New Article on the Swanson Marginalia in Ripperologist 128

[Phil Carter]

Doubt

Hello Mike,

Yes, I agree. There is doubt. And I happen to agree with Jonathan that we can doubt it actually happened.

For if, as I have maintained, and as others, such as Paul Begg have written, that DSS is actually only expanding on Anderson's story, then it all comes down to the veracity of the original story and it's story teller.

Now if there is one thing that is certain in Riperology, Sir Robert Anderson's versions of certain events in his book, TLSOMOL, are open to grave doubt. His version of his departure/retirement for example, has been shown by Simon Wood to have been totally false. The story, again shown by Simon Wood, of his award from the Russian Tsar, is also very doubtful. Anderson's way of manufacturing guilt in moral terms, is deceptive in the least and his outright boasting of his leadership and his own ability to have everything under total control at all times is staggeringly pretentious. Examples of these things have been written and talked about many a time, and I don't need to go into them here. The point is, that Sir Robert Anderson, as a recaller of the truth, leaves much to be desired. So on that basis alone, there is much room for doubt.

Which leaves a rather simple possibility. DSS is expanding and semi-detailing Anderson's story.
It has been said that Jim Swanson was convinced that DSS thought "Kosminski" to be killer. Sadly, this cannot be regarded as evidence as Jim Swanson also states that DSS would not reveal the killer's name at any cost..wild horses..etc. DSS was also known to be most reluctant to talk shop. So how would Jim Swanson know that DSS thought Kosminski was the killer if he never talked to any family member about the killer? Ipso facto...and respectfully said, Jim Swanson could not have possibly have known if DSS meant Kosminski was the killer. It was never discussed.

Oh yes, there is a great deal of room for doubt...and this is before we start looking at the mistakes and unprovable points DSS made in his annotations.

Jonathan and Mike, you both know my thoughts on Kosminski, Druitt and Tumblety. I respect you both for your efforts to get nearer the truth... but it has to be said that this ever on-going Kosminski story is really starting to grind down to nothing. DSS wrote the marginalia. That is the extent of the positivity towards the Kosminski story. From what has been revealed recently, the more I see, the more holes I see in anything other than annotating some details giving expansion of Anderson's story.

I won't be surprised if more material is found though..which may or may not cover the holes. And there is starting to be a huge amount of holes in the Kosminski story.

Just an opinion.

best wishes

Phil

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Mike

But this is all pointless I know because some people, by no means all, are locked into a rigid, sectarian viewpoint and then accuse me of doing the same.

When I was a member of a leftist political party -- the Australian Labor Party -- the enmity against other socialists was much more acute and vicious than against the Tories.

Same thing here. The venom is usually an inverse measure of the strength of your dissent.

I am proposing exactly what some who propose Aaron Kosminski as a good suspect, eg. because he was backed by two senior policemen. I do exactly the same with Macnaghten and Druitt and yet I am treated as beneath contempt by some.

The same some who should be very careful because if that it is such a weak theory, because the top cop made howling 'errors', where does that leave the Anderson-Swanson axis? They don't even know their suspect's first name (exactly like it is recorded-omitted by Macnaghten)?!

Anyhow, I wasn't brining Druitt into this at all. That's of course a straw man here.

I am asking the proponents of the [provisional] theory that Anderson and Swanson are more reliable primary, police sources than Macnaghten -- about 'Kosminski' -- as to why?

Anderson made numerous honest, muddled errors about this subject and Swanson has material in his marginalia which shows that he too believed things, or recorded things from Anderson, that do not fit the real Aaron Kosminski, and furthermore do not fit the real investigation of which he was in charge according to other primary sources -- some of them by him.

The most jarring mistakes:

1. They confidently assert that 'Kosminski' was deceased when Aaron Kosminski was not, not until 1919. Whereas Macnaghten in 'Aberconway' -- a document now excluded from some secondary sources -- knows that he is alive. And that he was still alive in the asylum, whereas Swanson has him conveniently and self-servingly deceased seemingly soon after the Kelly murder (his annotation does not disagree with Anderson's telescoped account) and Anderson apparently told his son that the Ripper had died in the asylum when he actually outlived this police chief!

2. That 'Kosminski' was out and about for a considerable time after the Kelly murder -- which is true -- and not 'safely caged' after being 'mere week's on the prowl. It is a huge hole in this theory, in my opinion (and for once I am not alone as, among others, Fido agrees) that Anderson and/or Swanson redact events from 1891 into 1888, exactly where, again, Macnaghten fictitiously backdates the incarceration of this 'suspect'.

Who exactly is manipulating whom here?

Aaron Kosminski was not sectioned until Macnaghten had been on the Force for nearly two years. Therefore he could have been there just as much as Anderson and Swanson in terms of investigating this suspect -- whom Macnaghten, by the way, claims 'lived in the heart' of the kill-zone which recent research seems to confirm.

[Phil H]

Please yourselves. I have better things to do. I have explained my position. Disagree if you will.

[Phil Carter]

The most jarring mistakes:

1. They confidently assert that 'Kosminski' was deceased when Aaron Kosminski was not, not until 1919. Whereas Macnaghten in 'Aberconway' -- a document now excluded from some secondary sources -- knows that he is alive. And that he was still alive in the asylum, whereas Swanson has him conveniently and self-servingly deceased seemingly soon after the Kelly murder (his annotation does not disagree with Anderson's telescoped account) and Anderson apparently told his son that the Ripper had died in the asylum when he actually outlived this police chief!

2. That 'Kosminski' was out and about for a considerable time after the Kelly murder -- which is true -- and not 'safely caged' after being 'mere week's on the prowl. It is a huge hole in this theory, in my opinion (and for once I am not alone as, among others, Fido agrees) that Anderson and/or Swanson redact events from 1891 into 1888, exactly where, again, Macnaghten fictitiously backdates the incarceration of this 'suspect'.

Who exactly is manipulating whom here?

Aaron Kosminski was not sectioned until Macnaghten had been on the Force for nearly two years. Therefore he could have been there just as much as Anderson and Swanson in terms of investigating this suspect -- whom Macnaghten, by the way, claims 'lived in the heart' of the kill-zone which recent research seems to confirm.

Hello Jonathan,

And you can add to this the fact that every man and his dog were still out looking for the Whitechapel Murderer after Kosminski, Aaron, was put away.
That includes D.S.Swanson. And R. Anderson.

(Apparently they were covertly colluding behind the backs of the rest of the Met Police and Special Branch..(Littlechild included)...)

best wishes

Phil

[Jonathan H]

But Anderson might have been right too

Bye Phil H,

try not to slam the door on your way out.

To Phil C

I argue that because the sources we have are so contradictory, incomplete and self-serving that, nevertheless, an argument can be mounted that Sir Robert Anderson, and therefore Swanson, were probably correct after all.

Macnaghten can be debunked as a boyish, obsessed fan of the case, and one who would oppose his loathed boss' opinion on everything -- and would have a weird prejudice that only an Oxonian gent could possibly have outsmarted the Yard.

Plus Mac was perhaps misled, as was the anguished Druitt family and the loose-lipped MP, by a posthumous diagnosis of so-called 'epileptic mania' not realising that reformed-modern medicine would later show that this condition does not exist; that it is really a symptom of psychopathic or delusional behaviour, eg. Montie thought he was the Ripper, he said he was the Ripper, and he killed himself because he was the Ripper -- case closed. Whereas we now know that all that 'evidence' proves bugger all.

If we strip back the remaining sources, and accept that Anderson has made honest mistakes, then what we have is arguably this:

- The unemployed hairdresser, Aaron Kosminski, lived within minutes of all the murder sites, and had the correct form of intermittent madness which made him dangerous to harlots, whom he apparently hated, and eventually a mortal threat to his own family who sectioned him.

- his people, whomever that specifically is, knew or strongly suspected his probable culpability and one of them was a witness, or more in-the-know than the others. They refused to hand him over to the police, and may not have communicated with police -- if ever -- until Aaron was 'safely caged'. As in safely caged from the authorities.

- The suspect came to police attention, possibly Macnaghten's attention, only after he was permanently a resident of the asylum system in early 1891. There was no 'Seaside Home' or any confrontation with a Ripper witness, and he was never the subject of expensive surveillance. But bits and pieces of other susepcts became muddled in Anderson's memory, and he passed this muddle onto a curious Swanson who wrote it down because he had never heard some of these aspects before. But he did recall, of course, being told by Anderson about the locked-up luantic who died soon after.

Yet originally Anderson did have a good sense of the evidence against this suspect. His dual identity had been uncovered by a family member, perhaps his brother, and he or they were terrified of the firestorm this would create aginst their family and their fellow Hebrews.

They, not the police, had him under close watch.

Miraculously Aaron seemed to get better, to become calm and lucid. Then, years later, his illness got the better of him and, this time, instead of taking a knife to a Gentile harlot he threatened a female relation (the letter from Crawford may be a glimpse into this struggle-danger).

So that was the end.

The bitterness that Anderson -- in no way an anti-Semite --felt against some of the Kosminski family morphed in his memory into angst against an entire class of low-life Jews.

The most painful and humiliating aspect of the whole affair to his enormous ego, that the Ripper had been out and about for years after Miller's Ct. but strangely harmless, inevitably vanished all together from his failing memory -- mixing up pipes and politicians -- and thus backdated the messy events of 1891 into a revised and more satisfying 1888.

But that would stll make Anderson (and Swanson) essentially correct; Aaron Kosminski had been somehow culpably 'seen' by a person close to him, and had then confessed by his guilty manner -- the sort of tiny but revealing gestures which only family members can instantly detect and correctly interpret.

PS

The increasingly deaf Adnerson may have misunderstood Macnaghten talking about Druiitt being dead, thinking he meant 'Kosminski' -- and his confidential assistant left it that.

Or, Mac was terrified of a scandal if his chief went blundering to Colney Hatch to see for himself so he cut off this option.

Macnaghten may have had to make such a quick trip to the asylum, under the cover of another matter, that he could not quite see the suspect's first name, and there was no going back.

[robhouse]

That 'Kosminski' was out and about for a considerable time after the Kelly murder -- which is true -- and not 'safely caged' after being 'mere week's on the prowl. It is a huge hole in this theory, in my opinion (and for once I am not alone as, among others, Fido agrees) that Anderson and/or Swanson redact events from 1891 into 1888, exactly where, again, Macnaghten fictitiously backdates the incarceration of this 'suspect'.

Jonathan,

You have repeated this claim countless times, and I do not see that there is anything to back up the notion that Anderson "redacted" anything from 1891 to 1888. This is based on your interpretation, incorrect in my opinion, of Anderson's 1901 statement that:

"the inhabitants of the metropolis generally were just as secure during the weeks the fiend was on the prowl as they were before the mania seized him, or after he had been safely caged in an asylum."

You interpret this to mean that Anderson is saying that he was caged in the asylum immediately after he was on the prowl for mere weeks. This, if I read you correctly, is the source of your repeated claim that Anderson has redacted events of 1891 into 1888.

However, Anderson does not say what you suggest. He says the fiend was "on the prowl" for weeks... i.e. he was on the prowl for victims. He also say the suspect was "caged in an asylum." What he does not say is that the suspect was caged in an asylum immediately after the weeks he was on the prowl. Indeed, if he had said this, then we would infer (quite correctly) that it was his being caged that brought the series to an end. But Anderson does not say this.

Indeed the Ripper may well have been on the prowl for mere weeks in 1888, then he may have stopped killing, and been caged 2 years later. Swanson seems to suggest that the suspect stopped killing after the identification, NOT that the murders stopped because the suspect was caged. This oft-repeated claim of yours—which I interpret to be a main tenet of your critique of Anderson's statement—is a flawed argument, since you are criticizing Anderson for something he never said. But instead for something you wrongly interpret his statement to have meant.

You say that "Anderson made numerous honest, muddled errors about this subject"... in fact he made one known error—that the suspect was identified AFTER he was in an asylum—which he changed in the book version. There is no other clearly demonstrable error in anything Anderson wrote about Kozminski.

You say of the "Anderson-Swanson axis that "They don't even know their suspect's first name." Really? Where is your proof of that? Anderson declared outright that he would not name the suspect. How do you determine from this that he did not know the suspect's first name? And how do you determine that Swanson didn't know the suspect's first name?

I am sorry but your reasoning is quite muddled here.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Rob and Jonathan,

Regarding the Anderson quote provided by Rob, isn't the only thing we can really take away from it that Anderson was telling his readers that the Ripper murders occurred only over a period of weeks, as opposed to years, which at the time was a prevalent notion? Whether or not he really believed that, or was just offering a politically influenced about-face (which is certainly possible), that was the primary serving purpose of that statement, the secondary purpose being to illustrate the limited area in which the killer worked; there is nothing in his words which would allow us to infer he was suggesting the Ripper had been in any way detained after a period of weeks. All he is saying is that he stopped killing after a matter of weeks.

It seems that a handful of individuals are suggesting that Kozminski was never actually suspected of murder by anyone. If that's the case, then we have to concede that NO ONE was suspected of the murders, since the sources of virtually all the suspects are the press, memoirs, and police reports, and if they're wrong about Kozminski, they're wrong across the board. Or am missing something?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[robhouse]

there is nothing in his words which would allow us to infer he was suggesting the Ripper had been in any way detained after a period of weeks. All he is saying is that he stopped killing after a matter of weeks.

Hi Tom,

Well that is exactly my point. Let's make an analogy and pretend that Anderson's statement was in fact the statement of one of the Police investigating the BTK case.

"the inhabitants of the metropolis generally were just as secure during the [YEARS] the fiend was on the prowl as they were ... after he had been safely caged in [PRISON]."

This statement could be perfectly correct in regards to Dennis Rader, whose murders were between 1974 and 1991, then there was a break and he was arrested in 2005.

We would not be able to infer from the statement that Rader was incarcerated immediately following the "years" he was "on the prowl". OR that he stopped killing as a result of being arrested.

RH

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Rob,

Good analogy, but you're preaching to the choir. If Anderson wanted to state that his suspect had been detained right after the last murder, he would have written that. It would have been important for him to convey that to his readers. Anderson was a braggart, plain and simple, so to infer something that only one person, over a 100 years later, would pick up on, is not at all Anderson's style.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Roy Corduroy]

Good evening Phil,

... every man and his dog were still out looking for the Whitechapel Murderer after Kosminski, Aaron, was put away.

Their dogs were actually seeking a rendevous with Kosminski's dog.

Roy

ps outstanding magazine article, Adam, Keith Skinner and all those who helped them.

[Jonathan H]

To Rob

I might be wrong, I often am, but in my defense my reasoning is not muddled at all. It's a clear through-line.

I am arguing that Anderson is sincerely muddled, and Swanson along with him.

You don't seem to think that these limited sources are ambiguous, whereas I find them almost opaque at times.

You might be right in your interpretation but I think you are almost certainly wrong, partly because you are examining it in isolation from the others.

For example, if Sir Robert told his son that the Ripper died in an asylum, and this is backed by the Marginalia. If so then this is a mistake on Anderson's part about 'Kosminski'.

Not a mistake Macnaghten, his confidential assiatnt, made. Odd that?

But then Anderson confused, in a 1908 interview, the pipes between the Kelly and McKenzie murders, and he amazingly confused the wrong Home Sec. from the wrong year, the wrong party, and the wrong government for supposedly putting him under pressure.

But you will, I presume, argue that that is a mistake about something else and somebody else, and not about 'Kosminski'.

I think that is too narrow an interpretation; you lose the forest for the trees.

That if you examine all the sources you will see that it is possible that Anderson meant or thought or knew that Aaron Kosminski was sectioned years later, but not very likely and the Marginalia makes the same arguable mistakes: both about the timeline and the suspect being deceased.

A mistake Macnaghten does not make, but he does set in motion by placing the Polish Jew -- maybe -- at an 1888 crime scene, and by having him sectioned in early 1889 (and the lack of any other name begins with the same police offciial in the extant record).

Also my interpretation does not just come from just the 1901 source but from other sources by or about Anderson.

For example here is Anderson with Griffiths:

'The Windsor Magazine', Vol.1, January to June 1895, page 507, in an essay entitled 'The Detective In Real Life.' Major Arthur Griffiths writing under his pseudonym of 'Alfred Aylmer':

'Much dissatisfaction was vented upon Mr. Anderson at the utterly abortive efforts to discover the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. He has himself a perfectly plausible theory that Jack the Ripper was a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum.'

How could anybody gleen from that that he was referring to events that stretched out from late 1888 to early 1891?

If Anderson knows the real timeline then he is being self-servingly mileading to make it appear that this miscreant was not a dnager to the community after a very brief reign of terror.

Do you really think Anderson was secretly thinking: lucklily the little swine got better for over two years, but no need to trouble the Major with that embarrassing titbit.

For it is quite simply wrong. Aaron Kosminski's 'hideous career' was not 'cut short' by his commital, but ended because -- if he's Jack -- because he calmed down and stopped savaging harlots around the corner from where he lived.

Here is the 'Blackwoods' (March 1910) version of his memoirs.

'I will only add that when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him; but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.'

From the book version:

'I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him ; but he refused to give evidence against him.'

You claim that Anderson corrects his mistake about the timing of the witness only identifying the suspect after he was sectioned.

Does Anderson really do this in the second version?

According to the way you interpret sources unless somebody states it baldly then it did not happen.

Well, Anderson does not 'correct' the account -- by that criteria.

He merely omits the element of timing.

Who says it is a mistake anyhow?

The source is so ambiguous that it could be a genuine memory of what happened in early 1891, when Aaron Kosminski was 'safely caged' supposedly confronted with a Jewish witness (and then of course died soon after).

Anderson is so ambiguous in his memoirs, giving the impression that it was all wrapped up by early 1889, that secondary sources such as Cullen, Rumbelow and Farson understandably theorised he must mean Pizer and his disappointing witness. Even Fido dismissed Aaron Kosminski as being sectioned too late (exactly as Mac via Sims does in 1907) to be the specific figure to whom the police chief is referring.

The great limitation of these [late] primary sources is that neither acknowledges, or recalls, that the Reipper inevestigation lasted for years. Instead, if we only had them, we would tuink this was all over by the end of the 'autumn of terror'. This is even more true of the Marginalia than Anderson's writings. And Swanson ends it with the mistakes about the Jack murders ending with his incarceration, and then he supposedly died soon after. That is not how he reacted to Coles, suggesting that his knowledge, or what he thought he knew, about 'Kosminski' came ater that (in 1895?)

That is the other element-limitation to this theory which I go on about 'counltess times' because nobody will attempt an answer.

How did Mac know to be true what they did not?

We will have to agree to disagree, unless another clarifiying source turns up.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Jonathan,

None of the SY5 were muddled.

They were mendacious.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To Simon

Yes, that's an interesting theory.

Even according to my own theory Sir Melville shanghaied two quite minor suspects into the frame and disseminated them, albeit fictionalised, to the public (one of them, Ostrog, he knew by late 1894 had an iron-clad alibi yet he still gave them to Griffiths and Sims).

You could argue that's bloody mendacious even if nobody is harmed.

[Phil H]

It is possible you know you separate out the private knowledge of Anderson and Swanson and the political and private actions of Scotland Yard.

As I have suggested in other posts, Anderson and Swanson appear to have satisfied themselves, at least, that Kosminski was the murderer. They could not bring a prosecution.

In those circumstances it is entirely possible - and does not in any way undermine the Anderson/Swanson position - that the Commissioner of the day (Munro or Bradford) may have felt that SY needed to be perceived publicly of not treating the Ripper situation too lightly. Thus, in the absence of a clearly indentified, tried and condemned killer, each successive murder was treated seriously. It would have been good PR, reassuring and appropriate.

Real life does not require us to interpret things in a black and white way. People are quite capable of knowing something, and for perfectly sound reasons, acting in another way. It happens a lot in war, in politics and in the management of organisations.

Phil H

Phil H

[Chris]

Their dogs were actually seeking a rendevous with Kosminski's dog.

It's often overlooked that Polydore De Keyser, who fined Aaron for being in charge of an unmuzzled dog, had earlier described the Ripper as "a kind of human mad dog" ...

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4920/10973.html