Jack the Ripper (11 page)

The cry went up and was echoed from street to alley and lodging house to tenement, that no Christian could do such things to women; the culprit had to be a Jew and a foreign one at that. The history of serial murder since reveals this to be abject nonsense. Archetypal Anglo-Saxon types, like Peter Sutcliffe and Ted Bundy, are far more representative of the genre.

Next, the identification. The ‘seaside home’ was the colloquial name given to the inaugural police convalescent home, opened in Brighton in March 1890. Why it was necessary to take the suspect and the witness all that way is unexplained, unless the police were terrified of the press getting wind of things. However, the date on which the home opened does tie in, very neatly, with what Swanson says about the aftermath of the identification, the records of the workhouse infirmary and the asylum. Kosminski could have been identified some time between March and July 1890, possibly during his July stay at the infirmary (Mile End subsequently became Stepney Workhouse), or shortly before February 1891, when he was finally sent to Colney Hatch.

So far, so good. But now the hob-goblins begin to appear. A former Lord Chief Justice has described eyewitness identification as ‘the most serious chink in our legal armour’; and he is backed up by a conveyor belt of proven miscarriages of justice, emanating from faulty identifications. A battery of tests and experiments have, likewise, served to underline the frailty and flaws inherent in trying to recognise the person you saw, again. It all makes the point that, basically no identification can ever, by itself, be regarded as conclusive. And under what circumstances did Kosminski’s identification take place? Was he represented by a solicitor? Was there a proper identity parade, consisting of other working-class Jews of a similar age, height, build and clothing? These are considered to be the minimum requirements for a fair ID parade.

Who was the witness? Two names are traditionally put into the frame: Israel Schwartz, the Hungarian immigrant, who observed Elizabeth Stride being assaulted some fifteen minutes before her body was found, and Joseph Lawende, who fifty minutes later saw Cathy Eddowes talking to a man in the passage leading to Mitre Square, where she was murdered. Neither would have been likely to fare well in court under a vigorous cross-examination. Both had briefly glimpsed a man in the darkness, eighteen months to two years earlier. Lawende had stated that he would not have been able to recognise the man again, whilst Schwartz’s description of the man he had seen, plus the seeming anti-Semitic shout of ‘Lipsky’ directed at him (Schwartz), strongly implied that the man was Anglo-Saxon.

Other candidates for Anderson’s witness include one of Lawende’s companions that night, Joseph Levy, two unidentified men – who also, supposedly, observed Eddowes with a man in the precincts of Mitre Square – and an equally unidentified City Police officer, alleged by some to have been present that night. The latter is rather interesting. Macnaghten, if he can be relied upon, twice refers to this City Policeman in the Aberconway draft of his memoranda. First, ‘No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer (unless possibly it was the City PC who was on a beat near Mitre Square)’; and then again in his synopsis of Kosminski, ‘This man in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square.’

This mysterious officer keeps on cropping up. Major Arthur Griffiths, crime historian and former Inspector of Prisons, was clearly afforded a look at the Aberconway draft. In his 1898 book
Mysteries of Police and Crime
, he effectively repeats what Macnaghten said. George R. Sims, a journalist who most definitely did have good contacts at Scotland Yard, likewise refers to a Polish Jewish suspect in a 1907 magazine article: ‘The policeman who got a glimpse of Jack in Mitre court (sic) said when sometime afterwards he saw the Pole that he was the height and build of the man he had seen on the night of the murder.’

Was Sims merely amplifying what Macnaghten/Griffiths had said in a literary form of Chinese whispers, or was he actually referring to the ‘seaside home’ identification? If so, then it sounds as though the identification was by no means conclusive; which faces us with yet another conundrum.

Was Anderson’s witness actually the Will o’ the Wisp police officer? As the Ripper saga unfolded, so the police began holding back evidence which might then trap the killer. Israel Schwartz may have been kept back from Liz Stride’s inquest for this reason. Possibly, they persuaded the City police to do the same with their unnamed officer. In fact, it is just possible that some of PC Watkins’ evidence was withheld, although it seems unlikely that he was Jewish. Their Ripper files were destroyed in the Blitz, so they cannot assist us. If the officer was convalescing at the seaside home in 1890, it would also help explain Kosminski being taken there. Likewise, it clarifies the surveillance on him being carried out by the City force, although here, in an offshoot to the riddle it is just faintly possible that Swanson was in error. Not for the first time either, as he twice mistakenly refers to Met Constable William Smith, who saw Stride with a man, as a ‘City’ policeman in a report to the Home office on 19 October 1888.

But the latter must be accounted very unlikely, as indeed must the whole thesis of a mystery police witness, tempting though it is. It is frankly unlikely that the City Police had any Jewish officers in 1888, and it is surely incomprehensible that any police officer, whatever his religion, would have refused to give evidence against a suspect.

There is however one alternative: he declined because he was not as certain in his identification as Anderson would have had us believe. This would also fit in with George R. Sims’ article. His mystery policeman could only say that the suspect fitted the height and build of the man he had seen. Sir Robert Anderson was a man who believed what he wanted to believe, irrespective of what the facts actually were. In December 1888, he clung obstinately to his belief that Catherine Mylett had choked to death on her own vomit, when in the professional opinion of no less than five police surgeons, she had been murdered. Did he convince himself that the suspect had been positively identified, when he had not been?

The short answer is that we simply do not know. Possibly our unknown policeman from Mitre Square is nothing more than a mix-up with PC Smith from Berner Street. We really have no idea of who Anderson and Swanson’s witness was. What thwarts us at every turn is the lack of hard information. That also applies to Anderson and Swanson’s contention that their witness refused to testify against Kosminski. Here we have the most infamous series of murders in history– ‘he completely beat me and every other police officer in London’, wrote the City Police’s Commissioner Major Henry Smith. Yet, we are asked to accept that that the police metaphorically shrugged their shoulders and stepped aside. Means of coercion were available and I really do not find this credible of belief.

To close the book on Aaron Kosminski, all that we definitely know about him is that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who spent over half his life lingering pitiably in the twilight world of the incurably insane – where he was considered to be neither violent nor dangerous. According to the correction made to the Colney Hatch records, in 1891, Kosminski had been insane for six years i.e. since 1885. It is arguable that, by 1888, he would have been too far gone to have exercised the control needed to have successfully accomplished these murders. Even if his madness was not then readily apparent, we are still asked to believe that the hideous voices in his head, ordering him to kill and mutilate, simply vanished and were replaced by more benign demons. Of course, there may be things in the missing police files which tell a very different story about Aaron Kosminski, but based on what we have to go on at the moment, the case against him must be held to be very fragile.

In fact, it is not inconceivable that Kosminski was confused with other insane Jewish suspects. One such was Hyam Hyams, who as we shall see was a most intriguing character. In April 1889, Hyams was confined in Colney Hatch after stabbing his wife. On another occasion, he had struck his mother on the head with a chopper, seriously wounding her. Hyams was delusional and also suffered from hereditary epilepsy and alcoholism. He was released on 30 August but ten days later he was back under restraint for good, after attacking his wife again. Known as the ‘terror of the City of London police’, Hyams was taken by them to an asylum in Kent, who later transferred him back to Colney Hatch, where he died in 1913.

The asylum records paint a portrait of Hyam Hyams as a frighteningly unstable individual, perhaps fuelled by a strain of insanity on his mother’s side. Colney Hatch called him ‘crafty and dangerous’. Often violent towards staff and patient inmates alike, he once attempted to cut the throat of a medical orderly with a knife fashioned from a piece of metal. Like Kosminski, he engaged in ‘self abuse’.

Hyams fitted the description, given by Joseph Lawende, of the man seen with Catharine Eddowes. There are also some fairly startling circumstances linking Hyams with the events of 30 September 1888. Eddowes body was found outside the back window of No.8 Mitre Street, the premises where Hyams uncle, Lewis Levy, had once run a business. While Hyams’ mother, Fanny Hyams was living at No.24 Mitre Street at the time of the murder, the same house where the wife of Lawende’s companion, Joseph Levy, had lived as a child. Another of Hyams’ uncles, John Levy (no relation to Joseph), was then resident at No.25 Whitechapel Road, next door to where the bloodstained knife was found on the steps, shortly after midnight on 1 October. Curiouser and curiouser!

The violence, the masturbation, and the time of Hyams’ initial incarceration in Colney Hatch, match Macnaghten’s Kosminski more than Kosminski does himself. But the fact remains that confusion or not, Kosminski’s name must have been in the police’s purview for his name to be there at all

The other possible suspect Kosminski could have been confused with was another Levy, Jacob, no known relative to any of the other Levys mentioned here, although both Jacob and Joseph were butchers operating from premises near to one another. In August 1890, Jacob was sent to the City of London asylum, suffering from general paralysis of the insane, the result of tertiary syphilis. He died there the following July. Insanity seems to have run in Jacob Levy’s family; he had himself previously spent time in an asylum, in 1886. It has been suggested that Joseph Levy was really Anderson’s witness and Jacob the suspect, thus Joseph declined to give evidence because he knew Jacob.

Whatever the truth, the City Police seem to have been watching a Ripper suspect who was eventually placed in an asylum. Inspector Robert Sagar, of the City detective force, is said to have written in his unpublished (and regrettably unavailable) memoirs, that they had surveyed a suspect who worked in Butchers Row, Aldgate, prior to his being incarcerated. This was not Kosminski because the suspect was working, plus Sagar wrote that he was confined in a private asylum. Moreover, Sagar said on a separate occasion that his suspect ‘could not be identified.’

Was Sagar’s suspect Hyam Hyams or Jacob Levy? Possibly; although the descriptions given do not, entirely, accord with either man.

Did Macnaghten confuse either Hyams or Levy with Kosminski? In Hyams’ case it is conceivable. Macnaghten may also have had ‘previous’ in this connection. Author Douglas G. Browne, who was given special access to the police files in researching his 1956 book
The Rise of Scotland Yard,
wrote that, ‘Sir Melville Macnaghten appears to identify the Ripper with the leader of a plot to assassinate Mr Balfour at the Irish office.’ A possible confusion? The Macnaghten Memorandum does contain errors when he refers to Montague Druitt.

It is surely worth asking the question; if Anderson, Swanson and Macnaghten had not mentioned Kosminski by name, would we prefer him over Hyams or Levy as the suspect? Or for that matter Aaron Cohen, whose case is discussed elsewhere in this volume.

But they did name Kosminski and in doing so left us with the proverbial riddle within an enigma, within a mystery.

Begg, P., Fido, M. & Skinner, K.,
The Jack the Ripper A –Z
, 4th edition, (John Blake Publishing, 2010)

Evans, S. & Skinner, K.,
The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook
(Robinson Publshing, 2000)

Fido, M.,
The Crimes,
Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper
(Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1987)

King, M., ‘Hyam Hyams’ in
Ripperologist Magazine
, #35 (2001)

James Maybrick (1838–1889) is the most controversial of all the Ripper suspects. He was a respected cotton merchant who, at the time of the murders, lived in Liverpool, the city of his birth and not London. He died in May 1889 and his wife, Florence, was convicted of his murder, although she was almost certainly innocent of the crime. James Maybrick was not considered a suspect at the time of the Ripper killings. He is not mentioned in the Macnaghten Memorandum, or any other contemporary police documents. Indeed, he was not linked to the killings until the emergence of the so-called Diary of Jack the Ripper in the 1990s. His credibility as a Ripper suspect is, therefore, intrinsically bound up with the authenticity of this document. In March 1992, Michael Barrett, a retired scrap metal dealer from Liverpool, telephoned Doreen Montgomery, a leading figure in the Rupert Crew Literacy Agency in London, and told her that he had Jack the Ripper’s diary. The following month Barrett showed the diary to her and the author Shirley Harrison. It measured approximately 11in by 8½in. It was hardbound in black cloth, with black leather quarter binding and seven bands of gold foil across the 2in spine. It was originally a scrapbook or possibly a photograph album. The first forty-eight pages had been cut and torn out; there were sixty-three pages with handwriting on them and then there were seventeen blank pages at the end. The book provided a graphic account of the murder of seven women, including the prostitutes who are considered to be the five canonical Ripper victims. Technically, it wasn’t really a diary at all. It had no dates and there were only a few references to family details. It is really a confessional document, in which the alleged murderer tries to rationalise and justify his terrible killing spree. It ends rather dramatically with the infamous signature, ‘Yours truly, Jack the Ripper’.