Plausibility of Kosminski

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

One swallow does not a summer make, and one newspaper-owning Tory MP may not brown the bread, but when you put Maclean's story, given "on the authority of a Scotland Yard detective", together with all the other contradictory stories [there was a corker in April the same year about JtR being a Belgian] from Scotland Yard detectives, that bread most decidedly turns to toast.

I see someone's attempting to excavate Ostrog's Banstead records. Bonne chance. Personally, I'm far more interested in how Macnaghten felt in 1894 when Ostrog was released from prison and paid £10 compensation from Metropolitan Police Funds for being wrongly imprisoned for an 1889 crime committed while he was a guest of the French penal system.

Did Macnaghten blush, give an embarrassed cough and nudge his memorandum to the back of a drawer?

There is only one thing of which we can be certain. Having learned the truth about Ostrog, Macnaghten did not amend his memorandum.

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

Contradictory?

Hi Phil,

You follow me around the boards jumping at me for my Le Grand research, and I could quote where you've said he's not a legit suspect because Macnaghten doesn't mention him. But on here, you're championing a Le Grand press report and using it to dismiss Macnaghten as worthless. Your reasoning is circular and contradictory. If Le Grand is a non-starter, as you say, then any report about him only reflects the inefficiency of the investigators following him, and clearly their ignorance of other, more viable suspects, such as Mac and Anderson's. If Macnaghten was full of bull, then surely the fact that Le Grand isn't named in his report is to his favor?

It seems to me you just don't respect suspect-related research, for some odd reason. That's your prerogative, but constantly attacking researchers and investigators, living and dead, without bothering to offer up a scenario, theory, or suspect more viable than ours, is surely not productive, is it?

I'm saying let's not pretend you just don't value the MM as a source. Clearly, I'm not at all convinced by it, as I've followed another trail, but you take every opportunity to bash what little of my research you know and understand, and don't seem to even care that regardless of the suspect in question, my research has opened up avenues that weren't open before, such as the understanding as to whom this very report you and Simon are touting is in reference to.

In short, you have a problem with researchers and writers in general, with the obvious exception of Simon. And because of that, you must not be having as much fun with this hobby as the rest of us.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Hello Mr. Wood, and might I add how glad I am that you're posting again?
Thank you so very much for the Sugden hint you sent me (via Lynn Cates) about Stanislas Lublinski alias Grand Guidon, which enabled me to locate the original French convinction for Ostrog in Paris. You might be interested in perusing the original document, posted here: http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=5756

I see someone's attempting to excavate Ostrog's Banstead records. Bonne chance. Personally, I'm far more interested in how Macnaghten felt in 1894 when Ostrog was released from prison and paid £10 compensation from Metropolitan Police Funds for being wrongly imprisoned for an 1889 crime committed while he was a guest of the French penal system.

Yes, I've thought about this, and I have suspicions about Ostrog's inclusion in the MM as referring to ANOTHER suspect, but this belongs to another thread.

Mr. Wood, could you please direct me to “Maclean's story, given on the authority of a Scotland Yard detective“? Is it discussed in the present thread?

there was a corker in April the same year about JtR being a Belgian

Oh, this was most plausibly Le Grand.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Maria,

Voilà.



Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

Oh, this was most plausibly Le Grand.

Yes, it was. If Simon would keep up with my research in the journals, as I do his, it would appear he'd save a lot of time and mental energy. When you discount everybody else's research, you stand the risk of lagging behind. Given how much faith and interest Simon and Phil have in the articles about Le Grand, perhaps they'd like to start working with me and not against me?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Given how much faith and interest Simon and Phil have in the articles about Le Grand, perhaps they'd like to start working with me and not against me?

Phil Carter already has delved in some Le Grand research, recently. What Phil's apparently not conscious of at this point is that one can either teach or do, lecture or research. If we spend an equal amount of time answering his long posts with reservations on Le Grand's candidacy, there won't be much time or energy left for Le Grand research. :-) Phil, I promise that there are suspect-related hints and people are following them, plus Debs and Rob are producing about 2 new documents per week. So just be patient, by all means keep your reservations, to which you're entitled to, but prepared to be surprised in the not too distant future.
I promise this was the last highjacking into Le Grand talk on my side.

[Tom_Wescott]

I've done my best in avoiding Le Grand talk whenever possible, but when Simon and Phil keep posting Le Grand articles, that makes it rather impossible. Believe me, I wish it were as simple as to say that these articles singlehandedly turn the arguments against the other suspects to toast, but clearly that is not true, as Paul pointed out. What I will NOT do is get involved with them in a discussion of these articles, or Le Grand. I cannot recall the last time that a discussion with Phil regarding my research has led to anything positive, whether it be a new insight, a new piece of evidence, or even the slightest hint of encouragement. However, I have agreed with some of the things he's had to say on this thread, which is about Kozminski, so let's talk about Kozminski.

I'm starting to wonder if these articles, discovered by others and published by me a year and a half ago, aren't the 'new information' that's been rumoured about for so long as destroying the case against Kozminski. Could Simon shed some light on that?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

The attached newspaper snippet in Simon Wood's post #1294 (from the Western Mail of Febr. 26, 1892) most certainly refers to Le Grand, as it even references Le Grand's 1891 convinction for blackmailing the old ladies. The newspaper snippet has been already quoted last June in an Examiner 2 article. It was brought to attention by Mike Covell and interpreted by Howard Brown last spring.
(I think it's the third time already I'm identifying this source in the present thread, but sometimes repetition is key.) :-)

[Trevor Marriott]

I just cant beleive you !

Yes, I have the audacity to call what you write nonsense. It is nonsense. It's nonsense to say, for example, that it's a fact “that there was never anything in that file which showed the real identity of the killer or killers”. That's not a fact, Trevor, it's simply what you think and your thinking is empty and hollow because you don't have any more knowledge of what was or was not in the files than I do. Do you understand that? You don't know. Neither do I. So, yes, Trevor, you write nonsense.

So if there was anything in the files why didnt macnaghten mention it in The memo. What reason could he possibly have had for witholding it and what would he achieve by doing so.

In the absence on that and what we know know I am satified as are others that there was nothing but I am sure you will do you usual trick instead of answering a question you will come back asking one thus avoiding giving an answer to which there is only one that is applicable

That you think I “have no capacity for sensible and logical reasoning or understanding of facts, evidence or police procedures or methodology” isn't going to keep me awake at nights, not coming from someone who has paraded their ignorance on these boards as often as you have done.

[PaulB]

I just cant beleive you !

Go away, Trevor. I really don't have time for you anymore.

And stop trying to attribute to em what you have consistently done on this thread. It won't wash.

[Phil Carter]

The attached newspaper snippet in Simon Wood's post #1294 (from the Western Mail of Febr. 26, 1892) most certainly refers to Le Grand, as it even references Le Grand's 1891 convinction for blackmailing the old ladies. The newspaper snippet has been already quoted last June in an Examiner 2 article. It was brought to attention by Mike Covell and interpreted by Howard Brown last spring.
(I think it's the third time already I'm identifying this source in the present thread, but sometimes repetition is key.) :-)

Hello Maria,

Which is exactly my point... why would the police still be chasing anyone.. note anyone.. as the Ripper if he was already known to be either locked up or in an asylum? It doesn't matter whom they are chasing. The mere fact they still are means that all those locked away or dead CANNOT be the Ripper... now what is so difficult to understand? And that is the THIRD time Ive written that too!.. repetition should not be needed here. KOSMINSKI was LOCKED AWAY, DRUITT was DEAD and OSTROG was INNOCENT.

So how can these three STILL be regarded as being Jack the Ripper if the POLICE are both saying, and by dint of action, showing, that they haven't got him??? Arnold said it.. Swanson himself said it, Abberline said it, Griffiths said it.. Monro said it, Anderson said it.. Reid said it...we haven't got him /he wasn't locked away/dead/didn't have a clue to go on..

Now what more do you need as well as numerous Press reports quoting detectives chasing down Jack the Ripper after these three were accounted for?

The MM means nothing when weighed up against all of these men's words.
Ipso facto.. Swanson's marginalia is useless because it refers to one of the MM3...who cannot have been the Ripper if the quotes from the policemen at the time are correct!

Is it so difficult to understand?


kindly

Phil

[Phil Carter]

To PaulB

I think that what Phil is referring to is the outrage which broke over A. J. P. Taylor's head, in 1961, with the publication of his classic 'The Origins of the Second World War'.

It was a best-seller by a popular author -- there are worse fates! -- but it was also condemned by the establishment of historians (the scathing criticism was led by fellow Oxford don Hugh Trevor-Roper) who thought that though it was characteristically entertaining, and ingeniously argued, it was still utter nonsense -- and even morally objectionable.

Taylor turned everything on its head, arguing that Hitler was just a 'traditional German statesman' who was a bit more evil, more ruthless, but still a gambler, and a bluffer, and an opportunist -- not a master planner. He admired Great Britain and loathed the Soviet Union, yet in 1939 ended up in alliance with the latter and at war with the former?

To give but one example of Taylor's revisionist thesis, though this thumbnail hardly does it justice.

Conventional wisdom had asserted that the Munich Agreement was a morally terrible, and terribly stupid deal in which Hitler dismembered the Czech state due to spineless Appeasement by Britain and France. Within a few months, as people like Churchill had warned, Hitler tore up the treaty and gobbled up the rest of the now defenseless state without a shot being fired. Hitler's claim to having been satisfied with just the German-populated Sedentland ('Peace for Our Time') was brutally exposed as just a ruse, one of many on the maniacal Fuhrer's path to attempted world conquest.

Taylor counter-argued that the Munich Agreement of Sept. '39 was both brilliant and moral. That it undid the damage the imperial powers had done at Versailles in arbitrarily dismembering the Austro-Hungarian empire. That Hitler, like most German statesmen of the era, looked East not West and wanted the Treaty overturned with the German bits and Austrian pieces 'restored'. When Chamblerlain offered him the Sedentland, Hitler accepted, but thought it was a silly treaty; that the Czech state would inevitably collapse within a short time, specifically due to infighting between the Czecks and the Slovaks. Collapse it did in March '39, for which Hitler felt that he was unfairly blamed as it was the western powers who had carved up the country -- when what they should have done was either fight for its total independence or just hand it over.

To Phil Carter

I honestly do not think I am ignoring the sources. I just think that Macnaghten kept what he had learned about Druitt to himself. If another suspect turned up after Feb 1891 he had to go along with it, or give the game away.

Or, the simpler and more likely explanation was the one provided by Paul.

Hello Jonathan,

Yes, AJP Taylor's troubles only started with the examinatiuon of his opinions re WW2.. he got into masses more crossfire over numerous other things as well.

Thank you for saving me the trouble.. as Ive had a hard day at work. AJP Taylor is something that needs more than a quick reply to and cannot be covered in a reply thread as this.. besides.. it is off topic anyway.


kind thanks

Phil

[mariab]

last mention of Le Grand in this thread

Which is exactly my point... why would the police still be chasing anyone.. note anyone.. as the Ripper if he was already known to be either locked up or in an asylum? It doesn't matter whom they are chasing. The mere fact they still are means that all those locked away or dead CANNOT be the Ripper... now what is so difficult to understand? And that is the THIRD time Ive written that too!.. repetition should not be needed here. KOSMINSKI was LOCKED AWAY, DRUITT was DEAD and OSTROG was INNOCENT.

Apologies Phil, I didn't see your previous 2 posts repeating this.
I absolutely see your point, and I too have been thinking about what you're saying, also in relation to the fact that Le Grand was apparently deported in the late 1910s. I haven't yet made up my mind about this, but my interpretation of the info we have so far is that there were concrete suspicions but not enough evidence to attempt a trial against Le Grand as a suspect in the Whitechapel murders. Then Coles happened, and the police started chasing for a killer anew. Then Cutbush happens, and we have the MM.
I mainly agree with you about the MM, but I believe that we should search for more information on what Macnagthen knew about Ostrog in 1891, as it might be of interest to establish if Ostrog was mentioned in the MM instead of Le Grand (intentionally or not). By the by, Le Grand is mentioned in Macnaghten's Memoirs (not as a Ripper suspect, but as a cunning criminal).

The MM means nothing when weighed up against all of these men's words.
Ipso facto.. Swanson's marginalia is useless because it refers to one of the MM3...who cannot have been the Ripper if the quotes from the policemen at the time are correct! Is it so difficult to understand?

If someone choses to answer this, perhaps the thread would move away from Le Grand, back into the MM and perhaps even to Kozminsky? :-)

PS.: I would have talked about AJP Taylor and his silly views on WW2, but one highjack theme is enough.

[Phil Carter]

Hi Phil,

You follow me around the boards jumping at me for my Le Grand research, and I could quote where you've said he's not a legit suspect because Macnaghten doesn't mention him. But on here, you're championing a Le Grand press report and using it to dismiss Macnaghten as worthless. Your reasoning is circular and contradictory. If Le Grand is a non-starter, as you say, then any report about him only reflects the inefficiency of the investigators following him, and clearly their ignorance of other, more viable suspects, such as Mac and Anderson's. If Macnaghten was full of bull, then surely the fact that Le Grand isn't named in his report is to his favor?

It seems to me you just don't respect suspect-related research, for some odd reason. That's your prerogative, but constantly attacking researchers and investigators, living and dead, without bothering to offer up a scenario, theory, or suspect more viable than ours, is surely not productive, is it?

I'm saying let's not pretend you just don't value the MM as a source. Clearly, I'm not at all convinced by it, as I've followed another trail, but you take every opportunity to bash what little of my research you know and understand, and don't seem to even care that regardless of the suspect in question, my research has opened up avenues that weren't open before, such as the understanding as to whom this very report you and Simon are touting is in reference to.

In short, you have a problem with researchers and writers in general, with the obvious exception of Simon. And because of that, you must not be having as much fun with this hobby as the rest of us.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hello Tom,

1) I wouldn't follow you to watch Chelsea play, let alone "around the boards"..That accusation is unfounded.. but I will admit to deflowering your Le Grande theory every time you blow his horn with no evidence and tell us all "if you knew what I know".. you really are asking for it. You are supposed to be a writer. People will disagree and argue against your theory. Live with it or produce the evidence.

2) With the reference to Macnaughten being at an advantage NOT mentioning Le Grande.. this is actually ignoring his comment that there were "many homocidal maniacs" (he may well be including Le Grande by his definition, if Ostrog is to be a yardstick of homocidal mania and Kosminsky, the dog.walking masturbator)... but also goes on to say that the three most likely better than Cutbush (who wasn't much of a suspect, let's face it) were.. etc etc.. So where down the order does that put Le Grande in MM's eyes eh? Below Kosminski, below Ostrog and below Druitt.. not much of a suspect then.. eh?

3) I DO respect suspect research.. that assumption is wrong. I don't respect suspect research based on "if you knew what I know". That isn't "productive" either.. its loud mouthing your way around saying nothing evidential.

4) No Tom, I "do not have a problem with researchers and writers in general." and I will inform you, as you assume to know so much about my personality within Ripperology, that I help quite a few people that you, and others, have no idea about, because I keep my word to say nothing. In return I ask for no plaudits.. because I like it that way. Even one very famous writer who is posting here has been offered help without me mentioning it to anyone, should he wish to take up the offer. (which is private and between the two of us. I am not expecting a call.. but the offer is quietly been made.) So try emailing me and being polite. Try it. You may also find out something you don't know about me instead of making assumptions based on what you think you know, but do not know.

5) I have said it before. I will say it again. I WELCOME your research. I ENCOURAGE your research into Le Grand. But my opinion, and I am far from being the only one, is that it is weak..AS IT STANDS.

This thread is about Kosminski. I have given my opinions. Others can choose what they themselves wish to believe. That is entirely up to them.
.. be they famous writer, researcher, historian or just a watcher of the thread. It is entirely a matter of personal taste. That I respect. You are just going to have to respect that this particular human being says the time for the Merry-Go-Round concerning Kosminski, Druitt and Ostrog be put to rest. That is an opinion I stand by, on current knowledge of the three of them. Not that my opinion matters, nor anyone else's for that matter, as Paul said.

Toasted. Made blacker with hardened Marmite, and very very stale.


kindly

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi Tom,

I have kept well abreast of your research. It's a fascinating construct, which in places is very compelling.

No offense intended, but I just don't buy LG's candidature, any more than I do that of the MM3 or [insert suspect's name here].

You're a year ahead of me with regard to the Western Mail article. The only new thing I have brought to the table is the identification of its London correspondent as James McKenzie Maclean, Tory MP for Oldham and co-owner of the newspaper. And knowing that the story wasn't cobbled together by some hack who nightly propped up the bar at the Frog & Nightgown pub is important.

Whose high-level confidence at Scotland Yard did Maclean enjoy? Why was the story dropped into his ear at this particular time? Why the poo-poohing of Farquharson's year-old suicide yarn? Why the promotion of a suspect who only stopped murdering because he knew he was under surveillance, a suspect who in April morphed into a Belgian sentenced six months earlier to a twenty-spot in Portland prison?

I agree with you. That this latter report was a reference to LG is as plain as the nose on Cyrano de Bergerac's face, but if it is true that LG was the Whitechapel murderer then by April 1892 the MM3 were already toast.

If LG was JtR, why two years later did Macnaghten drop him in favour of his MM3? It all needs to be explained.

I wish you nothing but success, Tom. Pull off your case against LG and I'll be the first to doff my cap.

Regards,

Simon