by Robert House
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—DSS6
Clearly, Donald Swanson simply jotted down the notes for his own private reasons and never intended to make his opinions on the matter public. In fact, Swanson never wrote publicly about the Whitechapel murders at all and was much more disciplined than Anderson in keeping his mouth shut about Scotland Yard’s secrets. Indeed, an often-ignored aspect of the marginalia is that Swanson highlighted this sentence Anderson wrote: “Scotland Yard can boast that not even the subordinate officers of the department will tell tales out of school.” He also underlined Anderson’s sentence “It would ill become me to violate the unwritten rule of the service.” Swanson undoubtedly recognized the irony here, because this was exactly what Anderson was doing.
In addition, just above Anderson’s paragraph beginning “I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter,” Swanson penciled in “known to Scotland Yard head officers of CID,” underlining the word “head” twice. Unfortunately, it is not exactly clear whether this was in reference to the author of the Ripper letter, which Anderson discussed in the preceding paragraph, or to “the identity of the murderer,” which he discussed in the paragraph immediately following. Yet either way, it suggests that some aspects of the case were known only by the “head” officers at Scotland Yard and were kept even from the rest of the force working the case. Swanson, by comparison, knew how to keep his mouth shut, and, as noted in his obituary, his work was “decidedly a secret service.”7
It is important to note that Swanson’s penciled notes in general seem to corroborate Anderson’s story. He does not contradict Anderson in any way, nor does he state that he agrees with Anderson’s statement that the Ripper’s identity was a “definitely ascertained fact.” Yet as Ripperologist Andy Spallek has pointed out, Swanson “goes to great lengths to indicate that the suspect knew he was identified and as a result no further murders took place.”8 This seems to suggest not only that Swanson believed Kozminski was the murderer, but also that Kozminski stopped killing because he knew he was under police surveillance. And given that Swanson wrote the marginalia purely for himself, it seems likely that if he disagreed with Anderson about the Ripper’s identity, he would have said so.
Most important of all, though, Swanson finally revealed the name of the suspect as “Kosminski,” making it clear that Anderson’s “low class Polish Jew” and the insane Polish Jew referred to by Macnaghten were the same person. Yet it was still not known which “Kosminski” they were all talking about.
Around the time that the “Swanson marginalia” were discovered, Martin Fido published a book called The Crimes, Detection, and Death of Jack the Ripper. Determined to figure out Macnaghten’s vague reference to “Kosminski,” Fido conducted an extensive search of asylum records, trying to find any lunatic named Kosminski (or some name of a similar spelling) who had been admitted to an asylum around March 1889. The only insane Kosminski he found was an immigrant Polish Jewish hairdresser named Aaron Kozminski.
In most respects, Aaron Kozminski seemed to fit the statements of Anderson, Swanson, and Macnaghten very neatly. He was an immigrant Polish Jew, who lived with a brother in Whitechapel and was admitted to Colney Hatch asylum. Kozminski also “lived in the very heart of the district where the murders were committed,” within easy walking distance to all of the murder sites. In addition, the cause of insanity on Kozminski’s asylum record was “self-abuse”—a Victorian euphemism for masturbation or “the solitary vice.” This agreed both with Anderson’s statement that the Polish Jew suspect was “a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute,” and Macnaghten’s statement that Kosminski “became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices.”
Yet there were also several problems that caused researchers to wonder whether Aaron Kozminski was in fact the right “Kosminski.” For starters, Swanson said that “Kosminski” was admitted to “Stepney workhouse,” whereas Aaron Kozminski was in fact admitted to Mile End Old Town workhouse. If Swanson was confused here, however, the reason for it is understandable. By the time that Swanson wrote the marginalia, circa 1910, Stepney workhouse was no longer within the boundaries of the redefined Borough of Stepney but instead was in Poplar. The Mile End Old Town workhouse, on the other hand, was in Stepney. Swanson might have simply thought, It was at that workhouse in Stepney9 There were other problems, though. For one thing, Macnaghten wrote that “Kosminski” had been “removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889”—whereas Aaron Kozminski was admitted to Mile End workhouse in July 1890 and then readmitted to Mile End and subsequently Colney Hatch asylum in February 1891. Even more troubling was Swanson’s statement that “Kosminski” died shortly after his admission to Colney Hatch. As we have seen, Aaron Kozminski lived until 1919, some twenty-eight years after his admission, and he was probably still alive when Swanson penciled his marginalia10 In sum, these inconsistencies led Fido and others to conclude that Aaron Kozminski could not have been Anderson’s suspect, and debate over this point continued (although largely abated) until the present day.
No one has ever really explained these problems. Of course, one likely explanation is simply that Macnaghten and Swanson made mistakes. As Ripperologist Stewart Evans has noted, the mistakes in the Swanson marginalia and the Macnaghten memorandum “are confined to demonstrable errors, not assumptions, and are few. Indeed if they can be explained the recollections of Anderson, Macnaghten and Swanson are remarkably accurate in relation to Kosminski, allowing for the effects of the passage of time on memory.”11 Macnaghten, for example, most likely had access to the police files on the case, but he probably did not have any direct involvement with Kozminski as a suspect. And, as he admitted in his autobiography, he never kept a diary or a notebook and wrote entirely from memory alone. Regarding Swanson’s statement that Kozminski had died, it is perhaps possible that the MET simply lost track of him and somehow assumed that he had died after he was transferred to Leavesden Asylum in 1894. After all, the police lacked sufficient evidence to convict Kozminski, so, legally speaking, they couldn’t touch him. They were obviously aware that he had been placed in an asylum, but they may not have bothered to check up on him there. We may speculate endlessly on various explanations for these two mistakes, but we will probably never know the answer.
In any case, such problems were of little interest to the press, which seemed to be champing at the bit to declare that the case was closed. In October 1987, Charles Nevin of the Daily Telegraph boldly suggested that the Jack the Ripper mystery was finally solved and that the guilty party was a destitute and insane hairdresser named Aaron Kozminski. As Nevin pointed out, the Swanson marginalia “would seem to deal a body blow to the deep and convoluted speculations about the Ripper’s identity which have reached a new intensity with the approach of the centenary of the killings.”12 Still, the apparent solution to the most famous unsolved murder case of all time felt like a bit of a letdown. After all, the celebrated rogues’ gallery of Ripper suspects included members of the royal family, Freemasons, and a black magic practitioner, and within a few years, both Lewis Carroll and the famous painter Walter Sickert would be added to the list. Compared to these exciting characters, a lower-class insane hairdresser was painfully dull and unglamorous. As Nevin wrote, “Truth has once again proved to be far more drab and far less entertaining than speculation.”13
20
A Few Possible Leads
Given that Aaron Kozminski was a strong suspect in the Ripper case, we might expect
to find additional sources that mention him, and indeed, there was at least one other person who did. George Sims was a journalist and a playwright who wrote extensively on the Ripper murders and on the East End in general. He was also a personal friend of Melville Macnaghten. In an article published in Lloyds Weekly News on September 22, 1907, Sims wrote, “It is betraying no state secret to say that the official view arrived at after the exhaustive and systematic investigation of facts that never became public property is that the author of the atrocities was one of three men.”1 Sims then went on to describe the same three suspects who were mentioned in the Macnaghten memorandum but without naming them.
The first man was a Polish Jew of curious habits and strange disposition, who was the sole occupant of certain premises in Whitechapel after night-fall. This man was in the district during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders, and soon after they ceased certain facts came to light which showed that it was quite possible that he might have been the Ripper. He had at one time been employed in a hospital in Poland. He was known to be a lunatic at the time of the murders, and some-time afterwards he betrayed such undoubted signs of homicidal mania that he was sent to a lunatic asylum.
The policeman who got a glimpse of Jack in Mitre Court said, when some time afterwards he saw the Pole, that he was the height and build of the man he had seen on the night of the murder2
Sims’s information clearly came from Macnaghten himself, so we can be certain that the suspect referred to here is Kozminski. Yet the article also contained some additional information that was not in the Macnaghten memorandum. For example, where Macnaghten said only that Kozminski “strongly resembled the individual seen by the City P.C. near Mitre Square,” Sims said, “He was the height and build of the man he had seen on the night of the murder.” Sims also
said that “soon after [the murders] ceased certain facts came to light which showed that it was quite possible that he might have been the Ripper,” adding that the man was not sent to the asylum until “some-time afterwards.”3
Even more interesting is Sims’s statement that the suspect “had at one time been employed in a hospital in Poland.” It is not known whether this was true, and it might be argued that this idea seems to be contradicted by the Book of Residents for Kodawa, which listed Kozminski as a tailor. Yet the date of the Book of Residents entry is uncertain, and it may have been entered when Kozminski was only about ten years old. Thus, it does not preclude the possibility that Kozminski may have worked as an assistant in a hospital at some later time. Of course, if Sims’s statement were true, it would suggest that Kozminski might have had some degree of rough anatomical knowledge, as some doctors believed the Ripper had.
Finally, Sims’s article claimed that Kozminski was “the sole occupant of certain premises in Whitechapel after night-fall” and that he “was in the district during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders, and soon after they ceased certain facts came to light which showed that it was quite possible that he might have been the Ripper.” It would be fascinating to know what these “certain facts” were, but Sims does not say.
Although there are no other known sources that name Kozminski specifically, at least two other people referred to an unnamed suspect who may have been Kozminski. And given that Donald Swanson claimed that the City CID kept Kozminski under surveillance, it is especially interesting that both men were plainclothes City detectives, who spoke of conducting surveillance on a suspect who was apparently Jewish and was admitted to an asylum.
Ex-detective-inspector Robert Sagar of the City of London Police Force was, at the time of his death in 1924, described as “a man of outstanding ability in the detection of crime.” Born in Lancashire, Sagar made a brief foray into the study of medicine as a young man, before becoming fascinated by the problem of criminology and the detection of crime. “His forte was the discovery of the criminal,” his obituary noted. “To unravel the tangled skein of a complicated human problem gave him as much pleasure as even ‘Sherlock Holmes’ derived from his voluntary activities.”4 After the murder of Catherine Eddowes within the City of London boundary, Sagar was deputed as a liaison for the City Police Force in daily conferences regarding the Ripper crimes.
As noted in an article printed at the time of his death, Sagar “spent much time in trying to trace ‘Jack the Ripper.’ ”5 He is known to have made at least two separate references to conducting surveillance on an unnamed suspect who, as he said, “without a doubt, was the murderer.” The first was in an article printed in the London City Press on January 7, 1905, at the time of Sagar’s retirement. The article noted that Sagar’s “professional association” with the Ripper murders was “a very close one,” and added, “Mr. Sagar knows as much about those crimes, which terrified the Metropolis, as any detective in London.” According to Sagar,
It has been asserted that the murderer fled to the continent, where he perpetrated similar hideous crimes; but that is not the case. The police realised, as also did the public, that the crimes were those of a madman, and suspicion fell upon a man, who, without a doubt, was the murderer. Identification being impossible, he could not be charged. He was, however, placed in a lunatic asylum, and the series of atrocities came to an end. There was a peculiar incident in connection with those tragedies which may have been forgotten. The apron belonging to the woman who was murdered in Mitre Square was thrown under a staircase in a common lodging house in Dorset Street, and someone—presumably the murderer—had written on the wall above it, ‘The Jewes are not the people that will be blamed for nothing.’[sic] A police officer engaged in the case, fearing that the writing might lead to an onslaught upon the Jews in the neighbourhood, rubbed the writing from the wall, and all record of the implied accusation was lost; but the fact that such an ambiguous message was left is recorded among the archives at the Guildhall6
In many respects, this sounds very much like Robert Anderson’s statements about Kozminski. The fact that Sagar said that identification was “impossible” seems to imply that he was aware that an identification had been attempted but was not successful. Sagar insinuated that after the identification, the suspect was “placed in a lunatic asylum, and the series of atrocities came to an end.” This parallels Swanson’s statement that “after this identification . . . no other murder of this kind took place in London.” It is also interesting that Sagar went on to mention the Goulston Street graffito, and the police “fearing that the writing might lead to an onslaught upon the Jews in the neighbourhood.” This seems to hint that Sagar’s suspect was Jewish.
Sagar’s second reference to this suspect appeared in September 1946 in a Reynold’s News article titled “Who Was Jack the Ripper?” by Justin Atholl. The article read,
More probable is the theory that the police knew the identity of the Ripper but were never able to get evidence to arrest him. The crime committed by a maniac, completely without motive, is the most difficult on which to get evidence the law will accept.
Inspector Robert Sagar, who died in 1924, played a leading part in the Ripper investigations. In his memoirs he said: “We had good reason to suspect a man who worked in Butcher’s Row, Aldgate. We watched him carefully. There was no doubt that this man was insane, and after a time his friends thought it advisable to have him removed to a private asylum. After he was removed, there were no more Ripper atrocities7
In many respects, this statement also seems to fit Kozminski. Once again, it is suggested, “The police knew the identity of the Ripper but were never able to get evidence to arrest him.”8 The suspect was insane and “after a time” was removed to an asylum by “his friends.” It is particularly interesting that Sagar, a City detective, said, “We watched him carefully,” implying that the suspect was kept under surveillance by City detectives, which matches Swanson’s statement that Kozminski was “watched by police (City CID) by day & night.”9
Sagar claimed that the suspect worked in Butcher’s Row, a section of Aldgate High Street that had
historically been the location of butcher shops just outside the Old (“Ald”) Gate of the City of London. Unfortunately, no documentation has been found to indicate that Kozminski ever worked in Butcher’s Row, and it is not known whether he was employed at all in 1888. A review of trade directories for 1888–1891 by researcher Scott Nelson has revealed that there were three or four tailor shops in the area of Butcher’s Row and at least one hairdresser’s shop, Kallin & Radin, adjacent to St. Botolph’s Church on the northwest corner of the block10
An apparent problem with Sagar’s statement is that he said the suspect was removed to a “private asylum.” As far as we know, this does not fit with Kozminski, who was admitted not to a private asylum, but rather to the County Asylum at Colney Hatch. Again, it is possible that Kozminski was admitted to a private asylum, but no proof of this has ever been discovered. Despite these problems, it still seems possible that both of Sagar’s statements might refer to Kozminski.
Another likely source was a man named Harry (or Henry) Cox. Like Sagar, Cox was a City detective, and an article published in the Police Review on the occasion of his retirement in December 1906 noted that it was “as a shadower of criminals that Mr. Cox did some of his best work.”11 The article described several of Cox’s adventures shadowing criminals while wearing various disguises—one disguise was that of a painter, another that of a clerk “with a silk hat[,] umbrella, and evening paper.” The same week this article came out, Thompson’s Weekly News published an article titled “The Truth about the Whitechapel Mysteries, Told by Harry Cox.” In it, Cox claimed to have conducted undercover surveillance on a suspect “not unlikely to have been connected with the crimes,” who was insane, was apparently Jewish, and was later committed to an asylum. The article may well be a firsthand account of the surveillance of Kozminski, and we must assess it carefully. Because of this, I have excerpted the article at length, highlighting the more interesting points:
