The Seaside Home: an alternative scenario

[Fisherman]

"Sent" in Swedish means "late". And thatīs what it is here now. So goodnight to you!

the best,
Fisherman

[Chris]

Could it have been the other way around, Chris? Could the initial contact have been made by the police, approaching the family after having been tipped of or simply making the call themselves that Kosminski was quite possibly the Polish Jew they were looking for?
The reason I ask is that this may perhaps - if this was the case - have lain behind the difficulties spoken of in connection with sending Kosminski to the Seaside Home; Maybe it took a whole lot of persuading of Kosminskiīs family to gain access to him? It would also tally with the belief that Jewish people are reluctant to give up their own.

As I mentioned, it was the Crawford Letter that originally suggested this idea. That letter concerned a woman who approached the police under cover of anonymity because she was terrified of the danger to her family if her relation were publicly suspected. In those circumstances I can imagine why the police might do a deal in which they attempted to keep the suspicion secret as far as possible in return for the cooperation of the family.

I don't really see why they should have gone to that trouble if the information came from another source. If that were the case, could they not simply have arrested the suspect, as they did other suspects?

[Chris]

IF the scenario that you paint is true then the family did not give him up to Gentile justice. Strictly speaking, no trial means no Gentile justice. No family member testified against him in court.

Its also a possibility that Anderson was convinced the family had dragged there heels in coming forward.

Yes, I think that's another possibility. If the family had delayed communicating their suspicions, and did so only under conditions that were inconvenient to the police, Anderson might have considered they were shielding the suspect - particularly if he were keen to vindicate his earlier suspicions (or prejudices) against Polish Jews.

[Marlowe]

Fisherman,

You see, Belinda made an excellent point the other day by asking, why didn't Swanson make mention of the suspect being restained at the identification, because he did say they needed to tie his hands at a later date. As I tried to point out, he DID tell us that by saying "with difficulty", because that suggests there was the need to do the same thing then, at that time as well.

[Dr. John Watson]

The idea that Kosminski was sent to the Seaside Home for identification because that's where the witness was located is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. If it was simply a matter of wanting to hold the identification in private out of concern for Kosminsky and his family, couldn't he have simply been arrested on a pretext - say disorderly conduct, for instance - then taken to a holding cell at a police station out of the area and there subjected to identification? Another question: Has anyone attempted to locate the records of the Seaside Home for the period in question? Such records may contain a reference to the identification or perhaps the name of a patient or physician who can be connected to the Whitechapel area either as a witness or investigator. Incidently, I'm used to spelling the suspect's name as Kosminsky instead of Kozminsky. Is there a preferred spelling?

Curious John

[jason_c]

The idea that Kosminski was sent to the Seaside Home for identification because that's where the witness was located is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. If it was simply a matter of wanting to hold the identification in private out of concern for Kosminsky and his family, couldn't he have simply been arrested on a pretext - say disorderly conduct, for instance - then taken to a holding cell at a police station out of the area and there subjected to identification? Another question: Has anyone attempted to locate the records of the Seaside Home for the period in question? Such records may contain a reference to the identification or perhaps the name of a patient or physician who can be connected to the Whitechapel area either as a witness or investigator. Incidently, I'm used to spelling the suspect's name as Kosminsky instead of Kozminsky. Is there a preferred spelling?

Curious John

The seaside home opens up a whole new can of worms. The Brighton Seaside home wasnt opened until 1894(?). But i think its reasonable to assume other homes were used in Brighton before this date.

[harry]

It appears obvious,that if an identification could be made any time after the incident happened,then such identification must have been made at the scene of the incident So why is it neccessary that such witness be taken or sent anywhere,unless those that sent or took such witness were certain that the witness would cooperate.This is just one of the many curious,to me,incidents surrounding the claim of an identification having taken place.Not that I believe there was such a witness,or an identification.Just a false claim by a person who could not bear to admit being bested by a killer he believed to be from the lower classes.

[Phil H]

Harry

Isn't your question the wrong way round?

So why is it neccessary that such witness be taken or sent anywhere,unless those that sent or took such witness were certain that the witness would cooperate.

We have no reason to question that Swanson (and Anderson, on the assumption that there is a link between their writings) knew what he was talking about when he mentioned the Seaside Home and what occured there. He was there, and the events were likely to have been significant enough to remain in memory. We were not - and we clearly do not now have all the information/files available to those two men.

So it is surely for US to understand or work out why/what happened. There were obviously reasons (and there were issues - the "with difficulty" phrase to me, for those men at that time, would have referred to administration) and it did take place.

The only possible slip, for me, may have been that Swanson meant to write Seamen's Home rather than Seaside, as the former was in London and we do not have to consider such a long trip. But I do not rule the Seaside version out.

Not that I believe there was such a witness,or an identification.

I'm unclear about what this statement means, given the qualification in the next sentence.

Do you mean that there was no trip to a Home (whichever) and no witness existed, or that in terms of their veracity, witness and what he said were worthless? I find it difficult to believe that the police at the time would have gone to all that evident trouble if they did not believe there was SOME point.

I don't think we can just dismiss Swanson/Anderson and what they wrote on the basis of our instincts and without corroboration - that is neither the historical method nor a sensible/logical way of handling evidence.

Phil

Phil

[Jonathan H]

The historical method -- like it or not -- is to try and match, or make sense of bits of contradictory information as best we can, until another source turns up which upends that paradigm.

The Evans/Rumbelow theory is that fading memories have substituted bits of data, in an inevitably self-serving way, eg. We did solve it! The public hammering we suffered was totally unfair!

At the time, Feb 1891, that a mad Polish Jew, Aaron Kosminski, was permanently sectioned, a Jewish witness, almost certainly Lawende, said 'no' in a 'confrontation' with a Ripper suspect, in a sensational, tabloid-saturated case involving the murder of a young and pretty 'Unfortunate' (as Kelly had been).

It is just a coincidence that the Sadler debacle involves a Seaman's Home, and that this element has arguably lodged in Anderson and/or Swanson's memory becoming the Seaside Home, in a much more reassuring, less painful tale -- even if only existing in Swanson's mind?

Is it really just a coincidence that Lawende described a youngish, lithe, fair (eg. Gentile) man dressed as a seaman, and that a fading memory has arguably extracted that 'Jack the Sailor' element -- because it did not a fit a Polish Jew -- and transferred it across to a police location, one by the sea?

People ask why would the police take the fiend to such a remote location for an identification.? Well, they probably wouldn't. It is just bits of data banging around an aging, not senile mind, like a pinball, and rearranging itself as coherently, and pleasingly as it can; to substitute Tom Sadler, a seaman, with 'Kosminski', now positively identified -- yet still a 'no' -- at a sea-location.

Predictably the pleasing element, that the Polish Jew was long deceased, also becomes part of the mythos, though totally inaccurate.

I have asked so many times if this is really all just a coincidence?

[Chris]

It is just a coincidence that the Sadler debacle involves a Seaman's Home, and that this element has arguably lodged in Anderson and/or Swanson's memory becoming the Seaside Home, in a much more reassuring, less painful tale -- even if only existing in Swanson's mind?

The problem with this theory is that the circumstances were so different from what Swanson described in his annotations. It would require him to have been extremely confused - to a much greater degree than we have any evidence for.

One point worth noting is that the official name of the institution in question was the Sailors' Home, not the Seamen's Home. It is possible to find some instances of it being called the Seamen's Home, but they are very few and far between.

[Chris]

If it was simply a matter of wanting to hold the identification in private out of concern for Kosminsky and his family, couldn't he have simply been arrested on a pretext - say disorderly conduct, for instance - then taken to a holding cell at a police station out of the area and there subjected to identification?

I have thought about this possibility, but it would certainly be understandable if the family didn't wish to risk it. As far as I know, the police didn't broadcast the reasons for every arrest they made. All the locals would see would be the suspect being arrested and taken away - the pretext would be invisible to them. That might be a dangerous thing in the atmosphere of panic that existed.

And of course, there is still the possibility that they wished to conceal what was happening from the suspect himself. Surely he would immediately see through such a pretext - if he were the murderer.

Another question: Has anyone attempted to locate the records of the Seaside Home for the period in question?

If you mean the Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Hove, the answer is yes, but no relevant records appear to exist.

[Chris]

The Brighton Seaside home wasnt opened until 1894(?). But i think its reasonable to assume other homes were used in Brighton before this date.

The Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Hove was opened in March 1890.

One other Seaside Home with connections to the City Police was the Morley House Seaside Convalescent Home for Working Men near Dover. Unlike the Hove Home it was intended mainly for civilians, so it would have been possible for Aaron Kozminski to have been sent there as a patient:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=310

[Chris]

Incidently, I'm used to spelling the suspect's name as Kosminsky instead of Kozminsky. Is there a preferred spelling?

It did vary on occasion, but Aaron was born as a Kozminski and died as a Kozminski, so that's the one I prefer:

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

As with most bits of data, it can cut both ways.

That it was mostly, though not entirely called the Sailor's Home, means that a fading memory straining to remember could think to itself that it was not confusing it with the Seaside Home -- whilst forgetting that the linking neuron is the more obscure Seaman's Home morphing into the Seaside Home.

It can also be argued that you are observing Swanson though the wrong end of the telescope.

Instead of there not being evidence of a hopelessly confused memory -- therefore the marginalia must be mostly accurate -- how about the marginalia is demonstrably false, and therefore this is the evidence of a dodgy memory.

The Marginalia has two elements which are self-servingly wrong: there was a 'Ripper' murder after Kosminski's incarceration, Coles, and the two events are so close together, in time, that that it is exactly the kind of memory-cheat that happens to us all.

Secondly the suspect was not deceased 'soon after' being incarcerated.

Therefore it could be argued that perhaps every element of the tale is to be distrusted.

Also, Swanson is providing a tale which arguably disagrees with Anderson as to timing.

The latter, in several examples, has the whole saga wrapped up early. His memoirs imply the un-named Kosminski's being safely caged: early to mid-1889 -- where Macnaghten has backdated the event too in his Report(s)..

Whereas, to even mention the 'Seaside Home' is arguably to show some sort of cognition on Swanson's part that this suspect was out and about for years after the Kelly atrocity -- though that is, admittedly, not the theme of the jottings.

Swanson is, in my opinion, either fusing the two young pretty victims, Kelly and Coles, or recording Anderson's confusions about them.

To me it is unbelieveable that the Ripper could be so definitely indentified and for it not to leak to any other policemen, or to the press, or not be mentioned in the Mac Report(s).

That it could be a totally unknown story until 1910, especially when Macnaghten -- who knows nothing of any such identification -- is the much more reliable source in terms of the duration of the Ripper hunt, and that Druitt was really a too-late suspect.

[Phil H]

I really cannot let this comment pass by:

The historical method -- like it or not -- is to try and match, or make sense of bits of contradictory information as best we can, until another source turns up which upends that paradigm.

In its cynicism and hopelessness, this belittles every professional historian working today or in previous generations.

The historical method is a process - evolved over many years -of weighing and evaluating evidence in aprecise and logical way. Thus it will take a document and examine such things as who wrote it, when and why, what its intention was, what the sources and reputaion of the author might have been etc etc. It will use internal and external evidence, note the views and conclusions of other reputable authorities and generally nothing like the haphazard, mosaic-like approach described in the comment I have quoted.

Serious historians do not just toss out "contradictory information" - at least without good cause (such as corroboration of a differing view from other sources etc; contradictory physical evidence and so on). How is this "policed" or audited - by peer review - the accolades or brickbats of others considered able to express an expert view.

That is why those "revisionist" on subjects like the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the age of the Sphinx, the purpose of the pyramids and similar modern hypotheses that are rejected by the professionals get so angry when their theories are belittled or rejected because they do not fit the conventional wisdom.

That accepted approach/interpretation has been built up over the lifetimes of many writers and academics and may not be perfect (it can never be that)
but which does have a general acceptance among those qualified to judge because of their exposure to the evidence and their own works (foot-noted and solidly evidence based.

The comment also misunderstands the intent of history. We are not seeking some "truth" that can be recreated - all history is always about interpretation and always says more about US than about the past. Thus to say, it is about trying to "make sense of bits of contradictory information as best we can, until another source turns up" might be literally true but suggests a haphazard and careless process.

I have been reading about JtR for around 40 years now. Ripperology has begun, in the last 20 years or so to throw off the charlatans like Stephen Knight (who promoted "facts" even knowing their falsehood) and journalistic fabulists like Donald McCormick and replace them by serious historians.

I would rate Messrs Begg, Evans, Rumbelow, Fido Sugden and some others (I think Robert Clack, and Philip Hutchinson deserve a mention for their work on London), as first rate, relying on good sources, weighting them in a consistent way, sorting out the wheat and the chaff of fact and fiction and I believe moving us forward in a major way.

I think it is a good thing that the "suspect-based" theories that crop up from time to time are treated with some scorn here on Casebook - the Barnardos, Dodgsons, Clarences and Sickerts may sell books but do not pass muster to the informed. Rob House's new study of Kosminski was interesting to me in that it simply accepted him as a "contemporary suspect" but used its energies on bringing light into the dark places of his Polish background, the family, conditions in East End sweatshops etc. That helps everyone, and I for one am grateful for the enormous labours that Mr House and the others I have mentioned above put in to all our benefits.

Sorry to rant on about what is probably a minor point, but - in my view at least - these things are important.

Phil