There's Something Wrong with the Swanson Marginalia

[c.d.]

Lynn is in Texas? Does he wear a big hat? The whole picture is mind boggling.

c.d.

[mariab]

Hi C.D.,
I KNOW, for me too! Apparently Lynn teaches in 3 different colleges in Austin, Texas. (Which is not so evil a place, I hear, at least it's close to a body of water, which always does it for me).

[Jonathan H]

Unlike Mcnaghten, the memoirs of Anderson tell a neat tale.

Due to a house-to-house search the police had narrowed down the generic profile of the fiend: eg. a Polish Jew being shielded by other Polish Jews, because they were antipathetical towards co-operation with the law enforcement of their adopted Gentile country.

Despite Anderson being abroad, the police had efficiently narrowed down their suspects to the mad masturbator and he was 'unhesitaingly identified' by a witness, who then refused to testify against the murderer for the narrowest of sectarian reasons --the swine!

You couldn't do that in France!

Fortuitiously, the Super-suspect was 'safely caged' in a madhouse -- or was this before the identification? -- and so at least the murderer's reign of terror was ended.

When did all this happen?

The implication of Anderson's account in 1910, is that it was towards the end of 1888, or the beginning of 1889 [the Macnaghten Report, both versions, has Kosminski incarcerated in March 1889 -- only out by one month under two years]

People talk about it being responsible of the police to have investigated other suspects, for example Sadler, and this is true.

I argue that what people are missing is Anderson's version as a tale, with its own internal logic, does not match the primary sources on the police hunt between 1888 to 1891.

The events of early 1891, with Coles and Sadler, cease to exist in Anderson's account!

Exactly as historical methodology would teach us to expect from a late, biased and egocentric source, eg. the most embarrassing element of the story has been discarded, or rather redacted back into 1888 with a much more satisfying conclusion.

A near triumph, rather than a disheartening anti-climax.

I don't believe that any Ripper witness ever saw Kosminski.

I don;t believe that the police were ever watching him.

I don't believe he was never investigated as the Ripper whilst at large, only after he was incarcerated -- and this may have been a discreet chat with a couple of family members ['suspecting the worst' - Mac] and nothing filed, by perhaps Macnaghten.

Macnaghten is the first and only record we have hinting at family suspicion, and this police chief remains consistent, in all his bits and pieces, that the Polish Jew was a minor suspect, and the only possible witness was a beat cop -- who never literally existed!

As Simon points out why would you tell the press, in 1891, that you were looking at Sadler as the fiend if the probable real one has been incarcerated years before -- actually only days before.

You wouldn't.

As Evans and Rumbelow argue in 'Scotland Yard Investigates' (2006) the events of Feb/March 1891 throw up a whole series of coincidences; a Kosminski exhibiting 'unmentionable vices' was incarcerated, and a suspect was 'confronted' by a Jewish witness who said: no. Even a Sailor's Home appears briefly, with Sadler, as the likely origin of Swanson's bizarre 'Seaside Home' locale [note that Macnaghten's police witness has morphed into a police location for a Jewish witness].

Martin Fido's reactions are instructive here, to the Marginalia 23 years ago, as he grasped that Anderson's story is set in 1888, not 1891. Ergo, the suspect could not be Aaron Kosminski, hence this researcher's fastening onto another madman of 1888: David Cohen.

You can't have it both ways is Fido's point.

Either Anderson was right about a Polish Jew suspect in 1888 -- so not Kosminski -- or he was right about Kosminski but had the timing [self-servingly] terribly muddled as the years passed.

Could Kosminski have been the Ripper after all?

Of course.

Yet advocates of his likelihood, I think, torture the scraps to make it look a pretty straight-forward theory.

It is not.

It does the contradictory sources no justice to pretend that they are.

[Swanson having the Ripper murders end with Kosminski's incarceration, and then expiring soon after is such a give-away! Like if Macnaghten still had Druitt teaching at Blackheath after he had drowned himself] .

Yet I think an historical case can be mounted that Anderson's mythical Supergrass is an expression of acute anguish and frustration on his part; that the need to mythologise at all is an emotional measure of how certain he really was.

Not 'only thought he knew' -- he knew!

Anderson also, originally, knew that by the time they had located the Ripper it was too late to do anything about it.

It is that knowledge, not the identity of the murderer which was as certain as it gets, that was too appalling to ever hold in a mind which never conceded error.

Oh sure, there was a witness alright, and, yes, the suspect knew that he had been identified. But it was much more likely to be a member of his own family who was definitely not going to testify against him in a courtroom -- and who had him sectioned instead.

That behind the witness myth is is the unhesitating certainty of a fellow Polish Jew, eg. the brother, and the frantic scrambling to sideline the police -- who knew nothing of any of this yet -- and get Kosminski into a madhouse.

Imagine if a less egocentric Anderson had candidly written the following:

That two years after the house search, and after unfortunately nearly railroading an innocent sailor, some lousy, wretched, Polish family came forward --after 'safely caging' their member from the police -- and admitted that he had admitted to them that voices had told him to kill Gentile harlots. This man's name was on that original list, but had been missed for lack of any other knowledge pointing to this unstable ex-hairdresser.

Would there even be much of a Ripper mystery now ...?

[mariab]

I agree with everything in your recapitulation, Jonathan H, and I'm glad that someone finally mentioned Martin Fido. Nevertheless, I'm waiting with great fascination to read Rob House's book on Kozminski, which will doubtless tidy up what knowledge there is about the ambiguous sources and the twisted circumstances surrounding this part of the investigation. I was also somehow hoping that Trevor Marriott might have some success with the Secret Branch ledgers, so that we might perhaps find out if Kozminski's mentioned in there BEFORE Rob House's book goes to print. That would constitute a pretty nice timing, indeed (I know, dare to hope).
Jonathan H. wrote:
He was 'unhesitaingly identified' by a witness, who then refused to testify against the murderer for the narrowest of sectarian reasons --the swine!
You couldn't do that in France!
I'm of the same opinion (if the sob story with the mysterious witness's true!), as little as I've heard about the France judicial/police system in the Fin de siècle. By the way, does anyone have any ideas about criminal archives in Paris, similar to www.oldbaileyonline.org? (Only in France they won't be online.) I'd like to go look if some names I have in mind turn up eventually in criminal archives in Paris (as I'll be back there in about 10 days). I can go look at the Archives Nationales and at the Bibliothèque du Sénat (I'll just check the inventaries for the fonds publics and the états de notaires), but never before have I attempted to locate criminal records in Paris. Anybody here knows any pertinent info? I would totally appreciate this...

[Tecs]

Who was the witness? When did the identification take place? Where was the identification conducted? Why does no other source mention such a prima facie important identification?

I've always wondered how we would have treated Anderson's claims had he been lower down the chain? It is the case that Macnaughton's memorandum and Anderson's views are both viewed as the cornerstones for Ripper research. The truth is that Macnaughton only joined the police in 1889 after the bulk of Ripper murders (as seen at the time) and didn't investigate any of them himself, a fact that he later regretted.

He was parachuted straight into his post at the age of only 36, with no experience at all, (the way it was done in those days.) I am sure that many people don't realise just how inexperienced he was and how unqualified he was to give a truly authorative opinion. Yes, he was around at the time, yes he had access to the documents, yes he had a 1000% more chance of solving the case than I do! But, isn't he really just a bloke who happened upon a quite interesting investigation and found himself in quite a priveleged position to find out more than the average punter? Also, Warren refused to have him in post when first suggested the year before. The reason, I recall, was that Warren had heard that he (Mac) had been beaten up in Bengal by a group of Indian rioters. British policemen should be made of stronger and more authoratative stuff than that in his opinion, so he said no. Perhaps though there was more to it. Perhaps he met Mac and thought he was an arse?

I am sure many people think along the lines of, "He was a chief of police, he must have known what he was talking about." without truly understanding or appreciating the real position he was in.

As to Anderson, he had more about him with regards to police work, but at the end of the day he was just a police officer who said that in his opinion, Jack the Ripper was definitely identified and they knew exactly who he was and what happened to him. Yes, of course he was a very high ranking police officer, but as I've just written above, in those days that didn't mean a long career going up through the ranks having once walked the beat and having to earn your stripes etc. As I have said on a previous post elsewhere, nobody else actually agreed with Anderson. In my opinion, Swanson was distancing himself from Anderson's views by backtracking and using the lukewarm response "suspect" in response to a piece by Anderson naming the "murderer."

Other police either pooh-poohed his views, (Smith, Abberline), or said that he only "thought he knew." No other officer came out and agreed completely with him. Now, some will say that this is because the whole thing was top secret, known to only a handful of senior men. I think that if you look through the files, there were a whole series of identity parades with witnesses being brought in front of suspects and wheras most officers took them for what they were, Anderson, for some reason, exaggerated in his own mind one of these scenarios and ended up believing that the Ripper really had been identfied.

I think that the re-evaluation of Anderson has a lot to do with Martin Fido and his assertion that Anderson was actually a wholly reliable witness and source. Martin of course is a very highly respected authority on the case, quite rightly and quite correctly and as an extremely competent speaker his vociferous defence of Anderson has, I think, rubbed of and influenced many people, especially those new to the case. It is very interesting to remember how Anderson was viewed pre 1987. In the Barlow and Watt T.V. program for example he is described as a fool and most books from years gone by dismissed him as either a boaster or somebody who had convinced himself over the years that he was right.

My own view is that all of us want, in some way, to believe Macnaughton and Anderson because the truth is that without their input and direction we are nowhere! Guiding us towards Druitt, Kosminski, Ostrog, the Polish Jews, etc etc has occupied many years of interesting research and has given us hope that we may possibly be able to solve the case one day. Without that, we are flapping around rudderless (to use a mixed metaphor!)

And that would be intolerable...

Regards,

[Tecs]

I'm worried that everyone's gonna jump and hit me if I dare suggest the (remote) possibility that the witness might have possibly been Joeph Hyam Levy instead of Lawende and the suspect Jacob Levy instead of Kozminski?!

Anything is possible Maria.

Nobody can prove that M.K. Gandhi wasn't the Ripper! He was at least in the East End at the time which immediately makes him a better suspect than Albert Victor, Cream et al.

But he wasn't!!!

Regards,

[Jonathan H]

I subscribe to the theory that Macnaghten and Anderson are not in equipoise about the Ripper, or probably much else; that the former knew what he was talking and the latter did not.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

As Macnaghten did not join the Metropolitan Police until June 1889, do you think that when writing his memorandum he sought Anderson's guidance on the 1888 Whitechapel murders?

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

No I don't.

Both Druitt and Kosminski were discovered by Mac in 1891, and Ostrog is there purely for window-dressing and for no other reason. Mac thought the Kosminski family were wrong in their suspicions and and the Druitt family correct.

Anderson knew about Kosmsinki, somehow, but I doubt he knew a thing about the other two; he never, ever, refers to them even for debunking purposes.

The official archived version of the Report, in 1894, is in effect the first draft --seen by nobody, not even Doug Browne in the 50's.

The altered Aberconway version was created in 1898 to show the literary cronies.

It is a 'Home Office Report' because that is what Sims knew it as, though he was misled as to how bureaucratically definitive it was by Macnaghten -- it never even went to that dept. of state and is not an accurate copy of the original, deliberately so.

It was the late Mac's daughter who found it, and did not know quite what it was? Naturally she assumed it had been written in 1894 because that is what it claims. She titled it a 'memorandum', but her father gave it a much grander characterisation to his pals.

[mariab]

To Tecs:
Pertaining to Anderson, you'd probably find interest in reading a recently published essay by John Malcolm in Casebook Examiner 3 (which is a Ripperological electronic mag to which one can subscribe from the casebook site for $9/year, I think it is).

[Natalie Severn]

Martin Fido's reactions are instructive here, to the Marginalia 23 years ago, as he grasped that Anderson's story is set in 1888, not 1891. Ergo, the suspect could not be Aaron Kosminski, hence this researcher's fastening onto another madman of 1888: David Cohen

Hi Jonathan,
Macnaghten wrote the 1894 report to refute the claims made in a big National Newspaper,The Sun.The week before he wrote it,in February 1894,"The Sun" did a series of full page features over five days , going into detail about Thomas Cutbush[ though without naming him]. Cutbush was already in Broadmoor ,and had been incarcerated in a lunatic asylum briefy beforehand immediately after the murder of Frances Coles on Febrary 13th 1891.Thomas Cutbush had been knifing women in the street and wounding them in the buttocks and running away .Broadmoor being the institution for the criminally insane meant he was kept there at "Her Majesty"s pleasure".
Why,one wonders did Macnaghten "protest so much" about Cutbush,that he considered the dead Druitt, the incarcerated Kosminski and the complete non starter Ostrog,ahead,in terms of suspects of Thomas Cutbush? Was it simply because he understood he was a "nephew" of one of Scotland Yard"s recently retired, Chiefs of Police?

[Hunter]

The altered Aberconway version was created in 1898 to show the literary cronies.

How do you know this? And if so, why would it continue to reference Cutbush who was clearly out of the picture by that time? There would be no reason for him to erroneously suggest that it was written at the time of the official version whether Sims thought there was a Home Office report or not. Sims would have to know that such a report would be on official ledger, stamped and dated with a Home Office receipt; which Macnaghten's 'notes' were not.

Or was he simply taking Mac's word for all of this?

It is just as reasonable to suspect that the Aberconway version was written first, and then, the 'official version' altered to make it more plausable to the Home Office - leaving out his personal preferences. That is why drafts are usually undertaken before a final manuscript is submitted. It is the author's attempts at getting his thoughts together before presenting a final summation.

[Phil Carter]

It is just as reasonable to suspect that the Aberconway version was written first, and then, the 'official version' altered to make it more plausable to the Home Office - leaving out his personal preferences. That is why drafts are usually undertaken before a final manuscript is submitted. It is the author's attempts at getting his thoughts together before presenting a final summation.

(my emphasis)

Hello Hunter,

This written in bold, by myself, from your posting above is the exact reason why I wish to be able to see the (to quote the JTR A-Z) "... brief, and not entirely accurate summary of the murders of Nicholls, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly."

I have no idea what this refers to, and would wish to see the text pertaining to this in order for evaluation in terms of timelining, comparison to the Scotland Yard version and full adjudication with reference to modern theoirists.

It occurs to me that the valued memorandum and this marginalia are part of the need to establish Anderson's theory as more sound and grounded. This is obviously not the case however, as no clarity has emerged since the discovery of the latter item, despite the Crime Museum's public utterances to the opposite.

best wishes

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

In the final instalment of the Sun newspaper's series of articles Henry Labouchere MP opined that "The Sun had made out a fair case for public investigation."

"Then you would recommend public investigation?" asked The Sun representative.

"Yes; if I were Mr. Asquith [Home Secretary] I should elect a clever officer to look into the matter. He would do so carefully, for I suppose that the reward still remains valid."

A reader's letter, signed "A Liberal", agreed. "If Scotland Yard still entertains a doubt, let Mr. Asquith appoint a committee of experts to examine into and sift the mass of evidence which you have gathered with so much labour."

And the Sun's editor wrote, "We understand that the attention of the highest police authorities has been called to our statements, and we confidently look forward to our story being subjected to the closest and most searching investigation."

A public investigation into the Whitechapel murders? That was the last thing Scotland Yard would have wanted.

The Sun's final instalment appeared on Monday 19th February 1894. Macnaghten's memorandum was dated Friday 23rd February 1894. He must have worked fast and furiously in order to produce a draft and final memorandum in just four days and have all the pat answers ready to forestall any possible calls for such a public investigation.

Incidentally, the Sun's editor was T.P. O'Connor who, together with Henry Labouchere, founded the Star newspaper, which had so diligently reported the 1888 Whitechapel murders.

Were they trying to call someone's bluff?

Regards,

Simon

[Natalie Severn]

Interesting thoughts Simon.I wonder!