discussion of Aaron Kosminski's psychological profile

[Defective Detective]

The problem I have with your prognosis is that it's based on mental conditions that almost assuredly do not exist. The words "psychopathy" and "sociopathy" are used as catch-alls for any behavior that takes a perfectly respectable cultural paradigm and runs with it to its logical end. And "schizophrenia" as a pathological type has been almost entirely destroyed by the likes of Thomas Szasz. All these labels tell us are the prejudices of the doctors who diagnose them, not the subjective states of the mind of those who 'suffer' from them.

Any attempt to deduce an individual's interior state of being, particularly after twelve decades, is doomed to failure. Far better for Ripperologists would be to focus on the objective, quantifiable circumstances of the crime.

[robhouse]

To be admitted to Broadmoor, a person had to be found either guilty but insane as outlined in the M'Naughten Rules, or be determined to be unfit to plead. In either case, I believe that the state still needed to have sufficient evidence to prove the criminal actually committed a crime. As Anderson stated, “the author of those murders [i.e. the Whitechapel murders] was a lunatic, and if evidence had been available to bring him to justice he would have been sent to Broadmoor." It is clear that Anderson was talking about Kozminski here. Can someone clarify this? I.e. what exactly were the legal requirements for admission to Broadmoor? I assume that the state did not have the right to just take any person against whom they had suspicion of guilt, and throw them, gestapo-like, into a maximum security asylum.

Natalie, I am sure even you are aware that just because the authorities may not be able to prove a person's guilt, that does not mean that the person is "innocent," except in the strict legal sense of the word. Indeed, by a strictly legal definition, whoever the Ripper was would have been "innocent" in the eyes of the law, since the government was unable to prove a case against anyone.

RH

[Chris]

almost immediately after Kosminski is incarcerated for good, the Lubnowskis move from Greenfield Street and change their names. No explanation for this is known.

No doubt they eventually became known as Cohen rather than Lubnowski because Cohen sounded less foreign - just as the Kozminskis themselves were known as Abrahams. But in common with other immigrant families they continued to use the original surname for some purposes until much later, and they were already using the surname Cohen before the Autumn of 1888.

For example, Morris appears as Cohen as early as July 1888 (the qualifying date for the 1889 electoral register), and Matilda appears on the electoral register simply as Matilda Lubnowski as late as 1931.

[Natalie Severn]

The problem I have with your prognosis is that it's based on mental conditions that almost assuredly do not exist. The words "psychopathy" and "sociopathy" are used as catch-alls for any behavior that takes a perfectly respectable cultural paradigm and runs with it to its logical end. And "schizophrenia" as a pathological type has been almost entirely destroyed by the likes of Thomas Szasz. All these labels tell us are the prejudices of the doctors who diagnose them, not the subjective states of the mind of those who 'suffer' from them.

Any attempt to deduce an individual's interior state of being, particularly after twelve decades, is doomed to failure. Far better for Ripperologists would be to focus on the objective, quantifiable circumstances of the crime.

Excellent post.However since the Chief Commissioner of the London Police,Sir Henry Smith,knew all about the claims made by his colleague in the Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Anderson,and roundly dissed them,saying he[the Ripper]" had them all beat"-and writing 20 yearslater "still had them all beat"in 1910, its surely worth taking note?
Smith was also emphatic,when referring directly to Anderson"s claims as being "reckless allegations and that " nobody ever knew where he[the Ripper] lived".
Since it is the words of City police such as Robert Sagar,who have been quoted as probably having given the information to Anderson via Swanson,it seems to me to be just plain nonsense that the Chief Commissioner ,Smith ,would have known nothing at all about it.So it seems he did,as he confirms he did in his 1910 autobiography and that he thought the claim not worth mentioning---because "he had us all beat."

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie, I am sure even you are aware that just because the authorities may not be able to prove a person's guilt, that does not mean that the person is "innocent," except in the strict legal sense of the word. Indeed, by a strictly legal definition, whoever the Ripper was would have been "innocent" in the eyes of the law, since the government was unable to prove a case against anyone.

RH

Thanks Rob,
However,I do believe if they had been pretty sure they had got their man,they would have nailed something on him and would have made sure he was not free to say carry out a murder rampage in hospital which was not secure.

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie, I am sure even you are aware that just because the authorities may not be able to prove a person's guilt, that does not mean that the person is "innocent," except in the strict legal sense of the word. Indeed, by a strictly legal definition, whoever the Ripper was would have been "innocent" in the eyes of the law, since the government was unable to prove a case against anyone.

RH

Thanks Rob,
However,I do believe if they had been pretty sure they had got their man,they would have nailed something on him and would have made sure he was not free to say carry out a murder rampage in hospital which was not secure.

[Natalie Severn]

Natalie, I am sure even you are aware that just because the authorities may not be able to prove a person's guilt, that does not mean that the person is "innocent," except in the strict legal sense of the word. Indeed, by a strictly legal definition, whoever the Ripper was would have been "innocent" in the eyes of the law, since the government was unable to prove a case against anyone.

RH

Thanks Rob,
However,I do believe if they had been pretty sure they had got their man,they would have nailed something on him and would have made sure he was not free to say carry out a murder rampage in a hospital which was not secure.

[jason_c]

Thanks Rob,
However,I do believe if they had been pretty sure they had got their man,they would have nailed something on him and would have made sure he was not free to say carry out a murder rampage in a hospital which was not secure.

This part of your scenario did actually happen Natalie.

[robhouse]

Natalie,

You say that "I do believe if they had been pretty sure they had got their man,they would have nailed something on him." Again, the Metropolitan Police was not the Gestapo. They followed the law, and did not to my knowledge go around pinning crimes on people against whom they were unable to prove guilt. In other words, the British legal system then as now was "a system designed to protect innocent persons wrongly accused of crime." Anderson remarked on this [ie. the difference between police procedure in England vs. the methods of "Foreign Police Forces"] when he said the following:

"Detractors of the work of our British Police in bringing criminals to justice generally ignore the important distinction between moral proof and legal evidence of guilt. In not a few cases that are popularly classed with ‘unsolved mysteries of crime,’ the offender is known, but evidence is wanting. If, for example, in a recent murder case of special notoriety and interest, certain human remains had not been found in a cellar, a great crime would have been catalogued among `Police failures’; and yet, even without the evidence which sent the murderer to the gallows, the moral proof of his guilt would have been full and clear. So again with the ‘Whitechapel murders’ of 1888. Despite the lucubration of many an amateur `Sherlock Holmes,’ there was no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal, and if our ‘detectives’ possessed the powers, and might have recourse to the methods, of Foreign Police Forces he would have been brought to justice. But the guilty sometimes escape through the working of a system designed to protect innocent persons wrongly accused of crime. And many a case which is used to disparage our British ‘detectives’ ought rather to be hailed as a proof of the scrupulous fairness with which they discharge their duties."

[Natalie Severn]

Rob,
But I really don"t think that a criminal such as Jack the Ripper would have been allowed to go "relatively " free, however careful the police were supposed to be ,not to arrest someone without sufficient justification.Colney Hatch would not have been considered, by anyone with any sense at all, as being adequate to detain and "restrain" a violent murderer--or a man suspected of being a violent murderer such as JtR ,and therefore it would have been considered a very dangerous thing to do to simply send him to an asylum.The Chief Commissioner of the City Police,Henry Smith would not have dismissed Anderson"s Jewish suspect in the way he did---and he called Anderson"s allegation that the suspect"s Jewish family had shielded him from Gentile Justice a "reckless assertion"---and actually he said much worse than that.
So Anderson"s suspect ,far from being viewed by others such as Smith --as important was almost brushed aside in his autobiography which came out after Blackwoods magazine.
Best,
Norma

[robhouse]

So you are saying that the police would have used extralegal (ie. illegal) methods to have Kozminski put in Broadmoor, despite the fact that they could not prove his guilt?

[Natalie Severn]

I have no idea but I know there would have been a lot of egg on their faces if anything like the Autumn of Terror was repeated in the open wards of Colney Hatch or Leavesdon.
But above all I see no support for Anderson"s assertions.Quite the opposite from City Police chief ,Henry Smith---and he knew very well what Anderson had claimed and ridiculed it,in print .

[robhouse]

Let's stay on subject here... so you are saying that the Ripper would have gone on a prostitute killing rampage within the confines of Colney Hatch?

[Natalie Severn]

There is no mention whatever in any notes on Aaron Kosminski from Colney Hatch or Leavesdon of him having a sexual problem.The comment that refers to his alleged "self abuse" stays simply as a comment that has been reported by one of his family .At the time masturbation was thought to cause blindness and madness by some lay people .There is no indication whatever that his doctors concurred with that suggestion.It is completely ignored and no mention whatever is made to it again.
Jack the Ripper was a violent killer-first and foremost.So you ought to realise that the most likely reason he targeted the women he did, who were homeless ,addicted to drink and desperate to earn their doss money for the night,was not because they were "prostitutes" but because they were the easiest of all targets to kill and mutilate.That they were prostitutes may have enabled him to justify his murderous rampage---as the Yorkshire ripper did but are you seriously suggesting he wouldnt have killed and mutilated other women ---and probably men too, had he found them "easy targets"? Peter Sutcliffe claimed he only killed prostitutes.What a liar! What about the young student who had just stepped off a bus? The male colleague he nearly killed with his hammer ? What about several other of his early victims?
Aaron Kosminski"s doctors never once recorded that he was dangerous,violent, had criminal tendencies or gave the slightest hint of being him being detained in an Institution for the insane for anything other than his visual and auditory hallucinations and the steady deterioration of his condition during the entire thirty years he was in Colney Hatch and Leavesdon.

[robhouse]

You are changing the subject Natalie. You suggested that the Police would not have allowed Kozminski to be committed to Colney Hatch if they believed he was the Ripper. It is clear, however, that they did not really have many (if any) other options. They could not convict him, they could not have him committed to Broadmoor. Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that the police were in any way involved in having Aaron placed in Colney Hatch (although they may have been, but who knows.) So you have to be realistic. What options did they have? You have not suggested any, except to say that they would have trumped up some false charge and tossed him in Broadmoor extralegally. I countered and said that the London authorities did not use Gestapo tactics. You have not really responded sufficiently to any of these points, but instead, when you do not have an answer you change the subject and start talking about masturbation or Henry Smith. In addition, it seems ludicrous to think that the employees at the asylum, who dealt with dangerous lunatics on a daily basis and who also used various methods of physical and chemical restraint, would not have been able to deal with the Ripper. In any case, if you take a serial killer... typically a cowardly sort of person who is a loner, who targets vulnerable victims at night on the streets... and put him into a confined environment where he is under constant supervision, it seems highly unlikely that he is going to be given access to knives, or allowed to roam the halls looking for victims.