Take Your Pick

[Herlock Sholmes]

Neither Swanson, Anderson or MacNaghten had any understanding of psychopathy.

They all assumed that the only kind of man who could have committed such heinous murders; was a maniac or lunatic.
In their collective eyes; the killer would have presented as a man with unsound mind and therefore relatively easy to spot.

The biggest piece of luck the Ripper had, was that the concept of Psychopathy in the context of Criminology had only really been established a few years, and was comparatively new compared to your generic raving lunatic or psychotic maniac that one might expect to carry out such barbaric crimes.

When you have senior police officers who are assured of their belief that the perpetrator was a lunatic/Jewish lunatic; it really brings a degree of shallow-minded arrogance to proceedings.

They senior police officers may have had the best intentions; but it seems that none of them at the time would have recognised a clinical psychopath even if they had interviewed them directly.

All the while they were anticipating the Ripper to be an individual who had lost their mind and displaying symptoms of mania; whereas they should have been looking for the average looking man; unassuming, yet charming, bereft of empathy and filled with indifference as to the nature and severity of the murders.

On that basis, the idea of picking the witness is made somewhat redundant, because the idea that there was only 1 witness who saw the Ripper etc.etc.. is based fundermentally on the beliefs of police officers who never really fully grasped or understood what type of individual the Ripper was.


It is IMO likely that the real Ripper had indeed been questioned by the police at some point; but that he came across as normal and behaved typically like a man who was innocent.

The phrase "It's the quiet ones you've got to watch!" springs to mind.

Hi RD,

I don’t think that it’s the case that we can assume that those senior police officers were particular hampered by their lack of understanding of psychopathy, although any advance in knowledge would have been advantageous to them of course. When the police did a house-to-house searches they weren’t necessarily looking for a raving lunatic; they were looking for men who could come and go unnoticed, who could change bloodied clothing and who might even have been protected by family/friends. It seems that Anderson’s opinion came about as a result of these searches; he didn’t set out believing that the killer was specifically a Jewish madman. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that one of the reasons that the killer hadn’t been caught might have been because he was being shielded and he felt that, a) the killer came from the lower classes and was a local man, and b) the lower class Jews were even more likely to shield ‘one of their own.’

Stewart Evans has suggested that as a result of this search the police would have had a list of men fitting the above criteria and then, when Kosminski was incarcerated he was brought to the attention of the police who found that this man was also on their list. Scott Nelson has suggested two other possible triggers for the police’s interest on Kosminski, a) the GSG, giving a pointer to a rough area where the killer lived, and b) Kosminski’s threatening of his sister with a knife. It’s easy to see how the family might have considered this a ‘final straw’ moment.

No one could doubt that prejudice existed but we also have to remember how much pressure the Police were under to get the ripper off the streets. How many reputations (and careers) were on the line? Would they really have jeopardised their chances of catching their man if they narrowed sights to obviously insane Jews?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, I have to go and stand in the corner for the rest of the day.

Whilst the witness could have been Schwartz my suggestion that he had been at the Seaside Home as a kind of ‘safe house’ makes no sense. Kosminski didn’t enter Mile End Workhouse until 18 months after Stride’s murder.

A full-sized black mark for me and a smaller one for you lot for not spotting it .

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Scott Nelson]

Don't beat yourself up too much, Michael. The suspect could have been another 'Kosminski' who was under surveillance starting in October 1888. So, Schwartz could have been removed to another location. Equally, Aaron Kosminski could have been temporarily watched during this early period.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Don't beat yourself up too much, Michael. The suspect could have been another 'Kosminski' who was under surveillance starting in October 1888. So, Schwartz could have been removed to another location. Equally, Aaron Kosminski could have been temporarily watched during this early period.

Thanks Scott, I’ve been checking myself recently about jumping in to post too quickly but I had a relapse.

I hadn’t considered a different Kosminski even though I’d recently read Stewart Evans dissertation and then yours in response. This is the Isaac Kosminski that you found in the 1891 census. You suggest that during the house-to-house the police came across Isaac Kosminski as a ‘possible’ after the GSG had acted as a pointer allowing them to narrow down the search area thus reducing the list of potential candidates. Isaac possibly living at 76, Goulston Street.

Do we know anything more about Isaac Kosminski? Im assuming that he was completely unrelated to Aaron and co?

[Scott Nelson]

You might check with Karsten G. on Isaac Kosminski's possible whereabouts after the 1891 census. I put him out as a possibile suspect way back in the late 1990s. Now I favor David Cohen as Anderson's suspect, with a name change from Kosminski to Cohen. Plus, the Coram Knife possibly being the murder weapon (at least on Eddowes).

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thanks Scott.

[Damaso Marte]

I think there's a meaningful chance that if this ID had happened at all, the stuff about the witness refusing to testify against a fellow Jew was a motive that the police imputed to the witness, not necessarily something the witness actually gave as a reason for refusing to testify.

The witness - whoever it was - might have refused to testify for any number of reasons. The initial ID might have been something the witness felt pressured into and refusing to testify might have been a way to get out of the situation without losing face and retracting the ID. The witness might even have completely made up their testimony, gotten way too deep into it, and used religion or some other excuse as a way of not having to commit perjury.

I don't know how court worked in Victorian England, but today any defense attorney would make short work of Lawende on the stand, hitting him over the head with his earlier statements about not being able to identify the man he saw again. If the events that Anderson described did happen, I don't think they'd be going to Lawende as a star witness if other options were available - say one of Lawende's companions.