Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect

by Robert House

  By the 1880s, overcrowding was widespread, and conditions had deteriorated to the extent that the large county asylums such as Leavesden became “custodial warehouses for a thousand chronic incurables.” The ostensible goal of “curing” patients thus shifted back to simply controlling and managing them, and asylum staff had no option but to resort to the use of straitjackets and other methods of restraint.

  One popular method for controlling patients in this era was “chemical restraint,” by which unruly patients were “kept in a state of permanent over-sedation” with drugs. Asylum doctors seem to have essentially used mental patients as guinea pigs in experiments with dozens of drugs, and in 1881, Daniel Tuck listed among treatments used in asylums “hypodermic injections of morphia, the administration of the bromides, chloral hydrate, hyoscyamine, physostigma (the poison from the calabar bean), canabis indica, amyl nitrate, conium (hemlock), digitalis, ergot, pilocarpine, the application of electricity, the use of the wet pack and the Turkish bath and other remedies too numerous to mention.”30 Some of these were administered as a form of punishment, by which patients were essentially “frightened into good behavior” through the threat of heavy dosages of unpleasant drugs. According to an article published by a Scottish asylum physician, “The restraining influence which the knowledge that medicine can be administered to them, whether they are willing or not, exercises over many of the insane is very potent.”31

  By the 1870s, the “workhorse of asylum pharmacology” was chloral nitrate, a drug so popular that it frequently made an appearance as a plot device in plays and literature of the era, where it was referred to as “knockout drops” or “Mickey Finns.” A decade later, the powerful sedative-hypnotic drug hyoscyamine became the most commonly used method for restraining violent and homicidal cases. Hyoscyamine was said to be especially effective in curbing “maniacal excitement,” because within half an hour of its use, a patient would be reduced to a state of “absolute helplessness.” According to the American Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry (1883), “In cases of mania, or where there exists great excitement of an aggressive and destructive character, or rapidity of movement and speech, the use of the drug is the most effectual and rapid means of producing ‘chemical restraint.’ ” The strength of the dosage was increased or decreased depending on the “violence of the patient,” although, in practice, the use of hyoscyamine was still highly experimental, and there was “great uncertainty about the preparations.”32 One Pittsburgh doctor who personally experimented with the drug found himself in a state similar to deep intoxication, “oblivious to everything past, present, and future.” He stumbled to bed with “marked incoordination” and fell into a “deep slumber or coma” that lasted eleven hours. When he finally awoke, he had difficulty concentrating, and everything he looked at seemed “tinged with yellow.” Large dosages of hyoscyamine were often administered to manic patients with the intent of giving a shock to the system. The drug was not curative in any sense—on the contrary, its use was generally considered to be punitive, and the effect of the drug was described as “stupefying.”33

  The grim reality of the economic depression in England ultimately led to a decline in enlightened humane treatment and the emergence of a more pessimistic era. Thus, the age of idealism drew to a close. The Lunacy (Consolidation) Act of 1890 shifted the focus back to the issues of forced consignment and restraint, and “the asylum became less an institution of care or cure, more a prison . . . the emphasis was on locking up for life.”34

  Such was the state of affairs when Aaron Kozminski was admitted to Colney Hatch Asylum on February 7, 1891, as patient #11,19035 Kozminski’s disorder was listed as “mania” with the symptom of “incoherence,” and an observation noted, “On admission patient is extremely deluded. As mentioned in the certificate, he believes that all his actions are dominated by an ‘Instinct.’ This is probably aural hallucination. Answers questions fairly but is inclined to be reticent and morose. Health fair.”

  Much of the information on the admission form was simply copied from the Statement of Particulars written by Maurice Whitfield at Mile End workhouse. Thus, Kozminski was again listed as being not “dangerous to others.” Likewise, the “duration of existing attack” was again given as “6 months,” although this was later changed in red ink to “6 years.” Presumably, the entry of six months merely indicated the time that had passed since Kozminski’s previous admission to Mile End in July 1890. The updated “6 years” is therefore more accurate as an indication of when Kozminski actually first began to exhibit signs of insanity—in other words, in 1885, when he was twenty years old. The “Supposed Cause” of Kozminski’s insanity was entered as “unknown,” but in red next to this was an updated cause: “Self-Abuse,” a nineteenth-century colloquial term for masturbation, which was then widely thought to be the cause of a wide variety of disorders, including insanity.

  Shortly after Kozminski’s admission to Colney Hatch in February 1891, his sister, Matilda, and the rest of the Lubnowski family moved away from their home at 16 Greenfield Street, and by April 1891 they were living at 63 New Street, near the London Hospital. Then in May, Kozminski’s brother Isaac also moved away from Greenfield Street. The timing here is curious. Why did both Kozminski’s brother and his sister move away from Greenfield Street around the same time, shortly after Kozminski’s admission to Colney Hatch? Researcher Chris Phillips has suggested that the Lubnowskis’ move might have been motivated by “the imminent arrival of the twins Milly and Woolf in Spring 1891 . . . that might also explain why they wanted Aaron out of the house, if his behavior was giving cause for concern.” But why did Isaac move as well? We will return to this question later.

  Kozminski would remain at Colney Hatch Asylum for a little more than three years, and nine entries in the Colney Hatch Case Book give us some idea of his mental state between February 1891 and April 1894:

  F. Bryan

  1891 Feb 10 Is rather difficult to deal with on account of the dominant Character of his delusions. Refused to be bathed the other day as his “Instinct” forbade him.

  F Bryan

  April 21 Incoherent, apathetic, unoccupied; still has the same “instinctive” objection to the weekly bath, health fair

  Wm [?]

  1892 Jan 9 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.

  Wm [?]

  Nov 17 Quiet & well behaved. Only speaks German. Does no work.

  Cecil F Beadles

  1893 Jan 18 Chronic Mania; intelligence impaired; at times [?]noisy, excited & incoherent; unoccupied; habits cleanly; health fair.

  Wm [?]

  April 8 Incoherent, quiet lately, fair health

  Cecil F Beadles

  Sept 18 [Believes he is under protection of [?]Russian [?]Consulate—[deleted] Indolent but quiet, and clean in habits, never employed. Answers questions concerning himself.

  Cecil F. Beadles

  1894 April 13 Demented & incoherent, health fair36

  On April 19, 1894, Kozminski was transferred to Leavesden Asylum for Imbeciles, where he was entered as patient #7367. The reason for Kozminski’s transfer is not known, although it is likely that he was moved simply because the asylum doctors had decided that his condition was incurable. At the time of his discharge from Colney Hatch, it was noted that Kozminski “has not recovered,” and, on his transfer to Leavesden Asylum, his bodily condition was listed as “impaired,” but no further explanation of this was given. His nearest relative was listed as “Mother, Mrs. Kozminski 63 New Street, New Rd, Whitechapel”—the address where Kozminski’s mother, Golda, was by then living with Matilda and Morris and their children37

  Unfortunately, nothing is known about Kozminski’s first sixteen years at Leavesden, because the registers that contained his case notes from 1894 to 1910 have either disappeared or been destroyed. We find Kozminski liste
d in the 1901 Census for Watford, Hertfordshire, at Leavesden as “Aaron Kozminski, patient, single, age 36, hairdresser, Mile End Old Town, London, lunatic.”38 Yet apart from this, nothing else is known about Kozminski until 1910, by which time he seems to have degenerated to a state of complete mental inability, and the nature of his illness had been changed from mania to “secondary dementia.” Kozminski was then having both aural and visual hallucinations, and his physical condition had significantly deteriorated. The surviving Leavesden case notes are printed as follows:

  September 10, 1910. Faulty in his habits, he does nothing useful & cannot answer questions of a simple nature. B. H. poor. [B.H. means “bodily health.”]

  September 29, 1911. Patient is dull & vacant. Faulty & untidy in habits. Does nothing useful. Nothing can be got by questions. B. H. weak.

  April 15, 1912 Widal test negative [This was a test for typhoid fever.]

  September 6, 1912 No replies can be got; dull & stupid in manner & faulty in his habits. Requires constant attention. B. H. weak.

  January 16, 1913 Patient is morose in manner. No sensible reply can be got by questions. He mutters incoherently. Faulty & untidy in his habits. B. H. weak.

  July 16, 1914 Incoherent & excitable: troublesome at times: Hallucinations of hearing. Untidy—B. H. fair.

  February 17, 1915. Pat merely mutters when asked questions. He has hallucinations of sight & hearing and is very excitable at times. Does not work. Clean but untidy in dress. B. H. fair.

  February 2, 1916 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. B. H. good39

  The case notes do not continue after this last date, thus we know of Kozminski’s mental condition for only seven and a half years out of the total of almost twenty-eight years he was in both asylums. Some later notes briefly detailed Kozminski’s physical deterioration—characterized by weight loss, diarrhea, and swollen feet—until his death on March 24, 1919, at the age of fifty-three. Although the death certificate gives the cause of death as “gangrene of the leg,” as Philip Sugden said, some of Kozminski’s physical symptoms “suggest that he may have been suffering from cancer.” In any case, it seems likely that Kozminski’s low weight at the end of his life (ninety-six pounds) was a result of disease and perhaps the refusal to eat and should not be taken as an indication of Kozminski’s weight or build during the time of the Ripper murders, some thirty years earlier.

  Among the papers in the Leavesden Asylum file was a document from G. Friedlander, a sexton and an officer of the Burial Society, St. James Place, Aldgate EC3, to A. J. Freeman at Leavesden Asylum, acknowledging receipt of Kozminski’s death certificate. Another document (dated March 25, 1919) authorized the transfer of the “body of Aaron Kosminski” to Mr. Friedlander. This form was signed by I. & W. Abrahams, of “The Dolphin,” Whitechapel E, London, whose relation to the deceased is given as “brothers”—in other words, these were Aaron’s brothers, Isaac and Woolf Abrahams40 The form was originally mailed to Morris Lubnowski, then apparently filled out by (or on behalf of) Isaac and Woolf and given to the undertaker so that he could present it when collecting the body. The Dolphin was a public house located at 97–99 Whitechapel Road on the corner of Great Garden Street, where Isaac, Isaac’s son Mark, and Mark’s wife, Florence, lived at the time of Kozminski’s death.

  On March 27, 1919, Kozminski was buried in a Jewish cemetery in East Ham, for a cost of twelve pounds, five shillings. It is not known whether there was a funeral or whether any of Kozminski’s relatives attended the burial. The grave still exists, but it has been badly eroded by the elements, and the inscription is barely legible. It once read:

  In Loving Memory of

  Aaron Kosminsky

  Who Died 24th March 1919

  Aged 54 Years

  Deeply Missed By

  His Brother, Sisters, Relatives

  And Friends

  May his dear

  Soul Rest in Peace

  An apparent problem with this is that both of Kozminski’s brothers were still alive at the time he died, and so the inscription should read “Missed by His Brothers.” But the likely explanation is that the gravestone wasn’t cut until after Isaac’s death a year later.

  The next year, Isaac Abrahams suffered a brain hemorrhage on June 29 and was taken from the Dolphin to Whitechapel Union Infirmary, where he died two days later. Kozminski’s other siblings, Matilda and Woolf, both lived for many more years—Matilda dying in 1939 and Woolf in 1944. All of Kozminski’s family members were buried together in an East London cemetery, and the gravestones of Isaac, Woolf, and Golda all bear the name Abrahams. Aaron was buried elsewhere, and his grave was the only one marked “Kozminsky.” Disassociated from the family by name, he was buried in a separate location, alone and apparently rejected by his family, in a cemetery two miles to the south.

  18

  Anderson’s Suspect

  Moral certainty: (n.) in a criminal trial, the reasonable belief (but falling short of absolute certainty) of the trier of the fact (jury or judge sitting without a jury) that the evidence shows the defendant is guilty. Moral certainty is another way of saying “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Since there is no exact measure of certainty it is always somewhat subjective and based on “reasonable” opinions of judge and/or jury.

  —www.Law.com

  The police investigation of the Ripper murders has been much maligned over the years as an inept and disorganized affair that ultimately was responsible for the failure to solve the case. As head of the CID in 1888, Sir Robert Anderson was in overall command of all criminal inquiries in Metropolitan London, including the Ripper crimes, and thus much of the blame for this failure inevitably fell on him. Such criticism clearly rankled Anderson, and he seemed to have taken it personally.

  As a matter of public record, a police “failure” in the case would seem hard to argue against. Yet Anderson’s remarks on the matter painted a somewhat different picture. Over the years, he made a number of comments about Jack the Ripper, first hinting at and then stating outright that the killer’s identity was known to the police, and that it was a “definitely ascertained fact” that Jack the Ripper was a Polish Jew who had been “caged in an asylum.”1 The suspect, according to Anderson, had been “unhesitatingly identified” by “the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer,” but unfortunately, the witness refused to testify in court, and the police lacked sufficient evidence to convict the Ripper in a court of law. Despite this, Anderson reiterated that it was “a simple matter of fact” that his Polish Jew suspect was guilty. “It is not a matter of theory,” he said2

  As a result of these statements, Robert Anderson has since become perhaps the most controversial figure in all of Ripperology, and a number of Ripperologists have dismissed his statements completely, characterizing him as incompetent, boastful, and untrustworthy3 But one wonders whether such criticism is based on an objective judgment of Anderson’s character or simply on a reluctance to accept that the most fascinating and baffling of unsolved mysteries was indeed solved more than a hundred years ago, with little applause or fanfare. Clearly, Anderson’s character would never have attracted the scrutiny it does, were it not for his statements about the Ripper’s identity. Indeed, the criticisms of both Anderson’s character and his abilities as leader of the CID seem to fly in the face of his long tenure as assistant commissioner of the CID, his ability to effectively communicate with his fellow officers, and a marked reduction in crime during his time with the Metropolitan Police. By most accounts, Anderson was a competent leader, highly esteemed by his colleagues, and especially accustomed to dealing with sensitive matters regarding state security. In 1892, the year after Aaron Kozminski’s incarceration, Anderson was described as “a tallish gentleman in the prime of life, of precise habits, of quiet demeanor, and whose face is that of a deep student.” As the reporter noted, Anderson’s “controlling hand and
inspiring brain govern the conduct of every investigation requiring delicacy and originality of handling.”4 Surely, if any case ever required delicacy of handling, it was the Ripper case.

  Anderson did not make any public remarks implying that the case was solved until several years after the canonical Ripper murders. Indeed, in November 1889, a full year after the murder of Mary Kelly, Anderson commented on “our failure to find Jack the Ripper.”5 This would seem to imply that as late as November 1889, Anderson had not yet become convinced that he knew the Ripper’s identity. By June 1892, however—a little more than a year after Kozminski had been admitted to Colney Hatch Asylum—Anderson had changed his tune. “There is my answer to people who come with fads and theories about these murders,” he said. “It is impossible to believe they were acts of a sane man—they were those of a maniac revelling in blood.”6 The comment received little attention at the time. After all, Anderson may have been merely speculating that the murderer was a maniac and not speaking on any factual basis. In 1895, however, in an article in Windsor Magazine titled “The Detective in Real Life,” Anderson’s friend Major Arthur Griffiths stated the following: “Much dissatisfaction was vented upon Mr. Anderson at the utterly abortive efforts to discover the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. He has himself a perfectly plausible theory that Jack the Ripper was a homicidal maniac, temporarily at large, whose hideous career was cut short by committal to an asylum.”7

  This was the first definitive reference to Anderson’s “theory,” but, again, it lacked the stamp of authoritative declaration—everybody had a theory. Then, three years later, in an article titled “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” Griffiths expanded on the topic:

  The police do not always admit that the perpetrators remain unknown; they have clues, suspicion, strong presumption, even more, but there is a gap in the evidence forthcoming, and to attempt prosecution would be to face inevitable defeat. . . . Sometimes an arrest is made on grounds that afford strong prima facie evidence, yet the case breaks down in court. . . . The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant, “Jack the Ripper,” was never revealed. So far as actual knowledge goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder, had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion. Concerning two of them, the case was weak, although it was based on certain colourable facts. One was a Polish Jew, a known lunatic, who was at large in the district of Whitechapel at the time of the murder, and who, having afterward developed homicidal tendencies, was confined in an asylum. This man was said to resemble the murderer by the one person who got a glimpse of him—the police-constable in Mitre Court8