Seaside Home?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jeff,

I don't know if you're right or not.

Please start digging.

Regards,

Simon

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Simon..am I not right in remembering that the seaside home records record an unknown guest (around 1891?) I'm sure I've come across that somewhere?

Jeff

Perhaps it was Anderson on his summer holiday

[Cogidubnus]

I take it for granted we're disregarding the City of London Police Convalescent Home at Dover as altogether too difficult (and not a likely venue for a Jewish witness)...

Dave

PS edit:-

Perhaps it was Anderson on his summer holiday

Love it...

[Simon Wood]

Hi Dave,

Never take anything for granted.

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=310

Regards,

Simon

[Trevor Marriott]

If there was an identification, and if it was at the Seaside Home, and if Kosminski was the suspect (i.e. if Swanson got his facts right) then the problem of location has to be overcome.

For some reason (if he did get his facts right) an identification, involving Kosminski, was held about 50 miles from London in a (Police?) Convalescent Home. We are told that the suspect was taken there "with difficulty" for whatever reason. Taking this statement at face value (always dangerous I know) I would have to ask, if it was so difficult, why the witness wasn't taken to the suspect? Logical inference: taking the suspect to the witness, difficult though it was, was easier than taking the witness to the suspect.

My surmise - (if Swanson meant exactly what is recorded in the marginalia): there was a witness in the Seaside Home who was so ill or incapacitated that he couldn't be moved.

Regards, Bridewell.

The great difficulty in taking him down was that they took him down on a tandem Kosminski was on the front and Swanson behind. Swanson complained because Kosminski wouldnt do his fair share of the pedalling hence the great difficulty

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Dave,

Never take anything for granted.

Yes it's on a thread at the "other place" too - Which is why I said I took it for granted it was too difficult, meaning it had been exhausted as a possibility!


Dave

[robhouse]

Is not the key phrase in the marginalia:

"where he had been sent by us with difficulty"?

What was the difficulty, I wonder? Presumably not just the distance involved, so was it perhaps that the suspect concerned in this alleged identification, was not in police custody, but somebody else's?

One other point which should perhaps be mentioned: The marginalia allude to "identification". My reading of the text suggests that the witness (whoever it may have been) was shown just the one suspect and asked whether or not this was the offender. If this is what transpired, strictly speaking, it's a "confrontation". A confrontation ID is very weak from an evidential point of view, for obvious reasons - the witness is shown only one person and must either accept or reject that person as the offender. Such a procedure would have been permissible only if the suspect had been asked to stand on an ID Parade and had refused to do so. If such an offer was not made, any identification resulting from the confrontation would be invalid and not admissible. That was certainly the case in my time, but even my police service doesn't go back as far as the 19th century.

It could have been (I'm not saying it was!) that the whole "refused to give evidence" thing was a red herring to conceal a blunder in ID procedure.

If you haven't actually quite gone away, Trevor, perhaps you can confirm (or otherwise) that my understanding is correct. So much changed with PACE 1984, that it's sometimes difficult to recall, with certainty, how things used to be.

Regards, Bridewell.

This is a very reasonable idea. It seems most likely that the suspect was brought to the witness, who was perhaps either in a convalescent home, or near a convalescent home that the police could use for the identification.

[PaulB]

Hi Simon..am I not right in remembering that the seaside home records record an unknown guest (around 1891?) I'm sure I've come across that somewhere?

Jeff

First Annual Report. Since its opening until March 1891 the Home had received 102 visitors, 1 ex-superintendent, 9 inspectors, 11 sergeants,74 constables, 5 ex-police officers, "and 2 other visitors admitted by special request". This detail should be noted, but no special significance attached to it.
Paul

[Jonathan H]

Coming up with a theory is what you are supposed to do on a case in which a legal and forensic solution are beyond us.

I am challening the entrenched conventional wisdom that Anderson is 1) the most reliable police source and 2) that he is the only one who claimed that the identity of the Ripper was known.

On both counts a strong argument can be mounted that this secondary source paradigm is fallacious -- if all the primary sources by Macnaghten, about Mac, and by his proxies are examined together.

Look, if I had proof that the 'North Country Vicar' was definitely talking about Montague Druitt, would that change your opinion of this 'restoration' theory?

[Phil Carter]

First Annual Report. Since its opening until March 1891 the Home had received 102 visitors, 1 ex-superintendent, 9 inspectors, 11 sergeants,74 constables, 5 ex-police officers, "and 2 other visitors admitted by special request". This detail should be noted, but no special significance attached to it.
Paul

Hello Paul,

The list tells me that Chief Superintendant Donald Swanson hìmself did not visit there, so the indications, to me, are

1) Swanson himself did not visit the Home. OR
2) IF he did he was one of the '2 other visitors'
3) in those days, would a one day round trip be feasble?


Kindly

Phil

[PaulB]

Hello Paul,

The list tells me that Chief Superintendant Donald Swanson hìmself did not visit there, so the indications, to me, are

1) Swanson himself did not visit the Home. OR
2) IF he did he was one of the '2 other visitors'
3) in those days, would a one day round trip be feasble?


Kindly

Phil

Personally, if this has any bearing whatsoever on the identification, and we don't know that it it does, and I would recommend caution before assuming that it does, I would imagine that Swanson and any other senior officials would have either returned to London or been accommodated at a hotel. It could refer to Kosminski and a companion; allowing all caveats and concerns about the danger of having him there, a bunch of convalescent policemen would probably have provided the most secure environment outside a prison cell. Or the witness. As said, though, it may have no bearing on the identification at all.

[PaulB]

Coming up with a theory is what you are supposed to do on a case in which a legal and forensic solution are beyond us.

I am challening the entrenched conventional wisdom that Anderson is 1) the most reliable police source and 2) that he is the only one who claimed that the identity of the Ripper was known.

On both counts a strong argument can be mounted that this secondary source paradigm is fallacious -- if all the primary sources by Macnaghten, about Mac, and by his proxies are examined together.

Look, if I had proof that the 'North Country Vicar' was definitely talking about Montague Druitt, would that change your opinion of this 'restoration' theory?

Jonathan,
I don't think it is the "conventional wisdom" that Anderson is the most reliable police source, or, if it is, that it is "entrenched". Anderson's reliability has come under attack pretty consistently for the last 15-years or more and he's been accused of almost everything from being a liar through geriatric wishful thinker to an egocentric self-deluder. Everything short of bed-wetting.

[Jeff Leahy]

Personally, if this has any bearing whatsoever on the identification, and we don't know that it it does, and I would recommend caution before assuming that it does, I would imagine that Swanson and any other senior officials would have either returned to London or been accommodated at a hotel. It could refer to Kosminski and a companion; allowing all caveats and concerns about the danger of having him there, a bunch of convalescent policemen would probably have provided the most secure environment outside a prison cell. Or the witness. As said, though, it may have no bearing on the identification at all.

Thats an interesting point. Has anyone ever checked the Grande Hotel register?

Probably teaching grand mother here but I could drop them an email an see if it still exists?

Thanks for clarification

Yours Jeff

[Jonathan H]

OK, I'll be more precise.

The conventional wisdom is of course not monolithic.

There are different camps.

Which falls into two streams: credible and plausible followed by the incredible and ludicrous.

In the first category are Aaron Kosminski, David Cohen, 'Dr.' Tumblety and George Chapman.

In the second, to name only a few, are Matter's vengeful medico, Le Queux's de-facto novel about the Czarist Secret Service (thanks Rasputin!), all the convulsions of the Royal Watergate, the hoax diary (and hoax watch) and the brilliant though sleazy artist-as-killer.

And then there's Montague Druitt, a suspect 'debunked', to differing degress depending on the secondary source, because the only police chief who seems to know about him knows hardly anything accurate about him -- so that takes care of that.

These different camps, therefore, are in a loose alliance that Macnaghten is not a reliable source, to put it mildly for some. That he cannot be accepted at face value regarding his 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs (both sources often excluded) that he had 'laid' to rest the 'ghost' of a long-dead fiend who was -- professionally speaking as a sleuth -- 'remarkable', and 'fascinating', and 'Protean'.

The identification of Farquhrason was an extraordinary breakthrough, as it bridged the 1889 obits with his reappearance in Mac's Report, therefore 'belief' in Druitt as 'Jack' precedes Macnaghten -- whether he was later sly or forgetful.

[Jeff Leahy]

OK, I'll be more precise.

The conventional wisdom is of course not monolithic.

There are different camps.

Which falls into two streams: credible and plausible followed by the incredible and ludicrous.

In the first category are Aaron Kosminski, David Cohen, 'Dr.' Tumblety and George Chapman.

In the second, to name only a few, are Matter's vengeful medico, Le Queux's de-facto novel about the Czarist Secret Service (thanks Rasputin!), all the convulsions of the Royal Watergate, the hoax diary (and hoax watch) and the brilliant though sleazy artist-as-killer.

And then there's Montague Druitt, a suspect 'debunked', to differing degress depending on the secondary source, because the only police chief who seems to know about him knows hardly anything accurate about him -- so that takes care of that.

These different camps, therefore, are in a loose alliance that Macnaghten is not a reliable source, to put it mildly for some. That he cannot be accepted at face value regarding his 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs (both sources often excluded) that he had 'laid' to rest the 'ghost' of a long-dead fiend who was -- professionally speaking as a sleuth -- 'remarkable', and 'fascinating', and 'Protean'.

The identification of Farquhrason was an extraordinary breakthrough, as it bridged the 1889 obits with his reappearance in Mac's Report, therefore 'belief' in Druitt as 'Jack' precedes Macnaghten -- whether he was later sly or forgetful.

Theres also a fourth camp which excepts that McNaughten had private info and may well have believed that Druitt was JtR. They have no reason to doubt MM.

However they cant figure out how a man travelling to Cannon Street Station would only kill in Whitechapel and how he managed to play cricket by 11 Oclock having just killed Annie Chapman.

The main arguements against Druitt being teh Ripper simply have nothing to do with McNaughten.

Yours jeff