Plausibility of Kosminski

[Stewart P Evans]

Challenge

...
If you want I will issue a public challenge (not a demand) here and now for them to publish the Aberconway version in its entirety for all to see. In order that the world of Ripperology can read it and make up their own minds whether there is anyhting of interest, or anyhting which effects or changes what is currently known from The MM of 1894. But I am sure it will fall on deaf ears or we will get the same lame duck excuse blame it on Trevor.

I really don't want anything Trevor. But you must do what you feel you have to do. If you are issuing a challenge, then to whom are you issuing it? Have you approached them privately? None of my business I know, but I'm just trying to help. If it was mine to show I'd show you.

[Stewart P Evans]

Right...

I took it up with the current owner months ago and the letter I got back stated what I have posted and it still hasnt been done and you talk to me about agendas

Right, well I'm afraid that there is nothing that I can do about that. I think we are back to your attitude when making your demand 'months ago'.

[DavidtheFish]

Well you would be suprised, and give it a rest what I have done its wearing thin now its a lame duck excuse

If you have any "substance" squirreled away then bring it on.

Hmmmmmmm the gods dont like to be challenged

I know I am interrupting a rather long going feud and this may not be the right thread, but since I have both your attentions:

Mr. Evans,

I just wanted to say hello and thank you for sparking my interest in Jack the Ripper a few years back. Your documentary on Tumblety and your contributions on most of the other documentaries on the subject were/are very interesting indeed.

Mr. Mariott,

I found your documentary on the German suspect interesting as well.

Although neither Tumblety nor Faugenbaum(sp?) are my Ripper choices, you both have made me think, and that is what makes this case very intriguing.

Now back to our regularly scheduled feud.......

[Stewart P Evans]

Feud?

I know I am interrupting a rather long going feud and this may not be the right thread, but since I have both your attentions:
Mr. Evans,
I just wanted to say hello and thank you for sparking my interest in Jack the Ripper a few years back. Your documentary on Tumblety and your contributions on most of the other documentaries on the subject were/are very interesting indeed.
Mr. Mariott,
I found your documentary on the German suspect interesting as well.
Although neither Tumblety nor Faugenbaum(sp?) are my Ripper choices, you both have made me think, and that is what makes this case very intriguing.
Now back to our regularly scheduled feud.......

Thank you for your kind remarks.

Feud, what feud? I find Trevor very entertaining. I have met him a couple of times and found him to be a very pleasant and personable chap. And as we are both ex-police officers we have much in common.

[DavidtheFish]

Thank you for your kind remarks.

Feud, what feud? I find Trevor very entertaining. I have met him a couple of times and found him to be a very pleasant and personable chap. And as we are both ex-police officers we have much in common.

Ok. My mistake....didn't mean to offend either one of you. But I do have one question. Do you(or anyone for that matter) feel that Stride could have been killed by Kosminski? I remember in one of the documentaries you participated in that you didn't think that Stride was a Ripper victim, but you couldn't prove that. Please don't ask me to prove it because I am not nearly as knowledgable on the subject as most, but I don't think the same individual killed all of the C5.

Thanks again for responding

[fido]

Two points that came up a little while ago:
Someone said Anderson doctored or misrepresented the Parnell letter in The Times. He didn't. That was the work of a young Irish journalist called Woulfe Flanagan. Anderson used official documents to write another set of Parnell articles detailing the activities of Fenians in America, with the evident innuendo that Parnell was associating with and endorsing the hopes of people who wanted full independence for Ireland, and not just limited Home Rule under the supervision of Westminster. And since that part of the case against Parnell was effectively carried, Anderson actually had the gall to disregard the exposure of Piggott's forgeries and claim the Commission investigation a success in exposing Parnell, when most people saw it as a triumph for him and a rout for The Times. Anderson's dodginess appears most clearly in his obscuring his own apparent familiarity with Piggott. But there's no evidence that he had anything to do with the forged letter.

In re Rose Mylett: I agree that the footnote asserting that no one would ever have associated it with the Ripper but for newspaper sensationalism is one of the most revealing of Anderson's utterances. But I don't think it proves him to have been lying for self-glorification long after the event. he was actually repeating the untenable position he took up at the time, when his conviction that the first police report describing no sign of a struggle proved that she had not been strangled, and as the coroner complained, sent doctor after doctor down to the scene until he got the report that satisfied him - (and no one else!) It shows him to have been opinionated to the point of being pig-headed, and like the Buswell murder investigators, almost incapable of changing his mind in the light of fresh evidence once it had been made up. So I have no problem with any suggestion that he decided very early that the murderer was (a) a local Jew and (b) insane, and until the alleged identification probably had little more, if anything to go on.
My reason for ruling out Kosminski is not mistruct of Anderson's or Swanson's or Macnaghten's veracity, though two at least of them made demonstrable mistakes. It is the improbability of any ID after 1890 being worth anything: the fact that Swanson said the Ripper had died in teh asylum, and apparent thought he was dead as early as 1894, and the fact that Kosminski was alive until 1917. Assuming the supposed Ripper's death was something that would not have been casually assumed, I take it a jewish and insane suspect had died, and that makes David Cohen the only possibuility.
How Kosminski's name got into the mix, then remains a mystery on a par with an ID in which a witness was taken with difficulty to the Sweaside Home by the Met, and released by them after the IDwas made because the witness wouldn't stick to it, and thereafter watched on Met territory by teh City - something must lie behind this confused farrago, but equally something is wrong with it. Of course Kosmisnki remains part of the historian's enquiry, and must be described as a police suspect, though I think he was a City police suspect whose name got wrong;y attached to the Met suspect. I've heard from Don that the explanation must be simpler, and I think from Paul or Stewart that it must be more complex. But I await a persuasive hypothesis meeting these problems to challenge the Cohen theory.

By the way, when I said way back that an unnamed doctor was the otehr lead suspect, I should have put it that it seems the police divided between those who suspected a local Jew and those who suspect "a" doctor, including Dr Tumblety and "Dr" Drewitt, and leeson's doctior and Spicer's doctor, and feldscher Losowski, etc etc
Martin F

[mklhawley]

Thanks for clarifying my comments Martin.

Mike

[Simon Wood]

Hi Stewart,

So, Commissioner Sir Edward Bradford gave Macnaghten and/or Anderson the nod!

By October 1894 Michael Ostrog had successfully established his cast-iron alibi, at a cost of £10 from the police fund, for the period of the Whitechapel murders.

Yet in 1898 he was still one of Griffiths' three homicidal maniacs, against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion."

Why in the interests of justice and sheer plain decency had Ostrog not been struck from the MM3?

As to bureaucratic markings, I would have expected some indication that it had been read and the contents duly noted—the initials E.B. perhaps—or a comment in the margin, a file number, date-received stamp . . . anything. I'm not fussy.

I'm intrigued to know how this document survived unsullied until it was passed from New Scotland Yard to the Public Record Office. More importantly, I'm intrigued to know why its condition is how you "would expect it to be."

Regards,

Simon

[PaulB]

I took it up with the current owner months ago and the letter I got back stated what I have posted and it still hasnt been done and you talk to me about agendas

I think I have answered this. Your general attitude, accusations veiled and otherwise, and innuendo that Keith Skinner stole the material, and the fact that you never approached Keith or any of the A to Z authors to see or otherwise be provided with the Aberconway version, has led the owner to change his mind. As a matter of fact, I believe that the owner of the document was happy for it to be made available on the internet, and asked if it interfered with any plans Keith had for using it. Keith said it didn't and was in the process of seeking permission when you made your filthy innuendo about Keith and that changed the ball game. It will now be published in the next edition of the A to Z.

[Phil Carter]

...So I have no problem with any suggestion that he decided very early that the murderer was (a) a local Jew and (b) insane, and until the alleged identification probably had little more, if anything to go on...

My reason for ruling out Kosminski is not mistrust of Anderson's or Swanson's or Macnaghten's veracity, though two at least of them made demonstrable mistakes. It is the improbability of any ID after 1890 being worth anything: the fact that Swanson said the Ripper had died in the asylum, and apparent thought he was dead as early as 1894, and the fact that Kosminski was alive until 1919....


Martin F

Hello Martin,

I agree entirely, and have said this many times during the course of this thread alone. In addition, the comments from the police officers themselves at the time.. in my very humble opinion, outweigh the later comments in said biographies.
... which is where I expand the date line a little, and we are of differing opinion.. but that expands beyond "Kosminski's" plausibility..

kindly

Phil

[PaulB]

I really don't want anything Trevor. But you must do what you feel you have to do. If you are issuing a challenge, then to whom are you issuing it? Have you approached them privately? None of my business I know, but I'm just trying to help. If it was mine to show I'd show you.

You have demonstrated your generosity of spirit and been a hospitable host to many Ripperologists, Stewart, but if I was in your shoes and the document was mine to show Trevor, I wouldn't. As it happens it is not, but if that is the decision of Keith or the owner then I back them to the absolute hilt. The innuendo was foul. It is not forgotten.

[PaulB]

Years ago, Paul, whilst studying scientific research methods, I was given the following as an example of hypo-inductive reasoning:-

John is a boy; John wears trousers.
Susan wears trousers, so must also be a boy.

Whereas I genuinely marvel at the depth of Anderson-related research undertaken by yourself, Stewart and others, I doubt that it will ever prove that Anderson exaggerated (or worse) the circumstances surrounding the Seaside Home identification.

To my mind, insufficient consideration has been given to an alternate approach. It is fairly obvious, for example, that Anderson believed that he knew the type of man the Ripper was likely to have been (an insane sexual deviant), and that he and Swanson regarded the end of the Ripper scare as providing a clue as to the killer’s identity.

It is also fairly obvious that that investigators had little, if any, tangible evidence against Kosminski, which is why almost total reliance was placed on the Seaside Home identification. The fact that Swanson bothered to state that ‘no other murder of this kind took place in London after the suspect had been identified’ would appear to reinforce this conclusion.

As I contended earlier on this thread, I think the likeliest explanation for Kosminski’s ‘identification’ may be attributed to the fact that he was diagnosed as insane and removed from the streets at a time which roughly coincided with the cessation of the murders. As such, this was less of a rigorous detective process than an exercise in hypo-inductive reasoning. Thus I have difficulty in sharing your conclusion that ‘Anderson would have known about all the serious suspects and that if he thought "Kosminski" was at worst the best of the bunch then he has to be given credence.’

To my way of thinking, Paul, there were no serious suspects, not least because the investigation was fatally flawed by Anderson’s assumption that the wanted man must have been insane and obviously homicidal. Our latter-day understanding of such offenders is sufficient to effectively exonerate Kosminski and similar such ‘suspects’. Even if we assume that Kosminski was a paranoid schizophrenic (and I long ago asserted that Kosminski’s psychopathology was indicative of hebephrenia rather then paranoia), such men are incapable of exerting the degree of victim and crime scene control that is apparent through even the most casual evaluation of the Ripper murders. From the psychological perspective alone, Kosminski could not have been Jack the Ripper. Anderson was therefore wrong, irrespective of his documented certainty regarding the issue, and no amount Anderson-related textual analysis will change that.

Returning to my opening paragraph, I will provide another example of hypo-inductive reasoning:-

Jack the Ripper’s crimes had about them a touch of insanity.
Kosminski was insane and so must have been Jack the Ripper.

That, I believe, more or less encapsulates Anderson’s case against Kosminski. And whilst I wish you well in your Anderson researches, I really do think that the time has come to consider an alternate approach – one that places greater emphasis on what he did rather than what he said.

Or even what he said he did.

Hi Garry,
It's a perfectly reasonably hypothesis, but, alas, like other hypotheses, lacking the evidence necessary for it to be accepted. Yes, Anderson said "the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type", and "sexual maniac" may mean "insane sexual deviant" as you have said, but Macnaghten thought Jack the Ripper was a sexual maniac too. So can we say the "the investigation was fatally flawed by Anderson’s assumption that the wanted man must have been insane and obviously homicidal". Was that really just Anderson's assumption, or was it what the police in general would have thought? Macnaghten said that sexual maniacs could be walking among the general population unnoticed, so they obviously weren't regarded as stereotypical drooling madmen with wild eyes and insane grins. So what precisely would the police have been looking for and would looking for a homicidal madman have necessarily led the police to the wrong suspects?

That said, Aaron Kosminski probably was a hebephrenic or disorganised schizophrenic, which was the diagnosis reached by the psychiatrist consulted for The Definitive Story, who concluded that Aaron Kosminski probably wasn't Jack the Ripper. However, it was argued that schizophrenics have periods of lucidity and in rare cases can be homicidal, and it has been proposed that the murders could have been committed at such times. I can offer no comment, but lean strongly towards the conclusion that he was not.

Textual analysis won't change the "psychological perspective", nor is it intended to, it is intended only to hopefully help in establishing whether or not the events described by Anderson (and Swanson) actually happened.

[Supe]

Trev,

A look at somewhat recent American political history might be instructive. You may well not have heard of Bella Abzug (that would wound her greatly) but she was a member of the House of Representatives from Manhattan in the 1970s. She was quite left-wing and unabashedly so. She was also very brash, aggressive and even, many said, a disturbing loud-mouth. As such, whatever her popularity in her Congressional district (overwhelmingly Democratic) she was quite disliked (a charitable word) in most of the rest of the United States.

So much so that whereas generally when a bill is presented in Congress the author seeks as many co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle as possible. Not, however with Ms. Abzug. He sponsorship or even just endorsement of possible legislation was seen as costing scores of votes, enough so that the piece of legislation might fail.

Eventually, even Bella learned that if she wanted something enacted into law it was best she keep her mouth shut.

A lesson there I'd say.

Don.

[Stewart P Evans]

You are right...

You have demonstrated your generosity of spirit and been a hospitable host to many Ripperologists, Stewart, but if I was in your shoes and the document was mine to show Trevor, I wouldn't. As it happens it is not, but if that is the decision of Keith or the owner then I back them to the absolute hilt. The innuendo was foul. It is not forgotten.

You are right Paul and, given the circumstances, I suppose that I wouldn't have shown the document. It's not mine, it's not mine to show, and I think that the course of action you have described is fair enough in the circumstances.

[Stewart P Evans]

Obviously...

...
So, Commissioner Sir Edward Bradford gave Macnaghten and/or Anderson the nod!
By October 1894 Michael Ostrog had successfully established his cast-iron alibi, at a cost of £10 from the police fund, for the period of the Whitechapel murders.
Yet in 1898 he was still one of Griffiths' three homicidal maniacs, against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion."
Why in the interests of justice and sheer plain decency had Ostrog not been struck from the MM3?
As to bureaucratic markings, I would have expected some indication that it had been read and the contents duly noted—the initials E.B. perhaps—or a comment in the margin, a file number, date-received stamp . . . anything. I'm not fussy.
I'm intrigued to know how this document survived unsullied until it was passed from New Scotland Yard to the Public Record Office. More importantly, I'm intrigued to know why its condition is how you "would expect it to be."
Simon

Obviously I cannot say that Bradford did give the nod, but police protocol would probably suggest that he did. Either that, or he was happy to leave such decisions to the two top men in charge of the CID.

I think that you, and others, probably read too much importance into this document because of its relevance to a mystery that has been hyped to such a degree in modern times. With no names mentioned I doubt that they cared about the exact details of three men listed as suspects only several years earlier. It merely illustrated that the police did have suspects and it certainly didn't make headlines when Griffiths' book was published in 1898.

Such a document would not need initialling as it was for the information of the Commissioner only, was not part of a file, did not require further action and did not require minutes. Hence no file number and no date stamp as it was not a document received from an outside source (it was an internal office to office memo).

Hence I would expect it to be in that condition, which it is. Quite natural and normal. Well, to me anyway but what do I know?