Plausibility of Kosminski

[Ben]

There is nothing to suggest in any of the asylum records,sketchy though they are that in the 30 years of incarceration , any member of staff was warned of him being violent,needing a restraint jacket ,let alone being a murderer,let alone Jack the Ripper.

To be fair, Nats, we can't rule out Kosminski on that basis.

Other violent serial killers have spent their incarceration in relative tranquility. Ed Gein was never violent during his time in a mental institution, and apparently never needed a straight-jacket.

Regards,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

To be fair, Nats, we can't rule out Kosminski on that basis.

Other violent serial killers have spent their incarceration in relative tranquility. Ed Gein was never violent during his time in a mental institution, and apparently never needed a straight-jacket.

Regards,
Ben

Ben,I do not accept this Ed Gein comparison.Hell this is a recent killer who was no doubt stuffed up to the eyeballs with anti psychotic drugs----obligatory from a health and safety issue for those working with such dangerous patients.There were no drugs to quell such violence in those days.There are numbers of other matters pointing away from Kosminski too.No other senior policeman suspected Kosminski and several discounted the idea as utterly preposterous.
Johnny come lately, Macnaghten,a man who was never once "on the case" sort of accepted Anderson"s "suspect as viable,but ,and this is important, proposed Druitt .
Best

[Ben]

Hi Nats,

The Gein comparison is perfectly apt. He exuded an external pacivity even prior to his incarceration, and wouldn't have required any anti-psychotic drugs. Similarly, if Jack the Ripper conveyed an external "craziness" of the order you're envisaging, he wouldn't have been able to inveigle prostitutes. As for other policeman suspecting Kosminski, there was Donald Swanson. He didn't say so as explicitly as Anderson, although by stating that no crimes of that nature took place again in London after his capture, it seems reasonable to infer that he agreed with his boss.

I don't suppose for a moment that Kosminski was JTR, but in terms of the police suspects, he's the best of a bad bunch. Swanson and Anderson were at least contemporary to the ripper murders, which Macnaghten wasn't.

Best regards,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

Quite frankly I dont believe this for one second Ben.Institutions such as that Ed Gein was admitted to have a duty of care under Health and Safety to their staff regarding murderers and dangerous criminals.Ofcourse he would have been doped up,and carefully watched once inside.
Anyway Aaron Kosminski was well enough in 1889 to be freely and apparently calmly walking his dog, unchecked by a single policeman other than the one who spotted an unmuzzled dog out and about when that was against the law at the time .He was free for a further two years-well past the time when Macnaghten considered the Ripper was done for -he believed the murderer committed suicide or was placed in a lunatic asylum or otherwiose disappeared then ie soon after Mary Kelly was murdered in November 1888.

[Ben]

Institutions such as that Ed Gein was admitted to have a duty of care under Health and Safety to their staff regarding murderers and dangerous criminals.Ofcourse he would have been doped up

They'd only need to dope him up if he presented a continuous physical threat prior to his capture, Nats. The salient point is that Gein was quite capable of tranquility even prior to his capture. It wasn't as though he was violent and crazy all the time, and there's no reason to infer that JTR would have been.

Anyway Aaron Kosminski was well enough in 1889 to be freely and apparently calmly walking his dog

But there's nothing to suggest the real killer wouldn't have been either. Nor is there anything to suggest that the murderer couldn't have been "free" two years after the Kelly murder.

[The Good Michael]

Ed Gein was a very passive guy, incapable of doing what he did. Drugs weren't necessary for him. He was effeminate and was ridiculed for that as a youth. His only friends were his brothers, and they all kept to themselves. He did have an anti-social personality, but was non-violent except to his victims. I think Kosminski could have been similar until he went off the deep end. Remember that Gein was found not guilty for reasons of insanity, maybe like Kosminski would have been.

Mike

[Natalie Severn]

Ed Gein was a very passive guy, incapable of doing what he did. Drugs weren't necessary for him. He was effeminate and was ridiculed for that as a youth. His only friends were his brothers, and they all kept to themselves. He did have an anti-social personality, but was non-violent except to his victims. I think Kosminski could have been similar until he went off the deep end. Remember that Gein was found not guilty for reasons of insanity, maybe like Kosminski would have been.

Mike

Well all I can say Mike is that I would be very surprised if he wasnt sedated when he was put in the bin.
Natalie

[jason_c]

"Now the reason I have included this "backdrop" in a thread entitled "the Plausability of Kosminski" is that I firmly believe the deep trouble Robert Anderson was in during "the Autumn of Terror" and the furore and backlash against the Chiefs of Police created by the Press due to the "Ripper" not being caught,caused Robert Anderson to conceive of an almost mythical "Low class Polish Jew" before the year 1888 was out to get himself off the hook.
He claims in his Autobiography,that he came upon his idea during discussions on the police findings of the October 1888 house-house searches,when,he also claims, it was thought the Jewish Community were the ones who would be prepared to hide the identity of the murderer if he was one of their own.This statement was robustly challenged by Major Henry Smith,present at the time in his role as the City Police Acting Commissioner at the scene of the Mitre Square murder of Catherine Eddowes---who claimed it was utter rubbish"


Natalie


There is no evidence Anderson tried to get himself off the hook in 1888(or for many years afterwards) by blaming a low class Polish Jew. He could only be accused of this when he wrote his auto-biography many years later. Apart from the house to house searches the police went out of there way to minimize the belief that a Jew was responsible.

Anderson may have been stroking his own ego when he publicly claimed the Rippers identity was known. There is nothing to show he used this 'tale' to take pressure off himself (from the newspapers or the government) during the Ripper scare. There is no "Anderson memorandum' in which he blames the Jews.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Jason,
Not only Anderson but Macnaghten gives us the S.P. on the situation.Macnaghten in 1894 claimed that his second suspect after Druitt was "a Polish Jew,living in the very heart of the district".
We therefore have a match for the theories thrown up during and after the police house -to -house searches of October 1888.These theories are referred to and were to be well publicised by Anderson in 1907 as well as after his autobiography was published.All the indications therefore are that the theory of the low class Polish Jew began to take shape sometime after the house-to-house searches of Autumn 1888.Anderson says so himself and Macnaghten"s language matches Anderson"s in this regard.
In addition we have got this same Macnaghten naming the suspect in both his draft and official versions of his 1894 report,and stating again in both reports-ie including his OFFICIAL version that he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889.
Well we know little about Kosminski from other sources except that in 1889 far from being locked up, he was actually walking Mr Jacob Cohen"s dog in freedom in the Cheapside area of the City of London in 1889 ie until a policeman saw the dog was unmuzzled and took him to court for that offence-nothing to do with the Ripper-and for which he was fined 10 shillings.
I would remind you that Kosminski remained free until February 1891.

BTW I am not suggesting the police-or Robert Anderson come to that-publicly stated the Ripper was likely to be found in the heart of Whitechapel"s Jewish community.I am referring to the very words Robert Anderson wrote about this in his book of 1907 and his autobiography later and in Blackwoods Magazine.And yes,the police in general,particularly Warren,did their very best to stop anti semitic
accusations and the blaming of Jews.The fact is that the Jews were scapegoated by certain sections from those who believed "no Englishman could have done the murders to a few disaffected locals who began to act like Hitler"s brown shirts in the wake of the Annie Chapman murder and tried to whip up a storm against the Jewish Community which Warren managed to forestall.
Best Wishes
Natalie

[stevebaker25]

Well all I can say Mike is that I would be very surprised if he wasnt sedated when he was put in the bin.
Natalie

Actually it is a fact that he wasn't sedated. He had no need to be. But he was under supervision, naturally.
I have it as fact that patients aren't sedated if there's no need for them to be so.

[Ashkenaz]

I have a friend who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. She has good and bad days. You would have no idea of her status if you met her on a good day

[The Good Michael]

Some things that I heard in the podcast of the 23rd that struck me.

First, Ally questioned Paul over the veracity of Macnaghten, and her point regarding a statement made so far after the fact, casts some doubts, and that a police official wouldn't necessarily be believable just because he was a police official.

My response to that is: Why would he lie? I understand that some people want to take credit for being smarter than they are, but this would have amounted to a story concoction of Hutchinsonian proportions if it no basis in fact.

Paul suggested that there had to have been more information that we don't know about.

Ally questioned that kind of response as being something that is done in order to show one's suspect as being more viable, and of course, she is right that this occurs. Yet, in order for Macnaghten to have this opinion, there had to have been some file or some information that he knew of or else, again, he is a bald-faced liar.

One thing that points to his veracity is the way he doesn't use Kosminski's
full name. It is as if there is a familiarity, that his audience, whoever he, she
or they might have been, knew who he was talking about, so that he could simply say, Kosminski. This is how it feels to me, that the use of 'Kosminski' was enough to ring bells, the reader thinking, "Oh, yeah. That freak."

The podcast was excellent.

Cheers,

Mike

[Dan Norder]

All it takes for Macnaghten to have been wrong in his memorandum is for him to have gotten inaccurate or incomplete information from someone else, put information together incorrectly, or to have exaggerated things either consciously or subconsciously to fit what his target audience wanted to read (this document was intended to fight off complaints that they botched the investigation by not treating Cutbush as the killer, not to actually catch the Ripper). None of those things would make him a bald-faced liar.

And of course plenty of bureaucrats are, in fact, bald-faced liars when it comes to protecting their livelihood or trying to sound important (like a lot of people in general), whether it be done for rather innocent intentions or not, so I don't know why some people try to dismiss the idea out of hand.

I think it's more likely that Macnaghten didn't use Kosminski's full name simply because he didn't know it and not because he and every one else knew so much about the guy that saying more was unnecessary.

[Jeff Leahy]

Its Apparent that Swanson at least new Kosminski's christian name..

And i believe one of the main points raised in the show is the weight of evidence. You have McNaughten, Anderson and Swanson all concuring the name Kosminski.

Pirate

[Ally]

As I said in the podcast also, although perhaps I didn't make it clear enough, that it does not require lying for him to have been wrong or simply confused. Just because someone is confused, (like perhaps they think someone left the board for one reason when in fact they left it for another) doesn't mean they are lying. Mistakes occur, misinformation occurs. And when you have a group of people all hashing over the same thing, like police officers jawing over old cases, it is not impossible that what they all "know" to be the truth, isn't in fact true and one persons misperception taints the group.

Jeff,
From where do we get that Swanson knew Kosminski's first name?? I must have missed that reference.