"City PC"

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi all,

If anybody still cares, I think I've solved the whole 'City PC' conundrum. For all I know, a dozen people already have come to the same conclusion I have, but I don't see it on this thread. Anyway, I think Mac confused PC Thompson, who discovered Frances Coles body and heard a man running away.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

Dear Tom

Yes, that's possible.

But more likely is that if you look at the whole passage in both 'Aberconway' and 'Days of My Years', what Macnaghten has done is swap the witnesses of the 'double event' night.

The three Jews of the Eddowes murder are placed on the cart discovering Stride's body, and the beat cop from the latter placed at the site of the former. This gets rid of the Gentile-featured suspect seen by Lawende -- cue 'Kosminski's' shoehorning into the 1888 investigation -- and gets rid of the messy Schwartz tale of pipes, and knifes, and fleeing the scene of a Gentile woman in danger.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Tom.

If anybody still cares, I think I've solved the whole 'City PC' conundrum. For all I know, a dozen people already have come to the same conclusion I have, but I don't see it on this thread. Anyway, I think Mac confused PC Thompson, who discovered Frances Coles body and heard a man running away.

This isn't actually new. Both Tom Divall, writing in 1929, and Sir Basil Thomson, in 1936, said this very same thing. Whether they were right or not is the question.

Wolf.

[Bridewell]

Hi all,

If anybody still cares, I think I've solved the whole 'City PC' conundrum. For all I know, a dozen people already have come to the same conclusion I have, but I don't see it on this thread. Anyway, I think Mac confused PC Thompson, who discovered Frances Coles body and heard a man running away.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,

Didn't MacNaghten say that "no-one ever saw the Ripper unless possibly it was the City PC who was (on) a beat near Mitre Square"? Pc Thompson was a Met officer and there is (so far as I'm aware) no indication that he saw the killer of Frances Coles. I tend towards Jonathan's view that the witnesses from Berner Street and Mitre Square have been confused, although I shy away from the idea of it being a deliberate muddying of the waters on the part of Sir MM.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Tom_Wescott]

This isn't actually new. Both Tom Divall, writing in 1929, and Sir Basil Thomson, in 1936, said this very same thing. Whether they were right or not is the question.

Wolf.

Hi Wolf (and Bridewell, and everybody). The MM was being dissected that far back in time? Why wasn't this proposed solution being discussed on this thread? Would have saved me some time. Do you supposed it was one of these two men - Divall or Thomson - or Mac himself who wrote in 1903 that the PC who got a glimpse of the killer in 'Mitre Court' was subsequently murdered (referring erroneously to Thompson)? If the writer was not Mac himself, he was getting his information from Mac, and when pressed by ex-Inspector Reid for his sources, referred to Major Griffith's book. Though I suspect he was not being genuine with Reid, since Griffith's book did not contain some of the private details evidenced in the letters our mysterious correspondent wrote, such as that the Mitre Court PC had subsequently been murdered.

Anyway, the solution I'm offering is that Mac confused PC Thompson with Joseph Lawende.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Chris]

Hi Wolf (and Bridewell, and everybody). The MM was being dissected that far back in time? Why wasn't this proposed solution being discussed on this thread? Would have saved me some time. Do you supposed it was one of these two men - Divall or Thomson - or Mac himself who wrote in 1903 that the PC who got a glimpse of the killer in 'Mitre Court' was subsequently murdered (referring erroneously to Thompson)? If the writer was not Mac himself, he was getting his information from Mac, and when pressed by ex-Inspector Reid for his sources, referred to Major Griffith's book. Though I suspect he was not being genuine with Reid, since Griffith's book did not contain some of the private details evidenced in the letters our mysterious correspondent wrote, such as that the Mitre Court PC had subsequently been murdered.

As well as "Unofficial's" statement in 1903, I think Robert Sagar's reminiscences a couple of years later suggest this as a possibility:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=162295&postcount=53

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Chris, very interesting post from you in 2011. I had a feeling someone must have hit upon this before me. As I mentioned before, various 'throw-away' comments from 'Unofficial' lead me to believe he was a retired copper and not just a layman reading out of Griffith's book. Sims, perhaps, or someone close to Mac who may have consulted him prior to writing in response to Reid's letter. Unofficial conceeds that the City PC/City Police witness varied a 'Polish Jews' theory, but defends Mac's Druitt theory by pointing out that he only got a 'glimpse' of the suspect.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

To Tom

Sir Robert Anderson's memoirs came out in 1910 claiming that a Jewsh witness had positively identified a fellow Jew as the murdereer, but had refused to testify.

Sims acidly disparaged this notion in 'The Referee' as a grotesque, anti-Semitic caricature. That Sims was acting as Mac's proxy, as usual, is confirmed by the latter's memoirs, where he goes out of his way to characterise the only viable suspect and witness as both English Gentiles -- and that the killer himself was angry at three Jews for disturbing him.

Hence the beat cop shifted across to Eddowes.

To make the graffiti fit a number of Jews, on that night, you have to increase their number, to fit the plural, by adding more men to the cart at the Stride murder.

The City PC witness is a semi-fictional construct to first increase the viabilty of the Polish Jew suspect in Griffiths and Sims, and then to quash him in the memoirs because they are anti-Anderson on this matter:

"Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' (1914)

'When public excitement then was at white heat, two murders-unquestionably by the same hand-took place on the night of 3oth September. A woman, Elizabeth Stride, was found in Berners Street, with her throat cut, but no attempt at mutilation. In this case there can be little doubt but that the murderer was disturbed at his demoniacal work by some Jews who at that hour drove up to an anarchist club in the street. But the lust for blood was unsatisfied. The madman started off in search of another victim, whom he found in Catherine Eddowes. This woman's body, very badly mutilated, was found in a dark corner of Mitre Square. On this occasion it is probable that the police officer on duty in the vicinity saw the murderer with his victim a few minutes before, but no satisfactory description was forthcoming. During this night an apron, on which bloody hands had been wiped, was found in Goulburn Street (situated, if my memory is correct, about half-way between Berners Street and Mitre Square). Hard by was a writing in chalk on the wall, to the effect that " the Jews are the men who will not be blamed for nothing." The apron gave no clue, and the chalk writing was obliterated by the order of a high police official, who was seemingly afraid that a riot against the Jews might be the outcome of this strange " writing on the wall:' This was the only clue ever left behind by the murderer.

What you have here is not two police chiefs who both with a paucity of hard evidence agreed to disagree about their competing suspects.

What you actually have is two police chiefs -- two primatry sources -- who both think they do have coclsive evidence and one of whom, Mac, kept asserting, in public, that the other was dead wrong.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Jonathan,

I noticed that Mac spelled Goulston street as 'Goulburn' street. Why did he do that?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

I have attempted to attach the clipping that we're discussing, where an anonymous letter writer to the Morning Advertiser on March 25th, 1903 refers to the PC witness as 'murdered', meaning PC Ernest Thompson. I NEVER post attachments, so I hope this works.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Sounds like this “Unofficial“ guy read the MM 2 years ago. (Stating the obvious here.)

[Jonathan H]

To Tom

My theory is that Macnaghten misremembered it slightly.

You see, he claims to be writing the whole book from memory and apologises, in advance, for any errors.

He's cheerfully dissembling as usual with a big Cheshire Cat grin. For we know that he had 'Aberconway' at his elbow when writing about the Ripper for his memoir, which he reshaped -- again.

But 'Aberconway' (and the other version) does not contain the graffiti detail or the street name, and so he had to use his memory.

What an oversight? The 'only clue left' behind by the murderer and Mac did not include it in either version. But in 1914 he needed that detail because it helped debunk Anderson, eg. the murder was not a Jew as he blamed some Jews for disturbing his 'work'.

To Mariab

It is more likely that 'Unofficial' is simply lifting this opinion from Major Griffiths' "Mysteries of Police and Crime" (1898).

The 'Aberconway' version was known to exist by Griffiths and Sims but they were miseld by Macaghten int believeing tha it was a copy of a definitive document of state, filed at the Home Office, when it was no such thing.

The official version of the same document, which is quiet different, was never sent to the Home Office, remaining on file at Scotland Yard. It may have been completely unknown until 1966 when Robin Odell gained access to it in order to compare it with the 'Aberconway' version.

Yet it was the 'Aberconway' opinion, in which Druitt is probably the Ripper, which Mac projected onto the public; first, anonymously, via proxies, and then under his own name in 1913 and 1914.

[mariab]

To Mariab
It is more likely that 'Unofficial' is simply lifting this opinion from Major Griffiths' "Mysteries of Police and Crime" (1898).

I keep hearing about the Griffiths book today, but it went to print 3 years before the MM. “Unofficial“ wrote his letter to The Morning Advertiser on March 25th, 1903, clearly quoting the 3 “suspects“ from the MM. Is this supposed to mean major Arthur Griffiths' book (which I haven't read) already discusses these 3 suspects in 1898, prior to the MM? Pertaining not just to an incarcerated Polish Jew and to a “disappeared“ doctor, but also to Ostrog? For the latter, I have reservations.

[Jonathan H]

To Mariab

The official version of the Macnaghten Report was written in Feb 1894 and filed with Scotland Yard's archive (and I do not think was ever seen or referred to by anybody, before 1966).

The unofficial version, either a draft written in 1894 or a revision composed closer to 1898 -- nicknamed by modern researchers 'Aberconway' because it was copied by his daughter Lady Aberconway -- was used by Major Arthur Griffiths in his 'Mysteries of Police and Crime', published in Dec. 1898.

Griffiths was a Prisons Inspector and therefore, like Mac, whom he knew, an officer of the state. His adaptation of 'Aberconway' is in the introduction of his book rather than the chapter on police failures -- because now the Ripper case was apparently something of a success.

Reviewers at the time took note of this unexpected revelation, some quite scpeptically, and it was the first time that the [here un-named] 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog entered the public arena (the un-named M. J. Druitt, the 'son of surgeon', had appeared very briefly in Feb 1891 with the 'West of England' MP leak, thouygh he now became a middle-aged doctor).

In 1903, the retired detective Fred Abberline questioned the veracity of the drowned medico and locked-up lunatics suspects in Griffiths and George Sims(understandably from his point of view since they were not known to police in 1888, not until after the former was long deceased and the latter had been permanently sectioned).

Goerge Sims, a close Mac pal, hit back witn the first extant reference to the 'Aberconway' version, though is described as a definitive document fo state when it clearly is not:

March 29, 1903.


"Jack the Ripper" committed suicide after his last murder - a murder so maniacal that it was accepted at once as the deed of a furious madman. It is perfectly well known at Scotland Yard who "Jack" was, and the reasons for the police conclusions were given in the report to the Home Office, which was considered by the authorities to be final and conclusive.

How the ex-Inspector can say "We never believed 'Jack' was dead or a lunatic" in face of the report made by the Commissioner of Police is a mystery to me ...

April 5, 1903.

... A little more than a month later the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames. The body had been in the water about a month.

I am betraying no confidence in making this statement, because it has been published by an official who had an opportunity of seeing the Home Office Report, Major Arthur Griffiths, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons.

I have no time to argue with the gentlemen, some of them ex-officers of the detective force, who want to make out that the report to the Home Office was incorrect ... "Jack the Ripper" was known, was identified, and is dead. Let him rest.

That reference to 'the Commissioner' writing the Report is the closest that Macnaghten came to be outed as the orchestrator of the drowned doctor tale, but it does not say which one.

It'sd amusing to think that all anybody at the Home Office knew about this alleged sucided, slam dunk suspect was what they could read in the tabloids.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Jonathan,

I just wanted to see if you could acknowledge that Mac was capable of error...and you almost did! That's progress.

As for the graffito...since the MM was written in defense of the Met police, it only makes since that it would not make reference to their blunder of erasing what most of the public and their detractors considered one of their best clues.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott