Plausibility of Kosminski

[Garry Wroe]

Macnaghten was not checking out a 'cold case' in Feb/March 1891, for the Ripper was believed to be very much alive and active, if now an infrequent murderer, eg. Coles.

When referring to cold-case evaluations, Jonathan, I was thinking more in terms of those investigators who had been directly involved with the case. I mentioned Macnaghten only because he made reference to Ostrog, Kosminski and Druitt.

But since you mention it, Macnaghten certainly did believe it to be a cold-case in early 1891. His stated conviction was that the murders ceased with the death of Mary Kelly in November 1888.

[Tom_Wescott]

Much can depend on the tone of voice, or the sense of irony surrounding a remark like that. Anyway, if he didn't destroy his papers - where are they?

We call them the memoranda.

Yet surely THEY were the men in a position to know - or to speculate with some authority, if anyone was?

Being in a position to know, and bothering to learn, are two different things. With Macnaghten, we have two choices – 1) We can accept the memoranda as an honestly written document, reflecting his true views and knowledge, and thus can only conclude he was an idiot, or 2) He was not an idiot and the errors were intentional. If that’s the case, a whole other can of worms gets opened.

Garry,
I totally get what you’re saying. My favorite example is the case of the Green River Killer, who because of a horribly flawed ‘profile’ by none other than the king of serial killer profiling himself, John Douglas, was able to enjoy 20 years of freedom before DNA nabbed him.

I'm not sure that Druitt's homosexuality - and let's remember that there is absolutely no evidence that he was homosexual.

I suspect pedophilia, or at least something more hardcore than mere homosexuality, which even in 1888, I don’t believe, would have been enough to get dubbed ‘sexually insane’. Then of course, we’re assuming Mac wasn’t exaggerating.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

To Garry Wroe

You're missing my point.

When Macnaghten went to investigate the MP tale it was stll a 'hot' case. The fiend had just killed, maybe, Frances Coles.

What Mac learned, rightly or wrongly, convinced him that 'Jack' was dead, and had been dead by his own hand for years!

How excruciating!

It was the incovenient timing of Druitt's self-murder which forced Kelly to be the final victim.

How do we know this?

Because it is in Mac's memoir of 1914. It's even in the title!

He called his chapter 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper'; meaning we were chasing a phantom as we did not know that he was long deceased (and I laid him to rest).

Inelligence about this chief suspect did not come to them, or just Mac, until 'some years after' the un-named Druitt drownd himself in the Thames.

It is the most striking admission Mac makes, and it fits all of the porimary sources from 1888 to 1891.

It then, arguably, fits more police and press sources from 1891 to 1898, if Mac kept this information to himself, which I believe he did.

[Scott Nelson]

Jonathan,

Will you kindly admit my brilliance once and for all?

Now, once again, this thread is getting really boring!

[Tom_Wescott]

We should all just agree that Robert Mann was Jack the Ripper.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[PaulB]

Hi Paul

Nice post but as you know Wilde brought it all on himself as the original accusation was that he was a heterosexual 'posing' as a sodomite.

He could have ignored this but didn't and paid a heavy price.

Some people aren't as clever as they or other people think they are.

Hi Stephen,
A good point, but highlights the point that Wilde wasn't necessarily persecuted for being a homosexual but was the central figure in a row in which his homosexuality was core. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that as an old Etonian Macnaughten would probably have come into contact with homosexuality and know it not to be the next thing to Satan. Debbie McDonald wrote a good book that's well worth reading.

[PaulB]

Hi Paul,
You said:
Well, it's arguable that the Victorians persecuted and criminalised Oscar Wilde for his homosexuality; homosexuality was illegal, the Marquess of Queensbury to all intent and purposes accused Wilde of being a Sodomite, and Wilde, egged on by others, charged MoQ with libel, to which MoQ responded by proving that Wilde was one. It wasn't quite as if society said "hey, ho, let's get Wilde for being a poof".

Now you know I have a great regard for your work but this is so splitting hairs, Paul!
Queensbury was livid because his son and Oscar Wilde were lovers.He set out to spread word everywhere he could that Oscar was homosexual -which ,as you correctly state, meant that Oscar could end up in jail for [and incidently did for two years .
Oscar hounded as he was by Queensbury , had little choice but to shout 'libel'---He knew Queensbury was after him for being gay and would have him imprisoned.
If that Victorian era had been in any way 'enlightened' they would not have criminalised homosexuality or jailed homosexuals for being gay which ofcourse they did-Victorian Society did!

Well, it's not quite splitting hairs, Norma. Victorian society was unenlightened, as you would have it, and it did criminalise homosexuality, but I wasn't saying otherwise. I was questioning whether Wilde was persecuted by society, which he wasn't. He was a society darling until he crossed MoQ. But as I said to Stephen, I was simply making a passing remark to the effect that Macnaghten would probably have been familiar enough with homosexuality not to demonise Druitt.

and you too Paul are also 'at it again':

I didn't say otherwise. I said let "us" not get into this again.

Who says the idea 'lacks support' ? Who can evaluate the motivation of two Victorian police officers both selling their wares /autobiographies and wanting to put themselves and their work in the best light possible light in the roll call of history? If it was you who had been in charge both at the time and in the aftermath, would you want to go down in history as someone who never managed to catch the ripper?
Both Anderson and Macnaghten were well aware that in the months and years that followed the Autumn of terror nobody had ever been caught for the most notorious murders of their tenure .
Indeed Abberline was extraordinarily sceptical and blunt about the story of the conveniently 'drowned doctor' and the 'lunatic caged in an asylum'---Poppycock" was his response and you bet he heaved sigh about the "fairy stories'------- along with all those policemen involved on the ground in the case who never stepped forth to agree---mind they probably would not have wanted to or dared to disagree in public with these two ex bosses.
Titter ye not !

I say the idea lacks support, not that that amounts even to a small hill of beans, but I don't know of any evidence that Anderson and Macnaghten were particularly concerned about how the Whitechapel murders reflected on them personally, and I have pointed out that both men enjoyed successful careers and that in his retirement Anderson was primarily a commentator on penology and was a theologian, not criminal cases. All I am saying is that we can work up all sorts of theoretical scenarios, but the theory needs supportive evidence. Macnaghten, for example, comes across as a raconteur telling good stories, of which the Ripper was one, not as someone anxious to defend himself against charges of "you didn't catch him".

[PaulB]

A fascinating post Jonathan .Just one thing though.I have the impression that the Druitt family all suffered some form of mental illness either depression or paranoia so they could have suspected him wrongly.Druitt was suffering from depression topping himself like that.He may have begun to hallucinate too or have suffered from delusions,
Best,
Norma

To Norma

I totally agree.

We may be deaing with a ghastly mistake.

That Druitt confessed to his family that he was the fiend and before he could be sectioned (eg. afarid of going like mother) he topped himself -- which seemed to confirm the confession.

But ... it was a delusion.

He was no more the Ripper than he was Napoleon. If only he hadn't died they would have discovered this reality.

The reason I disagree with you about Abberline as a source who, in 1903, trumps Macangten (and Anderson) is partly because he says that 'we' never believed in the suicided medical student or the locked-up loonie. He is thus out of the loop that Macanghten did believe rightly or wrongly, in Druitt -- and Anderson in the Polish Jew madman. Touchingly Abberline says he is going to tell Mac about Chapman, very out of the loop.

Could he have been right about Chapman? Of course.

I agree too. That's why I have been saying pretty consistently for more years than I particularly want to recall, that we don't have any idea what the private information received by Macnaghten was, therefore we can't evaluate it and can't say whether Macnaghten was probably right or wrong. All we can say is that Macnaghten wasn't a dolt and was persuaded by it.

[PaulB]

Jonathan,

Will you kindly admit my brilliance once and for all?

Now, once again, this thread is getting really boring!

Yea, but at least its not some old farts cat scratching. Skip the boring bits. You can always look back over them if things "hot up" and you want to find out why.

[Stephen Thomas]

I have been saying pretty consistently for more years than I particularly want to recall, that we don't have any idea what the private information received by Macnaghten was, therefore we can't evaluate it and can't say whether Macnaghten was probably right or wrong. All we can say is that Macnaghten wasn't a dolt and was persuaded by it.

We can't even say that, Paul.

He could have merely been pretending that he was persuaded by it.

[Phil H]

hink, belatedly that there was a misunderstanding of my bracketing Kosminski and druitt, earlier. I certainly do not do so personally.

I was commenting on - and quoted - an earlier remark that neither man was the murderer because "[t]hey were simply men who spoke with a Geordie accent." It was someone else who had put them together - I was simply pointing out that they were strange bedfellows.

Let that rest.

On Wilde, I think you'll find that far from persecuting him, the authorities allowed him every opportunity to go abroad (as had Lord Euston during the Cleveland Street affair).

Please let us drop the attitude of damining the Victorians because they were different from us. It is anachronistic, misguided and unhistorical and does not help to say "if only they had been more like us!" Our society is not perfect and I suspect in both the US and the UK we have a mixture of laws, some of which are good and bad, some of which have been brought in as a "knee jerk" (Labouchere!); some of which are archaic and we have to live with that situation. So did our forebears. Let us evaluate the Victorians as they were, not as we wish they might have been. The alternative is distortion and misunderstanding - as with the IMHO faulty evaluation of the "gentlemen" police officers and officials on which I commented earlier.

Thanks Paul for your endorsement.

Phil

[PaulB]

We can't even say that, Paul.

He could have merely been pretending that he was persuaded by it.

Yes, he could, although we'd need evidence for that conclusion.

[Stewart P Evans]

I do not agree...

...
Well, let's not get into this again, Norma. It comes down to supporting a hypothesis and the idea that Anderson and Macnaghten felt any need to "save face" lacks support. Macnaghten wasn't even working for Scotland Yard when the murders were committed and Anderson was newly appointed and not even in the country when all but the last murder was committed, so neither man really had to concoct stories to "save face", and anyway they both enjoyed successful careers.

Paul knows that I do not agree with this argument of his, in my humble opinion, for the following reasons.

Anderson and the Whitechapel Murders -

‘After a stranger has gone over it [the Whitechapel district] he takes a much more lenient view of our failure to find Jack the Ripper, as they call him, than he did before.’ – August 1889

‘“I sometimes think myself an unfortunate man,” observes the C.I.D. chief, “for between twelve and one on the morning of the day I took up my position here the first Whitechapel murder occurred.”
The mention of this appalling sequence of still undiscovered crimes leads to the production of certain ghastly photographs.
“There,” says the Assistant Commissioner, “there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders.
It is impossible to believe they were acts of a sane man – they were those of a maniac revelling in blood.”’ – June 1892

‘Much dissatisfaction was vented upon Mr. Anderson at the utterly abortive efforts to discover the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. He has himself a perfectly plausible theory that Jack the Ripper was a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum.’ – May 1895

‘“I told Sir William Harcourt, who was then Home Secretary, that I could not accept responsibility for non-detection of the author of the Ripper crimes, for the reasons, among others, that I have given you.”’ – September 1908

‘And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that “undiscovered murders” are rare in London, and the “Jack-the-Ripper” crimes are not within that category.’ – March 1910

‘Sir Robert added that one of his objects in publishing his reminiscences was to show how scares were exaggerated about “undiscovered” crimes. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is no large city in the world where life is so safe as London. If I did not know the care and accuracy with which crimes are reported and statistics are prepared, I should not risk such a statement.”’ – March 1910

‘And many a [unsolved] case which is used to disparage our British ‘detectives’ ought rather to be hailed as a proof of the scrupulous fairness with which they discharge their duties.’ – 1912

‘What I may term a pet theory of Sir Robert’s, was the difference between moral and legal proof. He was never tired of referring to this, because he said that he felt keenly the injustice done to the police when they failed to catch and convict a criminal against whom there was a lack of legal proof. He said that the public did not understand this.’ – 1931

[Phil H]

Originally Posted by me:"...if he didn't destroy his papers - where are they? "

Tom's reply: "We call them the memoranda."

Too glib for me, and in any case, I don't think your response stands up to evaluation, Tom.

The memorandum on the file could not be destroyed. It formed part of the official record. It would not even have been in Macnagten's possession most of the time I think, but in a registry. Registry clerks (who no longer exist in my department) were ferociously protective of the material they controlled.

The Aberconway paper (which I interpret as an early draft of the file copy) and the possible "outline" last seen in India - which I interpret, if it was not the "untyped" original of Aberconway, as Macnagten's rough notes - would not constitute his "papers".

In English, "papers" would logically relate to the documentation on which the drafts and memorandum were based - thus any correspondence with the Druitt family, any medical, personal or semi-official records (copies of death certificates etc) or handwritten notes/copies of relevant papers given macnaghten by the Druitt family or others. (This is the definition of "papers" used when prime Ministerial material is lodged with a university library or in the National Archives - i.e. the Churchill papers. I think I have also seen the same useage in relation to presidential libraries in the States.)

Thus I would see Macnagten as effectively retaining a draft of what was on the official file, so he could retrace his thinking if asked later/maybe as a souvenir of an absorbing and high-profile case. But he would have destroyed anything that would allow others access to personal information and thus to impinge on the Druitt family's privacy.

I deduce the existence of such a collection becayse I recall Macnaghten as stating that some of the JtR photos resided in his safe at one time; also that he seems to have been a man who took a deep interest in the case and would not have (in my interpretation of his character) have drawn conclusions without reasonable grounds/evidence.

Others will no doubt disagree, but I strongly rebut the link between "papers" destroyed and the memoranda (in its various forms).

Phil

[PaulB]

Paul knows that I do not agree with this argument of his, in my humble opinion, for the following reasons.

Anderson and the Whitechapel Murders -

‘After a stranger has gone over it [the Whitechapel district] he takes a much more lenient view of our failure to find Jack the Ripper, as they call him, than he did before.’ – August 1889

‘“I sometimes think myself an unfortunate man,” observes the C.I.D. chief, “for between twelve and one on the morning of the day I took up my position here the first Whitechapel murder occurred.”
The mention of this appalling sequence of still undiscovered crimes leads to the production of certain ghastly photographs.
“There,” says the Assistant Commissioner, “there is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders.
It is impossible to believe they were acts of a sane man – they were those of a maniac revelling in blood.”’ – June 1892

‘Much dissatisfaction was vented upon Mr. Anderson at the utterly abortive efforts to discover the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. He has himself a perfectly plausible theory that Jack the Ripper was a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum.’ – May 1895

‘“I told Sir William Harcourt, who was then Home Secretary, that I could not accept responsibility for non-detection of the author of the Ripper crimes, for the reasons, among others, that I have given you.”’ – September 1908

‘And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that “undiscovered murders” are rare in London, and the “Jack-the-Ripper” crimes are not within that category.’ – March 1910

‘Sir Robert added that one of his objects in publishing his reminiscences was to show how scares were exaggerated about “undiscovered” crimes. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there is no large city in the world where life is so safe as London. If I did not know the care and accuracy with which crimes are reported and statistics are prepared, I should not risk such a statement.”’ – March 1910

‘And many a [unsolved] case which is used to disparage our British ‘detectives’ ought rather to be hailed as a proof of the scrupulous fairness with which they discharge their duties.’ – 1912

‘What I may term a pet theory of Sir Robert’s, was the difference between moral and legal proof. He was never tired of referring to this, because he said that he felt keenly the injustice done to the police when they failed to catch and convict a criminal against whom there was a lack of legal proof. He said that the public did not understand this.’ – 1931

Thank you, Stewart. A lot of work there. I assume the “quotes” are intended to demonstrate that Anderson had a preoccupation with the case, which can in turn suggest that he felt a need to “save face”. However, the Whitechapel murders assumed an importance which made them something about which Anderson was questioned (several of the “quotes” are responses to journalist's questions), to which, as a prolific writer, he would have alluded, and which was probably the best example to cite when Anderson wanted to illustrate that the British police often knew the identity of a perpetrator but were unable to procure evidence because of constraints not placed on foreign police, which, as the last “quote” shows, was something he felt very keenly. None of this necessarily constitutes evidence that he felt so personally responsible for the failure that he concocted a story to “save face”.