Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888

by Edwards, Russell

  I personally examined the said Aaron Kosminski and came to the conclusion he is a person of unsound mind and a proper person to be taken charge and detained under care and treatment.

  a) Facts indicating insanity observed by Medical Man, viz: He declares that he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the gutter for the same reason.

  b) Other Facts Indicating Insanity Communicated by Others Jacob Cohen, 51 Carter Lane, St Paul’s EC says that he goes about the streets and picks up bits of bread out of the gutter and eats them, he drinks water from the tap & he refuses food at the hands of others. He took up a knife and threatened the life of his sister. He says that he is ill and his cure consists in refusing food. He is melancholic, practises self-abuse. He is very dirty and will not be washed. He has not attempted any kind of work for years.

  Houchin ended his report with the words: ‘The said Aaron Kosminski appeared to me to be in a fit condition of bodily health to be removed to an asylum, hospital or licensed house.’

  The decision to commit him is recorded as ‘unchallenged’, which means that nobody in his family opposed him being locked up: if they had (as I am sure they must have had) suspicions about him, they probably felt great relief at the responsibility for him being taken from them.

  Jacob Cohen, who gave the information about the attack on a sister (who must have been Matilda, unless the report inaccurately uses ‘sister’ for ‘sister-in-law’) and the way that Aaron was behaving, was Woolf’s business partner, and could also, perhaps, have been Woolf’s brother-in-law. Woolf’s wife Betsy had a brother Jacob who took the name Cohen after he left Poland, and although he lived and worked (successfully, as a butcher then a draper) in Manchester, it is possible that he was an investor and partner in Woolf’s business venture, and visited London because of the business. The address he used when he gave the information about Aaron Kosminski is the address of Woolf’s business. But this is speculation: I think it sounds plausible, but nobody has established the true identity of Jacob Cohen, and Ripper researchers have worked hard at it.

  The siblings may have asked Jacob Cohen to give the details of Aaron’s progressive degeneration because he would be seen as more independent of the family. Possibly the family also gave evidence and this simply wasn’t recorded. Houchin would have been dealing with many cases, and we are lucky that such a detailed report has survived.

  When Aaron was arrested for walking the unmuzzled dog he said in court that the dog was ‘Jacob’s’, and this is probably another reference to Woolf’s partner.

  From the workhouse, he was taken to Colney Hatch Asylum on 6 February 1891. This institution was opened at Friern Barnet in July 1851 as the second pauper lunatic asylum for the county of Middlesex. Designed in the Italianate style by S. W. Dawkes, it had 1,250 beds, making it the largest and most modern institution of its kind in Europe. Within ten years it was enlarged to take 2,000 patients. It had its own cemetery (closed in 1873 after which the patients were buried in the Great Northern Cemetery in New Southgate), its own farm on which many patients were employed, its own water supply, and its own sewage works built after the local residents complained of untreated sewage from the asylum flowing into a nearby brook.

  The Colney Hatch admission register describes Kosminski as twenty-six years of age, Hebrew, single and, again, a hairdresser. The cause of his condition, originally entered as ‘unknown’, was amended in red ink to ‘self abuse’ and the period of his current ‘attack’ was initially listed as ‘6 months’ but again amended to say ‘6 years’, suggesting that Aaron had been showing mental health problems since 1885, when he was twenty. It was recorded that he was not deemed to be a danger to others. Brother Woolf was again listed as nearest relative.

  Through my own research at the LMA I have copies of his notes, and they show him ranging between quiet, morose periods and episodes of great excitement:

  FORM OF DISORDER: MANIA

  Observations

  Ward 9.B3.10

  On admission patient is extremely deluded & morose. As mentioned in the certificate he believes that all his actions are dominated by an ‘Instinct’. This is probably mental hallucination. Answers questions fairly but is inclined to be reticent and morose. Health fair. F. Bryant

  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. Bryant

  April 21: Incoherent, apathetic, unoccupied; still has the same ‘instinctive’ objection to the weekly bath; health fair. Wm Seward

  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 Seward

  Nov 17: Quiet and well behaved. Only speaks German [?Yiddish]. Does no work. Cecil J. Beadles

  1893 Jan 18: Chronic Mania: intelligence impaired; at times noisy, excited & incoherent; unoccupied; habits cleanly; health fair. Wm Seward

  April 8: Incoherent; quiet lately, fair health. Cecil J. Beadles

  Sept 18: Indolent, but quiet and clean in habits, never employed. Answers questions concerning himself. Cecil J. Beadles

  1894 April 13: demented and incoherent, health fair. C. Beadles

  April 19th: Discharged. Relieved. Leavesden. Wm Seward

  This last note shows that Aaron Kosminski was transferred to the overcrowded Leavesden Asylum near Watford in Hertfordshire in 1894, where conditions were far worse than at Colney Hatch. No reason was given for the transfer, but it is possible that his intractable condition meant that he was never going to be rehabilitated. When he was admitted to Leavesden his bodily condition was noted down as ‘impaired’. For the first time, his mother Golda is listed as his next of kin, her address given as the house where his sister Matilda and her family lived.

  The sparse notes taken at Leavesden relating to the last years of his life, which were procured for me by the archivist at the LMA, show that his behaviour continued to fluctuate, and later on his physical health also began to deteriorate. The notes below from Leavesden have been compiled from various loose sources in the records and have been arranged in chronological order to give a better sense of Kosminski’s decline:

  10/9/10:

  Faulty in his habits, he does nothing useful & cannot answer questions of a simple nature. BH [bodily health] poor. AKM

  29/9/11:

  Patient is dull & vacant. Faulty & unhealthy in habits. Does nothing useful. Nothing can be got by questions. BH weak. H.C.S.

  15/4/12:

  Didn’t test negative. FH

  6/9/12:

  No replies can be got; dull & stupid in manner & faulty in his habits. Requires constant attention. BH weak. AKM

  16/1/13:

  Patient is morose in manner. No sensible reply can be got by questions. He mutters incoherently. Faulty and untidy in his habits. BH weak. AKM

  1/4/14:

  Patient has hallucinations of sight and hearing, is very excitable and troublesome at times, very untidy, bodily condition fair.

  16/7/14:

  Incoherent and excitable: troublesome at times: Hallucinations of hearing. Untidy – BH fair. G.P

  14/2/15:

  Pat merely mutters when asked questions. He has hallucinations of sight and hearing and is very excitable at times. Does not work. Clean but untidy in dress. BH fair. DNG.

  1/3/15:

  No improvement.

  Weight taken on 17 May 1915, 7st 8lb 100z

  1/11/15:

  Patient has cut over left eye caused by knock on tap in washhouse.

  2/2/16:

  Patient does not know his age or how long he has been here. He has hallucinations of sight and hearing & is at times very obstinate. Untidy but clean, does no work, B.H. good.
JM

  8/7/16:

  No improvement.

  5/4/17:

  No improvement.

  26/5/18:

  Patient put to bed passing loose motions with blood and mucous.

  27/5/18:

  Transferred to 8a.

  3/6/18:

  Diarrhoea ceased. Ordered up by Dr. Reese.

  28/1/19:

  Put to bed with swollen feet.

  Weight in February 1919, 6st 12lb.

  20/2/19:

  Put to bed with swollen feet and feeling unwell.

  Temp 99°.

  13/3/19:

  Hip broken down.

  22/3/19:

  Taken little nourishment during day, but very noisy.

  23/3/19:

  Appears very low. Partaken of very little nourishment during day.

  24/3/19:

  Died in my presence at 5.05 a.m. Marks on body, sore right hip and left leg. Signed: S. Bennett, night attendant.

  According to Aaron Kosminski’s death certificate, the cause of death was gangrene. He was fifty-three when he died, and weighed less than seven stone, probably the result of refusing to eat and years of inactivity. The marks on his hip and leg could well have been bedsores. From the sparse notes we can deduce he was in a near catatonic state much of the time, but we do not know whether he was drugged. Although antipsychotic drugs were not developed until the 1950s, workers in the noisy, understaffed asylums routinely sedated patients to make caring for them easier.

  Aaron’s body was passed into the possession of ‘I & W Abrahams’, his two brothers, Isaac and Woolf. He was buried by the Burial Society of the United Synagogue on 27 March 1919 at East Ham Cemetery at a total cost of twelve pounds and five shillings, and his address was given as 5 Ashcroft Road, Bow, which was at that time the home of his brother-in-law Morris Lubnowski and sister Matilda. The inscription on the gravestone read: ‘Aaron Kosminski who died the 24th of March 1919. Deeply missed by his brother, sisters, relatives and friends. May his dear soul rest in peace’.

  Although the gravestone refers to only one brother, Isaac was alive for another year – so it is likely the gravestone was added later, after Isaac’s death. The siblings and their mother Golda are all buried together, in a different cemetery, and their surnames are all recorded as Abrahams. So despite the loving inscription, it seems the rest of the family were happy to keep their mentally ill brother separate from them, even in death.

  Looking at these records, it is understandable that Martin Fido and others find it difficult to reconcile this steadily deteriorating and sad figure with the dreaded Jack the Ripper. Yet Aaron Kosminski is the only ‘Kosminski’ in the asylum records fitting the time period, and a ‘Kosminski’ was named by Melville Macnaghten as ‘a strong suspect’; Robert Anderson was convinced that the Ripper was a poor, insane Polish Jew who had been identified as the Ripper and sent to an asylum and Donald Swanson appeared to agree with him, albeit misnaming Mile End Workhouse as ‘Stepney Workhouse’, and then named him. I believe there are enough circumstances to make the police’s ‘Kosminski’ and Aaron Mordke Kosminski one and the same, and that is why, in my pursuit of the scientific evidence to prove who the Ripper really was, I made him my prime target.

  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.