Complete History of Jack the Ripper (71 page)
Read Complete History of Jack the Ripper Online
Authors: Philip Sudgen
A footnote added:
Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I should almost be
tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to, provided that the publishers would accept all responsibility in view of a possible libel action. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will only add that 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.
When the memoirs were published in book form later in the year a few modifications were made to this passage. The reference to ‘low-class Jews’ was expanded to ‘certain low-class Polish Jews’. And the footnote was rewritten and incorporated into the main text:
Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him.
In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute.
Finally, in the introduction he wrote to H. L. Adam’s
The Police Encyclopaedia
(1920), Anderson reaffirmed his belief that the Ripper case had been solved: ‘Despite the lucubrations of many an amateur “Sherlock Holmes”, there was no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal, and if our London “detectives” possessed the powers, and might have recourse to the methods, of Foreign Police Forces, he would have been brought to justice.’
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For another half-century nothing more was known about Anderson’s low-class Polish Jew. But in 1959 his identity was revealed by Dan Farson’s discovery of Lady Aberconway’s copy of Macnaghten’s draft report of 1894. According to the draft the second suspect against whom the police had reasonable grounds for suspicion was:
No 2
. Kosminski, a Polish Jew, who lived in the very heart of the district where the murders were committed. He had become insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, with strong homicidal tendencies. He was (and I believe still is) detained in a
lunatic asylum about March 1889. This man in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square.
The official version, in the Scotland Yard case papers, is briefer:
(2) Kosminski, a Polish Jew, & resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies; he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circumstances connected with this man which made him a strong ‘suspect’.
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A last police fragment concerning Kosminski came to light at the height of the publicity surrounding the centenary of the murders. Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson died in 1924. In 1980 or 1981, upon the death of his unmarried daughter, some of his books and papers passed to James Swanson of Peaslake in Surrey, her nephew and the chief inspector’s grandson. Among his new acquisitions James found a copy of Anderson’s memoirs, annotated in pencil by Chief Inspector Swanson himself. At the bottom of page 138, on which Anderson had asserted that the murderer had been identified but that the witness had refused to give evidence, Swanson had written:
because the suspect was
also a Jew
and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind.
In the margin he continued:
And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London.
On the back end-paper of the book Swanson had added a further note:
Continuing from page 138, after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect’s return to his brother’s house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day & night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards – Kosminski was the suspect – DSS
In 1987, when James Swanson revealed the existence of this evidence to the
Daily Telegraph
, the paper trumpeted its scoop on the front page under the caption ‘WHITECHAPEL MURDERS:
SENSATIONAL NEW EVIDENCE’. Inside it published a special report by Charles Nevin. But Paul Begg was the first to print the Swanson marginalia in full, in his book
Jack the Ripper
:
The Uncensored Facts
, in 1988.
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Macnaghten and Swanson give us the name of Anderson’s suspect: Kosminski. The first author to attempt to follow up these leads was Martin Fido, whose book,
The Crimes
,
Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper
, was published in 1987. I can find little to say in favour of his theory that David Cohen, a lunatic found wandering at large in December 1888, was the murderer. But Fido is to be congratulated upon his explorations into asylum records at a time when their importance was generally unrecognized and his discovery of Aaron Kosminski in the archives of Colney Hatch Asylum was a find of major importance.
Fido published some details from Kosminski’s Colney Hatch record.
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By no means do they tell the complete story. However, when I set out to learn more I quickly discovered that searching Kosminski out in workhouse and asylum records would be no straightforward task. Medical records of individual patients in public asylums are closed to public access for 100 years. Fortunately, after I had explained that my purpose was to write an accurate and objective history, the hospitals in which Kosminski was treated graciously permitted me to examine all relevant files. As a result what survives of Kosminski’s story can be told in full for the first time. The records demonstrate that the memories of our police informants were faulty even on the most basic facts. For Kosminski was not committed to Colney Hatch in 1889 but in 1891. And far from dying shortly afterwards, he lived for another twenty-eight years.
The records of Mile End Old Town Workhouse show that Aaron Kosminski, an unmarried Jewish hairdresser, was admitted to the workhouse on Saturday, 12 July 1890, from 3 Sion Square, the home of Woolf Abrahams, his brother-in-law. He was able-bodied but insane. Three days later he was discharged into the care of his ‘brother’. The ‘brother’ referred to was probably Woolf Abrahams. However, when Aaron was re-admitted to the workhouse on Wednesday, 4 February 1891, it was from the home of Morris Lubnowski, another brother-in-law, at 16 Greenfield Street. On 6 February Aaron was examined at the workhouse by Dr Edmund King Houchin of 23 High Street, Stepney. The doctor concluded that he was of unsound mind ‘and a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under
care and treatment’ so Henry Chambers, a JP for the County of London, accordingly made an order committing him to the county lunatic asylum at Colney Hatch. Aaron was discharged from the workhouse to Colney Hatch on 7 February. There is a slight discrepancy in the workhouse records as to his age. In July 1890 the year of his birth is noted as 1865, in February 1891 as 1864.
Today the only documents in the records of the Mile End Old Town Board of Guardians which actually shed light on Kosminski’s mental state are the medical certificate and the committal order made out on 6 February by Houchin and Chambers respectively.
The medical certificate sets out the grounds for Dr Houchin’s opinion of insanity. It rested partly upon his personal examination of Kosminski: ‘He declares that he is guided & his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind; he says that he knows the movements of all mankind; he refuses food from others because he is told to do so and eats out of the gutter for the same reason.’ But in addition Jacob Cohen of 51 Carter Lane, St Paul’s, had informed Houchin that Kosminski ‘goes about the streets and picks up bits of bread out of the gutter & eats them, he drinks water from the tap & he refuses food at the hands of others. He took up a knife & threatened the life of his sister. He says that he is ill and his cure consists in refusing food. He is melancholic, practises self-abuse. He is very dirty and will not be washed. He has not attempted any kind of work for years.’
On the reverse of the committal order some particulars about Kosminski, prepared by Maurice Whitfield, Relieving Officer for the Western District of Mile End Old Town, were recorded for the benefit of the receiving doctors at Colney Hatch. They tell us that none of Aaron’s close relatives were known to have suffered from insanity and that the cause of his illness was unknown. His first attack had occurred at the age of twenty-five and he had been treated at the Mile End Old Town Workhouse in July 1890. The present attack had lasted six months. It is particularly significant that, despite Jacob Cohen’s mention of a knife threat, Whitfield’s statement explicitly asserted that Kosminski was not suicidal or dangerous to other people.
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The records of Colney Hatch confirm that Kosminski was admitted to the asylum on 7 February 1891. On the day he came Mr F. Bryan, one of the assistant medical officers, reported that he was clean and of fair bodily health. Kosminski was held at Colney Hatch for the next three years and his progress there was documented in brief
case notes made two or three times a year. At first doctors found him difficult to deal with because of his obedience to his guiding ‘instinct’. This, they thought, was probably aural hallucination (i.e. he was hearing voices). Whatever, Kosminski’s ‘instinct’ forbade him to wash and notes of 10 February and 21 April 1891 tell us that he was objecting to weekly baths. By January 1892 his habits were cleanly. But the doctors failed to cure him of another symptom mentioned in Houchin’s medical certificate – a refusal to work. Between 21 April 1891, when he was described as ‘incoherent,
apathetic, unoccupied’, and 18 September 1893, when we are told that he was ‘never employed’, all but one case note referred to his unwillingness to work. Kosminski’s general health remained satisfactory but his mental condition seems to have deteriorated. Although tending to be reticent and morose, he could answer questions fairly when first admitted. In November 1892, however, he was only speaking German. And two months later it was noted that he was suffering from chronic mania and that his intelligence was impaired. As late as September 1893 he could still answer questions about himself. But on 13 April 1894, just six days before he was discharged to Leavesden Asylum near Watford, he was described tersely as ‘demented & incoherent’.
Of particular interest to us is any disposition Kosminski may have exhibited towards violence. Our evidence is pretty conclusive on this point.
When Kosminski first came to Colney Hatch the information provided about him by Whitfield was dutifully copied into the male patients’ casebook. But as a result of their experiences with the patient and, presumably, regular contact with his relatives, the staff at the asylum subsequently made alterations in red ink to some of these entries. We thus find the cause of Kosminski’s illness altered in the casebook from ‘unknown’ to ‘self-abuse’ and the duration of the present attack corrected from six months to six years. Obviously, though, the doctors learned nothing to persuade them that Kosminski was a homicidal patient. For Whitfield’s statement that he was not dangerous to others was allowed to stand unamended.
The case notes strongly suggest that their assessment was right. Nine notes in all cover the three years Kosminski remained at Colney Hatch. Only one, dated 9 January 1892, explicitly mentioned violence: ‘Incoherent; at times excited & violent – a few days ago he took up a chair, and attempted to strike the charge attendant; apathetic as a rule, and refuses to occupy himself in any way; habits cleanly; health fair’. Another, entered on 18 January 1893, recorded that at times he was ‘noisy, excited & incoherent’. It is apparent, then, that Kosminski could be excitable. But more frequently he was described as quiet, apathetic or indolent. And there is no evidence of malice or cunning.
One last piece of evidence on Kosminski’s behaviour at Colney Hatch exists. On 18 April 1894, a day before he was discharged to Leavesden, a statement giving brief details about him for the receiving doctors was signed by William J. Seward, the Medical Superintendent at Colney Hatch. In it Seward reiterated Whitfield’s assessment that Kosminski was neither suicidal nor dangerous to others and commented simply: ‘Incoherent; usually quiet; health fair.’
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