|
A Ripperologist Article
|
This article originally appeared in Ripperologist No. 65, March 2006. Ripperologist is the most respected Ripper periodical on the market and has garnered our highest recommendation for serious students of the case. For more information, view our Ripperologist page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripperologist for permission to reprint this article.
|
 |
The Kozminski File
Robert House
As a result of conducting some research through the
Polish State Archives in Poznan, I have discovered the
birth certificate of Jack the Ripper suspect Aaron
Kozminski as well as the birth certificates of his
siblings. In this article, I will briefly describe how
the discovery came about and discuss the implications
of the information contained in the birth
certificates.
Aaron Kozminski’s birth certificate would probably
have been found long ago, except for the fact that
archives in Poland are not centralized but housed in
numerous regional archives. These places will do
research for a fee, but unless you know the town from
where a person was, finding such a document is like
looking for a needle in a haystack and can be pretty
expensive. On the ‘Reconsidering Aaron Kosminski’
thread on the Casebook: Jack the Ripper website there
was a spirited discussion and a good deal of research
into the genealogy of various Kozminskis and their
relatives, such as the Lubnowski family. Research
turned up Golda Abrahams’s death certificate, among
other things. But the real breakthrough was Chris
Phillips’s discovery of a naturalization application
memorial for Israel Lubnowski-Cohen, who was probably
a brother of Morris Lubnowski. Most of these memorials
did not list a place of birth. As Chris Phillips
noted, ‘The memorials were written on printed forms,
and by 1896 the form had become more detailed,
including the phrase “he was born at”.’ Thus, Israel Lubnowski-Cohen’s application, dated 1901, listed his place of birth: Klodiva (Klodawa) in the Province of Kalish (Kalicz), Poland. As Aaron’s sister Matilda was the wife of Morris Lubnowski, I assumed that it was likely that the Kozminski family came from the same region as the Lubnowski family. I believed that it was worth finding out if it could be proved that the Kozminskis came from Kalish (Kalicz), so I wrote up a research request, had it translated into Polish, and sent it to the State Archives in Poznan.
For my correspondence with the State Archives in
Poznan I used a Polish translator. When I received the
first response from them telling me what they had
found, I quickly scanned the page and read a list
which contained six documents. One of these was
‘dokument uroenia – Aron Mordke Kozminski z 1865 r.’
This translates to ‘Birth certificate – Aron Mordke
Kozminski, dated 1865.’ Needless to say, I was pretty
excited. The list in its entirety is as follows
(translated from Polish):
1. Birth certificate - Pessa Elka Kozminska, dated
1845
2. Birth certificate - Hinde Kozminska, dated
1848
3. Birth certificate - Icek Szymche Kozminski,
dated 1851
4. Birth certificate - Blimbe Laje
Kozminska, dated 1857
5. Birth certificate - Aron
Mordke Kozminski, dated 1865
6. Birth certificate -
Mosiek Lubnowski, dated 1857
I ordered these documents, paid a US$110 research fee
and, after several months, received photocopies of the
original documents.
The translation of the birth certificate of Aron
Kozminski is as follows (transcriptions of his
siblings’ birth certificates and his parents’ marriage certificate follow this article):
#21. Town Klodawa. It happened in the town of Klodawa
on 17th September, 1865, [Starozakonny] Abram Jozef
Kozminski, age 44, tailor, in the presence of
witnesses Lajzer Pizeszewski, hawker, age 70 and
[Zojki] Skowronski, labourer, age 40, both living in
Klodawa, showed us a child, male, from his wife Golda
of Lubinowskich, age 44, born here in town Klodawa on
11th current month and year at 10 p.m. who was named
(at circumcision) Aron Mordke. This act was read to
the father and witnesses and signed by them
(signatures)
First, let me say that there is no doubt in my mind
that this is the birth certificate of Aaron Kozminski,
as Aron’s date of birth, 11 September 1865,
corresponds exactly to Aaron Kozminski’s known age. It
is interesting to note that his middle name, ‘Mordke,’
means ‘warrior’ in Yiddish. Aron’s mother’s name was
Golda, as expected, but her maiden name proved to be
quite a surprise to me. It was Lubnowska. Also
included among the documents I received was one that
was not on the list: the marriage certificate of Abram Kozminski and Golda Lubnowska.
Pessa, Hinde, Icek, Blimbe and Aron were clearly
siblings, as they all had the same parents: Abram
Josef Kozminski and Golda (or Goldy) Lubnowska. Blimbe
was most likely Aaron’s sister Betsy, who was married
to Woolf Abrahams, as the presumed birth dates of
Betsy and Blimbe were pretty much identical, based on
Betsy’s age in the 1891 census. Betsy was her
Anglicized name. I did not receive a birth certificate
for Matilda Kozminska, who was presumably born around
1856. See accompanying family tree.
It is interesting to note that the dates on these
documents are rather inconsistent. It appears that it
was common for people to estimate their own ages -
which they often did inaccurately. For example,
Golda’s age on her 1844 marriage certificate is 23,
which would mean she was born circa 1821, but a year
later, on the birth certificate of her daughter Pessa
(1845), her age is 21, which would mean she was born
circa 1824. On the 1901 census for the Lubnowski
family, Golda’s age is listed as 82, which would mean
she was born circa 1819. By the time of her death in
1912, her age is estimated as 97, which would mean she
was born in 1815. We can only guess her exact age. I
estimate, however, that she was born around 1823. The
same types of variances in age are seen later on the
1891 and 1901 census records for the Abrahams family.
In 1891, Betsy’s age is 34 (born c. 1857) and in 1901
her age is 40 (born c. 1861). I thus conclude that
people often had only a general idea of how old they
were.
The marriage certificate for Abram and Golda gives us
a good deal of information: Abram’s parents were Icek
and Malgorzata (Kozminski), a married couple living in Grzegorzew. Golda was ‘born from a married couple [Walek] and [Rudka] Lubnowskich of the occupation of butcher, living in the town of Klodawa.’ The birth certificates also tell us that Abram’s profession was that of a tailor. A witness at the certification of Pessa’s birth was Szymon Lubnowski, tailor, aged 33, probably Golda’s brother.
On the birth certificate of Mosiek Lubnowski (probably
Morris Lubnowski), the name appears to be spelled
Mosiek Abram Lubelski, although the handwriting is
hard to read. On the typescript of the document sent
by the Archives office, it is written Mosiek
Lubnowski. His father is Josek Lubnowski, shoemaker,
and his mother is Laj, age 25. It is unknown to me why
Mosiek’s surname is spelled Lubelski on the
handwritten document, although it is common to see
variant spellings of surnames on these documents. For
example, the surname Kozminski appears variously as
Koziminski, Koziminskiewicz and Kozminska. It is worth
noting that Polish adjectives have different forms for
the genders. Surnames ending in ski are regarded as
adjectives, so they, too, reflect gender with
different endings. Thus Kozminski is the nominative
form for a male; Kozminska is the same form for a
female. As for the suffix ‘ewicz,’ it means ‘son of.’
As Chris Phillips notes: ‘The parents (of Mosiek) do
look as though they match the parents given in Israel Lubnowski’s naturalization records - Jozek and Laj for Joseph and Leah. So maybe Mosiek is Morris... the supposition would be that Szymon (born c.1812), Jozek (born c.1815) and Golda (born c.1823) would be siblings.’ Thus it seems a distinct possibility that Morris Lubnowski and Blimbe (Betsy) were first cousins, but this is not proved.
Preliminary Thoughts and Interpretation
Golda’s death certificate lists her husband as Abraham
Joseph Abrahams, a master tailor. This is almost
certainly Abram Josef Kozminski. As Chris Phillips
pointed out, it would have been an extraordinary
coincidence for Golda to have married two men both of
whom were tailors named Abram Josef. It would
therefore appear that Golda changed her deceased
husband’s surname on the record to the name of her
daughter’s husband (ie, Woolf Abrahams). Why this was
done is not clear, but it suggests that she wished to
distance herself from the name of her son, knowing
that he was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders.
Abram Josef Kozminski’s date of death is uncertain,
but it was certainly before 1901, when Golda is listed
in the census as a widow. There is an Abram Kozminski
who died in Kolo in 1887, just a year before the
Whitechapel murders. I have ordered this document but
I have not yet received it. Kolo is located about 12
miles west of Klodawa, and about 8 miles north of a
town called Kozmin, with which the name Kozminski may
have been connected. In Polish, ‘ski’ is an adjectival
suffix meaning ‘of, from, connected with, pertaining
to.’ Attaching the ending ‘ski’ to the root ‘Kozmin’,
as in Kozminski, is a way of saying ‘somehow
associated with Kozmin’. Kolo is also located only
about 5 miles west of Grzegorzew, from where Abram
came (see map). I firmly believe this 1887 death
certificate from Kolo will turn out to be that of
Aaron’s father.
It has occurred to me that the death of Aaron’s
father, just one year before the Whitechapel murder,
may have been a sort of trigger. In his book, Serial
Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Peter
Vronsky describes the trigger as ‘a series or
combination of pressures in daily life that law
enforcement officers call “stressors”, which at some
point drive the predisposed individual to crack and
act on his fantasy.’1 The FBI’s study on serial
killers reported that in the case of eight per cent of
the killers surveyed the stressor was the death of a significant person in the killer’s life. The death of Aaron’s father in 1887 may well have been such a stressor. I have also considered the rise in anti-Semitism in London at this time as an additional pressure that may have led to Aaron’s becoming a serial killer.
In terms of the birth certificate of Aaron Kozminski’s
brother, Icek, the Polish Archives spelled his name
Icek Szymche on the typed transcript of the document
they mailed to me, but in the actual handwritten birth certificate it appears that his name is spelled Iciek Szyme Kozminski, although again the handwriting is difficult to read. The discovery that Aaron had a brother named Icek (Isaac) is intriguing to say the least.
We know there was an Isaac Kozminski who lived at 76
Goulston Street, but it is not known if this is the
same person as Aaron’s brother Icek. The 1891 census
lists Isaac (age 43), Elizabeth (wife), Michael (son)
and Betsy (daughter) at the Goulston Street address.
Presumably one could find the Polish marriage record
of Icek and Elizabeth, or a birth certificate for
their son Michael, which would determine if Icek (born
1851) is the same as Isaac (born c.1848), who was
living at 76 Goulston Street. Again, their dates of
birth may have been only estimated, as we saw with
both Golda and Betsy.
It has always been assumed that Aaron Kozminski was
living with one of his sisters during 1888, although
there has never been any direct proof that this was
the case. We know that by 1890–91 Aaron was presumably
living at either Sion Square or Greenfield Street, or
at both of these addresses at different times. It
seems likely that there was a shared responsibility
for taking care of him, so to speak. However, his
residence from 1881 to 1889 has never been known. If
Isaac Kozminski of 76 Goulston Street was Aaron’s
brother, as now seems probable, there is a distinct
possibility that Aaron may have stayed at this address
during 1888.
Let us briefly examine the thesis that Aaron Kozminski
was staying at 76 Goulston Street during the murder
series. First, this would fit better with Anderson’s
statement that the killer lived ‘in the immediate
vicinity of the scenes of the murders’2 and the
Macnaghten memorandum that states that Kozminski
‘lived in the very heart of the district where the
murders were committed’.3 Furthermore, because the
Goulston Street address falls within the area the
police searched house-to-house, Aaron Kozminski may
have appeared on a short list of suspected men, which
would better explain Anderson’s statement in his
autobiography, The Lighter Side of My Official Life:
During my absence abroad the Police had made a
house-to-house search for him, investigating the case
of every man in the district whose circumstances were
such that he could go and come and get rid of his
blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to
was that he and his people were certain low-class
Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people
of that class in the East End will not give up one of
their number to Gentile justice.
And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on
every point.4
As it is clear that Anderson believed that Kozminski
was the Ripper, his statement would now make more
sense. In effect, he appears to be suggesting that
Kozminski was interviewed during the house-to-house
search.
The Goulston Street residence would presumably fit a
geographic profile of the killer even better than the
Sion Street address. The murder of Tabram is the
closest of all the crime scenes, which again fits the
profiling theory that the first murder will be closest
to the killer’s residence.
Finally, there is the obvious connection with the
piece of apron and the graffito found in Goulston
Street, essentially the only real clues definitely
tied to the case. The killer’s presumed escape route
after the Eddowes’s murder in the early morning hours
of 30 September 1888 would have been along the dark
back streets, probably down Stoney Lane and Goulston
Street via either Wentworth Street or New Goulston
Street. This would have allowed Kozminski, if he was
indeed the killer, to slip into his residence after
quickly wiping his hands clean on the apron.
These are my preliminary thoughts on these new
discoveries. I am still doing further research into
this subject and will publish any new information that
I find in due course.
As a final note, I would like to correct and update my
article, Aaron Kosminski Reconsidered, which appeared
in Ripperologist No. 58 (March 2005). I wrote that
Morris and Matilda Lubnowski’s son Joseph was born in
Poland. This apparently was a significant error. He
was actually born in Germany circa 1880, which means
that the Lubnowskis had left Russia before the April
1881 pogroms. Their date of entry into England still
appears to be 1881, but they were in Germany for
longer than I had previously thought. It is still not
clear when Aaron left Russia and whether he was in
Germany for any length of time. He may have come later
or he may have been with the Lubnowskis in Germany by
1880 or earlier. In conclusion, it is still unknown
whether Aaron was in Russia during the pogroms and
what, if anything, he witnessed or experienced at that
time. I hope further research will uncover more
information on this and other issues.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their
help: Chris Phillips, whose excellent research was indispensable in finding the birth certificates of Aaron Kozminski and family, and who helped in interpreting them; and John and Laura Malcolm, for translating and interpreting the actual documents and for drinking beers and talking about the case with Elizabeth and me at the Burren in Davis Square, Somerville. Finally, my thanks to Elizabeth for listening, discussing, and putting up with my obsessive carrying on about this topic over the last few months.
Addendum - Translation of Birth Certificates of Aron Kozminski’s Siblings
NOTE: Some of the documents below show dates for both the Julian Calendar (which was used in Russia) and the Gregorian Calendar. This accounts for the 12- day discrepancy in dates as, for example, on the birth certificate of Hinde Kozminska, where her date of birth is listed as ‘on 13th/25th current month.’ After the January Uprising in 1863, Poland’s constitution was abolished and the political entity known as Congress Poland was officially absorbed by Russia. After this time, only the Julian Calendar dates were used.
#31. Grzegorzew. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 24th December 1845 at 11 a.m. [Starozakonny] Abram Jozef Koziminski – tailor, age 24, living in the town of Grzegorzew, here in Klodawa staying temporarily, in the presence of witnesses [Hersz] Szczecinski, bookbinder, age 50 and Szymon Lubnowski, tailor, age 33, living here in Klodawa, showed us a child, female, born here in Klodawa on 20th current month and year at 8 p.m. from his wife Golda, age 21. The child was named Pessa Elka. This act was read and signed by (signatures)
#18. Klodawa. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 16th/28th November 1848 at 11 a.m., [Starozakonny] Abram Jozef Kozminski, tailor, age 27, living here, in the presence of witnesses [Starozakonnych] [Hersz] Szczecinski, bookbinder, age 66, and [Jom] Londynski, labourer, age 70, both living in Klodawa, and showed us a child, female, born here in Klodawa on 13th/25th current month and year at 2 a.m. from his wife Golda of Lubinowskich Kozminska, age 25, who was named Hinde. This act was read and signed by us and witnesses. (Father) however can’t write. (signatures)
#15. Klodawa. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 2nd, 14th May 1851 at 7 a.m. [Starozakonny] Abraham Jozef Koziminski, tailor, age 29, living in the town of Klodawa, in the presence of witnesses [Starozakonnych] [Hersz] Szczecinski, baker, age 63, [Hersz] Olewski, (tradesman), age 66, living here in the town of Klodawa, and showed us a child, male, born on 25th April, 7th May, current year at 6 a.m. from his wife Golda of Lubnowski, age 28, who in circumcision was named [Iciek] Szyme Kozminski. This act was read, signed in Hebrew by father and in Polish by witnesses. (signatures)
#14. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 26th July/7th August 1857 at 6 p.m. [Starozakonny] Abram Jozef [??] Kozminski, tailor, age 36, living in the town of Klodawa, in the presence of [Starozakonnych] Majer Studentkowski, (teacher), age 54 and Lajzer Rzeszowski, publican, age 62, both living in the town of Klodawa, and showed us a child, female, born here in Klodawa yesterday at 5 a.m., from his wife Golda of Lubnowskich, age 35, who was named Blimbe Laje Kozminska. This act was read and signed by everyone. (signatures)
#1. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 2nd/14th January 1857 at 9 a.m. [Starozakonny] Jozek Lubnowski, shoemaker, age 42, living in the town of Klodawa, in the presence of witnesses [Starozakonnych] Majer Studentkowski (teacher), age 54 and Lajzer Rzeszowski, publican, age 62, both living in the town of Klodawa and showed us a child, male, born here in Klodawa on 6th current month and year at 8 a.m. from his wife Laj, age 25, who at circumcision was named Mosiek Abram Lubelski. This act was read and signed by witnesses. (signatures)
Translation of Marriage Certificate of Aron Kozminski’s Parents
#18. Klodawa. It happened in the town of Klodawa on 8th December 1844 at 3 p.m. [Starozakonny] Szmul Zelig Korek local Rabbi together with [Starozakonny] Abram Jozef Koziminskiewicz, age 22, born from [Idek] and Malgorzata, married couple living in Grzegorzew and Golda Lubnowska, single woman, age 23, born from a married couple [Walek] and [Rudka] Lubnowskich of the occupation of butcher, living in the town of Klodawa, certified that in front of him today, Abram Jozef Koziminskiewicz and Golda Lubnowska got married in the presence of witnesses Hersz Szczecinski, bookbinder, age 58, [Walek] Kniawski, tradesman, age 50, both living in the town of Klodawa. In the town of Buznica there were three announcements made prior to the marriage, on 23rd and 30th November and 7th December current year. In Klodawa oral permission was given by the present fathers for the marriage and there were no objections for the (young couple) to be married. The newly married certified that there wasn’t any agreement made prior to the wedding. This act was read and signed by (signatures)
Sources
1 Vronsky, Peter, Serial Killers: The Method and
Madness of Monsters. Pg. 289, Berkley Publishing
Group, 2004.
2 Anderson, Sir Robert: The Lighter Side of My
Official Life, page 137, Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1910.
3 Macnaghten, Sir Melville: The Macnaghten Memorandum.
4 Anderson, Sir Robert: loc. cit., pages 137-138.
