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[Cogidubnus]

What an extrordinary previous post ...?

Why are some so threatened when Simon and I, or others, are engaging in civil debate?

Sycophancy? Nobody on this thread agrees with me ...?

I wasn't referring to your debate Jonathan/Simon, and I'm sorry if you interpreted it so...look back a bit...

Dave

[Monty]

Monty
You write that the witness "refused to give testimony", and whilst that is certainly an interpretation which could be reached, what Anderson actually said was "declined to swear to him", in the volume edition "he refused to give evidence against him", and in The Globe wrote, "refused to proceed with his identification." Whilst one can infer from these statements that the witness "refused to give testimony", it could also mean that he refused to give evidence against the suspect rather than refusing to testify.

The importance of the distinction, is that whilst the witness could be forced to testify, he could not be forced to express certainty that the suspect was the man he saw. The police could therefore have charged the suspect and subpoened the witness, but to get his to confirm that the suspect was the man he'd seen may have required persuasion, causing them to hold off pressing charges.

And, of course, the witness may have felt he had legitimate reasons for his uncertainty. "Mentor" of the Jewish Chronicle, whilst castigating Anderson, acknowledged that he would have himself have doubted himself had he been the witness, and, indeed, that he considered it right and natural to do so: "What more natural than the man's hesitancy to identify another as Jack the Ripper so soon as he knew he was a Jew? What more natural than for that fact at once to cause doubts in his mind? The crimes identified with "Jack the Ripper" were of a nature that it would be difficult for any Jew - "low-class" or any class - to imagine the work of a Jew. Their callous brutality was foreign to Jewish nature, which, when it turns criminal, goes into quite a different channel. I confess that however sure I might have been of the identity of a person, when I was told he had been committing "Jack the Ripper" crimes, and was a Jew, I should hesitate about the certainty of my identification...". "Mentor" thus provides a legitimate and easily understandable reason why a Jew might doubt even their own certainty in the identification on discovereing that the suspect was a Jew, and it highlights the flaws you speak of.

Indeed Paul,

Which is why Im saying that the authorities had little else if nothing to go one other than this witness testimony which, if we take the Schwartz or Lewande sighting, was made many years previous and at night.

The modern phrase 'fishing' comes to mind.

Monty

[robhouse]

Phil,

Your 13 point list of objections boils down to only one valid objection, specifically that Swanson stated Kozminski died shortly after admission to the asylum. The rest of the points are not really problems, but rather are things that in your opinion seem odd, in my opinion, largely because we do not know the full story. In many cases, something might not make sense until further information comes to light which makes it suddenly make sense.

"This is extremely risky given that the man has managed by minutes, in some cases (not, Eddowes) of avoiding policemen. If he is that elusive, then they are actually gambling on the chance that he would be caught BEFORE he slashes another woman's throat..which takes seconds. That's one heck of a risk. He only has to cross the road and walk up to a women, say hello, and slash her throat. The police would not have been able to react quick enough to stop it. "

Is this not what other police forces have done in serial murder cases? The police left Gary Ridgeway on the street for I believe a decade while they believed it likely he was the Green River killer.

[PaulB]

Indeed Paul,

Which is why Im saying that the authorities had little else if nothing to go one other than this witness testimony which, if we take the Schwartz or Lewande sighting, was made many years previous and at night.

The modern phrase 'fishing' comes to mind.

Monty

Well, I think that's a bit of an assumption; as said so many times before, the police generally have a good reason for suspecting someone of a crime as heinous as the Ripper murders, and especially if they not only think it's worthwhile hauling in an eye-witness to make an identification but also have to overcome some difficulty to make that happen. It's impossible to accept that Kosminski became a suspect because simply because he was involved in a common or garden domestic, looked at someone funny in the street, was mad, or simply because he was Jewish. In fact, we can't even be sure that the eye-witness identification was the crux of the police case against Kosminski; whilst Anderson certainly blamed the eye-witness, that may had less to do with the importance of his testimony than that his reluctance to give evidence wasted police time and gave Kosminski's family the opportunity to have him banged away.

[PaulB]

Phil,

Your 13 point list of objections boils down to only one valid objection, specifically that Swanson stated Kozminski died shortly after admission to the asylum. The rest of the points are not really problems, but rather are things that in your opinion seem odd, in my opinion, largely because we do not know the full story. In many cases, something might not make sense until further information comes to light which makes it suddenly make sense.

"This is extremely risky given that the man has managed by minutes, in some cases (not, Eddowes) of avoiding policemen. If he is that elusive, then they are actually gambling on the chance that he would be caught BEFORE he slashes another woman's throat..which takes seconds. That's one heck of a risk. He only has to cross the road and walk up to a women, say hello, and slash her throat. The police would not have been able to react quick enough to stop it. "

Is this not what other police forces have done in serial murder cases? The police left Gary Ridgeway on the street for I believe a decade while they believed it likely he was the Green River killer.

And they didn't leave Kosminski free to roam the streets, as Phil suggests.
Common sense - always a dangerous things to introduce, makes it highly unlikely that they would have done something so crass, but that they did so is in any case an assumption by Phil based on the fact that neither Anderson nor Swanson said otherwise. For all we know the police may have told the suspect not to leave the house, and, as Swanson says, maintained round the clock surveillance to make sure he didn't. Assumptions based on what the sources don't tell us, unless there is reason to believe they would or should have told us had it happened, really isn't all that sensible.

[Monty]

Well, I think that's a bit of an assumption; as said so many times before, the police generally have a good reason for suspecting someone of a crime as heinous as the Ripper murders, and especially if they not only think it's worthwhile hauling in an eye-witness to make an identification but also have to overcome some difficulty to make that happen. It's impossible to accept that Kosminski became a suspect because simply because he was involved in a common or garden domestic, looked at someone funny in the street, was mad, or simply because he was Jewish. In fact, we can't even be sure that the eye-witness identification was the crux of the police case against Kosminski; whilst Anderson certainly blamed the eye-witness, that may had less to do with the importance of his testimony than that his reluctance to give evidence wasted police time and gave Kosminski's family the opportunity to have him banged away.

An assumption? I thought we were in Roma ;-)

That's my point, fishing for something extra.

Monty

[Debra A]

Monty
You write that the witness "refused to give testimony", and whilst that is certainly an interpretation which could be reached, what Anderson actually said was "declined to swear to him", in the volume edition "he refused to give evidence against him", and in The Globe wrote, "refused to proceed with his identification." Whilst one can infer from these statements that the witness "refused to give testimony", it could also mean that he refused to give evidence against the suspect rather than refusing to testify.

The importance of the distinction, is that whilst the witness could be forced to testify, he could not be forced to express certainty that the suspect was the man he saw. The police could therefore have charged the suspect and subpoened the witness, but to get his to confirm that the suspect was the man he'd seen may have required persuasion, causing them to hold off pressing charges.

And, of course, the witness may have felt he had legitimate reasons for his uncertainty. "Mentor" of the Jewish Chronicle, whilst castigating Anderson, acknowledged that he would have himself have doubted himself had he been the witness, and, indeed, that he considered it right and natural to do so: "What more natural than the man's hesitancy to identify another as Jack the Ripper so soon as he knew he was a Jew? What more natural than for that fact at once to cause doubts in his mind? The crimes identified with "Jack the Ripper" were of a nature that it would be difficult for any Jew - "low-class" or any class - to imagine the work of a Jew. Their callous brutality was foreign to Jewish nature, which, when it turns criminal, goes into quite a different channel. I confess that however sure I might have been of the identity of a person, when I was told he had been committing "Jack the Ripper" crimes, and was a Jew, I should hesitate about the certainty of my identification...". "Mentor" thus provides a legitimate and easily understandable reason why a Jew might doubt even their own certainty in the identification on discovereing that the suspect was a Jew, and it highlights the flaws you speak of.

Hi Paul,
If the latter case applied; wouldn't it have been more appropriate for Anderson to say the witness 'couldn't swear to him', I've seen this term used in cases of uncertain identification before.

[Jonathan H]

No, Rob , you're wrong.

Swanson also gives the completely false impression that there were no Ripper murders after 'Kosminski' was sectioned. In fact, just days later Frances Coles was killed and police, press, and public thought this could been the fiend.

Hence one of the reasons that Martin Fido rejected Aaron Kosminski as literally Anderson's suspect was that the timing of his being 'safely caged' made no sense. It had to be a mad Jewish man whose fate was decided in late 1888/1889.

Other primary sources suggest that Anderson had no knowledge of Aaron Ksominski, or 'Kosminski', in 1892, re: his interview. We would never know that either from his Ripper prognostications beginning in 1895.

That is why Farson, Cullen and, initially, Rumbelow thought that Anderson must mean Pizer, a suspect from 1888.

Aaron Kosminski was incarcerated in early 1891 and days later a young, pretty Whitechapel harlot -- like Kelly -- is killed, and then a Jewish witness (almost certainly Lawende) is brought in for a one-on-one confrontation with a sailor suspect, and said 'no'. What an excruciating disappointment that must have been, especially for a police administrator under pressure and with a huge ego.

And what an extraordinary coincidence, that Anderson's story -- but only from 1910 -- is also about a Jewish witness who refuses to testify against a prime Ripper suspect, who is already or about to go into an asylum.

Consider that Swanson is repeating a mythos begun by Macnaghten: the brief, 'autumn of terror' which ended abruptly with Kelly -- and that 'police' knew at the time that the terror was over either because Jack fled, was dead, or mad.

You would never know from Swanson's private annotation that Aaron Kosminski -- as opposed to his fictional counter-part 'Kosminski' -- was out and about for years after the Kelly murder, that the police investigation dragged on for years, and that he lived for years and years in the asylum system (to be fair, it may not be Swanson's opinion at all).

Arguably we know that Macnaghten knew all three of those factors which gut the Polish Jew suspect as 'Jack'.

[Cogidubnus]

Now THAT is interesting....

Dave

[Jonathan H]

To Dave

Thanks, it gets even more interesting when you consider that Tom Divall claimed in 1929 that Macnaghten had once told him that the murderer had fled to the States and died in an asylum there.

Remove the America-abroad element, and you have the nutshell tale as told by Anderson and/or Swanson from 1895 (the witness was arguably only added in 1910).

It is also Macnaghten who puts 'Kosminski' into the frame with Eddowes, via 'Aberconway' a fictionalised detail which was disseminated to the public by Griffiths and Sims.

If you read that story in 1907 (in Sims) a fading memory could think that the story was half-wrong (it was a Jewish witness not a Gentile cop) and half-right, the Polish Jew maybe seen with a victim (no, that's wrong too -- it was a Gentile-featured, sailorish-dressed man).

Then a fading memory substitutes Sadler with 'Kosminski'. Not confuses them, a Gentile and a Jew. Rather Sadler and 1891 and Coles have all ceased to exist, subsumed into Kelly and Miller's Ct. and 1888

Consider also that the mistake about 'Kosminski' being deceased, by Swanson, is not just some minor error. It is vital to the story of the Marginalia -- as a story.

In that it conforms all too neatly to the structural demands of a satisfying, if melodramatic tale.

eg. We brought in a witness. The witness knew he was the killer, and the killer knew he had been recognised. Hooray! But the witness refused to testify, the bloody foreign swine! Boo! We watched him day and night, and then he was sectioned in a nuthouse. Hooray! But .. what if he gets out? The killer died soon after. Hooray! Now the Jew faces ultimate judgement by a Christian God.

It's not just a mistake, for he story does not really work as well in Anderson, and that is why the Swanson Marginalia is much more satisfying -- as a tale.

Macnaghten, the frustrated thespian, always understood the dramatic needs of a good yarn.

[harry]

What one would have expected of the police,is that after the suspect was identified,they would have sat him down and interogated him, not on just the crime of which he had been identified,but on all the Ripper murders.Then having satisfied themselves there was a case for him to answer,left it to the courts to decide guilt.That is,police who respected the justice system.

[PaulB]

Hi Paul,
If the latter case applied; wouldn't it have been more appropriate for Anderson to say the witness 'couldn't swear to him', I've seen this term used in cases of uncertain identification before.

Hi Debs,
Yes, but my reading is that the witness did and could swear to the suspect being the man he'd seen, but subsequent to the initial confrontation, and for reasons which may or may not have been genuine, he refused to say so in court.

After all, they had a witness, they had what they believed was a positive eye-witness identification, yet an action by the eye-witness subsequent to the identification was evidently blamed by Anderson for preventing the police from bringing charges. Since a flat out refusal to appear in court is unlikely, though not impossible, and could have been remedied with a subpoena, albeit at the risk of having a hostile witness, it seems to be that a refusal to positively identify the witness in court is far more likely (and actually not uncommon) and not easily remedied. Anderson's wording seems to be to sustain that interpretation.

So what reason would the police have for releasing a positively identified suspect? Aside from other speculated reasons, such as the Met having "snatched" a City suspect, they had to bring charges within a specified period of time of release the suspect. This latter is what Anderson appears to be referring to when he said that more crimes would be solved in Britain if the British police had recourse to the methods of their French counterparts - holding on to a suspect almost indefinitely being allowable there. So I suggest that the police released the suspect and kept him under close 24-hour surveillance, intending to persuade the eye-witness to give evidence, but that the suspect's family had him certified before charges could be brought.

Dunno how that pans to you, but I think it's a scenario which fits the wording.

Paul

[Monty]

Hmmmm

I can't think of any witness whose sighting is damning enough to prosecute on its own Paul,

The authorities must either have had something else or they were not looking at a trial, possibly due to the knowledge the suspect wasn't fit for trial, however the sought conculsion in absence.

Makes one think doesn't it?....literally.

Monty

[PaulB]

What one would have expected of the police,is that after the suspect was identified,they would have sat him down and interogated him, not on just the crime of which he had been identified,but on all the Ripper murders.Then having satisfied themselves there was a case for him to answer,left it to the courts to decide guilt.That is,police who respected the justice system.

Harry,
The police may have done exactly that, with the exception of letting the courts decide guilt, which they couldn't do because an action by the eye-witness prevented charges being brought.

It seems to me that the police don't suspect someone of having committed a series of terrible crimes without a good reason, so it seems safe to assume that some sort of other evidence existed and that the suspect would have been questioned.

Paul

[PaulB]

I can't think of any witness whose sighting is damning enough to prosecute on its own Paul,

The authorities must either have had something else or they were not looking at a trial, possibly due to the knowledge the suspect wasn't fit for trial, however the sought conculsion in absence.

Makes one think doesn't it?....literally.

Monty

Well, yes, exactly. The eye-witness's testimony on its own and after such a passage of time wouldn't have secured a conviction on its own, so we can only assume that the police possessed other strong circumstantial evidence and that the eye-witness was important because it put the suspect at the scene of the crime.

And yes, whether or not the collective evidence was really sufficient to convict the suspect is not knowable from the sources we possess, but it is possible that the police never intended to go to full trial, only that they could present their evidence to the magistrate, it then being decided whether the suspect was fit to plead - which the medical reasons given in the surviving committal papers would suggest he wasn't.

The only possible fly in the ointment of the forgoing is Swanson's statement that the witness's refusal was in part due to not wanting the execution of the suspect on his conscience. Since the police would have reassured him on that point if there was no realistic chance of it happening, one could perhaps argue that the police did hope the case would go to full trial. I'm personally doubtful that we could safely draw that conclusion from what we know, however.

But it does make us think. And thinking is never, ever a bad thing. Uless one's is thinking bad thoughts.