New Article on the Swanson Marginalia in Ripperologist 128

[Bridewell]

Of course Swanson also – in a clerkly manner - prepared consolidated reports for his superiors prior to this.
But he was never in operational control of the investigation. He was never put in charge of it.

Yes he was - by Warren.

If it be asked what possible reason someone might have to forge the Warren note, then consider that without this document we would have much less with which to weigh the importance of the addendum to his annotation – ‘Kosminski was the suspect’.

Wouldn't your postulated 'forger' of the Warren note need to have knowledge of the existence of the Swanson Marginalia in order to have such a motive?
Who or what started this recent trend for suggesting that any document used to support an argument is a forgery?

Regards, Bridewell.

[Wickerman]

He still could have ultimately been wrong in his assessment of the suspect he is relating to. Not surprising in an unsolved case with no consensus. But Donald Sutherland Swanson is as good as it gets in any evaluation of the police investigation and what it encompassed... whatever value that even has at this remove.

I see some wrestle with the apparent contradiction of a highly respected, highly professional Detective making some highly subjective, highly erroneous and very controversial decisions.

If anyone should care to read up on the role played by Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, Senior Detective in the West Riding Police Force, at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, we can see that a well respected and highly professional detective can make some deplorable, in some cases disastrously subjective decisions.

It is not doing Swanson an injustice to accept he was human.

Every coin has two sides.

Regards, Jon S.

[APerno]

As I wrote earlier,

As an aside, in my youth (1950s) my father (a local Government official), writing at home, often used pencil - and indelible pencil at that. Tolkien, writing in the 20s/30s and later, often wrote initial drafts in pencil,. (His son's History of Middle Earth - about the development of JRR Tolkien's fiction, describes this in detail.)

If you think about it, before the 50s and the arrival of cheap "Bic" biro pens, there was a limited choice of things to write with.

There were fountain pens, and dip pens, but pencils were easy and readily shapenable. It is quite obvious why people used them - especially if somewhere where ink wells and bottles were not easily to hand.

Indeed, as I remember well from my time researching Foreign Office files in the (then) Public Records Office in Chancery Lane- now National Archives, Kew - King Edward VII annotated official dispatches in pencil or crayon. So Swanson was not idiosyncratic at all.

Phil H

I hope this is not too weird a digression, but I noticed in the recent film Valkyrie that the German General singed the order to begin the coup in red pencil. At the time it struck me strange that such an important document would be accepted signed in pencil, and wondered why the filmmakers would choose to portray it as such; your post is enlightenment to my wonderment regarding the filmmaker’s decision.

Anthony Perno

[Cogidubnus]

Well you and I might think that Colin...however there might be some practical difficulties involved in that, not least of which might be he's banned here...

Every good wish

Dave

[Bridewell]

About the only thing he has told us about his "expert" is that his opinion was based on sight of "a copy of it [the marginalia]", not the original. Presumably Mr Marriott's latest statement constitutes a recognition that the opinion he previously considered "conclusive" can not in fact be considered accurate.

Hi Chris,

If your assumption is correct, I hope that Trevor will now issue the fulsome apology to which the Swanson family is entitled.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Chris]

I think the one thing that really needs to be cleared up now is Trevor Marriott's claim earlier this year that a "leading handwriting expert" had stated that in their opinion the marginalia were not written by Swanson, and that these findings were "conclusive".
http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=14187&page=6

Sadly, Trevor Marriott refused to give any further details of the alleged "expert" who had provided him with a "conclusive" finding that the marginalia were not written by Donald Sutherland Swanson. That claim was, of course, in flat contradiction of the findings of two bona fide document examiners.

However, he himself has rendered this unsubstantiated claim even more implausible by his own recent statement that "you [Paul Begg] and everyone should know that a handwriting expert needs original handwriting for accurate handwriting comparison":

http://www.jtrforums.com/showpost.php?p=184880&postcount=62

About the only thing he has told us about his "expert" is that his opinion was based on sight of "a copy of it [the marginalia]", not the original. Presumably Mr Marriott's latest statement constitutes a recognition that the opinion he previously considered "conclusive" can not in fact be considered accurate.

[Lechmere]

I actually said this about DS Swanson’s role as described in the Warren letter:

“The other significant item to come from the DS Swanson collection is the note from Warren appointing Swanson as a species of superannuated clerk at Scotland Yard, through whose office everything related to the Whitechapel Murders should pass on its way in or way out.
“It is routinely and entirely inaccurately claimed that this note appointed DS Swanson in operational control of the Ripper investigation.
“For example in ‘The Man who hunted Jack the Ripper’ by Nicholas Connell and Stewart Evans (I am only using this example as I am reading this otherwise excellent book now), it states:
“‘Thus Warren designated one man, with his own office at the Yard, to take full control of the Whitechapel inquiry.’
“Actually the note makes it explicit that DS Swanson was only allowed to take control of directing events in an emergency and that his function was to coordinate the incoming and outgoing information at Scotland Yard. However it is actually the ‘superanuated filing clerk’ role that would have provided DS Swanson with the potential to know that ‘Kosminski was the suspect’.
“So the Warren document is important.”

The English language employs literary figures of speech called metaphors. Clearly I do not think that Swanson was a filing clerk, although he may well have been on a superannuation pension scheme.
I used the term to emphasise the mistake commonly made which is to attribute Swanson with operational control of the Whitechapel Murder investigation.
The use of the term ‘superanuated filing clerk’, in contrast to the received wisdom that DS Swanson was in operational control of the investigation into the Whitechapel murders, is an example of another literary devise, one that is known in the English language as ‘irony’.

It seems that after the ‘Autumn of Terror’, probably out of frustration, Scotland Yard took more of a hands-on role. We see this with Anderson interfering in the Mylett case, and Swanson’s involvement in the Sadler investigation for example.
Of course Swanson also – in a clerkly manner - prepared consolidated reports for his superiors prior to this.
But he was never in operational control of the investigation. He was never put in charge of it.

If it be asked what possible reason someone might have to forge the Warren note, then consider that without this document we would have much less with which to weigh the importance of the addendum to his annotation – ‘Kosminski was the suspect’. There are various other references from other sources which hint at Swanson’s role, but the Warren note greatly adds to Swanson’s credibility as someone in the know and so potentially in a position to speak about potential suspects. Hence just as it was thought advisable to subject the Marginalia to analysis (even if that analysis was imperfect) then surely the Warren note should be properly scrutinised. If it ever surfaces again.

On the pencil issue, we are not talking about annotations – I agree that annotations are often made in pencil. We are talking about DS Swanson writing a longish letter from his home in pencil. I was also asking why a comparison was not made with a document written (presumably in the same shaky style) in pen from the later part of DS Swanson’s life as the date of the ink can be more readily checked.

In order to support the theory that DS Swanson had shaky hands is it now being denied that he was a keen fly fisher who liked nothing more than spending his declining years threading fiddly flies onto hooks?
And there is a fundamental difference between weakness due to heart disease or the hardening of the arteries and tremors caused by a disease such as Parkinson’s. A massive difference.

July 2011 seems to really have been significant month in the history of the News of the World.
The News of the World announced it was going to cease publication on 7th July 2011 (although this had been anticipated).
On 23rd July 2011 Chris posted that the Swanson family had informed him they had come across some new correspondence (presumably the News of the World material).
The abortive draft story was also discovered in the Scotland Yard Museum in July 2011.

Adam – if you read the letter from Robert Warren to Jim Swanson dated 1st October 1987, that Charles Nevin he remembers seeing, it says:

Many thanks for your letter.
I am happy to release you from your contract with us.

That is hardly conclusive proof that the Marginalia, in the form in which we have it now (minus the red lines) was ever offered to the News of the World, is it?

Also Adam I didn’t suggest that any ‘Ripperologist’ would have been in a position to advise the Swanson family in 1981. I suggested that the Swanson family would have known of the importance of any DS Swanson related documents back then as we are told they sold the Marginalia story to the News of the World at that time.

I am surprised that various ‘Ripperologists’ didn’t urgently press the Swanson family to go through and produce every single item relating to DS Swanson at the earliest opportunity. Maybe they did and they were ‘knocked back’.
How big is this pile of papers that needs to be gone through?

As for the address books, the only relevant parts are those in shaky hand writing, not other bits which may be in pencil.

If there is no shortage of shaky DS Swanson writing in ink then the sensible thing is to produce them and have them tested. That at least will help to clear this mess up.

[Phil H]

Good post Hunter. Excellently put.

Phil H

[Hunter]

Both Anderson and Warren mention Swanson's role contemporaneously. Anyone with a copy of "the Ultimate" can find them. And then there's the records of subsequent years which show Swanson's involvement.

The files and even suspect theories sent to Swanson's desk were not so he could simply assimilate them for a central repository. He did make comment on them.

In fact, his role seems to increase as time goes on and others are reassigned to other duties... and this is not to suggest that Swanson didn't have other duties too, but, unlike some of the others periodically involved, the WM were still part of his duties. In 1891, he personally interviews Sadler and his wife, and follows up months later. In 1896, a 'Ripper' letter is channeled to him directly and he chastises those involved for circulating it before he had a chance to peruse it and evaluate its worth.

However his conclusions in his annotations are considered, he was the one policeman in all of this who would have been in possession of most everything relating to this investigation. He still could have ultimately been wrong in his assessment of the suspect he is relating to. Not surprising in an unsolved case with no consensus. But Donald Sutherland Swanson is as good as it gets in any evaluation of the police investigation and what it encompassed... whatever value that even has at this remove.

[Bridewell]

Provenance

Bridewell
I think you are somewhat mistaken.
For example the provenance of the records at the national archive or the london metropolitan archive or even humble tower hamlets local history archive is impeccable as they have been publicly accessible for years and the date and means of acquisition is known. The same goes for example with the booth papers at the London school of economics.

I am not mistaken at all. The records you refer to in the National Archive and in the London Metropolitan Archive are, and have been, as you acknowledge, "publicly accessible for years". Publicly accessible records can be tampered with by the public, whereas a private collection cannot. For that reason, if you are doubting the authenticity of the Swanson Marginalia you are, of necessity, casting aspersions upon the integrity of the Swanson family, the only people who have had unfettered access to the documents since the death of Swanson himself.

Another example for you is the warren letter appointing ds Swanson as a superannuated filing clerk for the whitechapel murders.

Swanson was neither superannuated nor a filing clerk. He was the 'de facto' head of the Whitechapel Murder enquiry. Anderson had no police experience. I used the phrase "chain of evidence" in my earlier post. Where evidence is concerned, the shorter the chain the better and the chain, in the case of the Marginalia, is very short indeed. They are authenticated beyond reasonable doubt.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Here's the final page of a 16th October 1882 report by Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson, written after having escorted a Phoenix Park suspect to Dublin at the behest of Edward Jenkinson, Britain's so-called "Spymaster General".



Two signatures are clearly recognisable.

Regards,

Simon

[Phil H]

As I wrote earlier,

As an aside, in my youth (1950s) my father (a local Government official), writing at home, often used pencil - and indelible pencil at that. Tolkien, writing in the 20s/30s and later, often wrote initial drafts in pencil,. (His son's History of Middle Earth - about the development of JRR Tolkien's fiction, describes this in detail.)

If you think about it, before the 50s and the arrival of cheap "Bic" biro pens, there was a limited choice of things to write with.

There were fountain pens, and dip pens, but pencils were easy and readily shapenable. It is quite obvious why people used them - especially if somewhere where ink wells and bottles were not easily to hand.

Indeed, as I remember well from my time researching Foreign Office files in the (then) Public Records Office in Chancery Lane- now National Archives, Kew - King Edward VII annotated official dispatches in pencil or crayon. So Swanson was not idiosyncratic at all.

Finally, I really must protest at the unwarranted slur on Swanson - a long-serving, loyal and scrupulous Crown servant as it seems to me. To refer to him as a superannuated filing clerk for the whitechapel murders even allowing for the writer's poor grammar seems to me to be letting prejudice show through. There is surely no historical basis for such an accusation.

Two things:

* it seems utterly reasonable to me that a series of murders which were attracting considerable press and public attention, should have a co-ordinator. Who else would pull together the various inputs from the street etc? Who else provide briefings for the Commissioner or Home Secretary? how else could co-ordination have been carried out?

* I have seen no evidence to suggest that Swanson sought, manoeuvred for, or wanted the role. It was given to him. Should he have refused?

Superannuated, means pensionable. Was Swanson even close to pensionable age in 1888? Certainly not, he had a decade or more service ahead of him. Neither were his duties those of a filing clerk or anything close to them.

Phil H

[Lechmere]

Bridewell
I think you are somewhat mistaken.
For example the provenance of the records at the national archive or the london metropolitan archive or even humble tower hamlets local history archive is impeccable as they have been publicly accessible for years and the date and means of acquisition is known. The same goes for example with the booth papers at the London school of economics.
A private collection that comes to light in the recent past has no such provenance unless the items that comprise it are rigerously tested.
Incidentally the scotland yard museum appears not to have a log of when items were acquired - at least the mysterious news of the world draft article seems to have popped up in that collection quite unannounced! The provenance of items from that source is clearly not so useful.

Another example for you is the warren letter appointing ds Swanson as a superannuated filing clerk for the whitechapel murders. If this item were held where it strictly belongs (presuming it is genuine) - in the national archive - then few doubts could be entertained as to its bona fides and we would hope it would not be 'lost'.

[Bridewell]

Pencil and Pen

As for the pencil writing, I would suggest that adults from a professional background would tend not to write letters in pencil - annotations fair enough.

Historically police officers have greatly favoured the use of pencil over pen. That is a habit formed early in the patrol constable who quickly learns that, in damp conditions, pencil is infinitely more reliable than pen. There is nothing in the least suspect about a police officer, or retired police officer, resorting to the use of a pencil. I have a copy of a book which alludes to an unsolved Nottinghamshire murder from the 1960's and refers to a suspect without naming him. He is named, in pencil, in my copy of the book and I didn't do so in any kind of conscious emulation of DSS.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Bridewell]

Provenance

If the collection came to light in a public archive then these 'sensitive' issues would not have arisen.

But if the collection had come to light in a public archive it wouldn't have anything like the provenance that it does! The Swanson Collection has been in the family's hands throughout. That is a chain of evidence which adds to, rather than detracting from, its authenticity.

Regards, Bridewell.