Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888

by Edwards, Russell

  (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’.

  (3) 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.

  I had first heard of the Macnaghten memorandum from Alan McCormack, and had read it straight away. It is a vital plank of genuine evidence, written as it was by a senior ranking police officer who would certainly have known all there was to know, at the time, about the investigation. For me it was the mention of Kosminski that was of prime importance, but for other researchers Druitt, because he was named first, was given the top slot.

  Macnaghten’s original notes, upon which he based the final memorandum, were in the possession of his daughter, Lady Christobel Aberconway, and she showed them to broadcaster Daniel Farson when he was researching a TV programme, Farson’s Guide to the British, in 1959. When the programme was aired, emphasis was placed on Druitt as Macnaghten’s favourite, but he was only referred to as ‘MJD’.

  Montague John Druitt was a teacher and barrister who, as Macnaghten mentioned, was found dead in the Thames on New Year’s Eve 1888. He was not a doctor as Macnaghten wrote, which illustrates the cautious way we have to treat evidence, even when it comes with such good provenance. His mother had been plagued by mental illness and, according to a note found on his body, Druitt feared he was going the same way. His suicide gave a perfect reason for the Ripper murders stopping when they did. Other authors in the late nineteenth century, usually from the police or press, also alluded to the Druitt suicide without mentioning him by name: we can deduce from this that he was a favoured suspect among those who were close to the case.

  Sometime before Macnaghten wrote his memorandum, a story about the Ripper’s supposed suicide appeared in the press saying that a ‘West of England’ member of parliament had solved the Ripper case and that the murderer committed suicide on the date of the final murder suffering from ‘homicidal mania’. Another reference to a Ripper suicide came from the journalist George R. Sims who spoke for several years from 1899 about a suspect who had drowned himself in the Thames at the end of 1888. Two books, written by Tom Cullen (Autumn of Terror, 1965) and Daniel Farson (Jack the Ripper, 1972), made the case for Druitt. For some years he was suspect number one, until he was eclipsed by the sensational royal conspiracy theories.

  The third suspect, Michael Ostrog, is the least likely of the triumvirate. He was a petty thief, conman and fraudster, with a long history of arrests and prison sentences behind him by 1888. But he had never been violent – the closest he came was pulling a revolver on a police superintendent after one of his arrests – and there is nothing to support Macnaghten’s allegation that he was a homicidal maniac. When he was on a couple of occasions detained in an asylum rather than in prison, he was found to be suicidal, but not a threat to others. Even his stays in the mental asylums were probably part of his well-practised ability to con: he possibly feigned madness to get a softer place to stay than prison. Some reports have him in prison in France at the time of the Ripper killings, although other researchers disagree. But nothing about him seems to fit what we know about the Ripper: he was in his mid-fifties at the time of the murders, and he was too tall at 5 foot 11 inches to fit any of the descriptions.

  Which brings us to Macnaghten’s views on Kosminski.

  In his memorandum, Macnaghten describes Kosminski as a Polish Jew whose insanity was brought on by years of indulgence in ‘solitary vices’, which we can assume is a typically coy Victorian euphemism for masturbation, and as a result he was sent to an asylum. In 1892 Robert Anderson, who at that time was still Assistant Commissioner CID, said in an interview in Cassell’s Saturday Journal that the Whitechapel murderer was undoubtedly a homicidal maniac. Three years later, the writer Alfred Aylmer said in the Windsor Magazine that Anderson had a very specific idea of the identity of the Ripper: ‘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.’

  Anderson put his ideas into print in 1901 in an article on penology and in a book published later about his life as a senior police officer. He stated that ‘the inhabitants of the metropolis generally were just as secure during the weeks the fiend was on the prowl as they were before the mania seized him, or after he had been safely caged in an asylum’, presumably because he believed the victims ‘belonged to a very small class of degraded women who frequent the East End streets after midnight’, leaving respectable citizens safe. So, early on, Anderson was making a stand for the identity of the Ripper having been known and that he had been safely taken out of circulation, which seems to confirm what Macnaghten said in his memorandum. But it did not end there: in 1910, when Anderson published his memoirs, he put his cards on the table. In The Lighter Side of My Official Life he made an assertion, without any sense of doubt whatsoever, that he and his force were aware of the identity of the Ripper:

  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. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circumstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his bloodstains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice.

  And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that ‘undiscovered murders’ are rare in London, and the ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ crimes are not within that category. And if the Police here had powers such as the French Police possess, the murderer would have been brought to justice. Scotland Yard can boast that not even the subordinate officers of the department will tell tales out of school, and it would ill become me to violate the unwritten rule of the service. So I will only add here that the ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist.

  Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. 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.

  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.

  It was strong stuff and upset several people when the memoirs were serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine prior to publication, particularly the editor of the Jewish Chronicle who said that Anderson had no proof that the killer was a Jew. Anderson replied to the objection and was unrepentant, arguing that ‘When I stated that the murderer was a Jew, I was stating a simple matter of fact. It is not a matter of theory. In stating what I do about the Whitechapel Murderer, I am not speaking as an expert in crime, but as a man who investigated the facts.’

  So Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner CID of the Metr
opolitan police in 1888 and a man who knew the full facts of the Ripper investigation, publicly insisted that the Ripper was a ‘low-class’ (i.e. a poor, lower working-class) Jew, driven insane by ‘unmentionable’ and ‘solitary’ vices and who had been identified by a witness who had clearly seen him but who had refused to testify or give any further assistance to the authorities.

  Anderson’s confident claims were not echoed by all the other officials involved with the case. It was later suggested that Anderson’s opinions were the cloudy recollections of an elderly man and others have even said they believed that he was lying outright. Anderson was self-serving and boastful at times, but it is unlikely he would come out with blatant lies, considering his position. He had strong religious principles which would also militate against him lying: since 1860 he had been a devout fundamental Christian and believed in the imminent coming of Christ. He was the author of innumerable books on religion and interpretation of scripture. His convictions regarding the Ripper did not seem to waver, even in light of strong criticism.

  Robert Anderson’s definitive judgement on the outcome of the Ripper case seemed to stand alone until the discovery of a copy of his 1910 memoirs which had once been in the possession of Chief Inspector Donald Swanson. Swanson was the detective who was pretty much in charge of the Ripper investigation while Anderson was on sick leave, and consequently it would be hard to find a better informed source: every shred of evidence, notes of every police interview, every statement given, arrest made and any and all theories were presented to him at the time. He was a career policeman, like Abberline, who rose through the ranks from being a beat constable, unlike Macnaghten, Anderson and Warren who were recruited at a high level from the world of the military or the colonies. Well versed in procedure, Swanson would have been closely familiar with every twist and turn in the case, and his opinion on any Ripper-related matter, had he chosen to write his memoirs (which he did not, unfortunately), would have been of enormous interest. So when this copy of Anderson’s memoirs turned up in the 1980s, riddled with Swanson’s own annotations written between 1910 and his death in 1924, including a part where he actually named Anderson’s Ripper suspect, the revelations were of maximum importance to historians and researchers.

  The book had passed to Swanson’s spinster daughter, Alice, following his death, and when Alice herself died in 1981, it came into the possession of her nephew, Jim Swanson. Despite the book being in the family for generations, the notations (or ‘marginalia’ as they have since become known) had escaped attention until Jim Swanson acquired the book and his brother, Donald, noticed the pencilled notes. A story about the marginalia was sold to the News of the World in 1981 for £750, but the newspaper never published it: there was no reason given. This meant that the marginalia languished in relative obscurity, of interest only to experts in the case, until the book was presented to Scotland Yard’s Black Museum in July 2006. When the press heard about it, it was treated as a brand-new discovery: the Daily Telegraph, for example, used a large photograph of Donald Swanson in old age, with the headline: ‘Has this man revealed the real Jack the Ripper?’

  The significant annotations related to the passage where Anderson claims that the suspect was a male Polish Jew, living in Whitechapel, who had people (probably meaning family or fellow members of his community) protecting him. The passage ended: ‘I will merely add that the only person who 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.’ From here, Swanson had written in pencil underneath and in the margin:

  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. And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London . . .

  The rest of the relevant notes continued in the endpaper of the book and read:

  . . . after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect’s return to his brother’s house in Whitechapel, he was watched by police (City CID), by day and night. 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 – Kosminski was the suspect. DSS.

  The content of the marginalia was probably the most important discovery since Dan Farson was introduced to Macnaghten’s memorandum in 1959, which led to Montague Druitt becoming the prime suspect for many years. Here at last was what seemed to be a direct reference to the identity of the Whitechapel murderer, the so-called ‘Jack the Ripper’, put forward by men who were actually in a position to know the real background story. It is easy to see why Alan McCormack of the Black Museum would claim in our conversations that Scotland Yard knew who the killer was and always had done. The book with its notes was, in effect, the ‘documentation’ that McCormack had told me about.

  As with any important document, there is always the issue of provenance. For the ‘Swanson Marginalia’ it appeared excellent, as the book had remained with Swanson’s immediate family and descendants. Also, the presence of the notes was not unusual, as Donald Swanson appeared to be a compulsive annotator of books, as could be seen by looking at other volumes in the family’s possession. What really needed to be confirmed, just to be on the safe side, was whether the notes in Anderson’s book were actually written by Swanson.

  Tests were arranged and in 1988, Dr Richard Totty, Assistant Director of the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory, was given a photocopy of the relevant pages along with copies of other known examples of Swanson’s writing. Dr Totty’s results were a surprise, as he felt that the marginalia had not been written in the same hand as the sample writing. It turned out that this was because the sample handwriting was not Swanson’s, but was written by a secretary on his behalf and merely bore Swanson’s signature. Replacement samples were provided which were in Swanson’s actual hand, and Totty confirmed that they matched.

  When the copy of Anderson’s book was donated to the Black Museum in July 2006, another set of tests was initiated, again to satisfy curator Alan McCormack that what they had was bona fide. Using one of Donald Swanson’s notebooks from the family collection for comparison, the analysis was performed by Dr Christopher Davies who at that time was one of the senior document examiners in the London Laboratory of the Forensic Science Service. In his report, he said:

  What was interesting about analysing the book was that it had been annotated twice in two different pencils at different times, which does raise the question of how reliable the second set of notes were as they were made some years later. There are enough similarities between the writing in the book and that found in the ledger to suggest that it probably was Swanson’s writing, although in the second, later set, there are small differences. These could be attributed to the ageing process and either a mental or physical deterioration, but we cannot be completely certain that is the explanation. The added complication is that people in the Victorian era tended to have very similar writing anyway as they were all taught the same copybook, so the kind of small differences I observed may just have been the small differences between different authors. It is most likely to be Swanson, but I’m sure the report will be cause for lively debate amongst those interested in the case.

  He concluded that ‘there is strong evidence to support the proposition that Swanson wrote the questioned annotations in the book The Lighter Side of My Official Life.’ But for some, ‘strong evidence’ is not conclusive evidence and the slight trace of hesitancy by Dr Davies means that, for some Ripper investigators, the authenticity of these annotations is still in question. They fight their corner in internet forums, with exasperatingly long arguments which are sometimes shut down by administrators once they become libellous. Several people have been accused of interfe
ring with the document in order to put Kosminski in the frame. The whole debate shows how passions are inflamed by the Ripper mystery, and the lengths some enthusiasts will go to prove a point.

  Eventually, thanks to all this acrimony, a new set of tests was conducted by Dr Davies in 2012, this time with newly found material from the Swanson family collection which had samples of Donald Swanson’s handwriting at different stages of his life. By this time, the copy of Anderson’s book had been removed from the Black Museum at the suggestion of the family because they felt there was no point it being displayed in a place where nobody could see it (just as happened with the shawl, which was removed in 1997). Dr Davies’ new report claimed that ‘there is very strong support for the view that the notes towards the bottom of page 138 in Donald Swanson’s copy of The Lighter Side of My Official Life and the notes on the last leaf in this book were written by Donald Swanson.’ And as for the key phrase ‘Kosminski was the suspect’, Dr Davies answered critics who felt that it had been added on purpose by Jim Swanson at a later date:

  I have concluded that there is no evidence to support the view that the final line on the last leaf of the book was added much later to a pre-existing text. I have also found no evidence to support the view that this line was written by Jim Swanson.

  The Swanson marginalia is one of the few artefacts from the Ripper story that has been subjected to physical scientific scrutiny, along with several Ripper letters, the Maybrick Diary and now, of course, the shawl. It is, I firmly believe, the genuine article, and I think my view is now vindicated. All attempts to rubbish the marginalia have been refuted by qualified analysis, and therefore I believe we can say that what is contained within it must be considered the important words of an important man involved in the Ripper case.