Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  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’.2

  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 1988.3

  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.4 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.5

  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.’6

  Leavesden was an asylum for adult imbeciles established in 1870. And on 19 April 1894 W. Thacker, Clerk to the Board of Guardians, Mile End Old Town, signed an order for Kosminski’s admission there as a ‘chronic harmless lunatic, idiot or imbecile’. The order named his mother, Mrs Kosminski of 63 New Street, New Road, Whitechapel, as his nearest known relative.

  Leavesden was Kosminski’s home for the remaining twenty-five years of his life. No case notes before 1910 appear to have survived. But from that date eight entries afford us glimpses of his behaviour. Two (1 April and 16 July 1914) noted that he was excitable and ‘troublesome’ at times, one (17 February 1915) that he was occasionally ‘very excitable’ and another (2 February 1916) that he could be ‘very obstinate’. None referred to him as a violent patient or as one that represented any risk to staff or other patients. Clean, but untidy and slovenly in his habits, he did no work and seemed unable to respond rationally to the simplest questions. This last point is mentioned in all but two of the eight case notes. ‘Patient is morose in manner. No sensible reply can be got by questions. He mutters incoherently.’ So ran a typical entry in January 1913. ‘Patient merely mutters when asked questions,’ another reported in February 1915. From four entries between 1 April 1914 and 2 February 1916 we learn that Kosminski was hearing voices and seeing things that were not there. By the latter date he had become a sad shell of a man, dull and vacant, and locked in a secret world of his own: ‘Patient does not know his age or how long he has been here. He has hallucinations of sight & hearing & is at times very obstinate. Untidy but clean, does no work.’

  Of Kosminski’s general health we know a little more. Dr Henry Case, Medical Superintendent at Leavesden, informed Thacker upon Kosminski’s arrival at his asylum in 1894 that his bodily condition was ‘impaired’. Detailed medical records after 1910 note that it ranged from weak to good and record such mundane facts as Kosminski sustaining a cut over the left eye from an encounter with a wash-house tap in November 1915 and being twice put to bed with swollen feet in January and February 1919. It was in 1918, however, that his general health seems to have entered into terminal decline. On 26 May he was put to bed suffering from diarrhoea and ‘passing loose motions with blood & mucus’. Eight days later, his diarrhoea having ceased, he was ordered up by Dr Reese. In May 1918, too, his weight fell below seven stone. In May 1915 it had exceeded seven stone eight pounds. By February 1919, the last time he was weighed, it stood at six stone twelve pounds. It is from such arid medical data that we must of necessity reconstruct the last days of the man Sir Robert Anderson insisted was Jack the Ripper. From late February 1919 Kosminski was more or less permanently bedridden with erysipelas. On 13 March it was reported that his right hip had ‘broken down’. On 22 March he was very noisy but took little nourishment. The next day he again took little nourishment and appeared ‘very low’. Then, at five minutes past five on the morning of 24 March 1919, he died at the asylum in the presence of S. Bennett, the night attendant. There was a sore on his left hip and leg. Some of Kosminski’s symptoms suggest that he may have been suffering from cancer but the male patients’ medical journal and Kosminski’s death certificate both record the cause of death as gangrene of the left leg.7

  To judge by Anderson’s comment that there was ‘no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal’ one would think the case against Aaron Kosminski cut and dried. In one respect, certainly, Kosminski was unique among major Whitechapel murder suspects – he was the only one against whom any direct evidence linking him with the crimes was ever adduced. That evidence, of course, was the positive identification of a witness mentioned both by Anderson and Swanson and the credibility of the case against the Polish Jew rests almost entirely upon it.

  So who was the witness? Neither Anderson nor Swanson tell us his name but there are sufficient clues in the police evidence for us to determine his identity with reasonable certainty.

  First, we have Macnaghten’s comment in the draft version of his 1894 report that ‘this man [Kosminski] in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square’. Now, as we have seen, Macnaghten’s draft and official report are factually weak. This particular statement is quite erroneous for despite Major Smith’s orders that couples be kept under close observation no City policeman saw the Ripper with his victim near Mitre Square and this led to speculation in the force that they might have met there by prior appointment.8 The Mitre Square witness, in fact, was Joseph Lawende, the commercial traveller who saw a man with a woman who may have been Kate Eddowes at the entrance of Church Passage, leading into Mitre Square, ten minutes before Kate’s body was discovered in the square itself. Macnaghten’s ‘City PC’ was undoubtedly a hazy memory of PC William Smith. Smith, however, was a Metropolitan, not a City, constable, and he reported seeing a man with Liz Stride in Berner Street, not one with Kate Eddowes near Mitre Square. In short Macnaghten confused two separate sightings made on the night of the double murder: those of PC Smith in Berner Street at about 12.35 and Joseph Lawende near Mitre Square an hour later.

  It may seem difficult to believe that a senior police officer could have botched his facts as badly as this. But Macnaghten’s report shows every indication of having been largely compiled from memory. In the last chapter we noted several errors in his account of Druitt and that of Kosminski is similarly flawed by its assertion that this suspect
had been committed to an asylum about March 1889. The correct date was February 1891. There are also errors in Macnaghten’s remarks on the Tabram, Chapman and Stride murders. The last is particularly revealing in that, like the reference to the City PC, it seems to have arisen from a transposition of the events surrounding the Berner Street and Mitre Square killings. Macnaghten’s draft avers that Stride’s killer was disturbed when ‘three Jews drove up to an Anarchist Club in Berners Street’. Now the Berner Street killer might very well have been disturbed but if he was it was by just one Jew – Louis Diemschutz, the steward of the International Working Men’s Club, who drove his barrow into Dutfield’s Yard, next to the club, within minutes of the time Long Liz must have been killed. Macnaghten’s reference to three Jews, then, was probably inspired by the story of Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris, the three Jews who, upon leaving the Imperial Club in Duke Street later that same night, chanced upon the couple subsequently believed to have been the Ripper and Kate Eddowes. Haste and a disposition to trust too much in the memory are the causes of the Chief Constable’s lapses. ‘I never kept a diary, nor even possessed a notebook,’ he confessed in his autobiography in 1914, ‘so that, in what I write, I must trust to my memory, and to my memory alone.’9

  If there is any truth at all in Macnaghten’s statement the witness who identified Kosminski was either PC Smith or Joseph Lawende. Other clues, though, clearly rule Smith out. Both Anderson and Swanson were emphatic that the witness was a Jew. And Swanson’s revelation that it was the City CID who watched Kosminski’s house points unmistakably at Lawende. Whether Sion Square or Greenfield Street was meant is immaterial. Both were well within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. So why was the surveillance being undertaken by the City force? There seems only one plausible explanation. The witness who had identified Kosminski was Lawende so the police were seeking to charge the suspect with the murder of Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square. Since the investigation of this crime, the only one in the series which occurred in the City, was the responsibility of the City detectives they had, of necessity, to be involved in the inquiry.