other hand, Anderson and/or Swanson seem to have believed that 'Kosminski' was not a minor suspect at all, but almost certainly the fiend.

Mancaghten himself in the alternate version of the same document, disseminated to the public, claimed that the un-named Druitt was almost certainly the Ripper. He did the same in his 1914 memoirs where no other suspect is worth mentioning.

If it is a draft is that why he had to write it again? Because he had given the game away about Druitt? And then he returned to this truth, at least as he understood it, when he briefed his literary cronies a few years alter?

Consider that if you only had Mac's official version you would never realize that the reason Druitt was not arrested was not because he was perhaps a weak suspect -- but better than Cutbush and 'believed' by his own family and definitely a sexual maniac -- but because he was long deceased.

Thus Mac did something in his memoirs which he did not do in either version of his so-called 'Home Office Report'. He conceded that Druitt was a posthumous suspect and that the police had been, embarrassingly and excruciatingly, chasing a phantom. He goes against the expected bias of such a source, making it more reliable than what he write under political pressure twenty years before.

That is why I argue that the memoirs, the de-facto third version of his 'Report', despite memoirs being unreliably self-serving, trumps the official version -- a document, moreover, so obscure, I argue, that Doug Browne did not come across it when he finished 'The Rise of Scotland Yard' in 1956 (he misunderstood the import of the last lines of Mac's Ripper chapter; as a literal plot against a minister and has Macnaghten disagreeing with his successor that the fiend took his own life, when he did no such thing?)

In that memoir chapter, Macnaghten, the 'man of action', hurtles down to the East End to investigate the Pinchin Street murder in 1889. He meets with a prostitute and her pimp-partner over a meal of 'toasted bloaters'. A Disraeli-style, one-nation Tory he expresses compassion and sympathy for their economic and moral destitution. About the Ripper menace she says that she does not care if she lives or dies.

What Mac is getting at is that he could not reassure this poor wretch that at least she had nothing to fear from the likes of 'he' because, at that time and for 'some years after', nobody at the Met knew that the murderer was already nine months in his grave.

To Phil

You should like this little-known quote from Mac's memoirs, in which he is much more candid in a throw-away remark about the lack of a chief suspect, than he is in either version of his 'Report':

'No light was vouchsafed to us, and after two or three weeks it seemed as if the Muswell Hill murder was going to climb on the shelf of undiscovered crimes alongside Jack the Ripper and the Cafe Royal case of eighteen months before ...' (Macnaghten, 'Days of My Years', p. 139)