Arbitrary Selective Rejection and Acceptence of Coincidences

[Robert]

Hi Errata

Well, either the family's finances weren't sufficient to keep Aaron in a private asylum by 1891, or maybe his condition had deteriorated so much that they saw no hope of his ever being able to live at home with them again, and as he was still very young they let him be placed in Colney Hatch.
If they were indeed sending him to private asylums it looks as though they'd run out of money by 1890 when Aaron had his first brief admission to MEOT workhouse.

[Wickerman]

The most surprising thing is that these places weren't full to bursting...

[Robert]

I wonder if some patients suffered from more than one reason, e.g. fell from horse in war while reading a novel.

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Errata

Well, either the family's finances weren't sufficient to keep Aaron in a private asylum by 1891, or maybe his condition had deteriorated so much that they saw no hope of his ever being able to live at home with them again, and as he was still very young they let him be placed in Colney Hatch.
If they were indeed sending him to private asylums it looks as though they'd run out of money by 1890 when Aaron had his first brief admission to MEOT workhouse.

I'm not certain that this is the case.

Asylums like Holloway were only ever meant to be short stay Asylums. They aimed to cure people through new ideas. They created beautiful environments. Fresh Air. No stress. Relaxation. They were largely middle class (and the kosminskis ran a Tayloring business, they are possibly helped by member s of their community all of whom seem to have made money)

Holloway also had a more secure wing for male patients with more direct staff. By the time Aaron entered the Asylum they were extending the stay times. A large wall was built in 1891.

Holloway died around 1885-6 so his brother-in-law took over general charge but the staff seem to have been fairly regular living at the asylum.

Personally I feel that they just came to realise there was little they could do. At first there may have been considerable improvement, especially if Aaron was using alcohol and this was stopped.

My personal belief is that once they realised he couldn't use the asylum much longer other avenues were considered hence the letter of introduction to Crawford.

Yours Jeff

PS Oh and it seems likely that patients were allowed home for stays with family. Alice McKenzie was killed on a Monday….the weekend of a Jewish Holiday.

[Jeff Leahy]

Yet both of these events are treated as red herrings by those who forward Kozminski as suspect when it seems these were considered evidence to begin with.

Of course your correct . Swanson says in his home office report that he believes its an insult against Jews..

But thats not why a dismiss both the GSG and Lipski

I dismiss them because they could both mean almost anything without knowing their context. So why I don't say they could have been written by and shouted by the killer…they don't tell us anything.

And even if it was Kosminski shouting 'Lipski' your talking about a man with Schizophrenia possibly having a psychotic episode, So perhaps he thought he was God warning Lipski to be careful…It could mean anything when considering the mans illness.

So I dismiss them a long time ago, because they can't tell us anything.

The apron on the other hand tells us a lot (And not that Eddows didn't have a sanitary towel )

Many thanks

Yours Jeff

[Chris]

What about the move after Kosminski's being committed to Colney Hatch? Did the family all move within a short spec of time?

Apart from the fact that the Lubnowskis had moved within a couple of months, we don't really know. Isaac may have moved by July 1891, when there's no one registered at 74 Greenfield Street. But we don't know when Woolf moved from Sion Square.

[Robert]

Woolf is there till 1893, but he isn't the following year.

[Scott Nelson]

Sorry, but I just don't believe Martin Fido would ever have picked Cohen as a candidate if he'd found Aaron Kozminski's records earlier.

He found Kosminski later, but still chose to stick with Cohen. Was Cohen's last name actually "Cohen?"

[Chris]

Was Cohen's last name actually "Cohen?"

Who knows?

[Jeff Leahy]

He found Kosminski later, but still chose to stick with Cohen. Was Cohen's last name actually "Cohen?"

I don't know but I am getting confused but I'm being informed by a reliable source: "the father of Betsy Abrahams, Kasriel Szlama Kozminski, was a cousin of Woolf Abrahams. Woolf married the daughter of his own cousin, his wife Betsy. Her brother was Jacob Cohen. Jacob Cohen was a cousin of Isaac, Matilda, Woolf and Aaron."

So the Cohen connection appears very complicated?

Yours Jeff

PS From a Different source I'm also being told of a Macro coincidence. When the Rothchildes first came to the UK from Germany they married Cohens. The Earll of Crawfords Wife appears to have been related (Cousoins of some sort) to the Rothchildes. Rothchildes had various charity connections to the Eastend. In 1882 both Rothchilde and Montagu donated vast sums of money to help Russian jews in Poland affected by progroms. Montagu travelled to Russia in 1886. Crawford, Rothchildes, Montagu and Holloway, were all collectors (Art and books)

[Chris]

I don't know but I am getting confused but I'm being informed by a reliable source: "the father of Betsy Abrahams, Kasriel Szlama Kozminski, was a cousin of Woolf Abrahams. Woolf married the daughter of his own cousin, his wife Betsy. Her brother was Jacob Cohen. Jacob Cohen was a cousin of Isaac, Matilda, Woolf and Aaron."

It sounds as though your source has read the article in Ripperologist 128 describing Pat Marshall's work!

The relationship between Woolf and Betsy isn't certain, but it seems likely.

And Betsy's brother was known as Jacob Cohen in England, though again it's not certain that he was the same Jacob Cohen who informed Dr Houchin about Aaron's symptoms.

[Errata]

I don't know but I am getting confused but I'm being informed by a reliable source: "the father of Betsy Abrahams, Kasriel Szlama Kozminski, was a cousin of Woolf Abrahams. Woolf married the daughter of his own cousin, his wife Betsy. Her brother was Jacob Cohen. Jacob Cohen was a cousin of Isaac, Matilda, Woolf and Aaron."

So the Cohen connection appears very complicated?

Yours Jeff

PS From a Different source I'm also being told of a Macro coincidence. When the Rothchildes first came to the UK from Germany they married Cohens. The Earll of Crawfords Wife appears to have been related (Cousoins of some sort) to the Rothchildes. Rothchildes had various charity connections to the Eastend. In 1882 both Rothchilde and Montagu donated vast sums of money to help Russian jews in Poland affected by progroms. Montagu travelled to Russia in 1886. Crawford, Rothchildes, Montagu and Holloway, were all collectors (Art and books)

Cohen is the most common name in Judaism. It's our Smith. Levy is our Jones and Israel is our Johnson. Ridiculously common names that have little to do with actual ancestry. It's like Schneider which means "tailor". Cohen, Levy and Israel are titles. Clans in a biblical sense. Not only are they not all related, about 75 percent of the time it's only been the family last name for less than 150 years. It's all about how Western immigration forms are phrased. My third cousins are Cohens despite the fact that no one else is because the progenitor of that line filled out his form differently than the rest of his family. Since our last name is difficult, he never changed it back. Anyone with my last name is related to me. It's that odd a name. But I've never in my life met another Cohen and wondered if they were related to my third cousins. Just like I don't think Magic Johnson is related to my fiance just because they have the same last name.

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

You've missed my point, yet in a way almost agree with it. I am arguing that Macnaghten's memoirs and 1913 comments are demonstrably more accurate than his report(s), including about the protracted nature of the Ripper hunt.



Although this is now a very unwelcome and politically incorrect opinion, Martin Fido could not go with Aaron Kosminski without rejecting Sir Robert Anderson too (and it was not just because Fido thought Kosminski too harmless).

Whatever he says now, Fido understood nearly 30 years ago that the 'Swanson Marginalia' was the last nail in the coffin for the reliability of Anderson (I agree, it is) if you switch to Aaron Kosminski, because this person does not match the most important elements of what the ex-chief had written (and told his son and probably Swanson), e.g. wrapped up by early 1889 and dead soon after that.

Ergo if Anderson and/or Swanson really meant Aaron Kosminski then they are hopelessly wrong and should not be taken seriously. If they meant David Cohen then they are still afloat as reliable sources, albeit they have the name wrong.

What compounds the debunking of Anderson and/or Swanson is that the alleged positive witness identification is much more likely to be a late, mythical addition to the story (inspired by a real event but not involving Kosminski). This would explain not only why no other senior police knew about it, but also why Macnaghten (both himself and via a populist proxy) denounces this part of the story directly in 1910 and implicitly in 1914.

I am just sorry that instead of the fading of this modern, revisionist theory about Anderson and the Polish suspect due to the Evans-Rumbelow breakthrough of 2006 it is instead because of DNA numbers in 2014 that apparently do not add up regarding a Whitechapel artifact that is not one.


But I can't keep herding kittens here, so if some insist on going with their own facts, well, that's their prerogative.

[Chris]

Whatever he says now, Fido understood nearly 30 years ago that the 'Swanson Marginalia' was the last nail in the coffin for the reliability of Anderson (I agree, it is) if you switch to Aaron Kosminski, because this person does not match the most important elements of what the ex-chief had written (and told his son and probably Swanson), e.g. wrapped up by early 1889 and dead soon after that.

But how can Swanson's errors tell us anything about Anderson's reliability? Did Anderson write that the case was wrapped up by early 1889 or that the suspect was dead? In fact, did Swanson say anything about early 1889?

If they meant David Cohen then they are still afloat as reliable sources, albeit they have the name wrong.

There are few enough hard facts in Anderson's and Swanson's accounts, but if they had been talking about Cohen, nearly all of them would have been wrong. He didn't live with his brother and he wasn't taken to Stepney workhouse, and he wasn't called Kosminski.

In my opinion, Martin Fido wouldn't have settled on Cohen as a suspect if he'd known about either Aaron Kozminski's records or the Swanson Marginalia, because Cohen doesn't fit the details given by Swanson at all.

[Jonathan H]

To Chris

We will have to agree to disagree about Fido.

To me, in 1987, he was being rigorous and not stubborn, and I admire him for it.

I do not think for a moment that Anderson (and Swanson) were talking about David Cohen either, he just fits critical data they left behind better than Aaron Kosminski. I certainly do think that Cohen is more likely to have been the Ripper than Kosminski based on his demonstrable violence.

But I cannot credit the view that Anderson does not point towards a resolution considerably before 1891.

My theory is that Anderson and Swanson never knew anything more about 'Kosminski' than what they were informed by Macnaghten. Whether deliberate or not, this information was a fictional variant of a real person.

Swanson wrote in Anderson's book because I subscribe to the theory that he is repeating what he was told by the chief he revered. What he was told was so new to him that he hastily recorded right next to the text and on the back flyleaf otherwise Swanson knew he was not going to remember events with which he was both unfamiliar and had not experienced himself.

we can even provisionally date when this happened. Just after the controversy of Anderson's memoir erupted and 'Mentor' made the devastating comparison with the Adolf Beck debacle. This created the need by Anderson to explain how a single witness could be remotely convincing when a dozen witnesses mistook Beck for another man (and caused such a public outcry it led to the creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal). Hence the annotation making the point that the suspect gave the game away by his gestures--he knew he had been identified. Mentioning the City Police explained how Swanson was unfamiliar with the identification, and the Seaside Home was really the Sailor's Home, and Sadler. Also the Judas witness has been somewhat softened; rather than a sectarian automaton it was his conscience that got the better of his duty to his adopted country--he felt he would have been a murderer too. Poor man.

Just as Anderson conflated the Kelly and McKenzie murders in his 1908 interview (and pipes and Home Secretaries) so is he conflating the Coles and Kelly 'final' murder(s), and the identification of Grant by Lawende. Events that happened over several years is being telescoped, and sincerely if self-servingly forgotten.

We see this in Swanson recording that no other murders of this kind took place. In fact, there had been at least one, Frances Coles, within days of 'Kosminski' being incarcerated (when Swanson may have believed the killer disguised himself as a woman). But I don't think Anderson via Swanson means this all happened in 1891, not at all. He has compressed everything into the 'autumn of terror' (if he did recall Anderson would not have just dismissed the McKenzie murder in his memoir footnote, but Coles too) and this can be seen in a number of sources.

I would draw your attention again to these:

Major Arthur Griffiths (Alfred Aylmer), 'Windsor Magazine', 1894:

“Much dissatisfaction was vented upon Mr. Anderson at the utterly abortive efforts to discover the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. He has himself a perfectly plausible theory that Jack the Ripper was a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum.”

But it was not 'cut short'. Aaron Kosminski was about and about for years between the murder of Mary Kelly and his being sectioned just before the murder of Frances Coles, the latter initially believed to be the final murder by Jack. Aaron Kosminski was not temporarily at large but rather at large for years.

Whereas if you recall the Ripper case as happening only between late 1888 and Mary Kelly's murder then it would seem to have been temporary and cut short if you also accept that 'Kosminski'went into an asylum in about March 1889 and soon after died there.

Sir Robert Anderson, 'The Lighter Side of My Official Life', 1910:

'However the fact may be explained, it is a fact that no other street murder occurred in the "Jack-the-Ripper " series. The last and most horrible of that maniacs crimes was committed in a house in Miller's Court on the 9th of November.'

This mistake is then passed onto Swanson:

The Swanson Annotation [excerpt]:

'And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London.'