Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (23 page)

In the original memorandum Macnaghten refers to the murder of Frances Coles in this way: “
Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891 - for which Thomas Sadler, a fireman, was arrested, &, after several remands, discharged. It was ascertained at the time that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19
^th
July ‘89 and was in Whitechapel on the night of 17th. He was a man of ungovernable temper & entirely addicted to drink, & the company of the lowest prostitutes
.” There is no mention as to his firm belief that Thomas Sadler was responsible for her murder.

The inclusion of Macnaghten’s opinion in the typewritten notes regarding the suspect Sadler in my opinion does not give a lot of credibility to the explanation put forward as to why the other suspect names were omitted from the same typewritten pages, because the police at the time believed her murder was the work of Jack the Ripper and that Sadler was looked upon by the police as being Jack the Ripper.

Further questions surround another entry found in The Aberconway Version, which relates to another Ripper suspect Michael Ostrog. In the original Scotland Yard Version dated February 23rd 1894,

Macnaghten describes Ostrog as follows: “
Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man’s antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his whereabouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.”

In the handwritten part of The Aberconway Version Ostrog is described as: “
Michael Ostrog. A mad Russian doctor & a convict & unquestionably a homicidal maniac. This man was said to have been habitually cruel to women, & for a long time was known to have carried out with him surgical knives & other instruments; his antecedents were of the very worst & his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactory accounted for. He is still alive
.” Note the absence of any mention of a lunatic asylum.

The relevant part here is in the last line of the Aberconway handwritten notes, which reads, “
He is still alive”
. As can be seen above in the original version Macnaghten stated Ostrog had been subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum. However, further research showed that at the time of the Whitechapel murders Ostrog was in prison in France. Additional research shows that in June 1894 four months after the original version in which Macnaghten states Ostrog was detained in a lunatic asylum, Ostrog was in fact arrested in Slough for an offence of theft and remanded in custody. There is evidence to show that between September 1887 and March 1888 Ostrog was detained in a lunatic asylum.

This all goes to confirm my belief that the original Scotland Yard version is unreliable as is The Aberconway Version. The handwritten notes from The Aberconway Version states that at the time these notes were written Ostrog was still alive. In my opinion they could not have been written from Macnaghten’s original notes, (Scotland Yard Version) because if Macnaghten in his notes, which Lady Aberconway copied from, wrote Ostrog was still alive then, he must have known where he was, had he known where he was then he would have known that he was in prison in France and could not have been a suspect for Jack the Ripper. There is no mention of the lunatic asylum in the handwritten notes. So from what document did Lady Aberconway obtain this information?

Another minor discrepancy relates to the murder of Martha Tabram who was subjected to a frenzied attack where she was stabbed thirty-nine times. On page six of the typewritten sheets when discussing her murder that part is described as, “
her body had received several stabs,”
thirty-nine stab wounds could hardly be described as “several”.

On a final note it should be noted that neither The Aberconway Version nor the original one contains any mention at all of the organs having been removed from any of the victims.

As has been stated the original Macnaghten Memorandum has been proved to be unreliable. What The Aberconway Version does is to, in my opinion, eliminate the suspect referred to as Kosminski from the investigation. Whatever information or report from which Macnaghten used as a source to include Kosminski in his list in the first instance may have been submitted in good faith but was obviously unreliable, or proven to be wrong, or could have simply been another malicious letter sent to the police at the time.

CHAPTER SIX

THE SWANSON MARGINALIA

Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police placed Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in overall charge of the investigation into the Whitechapel murders from 15th September to 8th December 1888.

Swanson was freed from all other duties and given his own office at Scotland Yard from which to co-ordinate inquiries. He was given permission to see, “
every paper, every document, every report and every telegram”
concerning the investigation. In this way Swanson gained a wealth of knowledge and information about the killings. Following a long and distinguished police career, which saw him rise to the rank of Superintendent he retired in 1903 and he died in 1924 aged 76.

Swanson was also a close friend of Sir Robert Anderson and in Anderson's book, “
The Lighter Side of My Official Life”
, published in 1910 Anderson refers to the identity of the Ripper as being a Polish Jew. In his book he writes, “
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.”

As I have previously stated, in the book Anderson makes no mention of the name of the suspect, the name of the witness, nor does he give any information regarding the identification he refers to and when it took place. It should also be noted that there was no known witness who fits the witness criteria as described by Anderson, so this in itself is questionable especially as up until Anderson published his book in 1910 he is on record on many occasions as stating the police did not know the identity of the killer. Examples of this will be shown in a later chapter.

Swanson is purported to have written pencilled notes, or annotations in Anderson’s book, which were later found by his grandson James Swanson in 1981 following him inheriting Anderson’s book and other papers. In these pencilled annotations Donald Swanson purportedly makes reference to an alleged seaside home identification procedure stating a suspect was taken by the police and subsequently identified by a witness. In the annotations Swanson names that suspect as Kosminski. These annotations go some way to corroborate the brief reference made by Anderson in his book.

But again there is no mention of the name of the witness, or the exact location where this identification procedure took place. Or when it took place, although one section of the annotations would suggest that if this identification procedure did ever take place then it could not have taken place before February 13th 1891 the date of the murder of Frances Coles whose murder was looked upon as being the work of Jack the Ripper and the last in the series.

The marginalia notes were written using two different two pencils – one grey and a second, purple-tinged pencil – and appeared to have been written at different times. The relevant annotations appear on page 138 of the book, followed by additional annotations written on the endpaper of the book.

On page 138 Anderson writes, “
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”
.

The handwritten annotations underneath had been written using a purple-tinged pencil and read, “
Because the suspect was also a Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of the murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind. D. S. S.”
The letters D. S. S. are the initials of Swanson.

Another relevant pencil annotation which in the book appears to have been written at a later date or dates, and had been written using a different, grey pencil and follows Anderson’s text, “
identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him”
. This annotation contained the words “
also a Jew”
, further down the page and added in the left-hand margin is annotated in pencil, “
after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London”
.

This last section of the written annotations raises a number of questions. Swanson is clearly stating that after the positive identification and the subsequent incarceration of the suspect who was identified, there were no further murders. How accurate is this statement? Swanson only had sole control over the case until December 1888. However, he was actively involved in the investigation into the later murders of McKenzie and Coles in 1889 and 1891 respectively and as stated above still believed these murders could have been the work of the Ripper. As far as the suspect Aaron Kosminski is concerned he was finally incarcerated in an asylum six days before Frances Coles’ murder so that’s another factor, which in my opinion must rule him out of suspicion.

As I previously stated when discussing the suspect Aaron Kosminski, there are contradictions between Swanson and Anderson. Swanson wrote that the suspect was identified and then incarcerated, whilst Anderson wrote that the suspect was incarcerated and then identified.

Furthermore, on February 10th 1895 following a non-fatal knife attack and wounding of another prostitute, Alice Graham, in Whitechapel the police arrested a William Grant Grainger. The police and the press believed that Grainger could have been the Ripper. Up until then the case would appear to have still been open. There had been no official announcement to the contrary.

Grainger was later convicted of wounding and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. No evidence was ever found to connect him with being Jack the Ripper. This clearly shows that the police were still trying to find Jack the Ripper and had no clues as to his identity even as late as 1895. Swanson was however not directly involved in this investigation as he was suffering from flu with a flu epidemic which was sweeping London at that time.

That same year out of the blue a story appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette dated 7th May 1895, which reported that Grainger had been identified by the one person whom the police believe, saw the murderer with a woman a few moments before her mutilated body was found. If the witness was Joseph Lawende, he told the police in his original statement that he had only noticed the man’s height, and did not think he would recognize him again. It is therefore curious as to why he was expected to identify him several years later. If it were Israel Schwartz then he only got a partial sighting of a man with Stride, and her body was not mutilated. Could this in fact be the identification procedure later referred to by Anderson and Swanson? There is no information to tell us where or when this identification procedure took place.

There are concerns over this as there are over the identification procedure Swanson and Anderson refer to. One being the fact that the Grainger offence came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police and Lawende was a witness in the murder of Eddowes, which came under the jurisdiction of the City Police. Would the Metropolitan Police use a City witness? In practice yes they would, but it appears that if the seaside home identification parade did ever take place then why didn’t the Metropolitan Police also use Lawende the City Police witness?

At the time the Pall Mall Gazette report was published Swanson who led the original Ripper investigation was interviewed by a reporter from that paper. He poured cold water on the suggestion that Grainger could be the Ripper and stated, “
The Whitechapel murders were the work of a man who is now dead”
. So this in itself again must eliminate Aaron Kosminski as he was institutionalized at that time and he didn’t die until 1919. If Swanson was correct then why did the police subject Grainger to an identification procedure in an attempt to connect him to at least one Ripper murder?

Having digressed away from commenting on the marginalia I will now return to that specific topic. Looking at the annotations on the endpaper referred to above they read, “
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 suspects return to his brothers 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” – D. S. S
.

Having Anderson’s book and other items of Donald Swanson’s come into his possession, James Swanson approached The Sunday Express and The News of The World newspapers in 1981 with the story surrounding the book and its annotations. The News of The World took up the offer and they agreed to pay him £750.00 for the rights to publish Donald Swanson’s story, which included the relevant annotations. James Swanson requested a further £250.00 should a second article ever be published to which they agreed.

However, for whatever reason The News of The World did not publish the article. The mystery of Jack the Ripper has been of public interest for over 125 years and I would have thought this new disclosure would have been worthy of publication. The main reason to not publish may have been due to the fact that the name Kosminski had already been in the public domain since the early 1960s when the Macnaghten original memorandum was discovered and made public.

James Swanson waited until 1987 and then The News of The World agreed to rescind the original contract enabling him to then offer the rights to the same book and its annotations to the Telegraph who took up his offer and did publish an article.