|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through May 27, 2000
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: Specific Suspects:
Contemporary Suspects [ 1888 - 1910 ]:
Kosminski, Aaron:
Archive through May 27, 2000
Author: Melanie Johnson
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 11:40 am |        | Good point, Caz! =) If Kosminski was the Ripper, wouldn't he have just been put into the asylum again anyway? So why was Sir Robert so anxious?
Mel |
Author: Ron Taylor
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 02:47 pm | | There is a lot here that doesn't make sense.
But Anderson's comments and Swansons marginalia are significant.
The biggest single mystery is why haul the suspect whether it was Kosminsky, Kaminski, Koslowski or Cohen to Hove. None of the reasons guessed (including several by me!!!) are really compelling.
Now we have formally and definitely found the location I'm hoping research at that end will show up something. |
Author: D. Radka
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 02:52 pm | | How are we coming up with the idea that the Convelescant Police Seaside Home (CPSH) was in Hove? Are we referring to the one in Brighton? Or a different one?
Thank you!
David |
Author: Ron Taylor
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 03:09 pm | | Why Hove not Brighton
The original location was never identified.
References were to "Police Seaside Home" and "Clarendon Villas" and "probably Brighton"
Purely by chance I discovered the Police Seaside Home was in Portland Rd (which contains Clarendon Villas)
Had this confirmed today by an ex Sussex Policeman.
Sir Robert Anderson was chair of the Ctte that ran this home and the patients were pretty well all Met Police.
Later the Home moved to Kingsway, Hove and is now situated in Harrogate Yorks. |
Author: A.M.P.
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 03:25 pm | | David,
It may be helpful at this point to explain that Brighton and Hove are adjoining towns, located on the South coast about 60 miles from London, in the county of Sussex (or to be precise East Sussex now that the county has been divided). They are part of the same administrative borough council. The two popular seaside resorts run straight into one another, and it is quite common for people to use the name Brighton for the whole area, even if they are talking about a place in Hove. For that reason, the home you refer to in Brighton is probably the same one that Ron is researching in Hove.
The really important question is whether Swanson's reference to the Seaside Home meant the one in Hove at all. For a previous discussion of this subject, including the comments of Stewart Evans, see the Police Officials board topic entitled 'Seaside Home Location'. |
Author: D. Radka
Thursday, 06 January 2000 - 10:15 pm | | Thanks, Ron and A.M.P., for your help. Much appreciated!
David |
Author: Guy Hatton
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 08:03 am | | Ron -
If, as you say, the "Seaside Home" is now in Harrogate, I think I'll take a little walk
to the beach this afternoon ;-) !
David -
Before you ask, Harrogate is a long way (in British terms) inland.
All the Best
Gu |
Author: Melanie Johnson
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 11:26 am | | Ron-
>The biggest single mystery is why haul the >suspect whether it was Kosminsky, Kaminski, >Koslowski or Cohen to Hove.
I'm interested in why you say Koslowski (or Klosowski) here. Am I unaware of something tying George Chapman to this angle, or were you picking a name out of the air? Because Chapman is my pet suspect, and I sincerely believe he was the Ripper. I know you said Koslowski, but think: how hard is it for us Brits to pronounce Klosowski? (or how hard would it have been in 1903?) Still, after he adopted his alias, he never admitted to being Klosowski again. Just wondering . . . =)
Mel |
Author: Ron Taylor
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 12:42 pm | | Location of Seaside Home
I had received incorrect information on this.
The definitive word is:
The home in Harrogate has been there since 1890 and therefore nowt to do
with Hove..
The first home in Hove was 51 Clarendon Villas,West Brighton. It opened in
1890, closed in 1892 (when it moved to Hove).
A Miss Bell donated the money to buy the piece of land in Portland Road
where the new home was built.
The Hove home NEVER had a male superintendent (this was police policy until
the mid 1900's)!
In 1966 the home moved to 205 Kingsway and for the first time a man, Mr
Holmes took charge..
Mel, When I referred to Kosminski, Cohen or Kaminsky I was using real examples of people who some have argued were Anderson's real suspect (altho' Cohen was a kind of John Doe description)
I shouldn't have used Klosowski because that was confusing. I was making the point (clumsily) that yopu made about the ease of confusing names. |
Author: Ron Taylor
Friday, 07 January 2000 - 03:00 pm | | Why Brighton or Hove?
I keep wrestling with this.
Taking a suspect such a distance when any witness must also have been a Londoner is bizarre....
try this as the ONLY working hypothesis I can come up with. But I really would like to hear any other ideas
November 13, 1887 -- "Bloody Sunday" A mass riot of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square, which Sir Charles Warren suppresses through military force. One man dies, and the radical press never forgets the incident.
Gov't was very concerned about political unrest.
All the senior police officers had military backgrounds.
May well have (almost certainly would have) planted informers
Jewish Working Mens Clubs were hotbeds of socialism. It was very close to such a club Liz Stride was murdered.
.......12:35 AM: Police Constable William Smith sees Stride with a young man on Berner Street opposite the International Worker's Club.The man is described as 28 years old, dark coat and hard deerstalker hat. He is carrying a parcel approximately 6 inches high and 18 inches in length. the package is wrapped in newspaper.......................
......................1:00 AM: Louis Diemschutz, a salesman of jewelry, entered Dutfield's Yard driving his cart and pony. Immediately at the entrace, his pony shied and refused to proceed -- Diemschutz suspected something was in the way but could not see since the yard was utterly pitch black. He probed forward with his whip and came into contact with a body, whom he initially believed to be either drunk or asleep.
He entered the Workingman's Club to get some help in rousing the woman, and upon returning to the yard with Isaac Kozebrodsky and Morris Eagle, the three discover that she was dead, her throat cut.
It was believed that Diemschutz's arrival frightened the Ripper, causing him to flee before he performed the mutilations. Diemschutz himself stated that he believed the Ripper was still in the yard when he had entered, due to the warm temperature of the body and the continuingly odd behavior of his pony.
.....
supposing Police had informer among club members....
somebody informing on JtR would have had no reason to fear....
but a political informer would not last very long if it became known....
supposing such an informer caught sight of the suspect.....
the need to spirit him out of London just might make some sense |
Author: Ron Taylor
Saturday, 08 January 2000 - 04:42 pm | | Police Home
found the Home in the 1891 Census at 51 Clarendon Villas.
In Enumeration District of Steyning, Civic district, Hove Ecclesiastical District Brighton.
But the street address is Hove.
Solves nothing. I can't get a photocopy of fiche until Tuesday and it was VERY hard to read.
Much smaller than I thought or some people were missed in Census:
Marg M Griffin Head 33 Lives by own means Born Hants, Portsea.
Fanny March, Matron Widow 57 Born Sssx Biddlecombe
James H ? Vistor Scholar 10 Born SSX, Brighton
James H ? Visitor Scholar Born Leics
Lahitia (?) Roper Servant 41 Ryde IoW
Eliza Inman Serv London, Bow
James Hay M 42 Police Inspector, Kent
Henry Hahl(?) M 47 PC Mdx Southall
Fredk Child s 28 PC Bucks, Beaconsfield
Fanny March Visitor Scholar 10 born SSX , Brighton
All subject to clarification when I get photocopy. |
Author: Ron Taylor
Sunday, 09 January 2000 - 01:23 am | | One interesting thing from 1891 Census at Police Convalescent Home.
In 1891 there was an Inspector James Hay staying there as a boarder
In 1881 there was a PC James Hay living in Whitechapel.
Both were born in Kent.
Likely same person |
Author: Ron Taylor
Thursday, 13 January 2000 - 11:34 am | | Police Seaside Home
I now have a copy of a lengthy article on this home (after it had moved from Clarendon Villas to Portland Rd.
The most interesting item is a reference to a "Monro Room"
Monro, of course, was of course, responsible for the Intelligence Dept of the Met and was also Police Commissioner from 1890. I'd like to think this is supportive of my informer hypothesis.
The scanned files are about .6mb so I haven't posted them, but willhappily EMail them to anybvody interested. |
Author: Diana Louise Comer
Wednesday, 23 February 2000 - 09:50 pm | | I have been wondering about the identification of Kosminski by Anderson's witness. I wonder how exactly it went down. Apparently you have a witness at one of the murders. He sees someone in such a compromising situation that this person must be the Ripper. Witness must have gone to the police with his information. How else would they know what he had seen? If he knew Kosminski he would have said, "Kosminski did it, I saw him." Later the witness refused to identify Kosminski under oath. This seems at the outset to be a conflict, until you realize that witness did not want Kosminski executed. An intelligent person would realize that if he did not come forward Kosminski would commit more murders and eventually be caught and hanged. A sensitive person would not want the death of more women on his conscience and if hypersensitive he would blame himself for not preventing Kosminski's execution. So such a person would tip the wink to the police but not follow through with a sworn identification. The other possibility is that witness did not know Kosminski. In that case he would not have become aware that Kos. was a fellow Jew until the identification, unless of course Kos. had a distinctively Jewish appearance.
Finally,if he did not know Kos. he could have only described his appearance to the police. Why, then, was this description so much more fruitful than say, Mrs. Long's description? Could witness have noticed some physical feature which was so outstanding and unique as to make the eventual identification of Kos. a certainty? The possibility of some deformity leaps to mind. The third possibility, besides the witness knowing Kos. by name, or spotting some peculiar physical feature, would be that he tailed him. After spotting Kos. at the crime scene he surreptitiously follows him home and then gives the address to the police. |
Author: paul branch
Friday, 12 May 2000 - 04:03 pm | | Greetings each and all,
I have been an avid reader of your message boards
for some months now, I love all kinds of true mysteries and find JtR particularly fascinating.
Unfortunately I'm no detective myself and certainly not qualified to make any meaningful postings as yet. You're all so very good !
However, I felt you might all be interested to hear that The Discovery Channel are airing, in the U.K., a program titled Jack the Ripper - An Ongoing Mystery, on Tuesday 16th May at 21.00hrs.
I've just seen a semi-preview and it appears that
Kosminski is the focus of attention, interested ?
Thats all for now
Paul |
Author: Christopher T. George
Friday, 12 May 2000 - 06:05 pm | | Hello Paul:
Indeed, Aaron Kosminski is the focus of the Discovery Channel show, and therein lies the problem. After the show aired in the United States on February 15, I wrote a review of it for Ripperologist (April 2000), and I am afraid I found it to be a poor effort. Yes, Kosminski is the preferred suspect, based on the 1988 FBI Profile of JtR, as if the show had been made in a time warp! There is no discussion of recently discussed suspects such as Dr. Francis Tumblety, Joe Barnett, or George Hutchinson. Also there is some faulty information imparted to the audience, e.g., MJK's head was severed from her body (told to the viewer by John Ross of Scotland Yard's Crime Museum), and that Israel Schwartz refused to pick Jack the Ripper out of a "line-up" because the suspect was a fellow Jew (stated by the narrator, actor Robert Lindsey). Now there may have been a Jewish witness who refused to identify a suspect, but that witness was more likely to have been Joseph Lawende, and at that date it is improbable that the British police would have used a "line-up."
I understand there are more TV specials coming up on Jack the Ripper for US viewers. Christopher-Michael DiGrazia tells me that the History Channel is launching a new series called "This Week in History." They will be doing a Ripper special during the week of August 31. I hear this is actually one of two History Channel efforts in the works, and that Stewart Evans, Paul Begg, and Martin Fido have been interviewed for the show. No news on when the second History Channel offering will air. Let us hope that these efforts prove more worthy than the Discovery Channel show.
Chris George |
Author: paul branch
Saturday, 13 May 2000 - 06:23 am | | Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comments.
Although I've not seen the program as yet, I have read the postings on the Ripper Literature boards which discuss this program specifically, it did'nt bode well !
It seems that Authors and TV program producers alike are always under pressure to produce the I.D. of Jack to give the audience some finale to the work. Noone likes a book without an end or a
show that finishes with "to be continued".
I imagine that any Ripper special would have to be
many hours long to do justice to all the existing theories.
As regards Kosminski, although there are many reasons why he can be eliminated as a Ripper candidate, he and many other suspects are quite compelling. I have seen many postings on these boards supporting cases against suspects in spite of clear auguments to the contrary. It is the nature of things and is, I believe, healthy to a point.
Even so, it is a shame when a TV program is aired
with a focus on a particular suspect and then cite flawed evidence to support its claims. I am sure that even the Kosminski fans on these boards would not stoop so low :-)
I will watch the show with guarded interest and continue to watch the boards.
Paul |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 13 May 2000 - 11:08 am | | Paul--
Hello.
I hope you enjoy the show. It's not all bad. You'll get a peek at Stewart Evans, Donald Rumbelow, and Paul Begg, among others.
Watch for some of the whoppers told by John Ross. He seems like an enthusiastic and pleasant enough fellow to hoist a pint with, but clearly he's no Ripper specialist. (Maybe Sir Melville Macnaghten was this sort of fellow).
I don't think Kosminski is a bad suspect, but the documentary is misleading. To the casual viewer, the implication is that the police were trailing him at the time of the murders!
Cheers,
RJP |
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 27 May 2000 - 03:30 pm | | Long, long ago, in August last year, Katya asked
for a simple explanation of the Cohen/Kosminski
confusion I postulate, and some rationale for
thinking Cohen a plausible suspect in the light of
the sightings of respectable-looking non-raving
men in the company of certain victims.
Allons!
I've posted a long boring piece under
'Primary Sources' on the 'Miscellaneous' Boards
giving reasons why I think Anderson's evidence
indicates as historical fact that a mad Jew was
identified, probably in the asylum, by a Jewish
witness. If you are already certain in your own
mind that this is garbage, and you don't feel open
to persuasion, don't waste any further time
reading this.
Now. Anderson believed the Ripper was a poor
Polish Jewish lunatic from Whitechapel. I searched
all the London public asylum records from 1888 to
1890 - a search which has not been repeated by
anyone else, which means I advise a little caution
when taking the opinions of people who have only
looked at Cohen and Kosminsky records. From
careful consideration of all Jewish inmates,
especially those from Whitechapel, I concluded
that David Cohen was not only the only possibe
'Anderson suspect', he very probably WAS the
Ripper. His incarceration would explain the ending
of the murders better than that of any other
lunatic committed in the period. And his
extraordrinary violence and hostility to just
about every one he encountered marks him out
strikingly from all the other patients over the
two year period.
Now consider the raving mania that worries
Katya. Raving mania is virtually never seen
nowadays. Tranquillisers are used imediately to
suppress it. Nor have raving maniacs ever remained
at large for any length of time. They are
obviously and visibly demented without any need to
check whether they'r putting straws in their hair
or asking for pieces of toast to sit down on.
Therefore Cohen's attack of raving mania started
very shortly before his arrest - or maybe even
during it. It is not without interest that
accounts of the arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer
indicate that when he knew he was blown and
caught, he started raving. In my opinion Cohen's
visible breakdown could easily have been brought
on because the steadily increased policing of
Whitechapel made it harder and harder for him to
slope off with a prostitute unobserved, and
achieve the needed emotional 'release' of a
murder. The increasing time lag from one murder to
the next suggests this. And forensic psychologist
Professor Luigi Cancrini of Bologna agreed as soon
as he saw Cohen's case notes. Cancrini had
previously observed that the crescendo of violence
in the Ripper murders were evidence of mounting
rage that must ultimately turn in on itself and
would probably result in suicide. That, of course,
remains a possibility. But Cohen's decline into
raving mania fitted his observations equally well.
I reconcile this with the appearance of the
'clerkly' man with Liz Stride and the
shabby-genteel man Hutchinson saw with Mary Kelly
because for a variety of reasons I don't think
either was the Ripper (or, in Stride's case, the
man Schwartz subsequently saw assaulting her).
On to the confusion. The reason I carried out
such an extensive search of so many asylums was
that I was looking for some one called Kosminsky
(or something very like it) who went into an
asylum in the spring of 1889. Both 'clues' came
from Macnaghten's garbled account of what he knew.
And they led nowhere. So I had assumed that there
was no Kosminsky, but that the mysterious figure
of Nathan Kaminsky who was treated in Whitechapel
Workhouse Infirmary in Aprill 1888 and then
disappeared from all records entirely, might very
well be 'David Cohen', since there were identical
elements in the very brief descriptions of them,
and Kaminsky's address was, and remains, the most
likely centre for the Ripper's operations that has
ever been connected with any suspect. I was
consequently astonished when I casually looked up
a further Colney Hatch record book which ran to
1894 and discovered that there really was a
Kosminsky. It didn't immediately strike me that he
was exactly the same age as both Cohen and
Kaminsky, as well as coming from the same parish
and being another foreign or Polish Jew. I thought
his incarceration was too late for him to be the
Ripper, and even rather too late for him to be
Anderson's suspect. When I found his medical
records I was quite sure he wasn't Jack: he was
harmless and suffered from aural hallucinations
and a touch of persecution mania. No sadism. No
violence. And apart from the typical silly
Victorian belief that his illness was caused by
masturbation, no sexual disorder.
I don't think anyone who has done original
research in the field has ever really believed
that Kosminsky was the Ripper, though Paul Begg
nursed the possibility for some time, during which
period he persuaded television director Geoff Pope
to become committed to the idea, and the
Cosgrove-Muerer production company to use the name
Kosminsky for the Jewish suspect in their
Peter-ustinov-and-the-panel-of-experts
investigation. Whereafter it has been suggested
that this is the 'preferred' theory today, which
is not, I feel, the case.
The fact that there was an innocent Kosminsky,
and a very similar figure in David Cohen whom I
believed to be guilty, led me to think there must
have been some confusion. I now believe the
Swanson marginalia (which emerged after and in
response to my work) bear this out completely.
In essence, Swanson says four things about
the suspect, two of which apply uniquely to
Kosminsky and two to Cohen. He says the suspect
was called Kosminsky and he lived at his brother's
house in Whitechapel. These are definite Kosminsky
points. But he also says he was taken to the
infirmary with his hands tied behind his back.
Since restraint of lunatics had to be recorded, we
know that this is untrue of Kosminsky, who was
never put under restraint at any time. Cohen, on
the other hand, was definitely taken from the
infirmary to the asylum under restraint (and since
his first action was to throw himself on the floor
and roll around, it seems likely that this was
restraint of his upper body or hands) and was
later put into 'strong clothes' to stop him from
tearing his garments off. And, most importantly,
Swanson says the suspect died shortly after
transfer from the infirmary to the asylum.
Kosminsky was still alive when he wrote this (and
would live another 9 years). Cohen, on the other
hand, died within a year of going to Colney Hatch,
and was the only Jewish patient to die prematurely
between 1888 and 1892. This seems to me to leave
no possibility of doubt that Cohen and Kosminsky
had somehow become confused in Swanson's mind and
he thought they were one and the same person.
(There are more questions about the Swanson
marginalia that remain unresolved: notably his
statement that the identification took place in
'the Seaside Home' - either the Metropolitan and
City Police Convalescent Home in Hove, opened in
1890, or one of the boarding houses used as ad hoc
police convalescent homes between the start of the
Convalescent fund in 1887 and the purchase of the
dedicated home in 1890), and that it took place
before the suspect went into the asylum, whereas
Anderson says it took place after. I can't even
offer reasoned deductions to explain these. Until
we find out some more facts they are unresolved
mysteries.
But I offer a hypothesis to explain the belief
that Cohen and Kosminsky were one and the same. We
know that the Met were not sure about Cohen's
name. They took him to the magistrates court to be
certified under the name Aaron Davis Cohen. By
nightfall that had changed to David Cohen. A
number of people, including some Cohens, have told
me that the authorities often allocated the name
Cohen to immigrants whose names they didn't know
or couldn't be bothered with. The Jewish scholar
who told Paul Begg this was untrue, and the
authorities went to great lengths to get people
recorded under their right names, hadn't seen some
of the records I have - the classic instance being
'Nathan Karnsky' whose name stayed thus as
originally recorded for 10 years after the
authorities had interviewed his mother and sister
and knew his name was Arginsky.
We know, too, that detailed information about
Anderson's suspect was known to very few people.
Macnaghten, for example, thought the identifying
witness was a City PC. Abberline's claim 'I know
all about that' had better be treated with a pinch
of salt: he knew ABOUT it, but he didn't know ALL
about anything that we've yet been able to sift
through. We have no idea how much Littlechild knew
or on what he based his scepticism about
Anderson's belief. And if the suspect was David
Cohen, those in the know would have breathed a
sigh of relief and pushed him to the back of their
minds when he died. Furthermore, the 'difficulty'
Swanson says they had in getting the
identification made might well have been because
their witness was (as most informed commentators
now think) Lawende. And Lawende was actually a
witness to the one murder that took place in the
City. So the City Police should have run any ID
that used him. The Met would not inform the City
if they'd hijacked their witness, only to find he
wouldn't give them the sworn statement they needed
incriminating a fellow Jew.
But according to Swanson, the CITY police
watched Kosminski at his brother's house in
Whitechapel - in other words, they trespassed
covertly on Metropolitan territory in the hope
that they were going to get the prestige of
catching the Ripper. So we have the possibility
that each force is keeping secret from the other
its trespass on their ground. If it then leaked
out from the City that their 'mad Polish Jew from
Whitechapel' had gone into Colney Hatch, those in
the Met who knew about David Cohen might have
thought they were talking about him, but they'd
be unlikely to want to share all their information
and stand accused of keeping the City in the dark
while they failed to get full advantage out of
Lawende. And while Cohen was incarcerated as a man
with no known relatives, Kosminsky's name would
have been known with certainty to the City police
- there was a sane brother with whom he lived. So
I think the Met, who had never been sure just who
Cohen was or what he was called, assumed they were
hearing that the City had tracked their man
'Cohen' in Whitechapel in 1888 and found that hs
name was really Kosminsky. And Swanson, at least,
accepted a couple of Kosminslian details as part
of thepicture of the Ripper.
QED
Except that nothing is ever satisfactorily
demonstrated to all unvbelievers, especially in
this case!
With all good wishes,
Ma |
Author: David M. Radka
Saturday, 27 May 2000 - 09:06 pm | | Mr. Fido,
It certainly is a pleasure having a man of your calibre posting here. What you write is almost too much to take in all at once. I have to print it out and study it before I can really comment. It's like meeting Einstein, and he wants to know just where I stand on the unified field theory right up front. I have the feeling others may be finding themselves in similar circumstance.
With respect to one point you make above, that Dr. Cancrini feels that the increase in the ferocity of the murders indicates that the murderer must soon turn his rage on himself (as your suspect did) and perhaps commit suicide. How do we know the murders really did increase in ferocity? Isn't it reasonable to think that the WM would have mutilated Polly Nichols a good deal more had he not been frightened away by the footsteps he heard? There would go an increase in violence from Nichols to Chapman. Didn't he merely cut Elizabeth Stride's throat, eschewing further mutilation of her? There goes an increase from Chapman to Stride. Certainly we see an increase in violence in Mitre Square, but could we not rationally explain it by the extreme time pressure he must have known he was under in that case? He must have made it 'round the corner a minute--perhaps less--before the PC entered the area and cast his bull's eye on Eddowes' body--thus the mutilations would appear to have been done with greater ferocity at least in part because he had to mutilate at warp speed. There goes at least some of the increase from Stride to Eddowes; it seems to me we might have a surge of violence in Mitre Square, and only the illusion of crescendo. And wouldn't it be rational to say that in Miller's Court there might just as likely have been a decrease, not an increase of violence as compared to Mitre Square? He basically did the same thing to Kelly that he did to Chapman, it seems to me, only he had much more time with Kelly so he did more of it. In these two cases exclusively, he carefully removed flaps of skin from the ventral torso and laid them aside--he did not attack ferociously. It might indicate the influence of a guiding instinct calmer than a great many have assumed. He may simply have been getting back to his "roots," meditating on his basic fetishistic preoccupations, when mutilating Kelly with time at his disposal. He may have been going backward in his series, toward a time of more patience, more perverse fascination with the female body, and less "violence."
It is something that I've never really understood about this case--the way that so many Ripperologists unreflectively buy into this myth-making "increase in violence" interpretation. To what extent do you feel this interpretation is adequately grounded in the case evidence?
David |
|
|
|
|
