Is Kosminski still the best suspect we have?

[GUT]

Harry
As said elsewhere, we often see the consequence, but don't see the action that caused the consequence , or don't see what motivated the action. In this case, we know Druitt and Kosminski were suspects (the consequence), but we don't know why. You won't ever get the proof/evidence/reason you want because it doesn't exist anymore.

Not aimed at you Paul but agreeing with you, the word "anymore" is so crucial, there is so much material lost over the years it doesn't mean it never existed.

[PaulB]

Exactly. That's what I am trying to explain to Harry.

[Scott Nelson]

I threw out last week's grocery list. Now I wish I hadn't.

[GUT]

I threw out last week's grocery list. Now I wish I hadn't.

Threw it out or someone took it as a souvenir

[harry]

Obviously there may have once existed evidence,relating to the identity of JTR.The possibility exists,but is it logical to base an assumption that Kosminski was the best suspect,when that evidence remains unknown,or indeed cannot be proven to have existed at all. With all respects,persons have a right to believe what they will.My belief is and always has been,that the claimed identification at a seaside home never happened.

[Jonathan H]

I agree.

Not that there was not a successful witness dientification between a Jewish witnesas and a Ripper suspect. There was, his name was Grant.

The problem of this field, for some, is that the police sources are manacled together like Sydney Poitier and Tony Curtis in "The Defiant Ones."

e.g. If Anderson can be shown to be less than reliable then Macnaghten is usually dragged to the bottom of the Thames with him, and vice versa .

I think this is lazy and fallacious. Real life is not like this. You might have a ship of fools on this matter, but then again not necessarily.

One may have been astute and have great powers of recall, whilst the other was hopelessly conceited and suffered from a demonstrably deteriorating memory.

It is amazing to me, still, how much Anderson's and Macnaghten's obvious dislike of each other is factored in by hardly anybody here, despite their advocacy of diametrically opposing chief suspects (well, not completely opposed as both believed their Rippers were deceased--but only one actually was). It is like they are cast in stone, rather than real, living people who worked together for twelve years (yet never mentioned the other in their respective memoirs).

Just because one senior policeman was talking out of his hat does not automatically mean that the other was too.

[PaulB]

Once you start tinkering with what the sources say, especially when it is done to help the source fit a preconceived notion, you are on a very slippery slope indeed.

Anderson says that both witness and suspect were Jews, and that fact appears to have been central to his thinking. He did not say the suspect and witness were Gentile and Jew.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Paul,

In the collected volume of TLSOMOL there is no reference to the ethnicity of the witness who "refused to give evidence against him."

Sir Robert Anderson is an unreliable source for those seeking the truth.

Regards,

Simon

[Trevor Marriott]

Harry,
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Those senior officers are unlikely to have made those claims without some sort of evidence to base them on. We don't know what that was, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.

Your last sentence is one you seem to favour, having used it in a number if posts over the past 12 months.

If it ever did exist then it was weak at best, perhaps some snippet obtained as a result of

1. Information received
2. Anonymous information received
3. Hearsay
4. Wild speculation based on specific events

Now here is the rub of the green because we now know at best there could have been nothing more that weak suspicions, or just simply opinions, which in the case of two officers is confirmed.

There is no other evidence to support you claim that they must have known something. And to add more grist to the mill. The later statements made by those officers who said "we didn't have a clue" corroborates that fact.

So perhaps you might now want to desist from keep banging on about the fact that they must have known something, and that something is more than we know now, and that mythical something is enough for us to keep looking on these as any form of suspect prime or otherwise.

It seems that Kosminski, Chapman, Druitt, Tumblety have been paid more attention to than other suspects, simply because they were mentioned by police officials. Yet other suspects mentioned in police documents (SB Register) by police officers are totally ignored and never discussed.

You perhaps now need to change the way you look at this mystery now and become more positive and less negative.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Paul,

In the collected volume of TLSOMOL there is no reference to the ethnicity of the witness who "refused to give evidence against him."

Sir Robert Anderson is an unreliable source for those seeking the truth.

Regards,

Simon

I agree that the reason given for why the witness refused to give evidence is probably Anderson's opinion presented as fact, but it's another thing to say lies were told about the witness being a Jew. At that point you're inventing an argument out of whole cloth.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[PaulB]

Hi Paul,

In the collected volume of TLSOMOL there is no reference to the ethnicity of the witness who "refused to give evidence against him."

Sir Robert Anderson is an unreliable source for those seeking the truth.

Regards,

Simon

There is in the Blackwoods version though.

Anderson is no more or less unreliable than other contemoraries and the reality is that hardly any research has been done on him. Or any of the other policemen, except Dew. I await Adam's biography of Swanson with interest.

[PaulB]

Your last sentence is one you seem to favour, having used it in a number if posts over the past 12 months.

If it ever did exist then it was weak at best, perhaps some snippet obtained as a result of

1. Information received
2. Anonymous information received
3. Hearsay
4. Wild speculation based on specific events

Now here is the rub of the green because we now know at best there could have been nothing more that weak suspicions, or just simply opinions, which in the case of two officers is confirmed.

There is no other evidence to support you claim that they must have known something. And to add more grist to the mill. The later statements made by those officers who said "we didn't have a clue" corroborates that fact.

So perhaps you might now want to desist from keep banging on about the fact that they must have known something, and that something is more than we know now, and that mythical something is enough for us to keep looking on these as any form of suspect prime or otherwise.

It seems that Kosminski, Chapman, Druitt, Tumblety have been paid more attention to than other suspects, simply because they were mentioned by police officials. Yet other suspects mentioned in police documents (SB Register) by police officers are totally ignored and never discussed.

You perhaps now need to change the way you look at this mystery now and become more positive and less negative.

Rubbish! Wrong on practicaly every point. All your unsupported opinion.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Paul,

Yes, there is. Agreed.

But SRA omitted it from his collected volume, which makes him unreliable.

Regards,

Simon

[Jonathan H]

To PaulB

If you were talking to me, and I am not sure you, were, then I respectfulyl disagree about warnings about slippery slopes.

The great danger--the real slippery slope--is to treat sources flatly, at face value, or to set up a straw man argument, e.g. this source is either lying or telling us the truth.

Thsi man pious and not a liar, therefore the was a witness identification by a Jew of a Jewish suspect, and the witness declined to testify.

A story that makes no sense as the madman was already safely caged, and so on.

So soem people go oh well we'll never know, never be able to ceconcile the contradictions.

It really is not that enigmatic and sphinx-like.

Not qwhen you measure the sources against other comparable sources. This is not "tinkering" if the bits and pieces do not match!

Then you have to try and explain why.

Anderson's suspect and his witness were central not to his "thinking" but to his memory.

His, eh, demonstrably crumbling memory.

When a person tells a story that makes them look a whole lot better about a crisis for which they received a public and professional bucketing, you have to ask why? Perhaps it is literally true? Perhaps it is not.

In 1908 it also seems central to Anderson's thinking that the Liberals were responsible for putting him, personally, under undue pressure about the Ripper.

Is that reliable? Were the Liberlas in government during 1888?

He also blames a medico for breaking a pipe at a crime scene--a major clue according to him.

Is that what happened? Is that a reliable recollection about the pipes at the Kelly and McKenzie murders seemingly fused together?

In 1896 he apparently told Major Griffiths that the fiend was a lunatic who had been "on the prowl" for a few "weeks" before his reign of [exaggeated] terror was "cut short" by being sectioned.

Is that reliable? Does it match Aaron Kosminski's timeline?

You wrote that the chiefs are about equally reliable and imperfect.

Really? When both [arguably] believed their chief suspects were deceased but only one of them actually was--and only one chief knew who was deceased and who wasn't.

Is that reliable? Personally, I think it is.

[harry]

In the absence of any information placing Anderson or Swanson at an identification at a seaside home,such information,as Trevor insists,can only be classed as hearsay.The term"he knew he was identified',means exactly what?It could have several meanings'He was sent',with whom,by whom'?By what method?.Take each element of the tale and test it by conventional means of proof,and what do one end up with?,