Schwartz, a fraud?

[Jonathan H]

Re: 'Aberconway' as a re-write?

It is my theory that Macnaghten rewrote the official version of this document in order to disseminate, from 1898, what he believed -- perhaps wrongly -- was the essential truth about the Ripper case:

Jack the Ripper was 'one of us' and not 'one of them', like it or lump it.

The pressures on Macnaghten were two-fold at that moment.

Firstly, Anderson had begun putting it about (eg. to Griffiths in 1895) that the fiend was known to be a locked-up lunatic.

This was actually a minor suspect whose name may have been on some sort of 1888 list (Anderson, 1910). Macnaghten had resurrected him in his 1894 Home Office Report (never sent) having discovered that the mentally unbalanced man had threatened a female relation with a knife, was a chronic masturbator, and who had been sectioned long after the Kelly murder (this detail had to be backdated).

I believe that the second pressure was that Mac knew that a 'North Country Vicar' was poised to release a semi-fictional version of Druitt on the tenth anniversary of his funeral (eg. 1899). This fictionalising would render Druitt and his family impossible to recognised by his peers -- let alone the press -- in order to fulfil some kind of bizarre confession the murderer had made to another priest.

Nevertheless it was a story which could potentially embarrass Scotland Yard because the story exposed their total lack of knowledge [in 1888] about this gentleman suspect who imploded after the final murder -- which the priest would confirm was that of Mary Kelly and not Frances Coles.

Macnaghten scrambled to head off both Anderson and the priest. Thus Mac too would provide Major Griffiths (and then George Sims) with a Ripper scoop, one in which it would be made clear to both crime writers that the Polish Jew was practically exonerated, whereas a fellow Gentile gentleman was the likely murderer (both writers, whether they knew it or not, would be part of this fictionalising of the truth because they both have the Druitt family of 'Aberconway' turned into anomic 'friends').

To convince the pair Mac told them that he was showing them (or communicating the contents of) a copy of a definitive document of state: a Home Office Report which named the top suspects (Sims, 1903).

In 'Aberconway' Macnaghten did exactly what the Vicar was about to candidly do: conceal Druitt in 'substantial truth in fictitious form'. The difference was that the Vicar candidly admitted he was intertwining fact and fiction ('at one time a surgeon ...') whereas Macnaghten, anonymously via cronies, was not admitting any such thing.

Thus the Vicar's story was quashed by Griffiths and Sims who were known to have top police contacts. Readers did not know, and could not know that two semi-fictional constructs were battling for supremacy -- and the Vicar's lost because it was assumed, ironically, that Griffiths-Sims' 'Jack' were writing the unvarnished truth (some were not fooled, William Le Queux among them).

In 'Aberconway' Druitt became definitely a real life Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde figure and yet the most critical deceptions were that Scotland Yard was about to arrest this man and thus just missed out on nabbing 'Jack the Ripper', and that the 'mad doctor' took his own life within mere hours of the Miller's Ct. atrocity (both of these propagandist elements would be dropped in Mac's relatively more candid 1914 memoirs).

Macnaghten 'sexed up' not only Druitt but also 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog, simultaneously rendering them unrecoverable too, unless the names were published -- and they would not be until everybody was long gone.

Unlike the official version which only had to fool the Liberal govt (eg. said to be a doctor ...') the new 'Aberconway' version had to effectively mislead two authors who would recall the Ripper saga in detail, especially Sims/Dagonet.

I think that Macnaghten believed that Joseph Lawende, the critical police witness used to 'confront' Tom Sadler (and later William Grant?), had seen Druitt chatting with Eddowes.

Therefore, Mac pulled the ethnicity of the witness and suspect inside-out by having a Gentile cop see a Jewish suspect with the fourth victim (by the way who was, and who was not, a Ripper victim comes from Druitt's confession) and created the fictional beat cop.

It worked.

Mac also falsely told Sims that some witness had seen the Ripper with a neatly-trimmed beard to cement the notion that the writer was the fiend's double, though the young Sims does resemble the clean-shaven Druitt (Sims, 1907).

But it also meant that 'Kosminski' was now fully redacted back as a major suspect of the 1888 investigation.

Yet in Sims, 1907, Mac, typically, tries to have it both ways by making it clear that the Polish Jew was out and about long after the Kelly murder; that he only came to police attention after the murders. But that source, 'Lloyds-Weekly' magazine, also paradoxically consolidated the lie that the beat cop had had a look at this suspect some time later.

This is the source, I argue, which helped create the sincere but false memory in Anderson of 'Kosminski' being 'confronted' by Lawende.

I think Anderson read this detail in Sims and it contaminated his fading memory. He knew, correctly, that it was a Jewish witness (Lawende), and not a beat cop. However, he was less clear on whom he had been 'confronting'. He recalled that a Jewish witness said 'yes' (Grant, 1895) and 'no' (Sadler, 1891), and he assumed that this must have been 'Kosminski', a suspect he also mistakenly thought was deceased ('Aberconway' shows that Mac knew he was quite alive).

Confirmation that Anderson is getting himself muddled between events of 1895, 1891, and 1888, is his confusing William Harcourt as the Home Sec. putting him under pressure in 1888 to find the fiend.

In this 1908 published account by [Tory] Anderson he has mistaken not only the wrong Home Sec. but the wrong political party: the Liberals for the Tories. Thus he is blaming, in a partisan way, the party he loathed -- and he is wrong. I think the reason that Harcourt has stuck in his fading memory is not just because the latter had been Home Sec. three years before the Whitechapel crimes, but also because in 1895 -- the time of the alleged Lawende-Grant 'yes' -- Harcourt was back on the government benches as Treasurer (and later that same year became Leader of the Opposition). Both Sadler and Grant were seamen and, lo and behold, part of this memory malfunction produces the unlikely Seaside Home police location for the confrontation.

In his 1914 memoirs, which pointedly omit Anderson and any idea that 'Jack' could have been a 'safely caged' Jew, Macnaghten now claims that the [non-existent] beat cop saw nothing substantial.

The theory -- and it is only a theory -- that Israel Schwartz was Anderson's witness is possible but arguably unlikely based on all the [limited] sources considered together: Lawende was the witness we know was used to confront a Ripper suspect, perhaps twice. He is behind Mac's fictional beat cop, as that sighting refers to Eddowes, not Stride.

[mariab]

Everyone but him is fairly close in their timing. Spooner is off by 20 minutes.

Precisely.

[Hunter]

Hi Mike,

Spooner went on to say that he thought he arrived at the club at 20 till one. Then he said a constable arrived about five minute later. That constable (Lamb) said that he was notified in Commercial Street about the murder around one o'clock and also said Dr. Blackwell arrived about ten minute after him. Blackwell noted the time of his arrival by his watch, which said 1:16. See the problem with Spooner's timing?

Everyone but him is fairly close in their timing. Spooner is off by 20 minutes. Yet he is notified by part of the same group that left the yard at the same time seeking assistance. Did the others wander around for more than twenty minutes before they found Lamb?

[mariab]

Edward Spooner, according to the transcripts published by the Daily Telegraph Tuesday Oct 2nd, stated the following at the Inquest....
"On Sunday morning, between half-past twelve and one o'clock, I was standing outside the Beehive Public- house, at the corner of Christian-street, with my young woman. We had left a public- house in Commercial-road at closing time, midnight, and walked quietly to the point named. We stood outside the Beehive about twenty-five minutes, when two Jews came running along, calling out "Murder" and "Police."
His time of course is in direct conflict with Israels story. They coincide.

"Between half-past twelve and one o'clock" means simply that Edward Spooner didn't have a watch available and made a gross estimate. Cross reference to Spooner's testimony at the inquest:
I believe it was twenty-five minutes to one o'clock when I arrived in the yard.
Clearly this is plainly erroneous if cross-referenced against what EVERYONE ELSE said, from the IWEC members to the police and the doctors. Apparently Spooner was estimating his time by the closing of the public houses, and got it wrong by almost half an hour.

[Michael W Richards]

Hello again,

Thanks for the kind reception Simon, nice to see you. I can only be true to mine own self so I suspect that from time to time I will still try and navigate down some roads less traveled, but now in a much more dignified manner.

Like for example, this road....a circuitous way to another look at Israel...

Edward Spooner, according to the transcripts published by the Daily Telegraph Tuesday Oct 2nd, stated the following at the Inquest....

"On Sunday morning, between half-past twelve and one o'clock, I was standing outside the Beehive Public- house, at the corner of Christian-street, with my young woman. We had left a public- house in Commercial-road at closing time, midnight, and walked quietly to the point named. We stood outside the Beehive about twenty-five minutes, when two Jews came running along, calling out "Murder" and "Police."

His time of course is in direct conflict with Israels story. They coincide.

Spooner is asked about seeing blow flowing. "Yes; it was still flowing"....and "It was running down the gutter."

I like to look carefully at the witnesses without affiliations or agendas. Im just suggesting that on that night, an Immigrant Jew who speaks no English outside a Immigrant Jewish Mens Club with members that speak little or no English, near 1am, may well have had an agenda.

I dont see any potential conflicts like that with Spooner.

Best regards

[Cogidubnus]

I have it on good authority that Lynn, though undoubtedly virtuous, is assuredly no lady!

Well I've seen the splendid sideburns and the impressive moustaches...but I'm not impressed by those...I have friends whose wives are far more impressive than that!

Dave

[Bridewell]

Horses Sweat, Men Conspire?

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks..."

Dave

Dave,

I have it on good authority that Lynn, though undoubtedly virtuous, is assuredly no lady!

Lynn,

Conspiracy Theorists? I simply surmised that Sir MM may have been something other than mistaken when he alluded to "the City P.C. who was (on) a beat near Mitre Square". That's what he wrote. Perhaps that's what he meant. I'll admit to being older (just!) than Dave, but even I haven't been around long enough to conspire with Sir Melville MacNaghten!

Regards, Colin.

[Cogidubnus]

Was that a denial or a vow?

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks..."

Dave

[lynn cates]

"Not I," said the cow. "Moo. Such a thing I'd never do."

Hello Dave. Well, don't look at me. You KNOW how traditional I am.

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

"which makes the City PC thing (and perhaps Harvey's later sacking) even more interesting."

Oh, fie upon it! Conspiracy theorists!

Where on earth do you suppose we got it from Lynn?

Dave

[Cogidubnus]

Hello Dave. Certainly not. You KNOW how straight laced I am. (heh-heh)

Yeth you're a tewwible pwude...

Dave

[lynn cates]

Con@#$%^&*

Hello Dave, Colin.

"which makes the City PC thing (and perhaps Harvey's later sacking) even more interesting."

Oh, fie upon it! Conspiracy theorists!

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Druitt, did he do it?

Hello Colin. You mean right about Druitt?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

traditional

Hello Dave. Certainly not. You KNOW how straight laced I am. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Bridewell]

Hi Colin, Lynn

Jonathan has a theory that the Aberconway version, rather than being a draft, is actually a later adaptation of the original MM, both being prepared for different purposes...for exposure to different parties...(I'm more than halfway convinced he's right)...which makes the City PC thing (and perhaps Harveys later sacking) even more interesting...

Dave

And perhaps also the suggestion that the reason for Harvey's sacking isn't recorded.

Regards, Colin