Did the Seaside Home ID happen?

[Jonathan H]

I never used words such as malice or incompetence. Ironically it is Anderson who ascribes those very deficiencies to everybody else.

Nor have I ever suggsted that some sources are, or must be "true" and "uncompromised" (where do you get this stuff?) as I always argue that all sources, primary and secondary, contain values and limitations. The puzzle is in what proportion, hence differing opinions and interpretations.

Sir Robert Anderson's fading memory is also affected by his big ego. As in, he always recalls/bends people and events so that they conform to his always being the smartest person in the room.

Historically this makes him, on the whole, an unreliable source re: the Ripper, and more unreliable as the years passed, as ego trumped what was left of his memory. What he wrote and believed does not match other sources, but they do form a pattern of egoism and conceit.

Is that a fact? No, it's an opinion.

In 1910 George Sims brutally lampooned Anderson as a liar and a bigot.

[Scott Nelson]

Certainly, people can suggest he went by another name and was never recorded in this country as Kozminski. But I think if they suggest that they also need to explain why two police sources should have referred to him as "Kosminski," rather than using the only name he was ever officially known by.

I addressed this in my February 2013 Rip article. Cohen was a popular English name change from European Jewish last names. Only a handful of 'Kosminski" families chose to remain Kosminskis in name in the late nineteenth century. If Aaron Kosminski hadn't been adverse to using the family's anglicized name, "Abrahams", that's the name he would have been recorded under the workhouse and asylum records. Then where would his status as a suspect be now?

There were thousands of immigrant Jewish families in the UK who had changed their last name to "Cohen." Would it have been better to confine a Ripper suspect under his uncommon non-anglicised name, limited to a handful of families, or a more common name, such as Cohen? What would the repercussions be to these families if a leak occurred concerning a suspect named "Cohen"?

[harry]

To me the most important consideration,is why,if the ID was so convincing of guilt,an arrest was not made at this seaside home?

[GUT]

To me the most important consideration,is why,if the ID was so convincing of guilt,an arrest was not made at this seaside home?

A possible answer is that he was so nutty they knew a prosecution wouldn't be able to proceed.

[Jonathan H]

You are so right, because according to Swanson the suspect 'confessed' by his guilty gestures, e.g. he knew he had been identified, and they knew he knew, and so on.

One possibility is that there was no arrest because there was no positive i.d. at the police seaside home.

The story is perhaps a legend (inspired by a real event) due not to deceit but to a sincere yet fading memory. This would explain why other pertinent police figures rejected Anderson's claim in 1910 of a positive identification.

On the other hand, maybe this memory malfunction or later mangling of some data cuts the other way too, e.g. David Cohen was the suspect, not Aaron Kosminski, a Polish-Jewish local who had been violent, had been sectioned and was definitely deceased.

[Chris]

I addressed this in my February 2013 Rip article. Cohen was a popular English name change from European Jewish last names. Only a handful of 'Kosminski" families chose to remain Kosminskis in name in the late nineteenth century. If Aaron Kosminski hadn't been adverse to using the family's anglicized name, "Abrahams", that's the name he would have been recorded under the workhouse and asylum records. Then where would his status as a suspect be now?

There were thousands of immigrant Jewish families in the UK who had changed their last name to "Cohen." Would it have been better to confine a Ripper suspect under his uncommon non-anglicised name, limited to a handful of families, or a more common name, such as Cohen? What would the repercussions be to these families if a leak occurred concerning a suspect named "Cohen"?

Sorry, but I don't follow. If this hypothetical suspect always went by the name Cohen in England, why should the police ever have referred to him as "Kosminski"?

[Batman]

Hargrave Lee Adam, dead man's eyes and scapegoats

Anderson isn't very reliable when it comes to his methodology for catching a criminal. For example, he claimed he could tell guilt by a person's reaction to the false belief they had been photographed, captured in the final moment of the dead person's eyes forever. Sorry, that's bordering on crystal ball stuff and isn't even circumstantial.

Yet we need look no further than Anderson's friend Hargrave Lee Adam, a criminology writer, who tells us that while working with him, discovered Anderson's memory to be mixing cases. So this was known even back then.

Kozminski was likely investigated as a result of Dr. Bond's profiling of JtR following the murder of MJK. The house to house searches looking for someone who met that criteria is obviously going to turn up some poor mentally ill person who happened to maybe masturbate in public and eat from the gutter, and couldn't tell his head from his own ass at times, being protected by his 'own kind' as Warren got into trouble for saying.

It wouldn't surprise me if all this started by a simple identification attempt where Lawende said he couldn't positively identify him, maybe said something about will he go to gallows and noted he was a Jew. Probably upset by Lawende's uselessness to ID either Sadler or Kozminski, make up this protection story and because Kozminski was ill, had him incarcerated and that's that, done and dusted because they didn't have any evidence against him except for a 'reaction' or something.

Also is it possible that the seaside home residence are responsible for morphing this story about an ID incident into what Anderson and Swanson are retelling it as?

[Trevor Marriott]

To me the most important consideration,is why,if the ID was so convincing of guilt,an arrest was not made at this seaside home?

To be more politically correct a suspect would have been arrested before being subjected to such a procedure.

Unless of course he volunteered of his own free will, and can you see that happening? "Excuse me Mr Kosminski we think you were jack the Ripper we would like you to come with us so that we can prove it"

It has also been suggested that he was taken from the asylum for the same purpose. I doubt the asylum authorities would have agreed to that, because if he were insane temporarily or otherwise he would not have been mentally capable of understanding what was going on.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

A possible answer is that he was so nutty they knew a prosecution wouldn't be able to proceed.

If that had been the case to allay the fears of the residents of Whitechapel they could simply have released a statement saying that they had identified the killer but due to the fact he is insane he cannot be put before a court and that he is incarcerated and will never be freed.

Of the course the danger with that is that if he wasnt the killer and further murders occurred how would they have looked then in the eyes of the public.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[GUT]

If that had been the case to allay the fears of the residents of Whitechapel they could simply have released a statement saying that they had identified the killer but due to the fact he is insane he cannot be put before a court and that he is incarcerated and will never be freed.

Of the course the danger with that is that if he wasnt the killer and further murders occurred how would they have looked then in the eyes of the public.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Precisely

[John G]

A total lack of substantive evidence is what links all the major suspects the police managed to identify. Thus, we have the mentally ill Kosminski, assumed to be guilty based upon hand gestures, which apparently amounted to a confession, and an identification by a surely unreliable witness, Lawende, years after the alleged sighting. I mean, they didn't even go to the trouble of assembling an ID parade, but decided on a direct confrontation instead!

Then there's Druitt, whose family supposedly suspected him, on what basis we no not, and allegations that he was "sexually insane", whatever that means.

Thomas Saddler's case is also very instructive. I mean, here we have a suspect arrested over the murder of Francis Coles, even though he was subsequently able to provide numerous alibis; something the police would have been aware of if they'd bothered to carry out a proper investigation.

But did that lead to an apology for Saddler and a review of police procedures, I.e. regarding the thoroughness with which investigations are carried out? No, instead the Met decide it would be a good idea to elevate him to the status of a major JtR suspect! And the frightening thing is, if Lawende had identified him he could well have faced arrest, prosecution and the prospect of the gallows.

[martin wilson]

Hi all

Perhaps the seaside home was not the police convalescent one, but another asylum?
All the best.

[Jonathan H]

It is unlikely that Swanson would have written simply Seaside Home if he did not mean the police hospital, otherwise he would have made a note-to-self that it wasn't that one.

We do know that Druitt's family believed him to have been the murderer, and we also know why they did. The evidence against him was both conclusive, and yet could only remain a probability because he would never go to trial for his crimes.

In the magazine version Anderson has the identification take place after the suspect had been safely caged. In the Marginalia the timeline has been cleaned up. Who did that--Anderson or Swanson?

[Batman]

It is unlikely that Swanson would have written simply Seaside Home if he did not mean the police hospital, otherwise he would have made a note-to-self that it wasn't that one.

Swanson though has said things that don't Jimmy. Kozminski didn't die shortly after. Also Swanson says no other murders of this kind took place even though Coles died after so he does omit the full series of Whitechapel murders. Maybe he is just talking about the C5.

All we need do is turn to Robert House's book on the subject to see how he deals with the anti-semitic content of the Lipski investigation and the GSG. He remains silent on the latter but says a Jew could have used the slur Lipski too. Let's face it, if JtR is responsible for both he is an anti-semitic gentile, not a Jew.

I really think Sugden did get it right with the Kozminski hypothesis.

[PaulB]

Anderson isn't very reliable when it comes to his methodology for catching a criminal. For example, he claimed he could tell guilt by a person's reaction to the false belief they had been photographed, captured in the final moment of the dead person's eyes forever. Sorry, that's bordering on crystal ball stuff and isn't even circumstantial.

Yet we need look no further than Anderson's friend Hargrave Lee Adam, a criminology writer, who tells us that while working with him, discovered Anderson's memory to be mixing cases. So this was known even back then.

Kozminski was likely investigated as a result of Dr. Bond's profiling of JtR following the murder of MJK. The house to house searches looking for someone who met that criteria is obviously going to turn up some poor mentally ill person who happened to maybe masturbate in public and eat from the gutter, and couldn't tell his head from his own ass at times, being protected by his 'own kind' as Warren got into trouble for saying.

It wouldn't surprise me if all this started by a simple identification attempt where Lawende said he couldn't positively identify him, maybe said something about will he go to gallows and noted he was a Jew. Probably upset by Lawende's uselessness to ID either Sadler or Kozminski, make up this protection story and because Kozminski was ill, had him incarcerated and that's that, done and dusted because they didn't have any evidence against him except for a 'reaction' or something.

Also is it possible that the seaside home residence are responsible for morphing this story about an ID incident into what Anderson and Swanson are retelling it as?

Actually, it isn't 'crystal ball stuff' at all, it was and is a commonplacee, the use of psychology, of tricking a person into responding guiltily or with innocence. And H.L. Adam's so often cited comment, it should be as often made clear that Anderson himself wrote that he was very tired (from which it seems safe to assume that he may have anticipated some errors of memory caused by fatigue). The house-to-house search was undertaken before the Double Event, which was before Dr Bond's did his profile. I don't recall Warren saying that the murderer was protected by his own kind. It was Anderson who said that. Except he didn't say it either. He say that if the murderer lived with his people (his family) then they must have had their suspicions aroused by seeing such things as bloodstained clothing and that they were not conveying their suspicions to the police. In other words, Anderson thought one or more family members weren't conveying suspicions to the police, which is not quite the same thing as saying they protected him.