Seaside Home?

[Jonathan H]

My interpretation of Macnaghten in his 1913 comments, his shaping of the narrative via Sims in 1907, and his memoris of 1914, is that he was very much quashing the notion that the best suspect to be the Ripper was a Polish Jew (or a Russian doctor, or an American medico) and that there was only one 'Jack': an English suicide, though a posthumous suspect.

Consider this also:

In the primary sources between 1891 and 1917 the suicided suspect is the paramount suspect according to Macnaghten and his cronies.

Whereas the Polish Jew suspect is a sideshow.

How do the sources stack up, balanced like that? Why aren't Macnaghten and Anderson in equipoise?

Because, arguably, Macnaghten and co. specifically mention both suspects, whereas Anderson seems oblivious about the drowned doctor (understandably).

This is purely from an historical point of view, not legal or forensic.

The drowned doctor is ascendant, and the Polish Jew is sidelined in the Edwardian era.

Later research will cut both ways about the real figures who lay behind the top cops' prognostications: Druitt was not a middle-aged doctor, or a rich recluse, or an asylum veteran. But Aaron Kosminski was also not 'safely cgaed' mere 'weeks' after the autumn of terror, not is it likely that once once he was forever sectioned that he was confronted with an eyewitness.

And Mac's memoirs do not confirm, in fact pointedly distance themselves from the 'drowned doctor' profile, and he also -- in a mixture of sources -- knows that 'Kosminski' wasn't dead and was out and about for years after Kelly.

the theory of many excellent secondary sources that the Polish Jew was actually the better suspect is a reasonable theory to argue.

But it it a revisionist take on the primary sources left to us.

To reverse the clock back to 1898, to Druitt being the best suspect and Macnaghten as the policeman who is the most reliable source -- by a country mile -- is thus a restoration of the original balance of the primary sources.

It's just an observation, as I often loosely throw around the word 'revisionist' when arguably I am seeking to restore an historical paradigm.

With Aaron Kosminski as the best suspect, secondary sources have arguably and understandably elevated and trumped a number of more reliable primary sources, and that perhaps this is not as strong an argument as it may have first appeared over twenty years ago?

[Trevor Marriott]

Oh dear. No, Trevor, he does not do that. He does not even come near to saying it. Not even within a whisker. What he said was that there were good grounds for suspecting them, but he concluded that they weren't guilty of the murders. There is a big difference.

I guess the defination and interpretation of "Exonerated" depends on which side of the fence you are on.

In my book it means "removed" from all suspicion,

He clearly came to his senses about Ostrog having perhaps realised he had been provided inaccurate information when setting out to compile the memo and the same in relation to Kosminski, hence "exonarates"

If you are removed from all supsicion then clearly you cant be guilty of the murders, and you certainly cant be a prime suspect without any suspicion.

From what i have seen and read in police documents and records I do not beleive their was ever a specific suspect file persee. Exitsing police records and documents are littered with the names of persons who were put forward in various way by various sources as suspects. If there had have been a file why were all of these not added to that file. Again i say that its so easy to say evidence of suspicion etc was part of those files lost stolen or destroyed.

[Jeff Leahy]

I guess the defination and interpretation of "Exonerated" depends on which side of the fence you are on.

In my book it means "removed" from all suspicion,

He clearly came to his senses about Ostrog having perhaps realised he had been provided inaccurate information when setting out to compile the memo and the same in relation to Kosminski, hence "exonarates"

If you are removed from all supsicion then clearly you cant be guilty of the murders, and you certainly cant be a prime suspect without any suspicion.

From what i have seen and read in police documents and records I do not beleive their was ever a specific suspect file persee. Exitsing police records and documents are littered with the names of persons who were put forward in various way by various sources as suspects. If there had have been a file why were all of these not added to that file. Again i say that its so easy to say evidence of suspicion etc was part of those files lost stolen or destroyed.

"Undiscovered murders in London are rare, and the Jack the ripper crimes are not within that catigory"

[PaulB]

My interpretation of Macnaghten in his 1913 comments, his shaping of the narrative via Sims in 1907, and his memoris of 1914, is that he was very much quashing the notion that the best suspect to be the Ripper was a Polish Jew (or a Russian doctor, or an American medico) and that there was only one 'Jack': an English suicide, though a posthumous suspect.

Consider this also:

In the primary sources between 1891 and 1917 the suicided suspect is the paramount suspect according to Macnaghten and his cronies.

Whereas the Polish Jew suspect is a sideshow.

How do the sources stack up, balanced like that? Why aren't Macnaghten and Anderson in equipoise?

Because, arguably, Macnaghten and co. specifically mention both suspects, whereas Anderson seems oblivious about the drowned doctor (understandably).

This is purely from an historical point of view, not legal or forensic.

The drowned doctor is ascendant, and the Polish Jew is sidelined in the Edwardian era.

Later research will cut both ways about the real figures who lay behind the top cops' prognostications: Druitt was not a middle-aged doctor, or a rich recluse, or an asylum veteran. But Aaron Kosminski was also not 'safely cgaed' mere 'weeks' after the autumn of terror, not is it likely that once once he was forever sectioned that he was confronted with an eyewitness.

And Mac's memoirs do not confirm, in fact pointedly distance themselves from the 'drowned doctor' profile, and he also -- in a mixture of sources -- knows that 'Kosminski' wasn't dead and was out and about for years after Kelly.

the theory of many excellent secondary sources that the Polish Jew was actually the better suspect is a reasonable theory to argue.

But it it a revisionist take on the primary sources left to us.

To reverse the clock back to 1898, to Druitt being the best suspect and Macnaghten as the policeman who is the most reliable source -- by a country mile -- is thus a restoration of the original balance of the primary sources.

It's just an observation, as I often loosely throw around the word 'revisionist' when arguably I am seeking to restore an historical paradigm.

With Aaron Kosminski as the best suspect, secondary sources have arguably and understandably elevated and trumped a number of more reliable primary sources, and that perhaps this is not as strong an argument as it may have first appeared over twenty years ago?

Jonathan,
There is no reason to suppose that Druitt was the best suspect or that Macnaghten was the most reliable source in 1898. Just because Griffiths and Sims understandably accepted the information he fed them doesn't mean that anyone else believed it, or, indeed, was even aware of it. Reid seems not to have known it, Abberline was arguably unaware of Macnaghten's private information and in any event publicly said there was nothing but the timing of Druitt's death to implicate him in the crimes. Littlechild appears never to have heard of Druitt, supposing that Druitt was Dr D), Anderson clearly didn't accept it, Swanson arguably didn't (assuming either man knew of it). How, then, does Druitt become the best suspect or Macnaghten the most reliable source c.1898?

Macnaghten only really came center stage post-1959 and the discovery of the AV, but nobody connected his "Kosminski" with Anderson's unnamed Polish Jew and, indeed, Don Rumbelow made a very strong case for the suspect to be John Pizer. What Martin Fido did in 1987 was to review the evidence for all the primary suspects and make the connection. This was revisionist history only in the weakest sense of revising popular thinking as expressed in a handful of books and magazine articles. It sort of pushed Druitt off the top of the Christmas tree of suspects, and it is great that you are working so assiduously to put him back there, but trying to restore "an historical paradigm" is surely overstating the case. At best you are trying to return us to pre-1987 thinking when nothing was known about Kosminski or Ostrog.

I have absolutely no problem with pushing Druitt as a suspect and have put new information your way as and when I have come by it, and you know that whilst I baulk at some of your reasoning I am very sympathetic to your arguments, but this isn't the Kosminski v Druitt battleground you seem always to turn it into. Everything doesn't have to be assessed in light of your theorising about Macnaghten/Druitt. Their orbits come together, but they also separate quite widely and can be considered wholly independently. That he was "very much quashing" the Polish Jew theory is your interpretation, but the actual evidence upon which it is based is largely your interpretation of the sources. What bothers me about it is that Macnaghten was subordinate to Anderson and that Anderson would have seen the memorandum if it had ever left Macnaghten's desk, and that in the office politics of a hierarchical organisation like the Met it would have been nuts to slap one's boss in the face and say his thinking on the case was wrong - especially if one's boss knew of and presumably rejected the evidence against Druitt. This raises several important questions about who knew what and how much they knew about it.

[Jonathan H]

To PaulB

I am not making myself understood. It's my fault. I rush these posts trying to do too many things at once.

You are right that Macnaghten's 'coming out' -- up to a point -- in 1913 and 1914, did not make him the key police figure on this subject that he arguably was, and had been since 1891 -- and had been pulling the strings since 1898.

What a lot of people thought between 1898 and for many years after, though dissipating by the mid-20's, was that the 'police' thought it was this drowned doctor.

With Anderson spoiling this cosy solution with his 'embarrassing anti-Semitism' unsupported by any other police figure, and candidly rejected by some.

So, at the time, Anderson, Abberline, Reid, Smith, were dwarfed in the popular imagination by Macnaghten, well, by Sims anonymously on his behalf.

That Jack the Ripper was no longer a mystery and, allegedly -- and incredibly -- had not been since the man's rotting corpse was fished from the Thames.

This was Sims' doing but once he died he was relatively forgotten and so the pop image of the top-hatted toff with medical bag, became detached from the tormented suicide in the river.

Plus, Leonard Matters tried to find this suicided physician, and so far as he could tell from the press accounts and the Royal College of Surgeons' records, such a figure did not exist -- which was half-right.

1959 was actually the brief revival for the drowned not-a-doctor and for the first time we could see that the opaque suicide of Mac's memoirs was the same figure.

Therefore I am reviving a paradigm that was accepted for a generation by a number of people as the 'solution', and sociologically-speaking -- not evidentially -- it's comeback is overdue.

I don't think Anderson ever told an untruth, but I do think he was played by his subordinate and we see glimpses of it in the sources.

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Jonathon

But surely this is 2012? and regardless of what any of the police officers wrote or thought about the various suspects we now know an awful lot more about the individual suspects: Kosminski, Druitt, Chapman, Tumbelty.

We can make an acessment about the Ripper murders based on what is known and the individuals involved.

Yes they are credible suspects as they are mentioned by the senior policeman running the case as possible suspects but the critia for their acessment alone by that is, as has been suggested, a step backwards not a step forward.

Yours Jeff

[Jonathan H]

It's my fault, Jeff.

I am going to let my upcoming articles speak for themselves as I can't get any traction with what I am arguing, due to rushing being tired -- I am in a different time-zone to you -- and I don't want people fussed by this.

It's always great to debate with PaulB, and I thank him -- as I do in the forthcoming article -- for passing on a new source which backs my theory to the hilt.



.

[Jeff Leahy]

Thats cool Jonathon and good luck with your work:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

But do keep your work focused positively towards Druit as a potential suspect..

Yours Jeff

[robhouse]

"One has to look back at where all of this started that was The MM and as is known this was the first mention of the name Kosminski. Then we have to look at the Aberconway Version in which MM writes that Kosminski can be exonerated. Now that should have been the end of anything further to do with anyone named Kosminski." -- Trevor Marriott

Trevor, as has been pointed out to me, you apparently did not read the actual Aberconway version, did you? The depth of your ignorance is truly astonishing. If you had you might have read the following (emphasis mine):

"Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2. but I have always held strong opinions regarding no 1., and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become."

also:

"A much more rational and workable theory, to my way of thinking, is that the ‘rippers’ brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Millers Court and that he then committed suicide, or, as a less likely alternative, was found to be so helplessly insane by his relatives, that they, suspecting the worst, had him confined in some Lunatic Asylum."

This clearly indicates that he thinks Kozminski is a possible suspect, although "less likely" than Druitt... in his personal opinion. You are truly a buffoon. Please keep your promise now and stay away from the message boards, as you do nothing but disrupt.


To auspirograph
"Are you suggesting the primacy of a Polish Jew line of police inquiry in the Whitechapel murders despite developments introduced with Clutterbuck's thesis?"

I am still awaiting your answer about this. What "developments introduced with Clutterbuck's thesis" have any bearing on the Polish Jew line of police inquiry, or on Kozminski's candidicy as a likely suspect?

Rob H

[lynn cates]

mixed up

Hello Jonathan. Thanks. And I tend towards the conjecture that elements of these Lawende attempts at identification were mixed up with each other.

Cheers.
LC

[Trevor Marriott]

"One has to look back at where all of this started that was The MM and as is known this was the first mention of the name Kosminski. Then we have to look at the Aberconway Version in which MM writes that Kosminski can be exonerated. Now that should have been the end of anything further to do with anyone named Kosminski." -- Trevor Marriott

Trevor, as has been pointed out to me, you apparently did not read the actual Aberconway version, did you? The depth of your ignorance is truly astonishing. If you had you might have read the following (emphasis mine):

"Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2. but I have always held strong opinions regarding no 1., and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become."

also:

"A much more rational and workable theory, to my way of thinking, is that the ‘rippers’ brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Millers Court and that he then committed suicide, or, as a less likely alternative, was found to be so helplessly insane by his relatives, that they, suspecting the worst, had him confined in some Lunatic Asylum."

This clearly indicates that he thinks Kozminski is a possible suspect, although "less likely" than Druitt... in his personal opinion. You are truly a buffoon. Please keep your promise now and stay away from the message boards, as you do nothing but disrupt.


To auspirograph
"Are you suggesting the primacy of a Polish Jew line of police inquiry in the Whitechapel murders despite developments introduced with Clutterbuck's thesis?"

I am still awaiting your answer about this. What "developments introduced with Clutterbuck's thesis" have any bearing on the Polish Jew line of police inquiry, or on Kozminski's candidicy as a likely suspect?

Rob H

Whose the buffoon ? you read and interpret it how you want dont you. Well read it again !

Exonerate the last two these being kosminski and ostrog, the no 1 he refers to is Druitt whats your problem ?

[robhouse]

Whose the buffoon ? you read and interpret it how you want dont you. Well read it again !

Exonerate the last two these being kosminski and ostrog, the no 1 he refers to is Druitt whats your problem ?

"Who's"

[Trevor Marriott]

"Who's"

Oh the silence is deafening just as it was when I raised the issues yesterday about the marginalia and its authenticity.

You are one of those who now find themselves up the swanson river without a paddle.

[robhouse]

If you are wondering about the silence... I can say, from my end, it is because you have not raised a single point that I think is worthy of a response. Your ability to interpret and analyze sources is non-existent. And I have no interest in your opinion on the case.

[Trevor Marriott]

If you are wondering about the silence... I can say, from my end, it is because you have not raised a single point that I think is worthy of a response. Your ability to interpret and analyze sources is non-existent. And I have no interest in your opinion on the case.

Oh so you have no interest and all those worthy points I rasied in that long post yesterday are of no interest to you that is strange.

Well I guess its the only comment you could have made because the truth hurts and when confronted with issues that have a direct bearing on your beleifs, your thoughts and most of all your book inferring that Kosminski was Scotland yards prime suspect I would want to run and hide to.