Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect - Rob House

[Phil Carter]

Hello Lechmere,

Correct, its late here, 1891 it should be for Sadler.

Re Kosminski.. totally agree.

If, as you surmise, the police found these suspects after the event... then Sir MM, who was referring to the case itself from the time of the murders, is naming three people who according to Monro cannot have been the killer.

Time for bed. Enjoy the evening.


best wishes

Phil

[Lechmere]

Phil – I agree in general with your case but Sadler was cleared by 1891 surely?
I think the police found out about most of these ‘suspects’ after the event. In other words after they were locked up or died, their circumstances filtered through and they were logged in the minds of various policemen keen not to have the memory of their careers blighted by being clueless about the most notorious case to have occurred during their career.
Were Aaron Kosminski a serious suspect on his admission to the asylum then I find it impossible to believe that no note, however obliquely, warning of his dangerous potential would be in found in his medical files.

[Phil Carter]

Then there's this from back awhile (apologies for diverting the thread's subject matter a bit.)

Howard Brown has posted an interesting article on the forums site, entitled "The London Police by James Monro in the North American Review, November 1890, v 151, no. 408, pp. 615-629.

Howard highlighted a significant part of the piece - important for time it was written and because of Monro's position at the time of the writing - Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.

Monro wrote: "Excluding the unique series of outrages in Whitechapel, - at the non-discovery of the perpetrators of which none grieved more than the Metropolitan Police, - I cannot call to mind half a dozen really serious cases of murder which, within the last five or six years, have remained undetected; and the number of such offences committed is really small."

If David Cohen was Anderson's Polish Jew suspect, surely Monro would have know about it and in this quote he clearly does not. Cohen had been dead for over a year at the time of Monro's writing. Monro's view also tallies with another piece in the Cassells Magazine of the same year, where he told the interviewer that the police had nothing positive in the way of clues about the identity of the Ripper.

my emphasis

Hello Scott,

It is not often we find ourselves in agreement.. but this I certainly DO agree with. Allow me, if I may, to expand upon it a little? This little nugget from Scott has been missed, I feel.

Firstly, Monro says in 1890, that the Whitechapel murders were unsolved.
Secondly, Monro states that the police had nothing positive about the identity of the killer. (clueless)

If Monro, the head honcho, tells everyone in 1890 that HIS POLICE FORCE had no idea (nothing positive) about any single suspect being the killer.. then the entire police force is therefore clueless. I doubt whether any/all the underlings in his police force would know, but Monro wasn't privy to the information his employees had.

Therefore, Abberline, Swanson, Reid, Anderson, Arnold, and I would imagine the City police as well, Griffiths, Smith.. all didn't know in 1890. They were, as Monro puts it, clueless about the killer's identity. The police force, as a whole. None more so than the Met Police, so aggrieved were they.

So whomever Sagar and Co were following in 1888... whomever Det Insp Harry Cox was shadowing.. it doesn't matter.. because in 1890, Monro said that NOBODY qualified. (So if it was Kosminsky being followed... it can't have been him as the suspect of being the Ripper, because in 1890, Monro says they didn't have a clue as to whom, ipso facto, anyone followed wasn't the killer, whatever their name was.)

Moreover, if anybody was locked away, or even better, dead, before 1890...(Cohen, Druitt) then.. err.. they can't be the killer either... the suspect the police (Monro, as head honcho, reperesenting the police) say they didn't have a clue about any identity in 1890.

Moreover, if we go on a little while in time... anyone mentioned of the above, that must be a non-suspect by 1890, then mentioned in 1894 by Sir MM in his memoranda, must be false... because Sir MM is referring backwards in time to 1888, 1889 and 1890 when there was no suspect identifiable. So if one believes Kosminski to having been followed.. or Cohen.. it can't be the Ripper they followed. Ipso Facto.. Sir MM has placed three non suspects in the memoranda.

Moreover, when Sadler was caught, in 1895, the police believed THEN they had caught the Ripper. So that confirms Monro's comment from 1890, and dispells Sir MM's from 1894. The Ripper had not been identified by 1894 either.. goodnight Kosminski, Druitt and Ostrog.

Because Sadler wasn't the Ripper after the investigation about him was concluded, one can't then go back in time and say that any of the previously named/followed/dead/locked away/ etc was the Ripper. They are already counted out of the equation... By Monro, in 1890, and by dint of Sadler being suspected of being the Ripper in 1895.

That suspicion of Sadler tells all the truth. No one was the suspect by 1895. And that rules out a locked up Kosminsky, a drowned Doctor called Druitt, A thief called Ostrog, a thug called Le Grande (who gets locked away for a long time in 1890) and anyone at all, infact.

But then again.. clinging on to a favourite suspect is par for the course in Ripperology. Doesn't matter about what Monro said in 1890 about his entire police force knowing nothing, or that they tried to pin the Whitechapel murders on Sadler in 1895. Mustn't let small things like that get in the way of a theory, must we? Perhaps someone will now say that Monro wasn't telling the truth... unlike Anderson of course.. Hahaha

kindly

Phil

[PaulB]

I think the point is that Kosminski's name was known if not in asylum records certainly prior to finding Cohen's name. In a way, that could be construed as a slide or a dismissal of Macnaghten's memoranda. It doesn't make Martin Fido's work less sensible, but it does mean he fancied Cohen after he found him in the records, thereby ssslliddiingg over Kosminski... in a fashion.

Mike

Not really, Mike. "Kosminski" was known, that's why Martin went looking for him. It was only when he couldn't find him that Martin looked at other potential candidates and settled on Cohen. So, he didn't slide over "Kosminski", he simply didn't find him in the records where Macnaghten had led him to expect him to be, and far from sliding over "Kosminski", he thought Cohen was "Kosminski" and explained how the East End Jewish nasal twang could have made the one name sound like the other. He was subsequently told that "Cohen" was a common John Doe name given to Jews whose names the authorities found difficult to spell and advanced that possible explanation too. Martin therefore accepted that "Kosminski" was Anderson's suspect, but believed him to be in the asylum records under the name David Cohen.

Only later, when he found Aaron Kosminski, could there be any question of sliding, but even then it's questionable.

[The Good Michael]

There was absolutely no "slide over" from one individual to another. Martin had settled on David Cohen for good and sensible reasons long before he came across Aaron Kosminski's name.

I think the point is that Kosminski's name was known if not in asylum records certainly prior to finding Cohen's name. In a way, that could be construed as a slide or a dismissal of Macnaghten's memoranda. It doesn't make Martin Fido's work less sensible, but it does mean he fancied Cohen after he found him in the records, thereby ssslliddiingg over Kosminski... in a fashion.

Mike

[PaulB]

Hello Roy

I appreciate what you are saying, but might I point out that before anyone looked into asylum records, the name Kosminski as a suspect was out there, known from 1959 onwards from the Macnaghten memorandum, the only Jewish suspect named in that document? And with due respect to Martin, the search of asylum records was to find a poor lunatic Jew who might correspond to the police suspect theories as promulgated by the likes of Anderson and Macnaghten, wasn't it?

Best regards

Chris

I think you'll find that (1) the name "Kosminski" wasn't out there in 1959, (2)for a very long time the most authoritative book about the crimes was Don Rumbelow's, and he made a very good case for Pizer being Anderson's suspect, and (3) Martin Fido was the first person to connect Anderson's unnamed Polish Jew with the Polish Jew suspect named "Kosminski" by Macnaghted. And (4) the search of the asylum records was to find "Kosminski", not just to find a poor lunatic Jew who fitted police theories.

It was because Macnaghten said that "Kosminski" had been committed in or around 1889 that Martin did not extend his searches far enough and therefore missed Aaron Kosminski. Believing that Anderson would not have lied about his Polish Jew, Martin concluded that the suspect was in the records somewhere, albeit under another name, and the most likely candidate he'd come across was, in his eyes, David Cohen.

There was absolutely no "slide over" from one individual to another. Martin had settled on David Cohen for good and sensible reasons long before he came across Aaron Kosminski's name.

[Colin Roberts]

More important still, he saw the beauty of Black Lion Yard as an address - (much more truly central to the murder sites than Plummers Row or Sion Square, though those addresses were unknown at the time).

Slightly more "truly central"!

Slightly!

[ChrisGeorge]

Martin decided to slide over from Kosminski and choose another Jewish candidate much like the FBI profilers said that the killer could be Kosminski or someone very like him, which rather indicates that Kosminski (no first name) is a straw man rather than an actual living person who might have committed the murders. In other words, Anderson was pointing to a possible candidate who could have done the murders rather than relying on any solid evidence that Kosminski was the Whitechapel murderer.

Best regards

Chris George

No, Martin found Cohen first, because he searched the records around the time of the murders. A logical place to start. Only by searching records from later did he find Kosminski. He didn't slide at all.

Hello Roy

I appreciate what you are saying, but might I point out that before anyone looked into asylum records, the name Kosminski as a suspect was out there, known from 1959 onwards from the Macnaghten memorandum, the only Jewish suspect named in that document? And with due respect to Martin, the search of asylum records was to find a poor lunatic Jew who might correspond to the police suspect theories as promulgated by the likes of Anderson and Macnaghten, wasn't it?

Best regards

Chris

[Stewart P Evans]

Indeed

No, Martin found Cohen first, because he searched the records around the time of the murders. A logical place to start. Only by searching records from later did he find Kosminski. He didn't slide at all.
...
Roy

Indeed Roy, I can confirm this. Paul Gainey and I got this point wrong in our book The Lodger, back in 1995. It was a mistake that was being disseminated at the time and we really should have double checked. Original 1987 correspondence now in my possession confirms Martin's account and clearly shows that Cohen was found first.

[TomTomKent]

Ok, on a serious note: As jarring as the percieved flaws in the AtoZ were at first, I think that a missing caption hardly scuppers the entire book. It is a brief oversight, and one that is easily missed by experienced editors.

On a selfish note: A decent book on Dickens is something to get excited about. I have been trying to convince apprentices that Rye Church and Bleak House are indeed the same ones they were forced to read about in school because of Dickens and am always happy to have further ammunition...

[fido]

All the information on Cohen comes from the Workhouse Infirmary and Colney Hatch records.
On looking at the A-Z I see to my horror that the two have been printed together as one, separated by a turn of the page and with the latter untitled. Still, the information is there. I see, too, it is missing the data from another book which recoirds his being transferred temporarily to another building because of his propensity to attack other patients.
I must offer apologies for this type of error, often to be found in the new A-Z, and acknowledge that it is largely my fault. I normally make a very careful proof-reading of the copy from the printers, and had given one to a print-out of the ms in its original form as submitted to the original publisher who went bankrupt and left us with a further two years accumulating new material. For various ressons I had devoted an inordinate amount of time to the composition of that version, and Paul and Keith kindly agreed that I should not be pressed to do more than the minimum for the finally corrected version, which came up for proofing during my teaching term. (This, too, had become suddenly more demanding as an eager-beaver new head of department has slapped in new and taxing mandatory requirements). So I simply didn't proof the version you have, and lacking the expected advantage of three pairs of eyes, mistakes crept in. Normally Paul and Keith - more up-to-date with Ripperology and more interested in its outer edges than I - would make the best checks of the factual data, and I, an old pedant with a degree in English language and literature, now teaching writing, would check for language, fluency, and evident misprints or dropped passages. It simply didn't get that attention from me, and I apologize to all, noting that Paul and Keith should be exonerated from blame. It's a real shame that this volume, with the brilliant inclusion of pictures in proper situ, thanks to the very hard work of Paul, Keith and Stewart, is marred by a lot of little slips.
And I may add that the apology comes this late because busy-ness with teaching has kept me from looking at the Ripper forums at all for the past few years, and I only started doing so now in preparation for the Drexel University conference.
It has always been a matter of regret to me that Keith and Stewart did not include any of the Cohen material in the Sourcebook: regardless of their distaste for the Cohen theory, it robs others of the opportunity to make a decision for themselves based on the full data.
We don't know who N. Cohen was - we wish we did!
And I don't know whether anybody has ever pointed out that the 1891 census shows a Henry Cohen living as a servant at 86 Leman Street, the Protestant industrial school given as Cohen's address in the records.
If all this material is difficult to find, I should at some point put it on the forums. This summer I'm not teaching summer session for once, and have more time to myself than usual. Naturally things like a demand for updating my last Dickesn book for a centenary reissue next year, and press releases to write for my choral society - not to mention all the things to do around the house and garden that my wife would rather see done than any other form of work - come crowding in.
All the best,
Martin F

[Colin Roberts]

If only there were a way of getting the field of 'Ripperology' to understand the most fundamental principles of a probability distribution.




Hypothetical Probability Distribution (Elliptical) (Click Image, to Enlarge in flickr)
Underlying Aerial Imagery: Copyright Google Earth, 2010
Overlying Plots, Labels and Color-Shadings: Copyright Colin C. Roberts, 2011

Let's pretend that the above imagery is a Doppler Radar depiction of the most concentrated portion of a cloud of precipitation that happens to be hovering over London's inner 'East End'.

Let's also pretend that each of the color-shaded isopleths represents exactly ten percent of the rainfall that is occurring, and that the density of each set of ten percentage points is greatest at the inner elliptical contour of each of the respective isopleths, and least at the outer elliptical contour of the same.

In other words, let's also pretend that the density of the depicted rainfall is greatest at the center of the overall elliptical distribution (i.e. the intersection of Thrawl Street and George Street, in the Parish of Christ Church Spitalfields), and least at its periphery.

Now, let's pretend that somewhere within this distribution of raindrops, there is a single Golden Raindrop that is proving to be quite elusive.

I would contend that its single most probable location is the center of the overall elliptical distribution of rainfall (again, the intersection of Thrawl Street and George Street, in the Parish of Christ Church Spitalfields).

But, does that imply that its probable location is the center of the overall elliptical distribution of rainfall?

In other words, does that imply that its location is 'probably' the aforementioned intersection of Thrawl Street and George Street?

Absolutely, positively not!

Under no circumstances, whatsoever, does that imply anything of the sort!

In fact, the probability that the elusive Golden Raindrop is to be found, specifically, at that intersection, is so low that it is effectively zero percent.

So, what then, must I say, in order to define the area, in which the elusive Golden Raindrop is probably to be found?

Any takers (other than Chris Phillips)?

Any takers?

No?

I shall refer anyone that is interested, to the following post, within a thread that is, perhaps, better suited to this particular issue:

... the big red splodge is the epicentre and Jack is most likely to have lived in that red area, then the yellow and green bands represent the next most likely, and so on?

More-or-Less!

In the hypothetical Golden Raindrop scenario that I described, - in the post, which I was quoting - each color-shaded isopleth depicts ten percentage points of the overall distribution of rainfall:

Red: 10.00%
Orange: 10.00%
Yellow: 10.00%
Green: 10.00%
Aqua: 10.00%
Blue: 10.00%
Purple: 10.00%

In this instance, the red color-shaded isopleth covers the smallest area - anywhere - that contains ten percentage points of the overall distribution.

Hence, it is of greatest interest!

Likewise, the purple color-shaded isopleth covers the largest area - depicted - that contains ten percentage points of the overall distribution.

Hence, it is of least interest!

If we consider these portions of the overall distribution, on a cumulative basis, we have:

Red: 10.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains ten percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange: 20.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains twenty percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange, Yellow: 30.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains thirty percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green: 40.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains forty percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua: 50.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains fifty percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue: 60.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains sixty percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple: 70.00% - This is the smallest area, anywhere, that contains seventy percent of the overall distribution of rainfall.
---
Not Depicted: 70.01% - 100.00%

..., let's pretend that somewhere within this distribution of raindrops, there is a single Golden Raindrop that is proving to be quite elusive.

I would contend that its single most probable location is the center of the overall elliptical distribution of rainfall (again, the intersection of Thrawl Street and George Street, in the Parish of Christ Church Spitalfields).

But, does that imply that its probable location is the center of the overall elliptical distribution of rainfall?

In other words, does that imply that its location is 'probably' the aforementioned intersection of Thrawl Street and George Street?

Absolutely, positively not!

Under no circumstances, whatsoever, does that imply anything of the sort!

In fact, the probability that the elusive Golden Raindrop is to be found, specifically, at that intersection, is so low that it is effectively zero percent.

So, what then, must I say, in order to define the area, in which the elusive Golden Raindrop is probably to be found?

So, Helena, ... can you define (i.e. describe) a region, in which this Golden Raindrop is 'probably' located?

If you correlate this concept with that of a probability distribution, pertaining to the elusive residence of 'Jack the Ripper', can you then define (i.e. describe) a region, in which this residence was 'probably' located?

*** Please, remember that the elliptical probability distribution that I have depicted, is purely hypothetical.

[Scott Nelson]

Then there's this from back awhile (apologies for diverting the thread's subject matter a bit.)

Howard Brown has posted an interesting article on the forums site, entitled "The London Police by James Monro in the North American Review, November 1890, v 151, no. 408, pp. 615-629.

Howard highlighted a significant part of the piece - important for time it was written and because of Monro's position at the time of the writing - Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.

Monro wrote: "Excluding the unique series of outrages in Whitechapel, - at the non-discovery of the perpetrators of which none grieved more than the Metropolitan Police, - I cannot call to mind half a dozen really serious cases of murder which, within the last five or six years, have remained undetected; and the number of such offences committed is really small."

If David Cohen was Anderson's Polish Jew suspect, surely Monro would have know about it and in this quote he clearly does not. Cohen had been dead for over a year at the time of Monro's writing. Monro's view also tallies with another piece in the Cassells Magazine of the same year, where he told the interviewer that the police had nothing positive in the way of clues about the identity of the Ripper.

[Scott Nelson]

It is said that David Cohen had no next of kin. What is this assertion based on? Who was the "N. Cohen" who failed to appear before the Thames Magistrates Court to file assault charges against Ellen Hickey on 7 December, 1888? Could N. Cohen have been a brother to David Cohen, who apparently was present at the court hearing?

It is stated that Cohen had been residing in London for about a year when he was picked up by police. Again, what could this assertion be based on, other than a workhouse entry? Who was the informant? The A-Z says that “the name of a lunatic at large suffering from mania with no known relatives was unlikely to have been accurately established...” Did his family disown him? Was he in fact staying at the Protestant Boy’s home on 86 Leman Street, being otherwise homeless -or having left a relative's house? What if it was established that his non-anglicised name was “Kosminski”? How would researchers feel then?

More research is definately needed on "Cohen."

[The Good Michael]

That was a fascinating read, I must say. Thank you for taking us through some of the process.

Mike