Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files

by Marriott, Trevor

  The Marginalia annotations state, “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.” I would hardly call six months a very short time, and are we to believe that observations were kept on him night and day for six months?

  Aaron Kosminski was sent to Mile End Town Workhouse and later to Colney Hatch but he didn’t die shortly afterwards. Again there are major flaws in the marginalia and the belief that Aaron Kosminski was the Kosminski named in that document and in the annotations.

  On Friday 6th February 1891 Dr. Edmund King Houchin of 23, High Street, Stepney, examined him at the workhouse. Aaron Kosminski was declared of unsound mind and a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under care and treatment. As a result of that Henry Chambers Justice of the Peace, issued a committal order to that effect the same day.

  If one examines the notes compiled by Dr. Houchin in his assessment, coming to his final decision he has not only used his own judgment but refers to information given by family members. If at this time Aaron Kosminski was looked upon as a Ripper suspect by the police or believed complicit in any of the murders I would have expected it to have been recorded and used to bolster the grounds for detaining him. After all what better grounds for detention than, “Believed to be wandering the streets at night committing murders.”?

  Ripper researcher and author Martin Fido published a book, “The Crimes Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper”, in which he was the first to suggest that Kosminski may have been in fact the Aaron Kosminski known to researchers today. Fido was the first researcher to attempt to identify the Kosminski named in the Macnaghten memorandum. When it became quite clear that the life and times and movements of Aaron Kosminski did not tie up with the Macnaghten Memorandum or the marginalia Fido later suggested that the now known Aaron Kosminski had been wrongly named by the authorities in 1889 following his detention and in fact the entries in both The Marginalia and the Macnaghten Memorandum could refer to Polish Jews David Cohen aka Aaron Davis Cohen or Nathan Kaminsky who could be one and the same.

  David Cohen was admitted to Stepney Workhouse on December 21st 1888 having been found wandering the streets unable to care for himself. He was later transferred to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum where he remained until his death in October 1889. Whilst in the asylum he showed signs of violence towards his fellow inmates and as a result was segregated. Fido suggests that the authorities could not establish his true identity on arrest and therefore gave him a “John Doe” name of Cohen, which Fido suggests was common practice. However, there are no official records to show this was common practice.

  It was used from time to time by immigration authorities both here and in New York. However, Fido’s suggestion doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny by reason of the fact that Cohen apparently had a known address of 86, Leman Street, Whitechapel, and was known to be a tailor, so formally identifying him in my opinion should not have been a major problem. Furthermore, there was a due process of law in 1888 with regards to dealing with insane persons and lunatics.

  Following an arrest and after being taken to a workhouse a person could only be lawfully detained for three days and then had to be taken before a justice to determine whether that person should be released or further detained. The Justice of the Peace had the power to authorize a doctor to carry out a full mental assessment.

  Having regard to the time he is alleged to have spent incarcerated I would have expected the workhouse and asylum authorities, and the police to make some attempt to identify an allegedly nameless man under their care. After all this unidentified man Fido suggests was given the name Cohen must have been somebody’s son, father or brother and for that person to suddenly disappear without any further trace is almost unimaginable.

  With regards to Nathan Kaminsky, he apparently lived in Black Lion Yard, right in the centre of Whitechapel. In March 1888 he was aged 23, he had been diagnosed as syphilitic at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary and admitted on March 24th 1888. He was released and cured from his illness on May 12th the same year. After that he disappears off the face of the earth and no further records can be found of his whereabouts. In a later article on the same topic published by Fido he now makes no mention at all of Nathan Kaminsky. The only tenuous link between the two to suggest they could be one and the same is their ages in the asylum records; they were both shown as being aged 23.

  As has been documented there were two other murders in Whitechapel, which the police believed to have been the work of the Ripper. The first being Alice McKenzie in July 1889 and the second Frances Coles in February 1891. These facts alone, along with other evidence and documents I will discuss in due course, in my opinion eliminates David Cohen or Nathan Kaminsky and Aaron Kosminski from suspicion of being concerned in the Whitechapel murders. Martin Fido’s suggestion that the police mixed the names up and were not sure of his true identity thereby naming him Cohen as was standard practice does not stand up to close scrutiny. This renaming was a practice used by USA immigration authorities at the time. I can find no evidence to show that it was used by the police or asylum or workhouse authorities at this relevant time period in this country.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE ABERCONWAY VERSION

  In 1959 a Ripper researcher Dan Farson revealed the existence of another version of the Macnaghten memorandum. This has now come to be known as “The Aberconway Version”. This copy is purported to have been transcribed from Macnaghten’s original notes and was found to be in the possession of Lady Christobel Aberconway the youngest daughter of Sir Melville Macnaghten, who had apparently received it from her elder sister via her mother. This version differs slightly in content from the original, but still refers to the same likely suspects. However, this particular version in its entirety has never been made public although it would appear that most of it had been published in the book, “The Jack the Ripper A-Z”.

  The Aberconway Version is made up of nine sheets, seven of which are typewritten, which are believed to have been typed, in the opinion of certain researchers, by Lady Aberconway’s secretary and compiled from handwritten notes Lady Aberconway stated she copied from her father’s original notes. No suspects names appear on these sheets save for one in relation to the murder of Frances Coles.

  In addition, there are two handwritten sheet inserts attached to the typed pages and these are again believed, (by amongst others Lady Aberconway’s son Christopher McLaren) to have been written by Lady Aberconway herself. Also seen on the typewritten sheets are handwritten annotations, which appear at the end of the handwritten notes and could be written by a different hand. These sheets do contain the names of the “suspects”.

  The reason being suggested for the exclusion of the suspect names from the typewritten notes are that firstly it was not necessary for the secretary to see the names, and secondly it would cause grave concern to any living descendants should the names be made public. This clearly shows that Lady Aberconway had intended to publish herself or have published these papers in edited form. This is supported by a letter she wrote to The New Statesman in November 1959: “I possess my father’s private notes on Jack the Ripper in which he names three individuals ‘against whom police held very reasonable suspicion’ and states which of these three, in his judgment, was the killer.”

  If as Lady Aberconway stated that she had copied her father’s original notes then what happened to those original notes? These notes looked to have contained much more detail than the accepted official version and I must ask why important and significant facts contained in these newly released documents copied from his original notes were not included by Macnaghten himself in his final memorandum, which is now known as The Scotland Yard version.

  I have studied carefully the content of The Aberconway Version and have set out below the significant differences between this and Macnaghten’s original Scotland Yard version, adding my comments and observations.

 
The first point I will discuss relates solely to The Aberconway Version and is to be found on page six of the typewritten sheets. The relevant passage reads: “No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer (unless possibly it was the City P. C. who was on a beat near Mitre Square)”. It is interesting because this suggestion that a police officer perhaps saw the killer on the night of September 30th following the murder of Catherine Eddowes has never been mentioned previously. One has to ask where this information came from and why was it not disclosed previously, and is it at all reliable having regard to the question of reliability of the original Macnaghten memorandum?

  The second point I will highlight follows on in typewritten form at the foot of the same page and reads: “I enumerate the cases of 3 men against whom Police held very… this sentence is then continued in handwritten form on the first of the attached handwritten sheets and reads: “reasonable suspicion. Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2.”

  This is a vitally important issue because the last sentence obviously refers to the last two as being Ostrog and Kosminski. The latter being regarded by many researchers and authors as being the prime suspect for Jack the Ripper, and many Ripper authors have over the years published and sold many books suggesting Kosminski was Jack the Ripper. Macnaghten’s comment coupled with all the research carried out over the past fifty years now in my opinion totally eliminates Aaron Kosminski, Nathan Kaminsky, David Cohen or anyone else with similar names.

  Staying with The Aberconway Version, also on page six there is a typewritten entry regarding the murder of Frances Coles in 1891. This entry reads: “Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens on 13th Feb. 1891 for which Thomas Sadler, a Ship’s fireman, was arrested, and – after several remands – discharged! It was subsequently ascertained that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July ’89 and was in Whitechapel on 17th the night when Alice McKenzie was killed. He was a man of ungovernable temper, and entirely addicted to drink and the company of the lowest prostitutes. I have no doubt whatever in my own mind as to his having murdered Frances Coles –”

  In the original memorandum Macnaghten refers to the murder of Frances Coles in this way: “Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891 - for which Thomas Sadler, a fireman, was arrested, &, after several remands, discharged. It was ascertained at the time that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July ‘89 and was in Whitechapel on the night of 17th. He was a man of ungovernable temper & entirely addicted to drink, & the company of the lowest prostitutes.” There is no mention as to his firm belief that Thomas Sadler was responsible for her murder.

  The inclusion of Macnaghten’s opinion in the typewritten notes regarding the suspect Sadler in my opinion does not give a lot of credibility to the explanation put forward as to why the other suspect names were omitted from the same typewritten pages, because the police at the time believed her murder was the work of Jack the Ripper and that Sadler was looked upon by the police as being Jack the Ripper.

  Further questions surround another entry found in The Aberconway Version, which relates to another Ripper suspect Michael Ostrog. In the original Scotland Yard Version dated February 23rd 1894,

  Macnaghten describes Ostrog as follows: “Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man’s antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his whereabouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.”

  In the handwritten part of The Aberconway Version Ostrog is described as: “Michael Ostrog. A mad Russian doctor & a convict & unquestionably a homicidal maniac. This man was said to have been habitually cruel to women, & for a long time was known to have carried out with him surgical knives & other instruments; his antecedents were of the very worst & his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactory accounted for. He is still alive.” Note the absence of any mention of a lunatic asylum.

  The relevant part here is in the last line of the Aberconway handwritten notes, which reads, “He is still alive”. As can be seen above in the original version Macnaghten stated Ostrog had been subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum. However, further research showed that at the time of the Whitechapel murders Ostrog was in prison in France. Additional research shows that in June 1894 four months after the original version in which Macnaghten states Ostrog was detained in a lunatic asylum, Ostrog was in fact arrested in Slough for an offence of theft and remanded in custody. There is evidence to show that between September 1887 and March 1888 Ostrog was detained in a lunatic asylum.

  This all goes to confirm my belief that the original Scotland Yard version is unreliable as is The Aberconway Version. The handwritten notes from The Aberconway Version states that at the time these notes were written Ostrog was still alive. In my opinion they could not have been written from Macnaghten’s original notes, (Scotland Yard Version) because if Macnaghten in his notes, which Lady Aberconway copied from, wrote Ostrog was still alive then, he must have known where he was, had he known where he was then he would have known that he was in prison in France and could not have been a suspect for Jack the Ripper. There is no mention of the lunatic asylum in the handwritten notes. So from what document did Lady Aberconway obtain this information?

  Another minor discrepancy relates to the murder of Martha Tabram who was subjected to a frenzied attack where she was stabbed thirty-nine times. On page six of the typewritten sheets when discussing her murder that part is described as, “her body had received several stabs,” thirty-nine stab wounds could hardly be described as “several”.

  On a final note it should be noted that neither The Aberconway Version nor the original one contains any mention at all of the organs having been removed from any of the victims.

  As has been stated the original Macnaghten Memorandum has been proved to be unreliable. What The Aberconway Version does is to, in my opinion, eliminate the suspect referred to as Kosminski from the investigation. Whatever information or report from which Macnaghten used as a source to include Kosminski in his list in the first instance may have been submitted in good faith but was obviously unreliable, or proven to be wrong, or could have simply been another malicious letter sent to the police at the time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SWANSON MARGINALIA

  Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police placed Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in overall charge of the investigation into the Whitechapel murders from 15th September to 8th December 1888.

  Swanson was freed from all other duties and given his own office at Scotland Yard from which to co-ordinate inquiries. He was given permission to see, “every paper, every document, every report and every telegram” concerning the investigation. In this way Swanson gained a wealth of knowledge and information about the killings. Following a long and distinguished police career, which saw him rise to the rank of Superintendent he retired in 1903 and he died in 1924 aged 76.

  Swanson was also a close friend of Sir Robert Anderson and in Anderson's book, “The Lighter Side of My Official Life”, published in 1910 Anderson refers to the identity of the Ripper as being a Polish Jew. In his book he writes, “I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him.”

  As I have previously stated, in the book Anderson makes no mention of the name of the suspect, the name of the witness, nor does he give any information regarding the identification he refers to and when it took place. It should also be noted that there was no known witness who fits the witness criteria as described by Anderson, so this in itself is questionable especially as up until Anderson published his book in 1910 he is on record on many occasions as stating the police did not know the identity of the killer. Examples of this will be shown in a later chapter.

  Swanson is purported to have written pencilled notes,
or annotations in Anderson’s book, which were later found by his grandson James Swanson in 1981 following him inheriting Anderson’s book and other papers. In these pencilled annotations Donald Swanson purportedly makes reference to an alleged seaside home identification procedure stating a suspect was taken by the police and subsequently identified by a witness. In the annotations Swanson names that suspect as Kosminski. These annotations go some way to corroborate the brief reference made by Anderson in his book.

  But again there is no mention of the name of the witness, or the exact location where this identification procedure took place. Or when it took place, although one section of the annotations would suggest that if this identification procedure did ever take place then it could not have taken place before February 13th 1891 the date of the murder of Frances Coles whose murder was looked upon as being the work of Jack the Ripper and the last in the series.

  The marginalia notes were written using two different two pencils – one grey and a second, purple-tinged pencil – and appeared to have been written at different times. The relevant annotations appear on page 138 of the book, followed by additional annotations written on the endpaper of the book.

  On page 138 Anderson writes, “I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him”.

  The handwritten annotations underneath had been written using a purple-tinged pencil and read, “Because the suspect was also a Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of the murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind. D. S. S.” The letters D. S. S. are the initials of Swanson.