Release Date for Kosminski Documentary

[Elamarna]

This Ripper going to ground for a bit before dropping the apron actually fits with Jacob Levy much more than Aaron Kosminski.

Levy is indeed a very fine suspect, just behind Anderson's suspect on my list.

Steve

[Lewis C]

Something that I wonder about this is, if Anderson and Swanson were convinced that Kosminski was the Ripper, why didn't they share this info more widely? According to the form at Kosminski's asylum, Kosminski wasn't dangerous to others. Wouldn't it have been in everyone's best interest for the asylum to have been informed that he was dangerous? When Francis Coles was murdered, police looked into the possibility that she might be a Ripper murder, meaning that they weren't convinced that The Ripper was in a lunatic asylum. Macnaughten knew about Kosminski, but apparently what he knew didn't convince him that Kosminski should be the #1 suspect, much less that the case had been solved.

[c.d.]

Hello Lewis,

Agreed. And you would expect that the police would ask asylum officials to notify them if anything at all changed with respect to Kosminski. But somehow they got the details of his death wrong.

Also, it is hard to believe that even if asylum officials were not informed outright who they were harboring that they didn't gather some suspicions. Yet, apparently no leaks in that regard. I can just see some asylum guard in the pub after a few pints. "Hey, you won't believe who we have in our asylum."

c.d.

[Elamarna]

Something that I wonder about this is, if Anderson and Swanson were convinced that Kosminski was the Ripper, why didn't they share this info more widely? According to the form at Kosminski's asylum, Kosminski wasn't dangerous to others. Wouldn't it have been in everyone's best interest for the asylum to have been informed that he was dangerous? When Francis Coles was murdered, police looked into the possibility that she might be a Ripper murder, meaning that they weren't convinced that The Ripper was in a lunatic asylum. Macnaughten knew about Kosminski, but apparently what he knew didn't convince him that Kosminski should be the #1 suspect, much less that the case had been solved.

One suggestion is that the perceived fear of mass public disorder, if it was revealed the killer was Jewish, was an important factor.
Particularily if there was not sufficient evidence to ensure conviction.
Indeed even a successful conviction could conceivably result in the same.
Therefore, you keep the name a secret, the fewer who know, the less chance of a leak.
The end result, the name Kosminski does not surface until the second half of the next century with Macnaughten, and not until nearly 100 years after the 1888 murder, in the case of the Marginlia .

On Coles, look at it from Swanson perspective, you have seen a man you believe to be the killer locked away, and then another murder occurs that is linked to the previous series.
It would be negligent not to check that murder very carefully, because if it was by the same hand as the others, then the killer is still on the loose.
So Swanson, checks the murder himself, adds it to the list of murders in the file, and in my view concludes it's not by the sane hand.

On Macnaughten, the Abberconway version is significantly different to the file version.

The Abberconway version says that the killer was never seen, unless it was by the City PC close to Mitre Square.
In the file version it just says he was never seen.
The Abberconway version also say with regards to "Kosminski" that he bore a great resemblance to that person seen close to Mitre Square; again that is missing from the file version.

In my opinion the memorandum is the oddest document in the whole case, full of blatant, sloppy mistakes. I have pondered for many years if it is all that it seems on the surface.
I plan at some point to produce an indepth work on the memorandum.

I hope that addresses some of your points to a degree.

Steve