Is Kosminski still the best suspect we have?

[Monty]

and what did they do with such persons, they arrested them and charged them soon after arrest as per guidelines. They didnt send them on holiday to the seaside

I thought you were aware of 1888 procedure?

The Vagrancy Act was a catch all, it gave the police great scope to arrest those of which there was suspicion, but no defined offence.

The location of a parade is due to either convenience or valid reasoning.

Tell me, have the arrest, charge and stop books survived?

Monty

[Trevor Marriott]

That's an interesting point. It's pure speculation, of course, but if the family did make some sort of deal with the police to arrange an identification, a condition might have been that the police would ensure he didn't hang, but was sent to an asylum instead.

As you say speculation. but of course that couldn't have happened because they had a positive ID and took him home not to an asylum

Which when you look at that it rings the warning bells. Here we have the police who have in their hands the Ripper and what do they do simply drop him off home. Surely the first place he would have been taken to would be an asylum

[Trevor Marriott]

I thought you were aware of 1888 procedure?

The Vagrancy Act was a catch all, it gave the police great scope to arrest those of which there was suspicion, but no defined offence.

The location of a parade is due to either convenience or valid reasoning.

Tell me, have the arrest, charge and stop books survived?

Monty

Why arrest for vagrancy when he is suspected of murder I dont buy that one another example of square peg into a round hole

[PaulB]

The ones that i mentioned in my original post and i dont recall saying prevented.. I was asking how he was sent or taken i.e under arrest or as a volunteer it had to be one or the other.

I highlighted the problems with both cases i cant see what the big argument is on this?

There isn't any big argument, Trevor. You did indeed ask some questions in your original post, albeit prefaced by a statement that you didn't think the identification happened as described. I asked why you insisted on asking questions about how something was done when we had it on the authority of an experienced Superintendent that it did happen. And I cited Don Rumbelow and also a commonplace method of arranging to talk to someone. You then said I needed to read up on police procedures and you said Swanson was lying
(was speaking with forked tongue). The procedures you duly cited were irrelevant. And thus we end up here

So, why couldn't the identification have happened as Superintendent Swanson described it?

[Monty]

Why arrest for vagrancy when he is suspected of murder I dont buy that one another example of square peg into a round hole

Seriously? You ask that question?

Because there was no evidence to arrest on murder. The use of the VA in such matters was why it was dropped in the 70s.

Monty

[Chris]

As you say speculation. but of course that couldn't have happened because they had a positive ID and took him home not to an asylum

Hardly a positive ID, when the witness refused to testify. That would make it rather difficult to get a verdict of "guilty but insane", wouldn't it?

And note that Swanson doesn't say they took the suspect home, any more than he says they took him to the Seaside Home.

[Fisherman]

PaulB:

1. There is ample evidence that the senior policemen, medical men, and legal practitioners knew what a serial killer was, but they didn't use the same terminology that we do. As for what they had to go on, they had little or nothing. They still managed to solve crimes thought.

If they had had the same kind of knowledge as we do - and, of course, they simply couldn´t - they would have sought after other types of perps. Of course they managed to solve crimes, by the way - if they had not, their existence would not have been required.

2. It has always been recognised that Macnaghten got details wrong, but the question is what the "evidence" was that they had against those named (or anyone else for that matter).

The basic point is that it IS a question. And that there is no answer. And of course, there need not be any more evidence than what we have - his friends suspected him, and he had taken his own life after the Kelly slaying, claiming to be afraid to go insane.

3. Yes, they searched the asylums but as far as we know "Kosminski" wasn't in an asylum when they were searched.

No, but that´s not the point I am making. What I am pointing to is how the combined pressure from the press and public had the police searching the asylums, thinking that the Ripper would have that background.

4. I admire your confidence in the British press.

Please don´t be ironic, Paul - what I am saying is that it would have mirrored societal perceptions to a large degree. Not that it was to be trusted - the 1888 society had some vary strange perceptions about things. Serial killers, not least.

5. Like I said, there was an awareness of serial killers, I think we found reports of lectures on the subject going back to the 1850s, but obviously the terminology was different and the whole subject was couched in a refined language.

They had little to go on anyway. And it would have been the Gilles de Rais-stuff to a large extent. The grey men, the likes of Shawcross, of Armstrong, of Kürten - they would not have been around in the material they studied. And we can see that they either thought themselves that they should look for external madness - or they were pushed to into accepting it.

They were not looking where todays police forces would look, and as I said - the Lechmere example tells that story.

6. Yes, your suspect does indicate what the police were NOT looking for.

It does, does it not. And why? Because they were prejudiced to some degree.

7. Can you point me to some records where a TYPE was specified as being looked for.

No, and they won´t exist in the first place. All we can do is to look at the names and specifics adhering to the ones they took an interest in, and work from the suggestion that there may have been a reason for it other than clear, caserelated evidence.

8. I don't think anyone with any awareness of Victorian society in 1888 would suggest that it wasn't orejudiced, or that the police weren't prejudiced either, but the mere existance of prejudice doesn't mean that everyone is prejudiced to the same degree or that they would allow prejudice to influence their conclusions. But the outstanding question is where the evidence is that the men were seriously prejudiced. It was a chanrge (if it was a charge) that Anderson emphatically denied.

Let´s face it - he would do that. And being a deeply religious man, there is every chance that he would feel entitled to do so. I have prejudices that I don´t readily recognize, I´m sure. I think most people have.
You have a point when you implicate that it would be hard to find a level of prejudice to work from that could be reasonable - it´s foolhardy to think that could be done. But looking away from such an obvious thing as it´s blatant existence would be a much worse thing, to my mind at least.

9. Sadly history is all about sources. It's about weighing and evaluating source material. If the head of the CID at the time of the crimes says that Jack the Ripper was "Kosminski" then it is only right and proper that all ourresources are brought to bear in an effort to assess whether he was right or not, or, at the very least, try to understand the evidence on which his conclusion was based. There is no, or should be no, acceptence that he is right and that his suspect was the Ripper. That does not mean that other people can't be looked at closely, and doing so has always been an accepted part of Ripper studies. But it is inevitable and only right that a suggestion by somebody who was there, who was in a position to know, and who was intelligent, should be given priotity to a suspect who was never suspected by anybody, no matter how good a candidate we think he looks. And if he looks that good he should be investogated. I don't see that this does a disservice to history.

... and that´s where we disagree. Because history tells me that we are dealing with prejudices, with faulty accusations and with police failure to a large extent as we examine the efforts of the men at the top and their suspects. They have to some degree disqualified themselves when it comes to deserving trust.
Consequentially, when I find a suspect with a lot of things going for him, I have no problems kicking the "police suspects" a step down the ladder.
And in doing so, I will have much more history to go on than Anderson et al did in 1888, when it comes to identifying a serial killer.
If that is breaking the rules, then I´d much rather get it right by doing it the wrong way, then getting it wrong by doing it the right way.

10. What some people like Trevor seem to forget is that we're not saying, or shouldn't be saying, that "Kosminski" et al was Jack the Ripper. We're trying to find out why people said he was. And Ditto anyone else.

That's my pennyworth.

And I appreciate and command it. But I think we already know why the suspicions against "Kosminski" were there.

Thanks, Paul!
Fisherman

[Chris]

But I think we already know why the suspicions against "Kosminski" were there.

Given that we don't know what Aaron Kozminski was like in 1888 or why (or when) the police suspected him, I think your confidence is hard to justify.

[Tom_Wescott]

Great, now the crime enthusiasts are jumping in.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Fisherman]

Given that we don't know what Aaron Kozminski was like in 1888 or why (or when) the police suspected him, I think your confidence is hard to justify.

You are welcome to that stance. I tink he generally fits in very well with the other police candidates, and that there never was anything much to his candidature. I may be right and I may be wrong (and the exact same goes for those who think the police had very good, damning and caserelated evidence) but that´s the way I see it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Jonathan H]

Probably Not

The witness identification did happen, just not the way Anderson likely justified it to Swanson after he had been criticised by English Hebrews. This was the great breakthorugh of Evans and Rumbelow in 2006 at finding the primary source that confirmed a Jewish witness may have been brought in for a "confrontation" with a Ripper suspect in the wake of the murder of a pretty, young harlot.

The 1910 tale is a sincerely mistaken mix of Lawende's no to Sadler (and Lawende's yes to Grant) at the same time Aaron kosminski was sectioned and/or came to Anderson's attention (he has misrecalled the Sailor's Home as the Seaside Home. Plus if this bit comes from Swanson it may have come years later when his memory was not what it was).

Sir Robert Anderson's memory can be shown to be deteriorating two years before his memoir, in which he tosses off the witness i.d. in a footnote in the magazine version (it is a perfect match for his comparable confusion and conflation over pipes at crime and Home Secretaries from different years, parties and administrations).

He seems to have believed, like Swanson that their chief suspect was deceased. He was nothing of the kind and Anderson's No. 2 knew this.

Anderson himself [implicitly] backdates the events to 1889 in his memoir, whilst we know from that same year he was claiming that they had not caught the man--and arguably his 1892 interview confirms this same lack of success.

Smith and Macnaghten could not not know about such an event, yet one does not and the other explictly denies that there was a critical witness to the murderer (Mac goes further in his memoir pointedly rejecting the earlier claim of a Jewish Ripper who had been sectioned).

Plus Macnaghten can arguably be shown to know more accurate data about Kosminski.

Could it have happened just the way Swanson scribbled it, entirely to himself? Of course, but it is not likely, e.g. the balance of probabilities is that it did not happen that way.

Let us not forget what a comforting and self-serving story it is for those who had directly faile, e.g. ther witness i.d. failed but it's ok the monster died soon afterwards--which Aaron Kosminski had not.

[Errata]

Biased and wrongheaded? Your evidence for that is...?

Their idea was that the killer had to be insane, masturbation being mentioned more than once. And then there is Anderson's absolute certainties.

"One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type ; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders ; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice."

Jack the Ripper was not a "sexual maniac". The very definition of a sexual maniac being that the individual is out of control, usually with some "deviant" behaviors. Even if the Ripper was what was considered a deviant, he certainly wasn't out of control. So that assessment is just plain wrong.

That he lived in the immediate vicinity of the crimes is likely, but not guaranteed.

And there is absolutely no evidence, nor is there any precedence to back up the idea that the people he lived with were shielding him.

The entire first sentence is just wrong. He thinks only an idiot wouldn't know these things, yet everything he says is wrong.

And the rest of it is wrong as well. Polish Jews did give up their own to gentile justice. Routinely. And the idea that they would knowingly abet the Ripper was incredibly stupid, and could only be dreamed up by a cop who was primarily a politician, and so only ever looked at the Polish Jewish community when looking for Socialists or Anarchists. Who granted, the Jewish communities didn't hand over as a rule.

As for the Swanson Marginalia that's even more bizarre than the idiocy of Anderson. So Anderson says that the only guy who got a good look at Jack would not identify him. Well, that''s a suspicious statement in an of itself. Who got the good look at the Ripper? No one saw the murders happen. So asking a witness to identify someone who was in the area is the best they can do. Nobody can put anyone at the scene of a crime.

And the details that Swanson adds to the story are wrong. And we know they are wrong. And the idea that Jew could not bear witness against another Jew is just a flat out lie. Now, I'm not saying Swanson is lying per se. He could have been lied to. Hell the witness might have taken advantage of the cops total ignorance of Judaism and lied about why he wasn't going to testify. But simply asking any Jew as to the validity of that reasoning would have caught out that lie, and evidently no one could be bothered to do that.

So, the killer HAS to be insane. He HAS to be a sexual deviant. He HAS to be a poor Polish Jew. He HAS to visibly be a monster. The kind of person that you can look at and KNOW he is the Ripper.

But everything we know about serial killers tells us that these are ridiculous assumptions, and are almost never true. Hell simple reasoning tells us that. But that's what the cops were looking for. So if they were looking for the wrong kind of man, what are the odds they found the right man?

[Trevor Marriott]

There isn't any big argument, Trevor. You did indeed ask some questions in your original post, albeit prefaced by a statement that you didn't think the identification happened as described. I asked why you insisted on asking questions about how something was done when we had it on the authority of an experienced Superintendent that it did happen. And I cited Don Rumbelow and also a commonplace method of arranging to talk to someone. You then said I needed to read up on police procedures and you said Swanson was lying
(was speaking with forked tongue). The procedures you duly cited were irrelevant. And thus we end up here

So, why couldn't the identification have happened as Superintendent Swanson described it?

Because the answers to your question lies with the answers to mine.

Not forgetting good old Hans Christian who spins a yarn about such an important event as this ID, that he forgets to mention where it took place, who the witness was and more importantly who the suspect was.

Its time this man Anderson was taken off his pedestal

[Trevor Marriott]

Seriously? You ask that question?

Because there was no evidence to arrest on murder. The use of the VA in such matters was why it was dropped in the 70s.

Monty

So are you trying to have us believe that they arrested him for vagrancy, which isn't recorded anywhere, and then shipped him off for a day trip to the seaside?

So what was the difference between arresting for vagrancy or murder either way they still had no evidence for the murder. So with no evidence how did he become a suspect?

Then we get back to how, and under what circumstances he finished up at the seaside home

The reality is that this ID as described has more holes in it than a golf course.

As to the Swanson marginalia my thoughts on that have been well documented

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KNRE4NY

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00F4QS0H0

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00F4PH392

[Monty]

So are you trying to have us believe that they arrested him for vagrancy, which isn't recorded anywhere, and then shipped him off for a day trip to the seaside?

So what was the difference between arresting for vagrancy or murder either way they still had no evidence for the murder. So with no evidence how did he become a suspect?

Then we get back to how, and under what circumstances he finished up at the seaside home

The reality is that this ID as described has more holes in it than a golf course.

As to the Swanson marginalia my thoughts on that have been well documented

Where do you expect it to be recorded?

And are you expecting a charge of murder, bearing in mind Kosminskis alleged mental state at the time?

It is pretty clear that Kosminski was going to be incarcerated (if he was Aaron), and indeed he was. You assume they were looking for prosecution which, under law, would not have occurred because, as a former detective, you would surely be aware that the insane cannot stand trial.

There is an issue with that suggestion, however that may be more down to a religious issue than the legal one assumed.

Monty