Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (22 page)

What Swanson writes is almost incomprehensible. According to him it would seem the police had in their grasp one of the most infamous serial killers in our criminal history having been identified by a witness, and they do no more than take him back to his brother’s house as if he they had been out on a normal day at the seaside, and then allow officers from another police force to watch him at a house which may even have been under their own jurisdiction.

In considering the aforementioned scenario, what were the options open to the police on their return back to Whitechapel? If they were that sure of his guilt, but were not able to prosecute him, in an effort to ensure he could not kill again they could have simply had him certified as being insane and sent forthwith to an asylum.

Another option would have been that with having the suspect’s sanity not questioned and him being in sound mind and body and in the knowledge that he had been identified as Jack the Ripper, and had gone voluntarily, the police could have then formally arrested him and taken him back to a police station where it is possible that if the suspect was the killer and him knowing he had been identified he may then perhaps made at some point a statement or made admissions. The police would not have needed to have told him the witness would not go to court to testify, and in any event the police would have still have had the twenty-four hours.

Having regards to my overall investigation into the suspect named Kosminski who many suggest is Aaron Kosminski. In my opinion this identification procedure did not ever take place, and the police officers in later years may have confused this with a similar identification procedure they carried out with Thomas Sadler, a suspect in the Frances Coles murder in 1891.

But even that suggestion doesn’t totally stand up to scrutiny. With regards to Sadler’s identification parade, there is nothing recorded in official files. A brief account was recorded in a newspaper but the name of the witness was not given. In that short press article there was no suggestion he was taken anywhere and Sadler did not have a brother who lived in the vicinity of Whitechapel.

If Aaron Kosminski was ever a likely suspect then that suspicion must have been removed totally in 1891 with the murder of Frances Coles, as her murder took place six days after he was finally incarcerated for good in an asylum and Swanson was directly involved in that case and at that time the police were still seeking the Ripper. So that in itself causes concern over the authenticity of The Marginalia and the viability of Aaron Kosminski being Jack the Ripper.

I find it hard to accept that despite Macnaghten exonerating his likely named suspect Kosminski, researchers still continue to champion a man named Kosminski as a viable suspect. Clearly the official facts and existing records also eliminate him. Set out below is the chronology and details from the official records:

Aaron Kosminski was admitted to Mile End Old Town Workhouse, 12th July 1890, from 3, Sion Square, Whitechapel. He was deemed to be able-bodied but insane.

Three days later [15th July 1890] he was discharged into the care of his brother [in-law] Woolf, at 16, Greenfield Street. This would suggest that after spending three days at the workhouse he was not deemed to be a lunatic or insane and in need of further detention and there was no need to take him before a justice at this time to have him certified.

Nothing more is heard of Aaron Kosminski for six months until Wednesday 4th February 1891 he was readmitted to the Mile End Old Town Workhouse from 16, Greenfield Street, Whitechapel. This undisputed fact also goes to eliminate Aaron Kosminski.

The Marginalia annotations state, “
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.”
I would hardly call six months a very short time, and are we to believe that observations were kept on him night and day for six months?

Aaron Kosminski was sent to Mile End Town Workhouse and later to Colney Hatch but he didn’t die shortly afterwards. Again there are major flaws in the marginalia and the belief that Aaron Kosminski was the Kosminski named in that document and in the annotations.

On Friday 6th February 1891 Dr. Edmund King Houchin of 23, High Street, Stepney, examined him at the workhouse. Aaron Kosminski was declared of unsound mind and a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under care and treatment. As a result of that Henry Chambers Justice of the Peace, issued a committal order to that effect the same day.

If one examines the notes compiled by Dr. Houchin in his assessment, coming to his final decision he has not only used his own judgment but refers to information given by family members. If at this time Aaron Kosminski was looked upon as a Ripper suspect by the police or believed complicit in any of the murders I would have expected it to have been recorded and used to bolster the grounds for detaining him. After all what better grounds for detention than, “
Believed to be wandering the streets at night committing murders.”
?

Ripper researcher and author Martin Fido published a book, “
The Crimes Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper”
, in which he was the first to suggest that Kosminski may have been in fact the Aaron Kosminski known to researchers today. Fido was the first researcher to attempt to identify the Kosminski named in the Macnaghten memorandum. When it became quite clear that the life and times and movements of Aaron Kosminski did not tie up with the Macnaghten Memorandum or the marginalia Fido later suggested that the now known Aaron Kosminski had been wrongly named by the authorities in 1889 following his detention and in fact the entries in both The Marginalia and the Macnaghten Memorandum could refer to Polish Jews David Cohen aka Aaron Davis Cohen or Nathan Kaminsky who could be one and the same.

David Cohen was admitted to Stepney Workhouse on December 21st 1888 having been found wandering the streets unable to care for himself. He was later transferred to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum where he remained until his death in October 1889. Whilst in the asylum he showed signs of violence towards his fellow inmates and as a result was segregated. Fido suggests that the authorities could not establish his true identity on arrest and therefore gave him a “John Doe” name of Cohen, which Fido suggests was common practice. However, there are no official records to show this was common practice.

It was used from time to time by immigration authorities both here and in New York. However, Fido’s suggestion doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny by reason of the fact that Cohen apparently had a known address of 86, Leman Street, Whitechapel, and was known to be a tailor, so formally identifying him in my opinion should not have been a major problem. Furthermore, there was a due process of law in 1888 with regards to dealing with insane persons and lunatics.

Following an arrest and after being taken to a workhouse a person could only be lawfully detained for three days and then had to be taken before a justice to determine whether that person should be released or further detained. The Justice of the Peace had the power to authorize a doctor to carry out a full mental assessment.

Having regard to the time he is alleged to have spent incarcerated I would have expected the workhouse and asylum authorities, and the police to make some attempt to identify an allegedly nameless man under their care. After all this unidentified man Fido suggests was given the name Cohen must have been somebody’s son, father or brother and for that person to suddenly disappear without any further trace is almost unimaginable.

With regards to Nathan Kaminsky, he apparently lived in Black Lion Yard, right in the centre of Whitechapel. In March 1888 he was aged 23, he had been diagnosed as syphilitic at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary and admitted on March 24th 1888. He was released and cured from his illness on May 12th the same year. After that he disappears off the face of the earth and no further records can be found of his whereabouts. In a later article on the same topic published by Fido he now makes no mention at all of Nathan Kaminsky. The only tenuous link between the two to suggest they could be one and the same is their ages in the asylum records; they were both shown as being aged 23.

As has been documented there were two other murders in Whitechapel, which the police believed to have been the work of the Ripper. The first being Alice McKenzie in July 1889 and the second Frances Coles in February 1891. These facts alone, along with other evidence and documents I will discuss in due course, in my opinion eliminates David Cohen or Nathan Kaminsky and Aaron Kosminski from suspicion of being concerned in the Whitechapel murders. Martin Fido’s suggestion that the police mixed the names up and were not sure of his true identity thereby naming him Cohen as was standard practice does not stand up to close scrutiny. This renaming was a practice used by USA immigration authorities at the time. I can find no evidence to show that it was used by the police or asylum or workhouse authorities at this relevant time period in this country.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ABERCONWAY VERSION

In 1959 a Ripper researcher Dan Farson revealed the existence of another version of the Macnaghten memorandum. This has now come to be known as “
The Aberconway Version”
. This copy is purported to have been transcribed from Macnaghten’s original notes and was found to be in the possession of Lady Christobel Aberconway the youngest daughter of Sir Melville Macnaghten, who had apparently received it from her elder sister via her mother. This version differs slightly in content from the original, but still refers to the same likely suspects. However, this particular version in its entirety has never been made public although it would appear that most of it had been published in the book, “
The Jack the Ripper A-Z”
.

The Aberconway Version is made up of nine sheets, seven of which are typewritten, which are believed to have been typed, in the opinion of certain researchers, by Lady Aberconway’s secretary and compiled from handwritten notes Lady Aberconway stated she copied from her father’s original notes. No suspects names appear on these sheets save for one in relation to the murder of Frances Coles.

In addition, there are two handwritten sheet inserts attached to the typed pages and these are again believed, (by amongst others Lady Aberconway’s son Christopher McLaren) to have been written by Lady Aberconway herself. Also seen on the typewritten sheets are handwritten annotations, which appear at the end of the handwritten notes and could be written by a different hand. These sheets do contain the names of the “suspects”.

The reason being suggested for the exclusion of the suspect names from the typewritten notes are that firstly it was not necessary for the secretary to see the names, and secondly it would cause grave concern to any living descendants should the names be made public. This clearly shows that Lady Aberconway had intended to publish herself or have published these papers in edited form. This is supported by a letter she wrote to The New Statesman in November 1959: “
I possess my father’s private notes on Jack the Ripper in which he names three individuals ‘against whom police held very reasonable suspicion’ and states which of these three, in his judgment, was the killer.”

If as Lady Aberconway stated that she had copied her father’s original notes then what happened to those original notes? These notes looked to have contained much more detail than the accepted official version and I must ask why important and significant facts contained in these newly released documents copied from his original notes were not included by Macnaghten himself in his final memorandum, which is now known as The Scotland Yard version.

I have studied carefully the content of The Aberconway Version and have set out below the significant differences between this and Macnaghten’s original Scotland Yard version, adding my comments and observations.

The first point I will discuss relates solely to The Aberconway Version and is to be found on page six of the typewritten sheets. The relevant passage reads: “
No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer (unless possibly it was the City P. C. who was on a beat near Mitre Square)”
. It is interesting because this suggestion that a police officer perhaps saw the killer on the night of September 30th following the murder of Catherine Eddowes has never been mentioned previously. One has to ask where this information came from and why was it not disclosed previously, and is it at all reliable having regard to the question of reliability of the original Macnaghten memorandum?

The second point I will highlight follows on in typewritten form at the foot of the same page and reads: “I
enumerate the cases of 3 men against whom Police held very…
this sentence is then continued in handwritten form on the first of the attached handwritten sheets and reads:
“reasonable suspicion. Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2.”

This is a vitally important issue because the last sentence obviously refers to the last two as being Ostrog and Kosminski. The latter being regarded by many researchers and authors as being the prime suspect for Jack the Ripper, and many Ripper authors have over the years published and sold many books suggesting Kosminski was Jack the Ripper. Macnaghten’s comment coupled with all the research carried out over the past fifty years now in my opinion totally eliminates Aaron Kosminski, Nathan Kaminsky, David Cohen or anyone else with similar names.

Staying with The Aberconway Version, also on page six there is a typewritten entry regarding the murder of Frances Coles in 1891. This entry reads: “
Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens on 13th Feb. 1891 for which Thomas Sadler, a Ship’s fireman, was arrested, and – after several remands – discharged! It was subsequently ascertained that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July ’89 and was in Whitechapel on 17th the night when Alice McKenzie was killed. He was a man of ungovernable temper, and entirely addicted to drink and the company of the lowest prostitutes. I have no doubt whatever in my own mind as to his having murdered Frances Coles –”