Plausibility of Kosminski

[robhouse]

Hi Rob

What, in your view, is the most likely sequence of the following events and approx dates:

Threatens sister with knife
first admittance to the workhouse
police are first notified of AK (and by whom? family or doctors)
ID at seaside home
surveilance of AK
second stint at workhouse/asylum

Hi Abbey.

It is really impossible to answer this question, since the sequence is not known for sure. I do not like to make assumptions... such as assuming the knife incident caused the family to bring Aaron to the workhouse in july 1890. We simply do not know when this happened. That said I will give you one possible conjectural sequence for some of the incidents you listed:

first admittance to the workhouse - July 12, 1890
ID at seaside home - July 13-14 1890 (ie. Immediately following admittance at workhouse)
surveillance of AK - July 15, 1890 to some unknown date
second stint at workhouse/asylum - Feb 4, 1891 admitted CH Feb, 7 1891

This could be the wrong sequence of events of course, but this seems perhaps the most likely scenario (to me anyway).

Threatens sister with knife - this could have taken place any time really. Arguably maybe closer to Feb 1891 but who knows. Possibly just prior to July 12, 1890(??)

Police are first notified of AK (and by whom? family or doctors) - It is not known when this happened. As I argue in my book, it might have been as early as October 1888 (Batty St "lodger" incident). A more likely date may be sometime either just prior to or on July 12, 1890. Possibly it was later, like late 1890 or early 1891, but I personally believe it was July 1890 or earlier. It is also unknown how the police first learned about him. Possibly a relative (Matilda?) informed the police, or Anderson himself, about her/his suspicions. (remembering the Earl of Crawford letter for example). Perhaps the police were informed by someone at the workhouse. Perhaps the police came across Kozminski by way of some normal part of the inquiry... again maybe the Batty St lodger incident.

There are too many unknowns to assume anything unfortunately.

[harry]

As to evidence,neither Anderson nor Swanson,could be witnesses.Only the police officers attending at this(fictional?)identification could attest as to what took place.Only they could have made an arrest at that time.Give their names,or give up this silly relince on Anderson and Swanson as the tellers of truth.

[Stewart P Evans]

The Problem

Would they 'destroy it easily'?
Were I the prosecution I'd argue:
"The witness naturally was cautious, that's a reasonable standpoint for any human being. Also, at no point did he say he wouldn't recognise him again. On balance, he had doubts. Just as you or I have doubts about realising our aspirations - doesn't mean we won't get there. A sensible man has doubts; there is always room for alternative events. So, now that we've shown that we all have doubts, and sometimes they turn out to be misplaced, we can now turn to the witness sighting. The witness saw this man's height, clothes and colouring from 9/10 feet away; while photographic evidence would have proven useful it turns out that when faced with the suspect he recognised him instantly. What matters here is not the 'doubt', rather these two simple propostions from our witness: he saw a man on the night; the man he saw sits over there. The witness is adamant in this".
Now, it may not work, Stewart, but are we seriously saying that the man who gave everyone the run around, the most notorious man around, wouldn't have been placed in a court of law (with a witness sighting and no alibi for each of the nights, plus a few other bits and pieces such as the man's character)?
On the insanity issue: there is ample evidence of people being taken into asylums and released, say 6/8 weeks later. Clearly, these people weren't that 'mad'. Perhaps this man was detained because the police fancied him for it, and they had something that led to detention without him being evidently a lunatic.
And, were it so unbelievable that this man could have been placed in front of a court of law during Victorian times, then why did Anderson risk his reputation with his statement and why is there no contemporary record of anyone laughing Anderson out of court (or is there)? Imagine a high ranking police officer today saying something that was clearly ridiculous - the press would have had a field day - prior to his resignation.

The problem is, as you surely realise, we are all speculating from limited and very contradictory source material. Yes, witness identification as described would soon be disposed of as little value and certainly no conviction would have been obtained on that alone. For goodness sake, the witness didn't even see a murder taking place.

Anderson (and Swanson), however, are seriously saying that the witness 'instantly' identified the murderer but that the witness simply refused to make a sworn statement to that effect so the police simply let the identified murderer be returned to his family and freedom. A better question would be why is there no contemporary record, in any shape or form, official or otherwise, of any such identification ever taking place?

It was not until 1910 that Anderson revealed the incredible fact that the police had identified Jack the Ripper and knew who he was but that their witness simply refused to give evidence and was 'caged in an asylum'. At that time his claims (inter alia) did meet with derision and accusations of boasting and telling tall stories.

None of it makes sense - unless, of course, Anderson was inventing the identification story to support his belief as to the identity of the murderer. But, then, he wouldn't lie - would he?

[Stewart P Evans]

Already stated

But Stewart, this is not a situation where layperson's are suggest there should have been an ID. This is two Police official's who suggested there was such an ID.
Telling us that the ID would have no legal standing doesn't answer the question as to why two police officials, who presumably were well aware of the legal situation, both claimed the suspect was subject to an ID.
We can resort to claiming both Swanson & Anderson were both lying, or were both mistaken. Or, that they had no intention of charging the suspect (given his condition), but required to know if this was the man everybody had been looking for, and should that be confirmed they had every intention of locking him up for good as "insane".
As I've said before, memoirs have a curiosity value and, in my opinion, cannot be relied upon for accuracy. That said, I wouldn't expect the ID to have been purely invented given that Swanson confirmed it privately. And I find it hard to believe it was a "mistake of recollection", for the same reason.
Regards, Jon S.

I have already stated what I think about all this and it's unnecessary to go over it again. Even the question of Swanson's 'private confirmation' has been addressed. Swanson would know that his family would, at some stage, have read his annotations, and may have already done so (before he died).

When I met Jim Swanson it was his proud boast that his grandfather had 'solved the case' and that he wanted to put an end to all the silly speculation which is the reason he went public with the 'marginalia'. Is it too much to suggest that the identification story, in the copy of Anderson's book, was an embellishment to confirm, at least to his family, that he (and his beloved boss Anderson) had actually solved this case (and, therefore, the attendant unsolved murders)?

For goodness sake, these men were human and subject to all the faults and failings that any of us are as human beings. They were not saints, nor were they supermen.

[Stewart P Evans]

Not clear

Even today identification on its own would not be enough to charge someone let alone convict them unless of course corroborated.
Direct confornations in this day and age are virtually a thing of the past. and were only used in the past when a suspect would not agree to take part in a parade.
What bugs me about this Kosminski ID is what power did they have to take him. They surely must have told both him and his family the reasons why they wanted him to accompany them. If that be the case why didnt they just arrest him on suspicion of murder. They obvioulsly didnt do that. But even if he agreed to accompany them and the Id was made why didnt they arrest him then. He wasnt insanse then because they took him back to a relatives home.
Someone mentioned Anderson getting confused with the Sadler ID Was sadler ever known to stay in a seamans home or mission if the answser to that is yes then there is the missing piece of the puzzle. Anderson got his knickers in a twist

It's not clear that the suspect was in police custody, it is more likely that he was in workouse staff/asylum custody which makes it even stranger that the story wasn't leaked or repeated.

The Anderson 'confusion' idea was a hypothetical scenario, in answer to the problem, that I floated in our Scotland Yard Investigates book. Much to the dismay of some of the Anderson supporters, one of the main objections being that Sadler wasn't known to be Jewish. However, I'm not so sure that 'confusion' is the right word as I feel it may have provided the ingredients for Anderson's identification story. That is that just after Kosminski was locked up there was a failed identification of a Ripper suspect (Sadler) by a Jewish witness (Lawende)

The 'seamen's home or mission' ingredient came in where two of the witnesses for a Sadler identification parade came from the sailor's home (or seaman's home) as Sadler, in his wanderings, had gravitated to the Sailor's Home in Wells Street seeking shelter on the morning of the Coles murder. My suggestion was that Sailor's Home/Seaman's Home could easily translate to 'Seaside Home' in a confused or deliberately invented identification story.

Some have called my hypothesis 'brilliant' whilst others have dismissed it out of hand as baseless speculation. I'd like to think that it has some merit. But then I crossed the line by suggesting the possibility that Anderson/Swanson might have told 'porkies'.

[Stewart P Evans]

Who are...

Who are the only two men to have ever claimed that the case was solved and the identity of the murderer actually known to the police?

Answer; Anderson, the head of the CID, the man in ultimate charge of the case and Swanson (by implication) the man in ultimate charge of the actual investigation and feeding all the information upwards to Anderson.

[mariab]

Most obviously I agree with everything Hunter points to in his long post #733. Plus I fully agree with several posters that the way Anderson describes the identification in question, it was most plausibly conducted not as a formal ID parade, but as a direct confrontation, which would carry much less legal weight, especially since it appears that there was some kind of conflict with the Jewish witness.
I starkly disagree with Rob House that the fact of agreeing with previous posters on specific details should be considered as these details “being repeated like the gospel word by various people“.

Most Ripper students of my acquaintance {...} soon tell me if they don't agree with what I say.

Damn straight.

Due to a tight schedule this summer and to having taken the last few weeks off I haven't yet been able to read Rob House's book, which I most certainly plan reading in the next couple months and I'm very much looking forward to this, but I have to confess 2 major reservations:
- I very much doubt that the alleged “Batty Street Lodger“ saga can be attached to the Kozminski case at all, since the fictitious story of the blooded shirt at Ms. Kür has already been identified as a planted story in the Northern Eastern Gazette pertaining to another suspect last spring (through a find by Debra Arif).
- I assume that no direct evidence has been found lately about surveillance of a Kozminsky by the police, and that the date of July 15, 1890, as proposed by Mr. House, is calculated based on the date of admittance to the workhouse (July 12, 1890) and a subsequent ID.

[Trevor Marriott]

It's not clear that the suspect was in police custody, it is more likely that he was in workouse staff/asylum custody which makes it even stranger that the story wasn't leaked or repeated.

The Anderson 'confusion' idea was a hypothetical scenario, in answer to the problem, that I floated in our Scotland Yard Investigates book. Much to the dismay of some of the Anderson supporters, one of the main objections being that Sadler wasn't known to be Jewish. However, I'm not so sure that 'confusion' is the right word as I feel it may have provided the ingredients for Anderson's identification story. That is that just after Kosminski was locked up there was a failed identification of a Ripper suspect (Sadler) by a Jewish witness (Lawende)

The 'seamen's home or mission' ingredient came in where two of the witnesses for a Sadler identification parade came from the sailor's home (or seaman's home) as Sadler, in his wanderings, had gravitated to the Sailor's Home in Wells Street seeking shelter on the morning of the Coles murder. My suggestion was that Sailor's Home/Seaman's Home could easily translate to 'Seaside Home' in a confused or deliberately invented identification story.

Some have called my hypothesis 'brilliant' whilst others have dismissed it out of hand as baseless speculation. I'd like to think that it has some merit. But then I crossed the line by suggesting the possibility that Anderson/Swanson might have told 'porkies'.

Stewart
I think the hypothesis is brilliant great minds think alike

First we had Barlow and Watts then Starsky and Hutch then Bodie and Doyle now Evans and Marriott can you feel the fear eminating for all those criminal who have evaded prosecution all these years

[Stewart P Evans]

Had...

...
- I assume that no direct evidence has been found lately about surveillance of a Kozminsky by the police, and that the date of July 15, 1890, as proposed by Mr. House, is calculated based on the date of admittance to the workhouse (July 12, 1890) and a subsequent ID.

Had any such evidence been found it would have been regarded as a major find in Ripper circles and would be mentioned all over the boards, and certainly here.

[Stewart P Evans]

Ex-Police Officers

Stewart
I think the hypothesis is brilliant great minds think alike
First we had Barlow and Watts then Starsky and Hutch then Bodie and Doyle now Evans and Marriott can you feel the fear eminating for all those criminal who have evaded prosecution all these years

Then we are both ex-police officers and some might suggest that we are a tad too cynical. I like to think that I am realistic and that I have great experience of all sorts of human beings and how they act - including senior police officers.

[mariab]

Had any such evidence been found it would have been regarded as a major find in Ripper circles and would be mentioned all over the boards, and certainly here.

That's why I assumed that no such evidence was found.
As a by the by remark, I find it hilarious how the “Batty Street Lodger“ saga is being appropriated left and right as an argument for different suspects – for 3 so far. But this is the nature of research, when new evidence forces us to change our interpretation.

[Stewart P Evans]

TV Series

...
First we had Barlow and Watts then Starsky and Hutch then Bodie and Doyle now Evans and Marriott can you feel the fear eminating for all those criminal who have evaded prosecution all these years

Do you think that there's a TV series in it for us?

[Jonathan H]

To Stewart

In my opinion yours and Don Rumbelow's 'Sailor's Home' theory (my nickname) is absolutely brilliant, and beautifully symmetrical from any angle.

Without introducing new sources, the theory connected the dots with already existing, yet perplexing, maddening sources, in a fresh, clear and compelling way, and left no loose ends -- for me anyhow.

Here we were all trying and straining to peer around the Lawende-Sadler 'confrontation' to try and see Lawende (or at least a Jewish witness) 'confront' a Polish/Jewish suspect (presumably Aaron Kosminski), whilst wondering why nobody else knew about it -- and how it could never have leaked?

Thus the theory is sublime because we can all stop straining; it is the very same 'confrontation' right in front of us all the time, but mis-remembered by Anderson in 1910 (I think it more likely that the story is Anderson's alone, and that Swanson is simply recording it, not necessarily agreeing with it).

Where I have a fundamentally different interpretation with you is regrading your last post about Anderson, and presumably Swanson, being the only two police officers who asserted that the fiend was identified.

To me Macnaghten says essentially the same thing in his draft, or backdated rewrite of his 'Report', in his briefings to Griffiths and especially Sims through the Edwardian Era, in his 1913 comments upon retirement, and in his 1914 memoirs; when 'certain facts' led to a 'conclusion' -- matching the 'doctrine' of the Tory MP in the 1891 titbit.

The difference with Anderson is only, in my opinion, one of semantics. As in, Druitt could never be tried for his crimes, and never defend himself, and so he had to pull back a touch -- or look like a cad against a fellow gentleman.

Consider these more candid comments Macnaghten allegedly made to an American newspaper upon his retirement:

Pittsburgh Press
6 July 1913

Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.
"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regret of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."

Of course Macnaghten may have been completely mistaken about Druitt, but the weight of the sources, by him plus the ones that are his by proxy -- minus the official version of his 'Report' in which he and the family swap places from 'Aberconway' over who was certain about what -- arguably show that at least Mac was just as certain as Anderson, and perhaps just as off-track?

[Stewart P Evans]

Yes...

That's why I assumed that no such evidence was found.
As a by the by remark, I find it hilarious how the “Batty Street Lodger“ saga is being appropriated left and right as an argument for different suspects – for 3 so far. But this is the nature of research, when new evidence forces us to change our interpretation.

Yes, that's right. Interestingly the 'Batty Street lodger' story had never been published in a Ripper book until the publication of The Lodger in 1995. Now, it seems, they can't leave it alone.

[Stewart P Evans]

Thank you...

To Stewart
In my opinion yours and Don Rumbelow's 'Sailor's Home' theory (my nickname) is absolutely brilliant, and beautifully symmetrical from any angle.
Without introducing new sources, the theory connected the dots with already existing, yet perplexing, maddening sources, in a fresh, clear and compelling way, and left no loose ends -- for me anyhow.
Here we were all trying and straining to peer around the Lawende-Sadler 'confrontation' to try and see Lawende (or at least a Jewish witness) 'confront' a Polish/Jewish suspect (presumably Aaron Kosminski), whilst wondering why nobody else knew about it -- and how it could never have leaked?
Thus the theory is sublime because we can all stop straining; it is the very same 'confrontation' right in front of us all the time, but mis-remembered by Anderson in 1910 (I think it more likely that the story is Anderson's alone, and that Swanson is simply recording it, not necessarily agreeing with it).
Where I have a fundamentally different interpretation with you is regrading your last post about Anderson, and presumably Swanson, being the only two police officers who asserted that the fiend was identified.
To me Macnaghten says essentially the same thing in his draft, or backdated rewrite of his 'Report', in his briefings to Griffiths and especially Sims through the Edwardian Era, in his 1913 comments upon retirement, and in his 1914 memoirs; when 'certain facts' led to a 'conclusion' -- matching the 'doctrine' of the Tory MP in the 1891 titbit.
The difference with Anderson is only, in my opinion, one of semantics. As in, Druitt could never be tried for his crimes, and never defend himself, and so he had to pull back a touch -- or look like a cad against a fellow gentleman.
Consider these more candid comments Macnaghten allegedly made to an American newspaper upon his retirement:
Pittsburgh Press
6 July 1913
Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.
"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regret of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."
Of course Macnaghten may have been completely mistaken about Druitt, but the weight of the sources, by him plus the ones that are his by proxy -- minus the official version of his 'Report' in which he and the family swap places from 'Aberconway' over who was certain about what -- arguably show that at least Mac was just as certain as Anderson, and perhaps just as off-track?

Thank you for that Jonathan, most kind.

I appreciate that we don't agree fully on your Macnaghten propositions, but I think that you have come up with some very good ideas and very interesting suggestions. I have stated this before so it's not mere flattery inspired by your above post.