Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

No one would deny the prejudice that Jews faced but this shouldn’t mean that we should assume that prejudice was the only reason for any example of a Jew being accused of something. Isn’t it more likely that, rightly or wrongly, they felt they had good reason for suspecting Kosminski?

I am very glad you asked that question.

There is no evidence that the police ever questioned or arrested Kosminski nor even that he was ever a suspect.

They did arrest Piser following the Hanbury Street murder, when local feelings against the local Jewish population were running high, even though the officer who arrested him said: there is no evidence whatsoever against him.

It is clear that the police investigation in general displayed no prejudice against Jews and I have never alleged that it did.

It was only many years later that police prejudice was shown - and by a retired policeman.

He accused Kosminski of being a criminal and a murderer, without citing any evidence in support of his accusations.

No-one fitting the descriptions given by Long or Hutchinson seems ever to have turned up, but the police did try to get two Gentile sailors identified.

That suggests they were pursuing sailors rather than Jews.

[Herlock Sholmes]

As the Lawende photograph has been mentioned I have to ask - if someone had seen Lawende across a Whitechapel Road would they have identified him as a Jew?

[Herlock Sholmes]

No one would deny the prejudice that Jews faced but this shouldn’t mean that we should assume that prejudice was the only reason for any example of a Jew being accused of something. It’s difficult to see why the police would pursue an investigation against someone purely because they thought that his ethnicity or religion made him the right ‘type’ of person for a series of horrible murders. Would they really have risked announcing an arrest only for further murders to occur? Isn’t it more likely that, rightly or wrongly, they felt they had good reason for suspecting Kosminski?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

There were notorious cases in central Europe and Imperial Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of Jews being tried for murdering and mutilating a woman or child.

In each case, they were eventually acquitted.

The same ideas permeated the Whitechapel murders case, with allusions to mutilation and ritual slaughter and with the marchers down Hanbury Street declaring that only a Jew could have committed the murders.

Witness sightings of suspicious-looking Jews abound in such cases, including the insinuations made by Long and Hutchinson, and those made against Piser.

One of those ideas was revived by Odell in the mid 1960s.

The great impetus behind the claims and suspicions that a Jew committed the murders is the memoir written by Sir Robert Anderson, in which he alleged that it was obvious that the murderer had to be a Polish Jew because only Polish Jews would protect the murderer.

It can hardly be denied that the whole basis of his case is prejudice, especially as he never cited one iota of actual evidence against the alleged Polish Jewish suspect.

There is the further - apparently unnoticed - fact that the Whitechapel murders case is only one of two cases in which Anderson claimed not only that Polish Jews perverted the course of justice, but that the murderer was himself a Jew, even though in both cases the best eyewitness evidence was that the murderer had fair hair.

It was only because of totally unfounded generalisations made long ago that the idea that the Whitechapel murderer was a Jew ever gained ground.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We could imagine anything and everything, but that won't get us any farther than 'imagining'.

It seems that Jewish customs were not as in tune with 'boozing and brawling'.

Is it your belief that all individuals conform to the group beliefs and behavioural tendency's of their own ethnic or religious group? I’d suggest that the police would be more than happy if this was indeed the case and that they could simply eliminate suspects on the grounds of “well we know that German Catholics never do x.”

These are the perils of generalisation.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I suppose for the exact same reason I agree with you on the idea that the supposed BS man was Jewish.

That is statistically unlikely as is a murderer writing his thoughts on a wall.

If I understand your first sentence correctly, you mean that the idea of a Jew writing the graffito is as farfetched as that of a Jew shouting the insult as Schwartz passed by.

But how likely is it that the murderer would have taken the trouble, as well as the risk, of taking a piece of his victim's apron all the way to Spitalfields and then discarding it inside the entrance to a building which he must have known to be inhabited by Jews, and that a message about the Jews happened to have been chalked on the entrance, without having been erased?

[Fleetwood Mac]

The study you quoted above is one of the sources for the statements I have been making about the rarity of public displays of drunkenness and violence towards women among Jews in the East East of London.

I suggest that the scene was set for the murderer to give the public what it wanted: a chalked message pointing an accusatory finger at you know whom.

I suppose for the exact same reason I agree with you on the idea that the supposed BS man was Jewish.

That is statistically unlikely as is a murderer writing his thoughts on a wall.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

An interesting article here, complete with a raft of contemporary sources.

Policing the Ghetto: Jewish East London, 1880-1920 (openedition.org)

It includes:

It was the singularity of Jewish culture and customs that was most striking. The newcomers, though quarrelsome and noisy, were essentially private people not much given to brawling and boozing or the lower forms of street life. Their home-centredness found expression in the attention lavished upon children, in the rarity of wife-beating and in their generally orderly conduct. The ‘Jewish type’ of child, said Inspector Reid, was fairly dressed, clean, well-fed and booted. ‘Jews rarely get drunk’, said Inspector Barker, his colleague from the Bethnal green Division. ‘Jew women as a rule lead happier lives than Gentile women, more respected by the husband and more faithful’

Reading the article, you can understand why the GSG was some idiot with nothing better to do than scrawl racist nonsense on a wall, and nothing whatsoever to do with the murder.

The study you quoted above is one of the sources for the statements I have been making about the rarity of public displays of drunkenness and violence towards women among Jews in the East East of London.

I believe I quoted Inspector Barker on another thread many moons ago.

I also quoted the following:

During the whole time I had charge there I never saw a drunken Jew. I always found them industrious, and good fellows to live among.

(Inspector Edmund Reid,
Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, 4th February, 1912)

I would also cite # 426 in A photograph of Joseph Lawende in 1899

in which I quoted from the same study as the one from which you quoted, as well as other sources, in reference to the Whitechapel murders, as well as the assault on Stride.

One of my sources was a police officer who witnessed the accusations being made against the Jews on the very day of the Hanbury Street murder, three days before Elizabeth Long told police about a dark 'foreigner'.

He was not the only policeman to note that the accusations, so readily made, were based on nothing more than prejudice.

Soon after the Hanbury Street murder, young men marched down Hanbury Street chanting that the murder had been committed by a Jew - on a day which happened to be the holiest Sabbath in the Jewish calendar.

There also appeared an erroneous newspaper report that the murderer had left a chalked message in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.

I commend your post for its quotation from Englander's study, but cannot see why you think it supports your final comment.

I suggest that the scene was set for the murderer to give the public what it wanted: a chalked message pointing an accusatory finger at you know whom.

And on the night of the next murders, after a body was found outside a Jewish club, an item of bloody clothing from the latest victim just happened to be left next to a message accusing the Jews.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Can any of us imagine

We could imagine anything and everything, but that won't get us any farther than 'imagining'.

It seems that Jewish customs were not as in tune with 'boozing and brawling'.

[Herlock Sholmes]

As a general point, there’s no ‘group behaviour’ applicable here. Can any of us imagine a modern day police force looking into the attack and murder of an Irish woman in the street for example and concluding that they could dismiss someone because ‘a man of his religion/ethnicity would never behave in this way?’ Or can we imagine the police saying ‘we have no record of an 6’3” Italian Buddhist ever attacking an Irish Catholic woman in the streets before therefore it’s extremely unlikely that this man was guilty?’

Within any group there will be ‘bad eggs.’ Not just violent one’s or criminal one’s but those that just don’t conform. Surely we should be keeping an open mind on various witnesses or suspects because no matter how likely we feel our own interpretation to be there’s always a possibility that we could be wrong. I think that we should also acknowledge that if we propose caution on some witnesses or that other witnesses could have been mistaken then we should extend the same caution to all. Witnesses can quite easily report something honestly but mistake someone’s age or height or build or hair tone or clothing.

[Fleetwood Mac]

An interesting article here, complete with a raft of contemporary sources.

Policing the Ghetto: Jewish East London, 1880-1920 (openedition.org)

It includes:

It was the singularity of Jewish culture and customs that was most striking. The newcomers, though quarrelsome and noisy, were essentially private people not much given to brawling and boozing or the lower forms of street life. Their home-centredness found expression in the attention lavished upon children, in the rarity of wife-beating and in their generally orderly conduct. The ‘Jewish type’ of child, said Inspector Reid, was fairly dressed, clean, well-fed and booted. ‘Jews rarely get drunk’, said Inspector Barker, his colleague from the Bethnal green Division. ‘Jew women as a rule lead happier lives than Gentile women, more respected by the husband and more faithful’

Reading the article, you can understand why the GSG was some idiot with nothing better to do than scrawl racist nonsense on a wall, and nothing whatsoever to do with the murder.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

That is incorrect. Shouting Lipski makes it more likely that Broad-shouldered Man was a Gentile, but evidence has been provided that "British" Jews sometimes used the slur against "foreign" Jews.

According to the newspaper report, the defendants were not British-born.

Nothing in the descriptions of Broad-shouldered Man, Pipe Man, or Church Passage Man eliminates the possibility of them being Jews.

The possibility is a remote one.

Their conduct and appearance strongly suggest the opposite.

There were Jews that got drunk, even on Shabbat. There were tall Jews. There were fair-skinned Jews. There were fair-haired Jews. There were Jewish sailors.

It was a rarity that a Jew was seen drunk in public.

It was unheard of for Jews to attack Gentile women in the street.

It was unheard of for Jews to shout antisemitic insults as people of Jewish appearance passed by in the street.

The chances of BS's having been Jewish are so remote as not to be worthy of consideration.

The chances of a fair sailor having been Jewish are similarly remote.

Though I doubt Church Passage Man was a sailor, since Lawende described him as fair complexioned, which is not the face of a man who has been to sea recently.

It seems plausible to me that a man with a fair moustache would have a fair complexion.

People knew how to recognise sailors.

If Lawende had not known how to do so, he would not have said that the man had the appearance of a sailor.

[Fiver]

And another problem is that it is obvious that both Schwartz and Lawende described Gentile suspects.

That is incorrect. Shouting Lipski makes it more likely that Broad-shouldered Man was a Gentile, but evidence has been provided that "British" Jews sometimes used the slur against "foreign" Jews.

Nothing in the descriptions of Broad-shouldered Man, Pipe Man, or Church Passage Man eliminates the possibility of them being Jews. There were Jews that got drunk, even on Shabbat. There were tall Jews. There were fair-skinned Jews. There were fair-haired Jews. There were Jewish sailors.

Though I doubt Church Passage Man was a sailor, since Lawende described him as fair complexioned, which is not the face of a man who has been to sea recently.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Long did not see the suspect's face, so there's no way she could have identified anyone's face.

A great suspect.

Long did not see his face, Cadoche did not see him at all, and the police never found a suspect fitting his description.

[Fiver]

In real life, the police asked Lawende, who had seen a fair man aged about about 30 and with the appearance of a sailor, to try and identify, in turn, two men who were themselves sailors.

They did not ask Long to try to identify a dark man in his 40s.

Long did not see the suspect's face, so there's no way she could have identified anyone's face.