Koz - No First Name in Marginalia

[Trevor Marriott]

The world can at least be grateful that Trev hasn't joined the often loony fringe of Biblical scholarship. Since he has huge trouble understanding how official files can be known to have existed, he simply wouldn't be able to comprehend how and why it can be said that the New Testament Gospels drew on earlier and now lost books.

However, one observes how convenient it is to Trevor to be able to discount every piece of evidence by claiming it is either forged or didn't exist, or was somebody's fantasy. You can't really argue against reasoning like that. Not that is is 'reasoning', of course. It's utter nonsense. But the marginalia is a forgery, so that's got rid of. No proof, of course. Just a bunch of unoriginal questions which have been asked a thousand times, and argued about, and written about. And there are no official records about Kosminski, and since he denies that records must have existed otherwise Macnaghten wouldn't have heard about him, so there's no evidence, not even presumed evidence, that Kosminski was a suspect.

It's great, isn't it. With 'reasoning' like that you can argue anything.

The MM is and has proved to be unreliable, The only thing you can rely on with any certainty is the fact that in The AV he exonatrates Kosminski. He refers to four likely suspects they all could not have been JTR one some or all had to be exonarated at some point.

In the light of that it matters not what records or files there were on Kosminski because it is clear that the contents of those were also unreliable. But no its not suffficient in the eyes of some resecarchers who have hidden agendas for keeping Kosminisk as an active viable suspect to this day. They still want to suggest that MM was wrong to exonerate this man and that 124 years later they know more than one of the men on the front line at the time.

Swanson must have also known about Kominski from The MM or from what he had been told as Scotlan Yard, and thereore must have known about the exoneration so why would he then write about some mythical ID parade in this marginalia and name someone who was no longer a suspect.

But of course someone not so au fait with all the ripperological facts in later years may not have been aware of The full contants of the AV and that could have been there biggest mistake.

[Bridewell]

To PaulB

We will of course agree to disagree, as ever.

I don't accept that I am slanting anything.

I am simply interpreting limited and incomplete sources in an attempt to create a unifying theory without loose ends.

I am joining dots together whilst always conceding that the dots can be joined other ways -- as you did with your previous post about Macnaghten.

Such conclusions can only ever be provisional.

By the way, when I wrote about the potential unreliability of the Swanson Marginalia, I did not mean its authenticity. I was clumsily referring to Swanson's credibility as a primary source writing in a private document -- and making errors about his own alleged chief suspect.

All sources have values and limitations, the disagreement is over the balance. Are they more reliable than unreliable?

I'll just tidy up a few other bits and pieces.

I have seen you write that before, about Mac's memoirs; about him pointing to a Thames suicide.

In 'Laying the Ghost ...' he never mentions the location and method of the likely Ripper's suicide.

Never even hints at it.

I agree, you'd think he would. What with his eye for the memorable anecdote and vivid detail even if exaggerated?

But he doesn't. Perversely neither 'drowned' nor 'doctor' make it into his public account.

Is that slanting it when I write 'perverse'?

I don't think so. It is perverse, that the Ur-source of the drowned doctor Super-suspect drops both those elements in his own account.

Why did he do that?

It was one of the first surprises when I read the whole chapter in 'Days of My Years' for myself rather than rely on the interpretation of secondary sources -- those which include the memoirs of course.

Well, [the un-named] Druitt wasn't a doctor and in the one account of his for the public under his own name Mac was careful not to commit himself to this error -- or should I write: lie? Nothing about what the 'Simon Pure' did for a living ...?

The river omission is even odder, as it was true. He thus denied his readers the most colourful and vivid bit about that suspect; his penitential plunge into a river (eg. see Sims what does with it in 1907)?

Griffiths and Sims had made it consistently clear to the public that the suicidal doctor drowned himself in the Thames, the latter even making it crystal clear that it was within hours of the Kelly murder.

The MP had made it clear in a source you recently found that he stuck by his opinion, despite the arrest of Sadler and apparent police scepticism -- that the Ripper had killed himself 'the same evening' as the final murder.

My theory is that Macnaghten could not include the river detail if he wanted to concede that this suspect did not kill himself 'the same evening', because it exposed a compression of events for the sake of a melodramatic climax.

It made the story impossible, so it had to go.

for if you elongate the gap between Kelly's murder and the fiend's own murder, then how can he be hanging about for longer than it takes to stagger to the Thames? It's already quite a stretch to even believe that nobody saw him on his way to the river, but any longer than a straight line from Miller's Ct. the Thames ('raving and shrieking' in Sims) and it is rendered ludicrous.

In 1914, Macnaghten stretches the gap to a loose twenty-four hours and shrugs that it might have been longer.

In reality it was was longer. Again the cosy old paradigm of the police chief who did not know much about the basic details of his preferred suspect is arguably shown to be very fragile.

Now, either the cronies were 'credulous' or they were in on it, that the suspect was being fictionalised.

Is that slanting it? I don't think so. It is interpreting contradictory data.

We know that 'Aberconway' is not a copy of a definitive document of state, nor does it reflect the real archived version about Druitt's worth as a suspect? That it was never sent to the Home Office.

Yet Sims, in 1903, breathtakingly swats away Abberline, no less than a genuine policeman who investigated the Whitechapel murders, because the playwright knows about the 'Home Office Report' -- which isn't one.

Now either Sims wrote that sincerely (and rudely) and therefore was misled by Macnaghten -- and was therefore credulous via his friendship with an high-ranking cop -- or he was in on it, and knew full well that the police of 1888 were of course not about to arrest the 'mad doctor'.

The Major probably knew that 'family' in the 'Home Office Report' had become 'friends'. That's deceiving his readers, a piece of deceit which Mac never corrected in Sims. The latter has more material on the likely Ripper, which also spins the story away from Druitt, eg. being in an asylum.

Now that is fact, Paul.

It is a fact that Sims' profile takes you away from the real Montague Druitt. The question is how and why did that happen?

The old paradigm said because Macnaghten began to sincerely forget bits and pieces.

I accepted that until I read your 2006 book, specifically your suggestive line that perhaps Mac should not be taken 'literally' in all that he writes?

For example, his memoirs deny that Druitt had ever been 'detained' in an asylum, or that he was about to be arrested, or that he killed himself within hours of the Kelly murder and thus strongly indicate, to say the least, that he was not forgetful but instead affably manipulative.

I respect the interpretation of Anderson as the most reliable police source and more sources found in the future may show it to be stronger again. In this interpretation Macnaghten becomes a sideshow: a man with merely a theory which may have hardened as a well-earned retirement beckoned (and he was seriously ill) whereas Anderson allegedly alone among these police sources, actually claimed that the Ripper had been definitely identified. Since Mac did not know much about Druitt, then we can judge him to be less reliable and certainly less emphatic than his former boss.

Then battle is joined over Anderson's values and limitations, and so on.

Yet I believe this interpretation to be quite unconvincing because Mac's 1913 comments, and his 1914 memoirs, and propagating his opinion via reliable surrogates, and Druitt-as-the-Ripper originating in Dorset, show that he too was just as convinced and just as certain about his chief suspect.

Sure, they both might have been wrong, but one of them might have been right.

That could have been Sir Melville Macnaghten because he, arguably, seems to have a better handle -- based on the frustrating fragments left to us -- on both the real Aaron Kosminski and the real Montague Druitt.

I offer the working theory that the 'North country Vicar' of 1899 is writing about Druitt and therefore we most certainly do have a provisional explanation as to why Macnaghten was so posthumously certain, along with the family and the politician.

The drawback is that 'epileptic mania' does not literally exist ...

I don't accept that I am slanting anything.

Maybe not but, in a post on a Swanson Marginalia thread, you make two mentions of Swanson and fourteen of MacNaghten. Much of what you say is very interesting, but perhaps better said on a MacNaghten thread, given the misplaced emphasis here.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Phil Carter]

Hi Trevor,

Glad you cleared that one up. I obviously mistook the meaning of your 'totally agree' comment earlier in the thread.




If you were the sort of person to filch papers from files, would you nick the rubbish and leave the good stuff? Wouldn't you actually nick the good stuff and leave the rubbish? No coincidence needed, just a bit of good, old-fashioned, common-sense deduction.

Regards, Bridewell.

Hello Colin,

Then whoever nicked what, KNEW what they were looking for. The meat from the bone.

Wasn't it in Don Rumbelow's book (correct me if I'm wrong) that a lady wrote to him mentioning that her late policeman husband left a cache of old Special Branch papers in a box under the bed?

Nice to know...eh?

best wishes

Phil

[Bridewell]

Swanson's Knowledge

Swanson must have also known about Kominski from The MM or from what he had been told as Scotlan Yard

Trevor,

At the specific direction of Sir Charles Warren, Swanson (who didn't retire till 1903) saw every single document pertaining to the Metropolitan Police's involvement in the Whitechapel Murders enquiry. Why will he have needed to read the MM to know that Kosminski was a suspect?

Regards, Bridewell.

[lynn cates]

suspect

Hello Colin.

"Why will he have needed to read the MM to know that Kosminski was a suspect?"

Umm, perhaps because he really was not?

Cheers.
LC

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Trevor,

Glad you cleared that one up. I obviously mistook the meaning of your 'totally agree' comment earlier in the thread.




If you were the sort of person to filch papers from files, would you nick the rubbish and leave the good stuff? Wouldn't you actually nick the good stuff and leave the rubbish? No coincidence needed, just a bit of good, old-fashioned, common-sense deduction.

Regards, Bridewell.

Yes but there is no evidence to show any ever existed. Just think all the manpower that would have been needed to convey a prisoner in 1888 to Brighton, Sgt and at least two constables. one Inspector perhaps, so theres four people aware of this Id procedure and four people aware of the outcome. Add to that staff from the seaside home where this supposdely took place three or more, all aware of the outcome, and no doubt others who these would have later spoken to.

The outcome the positive identification of the Ripper yet from that day forth no one said a word zilch nothing,and to this day no one has come forth to say I was there, or my grandfather said this or that. Nothing written in any police officers memoirs save for Hans Chritsian.

And in later years officers who were on the ground say nothing other than we didnt have a clue. Even Chief Insp Moore who was Staff officer to the commisioner mentions nothing other than in a 1913 police review article he beleived that the killer was a merchant seaman. Every piece of paper every file heading to the commissioner would have passed through his fingers first.

Its fantasy its made up it didnt happen had it happened we would have know about it in the absence od all of this there must be a doubt about the marginalia.

Playing devils advocate to please some.

The only other possible explantion is that if Swanson wrote the marginalia then at the time he had completly lost his marbles and wrote seaside home instead of seamans home in reference to Sadler, but even that doesnt stand up because Sadler did not have a brother and so following his ID parade could not have been taken back to his brothers house.

Oh what a tangled web is weaved as first they flatter to deceive

[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor,

At the specific direction of Sir Charles Warren, Swanson (who didn't retire till 1903) saw every single document pertaining to the Metropolitan Police's involvement in the Whitechapel Murders enquiry. Why will he have needed to read the MM to know that Kosminski was a suspect?

Regards, Bridewell.

Swanson left that position in December 1889 and went back to his normal duties.

It is suggested that Kosminski never came into the frame until 1891. By then all the ripper files were gathering dust.

[PaulB]

You are not able to prove that anything connected to this was lost or destroyed or that it ever exsited in the first place.

If it did ever exist what a coincidnce evidence to show perhaps who JTR was, lost or destroyed, and look at all the rubbish police files and records that has been left behind and not destroyed or lost.

As I said before its a cop out used by those who champion Kosminski and the marginalia. I would have thought you with your experience would be one of the first to question this mythical ID procedure which went against all known police protocol and procedures of the day. If there is a doubt about that there has to be a doubt about eveyhtibg else connected to the marginalia. They both stand or fall together. !

It is perfectly acceptable to postulate the existence of source materials that no longer exist, and it is possible to do so with as much certainty as if they were on a table in front of you. You do not understand this, thus you cannot accept it, but in your ignorance, all very reasonable to you, no doubt, you look very silly.

Now, this has been explained to you several times, so please start listening and taking this on board: YOU are saying that there was no file about Kosminski. That is YOUR argument. What you are being told is that there were files that have gone missing. There is absolutely no argument about that. We even have verbatim transcripts of documents that were in some of them. It is a fact. There were files that have gone missing. Yet YOU claim that there were no papers about Kosminski in any of them. And none about Druitt. And none about Ostrog. And none... And so, what is asked of you is: how do YOU know?

Now, you know, I know, and almost everyone here knows that any criminal investigation generates paperwork which is filed, so any investigation involving Kosminski, no matter how small, would have generated paperwork. Any suspicion about him being Jack the Ripper would have generated paperwork. It would have done. No question. So where is it? I'll tell you, if it existed, it has gone missing. That it is missing does not mean it never existed. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Keep talking about documents never having existed because they don't exist anymore and you'll hear that phrase over and over again.




it is not being said that there were files about Kosmisnki.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Trevor,

Swanson was relieved of his "eyes and ears" brief in December 1888.

Regards,

Simon

[Trevor Marriott]

It is perfectly acceptable to postulate the existence of source materials that no longer exist, and it is possible to do so with as much certainty as if they were on a table in front of you. You do not understand this, thus you cannot accept it, but in your ignorance, all very reasonable to you, no doubt, you look very silly.

Now, this has been explained to you several times, so please start listening and taking this on board: YOU are saying that there was no file about Kosminski. That is YOUR argument. What you are being told is that there were files that have gone missing. There is absolutely no argument about that. We even have verbatim transcripts of documents that were in some of them. It is a fact. There were files that have gone missing. Yet YOU claim that there were no papers about Kosminski in any of them. And none about Druitt. And none about Ostrog. And none... And so, what is asked of you is: how do YOU know?

Now, you know, I know, and almost everyone here knows that any criminal investigation generates paperwork which is filed, so any investigation involving Kosminski, no matter how small, would have generated paperwork. Any suspicion about him being Jack the Ripper would have generated paperwork. It would have done. No question. So where is it? I'll tell you, if it existed, it has gone missing. That it is missing does not mean it never existed. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Keep talking about documents never having existed because they don't exist anymore and you'll hear that phrase over and over again.




it is not being said that there were files about Kosmisnki.

Already answered in reply to your post which I have no doubt you will reply to in your inmitable way

[Trevor Marriott]

Hi Trevor,

Swanson was relieved of his "eyes and ears" brief in December 1888.

Regards,

Simon

Thank you for that I meant to put 1888

[PaulB]

The MM is and has proved to be unreliable, The only thing you can rely on with any certainty is the fact that in The AV he exonatrates Kosminski. He refers to four likely suspects they all could not have been JTR one some or all had to be exonarated at some point.

Sadly, Macnaghten did not exonerate Kosminski. Do you understand that? No, of course you don't. Silly of me to have asked really. Let me put it this way, on what evidence did Macnaghten exonerate Kosminski? What did he suddenly produce, evidence that Kosminski was not in London when the murders were committed?

Actually, I'll tell you what new evidence Macnaghten had that exonerated Kosminski. Her you go. Are you ready for this. He had - none. He simply reviewed the existing evidence. He tells you that. He simply reviewed the existing evidence and after carful and deliberate consideration he felt inclined - inclined, mark you; a word you seem unable to see or perhaps don't appreciate the significance of' he felt inclined to exonerate Kosminski and Ostrog. And he felt inclined to exonerate them in favour of - ta da, his own favoured suspect, the man against whom he had always harboured strong suspicions. Now, if there is anybody more open to the charge of bias, Macnaghten is going to take some beating. But we don't have to worry about that. What matters is that Macnaghten didn't really exonerate anyone - except in his own mind. And yours.

In the light of that it matters not what records or files there were on Kosminski because it is clear that the contents of those were also unreliable. But no its not suffficient in the eyes of some resecarchers who have hidden agendas for keeping Kosminisk as an active viable suspect to this day. They still want to suggest that MM was wrong to exonerate this man and that 124 years later they know more than one of the men on the front line at the time.

Nah, sorry Trev. Another nice try, but still no banana. You see, there are no researchers with hidden agendas. You've tried that nonsense in the past with all your drivel about cartels. That's just an easy, easy option for folk like you with nothing to back up your arguments. It's sud sad.

Swanson must have also known about Kominski from The MM or from what he had been told as Scotlan Yard, and thereore must have known about the exoneration so why would he then write about some mythical ID parade in this marginalia and name someone who was no longer a suspect.

But of course someone not so au fait with all the ripperological facts in later years may not have been aware of The full contants of the AV and that could have been there biggest mistake.

I could point out your errors, but you're really not worth it, Trev. Not when you do listen and don't understand. And you do neither.

[PaulB]

Already answered in reply to your post which I have no doubt you will reply to in your inmitable way

How I wish that you had answered it. Sadly, you haven't. Nor will you. Because you can't.

[PaulB]

Deleted. For some reason a post was posted twice, and as much as I know Trvor loves my posts, too much of a good thing and all that...

[Monty]

You are not able to prove that anything connected to this was lost or destroyed or that it ever exsited in the first place.

If it did ever exist what a coincidnce evidence to show perhaps who JTR was, lost or destroyed, and look at all the rubbish police files and records that has been left behind and not destroyed or lost.

As I said before its a cop out used by those who champion Kosminski and the marginalia. I would have thought you with your experience would be one of the first to question this mythical ID procedure which went against all known police protocol and procedures of the day. If there is a doubt about that there has to be a doubt about eveyhtibg else connected to the marginalia. They both stand or fall together. !

Neither are you in a position to state they are ficticious.

Andersons account is noted, and is supported by Swanson. Now unless you can provide evidence discounting either it stands.

Can you provide evidence?

Monty


PS. I know records were destroyed during the war and in the 60s and 70s.