No known suspect pre 1895 was Jack the Ripper

[Jonathan H]

To Phil

Thanks.

To Rob

The reason I think Macnaghten knew more than any other police officer on is because that is what all the sources show, not if you cherry pick.

For example, Mac knew 'Kosminski' was still alive in the asylum ('Aberconway'). Swanson and/or Anderon did not.

For example, Mac knew about 'Kosminski' and Druitt, whilst there is no evidence that any other police officer knew of the latter suspect.

For example, Anderson regarded the whole case as a tabloid beat-up abd Swanson never published an opinion on it. Mac was obsessed with the mystery, whose initial and only murders as he learned, he had missed by six months.

For example, only Mac went to the lengths of disseminating an opinion via other writers.

It is Mac, who wrote two vastly different versions of an internal 'Report' on the matter.

For example, only Mac is cognitive that the case lasted for years, and fruitless years.

For example, Mac via Sims, knows that 'Kosminski' was out and abouit for a considerable length of time after the Kelly murder, quite harmless.

For example, only Mac's memoirs seamlessly match the primary sources between 1888 and 1898 on this subject.

Plus, you manage to do Anderson a disservice. In the first version of his memoirs he showed that the madman could not be arrested because he was already sectioned.

The Ridgeway case is, arguably, not appilcable. There they had a prime suspect but not enough hard evidence. The Ripper mystery is about a police chief who discovered that the murderer was long deceased.

[Trevor Marriott]

To Phil Carter

If you really run with the theory the Macnaghten knew exactly what he was talking about, and knew exactly what he was doing, then we can imagine his reaction to Abberline's comments of 1903.

If you accept the MM as being correct then you must rubish the marginalia unless there were two different Kosminkis.

It did not phase him one bit, as he expected it because he was hustling his cronies and via them, the public, with a Scotland Yard-friendly version of what really happened in terms of the Ripper.

Just your opinion

Th problem was not the identity of the fiend. It was when his identity had been ascertained and how, eg. it was the dead Druitt in 1891 via the family, via an MP. It involved no 'police' investigation at all.

So that is evidence is it nothing more than hearsay and not corroborated. This goes out of the window because the police were still looking for JTR after that with the murders of Coles and Mckenzie

Therefore from 1898 until 1914, Macnaghten concealed both the timing of police cognition, redacting it into 1888, and the real identity of Druitt as a young barrister who killed himself three weeks afrter the Miller's Court atrocity. Also, the family were shielded, right from the start, by being turned into 'friends'.

Again just your opinion

Of course Abberline doesn't know about Druitt -- how could he (I think the same applies to 'Kosminski' too)?

But Abberlines suspect is not mentioned by anyone else.

When Abberline says 'we' never thought much of the drowned medical student and the locked-up lunatic suspects he is clearly ignorant that the former was backed by the Commissioner of 1903, by then Macnaghten -- whom Abberline wants to tell about Chapman unaware that the Drowned Doctor' begins with him -- and that the latter is the preferred suspect, by 1895, of Anderson and perhaps Swanson.

Druitt drowned in 1888 not a mention of him for 6 years and then by a police officer who in 1888 was not even in the police service.

We can also infer, from Sims' haughty respone to Abberline in 1903, that Mac assured the famous writer that the truth was in a 'Home Office Report', written by himself, and that this was regarded as definitive by the Yard and the government. Sims writes that Major Griffiths, eg. an unimpeachable, establishment worthy and officer of the state, had seen the 'Report' and thus it must be true.

What a game Macnaghten played.

Its was called "write a report and what you dont know make up" and as I said in a previous post just look at the names he puts in the marginalia and where they were in 1894. he slipped up because he thought all of them were out of circulation.

In terms of posterity, however, it robbed him of his modest and discreet claim in his memoirs to have posthumously identified the fiend; to have laid his ghost to rest 'some years after' he had taken his own life.

These memoirs are routinely ignored in many secondary sources. As eliminated from the historical record as Mac, himself, in those same memoirs, dumped 'Kosminki', Michael Ostrog, Cutbush, Tumblety, Sadler -- and even the Ripper as a Dr. Jekyll figure.

Some might argue that this is a kind of comeuppance for being too clever-clever?

Yes he was clever and like so many of Scotland yards finest could not have realised that 123 years later their opinions would be questioned and made to look as if one some or all were less than economical with the truth. I dont think they were delibertatley lying I think that because the murders and the fact that they did not bring anyone to justice was an embarrassemt to all who were involved in the investigation. So what better way to not look incompetent by saying yes we never brought anyone to justice, but we knew who he was etc etc.

But of course by the time they had all written memoirs etc and giving belated press interviews, none of them knew what the others had said in their memoirs or interviews that is why there are so many different suspects named.

The fact is there is and never was a prime suspect for JTR. There is a major doubt as to how many victims from the extended list of murder victims was killed by the same hand. I think it is time for those that have continoulsy championed Kosminski as being the prime suspect come out now and openly admit that due to the weight of evidence now put forward to suggest he was not the prime supect say they got it wrong.

I know that there has been a lot of heated arguments and debates over these issues but I think it is time for the community to work and share things with each other. Perhaps we might then see The full copy of ther Aberconway version and Dr Davies Forensic report on the marginalia.

[Jonathan H]

To Trevor

Where we disagree is that Druitt only came to Macnaghten's attention just after the Coles murder inquiry, or even during.

Via Sims, Macnaghten leaves us with a self-serving mythical version which if you strip it back -- which Mac himself did in his memoirs -- then you are left with an entirely posthumous suspect who was investigated by Macnaghten alone with nothinhg filed.

In my opinion this is not a footnote, at least not to Macnaghten, it is the heart of the case.

In 1898, and 1899 onwards the most famous writer on crime, for the masses, rammed it home that this English Gentleman suspect was the fiend.

To Edwardians the case was solved.

My revisionist take is that this was correct despite Druitt being semi-fictionalised for reasons of discretion; so far as can be known about any perpertrator of a crime in which you do not see the miscreant actually committing it, and have to rely on a hearsay confession.

But Trevor,

I agree with you about the alleged positive identification of 'Kosminski'.

That if such an extraordinary event had occurred it would have inevitably leaked over the course of a generation -- like a sieve!

Instead of just suddenly appearing in the extant record, in 1910, not htree years after a major piece by Sims, regarding a witness to a Polish Jew suspect whcih elminates the [Sea]man element, might have jogged fading memories.

And yes, I would love to see the full 'Aberconway' version published (so long as everybody was hunky-dory with that eventuality) because every time a new bit is revealed it backs my theory -- or so I claim, swine that I am ...