Plausibility of Kosminski

[Tom_Wescott]

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.

If Le Grand was the Ripper, Batchelor would not likely have been an accomplice. And Packer never met Warren.

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

Le Grand was one of the most successful criminals of the time. He hardly got caught for anything, and more often than not avoided jail time.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

Druitt

Hello Andrew. Welcome to the boards.

I think Druitt represents one of the last bits of romanticism in Ripper studies. Wish it were he.

You will want to meet Jonathan Hainsworth (who greeted you above) and Rev Andrew Spallek--they are the pre-eminent Druittists around here. Not to mention Mr. Ruffles.

Cheers.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

If you meet Andrew Spallek, leave the kids at home.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

You will want to meet Jonathan Hainsworth (who greeted you above) and Rev Andrew Spallek--they are the pre-eminent Druittists around here. Not to mention Mr. Ruffles.

If you meet Andrew Spallek, leave the kids at home.

Lynn, Andrew Spallek is no longer a member of casebook, in fact he's serving time in jail.
Whitechapel Society Journal editor Adrian Morris gave a fascinating presentation on Druitt's personal and professional (tribunal) occupations in the last months prior to his suicide (including new pics) yesterday afternoon at the Whitechapel Society conference.
No clue who Mr. Ruffles is...

To Simon Wood:
Warren and Bruce were too high up in the hierarchy to have seen Packer, he most plausibly met Abberline or Moore.

[Hunter]

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 mentioned to anybody.

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for your very well thought out reply. In keeping, somewhat, with the gist of this thread, I will respond to the paragraph above.

Macnaghten's role as Chief Constable was a non-operational management role. The highest rank in an investigative capacity was Chief Superintendent. This is not to say that Macnaghten could not make queries on his own and he certainly would have access to any files categorized by the CID, but the information derived on a suspect like Kozminski would have come from investigative CID officers working on the case under the direction of Chief Inspector Donald Swanson. The existing files clearly show this. I doubt that Anderson would have given the credibility he apparently does to Kosminski if he had been the machinations of Macnaghten. Swanson is a different story.

Swanson never said that he thought Coles was a Ripper victim. Even if he had strong suspicions of someone else beforehand, he would have done his job to investigate any subsequent suspects. It was his duty as the one trained police officer out of the trio mentioned. There is a significant difference between a patronage appointed official who starts at the top and one who spent his life climbing to his position based on performance and merit. I believe it is telling that Swanson did get so involved in the Sadler investigation.

While the marginalia includes a major inconsistency, which he may have harbored as early as 1895, and his assertion that the suspect had been identified and knew he had been can be questioned, there is no evidence that his memory was muddled or that his annotations were 'simply a record of his conceited and confused ex-chief.' He wrote what he wrote and signed his initials to it. That he was relating someone else's opinions is conjecture that is out of the realm of probability.

P.S to all - I don't see the need in bringing up the unfortunate circumstances involving Mr. Spallek on these boards. That he is no longer a member would have been sufficient or, at least, an offer for a private correspondence to the poster in question.

[PaulB]

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

Hi Tom,
I have no problem with your arguments about Le Grand. In fact I would welcome a solid presentation of the facts as it isn't always easy to keep up with all the developments. But one of the reasons why a 100-year closure was put on files was because they contained information not for public consumption, so I cannot see why an internal briefing memorandum from one senior officer to another senior officer, from Macnaghten to Bradford say, couldn't and wouldn't have mentioned anyone Macnaghten wanted to mention. There is no reason to suppose it would have been circulated beyond the initial recipient, it wasn't going to be made public, therefore it wouldn't have sparked a public and press backlash.

I also think there is a general mistake in thinking that Macnaghten was naming the three best suspects the police had to offer. Macnaghten doesn't say they were, he merely names three men more likely than Cutbush to have been the murderer. It's improbable, but they could have been the least likely suspects, but still better ones than Cutbush. That we know Macnaghten thought one of them was Jack and that we now know that Anderson thought another was, that suggests that they were the best suspects.

As said, if Macnaghten was aware of Le Grand then he could have cited him in a private memoranda to a senior colleague and that the absence of his name in the memoranda therefore doesn't necessarilly suggest that he was too hot to mention. That Macnaghten thought Druitt was the murderer carries the implication that he must have thought the evidence against him was stronger than the evidence against anyone else, but that's a separate issue.

It was your suggestion that putting Le Grand's name in an official and private document was risking a public backlash that I thought you may have been jesting over.

Paul

[Hunter]

A quick addendum to my previous post...

Chief Constable would have been similar to an adjutant in the military, except Peel and his successors were cognizant of the public suspicions about such an organized police force... thus military nomenclature was avoided; the exception being the rank of sergeant.

Macnaghten, in his position, would have been the appropriate man to write a memorandum.

[PaulB]

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.

Yes, I understand all that, but this discussion is spinning beyond the initial point that the case against Druitt was stronger than that against Kosminski because "Druitt begins in the extant record completely independently of Macnaghten (eg. the 'West of England MP' story)..." (what reason do you have for assuming that Macnagten and Farquaharson didn't obtain their information from a common source?), which I disagreed with, saying that just because one source mentions something before another is not reason for giving primacy to one rather than the other.

The masturbation was mentioned by Macnaghten, it appears to have been given high priority by Anderson (it was responsible for reducing "him to a lower level than that of the brute" - a Biblical context and meaning an unreasoning person), so it may have been core in some way not immediately obvious and consequently knhighlighted in MAcnaghten's memory. Whilst looking closely at what Macnaghten says can and does tell us a lot, and whilst the points you make are good ones - yes, it is curious what Macnaghten gets wrong and what he gets right - I remain wholly unconvinced that this suggests that Macnaghten was "a cagey source" and a puppet master pulling the strings of Griffiths and Sims for odd reasons of his own.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Maria,

The two-page summary of Packer's grape-selling story dated 4th October 1888 was initialled ACB [Alexander Carmichael Bruce], Senior Assistant Commissioner.

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Simon. Abberline would have met with Packer and taken the statement from which Carmichael's summary was taken.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

P.S to all - I don't see the need in bringing up the unfortunate circumstances involving Mr. Spallek on these boards. That he is no longer a member would have been sufficient or, at least, an offer for a private correspondence to the poster in question.

I agree. It was intended as an inside joke. Unfortunately, Maria likes to follow behind me and 'explain' what I say.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Paul, thank you for that explantion. What you say makes sense from a certain perspective. However, it seems that Le Grand was 'taken care of' when he was locked away for blackmailing attempts and handed a sentence described as extraordinary, and more severe than the punishment most got for murder. I seriously doubt he was an open topic for discussion to Home Office. The less said the better, as those with the immediate responsibility (i.e. Commissioner and below) would have been held accountable.

It's interesting that the very Police Sergeant who was the Holmes to Le Grand's Moriarty ended up in the same prison as Le Grand and remained in there after Le Grand was set free.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[PaulB]

Hi Paul, thank you for that explantion. What you say makes sense from a certain perspective. However, it seems that Le Grand was 'taken care of' when he was locked away for blackmailing attempts and handed a sentence described as extraordinary, and more severe than the punishment most got for murder. I seriously doubt he was an open topic for discussion to Home Office. The less said the better, as those with the immediate responsibility (i.e. Commissioner and below) would have been held accountable.

It's interesting that the very Police Sergeant who was the Holmes to Le Grand's Moriarty ended up in the same prison as Le Grand and remained in there after Le Grand was set free.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,
Yes, I actually wrote but deleted an observation that it would be helpful to know more about who for whom the memorandum was intended, what its purpose was, and whether Macnaghten or some junior researched the information it contained. Any one of those questions could have influenced what Macnaghten did and didn't include and he could have been omitted a name if it was politically sensitive. Neverheless, a report intended for the Commissioner would likely have contained the best information Macnaghten had, and it would have been the Commissioner's responsibility to decide what was or was not passed on to others, so I am still iffy about Macnaghten omitting Le Grand if Le Grand was strongly suspected of being "the man". I do look forward to a comprehensive account of Le Grand.
Paul

[Jonathan H]

To Hunter

I agree, up to point, but Druitt was not found, I believe, by normal police methods.

That's the whole point.

In his Report(s) Mac does give the false impression that he was a contemporaneous 'police' suspect of 1888 when Druitt was nothing of the kind.

Sims has the fiend dorwning himself as the inexorable police net closed, which Abberline and Reid and Littlechild knew could not possibly be true (at least for Littlechild not about an English doctor nearly arrested) and never seemed to have known that this Seabeast tale came from the Assistant Commissioner himself!

The investigation, such as it was, was done entirely by Macnaghten interviewing Farquharson, or at least learning his information and then going on to meet with a Druitt.

This was the incumbent political party, and the Tory bourgeisoie, conferring with itself.

Nothing to do with normal police work.

Why would it? The 'suspect' in question could not be arrested or charged.

The only thing that might happen is that a 'respectable' family could be dragged through the media and the libel crourts -- and ruined.

And the Yard would hardly come out of it very well either, chasing Sadler as the fiend when the real 'Protean' maniac was long dead.

I mean, have you ever considered what the Druitt family, or members of that family, must have thought when they saw the 1891 MP article??

The story, their ghastly story, was about to break. Then Coles was murdered two days later, and theis glimpse of the truth was sidelined, as if by a miracle.

Yet a semi-fictional version of the tale resurfaced in 1898, driven from behind the scenes by Macnaghten.

To Paul

We will, as ever, have to agree to disagree.

I would say this though.

The brilliant R. J. Palmer, a few years ago on this site, made a devastating point. That Macnaghten backdated -- presumably inadvertently -- Kosminski's incarceration to a point before he had joined the Force. Yet it was an event which happened whilst he was there at the Yard.

It is one thing for the memory to date things wrongly, but to actually ascribe a date long before you were present, about an event which happened long after you were present, is really something!

That means far from having the terrific, retentive memory which everybody compliments Mac about (except Anderson, who dismisses the un-named Mac as a fearful fusspot) his memory was utterly appalling!

He was quite incompetent, yet foooled a slew of people into thinking he was a marvellous administrator.

Of course, in mis-dating Aaron Kosminski's incarceration Macnaghten turned him into a much more 'plausible' Ripper suspect.

Is that really by chance?

[PaulB]

We will, as ever, have to agree to disagree.

I would say this though.

The brilliant R. J. Palmer, a few years ago on this site, made a devastating point. That Macnaghten backdated -- presumably inadvertently -- Kosminski's incarceration to a point before he had joined the Force. Yet it was an event which happened whilst he was there at the Yard.

It is one thing for the memory to date things wrongly, but to actually ascribe a date long before you were present, about an event which happened long after you were present, is really something!

That means far from having the terrific, retentive memory which everybody compliments Mac about (except Anderson, who dismisses the un-named Mac as a fearful fusspot) his memory was utterly appalling!

He was quite incompetent, yet foooled a slew of people into thinking he was a marvellous administrator.

Of course, in mis-dating Aaron Kosminski's incarceration Macnaghten turned him into a much more 'plausible' Ripper suspect.

Is that really by chance?

Agreeing to disagree over what?

That Macnaghten got the date so wildly wrong suggests, perhaps, that Aaron Kosminski was not "Kosminski", or it suggests that Macnaghten was using information supplied to him by somebody else (a clerk, junior officer) and which he used without thought, or it implies that he had a poor memory... If it was a slip then the answer to your question is yes, it was by chance.