New Article on the Swanson Marginalia in Ripperologist 128

[PaulB]

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.

Hello Phil,
What I actually wrote and what you may be paraphrasing is: "On balance, whilst it is true that he doesn't overtly endorse Anderson, he expands on the incident Anderson describes and he doesn't pooh pooh it."

Just for clarification, I am not saying that Swanson was simply repeating and adding details to a story told to him by Anderson, the reliability of that story therefore resting on Anderson. I am simply saying that Swanson added details to the account Anderson provided in The Lighter Side... For all I know those details could be from his own first-hand experience of the event Anderson was writing about, and some details he provides can certainly be interpreted to suggesting that they were.

What you have to ask yourself is whether or not Swanson would have accepted without question a tale about the identification of "Kosminski", even if that tale was told him by Anderson? Would you accept a story which flew in the face of what you and all your colleagues believed to be the case, and on top of which did not conform to what you understood to be sensible police procedure?

That's what you seem to be suggesting that Swanson did. And maybe he did. But was he really so gullible? Would he really have accepted a **** and bull story hook, line and sinker, without questioning the source at all. Without asking so much as who else was there. Without getting their perspective?

I am not prepared to accept that, not without good evidence of his gullibility.

One small point regarding Jim Swanson, if his claim that Swanson refused to divulge the name of Jack the Ripper is true, if Swanson ever said anything remotely like wild horses never dragging the name from his lips, doesn't that mean he knew or thought he knew the identity of the murderer? Doesn't it mean that the family believed he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper? I mean, why on earth would the family think he wouldn't divulge the name of the Ripper if they didn't think he actually knew it?

[Chris]

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.

I think it's interesting that Swanson observed that no more murders took place after the identification, and thought that the suspect had been put into an asylum a very short time afterwards, while Anderson thought (at one time) that the identification had actually taken place in the asylum. And the "weeks on the prowl" quotation could be read, as Jonathan is reading it, to indicate that all this happened in late 1888 or early 1889 (though as you say this might not be the case if the suspect was understood to have stopped "prowling" for some other reason).

And then we have Macnaghten thinking Aaron was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. I think if we didn't know Aaron's history we should be assuming fairly definitely on the basis of those opinions that he was put into a lunatic asylum a short time after the murders, and that the identification (or attempted identification, or whatever) took place either soon before or soon after.

One way of reconciling the evidence might be if there was confusion between Aaron being put into a lunatic asylum and Aaron being put into another kind of institution (a seaside convalescent home) as a patient for the purpose of identification. If that happened in early 1889 the only real chronological contradiction remaining would be Swanson's belief that he went to Colney Hatch very shortly afterwards rather than two years later. But if Colney Hatch was being muddled up with the seaside home that might be a result of the same confusion.

[Fleetwood Mac]

One way of reconciling the evidence might be if there was confusion between Aaron being put into a lunatic asylum and Aaron being put into another kind of institution (a seaside convalescent home) as a patient for the purpose of identification. If that happened in early 1889 the only real chronological contradiction remaining would be Swanson's belief that he went to Colney Hatch very shortly afterwards rather than two years later. But if Colney Hatch was being muddled up with the seaside home that might be a result of the same confusion.

Another possibility is that MacNaghten wasn't close to proceedings - for example, he doesn't mention the ID.

Apparently, Aaron had been suffering from his condition for about two years prior to his incarceration in Feb 1891, i.e. condition began around March 1889.

Could MacNaghten have been told the story and when he asked how long had he been displaying these symptoms, which naturally you would do where trying to tie Aaron in with the murders, he was told since around March 1889. Is it possible that MacNaghten wasn't told when Aaron was incarcerated, and so in McNaghten's mind it was probably around March 1889, not imagining that he could have been on the streets for two years, minus intermittment spells in workhouses, before being incarcerated.

[Fisherman]

Fleetwood Mac:

"he doesn't mention the ID."

He may well do that - or the outcome of it, anyway. He does say that Kosminski in appearance closely resembled the individual seen near Mitre Square, and that tells us that somebody who saw that individual - reasonably the Church Passage man - compared what he saw to Kosminski at some stage.
So no, the word identification is not used by Sir Melville, but we can easily see that he may have had knowledge of such a thing anyway.

The best,
Fisherman

[Chris]

Apparently, Aaron had been suffering from his condition for about two years prior to his incarceration in Feb 1891, i.e. condition began around March 1889.

Unfortunately this is an error that has crept into the literature. The Mile End Old Town creed register contains a note "Qy Insane", i.e. "Query Insane", which has been misread as "2y Insane" (see Sugden, p. 523).

[Phil H]

What you have to ask yourself is whether or not Swanson would have accepted without question a tale about the identification of "Kosminski", even if that tale was told him by Anderson? Would you accept a story which flew in the face of what you and all your colleagues believed to be the case, and on top of which did not conform to what you understood to be sensible police procedure?

But logically, Swanson would have been more "hands on" than Anderson. hence, IMHO, it is much more likely that Anderson got his story from DSS and edited for publication. Swanson put back in the details that he knew.

For Anderson to have known and DSS not knowmn, we have to assume a whole new range of agents for Sir A to work through. After all, someone had to liaise with City CID. I don't see that as being Anderson alone.

One small point regarding Jim Swanson, if his claim that Swanson refused to divulge the name of Jack the Ripper is true, if Swanson ever said anything remotely like wild horses never dragging the name from his lips, doesn't that mean he knew or thought he knew the identity of the murderer?

Exactly. Though in fairness we have to say that Munro and other "top cops" stated that they knew what the solution was.

Phil H

[Jonathan H]

To Fleetwood Mac

But this is what I have been trying to get people to consider.

Macnaghten arguably knows more accurate information about 'Kosminski' than either Anderson and/or Swanson, starting with the fact that the 'suspect' was not deceased.

To Fisherman

In his memoirs, for what this is worth, Macnaghten created an unmistakable polemic against Anderson's Polish Jew suspect (Sims had already dismissed the theory as an unlikely sideshow in 1907, and then unleashed scathing abuse about Anderson's memoir claims in 1910).

Also Mac now claimed, in 1914, that the beat cop witness had seen nothing satisfying, and -- for the very first time ever -- that the murderer had definitely written the graffiti; eg. a Gentile having a go at the three Jews who had interrupted him with Stride (with 'Juwes' corrected to 'Jews').

In my opinion what we have are police primary sources at cold war with each other, and one asserting that there was no prime witness to make a positive identification.

Macnaghten may have been wrong, but he also may have been right too.

[robhouse]

Jonathan,

Granted, I see given the Griffiths reference that there is a source which would support the idea that the series came to an end because he was caged. I will add a few things: first, this is a secondary source. Griffiths is speaking here, not Anderson, so we do not know if this is merely Griffiths's interpretation or inference from what Anderson told him. Secondly, as Chris points out, we do not know whether Kozminski may have been caged or otherwise removed from the streets earlier than 1891. The sources, Macnaghten included, might be interpreted to suggest that something happened around March 1889, and as I have suggested before, Kozminski may have been removed to a private asylum for a time, or as Chris suggests, to some sort of Seaside Home, which would explain why it was necessary to go to the seaside for the identification. We must accept that we do not have all the answers here. However, just because we do not have all the answers, does not mean you can assume Anderson was wrong in what he stated.

I don't think you responded to my question about why you assume Anderson and Swanson did not know Kozminski's first name.

"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?)"

As I have stated before, in my opinion, Swanson and Anderson both strongly suspected Kozminski... to the extent of a "moral certainty" in Anderson's case, to some unknown degree in Swanson's case. Both (I think) eventually came to the conclusion that the Ripper had five victims. (I may be wrong here.) But even "moral certainty" allows for a small amount of uncertainty. Therefore, any murders even after Kozminski's incarceration, would still be considered as possible Ripper murders. They would have to keep an open mind about this... not least because the case was officially "unsolved". It would be their duty to look at later suspects (Sadler for example) as possible Rippers—even if they believed that the Ripper was known. The Coles murder may have shook their resolve, but they apparently came to the conclusion it was not a Ripper murder.

[Jonathan H]

Was it all Sadler?

To Rob

Fair enough. You might be right.

It's just that you seem to go through the same kind of filling-in-the-blanks as I and others do -- eg. those who provisionally judge that the limitations outweigh the values of these critical, late primary sources -- I think proving that these are ambiguous sources capable of competing interpretations.

For example, the story which Griffiths relates about Anderson in 1895, is remarkably similar to how he will write about the Polish Jew suspect in 1898, and we know that comes from Mac's 'Aberconway' document. In which the suspect is sectioned soon after Kelly.

Did Anderson not know the Major was going to write that? Perhaps he did not. Did he read it thinking well that's wrong?!

Something else I want to bring up.

That 'Western Mail' article from early 1892. I'm sorry I can't be more specific. It is very late here and I have just got home.

The one in which an un-named police official debunks Farquharson -- by name -- because the real murderer is still under surveillance.

Yet due to the surveillance the suspect has been unable to murder.

Notice how similar this all is to the story told in the Marginalia, such as it is.

We identified him, we could not arrest him thanks to a treacherous Jew, but we watched him and he could not kill again. Then he was sectioned and died.

I think this suspect being watched in early 1892 was Sadler, and that Swanson and/or Anderson is again misremembering this suspect -- who had been 'confronted' by a Jewish witness but they could not get him.

[Hunter]

[B]But logically, Swanson would have been more "hands on" than Anderson. hence, IMHO, it is much more likely that Anderson got his story from DSS and edited for publication. Swanson put back in the details that he knew.
For Anderson to have known and DSS not known, we have to assume a whole new range of agents for Sir A to work through. After all, someone had to liaise with City CID. I don't see that as being Anderson alone.

Yes...

Swanson was in operational charge of the investigation long after December 1888. One only has to look at the surviving communications involving the Pinchin Street Torso murder, the interview with Forbes Winslow, other suspect theories that were presented to Swanson, the Coles murder investigation, and the last Ripper letter in 1896... all communications relating to this series of murders still sent through Swanson's desk.

And yes, it would have been Swanson who would have coordinated operations with City CID and any ID procedures... not Anderson, not Macnaghten, Monro, Prince Eddy or the guard at Buckingham Palace. Despite the anomalies that exist in all of these men's later writings, that is the way the investigative procedure was conducted. Anderson would have received his information from operational sources within the CID, except on rare occasions where there may be conflict ( such as the Rose Mylett case) when he might get his hands dirty for a few hours.

One note on Abberline--since he has been mentioned here from time to time--and it has been stated that he should have known some of these details as well. Abberline was taken off of the case in March 1888. The investigation continued long after that. He may have still rubbed elbows with fellow officers involved with the case, but he would not have been involved with any ongoing activities after that point, nor been presented with any files pertaining to them.

[Monty]

After all, someone had to liaise with City CID. I don't see that as being Anderson alone

If the witness was Lewande, and the case related to was Eddowes, there would have been no liaison in terms of co-operation with Met or Swanson.

Liaison in terms of notification yes.

Monty

[Chris]

And yes, it would have been Swanson who would have coordinated operations with City CID and any ID procedures... not Anderson, not Macnaghten, Monro, Prince Eddy or the guard at Buckingham Palace.

You provided some useful references to City/Met liaison in a previous discussion:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=240749&postcount=146

[c.d.]

Well let me ask what should be a very obvious question. If Swanson absolutely refused to reveal the Ripper's identity, why would he tell his family that he knew who it was in the first place? Is it possible that he made some sort of comment to that effect and they took it completely out of context?

This sounds like BS to me.

c.d.

[PaulB]

Well let me ask what should be a very obvious question. If Swanson absolutely refused to reveal the Ripper's identity, why would he tell his family that he knew who it was in the first place? Is it possible that he made some sort of comment to that effect and they took it completely out of context?

This sounds like BS to me.

c.d.

We don't know that Swanson absolutely refused to reveal the Ripper's identity, we have a statement by his grandson, who was a child when Swanson was alive, who claims that he did so. And he may well have categorically refused to discuss the case with children, maybe even with women who were not immediate family. We should not assume that he didn't discuss the case with his wife and other trusted grown ups in the family.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Paul,

Hello Phil,
What I actually wrote and what you may be paraphrasing is: "On balance, whilst it is true that he doesn't overtly endorse Anderson, he expands on the incident Anderson describes and he doesn't pooh pooh it."

Fair enough, Accepted in full.

Just for clarification, I am not saying that Swanson was simply repeating and adding details to a story told to him by Anderson, the reliability of that story therefore resting on Anderson. I am simply saying that Swanson added details to the account Anderson provided in The Lighter Side... For all I know those details could be from his own first-hand experience of the event Anderson was writing about, and some details he provides can certainly be interpreted to suggesting that they were.

Yes, and they can certainly be interpreted in the opposite manner as well. It can easily be interpreted as Swanson merely filling in some gaps as he remembered them, from Anderson's story..hence the mistakes he makes...

What you have to ask yourself is whether or not Swanson would have accepted without question a tale about the identification of "Kosminski", even if that tale was told him by Anderson? Would you accept a story which flew in the face of what you and all your colleagues believed to be the case, and on top of which did not conform to what you understood to be sensible police procedure?

Whether he accepted the story or not..if he is merely just repeating the known story bits as he heard them, he doesn't have to accept or not. He is just filling in the gaps of the story, without personal opinion. "Kosminski was the suspect" doesnt HAVE to be Swanson's personal view..it could just be DSS writing the name of Anderson's suspect.

That's what you seem to be suggesting that Swanson did. And maybe he did. But was he really so gullible? Would he really have accepted a **** and bull story hook, line and sinker, without questioning the source at all. Without asking so much as who else was there. Without getting their perspective?

No, I don't suggest that, as written above. No I don't therefore believe him to be gullible either. He doesn't have to swallow anything. He may just be adding details as he was told..without opinion.

I am not prepared to accept that, not without good evidence of his gullibility.

Neither would I be, had I thought that. But I don't.

One small point regarding Jim Swanson, if his claim that Swanson refused to divulge the name of Jack the Ripper is true, if Swanson ever said anything remotely like wild horses never dragging the name from his lips, doesn't that mean he knew or thought he knew the identity of the murderer? Doesn't it mean that the family believed he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper? I mean, why on earth would the family think he wouldn't divulge the name of the Ripper if they didn't think he actually knew it?

I have said this on another thread.. It has been said that Jim Swanson himself was convinced that DSS thought Kosminski to be the killer.(I believe that Chris posted this, apologies if not..)
If, as we are told, DSS didn't talk shop, refused to name the Ripper to his family, how in heavens name would Jim Swanson know that DSS meant Kosminski when DSS, according to Jim Swanson, didn't talk of the name of the Ripper to his family, used the "wild horses" statement to emphasise it, wasn't around when DSS wrote it and no other written communication exists to prove that Jim Swanson KNEW DSS was talking of the Ripper called Kosminski? (A letter to JS from DSS mentioning it for example)..

The answer is, respectfully, that Jim Swanson cannot possibly know what DSS meant because he never talked of the killer to him.

As to the last point... I believe the family DID honestly believe that DSS knew the name of the killer. I cannot see at this moment in time, any reason to believe that DSS himself was proposing that Kosminski was that man. I believe he just wrote Anderson's suspect in the book.

I believe that IF DSS knew the name of the true killer or killers, he kept it to himself.


It is something that without further evidence, cannot be cleared up with any certainty. Doubt remains, not least because of the quality of the original story teller, and his evidences, which in the book are lacking exactly that... evidence...Anderson.. who is known to clearly embellished things in that very same book. He is also known to promote "moral guilt"... without a trial. He is also full of an arrogance that is very contentious.

Thanks for the reply Paul. Appreciated.

best wishes

Phil