Is Kosminski the man really viable?

[Errata]

For all intents and purposes, he did.

I am curious as to what weight you give Mary Berkin's comments.

"It was general knowledge that my grandfather knew the name of the killer, and that there was no evidence except from a Jewish man who would not give evidence for ethical reasons."

How does one spin the Marginalia and her comments into Swanson merely stating Anderson's suspect??

As as aside, I find her comment about "ethical reasons" interesting, as at first glance it appears somewhat sympathetic.

Well, I might quibble with her saying that "it was general knowledge" that her grandfather knew the name of the suspect. If it had been general knowledge, someone would have mentioned it to a reporter friend during a tennis game or something and the man would have been hounded to death. Generally accepted family folklore I would buy, but he did have the book outlining all of that in his house, so someone could have read it as opposed to heard it from Swanson himself.

It's funny, because "ethical reasons" and "moral reasons" are two different things entirely, though it is not perhaps a distinction one might make in a casual comment. To me, "I won't condemn another Jew to death" is moral but not ethical, but "I'm only 99.9% sure that's the guy, and I really don't want to screw this up" is ethical, though perhaps not the most moral route.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Generally accepted family folklore I would buy, but he did have the book outlining all of that in his house, so someone could have read it as opposed to heard it from Swanson himself.

You are really suggesting that is a reasonable explanation of her comment?

[RivkahChaya]

Was that the rule? Because if it was Kosminski, he had been institutionalized previously, which might at least cause some doubts.

There's a difference between being legally insane, and being mentally ill, and that was true even in 1888. To be legally insane, you had to be judged so, and for the issue to come up, you had to commit some kind of crime. If Kosminski really did threaten-- who was it, his sister?-- a relative with a knife, that may have precipitated a commitment. Or his "crime" could have been vagrancy, or something. In the first case, a doctor could judge him no longer a threat, and in the second, a family member could promise to look after him.

The "ethical dilemma" was something I suspect was blown out of proportion.

In the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 1:4), it is stated that in order for a person to receive the death sentence for a crime, there must be at least two witnesses, who must have witnessed the actual crime, and further, warned the person just before he commenced the crime, that it might merit a death sentence. (The intent is to discourage the death penalty from ever being carried out.)

The Talmud and Mishnah are silent on Jews testifying as witnesses in the courts of other countries, because for so many centuries, the Jews lived apart from gentiles. A Jew who was a recent immigrant, and knows Mishnah, but little about English law, other than murderers usually hang, is going to feel that he is in a very difficult spot.

First, it is unlikely that the police would tell him what other witnesses have said, so as not to taint his testimony, and he may not know whether he is the sole witness, but he may think he is. Second, since he did not know what he was seeing until the police came and asked him questions later, he could not fulfill the requirement to actually witness the crime, and to warn the person of the penalty.

It would not matter that the person being identified (I'll just say "Kosminski" from now on, for clarity) was Jewish. There is no special obligation to protect a Jew from punishment, when the Jew is in fact guilty. I have no idea what might have been in the witness's head though, but the idea of a Jew testifying in a gentile court may have been so foreign to him, that possibly he thought Kosminski would be handed over to a rabbinical court. That may sound crazy; however, in other countries, Jews were rarely permitted to testify as witnesses in criminal cases, for the defense or the prosecution, and it was an issue of swearability. Jews wouldn't swear on a Christian bible, and such an act was considered meaningless anyway. Occasionally, a medieval court would come up with a particularly humiliating way to swear in a Jew, so maybe the witness was worried about something like that happening to him, and that's why he didn't want to testify.

It's a whole new world for him. He probably says he wants to consult his rabbi (in the same circumstances, I would), and after a translation, a couple of retellings, and a little speculation, it turned into "ethical dilemma," or "he won't testify against another Jew."

[Errata]

You are really suggesting that is a reasonable explanation of her comment?

No, I think it's a possible explanation. Not knowing the travels of the book in question, I can't really say how reasonable it is. But for example: Let's say Swanson doesn't talk about the suspect. Not to anyone. Which would be appropriate and seemingly in character. Upon his death, his child (or one of his children) inherits the Anderson book with the Marginalia. Upon reading it, he comes away with "Wow. Dad knew who this guy was" and tells his siblings, wife, kids, whoever. And this person either respects his father's wishes that the suspect remain unknown, or never particularly puts together the idea that because he has read this, he too knows who the suspect is. So now the fact that grand dad knew who the suspect was, etc. is generally known in the family, but not generally known in the populace, which we know was not the case.

She said it was "generally known" that her grandfather knew who it was, but the witness wouldn't identify him for ethical reasons. But it wasn't generally known. It was generally know that Queen Victoria's husband had died. It was generally known that syphilis was a sexually transmitted disease. It was generally known that the world was round. I don't think Swanson ever in his life showed up in anything "generally known". So "generally known to his family seems a more logical interpretation of that statement. But how they came to find out is a mystery. We don't know if he told his family, we don't know if he bragged about it when in his cups, we don't know if the marginalia clued them in, or some other document never seen. We don't know.

[Errata]

There's a difference between being legally insane, and being mentally ill, and that was true even in 1888. To be legally insane, you had to be judged so, and for the issue to come up, you had to commit some kind of crime. If Kosminski really did threaten-- who was it, his sister?-- a relative with a knife, that may have precipitated a commitment. Or his "crime" could have been vagrancy, or something. In the first case, a doctor could judge him no longer a threat, and in the second, a family member could promise to look after him.

When he moved from the Workhouse to Colney Hatch, he was evaluated by a doctor, who took a certificate before a judge to have him ruled insane in order to move him to the asylum. And he had committed no crime. So he was declared a person of unsound mind by the courts, which sounds a lot like being declared legally insane. It involved insanity, and a legal pronouncement. Now, I am aware that using insanity as a defense requires a hearing and a pronouncement by a judge. Which appears to be the same process Kosminski went through, except for the being charged with a crime part. And then there is incompetency, and while that is a somewhat different beast now, I don't think it was then. So I'm not entirely clear on the difference between the state declaring someone insane through legal channels, and being declared legally insane.

A clarifying question might be this. If Kosminski had killed a man while inside the asylum, would he have gone through the process of prosecution, and if so, would he have to have undergone the same evaluation for legal insanity, given that a certificate already existed where a judge had already decided he was insane?

[RivkahChaya]

She said it was "generally known" that her grandfather knew who it was, but the witness wouldn't identify him for ethical reasons.

Refresh my memory: when did she say this? it may have been, in her opinion, "generally known," at the time that she said it, but not generally known in the winter of 1888-89.

When he moved from the Workhouse to Colney Hatch, he was evaluated by a doctor, who took a certificate before a judge to have him ruled insane in order to move him to the asylum. And he had committed no crime. So he was declared a person of unsound mind by the courts, which sounds a lot like being declared legally insane. ... then there is incompetency, and while that is a somewhat different beast now, I don't think it was then.

You are right about "insane" and "incompetent" being different, and I really don't have any idea how fine the difference was in 1888, but criminal insanity as a legal concept existed well before 1888, with the M'Naghten rule going back to 1843. I think that in common parlance, using "insane" as a synonym for crazy happened, even though it really had a stricter legal definition.

So I'm not entirely clear on the difference between the state declaring someone insane through legal channels, and being declared legally insane.

For practical purposes, I'm not sure what it was in 1888. Today, it reflects how long you can be held, and whether you can be released into someone else's custody-- someone found insane by a jury can't be released to a relative's care. Someone judged incompetent can, even if the incompetent person might have been taken to a facility at one point after making a verbal threat to harm himself or another person, or been caught damaging property, or doing something like "performing lewd acts," if it amounted to stripping naked, or if the person was loitering on private property and refused to move.

A clarifying question might be this. If Kosminski had killed a man while inside the asylum, would he have gone through the process of prosecution, and if so, would he have to have undergone the same evaluation for legal insanity, given that a certificate already existed where a judge had already decided he was insane?

I don't know. Today, absolutely. You can be incompetent without being insane, and vice versa. being incompetent, but not insane would be a little like a child who commits a crime, and the case is handled by the juvenile system. Someone who is insane, but not incompetent might be someone who functions well on medication, but refuses to take it, and wasn't taking it at the time the crime was committed. Those things didn't exist in 1888.

However, there were different levels of security, and people who just needed looked after, because they couldn't take care of their daily needs were in one place, and people who needed to be in locked cells, and in chains for the safety of the guards and other inmates were in another.

Like I said, I don't know anything about the system in 1888, but right now, you wouldn't be about to transfer a person from essentially a "direct care" facility to a "high security" facility without a judge's order. You also couldn't keep someone in a high security facility without a consistent demonstration of need (documentation of repeated physical attacks on worker or other inmates), or a sentence of some kind that was the result of a trial for a felony.

1888 wasn't the middle ages, and if anything, people were more optimistic then that "crazy" people could be cured, so to hold someone indefinitely, I'd think you would need to have the person sentenced in court. I am not a lawyer, and especially not a lawyer from 1888, though.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Refresh my memory: when did she say this? it may have been, in her opinion, "generally known," at the time that she said it, but not generally known in the winter of 1888-89.

She said it in 2006, and she is clearly referring to "generally known" as within the family not the world at large. Also she does not say the name of the Ripper was known within the family, which fits with our belief that Swanson would not give up the name outside of a private note in Anderson's book.

http://jtrforums.com/showpost.php?p=180755&postcount=1

[RivkahChaya]

Hmmm.

"It was general knowledge that my grandfather knew the name of the killer," is a little bit different from saying "It's general knowledge that the killer was So-and-so."

I mean, it's general knowledge that something crashed in Roswell, NM in the summer of 1947, and it's general knowledge that a lot of people believe it was something alien to earth, those are both correct statements, but it would be incorrect to say "It's general knowledge that an alien spaceship crashed in Roswell, NM in 1947."

If you read carefully, the grandchildren are hedging what they say. Nevill Swanson merely states what he thought Swanson thought, not what his, that is, Nevill's, personal belief was, and Mary Berkin uses passive sentences to say what people generally thought Swanson thought, but she avoids coming out and saying "We know who it was."

I find it difficult to believe that if there was really no evidence beyond one witness, who did not actually witness a crime in action, but simply saw a suspect with a victim immediately before the crime, that Swanson would rest absolute conviction on the idea of that person as JTR. Berkin must mean "No admissible evidence," but some other evidence that couldn't be presented in court, like second-hand accounts. Or Swanson had interviewed Kosminski. Or she just doesn't know what she's talking about. It makes me wonder if there is something the family is not telling, but I can't imagine why, since they seem pretty intent on promoting the idea that Swanson had solved the case.

At any rate, the family's firm belief that Swanson was correct isn't evidence of anything.

1885 is a misprint for 1895, right?

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, now that I've thought a bit more, "generally known" is a pretty bold statement for referring to people outside the family, because even thought almost everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of Jack the Ripper, and most can probably place him in London in the late Victorian era, I really doubt that the name "Swanson" is either generally known, or generally associated with the Ripper case. Even people who have seen a couple of Ripper documentaries, and read some "unsolved mystery" books probably don't recognize the name. I think only people like us, who post to JTR MBs, and read books by Begg and Skinner, or people who are experts (like, academics) on either Scotland Yard, or late Victorian London, could place the name.

That doesn't mean that Swanson's direct descendant isn't over-estimating his importance, but I think it's more likely that "generally known" refers to the family, than to the public at large.

[Simon Wood]

Hi RivkahChaya,

You have highlighted a very good point.

Did the reluctant Jewish witness see the Seaside Home "suspect" before, during or after any particular murder?

If it was the former or the latter, his evidence would have been circumstantial and not "the means of murderer being hanged."

Regards,

Simon

[RivkahChaya]

Hi RivkahChaya,

You have highlighted a very good point.

Did the reluctant Jewish witness see the Seaside Home "suspect" before, during or after any particular murder?

If it was the former or the latter, his evidence would have been circumstantial and not "the means of murderer being hanged."

I know, right?

I can't believe that someone who witnessed a direct act of violence that immediately precipitated a murder, let alone actually watched a woman's throat cut, or saw someone eviscerating a human corpse, wouldn't have raised some kind of alarm at the time. So I can think only that this witness saw a man with a victim immediately before the coroner's estimated TOD, or saw someone leaving a crime scene quickly, right after the TOD.

In the case of the former, the power of subpoena existed back then, and in the case of the latter, I don't see how that identification could be such overwhelming evidence as to make the entire case for the police. The only way to reconcile all this, is to think that the police knew other things that were not admissible as evidence, but were already fairly convinced that Kosminski was guilty, and the identification cinched it; however, they couldn't go to court with just the ID, and were biding their time, and then sort of got lucky, with Kosminski doing whatever it was that allowed a civil commitment.

Nowadays, in the US, "victim's rights" is a big deal, and everyone talks about "justice for So-and-so," and it's not enough to get someone off the streets-- he has to be off specifically by being convicted of a particular charge of a particular crime against a particular victim. I don't think people worried much about that then, and it would have been enough to get the Ripper off the streets, however it happened.

[RivkahChaya]

Do we know whether, and if so, how well, Aaron Kosminski spoke English? I'm presuming that Swanson didn't speak Polish or Yiddish, so if Swanson ever interviewed Kosminski, it would have been in English. If Swanson required an interpreter, then I think it's unlikely the interview could have been kept a secret-- or just somehow lost to history-- but if the only participants were Swanson and Kosminski, then it's more likely not to have come down to us. I'm not sure why Swanson would necessarily want to kept the interview a secret, since I don't think there were problems with rights of the accused, having counsel present, etc., particularly since Kosminski wasn't charged with anything, and at any rate, you'd think Swanson would have mentioned it.

But does it strike anyone else as odd, once you give it some thought, that the police would go to the trouble of bringing a witness all the way for an identification, and then drop the matter? This must have been a pretty darned good witness for the police not even to have interviewed the suspect once he was pointed out. The police must have been absolutely certain of two separate things: one was that whoever the witness had seen was without a doubt the murderer, and the other was that the witness was capable of identifying him without a doubt. The first one makes me wonder what the witness saw, and the the second makes me wonder if the witness actually knew Kosminski. Anyway, to drop the matter, satisfied that the Ripper was safely away from the public, that must have been a really, really good witness.

Actually, it all smells fishy to me. There's either information missing, or Swanson was telling tall tales, which since he was talking about something that happened a long time ago, you can't really blame him. I mean, there was less interest in JTR in 1912 than there is now, and who doesn't exaggerate, and try to make their war stories a little juicier than they really are?

[Wickerman]

I am curious as to what weight you give Mary Berkin's comments.

"It was general knowledge that my grandfather knew the name of the killer, and that there was no evidence except from a Jewish man who would not give evidence for ethical reasons."

That is a fair question, and to be honest I am still waiting to see a particular reply.

I forget who asked her but, I understand Berkin was asked if that "knowledge" developed after 1987 when the marginalia surfaced or long before. I have been waiting to see some kind of response from Berkin.

That aside..
Because her opinion is third party we do not know what she claims is factual. It is not unreasonable to contemplate that Mary Berkin might choose to promote her grandfather's image by also asserting that he claimed to know the name of the killer.

I think a number of us could relate to possessing a larger than life image of one of our relatives. I had a grandfather who was in the Dublin Met., he sought out a wanted IRA suspect, found him, was shot by the mans father, but still arrested the suspect and dragged him through the backstreets of Dublin back to his own station house.
What little I know about him leaves me with this larger than life image, but I cannot claim to know the truth of the matter. I only know what I have been told. It may be a similar case with Mary Berkin.

Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

I think a number of us could relate to possessing a larger than life image of one of our relatives. I had a grandfather who was in the Dublin Met., he sought out a wanted IRA suspect, found him, was shot by the mans father, but still arrested the suspect and dragged him through the backstreets of Dublin back to his own station house.
What little I know about him leaves me with this larger than life image, but I cannot claim to know the truth of the matter. I only know what I have been told. It may be a similar case with Mary Berkin.

I think you are right, but I think the distinction between what she thinks Swanson believed, and what she personally believes, is really important.

We're really dealing with several different ideas, and this isn't made clear in the article.

What did Swanson really believe at the time?

What does his family think he believed, based on stories he told later?

What does the family generally believe with regard to Aaron Kosminski?

What does Mary Berkin personally believe?

How reliable a source is Mary Berkin on the first two items?

How relevant is her personal opinion?

There's either a missing open quote in the article, or it's obscured by the black box, so I can't tell where she's being paraphrased, and where she is being quoted directly. Nevill Swanson is clearer that he is talking about what Swanson thought, and not what he personally thinks. He still uses language that leaves room for the possibility that as strong as Swanson's personal conviction was, he could have been wrong.

[Hunter]

But does it strike anyone else as odd, once you give it some thought, that the police would go to the trouble of bringing a witness all the way for an identification, and then drop the matter?

According to Swanson the police didn't simply drop the matter; he was placed under surveillance by City CID until he was taken away to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colony Hatch.