Plausibility of Kosminski

[Wickerman]

Apart from knowing nothing about his looks and condition in 1888, I mean if he was a dwarf he could hardly have been the Ripper could he?

Joking, of course, but we don't know anything about him physically, and because of this we have no way of associating him with any of the murders. The only fact we have on record even argues against him being one of the suspects, ...he was only 23 in 1888.
:-(
Regards, Jon S.

[mariab]

No worries.

Thank God, I was afraid I had pulled an almost plagiarism here!

But I'm pretty sure my evidence for Le Grand and Joseph Aarons having orchestrated the Lusk 'From hell' hoax will be one of those rare 'ah hah!' moments in Ripperology.

And who provided essential, heavy-weight evidence to this? Yours truly (albeit by engaging someone else to do the search). Without expecting any important results out of the search, just due to a long established habit of looking under every stone.

For the record, I feel there are very, very few suspects who remain viable after all the research that has been done, and certainly the Koz is one of them. Right now I'd place him at number two on a list of two. A third potential breakthrough might come from Trevor Marriot's efforts, which I find quite exciting.

I'd still keep Tumblety on the list and also Barnett (a personal favorite who's totally unresearchable in the criminal sense). Trevor Marriott's efforts might provide answers pertaining to Tumblety (via McGarth?), Kozminski, and Le Grand.

With profuse apologies for the cryptic and the highjacking. :-)

[Tom_Wescott]

And who provided essential, heavy-weight evidence to this? Yours truly (albeit by engaging someone else to do the search). Without expecting any important results out of the search, just due to a long established habit of looking under every stone.

You mean the bit about the emperor that Lynn found? I wasn't aware you 'engaged' him on my behalf for that. Much obliged.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

You mean the bit about the emperor that Lynn found? I wasn't aware you 'engaged' him on my behalf for that. Much obliged.

Well, I'm naturally lazy and Lynn is such a quick researcher, plus I was snowboarding/ice skating in Bavaria during that (Easter) week.
Maybe we shouldn't mention too many details about this find, unless you want someone to go public with it before it gets published in an article or book?
Most profound apologies for the repeated highjacking.

[Errata]

You know, the single greatest argument for keeping track of old files on murders is that at this point, given about 5 hours and a glass of single malt I could make a convincing argument that Rutherford B. Hayes was Jack the Ripper.

You think if we make a strong enough circumstantial case that Anderson and his police cronies were offing prostitutes for fun and profit they might "find" some of these missing reports?

[TomTomKent]

Lets break the issue into seperate questions:

Was Kosminski a viable suspected to the police at the time? Yes.
Was he the Ripper? Possibly, and a good suspect today.
Was he the man described in the marginalia? Possibly not.

I have a speculative course of events in my mind, which I suspect is not beyond the realms of possiblity. At the time Kosminski was a strong contender in the eyes of the Police. I believe the list of suspects we have is partial, the best examples from a longer list. However i don't think all of the suspects had names attached to them in 1888. So ifweassumethe policewere looking for the "Jewish" suspect they had to identify, they may have had a list of potential names as they tried to identify the "suspect". For a considerable time kosminski wastop of the list for "leather apron" or "the Pole" or what ever the police called their suspect. For some reason Swanson had Kosminski's name stuck in his head all those years later -a conviction of how strongly the Yard felt Kosminski was their suspect- but somewhere down the line the Jewish suspect was confirmed to be another name from the list. A name we no longer evidence for, but my guess would be Levy or Cohen. When they hear their suspect is detained Swanson (a busy man judging by an excellent bit of holiday reading i dont have to hand right now. I want to say one of mr Evans books, but I am a bear of little brains and cant be sure) orders one of his officers to make regular, subtle enquiries andtrack this dangerous man. Then one day he, or almost certainly Mac asks their man "how is leather apron?"
"Dead sir." Followed by some details. At this point Swanson is free to have his memory fail him because the weight is off his shoulders. Years later Swanson tried to remember the name of the jewish suspect, and what filters up is the name that was the best fit for the longest time.

Kosminski is a good suspect, but may not be who was being described by swanson or Mac later. I know that is all suppossition and no evidence, feelfree to rip it apart.

[Jonathan H]

To TomTomKent

That very first question you ask, was 'Kosminski' a viable suspect to the police at the time has to be qualified from the simple: yes.

It can be argued that this was true of Anderson and/or Swanson, though at what time seems very dodgy.

No other police figures of significance knew of this specific suspect;s existence, let alone that that there was positive witness identification in as bizarre a location as a police convalescent hospital. Imagine trying to keep all that a secret?

Only one other significant cop, Macnaghten, knows of this suspect's existence and he is consistent in the official version of his Report, in the unofficial version which he claimed to cronies was official and definitive, in what he added to Sims' tale in the 1900's and in his memoirs -- the Polish Jew suspect was nothing much. In the memoir literally so!

[Wickerman]

Lets break the issue into seperate questions:

Was Kosminski a viable suspected to the police at the time? Yes.

Along with how many others?

Was he the Ripper? Possibly, and a good suspect today.

What do we know about him that makes him a 'good' suspect?
-Was he seen in the vicinity of the murders?
-Did he look like any one of the suspects?
-Did he carry a knife around the streets?
-Was he known to have threatened any of the unfortunate class with a knife?

Come on, help me out here, there must be something that makes him a good suspect?

Was he the man described in the marginalia? Possibly not.

At best, being the subject of Swanson's marginalia only makes Kosminski another suspect if we don't know 'why' he was suspected in the first place.
Being considered insane by your family is not sufficient.

Kosminski is still a major 'unknown' in Ripperology.

Regards, Jon S.

[TomTomKent]

Unfortunately my logic is somewhat circular; what makes him a good suspect is that at least one officer close to the case named him, for reasons unknown. We can only assume they had good reasons to suspect him, and were not telling a deliberate lie when naming him. That is why i state he is only one possible ripper suspect, from among many, and have not disguised my theory as anything more than unsupported speculation.

In all probability the police knew some other suspect as "kosminski" because that was the name people thought "the mad jew" was called, as others thought his name was "leather apron". But even then, the name being attached and renowned enough to be remembered is a reason to investigate the suspect further. When time and money allow i hope to add the case for scotland yards suspect to my bookshelf.

[jason_c]

To TomTomKent

That very first question you ask, was 'Kosminski' a viable suspect to the police at the time has to be qualified from the simple: yes.

It can be argued that this was true of Anderson and/or Swanson, though at what time seems very dodgy.

No other police figures of significance knew of this specific suspect;s existence, let alone that that there was positive witness identification in as bizarre a location as a police convalescent hospital. Imagine trying to keep all that a secret?

Only one other significant cop, Macnaghten, knows of this suspect's existence and he is consistent in the official version of his Report, in the unofficial version which he claimed to cronies was official and definitive, in what he added to Sims' tale in the 1900's and in his memoirs -- the Polish Jew suspect was nothing much. In the memoir literally so!

We dont know this for sure. For instance Abberlines disagreement with Kosminski as JtR was based on Abberlines not believing the suspects guilt. He didnt claim he hadnt heard of the suspect's existance.

[Jonathan H]

Abberline's words of 1903 to a reporter can be interpreted both ways. That the 'drowned man' and the 'locked-up lunatic' are mostly press fantasies. He gives more credence to the former because there was a man who killed himself soon after the final murder but that there was no other evidence against him.

What Abberline could not know, and did not know, was that, in fact, these two suspects were the respective choices of a former Commissioner and the current Commissioner. This suggests that 'Kosminski' and Druitt were both known to the senior echelon but not below.

[Errata]

Abberline's words of 1903 to a reporter can be interpreted both ways. That the 'drowned man' and the 'locked-up lunatic' are mostly press fantasies. He gives more credence to the former because there was a man who killed himself soon after the final murder but that there was no other evidence against him.

What Abberline could not know, and did not know, was that, in fact, these two suspects were the respective choices of a former Commissioner and the current Commissioner. This suggests that 'Kosminski' and Druitt were both known to the senior echelon but not below.

How could the lower echelons not know? It's not as though the brass was pounding the pavement proving or disproving suspects. Do you think they engaged in as much armchair investigation as we ourselves indulge in?

[Hunter]

Abberline may not have known because he returned to the Central Office in March 1889. The investigation of possible suspects went on for months - even years - after Abberline was assigned to other duties.

If there is any veracity as to the viability of Kozminski as a suspect, it lies with Swanson, who was in actual charge of the investigation and would have been responsible for the interrogation of suspects and witnesses and any ID attempts. The patronage appointed persons above him would have relied upon a career police officer to conduct such procedures and work directly with the City Police in coordinating the effort.

[Jonathan H]

To Errata

What you ask is, in my opinion, the pivot to the entire mystery.

As you say, how could top suspects in such a sensational case be known to police administrators and yet unknown to the actual detectives who do the work upon which the same bureaucrats are dependent upon?

I have posted a line of argument to this question many times before, yet it does not get across because, I presume, it is such a rude jolt to the accepted paradigm of the past decades.

Or, it is poorly argued.

The lack of cognition by Smith, Abberline, and Reid, and so on, about Druitt and Kosminski can only be reconciled with upper echelon certainty if the intelligence about these suspects bypassed normal police channels of investigation. And that bypassing can only have happened and been maintained if both suspects were already well beyond the reach of the law by the time that they had been discovered, eg. dead and mad.

Regarding Druitt we can see now, since 2008, in the extant record how this probably happened. If he was the killer then he was never on police radar as a suspect, alive or initially dead. But his family had cause to believe that he was 'Jack' and this horrific secret leaked in Dorset in early 1891. It was picked up by their local Tory MP, Henry Farquaharson, who blabbed to so many people that it in turn leaked to a press -- very wary of the libel laws.

The smooth operator Macnaghten went to investigate, and to 'cut the knot' his own way. He and the MP were both Old Etonians, both Tories, both officers of the state, and thus had the perfect clubby connections to privately confer -- and quash the story. I believe that Macnaghten then moved on to discreetly confer with the Druitts, or a Druitt.

The details of this tale, which have not directly survived, were so devastating that it caused members of the 'better classes' to become convinced that the maniac was one of their own.

In less than a decade this story of the suicided, young barrister did resurface, via Griffiths and Sims, but its flow was controlled by their single source and puppet-master, Macnaghten, and the other version of his Report which he claimed to his cronies be a definitive document of state (there is no mention of it in his memoirs). It also had fictional details making the real Montague Druitt unrecoverable, eg. a suicided, middle-aged physician.

One of those self-serving fictoids was that Druitt was a suspect in 1888, being hunted down by the efficient police but who killed himself before he could be arrested. In his 1914 memoir Macnaghten conceded that this was not so. That revelation was ignored then and is mostly ignored now -- Paul Begg being one of the exceptions.

There is no evidence, which has survived, that Macnaghten conferred with another policeman about Druitt, not even Anderson his superior. The latter never even alludes to this suspect even to debunk him -- possibly because Druitt had become so Tumbletyesque in the rebooting of the tale that it was better left alone.

True, Mac wrote a confidential briefing report for the Home Office, but it was not sent. It lay in the Scotland Yard archive, unknown and unread.

That is why, in 1903, Abberline is quite wrong, being out of the loop, in asserting that it was only the convenient timing of the man's drowning which made him a suspect -- in fact it was the belief, rightly or wrongly, of the man's family not 'the police'. He is also quite wrong that Druitt was a medical student, and wrong that he was the subject of a Home Office Report which was sent to that dept. of state (both details true, though, of the third, missing medical student suspect of 1888).

Touchingly Abberline says he is going to inform Commissioner Macnaghten about Chapman, completely oblivious that he is himself the behind-the-scenes source for the 'Drowned Doctor' tale.

Regarding Aaron Kosminski something similar happened.

In that it was all too late and cognition of him as a potential Ripper went from the circles around the madman straight to Anderson and/or Swanson. For example, something like the Crawford Letter.

We glimpse this in Anderson's muddled version to the magazine in 1910 where the identification takes place after the suspect has been sectioned -- which he dropped for the book knowing how procedurally implausible it would have been. Nevertheless, the first version was probably accurate in the sense that Kosminski as a Ripper suspect surfaced only after he had been 'safely caged' by his own family. That would reconcile the actions of the police from 1888 to 1895.

Behind the Edwardian mythos, rejected in its own time, of the positive i.d. happening in 1888 is a scrambled egg of Pizer, Violena, Sadler, the Sailor's Home, Lawende, Grant, Kelly, Coles, et. al. and quite possibly -- behind that layer -- the real 'witness' being a Kosminski who had his member incarcerated rather than handed over to 'Gentile Justice', and that this is the authentic source for the knowledge, and the certainty, and the bitterness over the allegedly despicable ways of 'low class Jews' being un-cooperative with the police.

[Errata]

To Errata

What you ask is, in my opinion, the pivot to the entire mystery.

As you say, how could top suspects in such a sensational case be known to police administrators and yet unknown to the actual detectives who do the work upon which the same bureaucrats are dependent upon?

I have posted a line of argument to this question many times before, yet it does not get across because, I presume, it is such a rude jolt to the accepted paradigm of the past decades.

Or, it is poorly argued.

I don't consider that poorly argued, nor do I find it particularly jolting. But while certainly there is an extraordinary amount of CYA going on, I find myself wondering if the upper echelons of the various authorities may have been well and truly rogered by the upper classes doing a bit of "monday morning quarterbacking". Everybody has a theory. And the rich and influential would have been no different. And much the same way that people are always eager to tell you how to handle any other aspect of your business, like how you handle your money, or your love life, or even your clothing, surely they could not have been shy about telling authorities exactly who they should be looking for and why.

And they wouldn't go to the beat cop. They would corner Anderson at a cocktail party. Who at first would be like "Oh yes very interesting" and other polite noises, at the next cocktail party when the same guy starts tearing into Anderson for "not doing his job" and putting away the poor guy who this aristocrat "knows" is the killer, then it becomes a thing. And I wonder how well they handled it. And I wonder how many Upper division types picked their killer not based on evidence, but based on who the guy was who cornered him at a cocktail party about that particular suspect.