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A Ripperologist Article
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This article originally appeared in Ripperologist No. 58, March 2005. Ripperologist is the most respected Ripper periodical on the market and has garnered our highest recommendation for serious students of the case. For more information, view our Ripperologist page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripperologist for permission to reprint this article.
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Aaron Kosminski Reconsidered
Robert House
In the summer and fall of 1888, an elusive and mysterious
killer terrorized the city of London, killing prostitutes in the streets of
Whitechapel, before finally disappearing into the shadowy fog of history. Since
that time, the identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’ has remained a mystery and a
subject of heated debate among students of the case. Evidence that may have
once existed has disappeared over time, as memories became confused and files
were ‘misplaced’. Thus, researchers inherited a complex jigsaw puzzle of
fragments, random facts, quotes, and documents, often contradictory and
difficult to interpret. The full ‘truth’ of the case is probably lost for all
time, but perhaps enough fragmentary pieces remain for us to formulate a
picture of the events as they occurred.
Anderson’s
Suspect
One
of the most intriguing of these fragments is the assertion by Sir Robert
Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the London
Metropolitan Police in 1888, that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper. In
an article published in Blackwood’s
Magazine in 1910, Anderson claimed that
the police had in fact solved the case, but had declined to publicize the fact
because, as he says, ‘no public benefit would result from such a course, and
the traditions of my old department would suffer’. Anderson made similar
assertions in other published sources, most notably in his book The
Lighter Side of My Official Life, also
published in 1910. While Anderson never named the suspect in question, he did
give a general description of him: the perpetrator was, according to Anderson,
a low-class Polish Jew who was ‘caged in an asylum’, and who was ‘at once
identified’ by ‘the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer.’
Anderson also tells us that the killer was ‘a sexual maniac of a virulent type’
who lived ‘in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders’ and ‘whose
utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the
brute’.
In 1959, the name of Anderson’s Polish Jew suspect was finally revealed to be
‘Kosminski’, after the discovery of a copy of an internal police memo written
in 1894 by Anderson’s second in command, Sir Melville Macnaghten. The memo
lists as a suspect: ‘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.’
Further indication that Anderson’s suspect’s name was Kosminski was established
with the discovery of handwritten notes written by ex-Superintendent Donald
Sutherland Swanson in the margin and end-paper of his personal copy of Anderson’s
memoirs. Fleshing out the details of the witness identification referred to by
Anderson, Swanson writes: ‘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’.
The full name of the suspect remained a mystery however until quite recently,
when Martin Fido’s exploration of asylum records led to the discovery of one
Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish hairdresser who had been certified as a lunatic and
admitted to Colney Hatch Asylum in 1891. The cause of his insanity is indicated
as being a result of ‘self-abuse’, generally believed to be a colloquial way of
saying masturbation. The asylum record’ reference to ‘self-abuse’ corresponds
to Anderson’s reference to ‘utterly unmentionable vices’ and Macnaghten’s
reference to the suspect’s ‘many years indulgence in solitary vices’.
Questions
about
the Kosminski Identification
There
can be little doubt that Aaron Kosminski is the Polish Jew suspect referred to
by Anderson, Macnaghten, and Swanson. However, some of the details in their
statements are demonstrably incorrect. Perhaps the most glaring error is
Swanson’s assertion that the suspect died shortly after being committed to
Colney Hatch - in fact, Aaron Kosminski lived for another 28 years. But in
general, their statements fit well with the known facts about Aaron Kosminski’s
life. As Stewart P Evans writes, ‘These are confined to demonstrable errors,
not assumptions, and are few. Indeed if they can be explained the recollections
of Anderson, Macnaghten and Swanson are remarkably accurate in relation to
(Aaron) Kosminski, allowing for the effects of the passage of time on memory.’1
Paul Begg notes, moreover, ‘We’re also told, crucially in my opinion, that the
Polish Jew indulged in utterly unmentionable vices, which corresponds with ‘self
abuse’ mentioned by Macnaghten in relation to ‘Kosminski’ and masturbation
attributed to Aaron Kosminski. In my opinion the identification is and always
has been fairly solid because of this and that any idea that Anderson’s suspect
was someone else has to first and foremost address this point.’2
Despite this, and Anderson’s ‘moral certainty’ notwithstanding, many students
of the case have been dissatisfied with the notion that this Kosminski could
have been Jack the Ripper. Aaron Kosminski has been dismissed by many
Ripperologists as being an unwashed, drooling imbecile, who roamed the streets
eating out of the gutter. Consequently, researchers have explored all sorts of
‘alternative’ Kosminski theories, involving, for example, other Kosminskis,
alternative spellings such as Kaminsky, and the theory that the suspect was
entered into a workhouse under a false name. The most common theory however, is
simply that Anderson had become boastful in his old age, and that his
‘definitely ascertained fact’ was just plain wrong.
But what if Anderson was right? What if the most famous murder case in British
history had indeed been solved by the police at the time? What if Jack the
Ripper has been right under our nose, virtually ignored for years, because so
many people were inclined to dismiss him?
This article proposes a re-examination of the suspect Aaron Kosminski. We will
take a closer look at what is known about the Polish Jew hairdresser: his
background of growing up in an environment characterized by poverty, oppression,
and exposure to violence; his public display of masturbation; his diagnosis
suggesting schizophrenia - that he hears voices which guide his every movement.
We know, for example, that he threatened his sister with a knife. Melville
Macnaghten claimed to have evidence that Kosminski hated women, and that he had
homicidal tendencies. And there were other ‘circs’, according to Macnaghten,
that made him a strong suspect - evidence that has apparently been lost. Aaron
was the right age basically for a serial killer, and he was said to have
‘strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square’. He
was identified by a witness. His presumed residence in 1888 was in the
geographic center of the murders.
In the end, while we may never prove that Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper,
perhaps a more thorough examination of the fragmentary evidence will lead us,
as it did Anderson, to a moral certainty of his guilt.
Aaron
Kosminski:
basic chronology
The
following basic chronology has been established from the admissions registers
and files of Mile End Old Town Workhouse and Colney Hatch Asylum:
12
July 1890
Aaron
Kosminski is admitted to the Mile End Old Town Workhouse Infirmary from no. 3
Sion Square. His brother (sic?) Woolf is recorded as certifying the entry.
That Aaron was regarded as an ‘able bodied male’ is indicated by his diet code.
15
July 1890
Aaron
is discharged into the care of an unnamed ‘brother’ whose address is recorded
as no. 16 Greenfield Street.
4
February 1891
Aaron
is returned to the Mile End Old Town Workhouse from no. 16 Greenfield Street.
Who brought him in is not recorded (it may have been the police).
7
February 1891
Aaron
is admitted to Colney Hatch Asylum. The Register states that Aaron’s nearest
known relative is ‘Woolf Kosminski’ of no. 3 Sion Square. A Jacob Cohen gives
some background information on Aaron: ‘he took up a knife and threatened the
life of his sister’. (This incident may have been the ‘final straw’ which led
to Aaron’s re-admission to the workhouse for a psychological assessment. In any
case, we are left to ponder the motivation of this attack, although clearly
Aaron felt some aggression or anger towards one or both of his sisters.)
13
April 1894
Aaron
is transferred to Leavesden Asylum for Imbeciles, where he stayed until his
death in 1919.
Kosminski
Family:
Emigration from Russia
Aaron
Kosminski was born in Russia in 1864 or 1865. Records show that Aaron’s two
sisters, Matilda and Betsy, and their families left Russia circa 1881, and then
stayed briefly in Germany, before finally settling in London either later in
1881 or in 1882. This is established by the birth records of the children of
Morris Lubnowski and his wife Matilda (Aaron’s sister): Joseph, the oldest
child, was born in Poland in 1880; Bertha was born in Germany in 1881; Annie
(b. 1884) and Jane (b. 1888) were both born in London. The children of Woolf
Abrahams and Betsy (nee Kosminski, Aaron’s other sister) Abrahams were both
born in London: Rebecca in 1882 and Matilda in 1890.
It is generally assumed that Aaron emigrated to London in the company of his
sisters’ families, although there is no direct proof that this is the case.
Scott Nelson notes: ‘Aaron’s 1882 entry into London is based on his burial
record (and I believe it was also on his headstone.) This is likely in error
because if he came to London with his sisters and their families, which is far
from certain, it had to have been in 1881, like the Naturalization Record says
(also we know the Morris Lubnowski was living at no. 10 Plummers Row in 1881).
It seems to me more likely that Aaron entered London with the Lubnowski and the
Abrahams families in late 1881’.3
Recent research by Chris Phillips has narrowed down the date of Aaron’s likely
arrival to June 1881. This is based on the Naturalization records for Morris
Lubnowski (1888) and Woolf Abrahams (1886), which both list them residing at
addresses in London from June 1881 onwards.
Aaron’s mother was most likely the Golda Abrahams listed in the 1901 census
living at 64 Wellesley Street with Morris and Matilda Lubnowski and their seven
children (Figure 1). She is listed as Golda Abrahams, a widow, ‘wife’s mother’
(ie, Matilda’s mother). It seems likely that Golda did not emigrate with the
family in 1881/82, and we may assume that she stayed behind in Russia for some
reason. By 1894, it appears she was in London, as there is a ‘Mrs Kosminski’
referred to on Aaron’s committal papers to Leavesden Asylum. Recent research by
Chris Phillips has revealed that Golda was at some point re-married to a man
named Abraham Joseph Abrahams who died prior to 1901. Of course in saying
‘re-married’ I am assuming that Golda was at one point married to a man named
Kosminski, ie, the father of Aaron, Betsy and Matilda. In fact, nothing is
currently known about Aaron’s father, except that he did not apparently
emigrate to London at the same time as Aaron and his sisters’ families. There
is in fact no evidence that he ever came to London at all, and it is possible
that Golda stayed behind in Russia or Germany to care for him if he was sick or
injured. We must assume that Aaron’s father either died or left the family at
some point. It is also important to note that there was an extremely high
divorce rate among Jews in Poland/Russia in the 19th century, and he may have
left the family much earlier than 1881.
To put the emigration of the Kosminski family in context, we must examine the
history of Poland and the political and social situation of Jews in Russia at
the end of the 19th century.
Poland
and
The Pale of Settlement
By
the late 18th century, Poland had been in a state of economic and social
decline for nearly a hundred years. In 1732, Russia, Prussia, and Austria
entered into a secret pact known as ‘The Alliance of the Three Black Eagles’,
the goal of which was to maintain the instability of an already weakened Poland.
In 1772, the ‘Black Eagles’ began to annex parts of the country, until finally,
in 1795, a third partition and final partition wiped Poland off the map. Russia
took the largest geographic area, but also the least important economically.
In Russia, there had been a distrust and lack of tolerance for the Jews since
the Middle Ages. The Russian peasants viewed the Jews as aliens, with a strange
and mysterious culture. Thus, when several hundred thousand Polish Jews became
absorbed into the Russian Empire, the government immediately recognized what it
termed ‘the Jewish Problem.’ This problem, largely anti-Semitic in nature,
remained unaddressed until 1835, when Tsar Nicholas I created the Pale of
Settlement, a strictly defined geographic area in which the Jews were forced to
live. The government then imposed severe legal restrictions on the Jews in this
area.
The Pale of Settlement (Figure 2) was a region of poverty and hopelessness.
‘Within the Pale, Jews were banned from most rural areas and some cities4;
they were prohibited from building synagogues near churches and using Hebrew in
official documents; barred from agriculture, they earned a living as petty
traders, middlemen, shopkeepers, peddlers, and artisans, often working with
women and children’5.
Although the Jews formed only one ninth of the total population in the
provinces of the Pale of Settlement, their numbers steadily increased due to a
high birth rate, until ‘the Pale became choked by a huge, pauperized mass of
unskilled or semiskilled Jewish laborers, whose economic condition steadily
worsened’6.
‘Often repeated,’ said historian Shlomo Lambroza, ‘the official view was that
Jews were a parasitic element in the Russian Empire who lived off the hard
earned wages of the narod [people].’7
In the 1860s, there was a brief period of improvement in conditions for the
Jews in Russia. Some of the oppressive restrictions were relaxed, and a small
number of Jews considered ‘useful’ were allowed to settle outside the Pale. The
Jewish communities of St Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa grew rapidly, and Jews
started to participate in intellectual and cultural life. But even during this
period, less than 5% of Russia’s Jewish population lived outside the Pale.
This brief period of improvement did not last long, however, and by the 1870s,
anti-Semitism was again on the rise in Russia. The Polish Revolution of 1863
had intensified Russian anti-Semitism and Slavophile nationalism. In addition,
the sudden appearance of Jewish merchants, doctors, and lawyers outside the
Pale caused a sharp backlash. Jewish financiers and intellectuals became the
symbols of agents of all that challenged traditional authority and values.
The Russian government at this time was becoming increasingly worried about the
rising unrest amongst the peasantry, which was seen as a consequence of the
Great Reforms - the coming of industry, capitalism, and the dissolution of old
loyalties and controls. In large part, the government scapegoated and blamed
the Jews for the unrest in the land. In a memorandum to the Tsar, General
Ignatiev, later Minister of the Interior and a member of the anti-Semitic Holy
League, wrote, ‘Every honest voice is silenced by the shouts of Jews and Poles
who insist that one must listen only to the ‘intelligent’ class, and that
Russian demands must be rejected as backward and unenlightened.’ Konstantin
Pobedonistev, the Tsar’s chief advisor on Jewish affairs, proposed the
following solution to the ‘Jewish Problem’: ‘One third must emigrate, one third
convert, and one third must die’.
The
Pogroms of 1881
The
assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a group of revolutionaries in March 1881
(Figure 3) threw the government into chaos and directly preceded the first
major outbreak of pogroms - violent attacks by the Russian peasantry on the
Jewish population. Although the assassination had nothing to do with the Jews,
Ignatiev believed a vast ‘Polish-Yiddish’ international conspiracy had been
responsible for the murder of Alexander II, and there were rumors that Tsar
Alexander III had issued a decree instructing the people to beat and plunder
the Jews for having killed his father.
Beginning in Elizabetgrad in April 1881, a wave of ‘pogromy’ (the Russian word
for ‘devastation’) was unleashed on the Russian Jews. In 1881 alone, there were
more than 200 attacks on Jewish communities in the southwestern regions of the
Pale. These were well organized attacks in which bands of hooligans were
brought in by train, well primed with alcohol and anti-Semitic indoctrination.
The mob would then throng into the Jewish parts of a town, break into houses
and shops, loot and burn property, and beat, rape, and frequently kill the
inhabitants. Approximately 40 Jews were killed, many times that number were
wounded, and hundreds of women were raped.
An account of the Russian pogroms of 1902 is probably accurate in giving a
sense of the violence that characterized the attacks of 1881:
Under every kind of outrage they died, mostly at the door of their homes. They
were babes, butchered at the breasts of their mothers. They were old men beaten
down in the presence of their sons. They were delicate women violated and
murdered in the sight of their own children.8
Although local authorities knew of planned
pogroms in advance, they seemed reluctant to intervene. The authorities
condoned these attacks through their inaction and indifference, sometimes even
showing sympathy for the pogromists.
The main explanation Ignatiev gave for the ‘uncharacteristic violence’ of the
poorer classes in the Pogroms was exploitation by the Jews, who had taken over
trade and manufacturing and also large amounts of land through rent or
purchase. The Russian peasants who plundered and destroyed the Jews possessions
‘may have felt justified that... they were merely appropriating property which
did not rightly belong to the Jews’.9
A commission established in 1882 to review the infamous restrictive May Laws
concluded that the Jews had ‘innate views that nourished the hostility of their
neighbors, especially among the lower classes’.
The official sentiment of this period is perhaps best expressed by Tsar
Alexander III, who was moved by the age-old Christian revulsion of the Jews as
the murderers of Christ: ‘In my heart I am very glad when they beat the Jews,
even though this practice cannot be permitted’.
The pogroms in Russia generated a wave of Jewish migration that continued for
decades. A veritable flood of penniless frightened Jewish refugees streamed
across the German border in search of safety. An estimated 120,000 Ashkenazi
Jews arrived in England between 1880 and 1914, and a total of almost 2 million
Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1910. During this time, many Jews emigrated
via Hamburg and Brody, which served as safe temporary havens for refugees on
their way to England and America and other western nations.
It is likely that the pogroms in 1881 directly preceded the Kosminskis’
decision to emigrate west.
Aaron
Kosminski’s Early Years
The
preceding outline of the background history gives a picture of the environment
in which Aaron Kosminski lived until he was about 17 or 18 years of age. Poland’s
annexation by Russia explains the apparently contradictory records which state
that Aaron’s sister Betsy was born in Russia, and that Matilda’s son Joseph was
born in Poland. As the Pale was contained in Russia, and the Kingdom of Poland
technically did not exist, both statements would have been correct. Thus, it is
almost certain that the Kosminskis lived in the Pale of Settlement.
As a boy, Aaron would have lived in a crowded and chaotic environment
characterized by extreme poverty - most likely an urban ghetto. As living
conditions in the Pale were extremely crowded, many families lived in one room,
and we may assume that Aaron shared a bed with either his parents or his
sisters when he was young. ‘Incest was common’ in environments like this, D Kim
Rossmo writes, ‘even amongst children as young as ten’10.
As both women and children were expected to work, it is likely that Aaron would
have had some sort of menial employment. Perhaps, as Macnaghten later told the
journalist George R Sims, ‘Kosminski’ had been at one time employed in a
hospital, as a hairdresser or an orderly.
Blood
Libel
By
the time Aaron was an adolescent, there was widespread anti-Semitism in Russia.
Influential newspapers forgot their Jewish sympathies, and anti-Semitic
literature appeared, containing both intellectual and obscene content.
Anti-Semitism also began to gain a semblance of intellectual respectability as
a result of the new ‘scientific’ anti-Semitism of western, mostly German,
origin.
In 1878, when Aaron was 13 or 14 years old, the myth of the ‘Blood Libel,’
outlawed by Alexander I, was revived in Kutais in anti-Semitic newspapers like Novoye
Vremya. Based in part on the ritual murder of the child Simon of Trent and
others, this myth held that the Jews participated in the ritual murder of
Christian children, using their blood to appease the wrath of God.
Specifically, the blood libel myth held that that ‘Jews had kidnapped a
Christian child, tied him to a cross, stabbed his head to simulate Jesus’ crown
of thorns, killed him, drained his body of blood and mixed the blood into
Passover matzohs.’11
If a Christian child was found murdered near Easter or Passover, there was a
good chance that local Jews would be blamed. Into the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, at least two dozen ritual murder trials took place in
Central and Eastern Europe.
Figure 4 depicts the murder of Anderl von Rinn, a three-year-old Austrian boy
who became the focus of a blood libel cult in the 17th century. The ‘martyr’
Anderl was alleged to have been murdered by two Jews, who are shown holding him
down as they slit his throat. The text reads: ‘Sie schneiden dem Marterer, die
Gurgl ab und nemen alles Blut von Ihm’ - which translates as ‘They cut throat
of the martyr and take all blood from him.’
The murder of Simon of Trent is said to have occurred during Passover week in
1475, in Trent, Italy. The story goes that the child, who was not yet three
years of age, was abducted from his home and taken to a house where he was
brutally slaughtered by the twin brothers Saligman and Samuel, assisted by
others named Tobias, Vitalis, Moses, Israel, and Mayr. While Moses strangled
the child with a handkerchief, flesh was cut from his neck and the blood
collected in a bowl. Pieces of flesh were also cut from his arms and legs, and
his body was punctured with needles. Later his body was thrown into the river.
Variations on this story were used to spread anti-Semitic propaganda during the
Middle Ages.
Figure 5 depicts the murder of Simon of Trent and is especially interesting in
that it shows a long gash being cut in the boy’s lower abdominal area. In an
interesting parallel to the mature modus operandi of Jack the Ripper, the
murder of Simon of Trent and blood libel mythology in general was said to
include strangulation, throat slitting, and as shown, a knife attack to the
abdomen. Is it possible that Aaron later re-enacted his memories of the blood
libel by killing Spitalfields prostitutes in a similar fashion?
The
Psychological Profile
of a Sexual Killer
In
the United States, John Douglas and Robert Ressler were two of the leading
developers of criminal profiling, especially as it relates to sexual homicide.
Between 1979 and 1983, the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) undertook a
study in which they interviewed 36 convicted sexual killers about their
backgrounds, crimes, crime scenes, and victims. The data they collected laid
the foundation for developing the theory and the methodology of criminal
profiling.
In England, a leading expert on criminal profiling is David Canter, and his
approach is different from the American model, relying primarily on an ever
growing database for statistical analysis. Canter’s methodology uses the
concept of geographic offender profiling, a technique developed in the late
1980s and early 1990s by D Kim Rossmo that is now used by police in the United
States and the United Kingdom. Geographic profiling techniques include: circle
theory, distance to crime research, demographical analysis, environmental
psychology, landscape analysis, point pattern analysis, crime site residual
analysis, and psychological criminal profiling.
Many have argued that profiling is not an effective tool for apprehending
criminals, and indeed this is often true: profiling has been shown in many
cases to be inaccurate and fallible, especially as it relates to the
apprehension of criminal offenders. That being said, however, it is generally
acknowledged that sexually motivated killers share many common characteristics,
and often share similar backgrounds. Thus, we can examine Aaron Kosminski’s
background and characteristics to see if he fits the general profile of a sexually
motivated killer.
Instability
of Residence
Data
show that the majority of interviewed sexual killers grew up without a stable
residence. Half reported ‘occasional instability’, while another 17% reported
‘chronic instability or frequent moving’. Only one-third reported growing up in
one location. ‘The histories of frequent moving... reduced the child’s
opportunities to develop positive, stable relationships outside the family’.12
In the impoverished, crowded and competitive atmosphere of the Pale, it is not
likely that the Kosminskis would have had a stable and consistent residence.
Later, the family emigrated west and may have resided for a brief time in Germany,
before finally settling in London around 1881 or soon thereafter. Once in London,
the family may have lived temporarily at the residence of some relative or
acquaintance in Whitechapel, before finally settling at Sion Square and Greenfield
Street.
Furthermore, it is likely that Aaron lived at both of these addresses at
different times. In July 1890, Aaron was admitted to Mile End Old Town
Workhouse from 3 Sion Square, which was presumably his residence at the time.
Less than a year later, in February 1891, he was admitted to the same workhouse
from 16 Greenfield Street. This seems to suggest that Aaron either changed
addresses, or that his sisters shared the responsibility of taking care of him.
After Aaron’s attacks of insanity began around 1885, he was probably difficult
to live with, and he may have been shuffled back and forth between the two
addresses. On the other hand, it is fair to guess that Aaron lived at 3 Sion
Square in autumn 1888, as this was his residence when he was admitted to Mile
End Old Town Workhouse less than a year after the series of murders ended.
In summary, it is clear that Aaron’s adolescence and young adult life was
characterized by instability of residence.
Absence
of a Biological Father
In
17 of 34 cases in the FBI study, the offenders interviewed reported that the
biological father left home before they reached the age of 12. ‘The absence was
due to a variety of reasons, such as death or incarceration, but most often the
reason given was separation or divorce’.13
Given the departure of the father, it is not surprising that the dominant
parent during childhood and adolescence is the mother (this is 21 out of 34
cases). ‘The psychological and social disengagement’ resulting from an absent
father figure perhaps enhanced a sense of ‘negative human attachment or the
disregarding of potentially positive ones that might have been expected’.14
Almost nothing is known about Aaron
Kosminski’s father. It is known that Aaron’s mother Golda had at some point
re-married a man who died prior to 1901. Also, it is almost certain that
Aaron’s parents did not emigrate to London with the extended family unit circa
1881. Although we may only speculate, it is probable that Aaron’s father was
absent from the family unit prior to 1881, either due to divorce, death, or
abandonment.
Divorce rates in 19th Century Russia were extraordinarily high, especially
prior to 1850. The average age at which women first married was around 20; in
divorce records, the majority of women were less than 30 years old. The high
divorce rate combined with low life expectancy led to frequent re-marrying. In
Golda’s case it is clear she re-married at least once, but she may have
re-married multiple times. By the time she gave birth to Matilda, her first
known child, Golda would have been about 37 years old. When she gave birth to
Aaron, she was around age 46. In light of this, and the possibility that Golda
may have been married and divorced prior to giving birth to Matilda, Betsy, and
Aaron, it is perhaps relevant to consider the reference to Aaron’s so-called
‘brother’ Woolf in the Mile End workhouse records.
Aaron is not known to have had a brother named Woolf, and it has generally been
assumed that this is actually a reference to Aaron’s brother-in-law Woolf
Abrahams, who lived at 3 Sion Square. However, there was in fact a Woolf
Kosminski listed in the 1901 Census living at 24 Batty Gardens. He is listed a
tailor born in Russia, and evidence has suggested that he arrived in London
some time between 1890 and 1894. However, there is no known link between Aaron
Kosminski and Woolf Kosminski, and as Woolf was born in 1844, he would have
been 21 years older than Aaron. This means that he was born when Golda would
have been 25 years old. It is possible that Woolf was a much older brother or
half brother of Aaron’s. It is interesting to note that both Woolf Kosminski
and Golda Abrahams first appear in London in the 1901 census. It is also
interesting to note that Matilda and Morris Lubnowski had a child who they
named Wolf in 1891, and that this may have coincided with Woolf Kosminski’s
arrival in London.
Siblings
In
the FBI study 20 out of 34 interviewed offenders had no older brothers, and 17
had no older sisters. One offender reported feeling jealous of his sister as a
kid. Others reported a change in ‘sibling order’ as a result of reconstituted
families, with new stepbrothers and sisters.
After emigrating to London, it is possible that Aaron regarded his older
sisters as sort of substitute mother figures, ie, people who would take care of
him. As Jacob Cohen reported in 1891, Aaron had not worked for years, so we
must assume that the sisters’ families supported Aaron financially. We may also
guess that Aaron may have resented his brothers-in-law assuming father figure
roles in the reconstituted family structure. Thus, it seems likely that Aaron
may have perceived a family situation dominated by females.
Perceived
Unfair Treatment
by Adults in Formative Years
It
has been noted by Ressler et al
that an ineffective and hateful social environment leads to developing
cognitive distortions, and negative attitudes that later become the
justification for violent acts towards others. ‘Many of the murderers felt they
were not dealt with fairly by adults throughout their formative years’.15
One killer said, ‘I wanted the whole world to
kick off when I was 9 or 10.’ The same killer stated, ‘I’ve got an older sister
that beat up on me a lot.... I had the instinct to feel like I’m getting a
rotten deal.’16
Aaron Kosminski was raised in a crowded ghetto
environment characterized by harsh and officially endorsed anti-Semitism, where
Jews were generally despised and mistrusted, and regarded as ‘a parasitic
element’. The government tended to blame the Jews for the problems in Russia,
including the pogroms themselves. In addition, the authorities were, in
general, disinterested in protecting the Jews from these attacks. Thus, it is
not a stretch to imagine that Aaron may have begun to develop a general
resentment of society and especially authority figures as a result of this,
making him think that the social system was generally weak and ineffectual in
stopping crime and violence. Thus, his perception of unfair treatment by adults
may have been the justification for his later acts of violence.
Witnessing
Sexual
Activity/ Violence
Ressler
et al
noted, ‘The individual development characteristics of the thirty-six murderers
showed the presence of sexual problems and violent experiences in childhood,
and a dominant sexual fantasy life.’17
Many of the murderers interviewed had witnessed sexual violence or ‘disturbing’
sex as a child or adolescent.
In his final interview, Ted Bundy spoke of the effect of pornography in
creating a fantasy realm which led to his becoming a serial killer: ‘The most
damaging kind of pornography - and I’m talking from hard, real, personal
experience - is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of
those two forces - as I know only too well - brings about behavior that is too
terrible to describe.’ In another interview, Bundy said: ‘this interest, for
some unknown reason, becomes geared toward matters of a sexual nature that
involves violence. I cannot emphasize enough the gradual development of this.
It is not short term...’18
In the pogroms of 1881, hundreds of women were
raped and assaulted. It is difficult to imagine the social climate that must
have existed that would lead to this sort of mass, sexual debasement and
aggression towards one ethnic group. Indeed, the pogroms seem to have been
characterized by a toxic mixture of many different types of aggressive and
assaultive behavior, including violent attacks, arson, looting, rape, murder,
and destruction of property.
It is not overstating the case to imagine that witnessing acts such as these
would have had a potentially devastating effect on Aaron, who was then only 16
years old, especially combined as this was with the onset of puberty, and an
overall environment of harsh anti-Semitism and poverty. We must also consider
the possibility that Aaron’s sisters or mother may have been raped, or other
family members beaten up. His sisters Betsy and Matilda would have been young
women in their 20’s at this time. It is also possible that Aaron himself was
assaulted during this time. Often in the case of sexual murderers, there is an
identification with the aggressor, and these memories later fuel the
development of an isolated fantasy realm. Thus we can speculate that Aaron may
have begun to develop a subconscious identification with the aggressors in the
pogroms, in a fantasy life that was fueled by the sexual violence he witnessed
at that time.
Compulsive
Masturbation
Over
80% of sexual killers interviewed in the FBI study reported ‘compulsive
masturbation’ in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Of these, 19 offenders
also reported ‘sexually stressful situations’ including ‘negative parental reaction
to masturbation’. It is generally inferred from Aaron’s hospital file that the
supposed cause of his attack of insanity was an uncontrollable public display
of masturbation.
In speaking of the role of aggression in the development of sexual fantasies,
Ressler et al
notes the following example:
One offender as an adolescent openly masturbated in his home, especially in
front of his sisters, using their underwear in his masturbation rituals. This
behavior represented the hyper arousal state derived from his memory of his
childhood victimization by an adult. He describes the punitive response from
his mother to masturbatory behavior, and his rejection by family members. Even
upon recall, his pain and hurt at their ridicule was clear.19
It is also noted that the subject was
apparently ‘oblivious to the inappropriate nature of his acts’.
This particular case may be especially relevant in formulating an understanding
of Aaron Kosminski. Especially important to note is that these acts were
perceived to be derived from a memory of victimization by an adult. Also
important is that he was rejected and ridiculed by family members.
Another case from the FBI study notes:
One offender’s early childhood fantasies
indicated a fixation on his internal organs. At age 5 (a critical age for
gender identification), he described the following event. He was sleeping
between his mother and his aunt, when the aunt had a severe hemorrhage, losing
blood in the bed... where she miscarried. We can speculate on how the
experience of sleeping with two adult females could stimulate feelings of
intimacy and closeness, which were then disrupted by a puzzling and violent
scene. The visualization of the blood and the miscarriage seems to have
triggered a morbid curiosity about female sexual organs... When he reaches
adulthood, rage and aggression is noted where there is a link to sexual
frustration. He describes impulsively picking up a large kitchen knife in his
girlfriend’s apartment just after she had been ‘sexually teasing’, thinking of
stabbing her... This type of penetration fantasy is noted in his offences, in
which he mutilates his victims by disembowelment.20
This extraordinary case suggests remarkable
parallels both with Jack the Ripper and possibly also with Aaron Kosminski. It
is reminiscent of Aaron’s threatening to attack his sister with a knife.
Consider the following conjectural scenario: Aaron shares a bed with one or
both of his sisters when he is living in the Pale, and begins to develop sexual
fantasies involving his sisters. He witnesses his sisters’ menstrual bleeding -
for example when Betsy would have been 12 years old in 1869, and Aaron was only
four or five - and as a result of this becomes obsessed with the female sexual
organs, imagining blood or violence to be associated with sexuality. When he is
about 16 he witnesses violence, murders, and rape during the pogroms in 1881,
possibly including the rape of members of his family. From then on, he begins
to develop angry thoughts and confused sexually violent fantasies involving his
older sisters, imagining himself in the role of aggressor. The root motivation
for such anger and aggression may have also involved the sisters’ ridicule of
his compulsive masturbation, which in his mind signified their rejection of his
sexual fantasies. Out of this confused miasma of sexual frustration and
rejection, Aaron enacts his violent fantasies involving his sisters towards
women in general.
Unsteady
Employment
Data
from the Ressler’s BSU interviews indicates that only 20% of offenders reported
‘steady employment’; the vast majority (69%) reported ‘unsteady employment’,
and the remainder (11%) reported ‘unemployment’.21
In his statement to Dr Houchin, Jacob Cohen noted that Aaron had ‘not attempted
any kind of work for years’. It is not clear how many years Cohen meant: this
could be interpreted as meaning two or three years, or more. However, the
implication of the statement is that Aaron had worked at some time. He is
listed in the asylum record as a hairdresser, so we are led to believe that
Aaron worked sporadically at least, but that he had not attempted any work for
some time.
Schizophrenia
It
is probable that Aaron suffered from schizophrenia. His medical certificate
declares that ‘he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an
instinct that informs his mind’. In other words he experienced aural
hallucinations. An entry in Aaron’s later case file at Leavesden Asylum (2
February 1916) recorded that ‘He has hallucinations of sight and hearing and is
at times very obstinate.’
Notably, Aaron also believed that he was ‘ill, and his cure consists in
refusing food’. ‘He refuses food because he is told to do so, and eats out of
the gutter for the same reason.’ This fragment of evidence has been taken out
of context and used by Ripperologists to characterize Aaron Kosminski as an
imbecile, and as a pathetic and harmless creature. Interestingly however, this
behavior is in some ways reminiscent of the bizarre case of Richard Chase, the
famous American serial killer, who believed in 1976 that he had soap-dish
poisoning, the result of which was that ‘his blood was turning to powder and
that he thus needed blood from other creatures to replenish it.’ He believed
that if your soap was ‘gooey, you have the poisoning, which turns your blood to
powder.’ This became, in Chase’s mind, a justification or rationale for his
killings. He also seemed to believe that people were poisoning his food.
Both of these symptoms, aural hallucinations and distorted perceptions are
symptoms of schizophrenia. Numerous serial killers have been diagnosed as
paranoid schizophrenics, eg, David Berkowitz, who claimed to be receiving
instructions from a neighbor’s dog. Likewise, Ted Bundy spoke of a ‘presence’,
a voice that told him to attack certain people. In Bundy’s case the voice seems
to have been a sort of ‘inner dialogue’, and he is generally not believed to
have been schizophrenic; but in any case, Bundy’s inner voices would be
described as auditory hallucinations, much like Aaron had.
Another interesting parallel can be found in the case study of a man referred
to in Ressler et al
as ‘Warren’. After his incarceration for ‘assault with intent to commit
murder’, Warren underwent a series of psychological evaluations. He was found
to be ‘uncooperative, withdrawn, irritable, resentful and hostile,’ and
although he had a tested IQ of 115, he was described as ‘withdrawn, and
pre-occupied, and at times he seemed to be listening to some inner voice (as
though he were experiencing auditory hallucinations, which he denied’.22
Compare this with Aaron’s later psychiatric
evaluation: ‘Incoherent, at times excited and violent,’... ‘apathetic as a
rule’. Aaron was not considered to be violent or suicidal while at Colney Hatch
asylum, but as far as I know, there has been no study as to how killers will
behave after being ‘caged’.
According to its definition, ‘Schizophrenic disorders generally begin in the
late teenage years or early adulthood and tend to occur in withdrawn, reclusive
individuals. Symptoms include disturbances of thought, both in form and content
(see delusion), and disturbances of perception, most commonly appearing as
visual or aural hallucinations.’23
According to the medical documentation, Aaron’s schizophrenia apparently began
in his early twenties.
As Erin Seigler has pointed out on the Casebook:
Jack the Ripper message boards:
Not every schizophrenic talks to himself
and foams at the mouth. Some appear quite normal and manage to function well in
society. The thing to remember about paranoid schizophrenics ... is that their
IQs are typically above average and they become quite adept over the years at
hiding their delusional system from others.24
The words of Ted Bundy, a schizophrenic, bear
this out:
I wasn’t a pervert in the sense that people look at somebody
and say, ‘I know there’s something wrong with him.’ I was a normal person. I
had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very
potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself.25
As Natalie Severn wrote on the Casebook
boards that if Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper, ‘the first murders would
have been committed most probably during some psychotic reaction’... and the
murder of Mary Kelly would have precipitated [a complete mental] breakdown’.
She added that in her opinion, in such cases, schizophrenics would be reduced
to
...mere shadows of their former selves,
shuffling about, pale and thin, eyes sunken and haunted looking. Above all
there was no return to their former selves apparently possible because the
onslaught of the psychosis had devastated them so completely. When they
describe poor Aaron like this - eating out of gutters and having outside
powers... running his life for him, it suggests to me that his illness had
reached that point of no return.26
Paul Begg notes that the idea that Aaron
Kosminski was an unwashed, drooling imbecile in 1888 is a very common
misconception. This description of Aaron Kosminski comes from 1892 and later
and it need not describe him in 1888. Psychiatrists have said that ‘sanity’ is
maintained by killing and the killing is sometimes motivated by external
influences (hence the sometimes long gaps between murders). If the murderer is
prevented from killing for some reason, or if the motivation to do so is removed,
then they can mentally and physically degenerate at a dramatic speed. Aaron
Kosminski in 1888 needn’t have been anything like he was in 1892 or after.27
Thus, it should be remembered that Aaron’s
later mental and physical condition as noted in the medical record, is not
necessarily indicative of what he was like in 1888.
An
Alternate Interpretation of the Goulston Street Graffito
After
the Eddowes murder, the following graffito was found written in chalk in a
doorway on Goulston Street, just above a bloodied piece of Eddowes’ apron:
The Juwes are
The men That
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing.
The intended meaning of this sentence was the
subject of much debate at the time of the murders. Sir Charles Warren admitted
that the message was difficult to interpret, and speculated that its author was
a foreigner. ‘The idiom does not appear to be English, French, or German,’ he
wrote, ‘but it might possibly be that of an Irishman speaking a foreign
language. It seems to be the idiom of Spain or Italy.’ In other words, Warren
believed that the phrasing indicated the graffito was not written by a native
English speaker. The favored interpretation at Scotland Yard, by Abberline and
others, was that the graffito was a deliberate attempt by a non-Jew to cast
blame on the Jews for the murder: in other words to say, ‘The Jews never accept
blame for anything’.
My initial instinct, however, is to interpret
the graffito in quite the opposite fashion: eg ‘(You) will not blame the Jews
for anything’. This interpretation is perhaps typical of the way a serial
killer’s mind works - both issuing an order, and at the same time asserting an
almost God-like sense of control over one’s surroundings. It is, in a sense,
reminiscent of the notation on Aaron’s medical certificate at Colney Hatch,
stating that he claims that ‘he knows the movements of all mankind’.
But let us try to decipher the sentence itself. The double negative form was in
common slang usage during this period, and thus the phrase should probably be
interpreted as a single negative. For example: ‘The Juwes are The men That Will
not be Blamed for anything.’
The real confusion in the sentence however, is the use of the word ‘will’,
which has a variety of meanings in the English language. For example, ‘will’
may be used to describe a characteristic of something, as in ‘this car will do
100MPH’. Read as such, the graffito would mean something like ‘The Jews are
never blamed for anything’. On the other hand, ‘will’ may also be used in
command form, as in ‘you will speak to no one about this!’ Read as such, the
graffito is an imperative command: ‘You had better not blame the Jews for
anything!’
Also, it is unclear what is meant by the word ‘nothing’, although this likely
refers to the crime series itself (assuming the murderer actually wrote the
graffito). On the other hand, it may be interpreted to mean ‘anything’, as in
‘The Jews never accept blame for anything,’ or, alternatively, ‘Don’t blame the
Jews for anything’.
Despite the ambiguity of this sentence, we may nevertheless begin to formulate
an interpretation of the Goulston Street graffito that is based upon Aaron’s
earlier experiences in Poland. Anti-Semitism was on the rise in London at the
time of the Whitechapel murders, although it was not nearly as extreme as the
Russian anti-Semitism of Aaron’s youth. The rise in anti-Semitism in London was
in large part a result of the murder series itself. It was widely known that
the police were looking for a Jewish suspect, and the much-publicized
apprehension of John Pizer just added more fuel to the fire. The police were
clearly worried about the possibility of riots and violence against the Jews.
In justifying his decision to erase the graffiti before it could be
photographed, Sir Charles Warren wrote: ‘taking into consideration the excited
state of the population in London at the time, the strong feeling which had
been excited against the Jews... I considered it desirable to obliterate the
writing at once... If that writing had been left, there would have been an onslaught
upon the Jews, property would have been wrecked, and lives would probably have
been lost.’ This statement gives an indication that the police were well aware
of the animosity towards the Jewish population, which was in a large part a
direct result of the murders.
If the author of the graffito was a Jew who had recently emigrated from Russia,
he may have been reminded of the period that directly preceded the outbreak of
pogroms in 1881. It is important to consider that the subject of the graffito
is ‘blaming’ the Jews. In Russia, the Jews were routinely and unjustly blamed
for all sorts of problems. They were wrongly scapegoated for the assassination
of the Tsar, and then they were later blamed for instigating the pogroms
themselves by their ‘innate views that nourished the hostility of their
neighbors’. The general sentiment in Russia was that the Jews deserved whatever
happened to them, including violence, rape, and even murder. The Russian Jews
were constantly reminded that the violence of the pogroms came about as a
direct result of their own collective ‘guilt’.
It is also important to note that Aaron was in fact literate, as it is noted in
his record that he could both read and write. Later, during his incarceration
at Leavesden Asylum, he was said to be reduced to a shell of his former self,
often speaking only in German. It is possible however, that Aaron in fact was
speaking Yiddish, which is closely related to and easily confused with German.
It is the perception of unjust treatment that may have first given rise to
negative, violent feelings Aaron felt towards society in general. He may have
perceived that the Jews were wrongly persecuted and scapegoated, and in his
mind he associated the violence of the pogroms with this scapegoating and blaming
of his people. Now once again, the Jews were being unjustly scapegoated, this
time for the murders. Understood in this context, the meaning of the Goulston
Street Graffito may be interpreted as: ‘You will not blame the Jews for these
murders!’ It is almost a desperate, defiant plea, borne out of fear that the
pogrom-type attacks would re-occur in London.
In the end, it is impossible to infer the precise, intended ‘meaning’ of the
Goulston Street graffito. But perhaps, the most important thing to contemplate
is that the graffito speaks of the Jews being blamed, and that Aaron had
experienced the widespread ‘blaming’ of the Jews in anti-Semitic Russian
propaganda. Even if the meaning was indeed to cast blame on the Jews, to say
‘The Jews never accept blame for their ways’, it may be possible that the Aaron
had internalized a feeling of self-worthlessness as a result of the
anti-Semitic propaganda that was rife in Russia in the 1870s and 1880s. As
noted earlier, serial killers often fantasize about the violent acts that they
witnessed as children, later identifying with the role of aggressor. Thus the
murders could be seen as re-enactments of the attacks witnessed during the
pogroms, their motivation as being derived from a sense of self-worthlessness,
and a general hatred for all mankind, including his own people.
Geographic
Profiling:
The Circle Theory
Now
we shall look at the suspect Aaron Kosminski from the angle of one component of
geographic profiling, as employed by Canter: the circle theory. This theory,
which developed from environmental psychology, holds that if all the crime
scenes of an offender were placed within a circle, the offender would be found
to be living within that circle, possibly close to the center. This theory was
subsequently validated by a study of serial rapes and murder.
Thus, we might start by drawing the smallest circle which contains the five
most probable victims in the Whitechapel murders: Nichols, Chapman, Stride,
Eddowes, and Kelly. (See Figure 6.) Using this simple method, the center of the
circle is only about one-eighth mile from the Abrahams’ residence at Sion
Square.
Note that I have also included Martha Tabram in the diagrams, as she was quite
possibly a victim of Jack the Ripper, although she is not considered to be one
of the canonical victims. Also, for the sake of argument I will assume Aaron’s
residence during the murders to be 3 Sion Square, although in all fairness, it
could be have been either 3 Sion Square or 16 Greenfield Street. Either way, it
does not make much difference, because the two addresses are close to each
other.
As noted by D Kim Rossmo, a serial offender’s residence would simply lie at the
center of a distribution of crime sites, if given ideal conditions. In reality,
geographic profiling is more complex than this, and crime scenes are often
found to be distributed in complex spatial patterns. Contributing to the
difficulties in this method are the psychological and physical boundaries that,
among other impedance factors, conspire to distort an already complex
analytical investigation. It should be noted, for example, that all the
Whitechapel murders, with the exception of the murder of Elizabeth Stride at
Berner Street, occurred north of Whitechapel High Street / Whitechapel Road
/Aldgate High Street. It is possible that this major thoroughfare was a sort of
psychological boundary in the mind of the Ripper, although the relatively small
number of crime scenes makes this speculation mathematically less significant.
Canter describes two models of offender behavior known as the ‘marauder’ and
‘commuter’ models, which are variations on basic circle theory. The marauder
model assumes that an offender will ‘strike out’ from his home base in the
commission of his crimes, whereas the commuter model assumes that an offender
will travel some distance from his home base before engaging in criminal
activity. (See Figure 7.)
As Canter writes, crime occurs at a ‘spatial and time intersection between both
the offender and the victim’. In the case of Jack the Ripper, a sexual predator
who targeted prostitutes, this means he had to go where the prostitutes were:
in other words, he had to go to Spitalfields proper.
By contrast, the Jewish areas south of Whitechapel Road were comparatively
quiet and respectable. In speaking of the largely Jewish neighborhoods, Phillip
Sugden says ‘the streets they overran became, by and large, quiet, law-abiding,
and clean,’ but that ‘notwithstanding these changes, crime and prostitution
lingered amidst the poverty and squalor, especially in parts of Spitalfields.’
In ‘Whitechapel’, an article published in The
Palace Journal in 1889, Arthur G Morrison
describes walking around in the vicinity of Mansell, Great Ailie and Leman
Streets, ie, the Jewish residential neighborhoods south of Whitechapel High
Street:
The houses are old, large, of the very
shabbiest-genteel aspect, and with a great appearance of being snobbishly
ashamed of the odd trades to which many of their rooms are devoted... Jewish
names - Isaacs, Levy, Israel, Jacobs, Rubinsky, Moses, Aaron - wherever names
appear, and frequent inscriptions in the homologous letters of Hebrew.28
In the same article, Morrison mentions
‘White’s Row, or Dorset Street, with its hideous associations’, and goes on to
speak of ‘dark, silent, uneasy shadows passing and crossing - human vermin in
this reeking sink’, when describing Fashion Street, Flower and Dean Street,
Thrawl Street, and Wentworth Street. Clearly, Spitalfields was the center of
the high crime area, the area with the highest incidence of prostitutes, and we
may assume, as the police did in 1888, that this was the Ripper’s primary
hunting ground.
By comparison, PC Smith noted when speaking of Berner Street: ‘very few
prostitutes were to be seen there’. With the exception of Stride, all the
murder sites are north of the Whitechapel Road. This seems to suggest that the
Ripper’s preferred hunting area did not generally include the more respectable
areas in the vicinity south of the axis of Whitechapel High Street -
Whitechapel Road - Aldgate High Street, including Sion Square and vicinity. We
can guess that the Ripper would not have gone searching for victims in the
‘comparatively respectable’ Jewish areas south of this main thoroughfare
because this area was closer to his residence. He would most likely have
preferred to prowl in Spitalfields.
In certain cases, crimes will be more opportunistic in nature – this concept is
addressed in ‘Routine Activity Theory’, which was developed by Larry Cohen and
Marcus Felson in 1979. If an opportunity arises when the killer feels
comfortable enough to kill with minimum risk, we may find murder sites outside
of a killer’s normal activity space, and evidence which suggests the murder was
committed with little or no planning. Stride’s murder may be just such a case,
and this fact could explain the anomalies in that particular murder, such as
the comparatively early hour of the event. If Aaron was indeed the killer, then
he was only about one quarter-mile away from his residence, in a somewhat
respectable area, inhabited mostly by Poles and Germans.
Now let us examine the map again, assuming that Aaron was the killer, and that
his residence was 3 Sion Square. (See Figure 8.)
It is interesting to note that three of the murder sites are almost exactly
equidistant from Sion Square - Buck’s Row (Polly Nichols), Hanbury Street
(Annie Chapman), and Dorset Street (Mary Kelly) - and that Mitre Square (Kate
Eddowes) is only about 1/4 mile further out. Also note that the Berner Street
site (Liz Stride) and the George Yard site (Martha Tabram) are almost
equidistant from the center of the circle.
Early
Attacks
It
has been suggested that it is likely the Ripper committed early attacks on
women that preceded the canonical murders in the series. With this in mind, it
is interesting to look at the murder of Martha Tabram. The Tabram murder site
at George Yard and the Stride murder site at Dutfield’s Yard are quite nearly
equidistant from Sion Square, and thus represent the twp sites closest to
Aaron’s presumed address in 1888. (See Figure 8.) This is significant with
respect to Tabram, as the FBI report postulated that ‘the first attack in a
serial homicide was likely to occur closest to the offender’s home’. This
theory has never been proved empirically. However, D Kim Rossmo has shown that
in 50% of serial murder cases, the first murder occurs within a mile of the
offender’s home. It should be noted that this result might more accurately
reflect modern criminal profiling, as many modern serial killers travel by car.
In any case we may theorize that Aaron Kosminski started out with a murder
closer to his home, and only later began traveling farther away from Sion
Square.
According to the testimony of Ellen Holland, Polly Nichols was last seen
walking east along Whitechapel High Street at the intersection of Osborn
Street. Given Kosminski’s probable residence at that time, this might be
thought of as ‘walking into the lion’s den’, so to speak. One might imagine
Kosminski met Nichols near Sion Square on Whitechapel High Street, and then
accompanied her to Buck’s Row.
Likely
Getaway Routes
Next
we shall consider the probable getaway routes from Buck’s Row and from Mitre
Square, as indicated on the map. The piece of apron found in Goulston Street
indicates the most likely getaway route from the Eddowes murder, and has been
generally interpreted as an indication of the direction to the killer’s
residence. Likewise, it has been suggested that the Buck’s Row getaway route
was to the south, and that the Woods Buildings alley is ‘a very likely escape
route through which Jack the Ripper fled after murdering Mary Ann Nichols a few
yards away in Buck’s Row’.29 As
shown on the map, both of these proposed routes lead towards the center of the
circle - Sion Square. The route from Mitre Square avoids the busy intersection
of Aldgate High Street and Houndsditch; the escape from Buck’s Row crosses
Whitechapel Road where one can become lost in the dark, maze-like streets
around London Hospital and New Road. (See Figure 9.)
I would like to add that although the maps and techniques I have used above are
not scientific, in a general way, by looking at the maps, many incidental
circumstantial bits of evidence ‘make sense’ using the model of Jack the Ripper
residing at 3 Sion Square.
An
Informant?
It
is perhaps relevant to refer to Stephen Ryder’s recent discovery of a letter to
Robert Anderson concerning a woman who said: ‘she has or thinks she has a
knowledge of the author of the Whitechapel murders. The author is supposed to
be nearly related to her, and she is in great fear lest any suspicions should
attach to her and place her and her family in peril.’ As Ryder points out: ‘As
this is the only letter within his entire surviving correspondence [of
Anderson’s] having anything to do whatsoever with the Whitechapel murders, one
might assume that this item held particular significance for Mr Anderson’.30
We now know that Anderson claimed to have solved the Ripper case, and that his
suspect was the Polish Jewish hairdresser, later identified by Swanson as
‘Kosminski’. Is it possible, then, that Anderson saved this letter because it
was the initial tip that led to the Ripper’s capture? The female mentioned
could have been one of Aaron’s sisters. It should also be noted that earlier
Anderson had stated that ‘his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him
up to justice’ - this referring probably to the results of the October 1888
house-to-house search. One can imagine the sorts of domestic quarrels that
might have ensued over this topic among the Lubnowski and the Abrahams families
if they did indeed suspect (or even know) that Aaron was the Ripper. However,
it is only fair to point out that Ryder believed the woman in the letter was
not a relative of Kosminski but of Montague Druitt. At this time, the woman’s
identity and that of the suspect mentioned in the letter remains a mystery.
The
Lubnowski Family Moves and Changes Its Name
After
he was identified by a witness at the Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Hove,
Aaron was released into the care of his ‘brother’, and afterwards ‘was watched
by police (City CID) by day and night’. When Aaron was re-admitted to the Mile
End workhouse on 4 February 1891, his residence was listed as 16 Greenfield
Street, so we can assume the police surveillance was conducted on Aaron while
he was living at this address. By the time of the April 1891 census, the
Lubnowskis had moved from this address to 63 New Street, New Road. Thus, it
seems that the Lubnowskis moved from Greenfield Street soon after Aaron was
re-admitted to the Workhouse. This would seem a natural thing to do,
considering that the police were watching their house. In addition, the public
hysteria and anti-Semitism surrounding the Whitechapel murders would justify
the fear that their family might be ostracized or worse. This idea dovetails
well with the female informant’s statement that ‘suspicions should attach to
her, and place her and her family in peril.’
On the other hand, what if the Lubnowskis had moved not after, but shortly
before Aaron’s re-admission to the workhouse - ie, while the house was under
surveillance. This may account for Sims statement of ‘a Polish Jew of curious
habits and strange disposition who was the sole occupant of certain premises in
Whitechapel after night-fall.’
It is also interesting and perhaps relevant to note that the Lubnowskis
apparently changed their name at this time, as they are listed in the 1891
census as ‘L Cohen’. By the 1901 census, their name is again listed as
Lubnowski. Later, they changed their last name to ‘Lubnowski-Cohen’. Did the
Lubnowski family move and change its name because of a desire to become
disassociated with Aaron and the public scrutiny attached with such a prominent
suspect in the case?
Conclusion
It
is difficult for a rational person to comprehend the motivations for sexually
motivated murder. Indeed, if we were to attempt to find a rational motivation
for the Whitechapel murders, we would almost certainly be barking up the wrong
tree. Instead, the underlying motivations for serial murder lie in a swamp-like
maze of desires, fear, confusion, and sometimes insanity. It has been proposed
that a characteristic of serial killers is an underdeveloped super-ego, which
is defined by Freud as ‘the faculty that seeks to police what it deems
unacceptable desires’ - in other words, the part of the brain which represents
the ‘rules’ of the external society, and which keeps ‘normal’ people from
acting out violent and sexual desires unchecked. In some cases, if a serial
killer was raised in environment rife with violence, he ‘learns’ that violent
behavior is acceptable. This may have been the case for Aaron Kosminski, who
witnessed broad societal acceptance and approval of the violence perpetrated on
a vast scale against the Jews in Russia.
On a conscious level, Aaron may have felt the desire to get back at society for
the injustices that were committed against his community when he was an
adolescent and teenager. On a more subconscious level, he may have identified
with the people who assaulted, raped, and murdered Jews during the pogroms.
Later, he may have played out these attacks over and over in his mind, in a
sort of fantasy, with himself in the role of aggressor. Also, the Goulston
Street graffito can be interpreted as some sort of reference, subconscious or
otherwise, to the scapegoating of the Jews, which directly preceded the
outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Aaron’s early teenage years.
As there is very likely a sexual nature to the attacks, we can assume that the
killer had a deep hatred for women. We may speculate that the seed for this
hatred was planted when Aaron witnessed rapes or sexual assaults during the
pogroms of 1881. Various other explanations are possible, however, including
the possibility of sexual desire felt toward his older sisters, the absence of
a father figure, or a domineering mother. We do know that Aaron threatened to
attack one of his sisters with a knife. We must also remember that Macnaghten
said there ‘were many circs (circumstances) connected’ with Kosminski that
‘made him a strong suspect,’ and also that ‘he had a great hatred of women,
with strong homicidal tendencies.’ There is no reason to suspect that
Macnaghten was lying when he said this, but as there is no further
documentation to support these statements, we must assume that some of the
police files on Kosminski have been lost. Ultimately, we are left in the dark
as to the root cause of Kosminski’s supposed misogyny.
The blood libel myth was revived amidst an environment of increasing racism,
social unrest and chaos, and one may contemplate the effect that it would have
had on Aaron Kosminski, especially as he was just experiencing the onset of
sexual desires associated with puberty. It is possible that the Aaron’s
memories of blood libel mythology later become intermingled with visions of the
attacks he witnessed in the pogroms, giving birth to an isolated fantasy life
dominated by an obsession with violence. These subconscious memories were then
realized in the Ripper’s mature modus operandi and signature. It is also
possible that Aaron was conscious of repeating the methods referred to in blood
libel mythology - throat slitting, strangulation, and piercing the torso
(evisceration) - and that he was conscious of the ritual nature of his attacks,
a Jew avenging his people by attacking Christian women of the ‘unfortunate’
class.
In brief, many aspects of Aaron Kosminski’s background and psychoses seem to
fit the profile of a sexual murderer, and of Jack the Ripper specifically. In
1988, the hundredth anniversary of the crimes, John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood
presented the first criminal profile of Jack the Ripper on the television
documentary The Secret Identity of Jack the
Ripper. They said that the Ripper was
probably: a mentally disturbed white male from a lower social class; in his
mid- to late 20s; raised by a dominant female figure who consorted with
different men (Golda was married at least twice); employed in a menial job and
had poor personal hygiene and appeared disheveled; had no surgical expertise;
lived in the locale of the murders; and did not commit suicide after the
murders stopped. This all fits Aaron closely. Other aspects of the FBI profile
of Jack the Ripper cannot be confirmed based on the facts known about Aaron
Kosminski - for example that the Ripper was a quiet loner who hated and feared
women, who was abused as a child, possibly sexually, who drank in pubs prior to
the murders, and who set fires and abused animals as a child. But there is
nothing in the FBI profile of Jack the Ripper that contradicts Aaron’s known
profile, or that rules him out as a suspect.
Finally, we must not forget that ‘Kosminski’ was identified by a witness.
According to Sir Robert Anderson, the suspect was ‘unhesitantly’ identified by
‘the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer.’ Interestingly, he
also notes that the suspect ‘knew he was identified’. The identity of this
witness is still a subject of much heated debate amongst Ripperologists. It is
clear that the witness was a ‘fellow Jew’, as this is the reason, according to
both Anderson and Swanson, that he refused to give evidence in court. In my
opinion, the witness was probably Joseph Lawende, the Jewish commercial
traveler who witnessed a man and a women talking at the entrance to Church
Passage in Duke Street just prior to the murder of Catherine Eddowes. The other
most likely candidate is Israel Schwartz, who witnessed a man attacking Liz
Stride in Berner Street, just before she was murdered some 10 feet away in
Dutfield’s Yard. The only other possible Jewish witness is Joseph Levy, who was
with Lawende and also witnessed the same couple standing at Church Passage; but
Levy claimed to have not got a good look at the man, and said ‘I passed on,
taking no further notice of them’. In the final analysis, the identity of the
witness is perhaps not relevant for the purpose of this article. The simple
fact is that the suspect ‘Kosminski’ was identified by someone described as
‘the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer.’
It is of course impossible to reach conclusions about many of the theories I
have put forward in this article. Possibly further research will uncover facts
about Aaron Kosminski’s past that support his candidacy as a suspect in the
case. In my opinion, the most profitable line of research at this point would
be try to locate specific documentation related to Aaron’s childhood: what
happened to his father, information about his mother and other members of the
family, and where specifically the Kosminskis were living in Russia. For
example, if it was discovered that Aaron’s father was killed during the
pogroms, or that members of the Kosminski family were attacked, concrete
information of this type would be a major breakthrough, and would go a long way
to supporting the theory that Aaron Kosminski is indeed the suspect most likely
to have been Jack the Ripper.
The author gives special thanks to Paul
Begg, Chris George, D Kim Rossmo, Stephen P Ryder, Chris Phillips, Scott
Nelson, Robert Charles Linford, and Chris Scott.
References
1
Evans, Stewart P. ‘Kosminski and
the Seaside Home’ at casebook.org/dissertations/dst-koz.html
2 Begg, Paul. Private email
correspondence.
3 Casebook Message Board,
‘Reconsidering Aaron Kosminski’
at casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/11394.html
‘Beyond the Pale: The History of
Jews in Russia’, www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/index.html
4 Ritter, Leonora. ‘Nineteenth Century
Russia.’ Charles Sturt University-Mitchell. (1998)
5 Kniesmeyer J, and D Brecher. Beyond
the Pale: The History of Jews in
Russia’ On-line Exhibit. (1995). www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/guide-cond.html
6 Ibid.
7 Klier, John D, and Shlomo Lambroza,
eds. Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence
in Modern Russian History. Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1992.
8 Rev WC Stiles, ‘Account of Pogroms
of 1902.’ At www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpogroms.htm
9 Aronson, Michael. ‘The Anti-Jewish
Pogroms in Russia in 1881.’ In: Klier
and Lambroza, 44-61
10 Rossmo, D Kim. Geographic Profiling.
Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press,
1999.
11 ‘The Blood Libel.’ At pnews.org/bio/blood.shtml
12 Ressler, Robert, Ann W Burgess, and
John Douglas. Sexual Homicide,
Patterns and Motives. New York: The
Free Press, 1988, 20.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 21.
15 Ibid., 23.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., 24.
18 Bundy, Ted, interview with James C
Dobson, January 24, 1989. At
pureintimacy.org/gr/intimacy/understanding/a0000082.cfm
19 Ressler et al, 36.
20 Ibid., 40–41.
21 Ibid., 31.
22 Ibid., 84.
23 Infoplease, encyclopedia entry on
‘Schizophrenia.’ At www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0843952.html
24 Seigler, Erin. casebook.org message
boards.
25 Bundy, Ted, interview with James C
Dobson, op cit.
26 Severn, Natalie. On: casebook.org
message boards, ‘Reconsidering Aaron
Kosminski.’ At casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/11394.html
27 Begg, Paul. Private email
correspondence.
28 Morrison, Arthur G. ‘Whitechapel.’
The Palace Journal, 24 April 1889.
At www.casebook.org/victorian_london/whitechapel3.html
29 ‘The Modern East End,’ by Johnno
casebook.org/victorian_london/jpphotos.html
30 Ryder, Stephen P. ‘Emily and the
Bibliophile: A Possible Source for
Macnaghten’s Private Information.’
At casebook.org/dissertations/dst-emily.html
Other
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Kent,
Joshua David. ‘Using Functional Distance Measures When Calibrating
Journey-to-Crime Distance Decay Algorithms.’ BS thesis, Louisiana State
University, 2003. etd02.lnx390.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-1103103-095701/unrestricted/THESIS.pdf
London, Jack. People of the Abyss, 1903 at
sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/
Nelson, Scott. ‘Kosminski’s Relatives’, at
www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-kosrelatives.html
Petherick, Wayne. ‘Criminal Profiling’,
www.crimelibrary.com/criminology/criminalprofiling2/
Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carrol and
Graf, 2002.
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