New Article on the Swanson Marginalia in Ripperologist 128

[Phil Carter]

Thanks. That's actually what I thought Phil might be referring to, but I wanted to check before commenting.

As you say, it's not obvious which "lunatic asylum" theory it refers to. Another possibility, in which it had previously been claimed that the suspect was dead, is the insane medical student theory (vintage 1895):

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3934

Strangely enough, that theory was circulated only a few months before Swanson was referred to in the Pall Mall Gazette as having a theory that the Ripper was a man "who is now dead".

my empahsis,

Hello Chris,

Yes, I had the quote in mind but wanted to use the other ones first, as explained above. to make other connecting points.

What HAS intruiged me is that emphasised comment. I honestly hadn't thought about that connection.

Because if Swanson IS making that comment and it IS referring to the dead medical student...can Swanson's making the "dead" mistake in the annotations possibly be him mixing these two specific suspect ideas?


best wishes

Phil

[Chris]

In a March 1903 Pall Mall Gazette interview Abberline poured cold water on the drowned doctor theory.

Also—

"I know," continued the well-known detective, "that it has been stated in several quarters that 'Jack the Ripper' was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory."

Abberline may have been referencing either Kosminski or Cutbush, although neither of these men died until after his newspaper interview.

Thanks. That's actually what I thought Phil might be referring to, but I wanted to check before commenting.

As you say, it's not obvious which "lunatic asylum" theory it refers to. Another possibility, in which it had previously been claimed that the suspect was dead, is the insane medical student theory (vintage 1895):

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3934

Strangely enough, that theory was circulated only a few months before Swanson was referred to in the Pall Mall Gazette as having a theory that the Ripper was a man "who is now dead".

[Monty]

Swanson was in such a position that all related correspondence ran through him.

Abberline was not.

Ipso facto Swanson was in a better position to pass comment than Abberline.

Monty

[Phil Carter]

Hello Simon,

Thanks for the quote. I was about to add that bit too and comment upon it.

By the way, have we ever found out where Abberline was living in 1888? 1891 Clapham, I know.. but 1888? Just curious.

best wishes

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

In a March 1903 Pall Mall Gazette interview Abberline poured cold water on the drowned doctor theory.

Also—

"I know," continued the well-known detective, "that it has been stated in several quarters that 'Jack the Ripper' was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory."

Abberline may have been referencing either Kosminski or Cutbush, although neither of these men died until after his newspaper interview.

Regards,

Simon

[Phil Carter]

In addition..

Hello Chris,

In addition to the last post (pardon the pun).. I quote Martin Fido on the role of Abberline, from 2008, in reply to a question starting a new thread about the role of Abberline. (http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=33)


"Abberline was head of the Whitechapel CID (H Diviusion) for many years, and had been transferred to Scotland Yard some time before the Ripper case began. When it proved difficult, and fell between two Divisions initially, (H Whitechapel and J Bethnal Green) Abberline was sent back to the East End where he outranked the Divisional CID heads and (presumably) united the detective investigation. Abberline would then appear to have been the principal liaison between the detectives on the ground and Scotland Yard, where Swanson was the desk officer who collated all the information that came in. Abberline was sent to make important arrests and to investigate things like the "missing" medical student. He interviewed important witnesses like Schwartz. His own account of giving sixpences to prostitutes on the streets at night so that they could go to the safety of lodging houses suggests that he did some personal detective patrolling."
-Martin Fido.

If he interviewed important witnesses..... then all aspects of a Polish Jew investigation would have included Abberline, if done whilst he was working on the case. I surmise.

Just an thought.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Can you quote the statement of Abberline's that you're referring to, please? I'm not sure it's clear that he did denounce the Polish Jew theory.

Hello Chris,

"Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago."

1903.

Err, Unless I am mistaken, it would include all activity between 1888 and 1903 from which he draws his comments. Ipso facto, all evidence against a Polish Jew, if there was any, was known to him.

One cant say something in 1903 stating that SY is no wiser than it was 15 years ago, when it obviously wasn't wise at all on the subject of the murderer at that time, without knowing the ins and outs subsequent to 1888 and up to 1903.

Ipso facto Abberline is stating that he is in knowledge of what SY knows and what they don't. Otherwise Abberline is guessing or merely opining without knowledge.. and we have no indication of that being the case.

best wishes

Phil

[Chris]

And when Abberline was working on the case, on the ground, he must have known about the Polish Jew theory.. which he later denounced as rubbish..without a scrap of evidence, I believe.

Can you quote the statement of Abberline's that you're referring to, please? I'm not sure it's clear that he did denounce the Polish Jew theory.

[Phil Carter]

No, he wasn't. Swanson was.

Hello Rob,

No.. but he was heavily involved in the investigations on the ground.. passing all info onwards to Swanson, I'd assume.

And when Abberline was working on the case, on the ground, he must have known about the Polish Jew theory.. which he later denounced as rubbish..without a scrap of evidence, I believe.

Now do please explain to me why Swanson would not have involved Abberline in his knowledge? Not exactly a need to know basis thing.. its Jack the flaming Ripper that caused a hell of a lot of trouble to very many!

Plus,the operation cost thousands of pounds in extra police monetary expenses... which assumes that the Home Office would want to be in on the act of knowing all about it and it being wrapped up. Seen any memo's documents to guide us between the two departments..the Met and the HO? I haven't.

best wishes

Phil

[Chris]

Originally Posted by robhouse

Something has gone wrong there. Those quotations were from Fisherman, not Rob.

[Phil Carter]

Yes, they do differ. That doesn't make your right.

Hello Paul,

Quite.

best wishes

Phil

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

That is completely irrational, Rob. Chris also recognized this, thankfully. I´m sorry, but that´s it. There has never been a case in history where we could ascribe strong suspicion to a suspect without knowing a iota about what it was that got him suspected. And there never will be. It would potentially be a gross miscarriage of justice to do so.

I suspect Mr. Phillips might not agree with your assessment of his position.

And I love all the "gross miscarriage" of justice nonsense. We are kicking around ideas about a suspect named in some police documents. We can't put that genie back in the bottle.

Knifethreaters are potentially strongly homicidal, his sister was a woman, and he may have threatened her over her behaviour visavi other men, perhaps thinking her a slut.

So Errata thinks the knife threat was no big deal, and you think he may have tried to carve her up as a slut. Nobody knows the truth and never will. We're all just projecting, some with a better grounding in reality.

I would also like to think that I am open to other ideas than the one I vote for myself. All I read and take in makes a difference - I just read Gordon´s book on the Thames Torso murders, and to my mind, that book lifts George Chapman up quite a bit as a useful suspect.

Gordon tries to fit Chapman up for the Thames Torsos, the Ripper, and the American Ripper-like crimes. His next book has Chapman as the Son of Sam....

Here's an idea - read Rob House's book !

[Abby Normal]

Fine. Prove it. And I don't mean that rudely. But the point is that maybe the evidence against "Kosminski" was rubbish, but Macnaghten tells us that there ‘were many circs' that made "Kosminski" 'a strong suspect’ and Anderson and Swanson thought he was Jack the Ripper. Prima facie that doesn't look like a completely empty hand of cards.

Did Anderson have a priori conclusions regarding ethnicity and so forth of the killer? He says that the conclusion we came to was that he was a low-class Polish Jew. That could mean Anderson, or Anderson and others, or just the police (or those police responsible for reaching the conclusion). Tellingly the supposedly arrogant and boastful Anderson does not claim it as his conclusion. And as far as we know it may have been but one of several conclusions the police reached.

And there is no evidence that the whole case against "Kosminski" rested on the eye-witness identification. Maybe it did, but there is no evidence for that. In fact it seems safe to assume that the police had reasons for suspecting "Kosminski" otherwise why would they have gone to the difficulty of taking him to be identified. And there are those 'many circs' mentioned by Macnaghten.

And maybe the evidence against "Kosminski" was non-existent, but that's doubtful. Policemen don't usually think someone is a murderer on the basis of non-existent evidence. That the evidence was crap and they were barking up the wrong tree, I can accept. But not that no evidence existed at all.

Hi Paul

Did Anderson have a priori conclusions regarding ethnicity and so forth of the killer? He says that the conclusion we came to was that he was a low-class Polish Jew. That could mean Anderson, or Anderson and others, or just the police (or those police responsible for reaching the conclusion). Tellingly the supposedly arrogant and boastful Anderson does not claim it as his conclusion. And as far as we know it may have been but one of several conclusions the police reached.

The royal 'we' perhaps?. Coming from Anderson ; )

[Abby Normal]

I know what you mean, but he's not a weak suspect. He can't be. We know next to nothing about why he was suspected, so how on earth can we judge whether he's strong or weak? All we can say is how people back then thought of him.

Hi Paul
Thanks for the reply. I see what your saying and understand your position . fair enough. I would say though,that because

We know next to nothing about why he was suspected

is actually part of why he would TODAY have to be a weak suspect.

The way I look at it, if we are going to call him any kind of suspect at all today, we have to base it on what we know today. And what we do know (or not)makes him a weak suspect now, IMHO of course.

But again I think today, all the suspects are weak-some are just less weak than others including Kosminsky.

But no doubt he was a strong suspect then to some.

[PaulB]

With respect, Paul, the evidence against Kosminski appears to have been almost entirely circumstantial. Smith’s investigation, conducted contemporaneously with the Seaside Home identification, turned up little or nothing. Macnaghten considered Druitt a stronger candidate than Kosminski. Littlechild was apparently of the belief that Anderson was barking up the wrong tree. Abberline reportedly dismissed the claim that the Ripper had been identified and committed to an asylum. On top of this, Jack the Ripper was not, could not have been, an individual in the throes of a serious psychotic illness.

Tellingly, Anderson had developed his own a priori conclusions regarding the killer’s ethnicity, area of residence, familial circumstances and psychosexual state. Lo and behold, Kosminski just happened to conform to this profile in every particular. Were one pushed to cite an example of the self-fulfilling prophesy, this would be it. For a better understanding of how such thinking can skew a major police investigation, posters might care to familiarize themselves with the case of Terry Hawkshaw, the Leeds taxi driver who for several years was the prime suspect in the Yorkshire Ripper murders.

Clearly, therefore, there was no tangible evidence against Kosminski. The entire case rested on the Seaside Home identification, which in itself counts for very little given that the empirical research suggests a high probability of misidentification under such circumstances. And if, as many insist, the Seaside Home witness was Lawende, why was no identification forthcoming when the City conducted its own investigation into Kosminski?

On this basis, Paul, I consider the evidence against Kosminski to have been neither good or bad. It was simply nonexistent.

Fine. Prove it. And I don't mean that rudely. But the point is that maybe the evidence against "Kosminski" was rubbish, but Macnaghten tells us that there ‘were many circs' that made "Kosminski" 'a strong suspect’ and Anderson and Swanson thought he was Jack the Ripper. Prima facie that doesn't look like a completely empty hand of cards.

Did Anderson have a priori conclusions regarding ethnicity and so forth of the killer? He says that the conclusion we came to was that he was a low-class Polish Jew. That could mean Anderson, or Anderson and others, or just the police (or those police responsible for reaching the conclusion). Tellingly the supposedly arrogant and boastful Anderson does not claim it as his conclusion. And as far as we know it may have been but one of several conclusions the police reached.

And there is no evidence that the whole case against "Kosminski" rested on the eye-witness identification. Maybe it did, but there is no evidence for that. In fact it seems safe to assume that the police had reasons for suspecting "Kosminski" otherwise why would they have gone to the difficulty of taking him to be identified. And there are those 'many circs' mentioned by Macnaghten.

And maybe the evidence against "Kosminski" was non-existent, but that's doubtful. Policemen don't usually think someone is a murderer on the basis of non-existent evidence. That the evidence was crap and they were barking up the wrong tree, I can accept. But not that no evidence existed at all.