Abberline's opinion re. Klosowski - West Coast Times

[Chris Scott]

Below is an article I had not seen before about Abberline's view on Klosowski. This follows a long article about Klosowski as a candidate to be the Ripper. I will post that shortly.

West Coast Times
19 May 1903

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks a lot Chris.This story is more or less the same as the one in the Pall Mall Gazette.
Interestingly while they include his comment,"there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man;" they then OMIT the most important part of Abberline"s reported sentence vizwhere he continues: "...and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead,or that he was a lunatic,or anything of that kind."
In my opinion those 1903 words of Abberline"s -about never believing the ripper was dead or a lunatic ,when they are placed alongside Major Smith"s 1910 statements to the same effect, tell us not only that these two Police Chiefs at least ,knew all about Macnaghten"s 1894 named suspects as well as Anderson"s "caged lunatic" theory and were having none of it.They were there at the time, kept a lifelong interest in the case and Abberline certainly is known to have maintained friendships with police like Godley and Neil , who worked on the Chapman case-in Godley"s case he had worked on the Ripper Investigation too.All these played important roles in the cases---and appear not to have given two figs for the various theories of Anderson and Macnaghten.

[Adam Went]

Thanks for that, Chris.

To add to what Nats said, I've heard people saying before that Abberline simply got caught up in all the hype of the Klosowski trial and that whole story about "You've Caught Jack The Ripper At Last!", etc, and that it may not have been a reflection of his true feelings. Reasonable enough point I suppose, but what that fails to take into account is the fact that to suggest that idea is to presume that Abberline was a man who was easily strung along, something you wouldn't expect from a detective of his calibre, and, more importantly, that he gave those statements in 1903.....and lived until 1929. So he had a full 26 years to recind his statements, and did not. Godley, IIRC, lived even longer into the early 1940's, and therefore had even longer to state something different, particularly since he had worked on the Klosowski trial. Arthur Neil didn't write his memoirs until 1932.....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Jonathan H]

To Natalie,

Re: Abberline in 1903

The counter-argument, much stronger than the one you and others waffle on about, is that Abberline, in fact, seems completely ignorant that the 'drowned man' theory is held by the Assistant Commissioner of 1903, and that the 'lunatic' theory is just as sincerely held by the former Assistant Commissioner -- who held that position at the time of the Whitechapel murder(s) inquiry [1888 to 1891].[Arguably the latter theory also believed by the former operational head of the case too].

There is no evidence whatsoever that anybody ever say the 1894 Macnaghten Report, or even knew of its existence -- apart from its author -- until a redrafted version of it was accessed and adapted by Major Griffiths in 1898.

An excited Abberline says, in 1903, that he is going to call on the Commissioner and let him know of his [ludicrous] certainty about Chapman as the Ripper, completely ignorant -- and this element is not his fault -- that Macnaghten had, to his own satisfaction at least, already identified the Ripper and begun, in 1898, propagating a myth about how Scotland Yard [that's the hapless Abberline too]had nearly apprehended this 'drowned doctor' prime suspect.

If Abberline knew anything about Druitt, and since the 'private inf.' bypassed normal police channels there is no reason why he would have -- and sure enough he didn't -- he would have known that in the official version of the Mac Report it claims that the family 'believed' in their late member's guilt.

That's much stronger than just the timing of his suicide.

So effective is this propaganda offensive from the top, that a major detective from the case has, by 1903, begun to believe the new paradigm about the Ripper murders; the truncated 'autumn of terror' established by Macnaghten via Griffiths to surprised members of the public -- at least those with long memories.

Abberline should be considering that a suspect's suicide just after Kelly is not at all convenient from the police and press point of view. For why on earth were they chasing Tom Sadler as the fiend, and not just Coles' murderer?

Unless you begin ruthlessly de-emphasising that embarrassing wild, goose chase of 1891. [Anderson would obliterate it completely from his fading. vain memory]

By the late Edwardian era, Edmund Reid also suffered mistakes of memory, but that the Ripper investigation spanned years -- and that Coles was the 'final' victim -- was not among them.

[Chris Scott]

As promised here is the Klosowski article that preceded the Abberline article I posted first.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Chris.
What always has surprised me is that given that a "coterie of top detectives ,Abberline, Godley and Neil , developed a strong conviction ....that George Chapman was also "Jack the Ripper" " ---to use Philip Sugden"s phrase in his " Complete History of JtR " it is really strange that none of Chapman/Klosowski"s 1888/1889 lodgings were subjected to a police search or dig from his days in Cable Street and the basement barber shop of the White Hart Public House in Whitechapel . Godley, after all, was the Police Officer who arrested him in 1902 and could surely have ordered the basements to have been overhauled?---but it never seems to have happened.
I mean , when Reginald Christie gassed his long term wife after she apparently became suspicious about what he had buried in the garden ,the police conducted a complete overhaul of both his house and garden at 10 Rillington Place, and unearthed a series of murdered women buried under floor boards and in the garden!
I know it had been 15 years before that the Ripper murders took place, but there could still have been bones to dig up if indeed Chapman/Klosowski had murdered more women than he was charged with murdering.In fact I think he was only charged with the murder of Maud Marsh his final victim of 1902.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Jonathan,
re History-----we need to understand the cultures we are talking about, first of all .Both history and culture are a lot more complex than you make them sound.History can change its contours , its forms ,according to who scribes it-according ,importantly ,to changes in the class positions of its scribes!
Cheers
Norma
PS I will return to Macnaghten,but another day----he does not particularly belong on this thread .

[Jonathan H]

Natalie,

If you only look at bits of information in isolation than you lose sight of the overall. You lose the ability to measure one source against another.

The perspective on Macnaghten here is Abberline's and it is you yourself who compared the latter [and Anderson] with the alleged veracity of the former.

You are moving the goal posts.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Jonathan,
I am not in a position to give much time to this matter at the moment but briefly I would remind you that in my post above I mention ex Superintendent Arthur Neil ,who worked on the Chapman inquiry,Detective Inspector George Godley , who had been actively involved in the Ripper hunt and the lead Inspector in the Ripper hunt, George Frederick Abberline .In each case they came to believe that George Chapman aka Severin Klosowski, was the Ripper.
There are just three contemporary police sources , whose observations and conclusions match and who as far as we know ,never wavered in their conviction that George Chapman and Jack the Ripper were one and the same.
In addition,Abberline claimed that George Chapman lived at the very centre of the murders viz George Yard .Whether he did or did not,what we know for certain is that certainly by the end of November or early December 1888 -at latest George Chapman aka Severin Klosowski lived in Cable street-a two minute walk from Berner street!
Now Abberline may have been a working class man, unlike Macnaghten and Anderson but that doesnt lower his credibility as a Detective.He literally was there during all five canonical murders in 1888 unlike either Anderson or Macnaghten.He had served 25 years in the Metropolitan Police ,fourteen of them "in the slums of Whitechapel".

Other sources that confirm that Chapman lived, or at the very least worked in the very heart of the murder district are his in laws the Baderski"s-who testified at his murder trial----referring to when they had known him from the Summer of 1889 its true but also a major witness and fellow Pole, Wolff Levisohn, who placed him .in his trial testimony at the basement barber shop in the White Hart Public House on the Witechapel High Street at the corner of George Yard in the year 1888 .

Jonathan-it is you who select the claims of one Police Chief,Macnaghten, ----ie a single source ---who wasnt even in the police force in 1888 and produced not a jot of evidence to base all your convoluted "story " upon------- wheeling on Anderson and a few others here and there,but its still just pure speculation,castles in the air!


The above police I mention were contemporary,"hands on", police , contemporary witnesses, contemporary sources and their conclusions about the case match.

Ofcourse some of the top brass would claim to be "in the know" but in my opinion this is mostly fiction as stated by Henry Smith,the Chief commissioner of the City of London Police and one of the police chiefs who would have been "in the know-in my opinion he ridiculed their assertions that anybody knew and more importantly, he actually took Anderson to task over his "RECKLESS ASSERTIONS "in his own autobiography written in the same year [1910] as Anderson made his public claims about the "Polish Jew theory" .

Its frustrating not to be able to give more time to this but I hope to be able yo return to it later in the week at latest