Letīs talk about that identification again

[Fisherman]

Different things make sense to different people. And for different reasons.

Does that make sense?

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Makes ... sense?

A successful identification unknown -- the entire episode is unknown -- to the head of the City Police and unknown to the second in command at CID.

A second in command who arguably knows more accurate data about the same suspect.

A slam dunk event at a police hospital outside of London and despite it being extraordinary and which never leaked?

Is that really likely, or even plausible?

One of the reasons that Farson, Cullen, Rumbelow (in 1975), Fido and Nelson thought/think that this must be an event and a susepct from 1888 is that this is the way Anderson writes about the Ripper case in 1910 -- eg. all over by early 1889.

It is one of the reasons Cohen remains in play for some theorists.

To his discredit as a potentially reliable source Swanson does not contradict this implied and much truncated timeline.

Jonathan,

The explanation makes sense for understanding what Anderson meant. It doesn't mean Anderson wasn't mistaken. The idea of ID and retraction seems to be the only viable option in interpreting what Anderson seems to have been saying. The guilt of Kosminski is a separate matter.

Mike

[Lechmere]

It makes sense of Anderson if you are prepared to discard the annotations.

[Fisherman]

True - to make the whole puzzle come together we will need a circular saw.

The best,
Fisherman

[Jonathan H]

Anderson reflexively blamed others and acted in a conceited manner. He always had to be the smartest person in the room.

He was also, I think, an incorruptible figure.

Therefore when he wrote this, the first version of his initial claim -- its first appearance in the extant record -- he both blamed somebody else and yet offered an alternate explanation for the lack of an arrest: a suspect who was already permanently sectioned:

From 'Blackwoods', 1910

'I will only add that when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him; but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.'

I am not saying that Anderson says that the suspect could not be charged because he was sectioned. He is not. But inadvertently that is what he is saying.

An argument could be mounted that Joseph Lawende was brought in to view Aaron Kosminski after he had said no to Sadler. It might have been a week later or a year later. He said yes, and perhaps was prepared to swear in court, perhaps not. The point is it wasn't going to court.

Later, as his memory became muddled, Anderson began backdating these events back into early 1889 and this is what he passed on to Swanson.

I find it significant that the suspect is named -- 'Kosminski' just like Macnaghten does -- yet the witness is not.

[Bridewell]

I find it significant that the suspect is named -- 'Kosminski' just like Macnaghten does -- yet the witness is not.

That was my thinking too. The only reason I can think of for naming the (unconvicted) suspect but not the witness would be the possible consequences for the witness of being identified:- i.e. named as someone who had been able to identify the killer but refused to testify. That wouldn't have been a concern if the witness had died, disappeared from the scene or become otherwise unreachable. Lawende, at least, was still alive.

[Bridewell]

Different things make sense to different people. And for different reasons.

Does that make sense?

The best,
Fisherman

Yes! (Does to me anyway).

[Bridewell]

The annotations start with the word ‘because’.
Because of what? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?
It is obvious that the ‘because’ refers to the refusal of the witness to give evidence. It explains why the witness refused to give evidence.

‘he refused to give evidence against him, because the suspect was also a Jew’.

It could not be clearer, but the annotator expands further:
‘also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind.’

I agree with Edward.
(Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!)

[Garry Wroe]

The explanation makes sense for understanding what Anderson meant. It doesn't mean Anderson wasn't mistaken. The idea of ID and retraction seems to be the only viable option in interpreting what Anderson seems to have been saying. The guilt of Kosminski is a separate matter.

It would be interesting to know precisely what Anderson meant when stating that the case would have been resolved had English investigators been possessed of those powers enjoyed by their foreign counterparts.

[Jonathan H]

Police State

For much of the 19th century, France was a police state -- under either Napoleon (1799 to 1815) or his nephew Napoleon III (1848 to 1871).

Thus France, even when a Republic, had a police-judicial system which was much more directed towards state power rather than individual rights, let alone liberty.

Anderson is right, in theory, that a diagnosis of madness wold not have stopped them from arresting 'Kosminski', his whole family, every person who might have helped him and throwing away the key.

Also, Anderson maybe alluding, somewhat, to the entrenched anti-Semitism of French society which had led to the momentous miscarriage of justice known as the Dreyfus Affair which brought the country to the brink of collapse and civil war.

Of course that involved the false conviction of an innocent Jewish officer for espionage -- and they knew he was innocent and still railroaded him. On second thoughts perhaps Anderson is not ...

[The Good Michael]

It would be interesting to know precisely what Anderson meant when stating that the case would have been resolved had English investigators been possessed of those powers enjoyed by their foreign counterparts.

Referring to the idea that other police departments weren't burdened with the same regulations? I kind of thought that was a connection to the French gendarmes, though I don't recall where I read it...and yes, there was no real explanation.

Cheers,

Mike

[Garry Wroe]

For much of the 19th century, France was a police state -- under either Napoleon (1799 to 1815) or his nephew Napoleon III (1848 to 1871).

Thus France, even when a Republic, had a police-judicial system which was much more directed towards state power rather than individual rights, let alone liberty.

Many thanks, Jonathan. I've seen similar interpretations before and have always construed them to mean that Anderson was hinting that the murderer escaped conviction on a legal technicality. The problem as I see it, however, is that, trusting to Swanson's version of events, Kosminski was at liberty at the time of the Seaside Home identification and thus legally sane. In other words there was nothing to prevent his arrest either in Brighton or as a consequence of the City investigation that commenced upon his return to his brother's house. This suggests to my mind that, beyond the eyewitness identification, there never was any evidence linking Kosminski to the Whitechapel Murders - hence Anderson's moral rather than evidential certainty regarding the matter.

[Garry Wroe]

Referring to the idea that other police departments weren't burdened with the same regulations? I kind of thought that was a connection to the French gendarmes, though I don't recall where I read it...and yes, there was no real explanation.

More of Anderson's smoke and mirrors, I suspect, Michael.

[Stephen Lee]

What annoys me about all this is that something must have happened to id him yet we don't know much in the way of facts.
And who attended this id? If the witness clearly identified him what were the other people in the room thinking? Were they privy to what was going on?

This was a huge story. I find it hard to believe that the people in the knows family members wouldn't have found out in secret. A few years later someone would have went to the newspapers to make some cash. The whole thing makes little sense.

[Garry Wroe]

Well, Stephen, since Smith, Abberline and Littlechild effectively dismissed the identification, it couldn't have been as decisive as Anderson would have had us believe.