There's Something Wrong with the Swanson Marginalia

[mariab]

To Sir Robert Anderson:
“S&M“ for the Swanson marginalia? It kinda fits with the tone of the debate in this thread. But, as Robert said in his post #658, the subject of our research was pretty brusque too.
(With apologies for the inappropriate joke.)

To Rob House:
Sleekviper is still a bit of a newbie, Mr. House. He's much better on Berner Street, though. For real.
Oops! Rob House's quote referred not to Sleekviper's post, but to Ally's post #645. My apologies.

[Natalie Severn]

Actually Maria, Stewart has been kind enough to post many fascinating hand written letters and artifacts that he has collected over the years from many of the numerous famous and infamous characters who litter the landscape of Ripperology,signficant correspondence from Sir Robert Anderson included.He has also explained in painstaking detail how the Littlechild letter came into his possession .Quite frankly its provenance has never been seriously questioned.In fact a whole cache of Littlechild"s typed correspondence,all similarly annotated and added to in his handwriting to the 1912 letter were all was apparently re-discovered in a bundle,during a Sotheby"s style auction in America----the details of which were posted a few years back by AP Wolf on JTRForums. Ap ,it needs to be said,at least had the good grace to apologise as a consequence to Stewart Evans, for ever having questioned the authenticity of the 1912 letter in the first place.
But yes, it is indeed a pity that Stewart is not posting on here ,many of us here have been treated to the legendary generosity and hospitality of Stewart and his lovely wife Rosie as well as benefitting greatly from his vast experience and knowledge of the case and its times.
Best Norma

[Ally]

So what does this mean for me, the actual crime-oriented hobbyist? And "nothing" is a totally appropriate answer. Is the argument for or against Kosminski for a suspect?

Hi Errata. The answer as to what it means is really "Not a damn thing". But what does the answer to most things mean on a larger scale. What does any debate on abstracts accomplish. Jack the Ripper will never be solved, does that mean the pursuit isn't worth doing?

Is it for or against freedom of academia to examine historical documents? Is it evidence? Is it trivia? If everything you (any one of you) says is true, what conclusion does that lead to? Guilt or innocence? Censorship or freedom? Conspiracy or coincidence? Because I find this thread fascinating, I just for some reason have a hard time breaking down what the argument is.

You are not alone. I think it is the fact that reasoned people can look at the exact same thing and come to completely different opinions and therefore, there are not clear answers. But as I mentioned before, there aren't clear answers in most things. It's rarely black and white. The difference is, some people allow different thought to poison their opinion of different people. That's where the actual problem is.

Or more appropriately what the goal of the argument is. And I am totally willing for this to be because I am dense, or trying too hard to find some overarching theme. But I really wanna know.

Sometimes there is no goal. Sometimes it's just about putting ideas out there, thrashing them out to the end and seeing where they lead. Such as the stuff about Kosminski/Kozminski. Is it significant? Yes. Do I come to a different conclusion from it than Chris? Yes. Will it solve anything? Nope.

If you are going to debate anything, the trick is to just debate for the sake of debating, to throw ideas out there and let other people throw their ideas back and maybe you learn something new and maybe they learn something new as well. That's how I view it anyway. I don't debate to be "right", though I understand most people believe that because that's their goal. The end isn't as important to me as the process. I actually ENJOY just thinking about things, turning them over, seeing what's there.

I think that most people who have been debating here are already convinced one way or the other. The debate , I don't believe, is even for those of us having it. It's mainly for those who come after, so they can see there are more than one side to a situation, there's more than one explanation, and there's more than one possibility.

Or to encourage people to not just believe what they are told, because the person telling them has written a book or two but to question it for themselves, and maybe, by doing so, someone with a new idea will uncover some new information.

[Ally]

As I said, if I had been forging the annotations in that situation, I should have used the name Fido gives for the historical Aaron Kozminski, rather than running the risk that Macnaghten simply (and uniquely) spelled the name wrong.

I actually would have gone the exact opposite and used the one that McNaghten would have used. My presumption would have been the police would have had their own way of spelling it, and if McN spelled it that way, then probably Anderson knew him by that, so Swanson as well.

But again, that's different strokes. And why though the idea of the precise spelling of the name is interesting, it ultimately leads nowhere. Because clearly two people can look at it and draw different conclusions.

But of course, if Swanson DID write that bit of the marginalia, where'd HE get the spelling from? It beggars belief (to me) that a name he couldn't recall at all would suddenly come to him, McN spelling and all.

[mariab]

But of course, if Swanson DID write that bit of the marginalia, where'd HE get the spelling from? It beggars belief (to me) that a name he couldn't recall at all would suddenly come to him, McN spelling and all.

There were not too many different alternatives to the spelling (for an Englishman). Perhaps Swanson talked to someone, or perused some kind of document that we don't have. I know it's complete conjecture, but it appears as plausible.

Hello Norma (Natalie),
Robert Anderson and I were NOT questioning the provenance of the Littlechild letter in the least. And I recall about Littlechild's typed correspondence being similarly annotated, that's why I pointed out to Robert that the letter being typed vs. handwritten doesn't constitute a problem whatsoever, provenance-wise. I don't own SPE's Tumblety book (JTR – the first American serial killer?), though I own all his other books, but I've read about this in several interviews of his (some of them posted here on casebook), and I've heard him talk about it in a podcast. I don't wish to miss anything that SPE has to say.
I hope that SPE might still consider keeping posting infrequently, providing help and documents for the needy (i.e., for all of us).

[Natalie Severn]

No Maria, I wasn"t suggesting you were.I was simply pointing out that the one time I remember it being "questioned" was by Ap and it wasn"t long before he apologised to Stewart when he read about the discovery of the other bundle of Littlechild letters in America which were indisputably Littlechild"s and bore the same Littlechild "insignia"-for want of a better word.
Cheers
Norma

[Chris]

But of course, if Swanson DID write that bit of the marginalia, where'd HE get the spelling from? It beggars belief (to me) that a name he couldn't recall at all would suddenly come to him, McN spelling and all.

Why should it be hard to believe that he had difficulty remembering the name, but that when he did remember it he had no problem spelling it? Isn't that quite normal?

Knowing what we now know, it seems quite likely that Aaron's name was spelled with an 's' in the police records, and that Macnaghten and Swanson both spelled it the same way for that reason. But that would have been a very dangerous assumption for a forger to make in 1987. In contrast, it would obviously be safe for the forger to stick with the spelling Fido had from the workhouse and asylum records.

[Ally]

Why would a forger assume that Swanson knew how the name was spelled in workhouse or asylum records?

If we are to presume that a forger would have thought Swanson would spell Kosminski the way it was on asylum records or workhouse records then doesn't that presume that we too would have to presume that's how Swanson would spell it? If we are thinking purely from a perspective of which way would Swanson have spelled this?

There is no reason to think that Swanson would ever have seen his name entered on a workhouse or asylum document.

Wouldn't the logical assumption be that Swanson would spell it how the other police spelled it? Then, even if it's wrong, it could be passed off to both officers with associations making the same mistake, because that's how he was known internally or because Swanson was taking it from the McM, which he had seen.

For example, if my friend spells her name Jayne, I am going to spell her name Jayne, even if her birth certificate says Jane. If someone were going to forge a note from me with Jayne's name in it, even if they know the legal documents say Jane, which way are they going to be more likely to spell it?

Yes, the McM might have been a mistaken spelling. But copying that mistake can easily be dismissed as well Swanson would have seen it and thought that's how it was spelled. Much more likely than Swanson knew how his name was spelled on non-police records.

[Ally]

And then of course that one has to look at this with the eye of whether a forger would actually have believed that the Kozminski Martin found was the right one. We all of course have the benefit of years, but if you remember the process..

Kaminsky to Cohen to Kozminski that Martin used, a forger might well have been afraid that the one Martin found wasn't actually the RIGHT one and therefore not the right spelling to go with.

[Chris]

Ally

I'm not saying the hypothetical forger would have assumed Swanson had seen workhouse and asylum records. But such a forger with Fido's book in front of him would see his references to an Aaron Kozminski who appeared in those records, and his suggestion that this was the origin of the Kosminski surname in the Macnaghten memorandum.

Obviously that raises the possibility that Macnaghten simply got the name wrong, and the danger that if the forger spells the name with an 's' he will set alarm bells ringing by duplicating Macnaghten's error. In contrast, there is no danger of getting it wrong if he sticks to the 'z' spelling that Fido has seen in the records.

And of course if he used the 's' spelling and someone challenged it, the hypothetical forger could indeed make a suggestion about Swanson having copied the error from Macnaghten or vice versa. But how much better it would be to use the 'z' form that he knew was used in contemporary records, and avoid the problem arising in the first place!

[Chris]

And then of course that one has to look at this with the eye of whether a forger would actually have believed that the Kozminski Martin found was the right one. We all of course have the benefit of years, but if you remember the process..

Kaminsky to Cohen to Kozminski that Martin used, a forger might well have been afraid that the one Martin found wasn't actually the RIGHT one and therefore not the right spelling to go with.

Maybe I've misunderstood what's being suggested, but I thought the whole idea was that a forger was inspired to add the name by Fido's discovery of Aaron Kozminski in 1987. If that's not the case, you might as well suggest it happened when Tom Cullen first published the Macnaghten memorandum in 1966.

[Ally]

If the forger was inspired, he didn't necessarily need to believe that *the* Kozminski that Martin found was the *correct* one. What if Martin was wrong? If he uses Kozminski, and it's later revealed that this one in the asylum (and at that time it was only the asylum entry) wasn't the right one, then it becomes fairly obvious that it's a forgery.

However, if he uses Kosminski, even if Martin is wrong, there is no harm no foul because it can be stated that Swanson was remembering McNaghten.

There are two possible spellings of the name. One relies on going with a cop who was there at the time. The other requires believing a researcher several years after the fact has identified a person in an insane asylum with a similar name was in fact THE Kosminski .

If the researcher is proved wrong, the forgery falls apart.

If you go with McN, it's safe regardless of whether Martin is right or wrong.

One is foolproof. The other is not. Which do you pick?

[Trevor Marriott]

That Littlechild's typed is not a problem in the least, provenance-wise. What would be nice is if we knew ALL the details about the internal discussions which led to the Littlechild letter. By the way, after having read Roger J. Palmer's recent 3 part piece in the Examiner, I'm getting interested in Tumblety again.

If I was you i wouldnt bother !

[mariab]

If I was you i wouldnt bother !

Yes, Mr. Marriott, I know your position on this. I'm not saying that Dr. T is my #1 suspect at all. ;-)

[Chris]

Ally

I'm not quite sure how serious you are about that scenario, but it seems to me that if the hypothetical forger was seriously concerned that some new evidence might emerge proving that the police suspect "Kosminski" was not Aaron Kozminski, then both spellings would involve significant risks.

Having said that, as far as I know nobody did comment in 1987 on the spelling of the name, so maybe the risks would be more theoretical than real.

I did say at the start that I didn't think the argument about spelling proved anything ...