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

by Robert House

  But now listen to the “proof” that Sir Robert Anderson gives of his theories. When the lunatic, who presumably was a Jew and who was suspected by Scotland Yard, was seen by a Jew—“the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer”—Sir Robert tells us he at once identified him, “but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him.” This is Scotland Yard’s idea of “proof” positive of their “theory”! What more natural than the man’s hesitancy to identify another as Jack the Ripper so soon as he knew he was a Jew? What more natural than for that fact at once to cause doubts in his mind? The crimes identified with “Jack the Ripper” were of a nature that it would be difficult for any Jew—“low-class” or any class—to imagine the work of a Jew. Their callous brutality was foreign to Jewish nature, which, when it turns criminal, goes into quite a different channel. I confess that however sure I might have been of the identity of a person, when I was told he had been committing “Jack the Ripper” crimes and was a Jew, I should hesitate about the certainty of my identification, especially as anyone—outside Scotland Yard—knows how prone to mistake the cleverest-headed and most careful of people are when venturing to identify anyone else. It is a matter of regret and surprise that so able a man as Sir Robert Anderson should, upon the wholly erroneous and ridiculous “theory” that Jews would shield a raving murderer because he was a Jew, rather than yield him up to “Gentile justice,” build up the series of statements that he has. There is no real proof that the lunatic who was “caged” was a Jew—there is absolutely no proof that he was responsible for the “Jack the Ripper” crimes, and hence it appears to me wholly gratuitous on the part of Sir Robert to fasten the wretched creature—whoever he was—upon our people24

  To an extent, Mentor’s critique was valid, given that Anderson did not supply any proof for his allegations, and his vague wording was bound to suggest many different interpretations (or misinterpretations) of what he actually meant. Mentor’s contention that the police came to the conclusion that the Ripper was a Polish Jew as the result of theory alone was almost certainly a misinterpretation of Anderson’s words. The “theory” in Anderson’s statement was that “One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice.”25 This is what would now be called a criminal profile, in other words, a deduced assumption about the murderer based on analysis of the case evidence. Then Anderson said, “The conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews,” and “The result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point.” Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Anderson meant that the police came to this “conclusion” as the result of theory or whether they discovered the Ripper by normal methods, and that the “result” (that is, the killer’s identity) simply matched their profile. The difference is important. If the police thought that the Ripper was Jewish merely because of a theory or a profile, then Mentor’s critique is entirely valid. If, however, the police discovered the Ripper’s identity as a result of unbiased inquiry and detective work, then Mentor’s critique falls flat.

  Anderson responded to Mentor in an interview that was printed in the Globe on March 7, 1910:

  When I stated that the murderer was a Jew, I was stating a simple matter of fact. It is not a matter of theory. I should be the last man in the world to say anything reflecting on the Jews as a community, but what is true of Christians is equally true of Jews—that there are some people who have lapsed from all that is good and proper. We have “lapsed masses” among Christians. We cannot talk of “lapsed masses” among Jews, but there are cliques of them in the East End, and it is a notorious fact that there is a stratum of Jews who will not give up their people.

  In stating what I do about the Whitechapel murders, I am not speaking as an expert in crime, but as a man who investigated the facts. Moreover, the man who identified the murderer was a Jew, but on learning that the criminal was a Jew he refused to proceed with his identification. As for the suggestion that I intended to cast any reflection on the Jews anyone who has read my books on Biblical exegesis will know the high estimate I have of Jews religiously26

  The Globe added that “In connection with Sir Robert’s assertion that the Whitechapel murderer was a Jew, it is of interest to recall that in one crime the culprit chalked up on a wall: ‘The Jews are not the people to be blamed for nothing’.” Anderson then responded to Mentor’s critique even more directly by writing a letter of apology to the Jewish Chronicle:

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE “JEWISH CHRONICLE.”

  SIR,—With reference to “Mentor’s” comments on my statements about the “Whitechapel murders” of 1888 in this month’s Blackwood, will you allow me to express the severe distress I feel that my words should be construed as “an aspersion upon Jews.” For much that I have written in my various books gives proof of my sympathy with, and interest in, “the people of the Covenant”; and I am happy in reckoning members of the Jewish community in London among my personal friends.

  I recognise that in this matter I said either too much or too little. But the fact is that as my words were merely a repetition of what I published several years ago without exciting comment, they flowed from my pen without any consideration.

  We have in London a stratum of the population uninfluenced by religious or even social restraints. And in this stratum Jews are to be found as well as Gentiles. And if I were to describe the condition of the maniac who committed these murders, and the course of loathsome immorality which reduced him to that condition, it would be manifest that in his case every question of nationality and creed is lost in a ghastly study of human nature sunk to the lowest depth of degradation27

  Mentor was not satisfied with this explanation and wrote a follow-up article claiming that Anderson had completely missed the point:

  I did not so much object to his saying that Jack the Ripper was a Jew, though so particular a friend of our people would have been well-advised, knowing the peculiar condition in which we are situated, and the prejudice that is constantly simmering against us, had he kept the fact to himself. No good purpose was served by revealing it. . . . What I objected to—and pace Sir Robert Anderson’s explanations still do—in his Blackwood article, is that Jews who knew that “Jack the Ripper” had done his foul deeds, shielded him from the police, and guarded him so that he could continue his horrible career, just because he was a Jew. This was the aspersion to which I referred and about which I notice Sir Robert says nothing28

  Mentor’s criticism was now leveled squarely at Anderson’s statement that the Ripper’s people were “low-class Jews” who “refused to give him up to justice.” Interestingly, Mentor said that he did not object so much to Anderson’s “saying that Jack the Ripper was a Jew” (apparently conceding it might be true), although “a friend of our people would have been well-advised . . . had he kept the fact to himself.” This, of course, touched on a larger issue—specifically, whether members of the East End’s Jewish community may have refused to cooperate with the police, either out of a general distrust for authority or out of fear that the Jewish community as a whole would be turned into scapegoats if it were revealed that Jack the Ripper was a Jew. This idea was supported by Chaim Bermant, the Anglo-Jewish author and a frequent contributor to the Jewish Chronicle: “If the Ripper was a Jew, then one can be fairly certain that his fellows would have kept quiet about it for the simple reason that the whole community could have been held culpable for his deeds, and that the menacing mood of hostility which surrounded them would have given way to outright violence.”29

  We must recall that Anderson claimed that the witness refused to testify after he discovered that the suspect was “a fellow-Jew.” Although Anderson does not elaborate on the point, it seems likely that a Jewish witness must have been aware that
if a Jew were convicted of the Ripper murders, all hell would break loose in the East End. Given the climate of anti-Semitism and the prejudice that was “constantly simmering” against the Jews in the East End, Mentor’s hesitancy to have Anderson “fasten the wretched creature . . . upon our people” is understandable.

  Still, Anderson was treading on thin ice in more ways than one. Among other things, he had made a rather public accusation that he was unable to back up with proof. Whether Scotland Yard had any other evidence against the suspect was a moot point, because Anderson was not in a position to discuss the matter openly anyway. As he said, such a course would have violated the “unwritten rule of the service” not to “tell tales out of school.” By the time The Lighter Side of My Official Life was published in book form later in 1910, Anderson had made a few changes. For starters, he changed the statement “his people were low-class Jews” to “his people were certain low-class Polish Jews.” This was apparently to clarify that the Ripper was shielded only by certain Jews, rather than by the Jewish community as a whole. He also changed “when he [the witness] learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him,” to simply “he refused to give evidence against him.” The statement that the identification took place “when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum” was removed completely—possibly because Anderson realized that this was an error. Finally, Anderson added the following: “In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute.”30

  It is important to note that despite the beating he took from Mentor, Anderson stood by his statement that Jack the Ripper was a “low-class” Polish Jew. It was, as he said, “a definitely ascertained fact.” Yet after all of his hints and insinuations, in the end Anderson never actually revealed the name of the suspect in question.

  19

  Macnaghten and Swanson

  Some forty years after the publication of The Lighter Side of My Official Life, a document surfaced that appeared to corroborate Sir Robert Anderson’s story in many respects, but in other ways, it simply confused matters. In the 1950s, journalist Dan Farson discovered a copy of a Metropolitan Police memorandum that had been written by ex-chief constable Melville Macnaghten, Anderson’s second-in-command at the CID in the years immediately following the Ripper murders. The document, now referred to as the “Macnaghten memorandum,” was written in 1894 in response to a series of articles in the Sun newspaper that claimed the Ripper was a syphilitic and paranoid lunatic named Thomas Cutbush. The memorandum was apparently written in case the MET or the Home Office was asked to make a public statement about the Sun articles. The document was never released publicly, and it is not known whether it was ever submitted to the Home Office.

  In the memo, Macnaghten wrote that there were three men, “any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders.” One of these suspects is described as

  (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 circs. connected with this man which made him a strong suspect.1

  An earlier draft of the memo, said to be in Macnaghten’s handwriting, differed somewhat from the official version in the Metropolitan Police files. Luckily, Macnaghten’s daughter Christabel Aberconway made a typed copy of the draft version sometime in the 1930s, before the original was somehow lost. The so-called Aberconway draft read,

  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 P.C. near Mitre Square2

  The suspects mentioned in the Macnaghten memorandum do not appear in any of the existing police files on the Jack the Ripper murders. Despite this, it is fairly certain that the police must have had dossiers on all three men, but the files are now gone, and they will probably never be recovered. In any case, Macnaghten disagreed with Anderson’s theory, because he claimed to have received “private information” that convinced him that the number-one suspect was one of the other men described in the memo—specifically, a barrister named Montague John Druitt, who committed suicide shortly after the murder of Mary Kelly. Still, Macnaghten apparently was not entirely convinced of Druitt’s guilt, referring to it only as a “more rational and workable theory, to my way of thinking,” than the Sun’s suggestion that Thomas Cutbush was the Ripper. As an alternative, Macnaghten also admitted the “less likely theory” that the murderer “was found to be so helplessly insane by his relatives, that they, suspecting the worst, had him confined to some lunatic asylum.”3 In other words, Macnaghten conceded that Kozminski may have been the Ripper, although he personally preferred Druitt as a more likely suspect. So despite the fact that Anderson was apparently certain of the Ripper’s identity, there was no consensus about the matter within the CID.

  When the Macnaghten memorandum was first discovered, few researchers made a connection between Anderson’s suspect and the Polish Jew named “Kosminski” referred to by Macnaghten. Apparently, this was because it was assumed that Anderson was referring to another Jewish suspect, specifically John Pizer, aka “Leather Apron.” With the benefit of hindsight, this seems a rather strange conclusion to have come to, because both Anderson’s suspect and Macnaghten’s “Kosminski” were Polish Jews who were admitted to an asylum. In addition, the fact that Macnaghten claimed that Kosminski “strongly resembled the individual seen by the City P.C. near Mitre Square” suggests that Macnaghten was aware that an identification of the suspect had been attempted, although (as we shall see) he was apparently wrong about the identity of the witness.

  The Macnaghten memorandum is unfortunately riddled with errors, and we must therefore take it with a grain of salt as far as accuracy. For example, Macnaghten described one of the other two suspects, Montague John Druitt, as “a doctor of good family,” whereas Druitt was actually a barrister and a teacher. As Paul Begg suggested, this “makes it abundantly clear that Macnaghten was relying on his memory and not working from written sources such as police reports.” Regarding “Kosminski,” one confounding aspect of the memorandum is the Aberconway version’s reference to a “City P.C.” witness. No researcher has ever found any evidence that there was a City P.C. witness at any of the Ripper crime scenes, and we must assume that this is another of Macnaghten’s errors. In the official version of the memorandum, however, the reference to a “City P.C.” was removed and replaced with “There were many circs. connected with this man which made him a strong suspect.” This may indicate that Macnaghten realized his remark about a City P.C. witness was an error.

  Some of Macnaghten’s other statements about “Kosminski,” while neither demonstrably correct nor incorrect, are not backed up by other sources. Specifically, these are the statements that Kozminski “had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies,” and that “there were many circs. connected with this man which made him a strong suspect.” While these statements seem to imply that the police knew much more about Kozminski than we do today, the source of the information is simply unknown. It might have come from interviewing Kozminski himself or from an interview with a family member or some other informer. Although these statements are obviously relevant to Kozminski’s viability as a suspect in the case, we must look at them objectively. As researcher Chris Scott pointed out, “We are only seeing the tip of the
iceberg. . . . There’s a whole tranche of presumably once extant paperwork that we no longer have access to, so we simply don’t know.”4 In any case, the Macnaghten memorandum still gave only the suspect’s surname (“Kosminski”), again leaving researchers frustratingly in the dark. Nobody knew who he was talking about.

  Then in 1987 another important discovery surfaced. This time, it was only a few penciled notes that had been written by Donald Sutherland Swanson in the margins of Swanson’s personal copy of Anderson’s autobiography. The so-called Swanson marginalia were revealed to the public on the centenary of the Ripper murders, when Swanson’s grandson Jim decided to “put an end to all the fanciful conjecture concerning the killer,” and reveal that the senior officials at Scotland Yard were convinced that they knew the Ripper’s identity5 In the book, where Anderson had written that a witness “identified the suspect . . . but he refused to give evidence against him,” Swanson penciled in “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, Swanson added, “And after this identification which suspect knew no other murder of this kind took place in London.” Swanson’s commentary continued on a blank page at the end of the volume, where he wrote,