Read Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 Online
Authors: Russell Edwards
Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 (30 page)
There is other material that backs up the claims by Macnaghten, Anderson and Swanson. Robert Sagar joined the City of London police in 1880 and swiftly rose through the ranks. By 1888 he was a
Sergeant, becoming a Detective Sergeant the following year. Major Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City police at the time of the double murder, said, ‘a better or more intelligent
officer than Robert Sagar I never had under my command’. In 1905, on Sagar’s retirement, a number of newspapers featured his involvement in the Ripper case, and their reports threw up
interesting snippets of information that have some bearing on the Kosminski claims. One, from the
City Press
, suggests that not only was the killer believed to be a ‘madman’
but also that evidence to convict him had not been forthcoming and he was taken out of circulation by being put in an asylum:
His [Sagar’s] professional association with the terrible atrocities which were perpetuated some years ago in the East End by the so-styled
‘Jack the Ripper’ was a very close one. Indeed, M. Sagar knows as much about those crimes, which terrified the Metropolis, as any detective in London. He was deputed to represent
the City police force in conference with the detective heads of the Metropolitan force nightly at Leman Street Police Station during the period covered by those ghastly murders. Much has been
said and written – and even more conjectured – upon the subject of the ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ murders. 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.
Reynolds News
took a similar line when talking about Sagar in 1946:
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 Butchers’ 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 atrocities.’
Frustratingly, Sagar’s memoirs have never been traced and as far as we know Kosminski did not work in Butcher’s Row, a section of Aldgate
High Street named for its prevalence of butchers and slaughterhouses. However, what Sagar is alleged to have said about friends removing the suspect to a private asylum has parallels with
Kosminski’s fate, even though, again as far as we know, he was not in a
private
asylum at any point before he was admitted to Colney Hatch.
Another City detective, Harry Cox, wrote in
Thompson’s Weekly News
following his retirement in 1906 that he too was involved in the surveillance of a suspect. He revealed that the
suspect was Jewish and that after a time the Jews in the area where the man lived became wise to who he was:
The man we suspected was about five feet six inches in height, with short, black, curly hair, and he had a habit of taking late walks abroad. He occupied several shops in
the East End, but from time to time he became insane, and was forced to spend a portion of his time in an asylum in Surrey.
While the Whitechapel murders were being perpetrated his place of business was in a certain street, and after the last murder I was on duty in this street for nearly three months. There were
several other officers with me, and I think there can be no harm in stating that the opinion of most of them was that the man they were watching had something to do with the crimes. You can
imagine that never once did we allow him to quit our sight. The least slip and another brutal crime might have been perpetrated under our very noses. It was not easy to forget that already one
of them had taken place at the very moment when one of our smartest colleagues was passing the top of the dimly lit street.
The Jews in the street soon became aware of our presence. It was impossible to hide ourselves. They became suddenly alarmed, panic stricken, and I can tell you that
at nights we ran a considerable risk. We carried our lives in our hands so to speak, and at last we had to partly take the alarmed inhabitants into our confidence, and so throw them off the
scent. We told them we were factory inspectors looking for tailors and capmakers who employed boys and girls under age, and pointing out the evils accruing from the sweaters’ system asked
them to co-operate with us in destroying it.
They readily promised to do so, although we knew well that they had no intention of helping us. Every man was as bad as another. Day after day we used to sit and chat with them, drinking
their coffee, smoking their excellent cigarettes, and partaking of Kosher rum. Before many weeks had passed we were quite friendly with them, and knew that we could carry out our observations
unmolested. I am sure they never once suspected that we were police detectives on the trail of the mysterious murderer; otherwise they would not have discussed the crimes with us as openly as
they did.
These accounts appear to support the claims of Anderson and Swanson – both Sagar’s and Cox’s recollections hint that the identity of the murder was known to
friends or family and that they appeared reluctant to give him up to ‘gentile justice’ as Anderson said. When Cox refers to ‘the last murder’ we do not know which one he
means, but possibly it was that of Alice Mackenzie, who is not today thought to be a Ripper victim, but was bracketed with the other deaths at the time. Swanson’s marginalia talks of
surveillance by City police prior to the suspect’s incarceration.
I have used these sources to produce a logical timeline of events surrounding Aaron Kosminski’s apprehension and incarceration.
On 12 July 1890, clearly showing signs of mental illness, his family took him to Mile End Workhouse where his sanity was queried. On his release he went back to his brother Woolf’s house
where the family took care of him and, if they had suspicions about his involvement in the crimes, they presumably did their best to keep him out of harm’s way and from the authorities.
Soon after, in response to intelligence or possibly even a tip-off regarding the alleged attack on his sister with a knife mentioned by Dr Houchin (who, interestingly, was a police surgeon for
the Whitechapel Police Division, and may have been involved with the police work on the Ripper case, and therefore on the lookout for anything suspicious), Aaron Kosminski was taken in by the
police to be identified by a witness who had seen him with one of the victims on the night of one of the murders. A positive identification was made, but owing to religious reasons, the Jewish
witness refused to give incriminating evidence and thus the police had little option but to release Kosminski into the care of his family, at which the City police begin their surveillance.
On 4 February 1891, by now exhibiting serious mental problems, he was taken back to the workhouse, deemed insane and went to Colney Hatch and, later, Leavesden.
Some researchers focus on the discrepancies in the various stories, but they were all recalled from memory at later dates, so this is understandable. There are many common themes and I think
there is enough evidence to support my interpretation of events, which I am offering only as a justification for going
down the route of pursuing Kosminski as the most
likely suspect. If this was all I had to base it on I, like so many others, would simply be putting forward a theory, arguing a case. And however convincingly I argued it, there would always be
doubt, a counter theory. But I was using
my theory
about Kosminski only as a shortcut to take me to the right man, in terms of scientific proof. All the way through my quest for the
Ripper, it is science, not theory, that has been my ally.
Like so many other researchers, I was intrigued by the assertion that there was a witness who identified the Ripper and there was a mysterious venue where this happened. I had
a second conversation with Alan McCormack in 2009 when he suggested I should do some digging into who the witness was, so this was the next avenue I went down.
Swanson said the identification took place at the ‘Seaside Home’ which on the face of it seems an unusual place to hold such an important event. However, during the Whitechapel
murders, whenever news got out that a suspect had been taken to a police station, large crowds and interfering journalists would descend in numbers, so with a situation as sensitive as this,
discretion would have been paramount. It makes sense that the police might look for a location outside London which was not a police station and yet was under their control, with staff who would
understand the importance of not talking about it.
Most researchers today accept that the ‘Seaside Home’ refers to the Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Hove, East Sussex. 51 Clarendon Villas (its correct address) runs parallel
with Church Road, yards away from the corner of Sackville Road, and only a short stroll from the seafront. The building is
still there today and is now private flats.
Convalescent homes were often built by the coast, where patients could benefit from the clean air while they recovered from illness: philanthropic employers set them up for the benefit of their
staff, especially those who worked in heavy industries or in cities with little access to country air (in later years, unions would provide them for their members). I have been to stand outside it
twice, the first time when I initially established that it was the right place, having found it in the Brighton archive library. I went again, much later, when I was well and truly on
Kosminski’s trail, and this visit caused a much stronger reaction in me. I felt myself shudder involuntarily, as I stood outside, knowing that he had been in one of those rooms.
The logistics required to get the suspect from his home to the Seaside Home may explain Swanson’s use of the phrase ‘sent by us with difficulty’. East London was still buzzing
with Ripper rumours and Ripper paranoia in 1890, and any obvious arrest of a suspect would have been seized upon by the voracious press – who wanted to keep the sensational story running
– and the nervous public, so spiriting the suspect away had to be done without drawing any attention.
But who was the witness? The clearest clue is in the claim that the witness was Jewish. Looking at the police files, there are three, possibly four, documented witnesses who saw the murderer and
were able to describe him: Mrs Long in Hanbury Street, PC William Smith (possibly) and Israel Schwartz in Berner Street and Joseph Lawende at the entrance to Church Passage near Mitre Square.
Unless Mrs Long and PC Smith were Jewish, and there is no evidence either way, but their names suggest they were not, then it falls to either Schwartz or Lawende who we know were Jewish. But which
one?
I concluded that it must have been Schwartz. One reason I plumped for him was because Joseph Lawende made the sighting of the man with Catherine Eddowes from across the
road, Duke Street. Neither of his two companions, Harry Harris and Joseph Hyam Levy, paid much attention to the couple and even Lawende’s sighting was, he admitted, unsatisfactory. A
description given by Lawende of the man he saw was set down in a report by Donald Swanson and published in the press. He was described as ‘age 30 ht. 5 ft. 7 or 8 in., comp. fair, fair
moustache, medium built, dress pepper & salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same colour, reddish handkerchief tied in a knot, round neck, appearance of a sailor.’
According to Major Henry Smith, acting commissioner of the City police in 1888, he had apparently spoken to Lawende about his sighting at the time. Mistakenly describing Lawende as a German,
Smith said in his 1910 memoirs that ‘I think the German spoke the truth, because I could not “lead” him in any way. “You will easily recognize him, then,” I said.
“Oh no!” he replied; “I only had a short look at him.”’ It is difficult to believe that Lawende, who was always unsure about his ability to recognize the man if he saw
him again, would be able to do so many months after the event, or that the police would expect him to.
I believe Lawende
was
called in to identify James Sadler, the companion and alleged murderer of Frances Coles in February 1891, but he was unable to do so. Some researchers have
suggested that this identification, made at the
Seaman’s
Home in Whitechapel, could have been confused in the minds of Anderson and Swanson with the passing of time, and unwittingly
altered to become the Seaside Home. That said, it is difficult to reconcile this idea – Sadler, as far as we know,
was not Jewish and yet both men had described the
suspect as Jewish. And if Sadler is not Jewish, this negates the reason given by Anderson and Swanson for the witness’s refusal to testify.
And of course the witness in the Seaside Home scenario identified the suspect as soon as he was confronted with him. Lawende drew a blank with Sadler, who could not have been Jack the Ripper
anyway as he was at sea on the dates of most of the Whitechapel murders. Not only that, members of Swanson’s family who knew him in later life confirmed that he was in possession of all his
critical faculties right into old age and so it’s highly unlikely he’d get this important point wrong.
With Israel Schwartz we have none of these problems. From a distance of only tens of feet away, he saw Elizabeth Stride being attacked by a man, just fifteen minutes before her body was found
only yards from the scene. He is the ONLY witness to see a Ripper victim being physically attacked, a major reason for me feeling sure it was him. I believe the man even acknowledged
Schwartz’s presence, shouting ‘Lipski!’ at him, probably as an anti-Jewish insult aimed at Schwartz.
Once I went back to Alan McCormack with my reasons for choosing Schwartz, he corroborated my reasoning, then he explained about the identification. He said that a
confrontation
took
place, as opposed to a line-up. It was not an unusual technique at the time, whereby a suspect or person of interest would be placed in front of, or shown to, a potential witness, not always
necessarily to make a confirmed identification immediately, but perhaps to unsettle and intimidate the suspect who the police were sure was guilty in any case. This could provoke the suspect,
believing he had been identified, to unwittingly give more information, or even break down
and confess willingly. The scenario Alan put to me is the one suggested by
Anderson and apparently confirmed by Swanson. This is my summary of it: