Plausibility of Kosminski

[Stewart P Evans]

Worth reminding

It is perhaps worth reminding everyone that the entire story of the alleged identification (around two years after the sighting) of a Polish Jew suspect by a Jewish witness (who had had a good view of the murderer) is based solely on the words of Anderson in his 1910 reminiscences, twenty years after the event, and Swanson's annotations (of indeterminate date) in a copy of Anderson's book.

Much as it appears to annoy some people when I quote Phil Sugden I shall do so again. For he made the following relevant observation, 'Over time our memories deteriorate more profoundly than many people inexperienced in the use of historical evidence realize, and reminiscences recorded long after the event are characteristically confused on chronology and detail. There is a very human tendency, too, for us to 'improve' upon our memories, to make a better story, to explain away past mistakes, or simply to claim for ourselves a more impressive role in past dramas than we have acted in life.' This, of course, highlights the greater value of contemporary records as opposed to reminiscences of a much later date.

This does not suggest that anyone was geriatric to the degree of being ga-ga, but it highlights common human failings. And it is this, as much as anything, that weakens any faith put into the words of Anderson and Swanson. Some even cling to the idea that 'he said it so it must be true' with regard to all they say. In his chapter 'Caged in an Asylum: Aaron Kosminski', Sugden ably argues the case for not putting too much faith in the words of these men. It is why Sugden has become the bete noir for some other writers and theorists, who will do their best to denigrate him and, thus, weaken the case he makes.

I greatly respect Phil Sugden and can only wonder at the mastery he achieved over his subject in a remarkably short space of time. No, I don't agree with all his opinions but he is a voice to be heeded. There is no doubt about that.

[TomTomKent]

The issue then becomes one of how much has been embelished or misremembered. It isunusual, even for the most doddery of us, to completely fabricate events when we remember them. I agree the memory plays tricks, but there are limitations. And if Anderson was wrong, would Swanson have embilished it further?

In my (limited) experience, facts can be confused, the Archers can be mistaken for a real conversation, or two memories entwined. But there remains a root cause.

[Trevor Marriott]

It is perhaps worth reminding everyone that the entire story of the alleged identification (around two years after the sighting) of a Polish Jew suspect by a Jewish witness (who had had a good view of the murderer) is based solely on the words of Anderson in his 1910 reminiscences, twenty years after the event, and Swanson's annotations (of indeterminate date) in a copy of Anderson's book.

Much as it appears to annoy some people when I quote Phil Sugden I shall do so again. For he made the following relevant observation, 'Over time our memories deteriorate more profoundly than many people inexperienced in the use of historical evidence realize, and reminiscences recorded long after the event are characteristically confused on chronology and detail. There is a very human tendency, too, for us to 'improve' upon our memories, to make a better story, to explain away past mistakes, or simply to claim for ourselves a more impressive role in past dramas than we have acted in life.' This, of course, highlights the greater value of contemporary records as opposed to reminiscences of a much later date.

This does not suggest that anyone was geriatric to the degree of being ga-ga, but it highlights common human failings. And it is this, as much as anything, that weakens any faith put into the words of Anderson and Swanson. Some even cling to the idea that 'he said it so it must be true' with regard to all they say. In his chapter 'Caged in an Asylum: Aaron Kosminski', Sugden ably argues the case for not putting too much faith in the words of these men. It is why Sugden has become the bete noir for some other writers and theorists, who will do their best to denigrate him and, thus, weaken the case he makes.

I greatly respect Phil Sugden and can only wonder at the mastery he achieved over his subject in a remarkably short space of time. No, I don't agree with all his opinions but he is a voice to be heeded. There is no doubt about that.

But of course we have no real idea exactly when this questionabe ID proceedure actually took place it coud have been anytime between 1888-1891.

[Fleetwood Mac]

The issue then becomes one of how much has been embelished or misremembered. It isunusual, even for the most doddery of us, to completely fabricate events when we remember them. I agree the memory plays tricks, but there are limitations. And if Anderson was wrong, would Swanson have embilished it further?

In my (limited) experience, facts can be confused, the Archers can be mistaken for a real conversation, or two memories entwined. But there remains a root cause.

I would agree with you, Tom.

Some events are embellished after the event: we all have parents who swear blind that summers used to be an extended period of sunshine, when, in fact, weather records suggest otherwise.

But, we can't apply a blanket 'events are embellished' to every single event. Each case to be taken on its merits, and I suppose the breadth of the details involved influences the probability of embellishment.

And, as suggested earlier, common sense should apply.

Anderson is not recalling a particularly detailed event. There are only a few variables as follows:

1) There was an ID.
2) The witness was Jewish.
3) The suspect was Jewish.
4) The identification was positive.

In my view, a man involved in a case of personal and national significance would be unlikely to innaccurately recall 4 simple variables.

[TomTomKent]

Of course, that is entirely true. The events may well have been embelished, or misremembered, or recorded accurately. Stating one or more point MAY not be accurate is not the same as saying any were.

Saying there is no evidence the ID took place is not producing evidence it did not or could not. There will have been a reason that Anderson believed there was an ID, and a reason Swanson thought it Kozzy. With out evidence we can not declare that we know if the ID took place, or where and how, but we can, as Mister Fido seems to have done, make reasonable deductions about a likely scenario (the majority of diescripters for the suspect Swanson callsKozminski fitting Cohen, but wisely avoiding speculation on the ID itself) or simply refuse to dismiss it out of hand (as appears to be Mr Beggs stance) stating only a hope future research sheds more light.

[Trevor Marriott]

Of course, that is entirely true. The events may well have been embelished, or misremembered, or recorded accurately. Stating one or more point MAY not be accurate is not the same as saying any were.

Saying there is no evidence the ID took place is not producing evidence it did not or could not. There will have been a reason that Anderson believed there was an ID, and a reason Swanson thought it Kozzy. With out evidence we can not declare that we know if the ID took place, or where and how, but we can, as Mister Fido seems to have done, make reasonable deductions about a likely scenario (the majority of diescripters for the suspect Swanson callsKozminski fitting Cohen, but wisely avoiding speculation on the ID itself) or simply refuse to dismiss it out of hand (as appears to be Mr Beggs stance) stating only a hope future research sheds more light.

Has it not occurred that Swanson was only confirming what MM had written in his memo after all as I said before MM only had the surname as well.

[TomTomKent]

Has it not occurred that Swanson was only confirming what MM had written in his memo after all as I said before MM only had the surname as well.

Or he may not have been. That is a suppossition only as reasonable as any other. If wecould prove that beyond any doubt it would leave the question why Mac put so much weight on the name.

It would also neatly cut through the knotted strings between Kozminski, Kaminski and Cohen;Swanson had reasonably assumed Anderson and Mac were describing the same suspect, so described Cohen while naming Kozzy.

[fido]

The point that memory deceives is well taken. We have excellent evidence of the shakiness of Anderson's memory in old age: his mixing up the Penge murder by neglect with another case, and his misremembering Sir William Harcourt as Home Secretary at the time of the Ripper murders. If Phil Sugden had rested his case there for treating Anderson's and Swanson's statements with grave caution, he would be universally respected. But it is a sad blemish on his work that he wrote,
"[Sir Robert] must sometimes have reflected upon those hectic days at the yard. And when he did it would doubtless have given him comfort to think, that whatever the world might say, he had laid the Ripper by the heels. Over the years, with the selective and faulty memory characteristic of advancing age, he came to believe it.
In supporting him, Swanson exhibited that same capacity for self-delusion."

Now any historian knows that when you say someone "must have" done something, it means you don't know for certain that he did - and when it comes to specifying somebody's unrecorded thoughts, the claim is very tenuous. To build on that "and when he did, it would doubtless have..." is to build a second uncertainty upon the first. This is building a house of cards on which no historian should rest anything but the most cautiously tentative of conclusions. But, using the agreed faulty and probably selective memory as a crutch, Phil goes on to the confident assertion "he came to believe it." Quod NON erat demonstrandum!
Worse still Swanson is casually hooked on to the same very shaky train of thought - so we now have two geriatrics sharing a happy delusion almost as gross as that of George IV when he came to think he had been present at Waterloo. It really won't do. It is one of a couple of moments in the book unworthy of Phil's magisterial coverage of the case.
Of course Anderson, Swanson and Macnaghten give us problems, and of course there can be no doubt that at least two, quite possibly three of them got some thing or things wrong. But except for dreams misremembered as reality - (something which has happened to me a couple of times) - demonstrably false memories always rest on something real. Of my own lapses: there really was a Worcester Pearmaine among then apple trees in the garden of my boyhood, only it wasn't the one I remembered in adult life. The Falstaff Inn really does stand outside the Westgate in Canterbury, but for 20 years I managed to remember it on the wrong side of the road.
So there really was a suspect called Kosminski, and the only Kosminski to go into a London asylum was Aaron, which makes it pointless to imagine another inmate really called Kosminski, but being registered under a different name in the asylum and death records. It's POSSIBLE, of course, but so improbable that no serious historian should spend time on it. Think of applying the same set of possibilities, as Paul Feldman once did, to the notion that there was another REAL Mike Barrett with whom the supposed owner of the Maybrick Diary had been deliberately confused!
On the other hand, confusion really does seem a possibility in the Kosminskicase, especially when one looks at the Swanson marginalia. The hypothetical explanation of the mysterious reference to the Seaside Home published by Stewart Evans and Don Rumbelow is that a confrontation of Sadler at a Seaman's Home was confused with whatever had happened with respect to the suspect known to Swanson as Kosminsky. So forms of confusion theory are far from being the irresponsible monopoly of one or the other kind of Kosminski-ite (to get back to this thread's supposed topic).
I'm impressed by Wickerman's thinking over all, and think well of his suggestion that two IDs may have been confused (tough this is an addition to the initial confusion I have always postulated of Kosminski's name with Cohen the suspect, and one cannot like such repoetition of speculations). I took in as an excellent observation the comment made by someone that taking the suspect to the witness at the Seaside Home0 would be quite extraordinary - which prompted my outre suggestion that that ID might have been made by a policeman, though he wouldn't be Jewish and he would be unlikely to withhold confirmation that his superiors wanted. Hence Swanson might have misremembered an ID at the Seaside Home which was inconclusive as being the one which Anderson took to be conclusive, and which probably took place in the asylum. It certainly looks prima facie as though Swanson is describing an extraordinary suspect- to-witness ID, whereas Anderson is describing a normal witness-to-suspect ID.
I need hardly say that all this is extremely tentative speculation trying to explain the conflicting testimony without making the casual assumption that geriatric memory on the part of two men who, by their descendants' accounts kept all their marbles despite forgetting some details, are all that is needed to explain them. To Mr Marriott who wanted to know why these IDs weren't recorded, I would ask what records outside the newspapers tell us of the Violenia and Mrs Fiddymont IDs? Local station records that might have held records have long disappeared. And to the correspondent who asked what other asylum visitors books I'd seen, the answer is Colney Hatch Female Side.
Martin Fido

[Trevor Marriott]

The point that memory deceives is well taken. We have excellent evidence of the shakiness of Anderson's memory in old age: his mixing up the Penge murder by neglect with another case, and his misremembering Sir William Harcourt as Home Secretary at the time of the Ripper murders. If Phil Sugden had rested his case there for treating Anderson's and Swanson's statements with grave caution, he would be universally respected. But it is a sad blemish on his work that he wrote,
"[Sir Robert] must sometimes have reflected upon those hectic days at the yard. And when he did it would doubtless have given him comfort to think, that whatever the world might say, he had laid the Ripper by the heels. Over the years, with the selective and faulty memory characteristic of advancing age, he came to believe it.
In supporting him, Swanson exhibited that same capacity for self-delusion."

Now any historian knows that when you say someone "must have" done something, it means you don't know for certain that he did - and when it comes to specifying somebody's unrecorded thoughts, the claim is very tenuous. To build on that "and when he did, it would doubtless have..." is to build a second uncertainty upon the first. This is building a house of cards on which no historian should rest anything but the most cautiously tentative of conclusions. But, using the agreed faulty and probably selective memory as a crutch, Phil goes on to the confident assertion "he came to believe it." Quod NON erat demonstrandum!
Worse still Swanson is casually hooked on to the same very shaky train of thought - so we now have two geriatrics sharing a happy delusion almost as gross as that of George IV when he came to think he had been present at Waterloo. It really won't do. It is one of a couple of moments in the book unworthy of Phil's magisterial coverage of the case.
Of course Anderson, Swanson and Macnaghten give us problems, and of course there can be no doubt that at least two, quite possibly three of them got some thing or things wrong. But except for dreams misremembered as reality - (something which has happened to me a couple of times) - demonstrably false memories always rest on something real. Of my own lapses: there really was a Worcester Pearmaine among then apple trees in the garden of my boyhood, only it wasn't the one I remembered in adult life. The Falstaff Inn really does stand outside the Westgate in Canterbury, but for 20 years I managed to remember it on the wrong side of the road.
So there really was a suspect called Kosminski, and the only Kosminski to go into a London asylum was Aaron, which makes it pointless to imagine another inmate really called Kosminski, but being registered under a different name in the asylum and death records. It's POSSIBLE, of course, but so improbable that no serious historian should spend time on it. Think of applying the same set of possibilities, as Paul Feldman once did, to the notion that there was another REAL Mike Barrett with whom the supposed owner of the Maybrick Diary had been deliberately confused!
On the other hand, confusion really does seem a possibility in the Kosminskicase, especially when one looks at the Swanson marginalia. The hypothetical explanation of the mysterious reference to the Seaside Home published by Stewart Evans and Don Rumbelow is that a confrontation of Sadler at a Seaman's Home was confused with whatever had happened with respect to the suspect known to Swanson as Kosminsky. So forms of confusion theory are far from being the irresponsible monopoly of one or the other kind of Kosminski-ite (to get back to this thread's supposed topic).
I'm impressed by Wickerman's thinking over all, and think well of his suggestion that two IDs may have been confused (tough this is an addition to the initial confusion I have always postulated of Kosminski's name with Cohen the suspect, and one cannot like such repoetition of speculations). I took in as an excellent observation the comment made by someone that taking the suspect to the witness at the Seaside Home0 would be quite extraordinary - which prompted my outre suggestion that that ID might have been made by a policeman, though he wouldn't be Jewish and he would be unlikely to withhold confirmation that his superiors wanted. Hence Swanson might have misremembered an ID at the Seaside Home which was inconclusive as being the one which Anderson took to be conclusive, and which probably took place in the asylum. It certainly looks prima facie as though Swanson is describing an extraordinary suspect- to-witness ID, whereas Anderson is describing a normal witness-to-suspect ID.
I need hardly say that all this is extremely tentative speculation trying to explain the conflicting testimony without making the casual assumption that geriatric memory on the part of two men who, by their descendants' accounts kept all their marbles despite forgetting some details, are all that is needed to explain them. To Mr Marriott who wanted to know why these IDs weren't recorded, I would ask what records outside the newspapers tell us of the Violenia and Mrs Fiddymont IDs? Local station records that might have held records have long disappeared. And to the correspondent who asked what other asylum visitors books I'd seen, the answer is Colney Hatch Female Side.
Martin Fido

But such an important Identification in such a high profile case such as this would have been recorded somewhere. Other people would have been involved in the process from the seaside home and many police officers would have been involved in taking him down to Brighton.

Others would have been aware of the outcome and as I have previously stated no one has talked or written anything other than Anderson and Swanson neither of which it would seem were directy involved in the actual ID process.

Could it not be the case that because the the police were looked on an incompetent by the public in not catching this killer, and because at the time Anderson was in the driving seat and therfore he took it as a personal kick in the teeth decided in later years to come up with this story and use the name Kosminki as the patsy.Simply because MM had used it in his memo trying to gain back some credibilty.

To that end this is another good reason why all the other senior officers chose to mention in their memoirs and press interviews that the Ripper was known to them

[TomTomKent]

Mr Fido, I think you can be forgiven one er of the mind. There are pubs either side of the road, (and the Falstaff now the restraunt of the hotel). Of course putting the wrong name to a number of simaler pubs (there is another a few doors down from the Falstaff, etc) mightbe comparable to remembering the names of two Jewish suspects who were investigated as ripper suspects.

[TomTomKent]

But such an important Identification in such a high profile case such as this would have been recorded somewhere. Other people would have been involved in the process from the seaside home and many police officers would have been involved in taking him down to Brighton.

Others would have been aware of the outcome and as I have previously stated no one has talked or written anything other than Anderson and Swanson neither of which it would seem were directy involved in the actual ID process.

Could it not be the case that because the the police were looked on an incompetent by the public in not catching this killer, and because at the time Anderson was in the driving seat and therfore he took it as a personal kick in the teeth decided in later years to come up with this story and use the name Kosminki as the patsy.Simply because MM had used it in his memo trying to gain back some credibilty.

To that end this is another good reason why all the other senior officers chose to mention in their memoirs and press interviews that the Ripper was known to them

Would that not require the seeding of information in the Memorandum and personal notes,kept private for many years? Notes not intended to be read by the. Public?

[Stewart P Evans]

Great...

Great to see Martin taking part in the debate. The reason that I used the Sugden quote, that I did, is that it sums up, I feel, pretty well the problems with memory and writing reminiscences many years after the events. I do not totally agree with what Sugden extrapolated from that premise.

What has always struck me as an incredible coincidence is the fact that over a year after any Ripper type scare we have the detention of Kosminski on 4 February 1891, and his discharge to Colney Hatch on 7 February 1891. Then, within a week, we have the Ripper type murder of Frances Coles (which was initially thought by the police to possibly be another Ripper murder, and quoted by the press as such). On or around 17 February, just ten days after Kosminski's admission into Colney Hatch, we have an attempted identification of a suspect, Sadler, as the Ripper by a Jewish witness. It all happened within a couple of weeks in February 1891.

That is truly very coincidental, especially as Anderson's unidentified claimed identification of his suspect (almost certainly Aaron Kosminski if Swanson is correct) by a Jewish witness failed as the witness 'refused to swear' to it. So Kosminski is detained, never to be released, on the 4th and within a couple of weeks a Jewish witness attempts to identify a suspect as Jack the Ripper.

This, of course, does not mean (or prove) that there was not a second identification of a suspect (Kosminski) by a Jewish witness but that does not alter the fact of the incredible coincidence. Nor does it alter the fact that if the identification claimed by Anderson took place, as described, there has never been any independent confirmation of that identification, official or otherwise, beyond the 1910 Anderson book, owned by Swanson, with its annotations.

[Phil Carter]

Goodness! And wasn't I born a few years before you?

By the way, didn't Diemschitz approach Dutfield's Yard in a cartel?

Hello Stewart,

Don't know about that as he wasn't part of a group of horse walking wagon off-loaders..., but by definition he may have been called a Carter by trade..


kindly

Phil

[PaulB]

It is perhaps worth reminding everyone that the entire story of the alleged identification (around two years after the sighting) of a Polish Jew suspect by a Jewish witness (who had had a good view of the murderer) is based solely on the words of Anderson in his 1910 reminiscences, twenty years after the event, and Swanson's annotations (of indeterminate date) in a copy of Anderson's book.

Much as it appears to annoy some people when I quote Phil Sugden I shall do so again. For he made the following relevant observation, 'Over time our memories deteriorate more profoundly than many people inexperienced in the use of historical evidence realize, and reminiscences recorded long after the event are characteristically confused on chronology and detail. There is a very human tendency, too, for us to 'improve' upon our memories, to make a better story, to explain away past mistakes, or simply to claim for ourselves a more impressive role in past dramas than we have acted in life.' This, of course, highlights the greater value of contemporary records as opposed to reminiscences of a much later date.

This does not suggest that anyone was geriatric to the degree of being ga-ga, but it highlights common human failings. And it is this, as much as anything, that weakens any faith put into the words of Anderson and Swanson. Some even cling to the idea that 'he said it so it must be true' with regard to all they say. In his chapter 'Caged in an Asylum: Aaron Kosminski', Sugden ably argues the case for not putting too much faith in the words of these men. It is why Sugden has become the bete noir for some other writers and theorists, who will do their best to denigrate him and, thus, weaken the case he makes.

I greatly respect Phil Sugden and can only wonder at the mastery he achieved over his subject in a remarkably short space of time. No, I don't agree with all his opinions but he is a voice to be heeded. There is no doubt about that.

Hi Stewart,
I would just like to add to what Martin has said that whilst the quoted extract from Phil is clearly true, it is also widely accepted that the core of a story, it's raison detre if you like, doesn't generally change. In other words, whilst memory can be bad about chronology and details of what a person saw and heard in Dallas at 12:30pm on 22 November 1963 as President Kennedy's car rolled through the street, President Kennedy's car did roll through the Dallas streets and he was assassinated. The same applies to Anderson: the identification of the Polish Jew may not have been positive as Anderson remembered, the Polish Jew's guilt by no means as certain as he says, the probability is that there was a Polish Jew and he was identified. I think Phil's brother's second volume on Nelson is out this month from Michael Joseph. Another book for the already groaning shelf. And I must drop Don an email to let him know.

[Garry Wroe]

From Commercial Road to Dutfield's Yard he [Schwartz] would have only a back view.

A rear view, Stewart, that would have allowed Schwartz to better judge crucial investigative factors such as Broad Shoulders’ height, physique, gait and degree of sobriety.

You do not know how close he was when the assault took place and the attacker called out to him across the road.

And neither do you. But since Schwartz crossed the road to avoid Stride and her attacker, he was likely less than the width of the street away. He was certainly close enough to note Broad Shoulders’ full face and dark moustache. Close enough, too, for Broad Shoulders to recognize him as a Jew, hence the cry of ‘Lipski!’

I do not presume that you have an 'inability to systematically analyse and process information', but I do disagree with you on the current point in question …

I have no problem whatsoever with you disagreeing with me. But the argument that I must be wrong purely because I fail to concur with Mr Sugden’s conclusions is wholly lacking in intellectual legitimacy. To my mind, it is the stuff of the kindergarten.

… By the way, does this ability to 'systematically analyse and process information' make you always right?

Like I said: the stuff of the kindergarten.

We are talking about words that Anderson used over twenty years after the event and his prose was never the best. Add to that the fact that his secular works may at times be described as 'picturesque', and you should realise what a shaky basis you are setting your argumant upon.

Oh, I see, Stewart. So we arrive at a conclusion and then reshape the evidence such that it conforms with that conclusion. This being the case, you might care to familiarize yourself with ‘confirmation bias.’

Your argument here is invalid (did you process the data correctly?). Levy stated at the inquest that the man he 'should say' was about three inches taller than the woman but he said of the couple, 'I cannot give any description of either of them.' Harris did not even appear at the inquest as a witness, having seen only the back of the man.

I fail to see the relevance of this, nor indeed how it contradicts anything I have stated.

I am sure that you, like me, have better things to do than indulge in this rather pointless exchange.

As far as I’m aware, Stewart, you entered into this debate of your own free will. If you wish to turn your back on it, that’s your choice. For my part, I do not consider a re-examination of opinions to be ‘pointless’, particularly when the evidence which underpins those opinions is far from conclusive.