Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files

by Marriott, Trevor

  Anderson in his book makes no mention of the suspect’s name or the name of the witness, or where this identification is supposed to have taken place. In his book he wrote that he would have named his suspect but for fear of libel action and that no public benefit would occur. However, the publishers of Anderson’s book had categorically stated that they would be willing to pay for any costs should a libel case ever be brought. So what reason could Anderson give for not naming the suspect, or the witness, or where it took place?

  The other source to suggest this identification procedure took place comes from what has become known as, “The Swanson Marginalia” which are pencil annotations purported to have been written by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in Anderson’s book in later years. I will discuss this marginalia in greater detail in another chapter but to briefly summarize. Swanson in these written annotations goes some way to corroborate in part what Anderson had written, but Swanson goes one step further and actually refers to the surname only of the suspect, that being Kosminski. He also makes no mention of the name of the witness.

  In the annotations Swanson states that Kosminski was taken with great difficulty to a seaside home, believed to be Brighton and then after being positively identified by the witness was taken back to his brother’s home in Whitechapel where he was then watched by the City Police, and sometime thereafter taken by his family to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum.

  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.

  From my investigation up until this point I was now firmly of the opinion that Aaron Kosminski’s status as a Ripper suspect was poorly deserved, having analysed closely Anderson’s references in his book, and the content of “The Marginalia”.

  In a further attempt to confirm my belief I then examined in great detail the police methods and procedures as dictated by the Victorian Criminal Justice system in 1888. Many of which I have discussed in the previous entry regarding Francis Tumblety.

  In order to put things into perspective we first have to go back and look again at the police powers and procedures in 1888. The police had a lawful right to question anyone at any time whilst gathering evidence following the commission of a crime. This may also include and involve speaking to a person who may later become a suspect. However, the police guidelines state that as soon as that person becomes a suspect and is “Charged/arrested” no more questions can be put to him.

  The offence of murder was classed as a felony and the police had the power to arrest anyone without a warrant. That arrest however would have warranted reasonable suspicion or direct evidence. A person so arrested would have been then taken to a police station and the facts together with any corroborating evidence relayed to a station Sgt or Inspector.

  That officer would have to either accept that “charge” against that person on the basis that there was a prima facie case and then that person would be formally charged with the offence providing there was sufficient evidence, and then detained and taken before the next available court. If there was not sufficient evidence then the accused would be “discharged” (released). It should be noted that the police did not conduct formal interviews of persons arrested in 1888.

  The second option open to the police having so arrested a person on suspicion would be for the arrested person to be detained at the police station without formal charge for up to twenty-four hours for further enquiries to be carried out with a view to the police perhaps obtaining enough evidence to be able to subsequently prefer a “charge”.

  At the expiration of that time or before if applicable, the arrested person would either be formally “charged” and detained to appear at the next available court or released (discharged). As previously stated if released without charge the police would still have the power to rearrest should new evidence come to light. In 1888 there was no legislation in place for the police to grant police bail for an accused to return back to a police station at a given date and time in the future, and therefore no powers to arrest anyone for failing to reappear.

  So how viable a suspect was the Kosminski named by Macnaghten and Swanson if they were one and the same? Was he a likely suspect, a prime suspect or simply a person who came under suspicion by reason of an offence he had committed or by his conduct in unrelated matters? What was the reasonable suspicion to warrant and justify any alleged police action being taken against a person named Kosminski?

  The answer to both questions is ‘none’. There is no official record of anyone named Kosminski ever being arrested in connection with these murders, and no official records to show what grounds there were for the Kosminski suspect named by Swanson and Macnaghten to be looked upon as a likely suspect.

  Whatever information which led to a person named Kosminski allegedly being the subject of an identification procedure in connection with the murders would appear to have come in either 1890 or 1891, two and three years respectively after the murder of Mary Kelly who some say was the last Ripper victim.

  As far as Aaron Kosminski is concerned, one might argue that the incident whereby he threatened his sister with a knife may well have brought him to the attention of the police in 1891 having regard to the fact that up until then they had no clues as to the identity of Jack the Ripper and would have still been desperate to solve the case. But even this incident with the knife was not the subject of an official police report. It appeared in his asylum record and was direct information given to the asylum by his relatives who were ultimately responsible for having him certified and detained in 1891.

  In any event, any such information obtained all those years later would have to be carefully scrutinized. So what official action did the police take or should have taken with this named suspect Kosminski under the powers they had between 1888 and 1891? Clearly whatever it was they didn’t arrest him or that would have surely been mentioned by Anderson in his book and by Swanson in the highly contentious marginalia in which he stated, “the suspect was taken with great difficulty to a seaside home”. I have to ask what the great difficulty was? Taken could have two meanings, one by force or the other as a volunteer, both I will expand on in due course.

  Researchers who strongly support the suspect named Kosminski keep using the “old chestnut” that official police records could have existed but have not survived due to either being lost, destroyed, or stolen, I am sorry to say I don’t subscribe to any of those views. Something as important as arresting a suspect for these crimes would not have passed unnoticed by the press in any event, and any such press articles published are likely to still been in existence today.

  Furthermore, all the police personnel who would have been involved directly or indirectly would have knowledge of such an arrest or such an identification procedure and would have no doubt talked about this, and no doubt discussed this important issue with the press or family members etc. over the ensuing years. Not to mention any staff at the seaside home where this is alleged to have taken place. There is absolutely nothing save for the name Kosminski being mentioned by Sir Melville Macnaghten in his 1894 memorandum, and Anderson only stating that this person subjected to the identification parade was a Polish Jew, and Swanson corroborating this by naming Kosminski who was in fact a Polish Jew.

  I have to say that right from the outset I do not believe this identification procedure ever took place in the way it has been described by Swanson and Anderson. In an attempt to disprove all of this I will play devil’s advocate using my knowledge of Victorian police procedures and practices and the gathering of the best evidence possible principal.

  I will discuss the various options, which would have been open to the police both lawfully and unlawfully at the time.

  The first would be the arrest if in fact there was ever such an arrest. If however they did arrest anyone named Kosminski where did that take place? Could it have been from that pers
on’s home and then they conveyed him straight to the seaside home? If they had done that it would have been against protocol and would without a doubt prejudiced any later prosecution. Not to mention the question of his mental status at that time if that arrest related to Aaron Kosminski, or in fact one of the other men named by Martin Fido; David Cohen and Nathan Kaminsky.

  Had they officially arrested Aaron Kosminski or any other named Kosminski it would and should have been recorded in official records. If the police had arrested anyone on suspicion and taken them to a police station and intended to utilize the full twenty-four hours, it may have been possible for them to have taken that person in custody from the police station under escort to the location where the identification parade was going to take place. However, that would have necessitated a great deal of police organization and manpower and much paperwork, and would still have needed documenting.

  It would not have been normal police practice to take a suspect such a long way to take part in an identification procedure. It was customary for witnesses to attend a police station. Records show that the police were conducting regular and normal identification procedures at police stations in and around Whitechapel in 1888, procedures which involved a line up of at least eight volunteers of persons fitting the same description as the suspect as was required by law.

  This type of identification procedure is always the first procedure to consider. It seems they may have bypassed this procedure in favour of what is commonly called a direct confrontation, which is simply placing the suspect before the witness and asking the question “Is this the man etc. etc.?” why, they chose this procedure we do not know, but they should have known that any positive identification made from such a procedure would struggle to stand up in court.

  I have to ask what made them do this, because they would surely have known that using the direct confrontation procedure would be almost worthless from an evidential standpoint when clearly they had the option to conduct a full parade. Of course the other important part of this is that it would appear that it wasn’t until after the procedure had taken place and the witness had made his identification that they were apparently made aware that the witness was not prepared to go to court to give evidence.

  With them not knowing this at the time the parade took place, they would have totally jeopardized their case by using a direct confrontation procedure. Had they used the accepted procedure and the witness had picked him out, and had agreed to testify, they might have had a case, albeit weak and reliant on identification, which on its own would perhaps not stand up to close scrutiny given the passage of time between the witness allegedly seeing the suspect and the time the witness made the identification but nevertheless sufficient to perhaps bring a person to trial but may not be enough to secure a conviction.

  So another scenario to consider is that could the police have decided not to arrest the Kosminski suspect but approached him and asked if he would accompany them on a voluntary basis to the seaside home and allow himself to be subjected to an identification procedure, on the grounds that he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Would he have consented and gone voluntarily? No.

  With regards specifically to Aaron Kosminski would his family even had allowed him to go? I think that is most unlikely. Faced with this situation of non-compliance, the police would either have had to abandon the procedure or there and then formally arrest that person and then continue with the procedures following arrest as I have previously mentioned.

  The police without making a formal arrest would not have had the power to simply drag anyone away screaming and shouting. From a practical and legal standpoint taking anyone by force without him being arrested would have been unlawful and again anything that happened thereafter would have been thrown out of court if it ever had got to that stage.

  Consent would be the important factor in considering this scenario and was legally defined as: “Consent is the permission to do a certain act freely given, without force, fraud, or threats, by a rational and sober person, so situated as to be able to form an independent opinion upon the matter to which he consents.”

  As can be seen anyone suffering with a mental disease like Aaron Kosminski or David Cohen would not be classed as rational and therefore not capable of perhaps understanding what was taking place and certainly not capable of giving rational consent.

  So is there yet another scenario to discuss? If one rules out arrest, and the suggestion that this suspect named Kosminski went of his own free will. The only other scenario would have been if the Kosminski suspect had been incarcerated in a workhouse or asylum at the time. It is known that Aaron Kosminski had two spells in the workhouse due to his insane behaviour. The first time was in July 1890 and again in February 1891 six days before the murder of Frances Coles.

  If Aaron Kosminski or any other Kosminski was the suspect referred to by Swanson could the identification parade have taken place whilst they were in the workhouse in either 1890 or 1891? Anderson wrote that the suspect was incarcerated and then identified.

  If this were in anyway a plausible scenario then the police would first have to have had the permission of the workhouse/asylum authorities to remove that person, or allow him to be the subject of an identification procedure. Given the reasons for anyone being incarcerated in such an establishment I think that is highly unlikely. The issue would still have revolved around consent. It would be argued that a person suffering from a mental illness is incapable of giving consent by reason of their illness, and would certainly not be capable of understanding the events leading up to and surrounding such an important identification procedure.

  In any event if all the aforementioned factors were satisfied it would have been more practical to conduct an identification procedure at the workhouse/asylum. This specific scenario does not stand up to close scrutiny because if Swanson is to be believed, he writes in the marginalia that on return from the seaside home the suspect was taken back to his brother’s house in Whitechapel and watched by the City Police. Had he been taken from the workhouse/asylum he would have to have been taken back to the workhouse/asylum, unless of course had the suspect been in their care and was discharged into the custody of the police.

  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, t
here 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.