|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** 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 **
"Anderson's Fairy Tales"
Casebook Message Boards: Police Officials: Police Officials:
"Anderson's Fairy Tales"
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 07 July 2002 - 05:21 pm |        | Hi Stan,
A few points I'd like you to clarify.
You say "Due to Cohen's death in October of 1889,
Cohen specifically does not fit Anderson's notion of a witness ID." Aren't you fallinginto the pitfall that has appeared on the boards before, of imagining that Anderson made or is known to have endorsed Swanson's reference to an ID in the Seaside Home, which could be the Police Convalescent Home that wasn't opened until after Cohen's death?
When you say confidently that
"Swanson was the only one to verify this Id but we must remember
that the characteristics written about the suspect do not fit Cohen or Kosminski.
They share some mutual characteristics but others are contradictory,"
you rather gloss over the extent to which the Swanson marginalia appeared to support the deduction I had already made and published while they were still unknown: namely that, for some reason that can only be guessed at, Cohen (the Ripper suspect) was confused with Kosminsky (the harmless lunatic who was in some ways remarkably similar to Cohen). For Swanson believes he is describing one man, yet he gives him two characteristics that belong uniquely to Cohen (a Jewish suspect taken into the asylum under restraint who died there shortly afterwards), and two that belong uniquely to Kosminsky (a Jewish lunatic named Kosminsky with a brother in Whitechapel). No other men in the London asylums fit Anderson's and Swanson's accounts in remotely the same way, especially when the fact that they were both 'from the heart of the district' is taken into account.
You say that neither David Cohen nor Nathan Kaminsky fit Swanson's description. But you can't use that description without some deductive explanation of its errors. Swanson states categorically that a man named Kosminsky died shortly after being sent to an asylum. Nobody on earth fits that description! Or have you some alternative in mind who somehow escaped being recorded in the asylum registers?
Could you identify the "authors outside this specific field" who have presnted a different picture of Anderson from that which Paul Begg and I put forward? Indeed, can you find a Ripper historian who has ever found it necessary to try and reduce the importance of Anderson's historical testimony UNLESS he was, however timidly, trying to put forward a case for a preferable suspect at the time when he formed his opinions about Anderson? Could you explain just how Anderson's account of his suspect has been shown to be inconsistent with proven fact? Could you identify the current research on Cohen and Kosminski which has undermined Anderson's brief remarks?
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: Stan Russo
Sunday, 07 July 2002 - 06:49 pm | | Martin,
It's tough to say that Anderson did not endorse Swanson's opinions, as he probably never saw them. Swanson's opinions do not fit perfectly to one suspect. This is what I meant by the current research, performed by yourself and others investigating Aaron Kosminski.
Everyone assumes that Swanson was at this witness ID so the characteristics he lays out about the suspect, who he names as Kosminski, should reflect the views of Anderson. This makes sense if they were both there at the ID.
Confusing Cohen/Kaminsky for Kosminski is a tough pill to swallow. If a suspect was identified as 'JTR', at an ID where both Anderson and Swanson both attended, wouldn't you believe that later comments on this suspect would perfectly fit not two, but one particular suspect. Some characteristics fit Cohen, some fit Kosminski, some fit both. This to me indocates that Swanson was not present at the ID. Now all we have to believe that this ID took place is the word of Anderson, and his thoughts regarding the suspect are vague as to a specific identity.
The police, including Anderson, were still under the belief that further murders and/or deaths, Rose Mylett and Alice McKenzie could possibly be the work of 'JTR'. How could that be if they had positively identified him as David Cohen, who was in an asylum during the time that those murders were committed? Are we to assume that Anderson knew 'JTR' to be David Cohen but did not inform James Monro, who actively investigated The Pinchin St. Torso murder as possibly being part of the 'JTR' murders?
If it were Kosminski, again we must assume that Anderson knew, and never informed his handlers at Colney Hatch and Leavesden.
Due to the vagueity of Anderson naming the murderer, it is very tough to challenge against this unnamed suspect. Swanson naming him as Kosminsky could only come from one source, Anderson, and as outlined above it seems ridiculous that Anderson would not have told the attendees at the asylums that they had a very dangerous man to take care of.
With respect to Nathan Kaminsky, all that is known about him is the one reference of him being treated for syphillis. If he was David Cohen then the above relates to him as it does to David Cohen.
Many have questioned Anderson over the years. Winston Churchill has been mentioned as speaking in The House of Commons unfavorably against Anderson's 1910 book. James Monro also challenged Anderson's statement that he had received permission to contribute or write articles for The Times against Parnell. The new book Fenian Fire, mentioned by Stewart, does not depict a favorable account of Anderson, going so far as to say 'for once, Robert Anderson was telling the truth'.
Ripperologist who question Anderson usually are promoting a suspect other than his Polish Jew, yet that does not necessarily lessen what they have to say about his veracity. I can only state what I have come to conclude that Anderson's reputation for dealing with the truth has been brought into question, by some before me, and now authors after me. I can only look at the possible names offered for his suspect and examine the cases for and against. In doing so I arrived at the reality that I cannot take Anderson's words and thoughts at face value.
Saying that 'JTR' was a poor Polish Jew does nothing for the case than offer three possible names for this suspect who theoretically, in my opinion, do not make viable candidates. If I were to say that my researches and beliefs led me to believe that 'JTR' was a French traveling salesman, how does that further the case. Anderson saying that 'JTR' was a Polish Jew leaves it as an impossible declaration to challenge unless there was definitive proof against another suspect.
It's mere theory and conjecture when discussing and dismissing Anderson, but then again, so is endorsing him, because he never actually named his suspect.
STAN |
Author: Ally
Sunday, 07 July 2002 - 09:25 pm | | You know what I find amazing? That someone who consistently claims poor english and blames it for his words being misinterpreted manages to post this:
"That some rabbinical edict compelled the Jews to migrate to the Bronx and that Anderson knew more about the interpretation of the sacred textes than the Chief Rabbi and so on is certainly a good way to depict and denigrate my posts but once again not what I have said."
It take more than bad suffixes to make a case for English-as-a-second-language.
Ally |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 12:02 am | | Aw, Ally, lay off Graziano, he's not the man to be blamed for nothing.  |
Author: graziano
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 12:21 am | | Well, my continuing posting on these boards for one year now has certainly helped me to better my english.
In fact that goal was the first reason of my coming.
Thank you for this hinted compliment but my poor knowledge of the english language compared to all others on these boards still prevent me from speaking with the shrewdness that would be necessary in such a subtle violent and quite hypocritical obliging environment represented by the majority of the posters here (well, the majority of the remaining ones).
Environment well supported by your job as moderator.
Not that I necessarily criticize it, it amuses me to see people considering themselves so seriously, trying to spit on others or conducting themselves like intellectual slaves morally bowing to the status of others, or seeing authorities falling to their pride.
Human nature.
If this is what you hint.
If you are instead saying that there is someone on my back dictating me what I post (and I do not know who else you could think of than Ed Carter), you are simply wrong.
Ed Carter was a genius, this I already said a lot of times.
Unfortunately I did not have the time to know him better, but from what I read from his posts on these boards he was also a very honest and sincer person.
He never asked me anything and so confirmed my high opinion of him.
You banned him forever and so you confirmed the idea I had on the environment you wanted on these boards.
That's all.
Feel free to think what you want.
But I am ready to go on a TV show to meet one of the experts. |
Author: Tom Wescott
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 01:24 am | | Paul Begg,
Perhaps you missed my post of July 5th relating to your new book. If you wouldn't mind, please scroll up and read it. I'm curious as to your response, as I imagine are all of us who are looking forward to your return to the Ripper book arena.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 03:11 am | | Hi Chris,
‘I do think, though, that Anderson, rather than leave the portion of his memoirs dealing with the Whitechapel murders with the unsatisfactory statement that the identity of the Ripper was not known, as was stated by Inspector Reed and Major Smith, it was better to give the information about a Jewish suspect, whom he possibly quite genuinely believed could have been the Ripper. Since Anderson was head of the C.I.D. he had more reason to put a better light on the investigation than Smith or Reed would need to do…’
Anderson might have had a better reason than anyone else to shed a rosier light on the Ripper investigation. Equally he might not have had any reason whatever to shed a rosier light on the investigation. After all, he had only just been appointed, had hardly tried his office chair for size before he went on holiday, didn’t return from holiday until after the Double Event, and the murders stopped in early November and the murderer was never heard from again. What responsibility would or should Sir Robert Anderson have felt for something that went on when he wasn’t there and was completely uninfluenced by any measures he’d instituted or withdrawn, especially when overall crime figure did fall substantially during his period in office – as he demonstrated. I think one must support this view that Anderson was desperate to shed a rosier light on the investigation and was less inclined than, say, Major Smith to admit that the police (no Anderson personally, coz he wasn’t there) were defeated by the Ripper.
But even if he did want to shed a rosier glow on things, was Sir Robert Anderson the sort of man who would wholly and completely invent a suspect who never existed, a witness who wasn’t real, and an identification that never happened, and peddle this invented story to the public?
And if he did invent the whole thing, how did Swanson get dragged in and think Anderson was talking about Kosminski? And who was Kosminski? And how did this chap with his bad dietary habits ever come to get his name linked to the Ripper case at all?
And if it was all invented, what was the theory Anderson reportedly had in 1895? Why did he abandon it? Did that theory involve someone committed to an asylum? If so, was that theory the one he was referring to in 1901? And if it did, was that the person Anderson actually meant when he wrote about ‘a Polish Jew’ in 1910 and was Swanson’s identification of that person with Kosminski a mistake?
Assuming that the identification was an invention leaves us with a whole load of problematic questions and is currently lacking anything that might be described a s supportive evidence. Let’s see other examples of Anderson inventing things that never happened so that he can claim the kudos for it.
On the other hand, was the identification a reality? If it was, then, as I tediously repeat, there was a suspect and there was a witness, and since we know absolutely nothing about why the suspect was a suspect or who the witness was or what he saw or how clearly he remembered it, and why he clearly remembered it, or how positive he was or how the suspect reacted to the witness, or what other evidence there was against the suspect and on which Anderson based his belief, then we can’t even begin to guess how solidly-based Anderson’s conclusion actually was.
So, if there was an identification, did Anderson walk away from it (or from reading reports of it) genuinely convinced that the suspect was guilty or was this a belief that grew on him over the passing years. Well, I think the 1895 and 1901 reports strongly suggest that the latter was not the case, and the 1901 statement always made the self-delusion in old age idea a colander. So we’re kind of left with two basic choices, either Anderson genuinely believed that the suspect was the Ripper or for some arcane reason he left the identification thinking “that’ll do” and thereafter spent his life knowingly deluding himself and trying to delude others. Why would he have done that? And is there any reason to believe that that is the kind of thing he did? |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 03:27 am | | Hi Tom,
I didn't miss the post. I just wasn't sure how best to answer it. The new book is an attempt widen the focus of Ripper studies by exploring what was going on at the time the crimes were committed so that they can be viewed against a broader backdrop. Specifically it is an attempt to show why the East End was primed for the crimes to attract the attention they did in 1888. Whether the book achieves this objective will be for the readers to decide, but I hope that the average interested reader will get a better feel for the period. |
Author: Ally
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 07:11 am | | Hi Graz,
Glad to know you are above such petty human behaviors as obnoxiousness and total arrogance. It is good to see you engaging in rational discourse without belittling or insulting the posters. Truly you have risen above 'human nature'. You are way too good for these boards.
Feeling a one month vacation coming on?
Ally |
Author: graziano
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 08:34 am | | I am ready to go on a TV show (in England of course - but not in the USA) to meet with one of the experts or more.
Hope it does not mind if I'll come with a Rabbi living in Antwerpen-Belgium friend (and professor) of mine.
Note nevertheless that he only speaks german (and Yiddish).
French is my second language, not english.
If there is any amateur to organize such a meeting please let me know.
I won't ask any money.
All expenses for my trip and my friend's on my shoulder.
But not the cachet the experts will ask.
Good Bye. |
Author: Tom Wescott
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 12:22 pm | | Paul,
Thank you for that very interesting overview of your new book. It wasn't my intention to put you on the spot, and I apologize if I did.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 01:26 pm | | Hi Stan!
You say,
"It's tough to say that Anderson did not endorse Swanson's opinions, as he probably never saw them."
Swanson states as a fact that the ID to which he refers took place in 'the Seaside Home'. We have no evidence one way or the other whether this was the only ID and was in fact the one to which Anderson referred. Since Swanson's elaboration gives descriptive points taken from two individuals (one of whom died in the asylum and the other of whom lived for a time with his brother in Whitechapel) there might have been two IDs. We just don't know. But we certainly do know from the records that there were two, and only two, Jewish patients who fitted those two points. Agreed, Anderson pretty certainly never saw Swanson's notes (or DS would probably have added more marginal notes with Anderson's further opinions, since Swanson's grandson said one of the old boy's great retirement hobbies was "writing" by which he meant annotating the margins of his books). All the more reason for insisting that we just do not know how far Anderson would have agreed that Swanson gave an accurate account of the case.
You say,
"Swanson's opinions do not fit perfectly to one suspect. This is what I meant by the current research, performed by yourself and others investigating Aaron Kosminski".
But I have never suggested that Swanson's remarks fit any suspect, or, indeed, any demonstrable sequence of historical facts. Quite the contrary. My question was: what current research has undermined ANDERSON's brief statements about his suspect?
You say
"Everyone assumes that Swanson was at this witness ID so the characteristics he lays out about the suspect, who he names as Kosminski, should reflect the views of Anderson."
'Everyone' has never included me. I have no idea whether Swanson was at the ID or not. His "taken by us" might just be a general reference to the Met as an institution.
You say,
"This to me indicates that Swanson was not present at the ID. Now all we have to believe that this ID took place is the word of Anderson, and his thoughts regarding the suspect are vague as to a specific identity."
I have no quarrel with this. Paul Begg, I believe, would endorse you very heartily on the second sentence, but say of the first that the peculiarities of Swanson's notes are so striking, and would be so outrageous to a police officer, that Swanson must himself have seen them and must therefore be giving a more accurate and detailed account of a very odd business than Anderson did.
You say,
"The police, including Anderson, were still under the belief that further murders and/or deaths, Rose Mylett and Alice McKenzie could possibly be the work of 'JTR'. How could that be if they had positively identified him as David Cohen, who was in an asylum during the time that those murders were committed? Are we to assume that Anderson knew 'JTR' to be David Cohen but did not inform James Monro, who actively investigated The Pinchin St. Torso murder as possibly being part of the 'JTR' murders?"
As I have remarked before, we really don't know at what time it crystallized in Anderson's mind that the ID of the poor Polish Jew was correct and conclusive. It might have been after the murders of Claypipe Alice or Frances Coles. Given the press attention and public anxciety over any East End murders after the Ripper events, Scotland Yard had no alternative but to treat every such case with a serious consideration of the question whether this might be the Ripper striking again. It was their duty not to bring a publicly closed mind to widespread fears that the terror of the slums was back. We don't know whether Anderson informed Monro before the latter's resignation. If he did, we don't know whether Monro agreed with him or not. We don't know whether Monro's theory was or was not that David Cohen or Aaron Kosminsky was the Ripper. We don't know whether his "hot potato" remark referred to the scandalous nature of the prime suspect or merely to the amount of bad press Scotland Yard got from the whole case. We don't know whether his statement that the Ripper ought to have been caught is echoing Anderson's view that he might well have been if the police in UK had the powers of continental police. We don't know whether the powers Anderson wanted were of stop and search without any cause for suspicion - ("Donnez-moi vos papiers!") - or house searches without warrants; or the right to hold a suspect for questioning as long as they wanted, unrestricted by Habeas Corpus. (In the latter case, we should add that we don't know whether this might mean that Swanson's recollection of a/the suspect having to be released into his brother's custody without being charged was the real irritant for the top brass).
You say,
"If it were Kosminski, again we must assume that Anderson knew, and never informed his handlers at Colney Hatch and Leavesden."
Since I think Anderson was talking about David Cohen who was dead before Kosminsky went into the asylum, I have no quarrel with this observation.
You say,
"With respect to Nathan Kaminsky, all that is known about him is the one reference of him being treated for syphillis. If he was David Cohen then the above relates to him as it does to David Cohen."
I agree that Kaminsky is so extremely a "coincidental" rather than circumstantial suspect that I cannot expect other people to share my continued feeling that this might have been 'David Cohen'. Whether he was or not, I think we have to attend to Anderson's unwillingness to name the suspect in public even after he had long been dead, because of "the traditions of his old department" (which Swanson evidently felt he had breached pretty substantially as it was!) May not these traditions have meant that it was even more important not to label a man as the Ripper until he had the promise of his day in court? I'm sure that if they could have charged their man, they would have been as delighted to show that they'd ended the Ripper scare as the Yorkshire police chiefs were in 1981. And they wouldn't have reaped the same sort of criticism from the press. But since they couldn't charge a man who was unfit to plead, they may well have felt bound by confidentiality.
In a previous posting, Paul Begg has dealt admirably with all the points you raise about Churchill and Campbell's new book.
You say,
"Ripperologists who question Anderson usually are promoting a suspect other than his Polish Jew, yet that does not necessarily lessen what they have to say about his veracity. I can only state what I have come to conclude that Anderson's reputation for dealing with the truth has been brought into question, by some before me, and now authors after me. I can only look at the possible names offered for his suspect and examine the cases for and against. In doing so I arrived at the reality that I cannot take Anderson's words and thoughts at face value."
Your first point is obviously true. But it remains a curious fact that Don Rumbelow and Richard Whittington-Egan, who do NOT accept the Cohen/Kosminsky theories, have never found it necessary to attack Anderson's reputation for veracity in their writing. Of course no one can object to your weighing the evidence and thinking that Anderson was probably wrong. But I don't think the judgement of history will ever be that Anderson was a man capable of making up or exaggerating a 'solution' of the Ripper case and foisting it on the public.
Stan, if you said Anderson ws a French polish salesman, we should evaluate this opinion by looking at the evidence you brought forward, its consistency with the demonstrable facts, your position to know any such thing, and whether you had a character (like, say, Le Queux or Stephenson) for drawing the long bow. Nobody is seriously saying anything more about Anderson than that by those criteria, he is the contemporary commentator whose statements seem most likely to be valid. This in itself made it worthwhile to go and see whether his admittedly extraordinarily vague phrase "a poor Polish Jew" could be narrowed down. Since he gave one other clue - the man was "safely caged in in asylum" -and the London asylum records have largely survived, it was possible to reduce the search from a needle in a haystack to a needle in a bundle of straw. There is no reason on earth why you should be compelled to agree that any of these three needles were likely candidates. There can be no argument if you say you think Anderson was wrong. One can disagree with you without having to battle it out all the time. But for the reputation of a man whose descendants would not like him to be falsely characterized as a liar, and for the reputation of those eccentric and extreme Christians who hold millenniarist views and avowedly scrupulous moral standards, it is necessary to be very careful about challenging his integrity just because you think his conclusion was mistaken.
And to everyone else
Stan will, I'm sure forgive me for stressing that no matter how ferociously we are arguing, there is no bad blood between us at all, and in other respcts we are exchanging the friendliest of e-mails off the boards. Let us all be like Dr Johnson and love to "argue to win", but equally do so with the generosity of spirit not to feel that disagreement in the interpretation of history reflects on our adversaries' characters.
All the best,
martin F |
Author: Stan Russo
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 02:08 pm | | Martin,
So its settled, we agree to diagree, the new mantra of the 'Ripperologist'.
STAN |
Author: Chris Jd
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 02:58 pm | | Hi Graziano,
Why a TV-Show?
The experts you asked for are on this boards AND lots of people interested in JTR are watching!!!
So, my little Latin one more time:
Hic Rhodos, hic salta!
Christian
I mean it! |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 06:24 pm | | Wotcher, Stan!
Yes, alas. I fear if we thrash out old arguments over and over again, we'll bore the pants off people whom Spryder and Ally would like to see visiting the boards. (Paul Begg and I ruefully realized that we were becoming prize bores when we ALWAYS settled down to the same diagreement whenever we met).
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: Scott Nelson
Monday, 08 July 2002 - 11:06 pm | | | Martin, should you decide to depart again for an extended period, could you first post those records of asylum inmates? |
Author: graziano
Tuesday, 09 July 2002 - 04:55 am | | | The TV show would open the doors of Hollywood (for me) and the Hell's gates (for the experts). |
Author: Martin Fido
Tuesday, 09 July 2002 - 08:04 am | | Hi Scott,
Thanks for reminding me. I'll seek out my notebooks, and hope evryone will forgive me if for some time I make little contribution to ongoing discussions (except the fascinating one with Stewart on th Lighting in Mitre Square board), as I shall certainly have to depart for an extended time in Septmber when I start teaching again.
All the best,
Martin F |
|
|
|
|
