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Archive through December 01, 2000
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles:
Non-Fiction:
Cases That Haunt Us, The (Douglas and Olshaker, 2000) :
Archive through December 01, 2000
Author: Graham Sheehan
Saturday, 25 November 2000 - 03:47 pm |        | Hello everyone,
I've been having a delve into old man Anderson's history. I knew he'd written books, but not quite so many or on religious subjects, nor did I realise he was born in Ireland. He's certainly held in great esteem by many Christian organizations. With his devout beliefs in mind, it does seem rather unlikely that he'd have made the statement he did re the Ripper's identity being a definitely ascertained fact if hadn't had very strong reasons to think this true. Dipping into various books to refresh myself of the details, it seems that some reseachers thought his Polish Jew was in fact John Pizer, good ol' Leather Apron himself, although it's pretty obvious Pizer wasn't Jack (I think).
How possible is it, I wonder, that Anderson was privy to information that no one else was? Although others mention the PJ, only Anderson felt himself in a position to put a definite name to the Ripper ('I'm almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer.' Then why didn't you, Anderson, ya bugger!?).
I'm not sure how much is known of David Cohen. Is there any possibility that he once held a respectable position in the Jewish community. Maybe as a shochet... Jack was believed by many to be suffering from religious mania, and a shochet was apparently considered a kind of low ranking cleric on account of how his duties bore great significance to has faith. And would also have been pretty handy with a knife...and back we go to Robin Odell's theory.
Trouble with me is, as soon as I convince myself a suspect definitely couldn't have been Jack, I start thinking of reasons why he COULD.
Graham |
Author: Jeffrey
Saturday, 25 November 2000 - 05:28 pm | | Hello all !
I must say that I have always found it quite fascinating that MM chose to write such a response to a newpaper article. In his response he goes to great lengths to exonerate Cutbush and it goes to show that he would not consider wasting time on even a minor investigation into Cutbush to challenge their (in some cases quite valid) suspicions. These Sun reporters probably knew a fair bit themselves of the Whitechapel killings.
There are one-or-two facts about Cutbush, including his wearabouts at the time, and the fact that he was a little on the eccentric side (to be polite) that make me wonder how Mr. M appeared to know so much of him and to speak with such confidence. Cutbush is probably a better suspect in someways than any of the other "3". Is it not strange that he would choose to probably tarnish forever the names of 3 innocent men in this way simply in support of Superintendant Cutbushs' nephew for some unknown reason ? Even of the three names, only one had any kind of criminal background. How could he justify writing in this way and putting suspicion for the most horrific crimes the country had ever known on a petty thug, a school teacher and an unknown Jewish imbecile?
Jeff D
PS; who did live at 29 Aldgate High Street ? ;-) |
Author: Harry Mann
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 05:43 am | | Could Anderson have been the only person to have knowledge of the suspect identification?.
Very doubtful.Before there could be an identification,it would have to be known there was a suspect,there was a place where he could be identified and there was a witness that could identify him.Who provided this information.
Next there would be someone who conducted the witness to the place of identification,there would presumably be someone in attendence to the suspect at the place of identification,and as it was a police project,someone who would sanction these activities.
Then considering that it was an officially sanctioned operation,official reports detailing the activities carried out would have to be submitted.These reports would contain the names of those people involved including the names of the witness and suspect.These reports would be scrutinised by the officer(s) leading the onground investigations and then these reports would be placed in the official file.
So quite a number of persons should have had access to the names of both witness and suspect.
Of course my interpretation of what I consider should have happened is completely wrong,and Anderson somehow,with the cooperation of maybe one other,did all those things himself. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 11:15 am | | Jon - I'm getting old and dim, and don't understand the point of your 'Happy Families' message.
Stewart - thanks for clarification. General note: if you are right in thinking A.C.Bruce interviewed Packer (or if Stephen Knight was right in saying that the handwriting - which looks very different from the memo appointing Swanson i/c murder investigation - was Warren's), then we have somebody senior to Anderson and well senior to Swanson indulging in 'hands-on' investigation. Possibly doing so, too, after Warren and Home Secretary have told Anderson they hold him responsible for finding the murderer.
Of course today's practice is different. An Administrative chief handing out responsibilities would not interfere with SIO's work. (Though one might bear in mind that Ch Constable Gregory personally insisted on nationwide broadcasting of the Yorkshire Ripper hoax tape, outweighing George Oldfield, although GO agreed with him in the debates that were dividing the investigation directors.) But back in 1888 the 'gentlemen commissioners' often tried to get in - I agree of course they probably didn't add much to the local CID. As late as 1928 AC Sir Wyndham Childs believed that his own ballistic examination of a spent cartridge solved the murder of PC Gutteridge, and foolishly discounted Robert Churchill's comparison micrsocope as a useless tool.
I don't think it's an invariable habit of yours to assess Victorian Police practice by modern experience, but I've been aware of the possibility as a trap ever since I was solemnly assured by a practising police officer that Dew couldn't have been in the CID in 1888: he was too junior. Of course we know that this is quite incorrect. Junior or not, Dew was in the CID.
The general debate on Smith, Anderson and knowledge is focussed on a very important area. Graham's sensible examination of who Anderson really was is admirable. If this work is done, without the preconception that Jim Bakke and Jimmy Swaggart provide a template from which Victorian evangelicalism can be understood, then I think the inevitable conclusion must be that Anderson might have been wrong, self-satisfied and opinionated, But he couldn't conceivably have been lying or boasting. What he said was what he believed to be true.
As for confirmation, Swanson believed Anderson's suspect was Kosminsky; Macnaghten had heard the name attached to a man with 'strong circs' against him, and both had apparently reached their positions by 1894, long before Anderson had said anything in public. (I take the Swanson date from a newspaper report about Grainger. The probable reason for Macnaghten's elaborate cutting down Cutbush is that the case was indeed, as is noted, very persuasive. So civil servants or ministerial spokesmen who might be called upon to respond needed very firm briefing). If I recall rightly somebody saying on these boards that Moore was contradicting Anderson in 1902, then we have fascinating evidence that he probably knew about Anderson's conference paper of 1901. But Abberline doesn't seem to have known of it. In his PMG interview he just refers to 'some people' who say the Ripper died in an asylum. And since he had said in 1888 that he didn't know what Chapman's injuries were, and he proved in 1901 that he was unaware of the BMJ's complete refutation of the 'burking' theory, one can only gasp at the amount the Scotland Yard top brass didn't put in front of the man they had sent to command the inter-divisional CID work on the ground. If Abberline knew so little, I don't imagine for one moment that Major Smith over in Old Jewry knew anything more about Anderson's beliefs than he read in his book/s.
And I endorse every word of Paul Begg's long posting looking at what Anderson was really apologising for.
Harry Mann - I agree absolutely that Anderson cdnt have held a secret ID parade all on his Todd, (tho' Swanson's mysterious remark that the suspect was taken to the Seaside Home 'by us with difficulty' makes me think furiously). Nor do I know why he was so much more certain than anyone else that this had proved conclusive. There isn't a shred of evidence that this was wishful thinking, or that (e.g.) he spotted the witness's face at the moment of recognition. A mystery which is at present unexplained.
Graham - likewise, I don't think Anderson's odd views about Jews give us any idea whether a probably natural wish to see the Ripper as 'different from us' would have encouraged him to prefer the Cohen/Kosminsky solution. (Cf modern Jews, from Cammy Woolf to Jonathan Goldberg QC whose initial reaction to the Cohen/Kosminsky theory ranges from 'A Jew? - I DO hope not!" to the misplaced confusion of religious law with ethnic extraction, 'Couldn't be. Mutilating a corpse is forbidden.') Schochet's knives? No, alas. Investigated by the police at the time and ruled out because they are curved and the Ripper's was straight.
All the best to all, and apologies to anybody who addressed aything direcly to me which I missed. My wicked publishers have kept me very busy checking editorial dept notes.
Martin Fido |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 12:43 pm | | Martin,
A couple of points. First I do not recall where I have stated that A.C. Bruce interviewed Packer, perhaps you could enlighten me? He may have done, but I don't recall saying he did. What I have said is that the so-called 'Packer Statement' of 4 October 1888 is written in Bruce's handwriting and initialled by him. But, of course, it is not a statement, it is more like notes of what Packer had to say. For what an 1888 witness statement looked like I would refer you to Hutchinson's statement at MEPO 3/140 ff. 227-229. The notes of what Packer had to say, initialled 'ACB' are merely that, notes. No headed paper, no signature, no counter-signature.
So these notes may have been made from Packer's proper written statement taken by someone else (which has not survived), possibly a Detective Sergeant or Detective Inspector of the Central Office. The reason for this scenario would be simple and eminently plausible. Serious allegations of neglect of duty had been made against the police by Packer, by the private detectives accompanying him, and by the press. To quote the Evening News, from an interview with Packer by a 'Special Commissioner' from that newspaper (inter alia):-
"Well Mr. Packer I suppose the police came at once to ask you and your wife what you knew about the affair, as soon as ever the body was discovered."
"The police? No. THEY HAVEN'T ASKED ME A WORD ABOUT IT YET!!! A young man in plain clothes came here on Monday and asked if he might look at the yard at the back of our house, so as to see if anybody had climbed over. My missus lent him some steps. But he didn't put any questions to us about the man and woman."
"I am afraid you don't quite understand my question Mr. Packer. Do you actually mean to say that no detective or policeman came to inquire whether you had sold grapes to any one that night? Now, please be very careful in your answer, for this may prove a serious business for the London police."
"I've only got one answer," said the man "because it's the truth. Except a gentleman who is a private detective. NO DETECTIVE OR POLICEMAN HAS EVER ASKED ME A SINGLE QUESTION, NOR COME NEAR MY SHOP TO FIND OUT IF I KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT THE GRAPES THE MURDERED WOMAN HAD BEEN EATING BEFORE HER THROAT WAS CUT!!!"
Now this is a very serious allegation indeed for Packer to make. He lived adjacent to the site of the Stride murder and for the investigating officers to have missed properly questioning him would have been a serious neglect of duty in a murder investigation. Serious enough for the officer involved to have lost his job. And here we have the crux of the matter, here is the reason that Packer's statement was being looked at at the highest level. Bruce was not involved because he was 'indulging in hands-on investigation' of the murder. It was because a serious allegation had been made against the police and such a senior officer would have to look at this serious allegation. An allegation which was being made public in the press and would come to the eyes of the Home Office.
In the event we know that Packer either had an extraordinarily bad memory, or he was simply lying (or on a publicity 'high'). For the statement of Detective Sergeant Stephen White (filed under MEPO 3/140 ff. 212-214) clearly shows that White had indeed seen Packer, and his co-residents on the morning of Sunday 30 September 1888 and that all at that address, including Packer, claimed to have seen nothing, Packer stating, "No I saw no one standing about neither did I see anyone go up the yard. I never saw anything suspicious or heard the slightest noise. and know nothing about the murder until I heard of it in the morning." The police were exonerated and Packer discredited.
This is the whole reason why it reached that level, as I have said, it was nothing at all to do with senior officers getting involved in investigating the murders, rather they were concerned with the very serious allegations levelled against the police.
With all due respect Martin I do not 'assess Victorian police practice by modern experience...' I would hope that I am a bit more intelligent than to do that and it surprises me to hear that you think I do. I assess Victorian police practice with reference to both my own police experience and my deep knowledge of the Whitechapel murders case and the police procedures of those days. With due respect I would say that it is your lack of police experience that leads you into thinking that the fact that a senior officer noted what had Packer had to say was 'getting involved in the investigation of the murder.'
My own knowledge of the differences (and there weren't as many as you might think), between the Victorian police procedures and those I experienced when I joined the force in the 1960's, is very good and I know that in those days an officer could get straight into the CID with little experience (as did Dew, and others) unlike today when a greater uniformed experience is required before joining the CID. I don't know who your 'practising police officer' was who made the comment on Dew, but I certainly would have made no such comment. |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 01:29 pm | | Dear Stewart,
"Martin must forgive me for sometimes thinking or speaking as a police officer. Having been one for 28 years it's difficult not to do so." (SPE 25.11.00)
"I don't think it's an invariable habit of yours to assess Victorian Police practice by modern experience, but I've been aware of the possibility as a trap...' (MAF 26.11.00)
"I assess Victorian police practice with reference to both my own police experience and my deep knowledge of the Whitechapel murders case and the police procedures of those days." (ESP 26.11.00)
I'm sorry you read my remark as a reflection on your knowledge of the case requiring the expenditure of a good deal of time in response, but delighted that this largely took the form of a detailed statement of how and why you think Bruce made notes on Packer's statement. It is, as one would expect, a very valuable little essay on the topic, though not, perhaps, unquestionably the last word.
Martin |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 04:09 pm | | Having looked at this discussion then , I am wondering if we should not attempt to clarify certain points about Anderson's and Swanson's statements in order to progress further. These are the questions I would like to ask about this matter , I wonder is anyone able to answer them ?
(1) Anderson states " If the police here had powers such as the French police possess , the murderer would have been brought to justice " ( The Lighter Side...p138 ) Does anyone know what those powers of the French police were ? Surely evidence would have had to exist against a suspect before even the French police could consider an arrest ? Is this a reference to habeus corpeus then ? Surely the British police could have pulled in a suspect and questioned him ?
(2) Anderson tells us that " the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him " ( ibid ) to which Swanson adds that the suspect was identified at the " Seaside Home ".
This surely means the witness was in the Seaside Home for means of recuperation , otherwise why did the indentification not take place elsewhere ?If so , then one of the following must be true - (a) The witness was a policeman or (b) the witness was a civilian and the Home was not the Police Seaside Home. Which is the more likely case then , and who would be the favoured potential witness in either case ?
(3) Swanson states " On suspects return to his brother's house in Whitechapel he was watched by police ( City CID ) by day and night ". Why however were these the City CID and not officers of the Met ? They were operating in Met territory. Does this mean that the suspect was actually a resident of the City ?( note he is stated as returning to his brother's house in Whitechapel and not his own ). Or does it mean that when he was witnessed commiting his crime , it was on City territory ? ( this suggests Lawende and the Catherine Eddowes murder ).
Hopefully someone wiser than me can answer these questions ! |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 05:29 pm | | Dear Martin,
Thank you very much for your reply, I suppose we must look upon this sort of exchange as bringing out the different view-points and assessing the true relevance of evidence that has been left to us.
Don Rumbelow was here the other day, and both of us being ex-policemen we discussed our experiences in 'the job.' Don was in the City whilst I was in a provincial force and used to working both in big towns and rural areas. But the basic job, hierarchy and protocol is more or less the same everywhere. When Don and I joined in the 60's you still had 'parades,' O.B.'s (occurrence books), S.O.'s (Standing Orders) regularly issued and updated, cape and overcoat, disciplinary rules, form of writing reports ('I beg to report...' &c.), memos, supervisory rendezvous points, rules of evidence, arrest and bail procedures etc. as existed in Victorian days. Many of the dusty old Victorian bail and warrant books were still in the police stations, and much of the law we enforced was the same as our forefathers used in Victorian days. For instance we were still dealing with drunks under Victorian legislation (the Licensing Act, 1861) and much more. We knew the rules of evidence backwards and could recite them in our sleep, we knew all the dodges of doing night duty, walking the street from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Personally I dealt with hundreds of criminals, made hundreds of arrests, took thousands of statements, dealt with countless sudden deaths (including many suicides and murders), witnessed dozens of autopsies, gave evidence countless times in Court (Coroners, Magistrates, Assizes, and latterly Crown Court), and so on. On many occasions I even acted as Coroner's Officer.
And this occupied more than half my life. So you may guess that we do tend to think and see life a trifle differently from the average non-policeman. Also being particularly interested in Police History, I was the curator of the Force Museum, and have been a member of the Police History Society for over fifteen years. As regards police hierarchy, as we are all aware, the main difference between then and now was, as you point out, the fact that the most senior officers (such as Anderson, Macnaghten, Monro, Smith etc.) were not policemen at all but an 'imported' officer corps. In fact the highest ranking career police officer at that time was the hugely respected Chief Constable, Adolphus 'Dolly' Williamson, whom even Anderson often resorted to for advice!
Regarding the Commissioner's report of 15 September 1888, putting Swanson in charge of the case, I have been down to see Jim Swanson, examined the original report and photographed it. I have shown Don and others the results of my work on all the documents and they agree with my conclusions. The main problem was the difficult to read handwriting of Bruce, and his impossible initials ('ACB') which had led to many of the previous errors and that includes me, for I too had read it wrongly until I made my extensive study of this material.
The good thing out of all this is Martin, that we are gradually reaching a better understanding of all the material we have and we can both help in this respect by applying our joint expertise on such matters. I know no-one as knowledgeable as you, for instance, on Victorian social history and the religious and literary influences of the times. We may never reach a consensus on the identity of the killer, for there was never a scrap of solid evidence against anyone, but we will gradually see the history of the murders more and more clearly, definitely resolve some of the peripheral mysteries, and know a lot more about the facts overall.
It is nearly twelve years since we first worked together (on the Peasenhall murder) and I look forward to future discussions on this even more tantalising mystery. We have never totally agreed with each other, but at least we have both always rejected the absurd.
With every good wish,
Stewart |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 05:35 pm | | Very good and pertinent questions, Simon.
(1) Anderson makes similar grumbles elsewhere in his writings, and bascially I think it is indeed habeas corpus that annoys him. The French police could hold a suspect (i.e. some one against whom they had some reasonable ground for suspicion) for as long as a juge d'instruction - a rather junior magistrate who supervised the investigation - agreed that they could keep him under wraps and go on looking for evidence. The English police had to keep coming back to court and getting a magistrate to review the state of their case and remand the suspect for another short period. I think I once suspected that Anderson also thought the French had less stringent restraints on their powers of searching private property, but I'm not going to swear to that.
(2) This is a key crux. In Blackwood's Magazine, Anderson wrote 'when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.' Now, for reasons Stewart Evans and Paul Begg have separately given, these words were changed in the volume to the words you quote. No mention of the suspect's being in an asylum, and the words 'swear to him' changed to 'give evidence against him'. No mention of the witness backing off because he and the suspect were both Jewish - (something Swanson confirms, evidently unaware of Anderson's Blackwood's piece).
And then we get Swanson's story. There's an additional comment on the witness from Swanson, saying he didn't want to cause a fellow creature to be hanged. This seems to rule out the asylum ID, since a committed lunatic couldn't even have been charged (as we gather the Ripper wasn't). You omit Swanson's statement that the suspect was ID'd in the Seaside Home 'where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification'. This, surely, rules out the suspect having any sort of treatment, (or holiday!) and implies that the witness was in the home. If anything, this would indeed suggest that the witness was a policeman if the Seaside Home was the police convalescent home. But that brings you up against the improbability of a policeman striking a racial and humanitarian conscience pose to withdraw an ID he's made without being put on oath. (I don't mean that policemen lack consciences or a feeling of ethnic solidarity, but that the almost military discipline of the Victorian force makes such a defiance of senior officers very hard to envisage). Add to that the fact that I think I'm right in saying we still haven't found any Jewish policemen at this period.
And why was the suspect taken 'with difficulty'? Does the stress on 'by us' mean 'by the Met' as opposed to the City or some other force, or by the police as opposed to the suspect's family? Or did his lawyers object, if he was rich enough?
Already at this stage, despite the congruence of the Jewish witness refusing to swear, Swanson's account is so far from Anderson's that I find I have to give serious consideration to the possibility that these accounts unwittingly refer to two different IDs: one in the asylum and one in the Seaside Home (whatever that was).
(3) And at this point Swanson's account becomes absolutely baffling. Why, indeed, was this suspect, apparently ID'd for these heinous and scandalous crimes, feebly released into his family's custody because a witness (who could have been subpoenaed and treated as hostile) turned stroppy? Why, indeed, if the Met were 'we' didn't they surveil him in what was their territory?
Here is where you're stuck with having to make some personal decisions before you even decide whether the questions need asking. You can decide, as Paul Begg may still do, that Swanson's story is so extraordinary it must be true: no police officer could write down something so full of problems without seeing them immediately, and knowing that the only justification for recording them was their absolute accuracy. (Bear in mind that Swanson's ony writing for his own recollection: not for the public).
You can take my view that Swanson's story is so extraordinary and conflicts so strongly with Anderson's simple and self-explanatory story, that there must be some garbling and error on Swanson's side, probably resulting from mixing up two IDs.
You can take the general anti-Polish Jew position that these people are all over the place and don't know what they're talking about, so we may as well leave them and go and look for Druitt and Eddie driving a cart together or James Maybrick popping down from Liverpool.
But one way and another, your questions go to the heart of the problems posed by what is otherwise, as Philip Sugden remarks, the only case of a suspect named on a basis of some evidence (the ID).
Good luck!
Martin F |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 05:40 pm | | Very good and pertinent questions, Simon.
(1) Anderson makes similar grumbles elsewhere in his writings, and bascially I think it is indeed habeas corpus that annoys him. The French police could hold a suspect (i.e. some one against whom they had some reasonable ground for suspicion) for as long as a juge d'instruction - a rather junior magistrate who supervised the investigation - agreed that they could keep him under wraps and go on looking for evidence. The English police had to keep coming back to court and getting a magistrate to review the state of their case and remand the suspect for another short period. I think I once suspected that Anderson also thought the French had less stringent restraints on their powers of searching private property, but I'm not going to swear to that.
(2) This is a key crux. In Blackwood's Magazine, Anderson wrote 'when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.' Now, for reasons Stewart Evans and Paul Begg have separately given, these words were changed in the volume to the words you quote. No mention of the suspect's being in an asylum, and the words 'swear to him' changed to 'give evidence against him'. No mention of the witness backing off because he and the suspect were both Jewish - (something Swanson confirms, evidently unaware of Anderson's Blackwood's piece).
And then we get Swanson's story. There's an additional comment on the witness from Swanson, saying he didn't want to cause a fellow creature to be hanged. This seems to rule out the asylum ID, since a committed lunatic couldn't even have been charged (as we gather the Ripper wasn't). You omit Swanson's statement that the suspect was ID'd in the Seaside Home 'where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification'. This, surely, rules out the suspect having any sort of treatment, (or holiday!) and implies that the witness was in the home. If anything, this would indeed suggest that the witness was a policeman if the Seaside Home was the police convalescent home. But that brings you up against the improbability of a policeman striking a racial and humanitarian conscience pose to withdraw an ID he's made without being put on oath. (I don't mean that policemen lack consciences or a feeling of ethnic solidarity, but that the almost military discipline of the Victorian force makes such a defiance of senior officers very hard to envisage). Add to that the fact that I think I'm right in saying we still haven't found any Jewish policemen at this period.
And why was the suspect taken 'with difficulty'? Does the stress on 'by us' mean 'by the Met' as opposed to the City or some other force, or by the police as opposed to the suspect's family? Or did his lawyers object, if he was rich enough?
Already at this stage, despite the congruence of the Jewish witness refusing to swear, Swanson's account is so far from Anderson's that I find I have to give serious consideration to the possibility that these accounts unwittingly refer to two different IDs: one in the asylum and one in the Seaside Home (whatever that was).
(3) And at this point Swanson's account becomes absolutely baffling. Why, indeed, was this suspect, apparently ID'd for these heinous and scandalous crimes, feebly released into his family's custody because a witness (who could have been subpoenaed and treated as hostile) turned stroppy? Why, indeed, if the Met were 'we' didn't they surveil him in what was their territory?
Here is where you're stuck with having to make some personal decisions before you even decide whether the questions need asking. You can decide, as Paul Begg may still do, that Swanson's story is so extraordinary it must be true: no police officer could write down something so full of problems without seeing them immediately, and knowing that the only justification for recording them was their absolute accuracy. (Bear in mind that Swanson's ony writing for his own recollection: not for the public).
You can take my view that Swanson's story is so extraordinary and conflicts so strongly with Anderson's simple and self-explanatory story, that there must be some garbling and error on Swanson's side, probably resulting from mixing up two IDs.
You can take the general anti-Polish Jew position that these people are all over the place and don't know what they're talking about, so we may as well leave them and go and look for Druitt and Eddie driving a cart together or James Maybrick popping down from Liverpool.
But one way and another, your questions go to the heart of the problems posed by what is otherwise, as Philip Sugden remarks, the only case of a suspect named on a basis of some evidence (the ID).
Good luck!
Martin F |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 26 November 2000 - 05:40 pm | | Very good and pertinent questions, Simon.
(1) Anderson makes similar grumbles elsewhere in his writings, and bascially I think it is indeed habeas corpus that annoys him. The French police could hold a suspect (i.e. some one against whom they had some reasonable ground for suspicion) for as long as a juge d'instruction - a rather junior magistrate who supervised the investigation - agreed that they could keep him under wraps and go on looking for evidence. The English police had to keep coming back to court and getting a magistrate to review the state of their case and remand the suspect for another short period. I think I once suspected that Anderson also thought the French had less stringent restraints on their powers of searching private property, but I'm not going to swear to that.
(2) This is a key crux. In Blackwood's Magazine, Anderson wrote 'when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.' Now, for reasons Stewart Evans and Paul Begg have separately given, these words were changed in the volume to the words you quote. No mention of the suspect's being in an asylum, and the words 'swear to him' changed to 'give evidence against him'. No mention of the witness backing off because he and the suspect were both Jewish - (something Swanson confirms, evidently unaware of Anderson's Blackwood's piece).
And then we get Swanson's story. There's an additional comment on the witness from Swanson, saying he didn't want to cause a fellow creature to be hanged. This seems to rule out the asylum ID, since a committed lunatic couldn't even have been charged (as we gather the Ripper wasn't). You omit Swanson's statement that the suspect was ID'd in the Seaside Home 'where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification'. This, surely, rules out the suspect having any sort of treatment, (or holiday!) and implies that the witness was in the home. If anything, this would indeed suggest that the witness was a policeman if the Seaside Home was the police convalescent home. But that brings you up against the improbability of a policeman striking a racial and humanitarian conscience pose to withdraw an ID he's made without being put on oath. (I don't mean that policemen lack consciences or a feeling of ethnic solidarity, but that the almost military discipline of the Victorian force makes such a defiance of senior officers very hard to envisage). Add to that the fact that I think I'm right in saying we still haven't found any Jewish policemen at this period.
And why was the suspect taken 'with difficulty'? Does the stress on 'by us' mean 'by the Met' as opposed to the City or some other force, or by the police as opposed to the suspect's family? Or did his lawyers object, if he was rich enough?
Already at this stage, despite the congruence of the Jewish witness refusing to swear, Swanson's account is so far from Anderson's that I find I have to give serious consideration to the possibility that these accounts unwittingly refer to two different IDs: one in the asylum and one in the Seaside Home (whatever that was).
(3) And at this point Swanson's account becomes absolutely baffling. Why, indeed, was this suspect, apparently ID'd for these heinous and scandalous crimes, feebly released into his family's custody because a witness (who could have been subpoenaed and treated as hostile) turned stroppy? Why, indeed, if the Met were 'we' didn't they surveil him in what was their territory?
Here is where you're stuck with having to make some personal decisions before you even decide whether the questions need asking. You can decide, as Paul Begg may still do, that Swanson's story is so extraordinary it must be true: no police officer could write down something so full of problems without seeing them immediately, and knowing that the only justification for recording them was their absolute accuracy. (Bear in mind that Swanson's ony writing for his own recollection: not for the public).
You can take my view that Swanson's story is so extraordinary and conflicts so strongly with Anderson's simple and self-explanatory story, that there must be some garbling and error on Swanson's side, probably resulting from mixing up two IDs.
You can take the general anti-Polish Jew position that these people are all over the place and don't know what they're talking about, so we may as well leave them and go and look for Druitt and Eddie driving a cart together or James Maybrick popping down from Liverpool.
But one way and another, your questions go to the heart of the problems posed by what is otherwise, as Philip Sugden remarks, the only case of a suspect named on a basis of some evidence (the ID).
Good luck!
Martin F |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 04:18 am | | Typical! You read a good question, go away and write a reply and return to find Martin Fido has answered it - three times! Well, my own take on those questions might add an extra dimension, so here goes...
(a) I’ll just add that throughout his writings Anderson is keen to make clear that the British police have to work within constraints not imposed upon their foreign counterparts and that this should be taken into consideration when comparisons are made between the British police and those of other countries, particularly France. He is always anxious to make clear that undiscovered (meaning unsolved) crimes are rare, the police often knowing who the perpetrator was but lacking sufficient evidence to make a conviction. The Ripper murders, he says, were in this category of solved but unproven.
One of the reasons why Anderson says this is because in those days most serious crimes were committed by a relatively small band of criminals who were identifiable by ‘trademarks’. The same was true in the United States, where a contemporary of New York’s Inspector Byrnes’ observed of the police that “They know the style of work of every professional thief in the country and when a robbery and the circumstances attending it are reported they can generally name the operator to whom it should be credited.” This thinking applied to thieves, pickpockets, house breakers, bank robbers and so on, but even murders were in the main committed during the execution of another type of crime, in which case the ‘trademark’ applied, or committed by people known and often close to the victim. When, in October 1888, Anderson wrote in relation to the Ripper that there were no clues of any kind, he wasn’t referring to clues in the modern sense, but to the absence of this ‘trademark’ or direct link type of clue.
In The Lighter Side of My Official Life, on page 144, Anderson explained that in cases where they knew the perpetrator but could not assemble sufficient proof to obtain a conviction, the British police were not able to act as were their French counterparts. “In such circumstances the French Police would arrest the suspected person, and build up a case against him at their leisure, mainly by admissions extracted from him in repeated interrogations."
(b) We would expect an identification to have taken place in a police station in London. That the identification was held at a ‘seaside home’ is therefore remarkable and extraordinary in itself, but Swanson’s statement that the suspect ‘had been sent by us with difficulty’ for identification shows that the identification did not take place there because that was where the suspect was. And, as Martin has also observed, since we have problems with the idea of the witness being a policeman, the probability is that he wasn’t a recuperating copper. We are therefore faced with a difficulty in explaining why the identification happened in such an odd place.
A curious parallel is to be found in the Kingsbury Run murder case in Cleveland where apparently a suspect was interrogated in an expensive hotel suite. In this case it was because the suspect had influential relatives who it was feared would interfere with the investigation if they found out about it. The interrogation was therefore conducted by a small group of men who apparently emerged convinced of the suspect’s guilt, their chief later alluding to the solution of the murder mystery and giving rise to exactly the sort of speculation surrounding Anderson’s revelations. The point, though, is that we can assume ‘the Seaside Home’ was chosen because it afforded some sort of secrecy not available at a police station.
One might also mention here that on first reading the Swanson Marginalia Donald Rumbelow remarked that the police would have had no difficulty whatever in taking in for questioning a suspect in a case as serious as the Ripper crimes. I don’t know how true this would be, especially if we are looking at ‘Kosminsky’ in 1891, but it does suggest and reinforce the idea that something out of the ordinary was going on.
(c) Swanson states that the brother’s house was in Whitechapel and since it seems generally agreed that the City C.I.D. would not have been invited to maintain surveillance on a Metropolitan Police suspect we are obliged to assume that the City C.I.D. was maintaining surveillance for reasons of its own. Those reasons are not of immediate concern, but priority question here being whether they were keeping surveillance before and after the identification, or only after. The City C.I.D. were also maintaining surveillance on the brother’s house, not the suspect’s, so the surveillance could have been altogether unconnected with the suspect and the presence of the City C.I.D. at a complete coincidence.
One possible explanation is that the suspect was under surveillance at his brother’s house by the City C.I.D. and that he was secretly whisked away from under the noses of the City by the Met, who took the suspect for identification and, on the refusal of the witness to testify, had no alternative but to return the suspect to City surveillance. Bizarre as this sounds, it does explain the choice of ‘the Seaside Home’, does explain the ‘difficulty’ that Don otherwise found inexplicable, does explain the release of the suspect that most people find extraordinary, does explain City surveillance and does explain why so few people knew about the identification. It might also explain why Anderson never went into detail about the identification, explain why subsequent identifications and police inquiries took place (the same happened after the interrogation in the Kingsbury Run case), and may point the finger at Schwartz rather than Lawende as the witness (would the Met have nicked a City suspect to be identified by a City witness to a City crime?).
I don’t want to get involved in a debate about the extraordinariness of the Swanson story pointing to the truth of it. If the suspect was ‘David Cohen’ then he was arrested by the police, brought before the Thames Magistrates, sent for two weeks observation in the workhouse infirmary and then committed to the asylum. It has also been argued that he had no known next of kin. This, then, is the sequence of events and presumably Swanson would have known this. Yet writing about it he refers to the suspect being sent for identification to ‘the Seaside Home’ (which Cohen wasn’t), with ‘difficulty’ (which Cohen wasn’t – he was already in the asylum), was released (which Cohen wasn’t), into the care of a brother (whom Cohen didn’t have), to be kept under 24-hour surveillance (which Cohen wasn’t because he was already in choky), and was committed by his family (which Cohen didn’t have). And on top of all of this we have the emphasis placed by both Anderson and Swanson on the witness’s refusal to testify, which would have been wholly irrelevant if the suspect had been committed and thus deemed unfit to plead.
I am reminded of a Woody Allen gage in which he is in danger and his life flashes before his eyes. He sees dinners of hominy and grits with his family, of the clean wooden cabin in the hills, possums and jackrabbits, and of walking to the fishing hole with Emmylou… and he realises that it isn’t his life. He’s about to die and someone else’s life is flashing before his eyes! This is rather like Swanson. It isn’t a matter of getting a detail wrong here and there, but of getting the whole thing wrong! Like someone else’s life flashing before his eyes, you’d think he would have noticed. |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 07:43 am | | Oh, my God! A TREBLE posting! The result of constant disconnections on busy Sunday evening, (when I was unable to get this follow-up on either). Apologies to all.
Stewart - Many thanks for your gracious and friendly letter. I quite agree that one of the most exciting things opening up from your work on the files and documents is the previously unsuspected role of Alexander Carmichael Bruce. I certainly recall the horrific handwriting of the 'Packer notes', which Stephen Knight had described as the unmistakable spidery scrawl of... Charles Warren! It took me more than two years to decipher one of the fractions, and the same period to decide that the word which Swanson, Sugden and you all read as 'yankee' was probably 'quaker'. (A 'yankee hat' is a term unknown to me: a 'quaker hat' was broad-brimmed and matching the alternative description 'wideawake'). And I noted with shock that in A-Z we had identified what are presumably Bruce's initials as 'CW'! I foresee masses of fruitful debate coming out of the data now available. (Like - "How obstinate can you get, Fido? If Swanson was happy with 'yankee hat' why don't you accept it and shut up?")
But of course I've been skipping forward again to look at such things. I'm still very much at the beginning of the book.
Which is a treasure trove. But I expect to say more about that on its own board when I've finished it.
All the best,
Martin
And just two comments on Paul's posting for Simon. 'It has also been argued that [Cohen] had no known next of kin' is naughty. It isn't argued. It's recorded on the asylum registers.
And those last two paragraphs, Woody Allen and all, surely represent a fine sense of logic screaming to get out of trying to assert that Anderson and Swanson are both recalling one and the same ID parade? While there are inevitable loose ends in our present state of knowledge, the central difficulties are quickly and easily resolved if we assume that there WAS some ID in the Seaside Home, but as it wasn't an ID of Cohen - (I don't think there's an earthly of its being Kosminsky) - and it wasn't the one Anderson was describing and that Swanson misunderstood or misremembered himself as glossing.
Welcome to the boards Simon, where Confusion Reigneth!
Martin Fido |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 09:06 am | | And those last two paragraphs, Woody Allen and all, surely represent a fine sense of logic screaming to get out of trying to assert that Anderson and Swanson are both recalling one and the same ID parade?
I'm not sure what is meant here, Martin, but I am asserting that Anderson and Swanson are recalling the same event, not trying to get out of doing so. Though that was not the purpose behind what I have written above, where I was trying to point out that it wasn't the eextraordinariness of Swanson's story that alone pointed to the truth, but was the sheer scale of error it demands that he made: here was a man in full command of his faculties recalling what was for him an important case in his career and one widely regarded as a signal failure, yet one which he knew to be solved, and yet writing an account hugely at variance with what actually happened. This, for me, beggars belief. It is tantamount to me recalling a holiday in Basingstoke and writing about throwing shrimps on the barby, sunning on the beach, swimming off the Great Barrier Reef and worrying about sharks and jellyfish. I just don't see this as a simple error. Moreover, because his story is so extraordinary, I think something in it would have tipped him off that he was confusing identifications.
I wasn't meaning to be naughty, either, in saying 'argued'. I appreciate that the next of kin detail is mentioned in the asylum records, but the police arguably knew a fair bit about him, like his full and real name, age, profession and so forth. Somebody provided that information and I was simply allowing for the possibility that this was a family member. The uncertainty seems to have crept in between the Thames Police Court and the asylum. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 09:16 am | | Dear Martin,
Thank you for the last. I didn't realise that you were still claiming that the word in the 'Packer Notes' description was 'quaker' and not 'yankee.' As Swanson clearly states 'Yankee hat' in his report I had thought the matter settled, but, I presume, you are saying that Swanson also wrongly stated 'Yankee.'
I have to agree that the handwriting is appalling and seriously vies with that of Dr Bagster Phillips as being the most difficult to read in the files.
The word in the report is thus:-
and I can see how you read it as 'quaker.' However, we then have to compare like with like in the same report. Here is an example of the lower case 'q' from the word 'quick.':-
As you can see it is totally different from the first letter of the questioned word. We then have to look at the letter 'y' at the commencement of a word, and here we have the word 'young,' which shows that it is much more similar to the first letter of the questioned word:-
Finally we can compare the final letter 'e' with that in the word 'she,' which shows that when used thus it does look like an 'r' not an 'e' although it is unquestionably an 'e.':-
In summation I have to say that the above together with Swanson's clear rendering of the word as 'Yankee' must lead us to conclude that we are looking at 'yankee hat.' A 'yankee hat' would, of course, be an American style stetson or wide-brimmed hat.
Yours in disagreement (but cordially)
Stewart |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 10:15 am | | | And some idiot somewhere lives in a fantasy land that suggests we'll ever develop handwriting recognition software. A phrase used by Jim Royale springs to mind. I am, nevertheless, in astonished awe at Stewart's ability to read any of the above. I am only glad that I didn't even consider doing The Ultimate. It would have been full of questionmarks denoting vast tracts of unreadable text! |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 12:00 pm | | Paul - yes, I know you are tryng to make the two accounts refer to one incident, and it's your fine sense of logic that is exercised to do so. And I had earlier noted your traditional position that Swanson's account is so extraordinary that he must be remembering right.
My suggestions are that one has to fine-draw at such length to make Swanson's total story stand up that he is the more likely of the two to have made an error. Anderson, on the other hand, had no reason to misremember the ID taking place AFTER chummy went into the asylum: he repeats his phrase 'safely caged' in different places, so it obviously stuck in his mind. And I'm not aware of his making mistakes of memory between 1901 and 1910 - (he did at the very end of his life when asked to comment on a murder case which he confused with the Penge murders). And so I suggest the Gordian knot is most simply cut by postulating that Swanson, while remembering SOMETHING very odd, may not be getting all the details right, and is probably erroneously taking it to be the case to which Anderson refers.
(Of course you know I think this as I know you think the other - but I guess this is all public explanation of where we differ).
Stewart - Wonderful illustrative posting! The lower case q is fascinatingly formed as an upper-case. I wonder whether Bruce casually started the word with an upper case, punctuating as carelessly as he calligraphed (if I may invent a horrible verb for his horrible writing). The formation is a near circle drawn down and around from top left with a very firm pothook added. The initial letter in the disputed word is a downstroke from upper left making a strong dog's leg into a firm downstroke for pothook. The pothook stroke is well defined, whereas there is no similar evidence of any attempt at a pothook in the y of young. Indeed, it is the top half v of the y which gets the best definition in young, whereas it is the lower quasi-pothook which takes most of the strength of the initial disputed letter. oI reserve judgement on the initial letter until (unless) I ever get to making close comparisons with more of Bruce's writing. That the final letter could easily be an e I concede at once - and without anything to cmopare with have no evidence to suggest that it could be an r. And I concede, too, that the word could easily be 'yankee'. (And I just took a quick look back at it to see how the first transcribers arrived at 'hunter' or 'hawker' - my goodness, it's a relief we don't have hand postings from the likes of Bruce! I'd give up the boards.
All the best
Martin |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 01:50 pm | | Actually, Martin, I am trying very hard to avoid airing our different viewpoints on this, for us, exceedingly well-travelled road. I was simply trying to make clear to all concerned that I don't believe a story is true simply because it is extraordinary! I maintain, as you know, only that the extraordinariness of the story would have tipped off Swanson that it was wrong. However, I was also trying to make a fine distinction between the extraordinariness of Swanson’s story and the degree to which it varies from what Swanson must have known was the truth (if the suspect was Cohen that is).
In my view there is nothing in Swanson’s story that conflicts with Anderson, except where the identification is supposed to have taken place. I agree that there is no reason why Anderson should misremember anything, but it is a detail Anderson himself changed and far more importantly is a detail that simply doesn’t make sense in the context of what he tells us. You acknowledge and agree that someone committed to an asylum is unlikely to have been brought to trial, being deemed unfit to plead. There would therefore never have been any question of the witness testifying, no reason for him to refuse to testify, no reason for his refusal to have rankled with Anderson, and absolutely no reason for Anderson to have mentioned the witness at all. Anderson need have said nothing more than that the suspect was mad, could not be tried and was secured in an asylum.
If a post-committal identification is going to be argued then I think one must give a solid explanation of why the suspect’s refusal to testify mattered a tinker’s. The refusal must make sense within Anderson’s narrative, which currently it does not. And without that (in my opinion) small problem, Swanson’s story doesn’t jar with Anderson’s at all.
I think anyone reading what we are writing and trying to assess the merits of each theory must be aware of the problems and address them. |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 03:13 pm | | But Anderson's statement including the reference to the asylum says nothing about testifying. It says 'swear to'. And the second revised statement changing that to 'give evience against' doesn't inevitably put the matter into a court. A statement made to the police is evidence. It's only Swanson's suggestion that the testimony wuld result in the suspect's being hanged that definitely points to a court.
Martin |
Author: Paul Begg
Monday, 27 November 2000 - 03:49 pm | | True - and Anderson's statement in The Globecould be interpreted as endorsing that interpretation: Moreover, the man who identified the murderer was a Jew, but on learning that the criminal was a Jew he refused to proceed with his identification. But Anderson also stated that the witness unhesitatingly identified the suspect. Anderson therefore had got what he wanted, namely a positive identification, so why would the refusal to proceed have rankled so much? And why would the witness have refused? And what did he refuse to proceed with; he'd already identified the suspect? As I've said, Anderson's emphasis on the witness seems explicable only if the intention was to proceed to court. And Swanson's story confirms the signifance of the witness testimony. Swanson fits with Anderson.
But it's only my interpretation. Others may disagree with me. Or may even reach and interpretation of their own. |
Author: Harry Mann
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 04:18 am | | Gentlemen,
Pardon me butting in with a simple and perhaps silly question,but who was identifying a murderer.
We do not know why the witness,if witness there was,was taken to confront the person at the seaside cum asylum residence.He would certainly be identfying the person for some reasson in relation to the ripper murders,but what?.Any answer to this would of course be pure speculation but there could be more than one reason other than the usually accepted one of having been seen near a murder site.
Also the police must have had some idea of why they thought a certain person could help them in connecting a suspect to one or all of the killings,but a further question is,who approached who in relation to an identification in the first place.I said I would ask silly question's.
Any identification would only confirm the identity of one person to another.The evidence neccessary to identify a murderer would already be in the hands of the police.Really the evasiveness of Anderson doesn't mean much,except to confuse the legion of ordinary people like myself. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 05:40 am | | Paul, many thanks for the kind words.
Martin, at the risk of becoming pedantic, and boring, I would just like to round off the argument for the description that Packer gave actually used the words 'yankee hat' and not 'quaker hat.' I feel that it is only fair to the readers of this board that they see the actual writing from the Swanson report on the Stride murder, (HO 144/221/A49301C, folio 156, para. 2, line 6) so that all will be aware of just how clearly this report writes the phrase:-
Now this report is a summary of all the facts on that case and Swanson would have had in front of him, when compiling it, all the relevant statements and paperwork. As I have already stated, the 'ACB' notes of what Packer said are definitely not his written and signed statement (which has long since disappeared along with all the other witness statements in this case). So we must assume that Swanson would have seen and had before him Packer's actual written statement, thus interpreting the word correctly. For that matter I myself have no doubt that the word in the 'ACB' notes is also 'yankee.'
So, I repeat, all factors taken into consideration and the enequivocal rendering of the word in the Swanson overall report must firmly establish that the word is 'yankee.' I appreciate that once you have made your mind up you are exceedingly difficult to shift away from your stated views, but I feel that, although minor, all the evidence in this particular instance should be placed before our readers.
Best Wishes,
Stewart |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 06:05 am | | Hi Harry
Please but in whenever you like. Martin and I don't want to discuss this among ourselves. We've being doing it since - well, I'd rather not go into how many years. But we know each others opinions very well indeed and, I may add, respect them most highly. But to reply to your question.
Anderson actually says that 'the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.' Anderson, then, is telling us that the witness actually saw the murderer.
I have always thought that the witness was Israel Schwartz because he saw a woman he identified as Elizabeth Stride assaulted and the weight of probability is that she was murdered by the man who assaulted her. As improbable as it might be that witnesses like Lawende saw a victim with someone other then her killer, such a possibility does exist. The probability in the case of Schwartz/Stride is much lower though and Schwartz is the only witness we know of who could be said to have seen 'the murderer'.
I don't think it's right to say that Anderson was being evasive. Unfortunately he wrote two 'versions' of his memoirs, one in serial form published in a magazine, the other being a book. He made some minor changes between the two. Martin and I disagree on how much emphasis should be put on particular changes. So it is a question of interpreting source material, rather than Anderson's evasiveness. |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 09:02 am | | Hi all,
Having watched the rather good Whitechapel Murders prog on C4 last night, it strikes me once again as very odd indeed that Anderson, Macnaghten, Swanson and the rest make absolutely no reference to Tumblety. If the evidence presented can be taken as fact, surely Tumblety has to be regarded as far more likely a candidate than the Polish Jew (be he Kosminski, Cohen or whoever). I was astonished to learn that the American had been so strongly suspected that his name appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic with the finger of suspicion pointed directly at him, with one British paper reporting that an arrest was imminent. He has never struck me as the 'type' who would have committed the murders (and too old, surely), but then neither has anyone else. Could the whole of the Anderson/Polish Jew business have been nothing more than a blanket to cover up the fact that the police actually had the killer in custody but had to let him go again? Or is it equally possible that Anderson never suspected this man because he never knew of his existence or the seemingly damning evidence against him? I can't believe that, had Anderson been in possession of all the details relating to Tumblety, he'd still have been so vehement in his claim that the identity of the murderer was known to him, which must then throw doubt upon what he said about the killer's identity being a definitely ascertained fact. Of course, with Tumblety safely out of the country, it would have been a relatively simple matter to find some poor lunatic on whom to pin the badge Jack the Ripper. I have no doubt that Anderson thought he was speaking the truth with his 'ascertained fact' statement, but obviously he didn't reach this conclusion by actually doing the footwork and surveillance himself, which means he could only have reached his conclusion based on, effectively, second hand information. If the Home Office and politicos decided the Tumblety matter was something best forgotten about - and were sure the quack was indeed the Ripper - the easiest thing to do would be to fabricate a basic case against someone who was in no position to protest or mount a defence of himself, knowing a lunatic couldn't be hanged and would be confined to an asylum whether he was Jack or not, and say to the senior officers: this man is the murderer. Based on what was presented to him, Anderson then makes no bones about describing the killer's identity as a known fact. He's happy to think they had their man, and the powers that be were happy for him to think that because having the real Jack right under their noses (and, indeed, in their cells) and then letting him go again would obviously have been a major embarrassment. Thus, there was the cover up many have long since suspected, but it wasn't for the reasons they imagined. This version of events is, possibly, the reason why there has been so much confusion and error surrounding the identity of the Polish Jew: for the simple reason that he wasn't Jack, and various pieces of information were spun together in an attempt to make a solid case against him.
I personally don't think either Tumblety or the Polish Jew were the Ripper, but if you had to choose between them without any bias, who would you go for: an American quack who hated women, collected internal organs, had a history of peddling pornography, who obviously could instill confidence in people and make them believe what he wanted to, as evidenced by his success selling various weird 'medicinal' concoctions, who was probably an unsuccessful abortionist, who had killed before, whose bloodstained clothes were found shortly after the double event, and who was actually named as Jack the Ripper by various newspapers; or, an imbecile whose worst crime seems to have been playing with himself in public (possibly), who may well not have been able to speak enough English or conduct himself in a sane enough manner to lure even desperate women to their death, about whom almost nothing is known, and who, in fact, may actually not even be one person as such, but whose 'identity' was drawn from two or more people?
Graham |
Author: Jon
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 01:22 pm | | Graham
Having read much of what has been published on Tumblety I am inclined to agree with your comparison. But I also think that to point a finger at a homeless lunatic Jew (or Barnett) is along the lines of pointing the finger at every Texan who lived in Dallas and hated Kennedy and who owned a gun, as being a 'good' suspect in the assassination. Which is too superficial to contemplate.
It takes much more than superficial coincidences to find a 'good' suspect.
Now with Tumblety, we are faced with a man who is flamboyant, a basic coward, possibly effeminate and may indeed have had a preference for his own gender. Is this the kind of man who could commit violent sex crimes against women?
The two seem to me to be diametrically opposed, unless of course, they are not sex crimes at all? |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 02:18 pm | | Jon,
I definitely go along with the notion that Tumblety just doesn't seem to fit the right mould to be the killer. Would a man who by the time of the murders is said to have only consorted with members of his own gender have been capable, or indeed inclined, to perform mulilations of a nature that the Ripper did? Is it possible that a person would target the genitalia and reproductive organs if the motive wasn't sexual? I guess it's possible but it doesn't seem very likely. Or maybe Tumblety thought: 'Aha! Whilst I'm eviscerating this whore I may as well take a few bits and pieces with me for my private collection of internal organs.' But if someone wanted uteri that badly, surely there must have been less risky ways of going about obtaining them. If the women had all been repeatedly stabbed and nothing more then I would regard Tumblety as easily the most likely suspect of those named to be guilty of the Ripper crimes. As it is...well, many people thought he was the man, and with very good reason. Maybe he's Jack, maybe he ain't...same old story!
Regarding the Polish Jew, I would say the person certain figures of authority may have chosen in Cohen/Kosminski is ideal. The Ripper was widely believed to be Jewish: so here is a Jewish suspect. He was thought to be a foreigner, most of whom, as the Victorians would have told you, were nasty, vicious people who had no respect for women and enjoyed partaking of hair curling perversions: here is a foreigner etc. He was also thought by the majority to be 'mad' in the Victorian sense of the word: so here is a raving nutcase who has spent years indulging in utterly unmentionable vices. And he needs to be somebody from a very poor background, none of whose family has any social standing or means by which to effectively defend him or cause a fuss: and so here we have a man who suffers from 'sex mania', is very poor, and who is exactly the type of person most regarded Jack the Ripper to be. He also needs to live locally, and so does our Polish Jew. And if Sir Robert Anderson believes him to be the killer, then he must be.
What should be borne in mind is that Macnaghten seemed pretty sure poor old Druitt was the murderer, and it's pretty clear he wasn't. Therefore I can't see why anyone should attach a great deal more credibility to Anderson's suspect. Unless, of course, it's because HIS one was real killer...
Sometimes this case really does me 'ead in! Gotta love it, though.
Graham |
Author: Martin Fido
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 03:05 pm | | Stewart - I don't want to get involved in endless discussion of the one work 'quaker' at this point, but will, later, after having had time to evaluate all that is now starting to appear about Bruce, probably have a number of questions to pose about your interpretation of the Packer notes.
And may all the world observe, that Stewart's use of an emboldened 'must', though persuasive rhetoric, does not actually turn his well-considered Opinions into FACTS. (Lest it be thought that I charge Stewart with shouting me down, however, let me share one of the most memorable scenes I remember seeing: Stewart, metaphorically pinned against the wall as he tried to talk a little sense about the Littlechild letter, while Paul Feldman Bellowed Balderdash at him, filling the room with nonsense about Maybricks and Diaries and Wills and Solicitors and Family Photographs and God KNows What-All).
Graham - Whatever theory you tend to adopt, my advice is NEVER NEVER support it with suggestions of a conspiracy or a cover-up. they hardly ever happen and hardly ever work.
Martin F |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 03:26 pm | | Martin,
The Anderson/Kosminski conspiracy 'theory' was just a bit of idle speculation on my part. It's possible that this is indeed what happened, although it takes a fair bit of imagination to conceive this as solid reality rather than a Stephen Knight-like flight of fancy. Nevertheless is does seem very strange that Anderson appears to have been unaware of Tumblety as a valid suspect, and equally strange that he would seem to have had in his possession irrefutable evidence of the Polish Jew's guilt.
Graham |
Author: alex chisholm
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - 09:20 pm | | For what it’s worth, I share Stewart’s conclusion regarding the official files’ reference to Packer’s “Yankee” hat, and, although I recognise the reluctance to give credence to newspaper reports, the following extract from the Daily Telegraph, 6 Oct., seems to support just such a conclusion.
“a number of sketches were prepared, portraying men of different nationalities, ages, and ranks of life. These were submitted to Packer, who unhesitatingly selected one of these here reproduced - the portrait of the man without the moustache, and wearing the soft felt or American hat.”
Best Wishes
alex |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 03:14 am | | Hi Graham
You make a couple of observations on which I’d like to comment.
What should be borne in mind is that Macnaghten seemed pretty sure poor old Druitt was the murderer, and it's pretty clear he wasn't. Therefore I can't see why anyone should attach a great deal more credibility to Anderson's suspect.
We can’t say that ‘it’s pretty clear’ that Druitt wasn’t the Ripper. Druitt was suspected by an intelligent and informed person who was there, was interested and who had more information than we do. He had ‘evidence’ against Druitt, but we have absolutely no idea what it was. We are guessing what the evidence was and accepting or rejecting on the basis of that guess. There’s nothing wrong with this, just as long as we remember what it is we’re doing.
Having said this, there are reasons why Anderson’s story is more credible than Macnaghten’s. Macnaghten admitted that he was theorising. So, too, did Littlechild (he said that Tumblety was amongst the suspects and to his mind a very likely one). But Anderson was at pains to point out that he was not theorising, but stating fact. He expressly and precisely stated this in the Globe: ‘In stating what I do about the Whitechapel murders, I am not speaking as an expert in crime, but as a man who investigated the facts.’ He reiterated this in the volume edition of his memoirs: “In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.’ Moreover, Anderson had some sort of evidence in the shape of whatever reason there was for suspecting the Polish Jew in the first place and he had the evidence of the eye-witness identification, so he wasn’t dealing in speculation and hearsay (or doesn’t appear to have been).
Nevertheless is does seem very strange that Anderson appears to have been unaware of Tumblety as a valid suspect, and equally strange that he would seem to have had in his possession irrefutable evidence of the Polish Jew's guilt.
There isn’t any evidence that Anderson was unaware of Tumblety.
In fact he almost certainly was aware of him because he is likely to have been responsible for sanctioning men to travel to the United States to undertake the investigations there. And one of the problems I have with Tumblety is that Anderson knew about him and rejected him. No matter what the case against Tumblety, Anderson knew it and nevertheless preferred the evidence against the Polish Jew. We can postulate all sorts of reasons for this (such as all those arguments that Anderson was anti-Semitic and therefore predisposed to favour a Jew over an American), but among them is that Anderson didn’t think Tumblety was as good a suspect – or knew he wasn’t.
(Or, of course, Anderson knew that the Polish Jew had murdered Stride and, assuming that Stride was a Ripper victim, concluded that he’d got Jack. Being incorrect in his assumption – if he was incorrect that is – Anderson therefore emerges as right and wrong and the Ripper could be Tumblety, Druitt, or the Man in the Moon.) |
Author: Graham Sheehan
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 03:50 am | | Hi, Paul
Regarding Monty Druitt, yes, I accept it is theoretically possible for him to have been the murderer, but his cricketing exploits cast serious doubts upon him. Could he really have butchered a prostitute having likely prowled the streets all night, made his way out of the East End back to his lodgings, cleaned himself up, leapt on a train, arrived at the cricket ground, and been out on the field just a few hours later showing no signs of fatigue etc? Very unlikely but not outside the bounds of possibility.
So far as the Polish Jew goes, it all comes down to precisely what it was that led Anderson decide this man's guilt was a definitely ascertained fact. If it was simply an eyewitness statement, that proves very little. But it would seem that he had something rather more solid. Unfortunately we don't know what that may have been. You mention the possibility that Anderson may have had evidence that the Polish Jew was indeed the killer of Stride. I would be inclined to go along with this line of thinking, namely that because of this evidence, and the fact that Long Liz was regarded as a Ripper victim, Anderson thought he'd got his man. But there is much evidence to suggest Stride wasn't struck down by our friend Jack. Therefore, if Anderson made his statement based solely on the possible evidence regarding the Berner Street murder then I think he was skating on very thin ice by declaring Jack's identity to be definitely ascertained. Alas, unless we can discover more then we'll never know for certain, and the debate is likely to continue unresolved for another 112 years.
Best regs,
Graham |
Author: Harry Mann
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 04:44 am | | A last thought on the identification problem,or maybe the last of several.
I imagine a chain of command from the lowest constable to Anderson at the top,with a clearly defined method of procedure for the passing of information.With Anderson and Swanson practically office bound,and with other adminastrive duties to occupy their time,the effective responsibility for the search for the Ripper was left with Arnold
and those next in rank.(Aberline etc).Under those of course the rank and file.
The process of identification of both victims and possible suspects,would rest with those personnel active on the ground,under direct control of Arnold,Aberline etc,and the resulting official reports would pass up the chain in the laid down manner.
If such an identification was carried out,as Anderson implies,I think that too would follow the set procedure,and that Arnold,Aberline etc would have been privy to the information that ensued,and the appropriate reports placed on file.
AS these officers seemed to be of the opinion that no evidence pointed to a particular person,it is in my opinion,doubtful if such a confrontation as Anderson states,ever took place. |
Author: Paul Begg
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 06:58 am | | AH, Harry, in which case Anderson is a liar or at best a gross exagerator and that puts his whole story into another ball park, so to speak.
The problem is, if we are going to cast doubt on the overall honesty of a primary source then we have to provide evidence and the evidence we have is that Anderson is honest and not given to exaggeration - where his claims can be tested, they are true.
Furthermore, we have alternatives. Either Abberline knew about Anderson's beliefs and he dismissed them. Or he didn't know about them. As indicated in a post above, if what he thought he knew about Druitt is a reflection of what he actually did know, then he knew zilch. Macnaghten, too, doesn't appear to have known about Anderson's beliefs (or, if he did, he was foolishly dismissive of a superior's opinion). |
Author: Jeffrey
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 12:05 pm | | Hi !
The more I hear on this debate, the more I am inclined to believe there could have been a conspiracy of some kind that had taken place. I'm not going to go off onto a wild tangent and point to the grassy knoll for answers, but there just may have been sufficient reason not to reveal the identity of the murderer. Take Abberline, for example, he maitained a scrapbook of his exploits on the force, yet kept no records of the Cleveland Street investigation or Jack the Ripper. A very minor point, but one which could have wider implications. Why keep momentos of all of your cases but the 2 most widely famous?
The incident at the seaside home indicates that the police were still looking for answers, even a few years after crimes had ceased. Understanding the line of thinking though, when you take into account the obliteration of the Goulston Street message, a decision taken by the highest ranking officer in the interest of public safety, you must always keep in mind the political ramifications that these men had to consider. I am convinced that had the murderer been discovered to be a low-class Polish Jew, and one that they had failed to capture at the time, they had to be concerned with the possibility of public demonstration or even worse.
Tumblety was known to the police via Special Branch, who were concerned with his possible Fenian connections. The fact that the first mention of Tumblety is made by Littlechild confirms this, and makes a barely tenuous link between the mad Quack and the Ripper investigation. An IRA connection would better explain the continuing investigation into Tumblety and his being followed back to America by British detectives.
I wonder if someone could help me, the first mention or written record of Leather Apron, is made to an investigating officer by a Timothy Donavon, a Deputy Lodging house keeper. Do I understand this correctly? How did the legend of Leather Apron actually originate and come to the attention of the police? Also, and this is going to sound really stupid I'm sure, but how many hats would the average person own in 1888 east London. I know its like asking how long is a piece of string, but could anyone give me even the vaguest of ideas as to whether people would have owned and wore a variety of different hats during this period. Would different hats be worn depending on which outfit a person was wearing, and would the average man own a few different styles of hat?
I would also like to echo the sentiments of Scott N regarding Martin Fido's contribution to study of Jack the Ripper. Taken from a viewpoint that there was a reason for the cessation of the killings, there are but very few real reasons (and retirement is not one of them) why the killings suddenly stopped. Mr. Fido and Stewart Evans are two who have built valid theories that attempt to explain why the killings stopped the way they did. Any theory worth consideration has to has to do the same and as much circumstancial evidence as we like to consider against the likes of Joseph Barnett, no serial killer could simply cease of his own accord and this rules him right out in my own humble opinion. I would love to see the Cohen/Kaminski/Kosminski theories investigated further.
Many thanks
Jeff D |
Author: Jeffrey
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 01:49 pm | | As the sempstress said to the good doctor, "I seam to have this great knack of bringing a good thread to an abrupt end" !?!?!?!?
............ never mind !
Jeff D |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - 07:16 pm | | Paul, we do indeed know that Anderson knew of Tumblety as he sent a telegram to Police Chief Crowley in San Francisco asking for samples of Tumblety's handwriting. Also, as you rightly say, he would also know of the failed attempt to locate Tumblety in the USA.
As we know, there was no hard evidence against any suspect in this case, Macnaghten in his 1894 report states all he had against Druitt was 'private information' and 'that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.' That does not amount to evidence of guilt and is hearsay at best. And I am sure that whatever Anderson had against his 'poor Polish Jew' amounted to nothing more.
As the police were in no position to prove who the murderer was they each seemed to adopt their own preferred suspect. There are modern examples of this in unsolved cases. So Anderson's reason for rejecting Tumblety could amount to no more than, as has been previously stated, the fact that he could not admit that a viable suspect had been in police hands and had effectively 'escaped.' And note I say 'viable' for had there been hard evidence against Tumblety he would have been charged and would never have been allowed any sort of bail.
The simple fact of the matter is, we do not know, and never will, the identity of the killer, no matter how convinced some theorists are that they are right. He (or they) may be total unknowns whose names have never been mentioned and if that is the case then all speculation will remain unproven. What should be retained through all this is objectivity and an open mind. For to choose one suspect and reject all else means a closed mind and a dangerous myopia. |
Author: Harry Mann
Thursday, 30 November 2000 - 04:36 am | | Paul,
Historical and court records contain innumerable cases of well respected and supposedly honest persons,who have tended to be less than truthfull in all things.That is not to say they were out and out rotters,but people who sometimes erred perhaps out of a false sense of loyalty.
Andersons 1910 statement was made some 20 years after the events described,and one may be of the opinion that was well beyond the time when it would be detrimental to any group of people.
Other more calamitous happenings,the Boer war for example,had helped dim the memory of the ripper killings,and the tensions in Europe were occupying peoples minds.
Who then would be outraged by the disclosure that a lowly,unbalanced Jew had killed a number of prostitutes in 1888.
Regards,
H.Mann. |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 30 November 2000 - 04:53 am | | Hi Harry
I know that people lie. All I said was that if Anderson lied then we are in another ball park, meaning that we must treat him differently. However, simply because people lie doesn't mean that Anderson lied. We have to have some evidence to support it and insofar as I have been able to test other revelations in his memoirs he appears to be truthful.
And as we have seen, people were outraged by what Anderson wrote, albeit not so much by his claim that the Ripper was a Jew as by his suggestion that Jews shielded him. And other equally distant events revealed by Anderson caused an outcry undimmed by the passage of time, as Churchill's reply to McVeigh illustrates. |
Author: Jon
Thursday, 30 November 2000 - 05:15 pm | | Paul
When reading of ALL the police officals memoirs, none can be said to be without errors. Anderson wasnt lying, possibly a little bombastic, proud, and confused in some details. All the police officials confused certain details & events so it is pointless to try justify a mistake of memory.
We cannot be certain as to which details he was confused about, so how can we make a case for him telling the truth?.
All the police officials wanted to make out that they knew more than they are given credit for, and thats all Anderson is guilty of, in my opinion.
Now, if you want to make a case for 'which' details he got wrong, then .....how long is a piece of string?.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Paul Begg
Friday, 01 December 2000 - 03:23 am | | Jon:- Harry Mann wrote: it is in my opinion, doubtful if such a confrontation as Anderson states, ever took place. If the identification never took place then it is an untruth and, to use big brush strokes, Anderson lied about it. In saying that insofar as Anderson's revelation can be tested, then appear true, I was responding to Harry's statement. I was not arguing that Anderson's account is free from error. Error is almost inevitable and it isn't the same thing as reliability. The historian's first and most important task is to assess whether or not his source materials are reliable and where other it has been possible to test other revelations they are true, so there appears to be no prima facie reason for supposing that Anderson is unreliable in the broad and general story he gives.
Until shown otherwise, the analysis of Anderson is that he was telling the truth and that there was a suspect, a witness and an identification, and that Anderson and Swanson concluded that the suspect was Jack the Ripper. This conclusion could have been based on poor or bad evidence, been influenced by anti-Semitism (which Anderson actually staunchly denied), senile wishful thinking, pomposity and arrogance, or a dozen other things, among them that the suspect really did commit the murders |
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