Is Kosminski still the best suspect we have?

[GUT]

G'day Pat

Personally I think Anderson, knowing the law as he did, gave just enough information about the prime suspect to avoid litigation. I dont think he was a racist man.

What litigation?

and

Why do you think Anderson would know anything about civil law?

[GUT]

Every time a I see this thread the word "still" really bugs me. I'm not sure that he ever was the best suspect let alone still being the best suspect. [vent over].

[Paddy]

Hi GUT,

Anderson did practice as a barrister when he was younger so would have known about civil law.
I apologise if litigation is the wrong term. What I meant is that he may have laid himself or the force open to legal action from the family of the suspect or the Jewish Establishment.
I am regarding the suspects presented on these boards so far.
As I thought then, I think now .....still.

Pat...............................................

[GUT]

G'day Pat

Anderson did practice as a barrister when he was younger so would have known about civil law.

Most barristers know little outside their area of practice, was the point I was trying to get across.

And I am not sure that in about 1910 in the UK that there was any form of legal action that either the family or the Jewish community would have been able to take.

Now it may have been simple courtesy, that I wouldn't argue with.

[Paddy]

Clearly you are a man with legal knowledge GUT so any information on that point is of interest to me.
Was there no law to protect people from libel in that time ? I mean if they had financial backing?
What about the Force or the Home Office. Could they have sued Anderson for misuse of information, or something along those lines ?
I am interested in this so I appreciate any information,
Thanks
Pat

[GUT]

Libel laws certainly existed, but libeling the dead is the issue and I am all but certain that in 1910 that was not possible in the UK, now if he said that Koz's family knew he was Jack it may have opened the door for them to sue, a similar issue certainly stopped the publication of a JtR book in Australia, as I understand it the author was saying that relatives of Druitt knew he was Jack, and if any of them were still alive they may have been able to sue [that may have been Farson or Cullen but I'd have to check on that].

Home office would really depend on what type of confidentiality agreements were in place, I suspect none. And were and Official Secrets involved, which may have been an issue.

And admit freely that I am one of those Barristers I alluded to earlier who may [but I am probably not] be experts in a couple of areas of law but have to do a bit of research in most other areas.

[Paddy]

Hi again GUT,

When Anderson made this statement in 1910 the suspect was not dead and Andersion did imply that his "people" had covered up for him?
This could have implicated the immediate family or the Jewish community.
He could have been seen to either place the family in danger or be stirring racial hatred. Surely this would have stirred up a storm behind closed doors?

Some laws or absence of them absolutely baffle me, sometimes they appear to fly in the face of logic. I expect Anderson thought that to regarding the arrest laws.
Thanks for your advice, its much appreciated.

Pat............................

[GUT]

G'day Pat

I think racial hatred and/or protecting his family was probably the reason.

Yes I was getting Koz and Klosowski's dates of death mixed up so yes libel may have been an issue.

And yes many [read most] laws don't make a lot of sense, even to lawyers.

[Scott Nelson]

It was Lawende

Huge assumption.

[Roy Corduroy]

Jacob Levy was arrested, also went to asylum, died in 1891 and he lived right there on the border with the City. How he fits with Cohen, Kozminski, and Kasminsky, if at all, I don't know.

Discounting the City police surveillance recollections and instead casting this as a play among top dogs with Macnaghten having Anderson and Swanson eat from a bowl is one dimensional. Yes it can be looked at that way Jonathan, but it treats certain other clues and connections as if they don't exist.

Roy

[Jonathan H]

Like what, Roy?

Be specific.

[J6123]

I think him and David Cohen are the two best suspects. I understand there's not really any evidence against either of them (the Kosminski DNA claim is interesting but doesn't cut it for me), but it's just what we know about them, plus Anderson's suspicions against Kosminki, that make them the two most interesting suspects.

I understand that one problem with Kosminski is that he didn't appear violent in the asylum, yet the Ripper murders were tremendously violent. Still, I would not rule Kosminski out completely.

[Trevor Marriott]

Personally I think Anderson, knowing the law as he did, gave just enough information about the prime suspect to avoid litigation. I dont think he was a racist man.
The fact that he stated that it was a Jew was interesting, why would he give that info out?
Macnaghten appeared (to me) to be practicing damage limitation.

Monro stated to one of his family that the case was a "Hot Potato" I believe? A political situation could have been playing out "in camera" since Andersons "Jew" statement. I think it was supressed to stem the rising tide of socialism. It appears throughout misinformation was used to bury the case.

Harry Cox stated in his memoir that the CID watched a Jewish man who lived among the tailors, and that it was thought widely that this man was connected to the murders. Quite rightly at the end he said there was no proof that this was the murderer. What he did say was this man was a very high suspect !

Just my opinion !

Pat...................

The fact is that the police did not have a clue as I have said before.

Below is a quote from Abberline in 1903 in which he makes the point that even if they knew the killer and that the killer was incarcerated then they could have gone public without the need to actually identify that person.

“Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known all about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end of such a mystery, if only for their own credit."

[Monty]

The fact is that the police did not have a clue as I have said before.

Below is a quote from Abberline in 1903 in which he makes the point that even if they knew the killer and that the killer was incarcerated then they could have gone public without the need to actually identify that person.

“Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known all about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end of such a mystery, if only for their own credit."

The police had a better clue then than any of us.

And Abberlines word fit with a Fido Kosminski. Besides, by 90 he had been removed from the case, so whilst in close touch, he was not involved.

Monty

[Jonathan H]

Poor Abberline was completely out of the loop regarding Druitt, Kosminski (and Tumblety).

His 1903 comment about how the police would have announced their success to the public is exactly what Macnaghten had been doing for five years via cronies:

Major Arthur Griffiths. "Mysteries of Police and Crime", 1898:

'The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant, "Jack the Ripper," was never revealed. So far as actual knowledge goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder, had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion. Concerning two of them the case was weak, although it was based on certain colourable facts. ... The third person was of the same type, but the suspicion in his case was stronger, and there was every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him. He was also a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th November, 1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was found floating in the Thames, and was said to have been in the water a month. The theory in this case was that after his last exploit, which was the most fiendish of all, his brain entirely gave way, and he became furiously insane and committed suicide. ...'

Followed by George R. Sims (persistently, until his 1917 memoir) as Dagonet in his "Mustard and cress" column in "The Referee", whose opinion carried enormous weight with the public (confirmed in 1904/5 by the exoneration of Adolph Beck) on matters of true crime:

January 22, 1899:

'... I don't quite see how the real Jack could have confessed, seeing that he committed suicide after the horrible mutilation of the woman in the house in Dorset-street, Spitalfields. ... Almost immediately after this murder he drowned himself in the Thames. his name is perfectly well known to the police. If he hadn't committed suicide he would have been arrested.

February 16, 1902:

'... The homicidal maniac who Shocked the World as Jack the Ripper
had been once - I am not sure that it was not twice - in a lunatic asylum. At the time his dead body was found in the Thames, his friends, who were terrified at his disappearance from their midst, were endeavouring to have him found and placed under restraint again.

July 13, 1902:

'... If the authorities thought it worth while to spend money and time, they might eventually get at the identity of the woman by the same process of exhaustion which enabled them at last to know the real name and address of Jack the Ripper.

In that case they had reduced the only possible Jacks to seven, then by a further exhaustive inquiry to three, and were about to fit these three people's movements in with the dates of the various murders when the one and only genuine Jack saved further trouble by being found drowned in the Thames, into which he had flung himself, a raving lunatic, after the last and most appalling mutilation of the whole series. ... the police were in search of him alive when they found him dead. ...'

Not everybody was fooled. William Le Queux, also an enormously popular (though right-wing) writer took it head-on:

"The Manchester Times" of February 10th 1899:

“Of course the mystery is still unsolved, and failing authority for this statement, we are left to adopt any of the thousand and one plausible hypotheses to explain away police failure. ... [the Drowned Doctor solution] was only long after the final crime that the theory above given was started in order to satisfy the public, and to account for the failure to make an arrest.”