Plausibility of Kosminski

[Errata]

For a start you cannot say somebody is officially guilty of a crime if they never stand trial, are never convicted -- are never even arrested for said crime (The Warren Report which 'convicted' Lee Oswald being a notable exception).

Anderson refers to the libel laws and witholds the name of his Polish Jew and the witness.

The 'West of England' MP story, which arguably solved the mystery, refers fearfully to the libel laws.

Are libel laws different in England? Because here, you have to prove the statement is false, and you have to prove that the statement caused harm. It's tough to prove a dead man is not the murderer, and clearly you cannot claim that the statement harmed him. As he's dead.

It sort of wouldn't have cost anything for them to say "Look, we are almost certain it was this guy Druitt, he killed himself right after, so we are considering the case closed (as in solved to the satisfaction of investigators) and you people don't have to worry about him anymore." Or you could sub out Kosminski for Druitt. Although in that case they would have had a nasty surprise. By American standards, that's not libel. Of course by American standards that just begging for a multimillion dollar "intentional infliction of emotional distress" lawsuit, but I don't think England had one of those in 1910.

And the Druitt family was not nearly so rich and influential to make trouble for the police, especially if everyone believed their son was Jack the Ripper.

I'm not saying it would be fair, but it would be pretty easy and have a high rate of return for the Police. And certainly the aristocracy and government officials were no strangers to throwing someone under the bus to cover up dirty laundry.

[Roy Corduroy]

It sort of wouldn't have cost anything for them to say "Look, we are almost certain it was this guy ...

'm not saying it would be fair, but it would be pretty easy and have a high rate of return for the Police.

And certainly the aristocracy and government officials were no strangers to throwing someone under the bus to cover up dirty laundry.

I"ve got it. You're a female Henny Youngman

See here (click)

Roy

[The Grave Maurice]

I never much cared for Berle, but Youngman always broke me up: "Take my theory...please!"

[Jonathan H]

To Errata

Yes the English libel laws were much stricter then and now.

In the late 50's Liberca successfull sued a Brit newspaper for insinuating that he was a homosexual.

I think what you are missing is that Mac 'cut the knot' his own way so that 'everyone would be satisfied' (except Ripperologists) and that the police had announced, eg. Mac via Sims, that the mystery was solved.

That Druitt is not much of a suspect is actually a recent and modern cocnept -- which might be correct -- but it is does not derive from the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

[Robert]

I'm a bit gobsmacked that in America you have to prove the allegation is false. Someone could accuse somebody of committing a crime for every day of their life. "When you were 20, you murdered someone. When you were 25, you buggered a donkey" etc. The accused person would simply not have the time to prove thousands of allegations false.

[Errata]

I"ve got it. You're a female Henny Youngman

See here (click)

Roy

Don't I wish. If I was that funny I would have graduated college with my theater major, gotten a masters, and still not have a job.

No, I just realize that things are different here than in England, and I not so surprisingly operate in an American frame of mind. So things occasionally strike me as odd, and when those things are statements made with the certitude of well established truth, I have to poke at them a bit and figure out why they seem odd to me.

In this case it was the difference between American and British Libel laws. The answer could have been many other things, some more valid than others, but I completely accept that this is the source of my confusion. Just because I poke doesn't mean I don't love...

[Errata]

I'm a bit gobsmacked that in America you have to prove the allegation is false. Someone could accuse somebody of committing a crime for every day of their life. "When you were 20, you murdered someone. When you were 25, you buggered a donkey" etc. The accused person would simply not have the time to prove thousands of allegations false.

Well, there is a third part of it that did not at all apply so I didn't mention it, which is that if the victim can prove that the source did not put forth the time or the effort to research it thoroughly, that is also libel.

Either way it is a civil suit not a criminal one, so it comes down to who the jury believes. If someone made up a lie for every day of your life, and they can prove that 5 are false, a jury will likely accept the rest as false.

There is such a thing as criminal libel, but its all wrapped up in fraud charges, and not particularly applicable here.

But we err on the side of free speech here (mostly). For example, I am pretty much immune from and to libel charges. Anything I say, or anything said about me is barring a few spectacular examples is not going to cause harm. If a newspaper publishes some nasty rumor about me, I can't prove it caused me harm. And frankly except for pissing me off, it couldn't cause me harm. Now if they published that I was a child abuser, and I then couldn't leave the house without serious problems, then it causes me harm. Buggering a donkey? Nothing. Actually it would probably make me laugh really hard. We don't have a right to not be offended, or irritated. We have a right not to be harmed, and that's about it.

[Robert]

Hi Errata

I know, I saw the thread about the religious nutters hurling abuse at gay funerals, which I thought was remarkable. Still, it would be a dull world if every country was the same.

[Wickerman]

...Assume that they had strong suspicions about Kozminski's guilt but couldn't prove it in court. That is the premise. Now in that situation, you have to ask, what could they do? What would you do in that position? What would any intelligent person do?

For me, the idea that the police said they had serious suspicions about a 23 year old being the Ripper is a little disconcerting considering the commonly held age range declared in suspect sighting was between 28-40, or thereabouts.
And they suspected a 23 year old?

If Kosminski's age did not concern them, then what does that say about their reliance on witness descriptions?

On the other hand, where did the police initially get their 'suspicions' from, ...the family?
It was not from crime scene evidence nor witness testimony. Also, the police apparently had the Kosminski household under surveillance for some length of time. How sure were they about 'who' they were watching?, We must not forget Aaron was just one of three brothers.
Isaac was the eldest at 37 and I think the wealthiest, Wolff was about 28 years old and somewhat poor in comparison to Isaac. How similar did these brothers appear in looks? - we will never know.

There might have been more madness contained in this family than that which surfaced with Aaron.

Regards, Jon S.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi all

I have always been leery of these "after the fact" police pronouncements that the case was solved, whether it came from Anderson/Swanson (Kosminski), Macnaghten (Druitt) or Littlechild (Tumblety). It all seems just too convenient and implausible, considering that most police officers involved in the case seemed to believe the case was never solved. It would seem to me that, particularly with Anderson and Macnaghten, they were just putting a better face on the enquiry and showing their old department in a better light than was the actual case.

All the best

Chris

[Chris]

I have always been leery of these "after the fact" police pronouncements that the case was solved, whether it came from Anderson/Swanson (Kosminski), Macnaghten (Druitt) or Littlechild (Tumblety).

Surely Littlechild didn't say the case had been solved?

[Jonathan H]

No, that's true, on one level, about Jack Littlechild's opinion of Tumblety, especially compared to the [relative] certainty of Abberline, Macnaghten, Anderson, and arguably Swanson.

On the other hand, George Sims was propagating an alleged chief suspect of 1888, 'Dr D', and the working-class Littlechild was making clear to the writer, as deferentially yet directly as possible to the upper crust, pompous 'criminologist', that the real chief suspect of Scotland Yard -- 'a very likely one' -- was really 'Dr. T', an American Confidence Man.

That this Tumblety was not just a footnote, or a curiosity, but instead occupied the lofty perch in which Sims, he thinks, has placed the wrong doctor Super-suspect -- perhaps because of what Anderson has misled Griffiths to believe and then relayed to Sims?

Actually it was Macnaghten who, arguably, fused Dr T with Mr D, leaving few fingerprints as usual.

[Chris]

On the other hand, George Sims was propagating an alleged chief suspect of 1888, 'Dr D', and the working-class Littlechild was making clear to the writer, as deferentially yet directly as possible to the upper crust, pompous 'criminologist', that the real chief suspect of Scotland Yard -- 'a very likely one' -- was really 'Dr. T', an American Confidence Man.

Littlechild didn't say anything about Tumblety being "the real chief suspect."

Sims wrote to him about "Dr D," and Littlechild said that a "Dr T" (which sounds like "Dr D") was "amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one."

[Wickerman]

It is these more contemporary opinions that tell the real story.

"That a crime of this kind should have been committed without any clue being supplied by the criminal, is unusual, but that five successive murders should have been committed without our having the slightest clue of any kind is extraordinary, if not unique, in the annals of crime..."
R. Anderson, Oct 23/88

Interesting that Swanson wrote his summary on Oct 19th and mentioned the house-to-house, that this is believed to have been when the police unearthed suspicions about Kosminski, yet Anderson one week later admits to "not the slightest clue".
So how much later did the police really lock on to Kosminski?

Regards, Jon S.

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

Yes, but Littlechild does not disabuse George Sims of his shtick about a suicided doctor being the chief suspect, either.

By implication, Jack Littlechild agrees that the best suspect to be the Ripper was a 'deviant' medical man, who, yes, was believed to have killed himself, and, yes, had been pursued by police in 1888, but he was an American, and he had been arrested and his surname initial was T, not D -- though they do rhyme.

Many other primary sources from 1888 and 1889, for example Inspector Andrews' trip to Canada to learn more about Tumblety, back up the theory that behind Sims' 'Drowned Doctor' was, to some extent, the American suspect, and that he was the leading suspect of the contemporaneous police investigation.

To Wickerman

I totally agree.

If 'Kosminski' was ever a genuine police suspect it came years later as Anderson's fading memory seems to concede, when he has the suspect confronted by a witness whilst the former is already sectioned in an asylum. This was in the 1910 magazine version, which he then revised for his memoirs. Also, in the meager, extant record it can be interpreted that Anderson did not learn about 'Kosminski' until no earlier than 1891, or even later still, in 1895.