Kosminski and Victim DNA Match on Shawl

[Stewart P Evans]

No

This is Sotheby's? If they dated it to 1902-04, why describe it as late 19th century?
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott

No, it's Lacy Scott and Knight of Bury St Edmunds. The description they gave, I presume, was based upon what the seller, and possibly other advisers, told them. It carries no authority in dating the item accurately.

[mickreed]

Indeed, Stewart Evans posted an excerpt from an interview with the vendor's mother previously, which indicated she had very little idea how Amos Simpson came by the "shawl".

We sure go round in circles on this thread. I suppose it's inevitably given the size of the thread, and the fact that new people are joining all the while. But Tom raised this earlier, Phil did, I did, and Mabuse, about three days ago, stated that a family member had confirmed directly that they are sceptical of the story which the consided 'dubious'.

[Monty]

Simpson's pension record states 'Appointed Act:Sergeant 31st August 1881' and on resignation 'late a Police Acting Sergeant' which again seems to indicate that it was a substantive rank.

Thank you for clarifying here, and the previous post Stewart. Valuable input.

Colin,

The earliest reference I've come across re examinations is 1895, however these in turn refer to earlier examinations years previous, it seems there was a setting of new examination papers in the 1890s.

The examinations were set by two bodies, the Police and the Government, and taken at Scotland Yard. They consisted of written arithmetic, grammar and procedural questions, and later an interview in front of a board made up of one of the four Chief Constables, and around four Divisional Superintendents, on a rota basis.

I've included this in my book, Capturing Jack the Ripper (apologies for the plug), which I hope some shall find interesting to read.

Monty

[Toofew]

Other DNA?

Yeah! There are those in this forum who argue - 'Good for Edwards. He's making a quid.' Well, so are those who rip off old ladies or scam people out of their life savings.

Now, I'm not putting Edwards in those categories - yet. He may really believe all this stuff about Amos Simpson, and Michaelmas, and so on. In which case he's very naïve and a rotten historian. If he he doesn't believe it, then he is a scam merchant. Time will perhaps tell.

The only thing going for him may be the DNA. Despite the many people who've basically said 'let's wait and see what it really tells us', there are those who are accepting uncritically Edwards's interpretation of Jari's work. Only Jari can give us the ins and outs of his work, and he hasn't yet. A few press stories, and even an intelligent and thoughtful radio interview, aren't enough. Particularly when the radio interview is laced with the kinds of caveats you'd expect any intelligent scientist to lay out.

Mick, you seem to be following this pretty closely so perhaps you have heard whether any DNA of unknown origin was extracted from the "whatever" piece of cloth. It logically seems that over the years, others should have left some DNA imprint upon the cloth.

Thanks for any light you could shed on this.

Billy

[mickreed]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for this highly informative reply, much appreciated. I got my information from the Leeds University website http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/...ack_the_ripper, which stated that the blue dye on the shawl was tested using the magnetic nuclear resonance technique and that this determined that the shawl predated the murders.

I must say, although I am a natural skeptic myself I am becoming increasingly impressed with the weight of circumstantial evidence, especially if it is correct that Kosminski's haplogroup was shared by only 7200 Londonders at the time, and presumably therefore only a few hundred Whitechapel residents, many of whom can be easily dismissed as serious suspects: too old, wrong gender, too young, infirmity. In fact, I'm now seriously considering demoting Robert Mann from my number one to my number 2 suspect!

Thanks for the link John. There, David Miller is quoted as saying:

“This, together with work undertaken by experts at Liverpool John Moores University, has allowed us to identify Kosminski as the alleged murderer.”

Note the ALLEGED. All he is saying that there is a possibility that Kosminski did it. It has yet to be proven.

Even if AK's haplogroup was shared only by 7200 Londoners, they would virtually all have been Ashkenazi Jews, nearly all of whom lived in Whitechapel.

[Robert]

Hi Stewart

Yes, OK he was Acting Sgt when he left. I just think it's strange that he'd list himself as a constable in 1891. Maybe he wasn't that bothered about his rank.

[pinkmoon]

boring.

This is all getting rather boring now we all seem to be saying the same things me included .

[Chris]

We sure go round in circles on this thread. I suppose it's inevitably given the size of the thread, and the fact that new people are joining all the while. But Tom raised this earlier, Phil did, I did, and Mabuse, about three days ago, stated that a family member had confirmed directly that they are sceptical of the story which the consided 'dubious'.

Oh yes - it's not the first time I've quoted what Stewart posted, either.

And a fair proportion of the questions people are asking now have already been answered - some of them several times.

What this thread really needs is a FAQ.

[Monty]

Hi Stewart

Yes, OK he was Acting Sgt when he left. I just think it's strange that he'd list himself as a constable in 1891. Maybe he wasn't that bothered about his rank.

Hi Robert,

The term 'constable' actually covered all ranks, from Assistant Commissioner down to the lowest rank. Commissioners were actually Justices of the Peace until the 1980s, when they were altered to constables also.

However, that said, I have seen censuses with official ranks noted, this mix, to me, means what is written in a census should not be taken as gospel.

Monty

[Robert]

OK Monty. Well, it's not important - just a little puzzle. Your explanation sounds plausible.

[lynn cates]

bifurcation

Hello Wolfie.

"Let's assume the shawl/table runner/pot plant holder was at the murder scene, but it was left on the ground by Eddowes or Kosminski, to the side of the act, before the murder began."

OK. I can do that.

"The item was splashed from a distance and either collected again by Kosminski, assuming it was his bait and trophy item to relive the acts again in private. He then dropped the item in his rush to leave the scene."

Where would he drop it? If it's close, it should be on the inventory; if far, how would Simpson link it to Kate?

Cheers.
LC

[John G]

Well, I posted it on the forum and said that the translation was done by Google Translate, but then Christer, who's Swedish, translated it from the original Swedish (it's a Swedish language, Finnish paper), and confirmed the translation.

I'm not surprised Dr Jari now thinks he was taken advantage of; its pretty clear from the Radio 4 interview that he thought he was taking part in a serious scientific study, which he intended to publish in a scientific journal, and then Russell Edwards starts making statements inferring that the evidence clearly and categorical proves Kosminski was JTR, which it clearly doesn't!

I wonder if he also feels mislead about the provenance of the shawl, which is virtually non-existent unless you accept the unlikely story of Amos Simpson abandoning his beat in Islington and embarking on a journey of several miles, on foot, in the direction of the City, which was outside his jurisdiction anyway, presumably based upon some vague rumour that a murder may have taken place there! Frankly, London was such a labyrinth at the time he would have been more likely to have got lost and ended up in Croydon!

Nonetheless, I believe non of this takes away from the valuable forensic evidence that Dr Jari has provided, i.e the mtDNA match, which I trust is not in dispute although far from conclusive.

[mickreed]

Mick, you seem to be following this pretty closely so perhaps you have heard whether any DNA of unknown origin was extracted from the "whatever" piece of cloth. It logically seems that over the years, others should have left some DNA imprint upon the cloth.

Thanks for any light you could shed on this.

Billy

G'day Billy.

Thanks for getting in touch. Well, that's the rub. So far as I can see we don't know yet. Edwards, presumably, is only telling us what he wants us to hear, or maybe he doesn't understand it either, or more likely both.

We can be certain that there would have been a huge amount of contamination over the years, but how they dealt with that, we do not know.

We have no real information about the science. It's either mediated through Edwards, the media, or users of these forums. Until we get full exposure of the science through peer-reviewed articles, we are stuffed.

Dr Jari is, I'm absolutely sure, honest and competent. He may still be wrong - because anyone can be wrong - but what worries me is that he seems much more cautious when we do get to hear him than others would suggest. And now we have him apparently saying, in a Finnish newspaper, that he has been 'taken advantage of' by the author and publisher.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Stewart,

Thank you.

I believe I am correct in saying therefore that both an expert from Sotherby's and from the auction house mentioned described the pattern as printed, no? If I am incorrect, my apologies.

But if so I personally am quite astounded that two representations from two aucton houses- one being THE most famous in the world- missed the fact that apparently the pattern was NOT printed- but painted on.

If true then frankly I am astonished.

No doubt I will hopefully be corrected on the matter by someone somewhere :-)

Many thanks again

Phil

[Chris]

Now that does look like an interesting method. Be nice to know what the error is likely to be ie. +/- x years.

There's a graph of the calibration curve with error bars here:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac201746u

It looks as though the error is on the order of decades. One suggestion is that the "shawl" is Regency, and I can believe from that graph that the technique could resolve the difference between that and the 1880s. It's less clear whether it could distinguish between 1888 and the date of 1902+ that's been bandied around.