Plausibility of Kosminski

[Simon Wood]

Hi Tom,

If Le Grand was the Whitechapel murderer and Sergeant White wasn't talking out of the back of his hat, it means that Jack the Ripper and his accomplice took Matthew Packer to Scotland Yard to see Commissioner Charles Warren.

Discuss.

Regards,

Simon

[Stewart P Evans]

Obviously

...
If Le Grand was the Whitechapel murderer and Sergeant White wasn't talking out of the back of his hat, it means that Jack the Ripper and his accomplice took Matthew Packer to Scotland Yard to see Commissioner Charles Warren.
Discuss.
...
Simon

That's obviously the 'inserting himself into the police investigation' bit.

[Scott Nelson]

That's obviously the 'inserting himself into the police investigation' bit.

Who? Sergeant White or Le Grande? Or both?

[Lechmere]

The Ripper murders were the only crimes Le Grand ever ‘got away’ with – the cunning fiend.

[PaulB]

It were a Grand day out, Gromit.

[Jonathan H]

To previous posters

The case for Druitt, historically speaking, has grown over the past few years not shrunk.

The identification of the 'West of England' MP by Andy Spallek showed that belief in Montie's guilt, rightly or wrongly, did originate among 'his own people' in Dorset.

That Macnaghten did not pluck him out of thin air, not the accusation that he was the Ripper. It all predates the Mac Report(s) of 1894.

There is no such source regarding 'Kosminski' or Ostrog.

I would claim that my own work has put forward two significant revisionist elements, which build upon Spallek's breakthrough.

1. That Mac's memoirs, the one public document about the Ripper under his own name, should trump the Report(s). For example, in that source he concedes that 'laying' to rest Druitt's ghost took years -- matching the sources from 1888 to 1891 -- and the Polish Jew and the Russian con man are left unmentioned, eg, they are nothing.

2. The frantic friends in Sims matches the 1889 article on the inquiry into Druitt's death, about the frantic brother. This is outside PC Moulson's report and -- at the very least -- shows that Macnaghten was cognizant about Druitt's true details before either he forgot them, or he began moulding them into 'substantial truth in fictitious form', to protect the family whilst enhancing the Yard's rep.

Which is why I asked about the 'self-abuse'.

To Paul

So that comes from Feb 1891.

It is a tiny detail, yet Macnaghten recorded it accurately three years later.

He gets entirely wrong the date of 'Kosminski's' admission, and in the unofficial version that he was seen by a beat cop chatting with Eddowes, and exaggerates that he was a homicidal maniac because he threatened his relative with a bread-knife.

But he gets 'solitary vices' correct.

See the pattern.

In the unofficial version of his 'Report', the one the cronies saw or were told verbally about, Macnaghten gets it 'wrong' about Druitt's vocation, gets it wring about his age, and gets it wrong about when he disappeared -- but he gets it right about the tiny detail of the season railway pass (a detail he may also have got from the inquest article).

Historical methodology asks us to find similarities and differences between sources, and to look for patterns and then try and explain them.

Others will not agree, but the train ticket and the self-abuse are for me evidence of a cagey source, one which knows all but manipulates the data for their desired effect on the specific audience to which they are disseminated.

[Hunter]

Hi Jonathan,
Since this has developed into a thread about the plausibility of several suspects other than Kozminski...

...The identification of the 'West of England' MP by Andy Spallek showed that belief in Montie's guilt, rightly or wrongly, did originate among 'his own people' in Dorset.

It shows that a 'West of England MP' may have thought that was the case.

That Macnaghten did not pluck him out of thin air, not the accusation that he was the Ripper. It all predates the Mac Report(s) of 1894.
There is no such source regarding 'Kosminski' or Ostrog.

Why should there be? Information can be compiled by several different means. Ostrog was being sought in Oct. '88 and it appears Macnaghten made inquiries about him after he joined the Met. Kozminski probably came from the CID investigation headed by Swanson (although you seem to believe this was all Macnaghten's doings).

...1. That Mac's memoirs, the one public document about the Ripper under his own name, should trump the Report(s). For example, in that source he concedes that 'laying' to rest Druitt's ghost took years -- matching the sources from 1888 to 1891 -- and the Polish Jew and the Russian con man are left unmentioned, eg, they are nothing.

The report was under his name written on official paper. There is no evidence that he compiled any more information on Druitt after he wrote this in 1894. He merely solidified his theory on one of them. The Polish Jew and the Russian con man were dropped because he obviously had settled on Druitt.

2. The frantic friends in Sims matches the 1889 article on the inquiry into Druitt's death, about the frantic brother. This is outside PC Moulson's report and -- at the very least -- shows that Macnaghten was cognizant about Druitt's true details before either he forgot them, or he began moulding them into 'substantial truth in fictitious form', to protect the family whilst enhancing the Yard's rep.

It shows that whoever his source about Druitt was got some of it right... including his name which was revealed in his 1894 document.

He gets entirely wrong the date of 'Kosminski's' admission, and in the unofficial version that he was seen by a beat cop chatting with Eddowes, and exaggerates that he was a homicidal maniac because he threatened his relative with a bread-knife.
But he gets 'solitary vices' correct.
See the pattern.

Yes, but it is a different pattern than you have surmised. He had no reason to get details about Kosminski wrong... nor Ostrog... nor his errors about the murders themselves... but he did. Either his sources or the way he gathered the information were flawed. I don't recall him mentioning the 'bread-knife' incident or that he was a 'homicidal maniac' in either version. He did say that 'Kosminski' had 'homicidal tendencies', but offered no details.

In the unofficial version of his 'Report', the one the cronies saw or were told verbally about, Macnaghten gets it 'wrong' about Druitt's vocation, gets it wring about his age, and gets it wrong about when he disappeared -- but he gets it right about the tiny detail of the season railway pass (a detail he may also have got from the inquest article).

Note this report from the Thames Valley Times that does not mention Druitt's vocation, gets his age and how long he had been in the water wrong and mentions the railway tickets:

Body found in Thames off Thorneycroft's

On Monday the body of a gentleman was found by Henry Winslade, waterman, in the Thames, off Thorneycroft's Wharf, and has since been identified by a season ticket and certain papers. Deceased was not a resident of the district, and the body had been in the water nearly a month. Deceased was about forty years of age, and the brother of a gentleman living at Bournemouth. The Coroner was acquainted with the fact that the remains had been removed to the mortuary, and an inquest will be held today.

From the Ultimate Sourcebook, Evans ans Skinner.

Historical methodology asks us to find similarities and differences between sources, and to look for patterns and then try and explain them.
Others will not agree, but the train ticket and the self-abuse are for me evidence of a cagey source, one which knows all but manipulates the data for their desired effect on the specific audience to which they are disseminated.

I can find no rational need in manipulating an internal (confidential) memo. His very job would have been on the line. He names all three suspects. If SY or the Home Office had used this document to publicly counter the Sun, an 'enterprising journalist' would have made hay of it like Parke did with the Cleveland St. Scandel.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Hunter,

Since this has developed into a thread about the plausibility of several suspects other than Kozminski...

After 2000 posts.. there can't be that much more to say about Koz the Boz.

kindly

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Hello Hunter,

Just a thought..

Would it not be feasable that Macnaghten had some sheets of official notepaper at home? I mean, if he composed that document a fair way away from access to the files, it would explain the discrepancies in the facts he presented, no?


kindly


Phil

[Hunter]

That's an excellent question that I don't have an answer for, Phil. It doesn't seem implausible for someone to take their work home with them... at least to compose a draft to get some thoughts down and then work off the draft at his office. He wrote this rather quickly and might not have had time to dig into all of the files but was simply remembering what he was familiar with (Or thought he was familiar with) in general because he seems to be writing in general instead of providing details. He probably thought this was all he needed to do to counter the Sun's allegations.

I know Stewart has stated different, but I can imagine a man like Macnaghten compiling something like this without being asked to do it by his superiors... possibly in anticipation that something might develop or give him a chance to be a part of an investigation that he missed the bulk of and the 'Cutbush' controversy was his chance to give his opinion -officially- on a case that was an obvious interest to him and one which he had gotten some side information himself outside of the normal CID procedure.

[Jonathan H]

To Hunter

Thank-you for engaging me in debate.

That Macnaghten got his information from Farquhrason, at least initially is obvious.

The alternative is untenable. It would mean that Macnaghten, the 'action man' obsessed with who was also an upper class gent, and an Old Etonian, and a Tory, and an Anglican, was either ignorant of this MP's 'doctrine' -- exactly the one he would repeat in his memoirs down to the 'inaccuracy' as to when the 'Simon Pure' killed himsef -- or knew about it, but chose not to speak with him.

Is that really likely?

The newspaper article does mention the season ticket, and a case can be made that strands of this piece have contaminated Mac's memory.

But ...

Is it likely that if Macnaghten, in 1891, had found this article in 1889 he would have left it that? If he can look at this article he can look at the rest. Much more likely is that he met with the family or a family member, of which we get a veiled glimpse in Sims in the 1900's. Plus this article does not contain the deatil about the brother trying to find his missing sibling.

Ahh, the Mac Report official version.

This docment, whilst official, was archived at some point by Macnaghten presumbaly before he retired in 1913. It makes no impact as a document until decades later in the 1960's. Probably becase, as Stewart wrote, if it was archived in 1894, that was so much later than the Ripper murders -- a truncated timeline created by Macnaghten -- that it was missed, and unknown.

Nevetheless, I argue that he created it becuas ehe had a dilemma. He knew that Cutbush was not the murderer, and that the murders by 'Jack' ended in Nov 1888. He knew that Druitt was the killer, but he could never be broiught to justice. He also realised that to admit the whole truth woul be embarrassing for the Yard, who were now facing a Liberal govt. whose hands were clean about the 'Whietchapel 'debacle.

Therefore, he put Druitt's name on file, but only as a minor, hearsay suspect about whom the police had not deemed it worth bothering to find out if he was a doctor or not.

If Asquith read out an adaptation of this 'Report' in the Commons, he would have been describing an English physician suspect, whom the press could not necessarily find. Plus the libel laws would have had to be taken int account, as the MP article's writer fearfully alludes to. Future Ripper researchers never found Druitt. They doubyed that there was a 'drowned doctor' and they were half-right in thei skepticism.

Until Druitt's name was handed to Dan Farson by the Dowager Aberconway in 1959, and even then his team initially could not find the drowned barrister based on her father's disinformation.

But then why mention Druitt at all, if you are terrified of waking 'sleeping dogs'?

I think the answer lies in the 'West of England' MP article. The Druitts' terrible secret had leaked. Ut could do so again. A story in the press about a young man banged up in Broadmoor could be the trigger for the story to rear its ugly head again. If the whole thign came out, then the police would be humiliated all over again. Unscrupulous backbench Radicals could create the nyth of the Tory barrister tipped off by the Tory-dominated police, or something equally scabarous.

You argue that Macnaghten would not have put his name to a set of lies in an official document.

That this would have out his job on the line.

I do not think you understand the dillemma Mac faced. He alone, via private information, knew the Ripper's identity -- rightly or wrongly. If the whole story came out in 1894, then his own knowledge of Druitt's double identity might too.

You see, his job was already on the line.

Better to take out insurance both for himself and the Yard by placing Druitt's name on file but downplaying his status and, critically, pretending that he was a suspect in 1888, or very soon after.

If Druitt were alone in that document then he would have to be the best suspect however minor -- but better than Cutbush who was demonstably insane, known to be violent to woman, and sectioned for life. This hardly made sense, so Mac edged close by conceding that Druitt was sexually insane -- no if ot buts -- and his family 'believed' him to be the murderer.

But we did not check with family to make sure if he was a doctor or not ...

To make this excrciiating hocus pocus work Druitt had to be subsumed into a list.

A list of people who were not suspects and therefore would be unrecognizaable to their peers, who had never thought of them as involved with the Whitechapel horrors because they weren't. That way you avoid digging up real disappointments like Sanders, and Pizer, and Tumblety.

That is why I disagree that Mac had no motive to alter details about Aaron Kosminski, creating 'Kosminski' the homicial self-abuser. Once more, he was too minor to find out even what his faull name was?!

In the unofficial version Mac would ramp this all up by, maybe, having the Pole seen with a victim by a beat cop. Ostrog he loathed for violating his beloved Eton, and so Mac turned him into the mad, mysoginist who carries surgical knives. Which does not match what we have on Ostrog in other sources. Mac contacted an asylum about this roach, yet never metioned that he was a Ripper suspect.

Because he wasn't.

If Hoem Sec. H. H. Asquith had read out the un-named suspects, the English dcotor, the mad Pole, and the mad Russian, their peers and families would not have recognised them (well, the Druitts would have and then held their collective breath).

By 1898, Macnaghten, either because he was incensed at Anderson's elevation of one of his decorous non-suspects, or knowing that a Vicar connected to the Druitts was about to publish a fictitious version of the drowned barrister, got in himself. He projected to the public utilizing a very different version of that source, now quite falsely called a 'Home Office Report'; a definitive document of state.

Neither Report appeared in public under his own knighted name. The official version was unknown, and the unofficial version was disseminated via proxies (though Sims nearly gave the game away in 1903) both of whom had no inkling it was unofficial and different from an archived Scotland Yard version (late in the day Jack Littlechild alerted Sims that he had been misled, though he was mistaken about which police chief was behind this self-serving chicanery).

The only document for the public about the Ripper, by Macnaghten, is his memoir -- the defacto third version of the 'Report'.

There is no evidence that we have that Aaron Kosminski, as a Ripper suspect begins with Swanson. In 1891 he thinks Coles is a Ripper victim, and he has Lawende brought in to look at Sadler, and Grant as late as 1895. These actions make no sense if the Marginalia is his opinion in 1888, or 1889, or 1891. But the marginalia does make sense if it is produced by either a faded, muddled memory, or simply a record of his conceited and confused ex-chief's opinion -- one Swanson, out of respect, never mntioned to anybody.

Before I get the usual back-hander here is [probably] Macnaghten's own words which encapsulate his usual mixture of candor and deceit (found by Crhis Scott):

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."

The break-knife was just a flippant throw-away, sorry.

[AndrewL]

Thoughts

First of all, let me say I think it's wonderful that people are still debating these issues over 120 years since the murders took place

As a newcomer, may I make an observation? It seems to me that no matter hoe hard we all try to be objective, many of us deep down have a solution that we 'want' to be true. This is why we reach such wildly differing conclusions from a small set of facts, which after all are very sketchy and can never come remotely close to actually proving who the Ripper was.

For my own part, I know that I 'want' the Ripper to be Druitt. I simply find it a more dramatically satisfying solution. A handsome, well-connected barrister with a troubled family who develops homocidal mania and finally takes his own life - that's the kind of character you could imagine being the culprit in a great crime novel. Of course we know next to nothing about what Druitt was really like, but crucially we have two photographs of him - and they are striking enough to let your imagination run wild.

By the same token, I don't 'want' Kosminski or any other poor Polish Jew to have been the Ripper. Frankly, it would be a bit of an anti-climax. It turns the evil genius 'Jack the Ripper' into a pathetic, one-dimensional lunatic - and the fact that we don't even have a photograph makes him even more anonymous.

Now, here's the thing - objectively, I think that the evidence against Kosminski is somewhat stronger than that against Druitt (although I think it's far from overwhelming in either case). However, because I find the barrister a more intriguing character, I am attracted to books/articles that propose his guilt and can't get excited by all the textual analysis of the Swanson marginilia.

If (by some miracle) conclusive proof that Druitt was the man emerged tomorrow, I would be very excited. If Kosminski's guilt was established beyond a reasonable doubt, I think I might be oddly disappointed.

I would be very interested to hear other vires on this, particularly from experts such as Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Stewart Evans whose work I admire so much.

Andrew

[Supe]

AndrewL,

First of all welcome aboard.

It turns the evil genius 'Jack the Ripper' into a pathetic, one-dimensional lunatic

Unfortunately, Hannah Arendt was among the first to comment on "the banality of evil" in her reports on the Adolf Eichmann trial. She was quite on target and most manifestastions of evil are produced by silly, sordid, sickening little people.

Don.

[Jonathan H]

To Andrew

Yes I know eactly what you mean.

The case has no interest for me either if it is a no-photograph nonenitity.

Though that's whom I assumed 'Jack' undoubtedly was, donkeys-years ago, when I thought that the only warring paradigms were between the Royal Rubbish versus the sensible, if dull explanation of the local, anomic lunatic.

Eg. 'Kosminski', or somebody like him.

Then, after seeing a doco a few years ago, I came to the case believing -- and wanting to believe -- it was the American confidence man, Dr Tumblety, because he was so interesting a scoundrel to have been suspected to be a fiend-murderer.

Perhaps even guilty of the cirmes -- even better!

But then as I read more, and finally read Macnaghten's memoirs for myself, my beliefs changed, though not completely, as I still think that Tumblety was the key police suspect of 1888.

Secondary sources have long argued that Macnaghten was a charmer, but didn't really know what he was talking about because Druitt was not a dcotor, and so on.

But that's actually a really big call.

For secondary sources to claim that such a critical primary source is mostly phoney baloney.

I began to wonder if they were mistaken, especially as Macnaghten's revealing memoirs are not included in a number of important secondary sources. For, to my surprise (well not complete surprise as I had been led to this tantalizing source by Paul Begg's brilliant book) Macnaghten does not claim that Druitt was a doctor in 'Days of My Years', and so on.

Other secondasry source claims which crumble at the slightest toiuch include the diea that Macnaghten only had a theory whereas Anderson claimed to be certain. Another that the official evrsion of his unknown, unseen 'Memo' should be consdiered his defintiive opinion. all of this was being treated as fact, when they are interpretations of quite ambiguous sources.

See: 'The West of England MP -- Identified' by Andrew Spallek in the dissertations section, if you have not already.

The discovery of such a compelling linking source between Druitt as a tragic barrister in 1889 and his bizarre re-emergence as an [un-named] Ripper suspect, for the public, in 1898 led me to theorize something shocking in terms of the conventional wisdom for many decades.

It's not a mystery.

Oh sure, it's complicated alright by contradiction, hellishly so, but if you accept the Druitt-Farqurason-Macnaghten axis, then the case was solved in 1891 and the public informed in 1898, and then relentlessly so by the famous George Sims, until 1917. Mac confirmed this official opinion -- actually it's only his own -- in 1913 and 1914.

Most people simply dismiss this all this; that Mac was wrong! Well, we don't know he was wrong. He might have been right, whether his memory began to fade or he was playing a game?

I bought into the received wisdom until I analysed certain sources more closely. Not that I necessarily know what I am talking about. It's just that I am often accused of having an 'agenda', when all I have is an opinion which I came to, somewhat reluctantly, based on where the sources pulled me.

But I have a bias too.

I have a crush on Macnaghten. He's so much fun and so vivid to me. Thus I want him to be right. Yet I argue that I can keep my sense of proportion because I concede that he may have been an 'amateur Sherlock'. One quite carried away by the cultural phenonmenon of 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' intersecting with his loathing of Anderson. And the latter, stiff-necked, pious ego-maniac that he was, may have been spot-on about 'Jack as an anomic lunatic, not some Flash Harry from the West End.

So, I know exactly what you mean.

Not only is Druitt a much more interesting suspect, but so is his advocate, Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten; the Old Etononian smoothie who somewhat declassed himself by becoming a police administrator. Yet he endearingly yearns to be Super-cop rushing to the scene of the most notorious crimes. This is an intriguing figure in his own right, even without the Ripper. A man who might be a bit of a fool, or an overgrown adolescent prankster -- or both?

Plus, you have the upper class twit Tory MP, who is foolishly and indiscreetly shooting his mouth off in 1891, with Macnaghten, I argue, rushing to shut him up. Thus you have these hideous crimes, which have been committed in a squalid abyss, being 'solved' in the finest of privileged gentleman's clubs.

This 'grand canyon' class contrast is really a terrific tale for a dramatist, and that Mac refused to let some Jewish wretch take the rap; that he made the 'better classes' swallow such a bitter pill, is an admirable and satisfying conclusion.

Plus, you have my 'case disguised' theory -- most people here would not even concede it is even that -- that Macnaghten, behind the Hooray Henry affability is a sort of ancestor to Le Carre's duplicitous gentlemen of the Cold War, and the case is completely revamped into something much more fascinating!

But is it transformed into fiction or has something like the historical truth been recovered?

[Tom_Wescott]

And Le Grand's 'prior record' is precisely why he wasn't and couldn't have been mentioned in the memoranda. This isn't conspiracy, just common sense. Most of us will agree that the negative press attention of the Sun (re Cutbush) is what sparked the production of the memoranda. Therefore, the inclusion of a suspect still alive and not in an asylum, who had in the past publicly stated to the press to have been employed by the police, the Times, George Lewis, and the vigilance committee, would not only have completely defeated the purpose of the MM, it would have sparked a public and press backlash against the police and other major institutions the likes of which we've never seen.

Hi Paul, I don't understand what part of this you think is intended to be funny. I think maybe you're not keeping up with things. None of what I posted was an argument for Le Grand as the Ripper, I was just staing facts, and these are facts that have an impact on the MM and therefore the plausibility of Kozminski.

1) Le Grand was a Ripper suspect prior to the creation of the MM.
2) The police kept it very quiet.
3) Le Grand made claims in court to the effect that he had been a police informant, employed by the Times in the Parnell commission, employed by George Lewis, best friend of HRH himself, and, as we all know, he hunted the Ripper side-by-side with the police in his part with the WVC.

These are facts, and it goes without saying that NOBODY in authority would want it to get out that the Ripper MIGHT BE someone with the connections Le Grand had. This is just common sense. And the fact that he's not named on the MM, when he's clearly a better suspect than AT LEAST Ostrog, bears this out. Erego, the MM cannot be said to be an honest representation of the best suspects the police had to offer.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott