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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » General Discussion » A?R Methodology and Research Thread « Previous Next »

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Archive through December 25, 2005Diana 50 12-25-05  12:28 am
Archive through December 29, 2005Robert Charles Linfo50 12-29-05  6:38 am
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Bob Hinton
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Username: Bobhinton

Post Number: 467
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 9:57 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Natalie,

Yes I understand that, but the point I am making is if we try to look at the 'whole' of the thing at the time of commission, how do we know that the 'whole' isn't going to be expanded at a later date?

For example if you applied this method to investigating the Pitchfork murders you would have been completely off the mark as he took a considerable break between one set of murders and another.

The only logical way of investigation is to look at each individual point and occurrence and only if they can be irrefutably linked, gather the strands together.

Dave,

The problem with GWF Hegel is that he was very much a product of the influences of his time and the lessons of history. One of his favourite theories was that “in history everything happens according to reason.” The problem with applying that to something like the Whitechapel Murders is the ‘reason’ employed by the killer is so enmeshed in his own deep psychosis that others who are not similarly tainted would not recognise it.

It may be fun to dig up the ideas of these old philosophers, but trying to apply them to what is often referred to as ‘the real world’ doesn’t get you very far.


Bob
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Scott Nelson
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Post Number: 170
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 12:19 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Further discussion on Kosminski's movements and police surveillance:

In 1890 Aaron was being to some extent cared for by his extended family, and that various groups were more or less overseeing him at various times. It would be nice if we could conclusively determine which family he stayed with, when and for how long. Can there be any reasonable approximation of where he was before he went into the workhouse the first time? During the Terror? In the years following his immigration? Is there any way we could trace his movements from immigration to his first stay at the workhouse?

The family may have moved around during the time period in question. For example, Swanson says only that “Kosminski” was watched at his brother’s house, he doesn’t necessarily mean that the brother and his family was also there. The police may have arranged with the brother to watch Kosminski, as he (Aaron) stayed there alone. The police would have to make arrangements for new living accommodations for the family. Much of the lack of information on Aaron’s whereabouts is because of the scant written records, and most of them consist of second or possibly, third-hand information. Aaron and his sisters came to London in late 1881 or early 1882 (the later in his burial record), so Aaron would not have appeared in the 1881 census. Unfortunately, no addresses for Aaron are recorded, so there doesn’t appear to be any known way to trace Aaron’s movements just before, during, and after the murders. The reason is probably because he was a “dependent”, who apparently never worked; therefore he would not be listed in the postal directories. Extensive searches were done of the directories and local registries during the period from 1886 to 1892, and thus far no “Aaron Kosminski” pops up anywhere.
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Scott Nelson
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Post Number: 171
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 12:34 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Comments on the Woolf Kirsch discussed by Robert above: This could conceivably be Aaron's younger brother. In the 1891 census Wolf Kirsch is listed as 21 years of age, married, and a tailor born in Poland. Not only did extended families share the same roof, but it was common for recent immigrants from the Continent to share premises with other immigrant families who spoke the same language. One discrepancy is that Kozminsky/Cash is described as "natural born British" whereas Woolf Kirsch was born in Poland.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 5454
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 12:54 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Yes Scott, that's why I was wondering if the one who changed his name could be a son born after 1901. However, I haven't found anything promising on Free BMD.

Robert
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2752
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 1:16 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Valuable findings here Scott and Robert.

Bob,
I can see that the methodology you propose,which tackles its problems one at a time, may have
more chance of providing successive approximations to the truth .As more evidence is gathered each piece of evidence may then be tested separately resulting in an gradual overall improvement on what has gone before and it doesnt
depend on a block theory that may be built with less well tested evidence.
I am still thinking about it!
Natalie
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Robert W. House
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Username: Robhouse

Post Number: 303
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 1:19 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Scott,
I think Aaron probably worked at some point in London. The statement that Aaron had "not attempted any kind of work for years", seems to imply that at some point he did work, as a hairdresser. My assumption is that he had not worked for years (3? 5?) prior to Feb 1891 when he was committed.

RH
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Bob Hinton
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 6:22 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Natalie,

Spot on - very well put.
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2754
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 6:49 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Bob,
It was a sort of "paraphrasing" -I had had to look up "Hegel" and stumbled across a description of modern analytical empiricism which tallied with what you were saying.I was impressed!But Bob-I am out of my depth with this-I know nothing about the different philosophies but this method from what I can understand of it [from a book] appealed because it suggested an objective method that may reveal reasonably precise answers that may in turn lead us to some new discoveries -possibly!
Natalie
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 5463
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 7:10 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Funny story about Hegel, from Heine :

"One beautiful starry-skyed evening, we two stood next to each other at a window...and I talked of the stars with sentimental enthusiasm and called them the abode of the blessed. The master, however, grumbled to himself : 'The stars, hum! hum! the stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky.' For God's sake, I shouted, then there is no happy locality up there to reward virtues after death? He, however, staring at me with his pale eyes, said cuttingly : 'So you want to get a tip for having nursed your sick mother and for not having poisoned your dear brother?' "

(quoted in Walter Kaufmann, "Nietzsche. Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist")

Robert
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Spiro
Detective Sergeant
Username: Auspirograph

Post Number: 56
Registered: 9-2005
Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 9:42 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Further on the practical application of Hegelian and dialectic Philosophy to the crimes of the Ripper and the analogies of the starry skies to the perception of wholeness from the myriad of parts, here's a parable on the deduction of the true nature of reality by Sherlock Holmes:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping expedition into the woods. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they adjourned to their tent,lay down for the night,and went to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend leading him out into the night air. "Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars."

"What does that tell you?" Holmes asked.

Watson pondered for a minute. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and
potentially billions of planets.Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.Horologicaly, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter
past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.What does it tell you?"

Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. "Watson, my good fellow, somebody has stolen our tent."

(Message edited by auspirograph on December 29, 2005)
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c.d.
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Post Number: 160
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Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:07 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"Hamlet", Act I, Scene V.

c.d.
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Bob Hinton
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Post Number: 473
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 5:43 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Natalie,

I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing anything about obscure philosophies.

Two brothers once worked on a farm, one went to university and became a doctor of Philosophy, and the other stayed a farmer.

One day the Philosopher came to visit his brother and extolled the virtues of his calling.

“Do you know’ he said ‘ I have studied the worlds greatest minds from ancient times right up to the modern greats. That gives me the ability to discuss matters of intellectual mystery with all of my peers - something you will never be able to do.”

The other brother thought for a minute.

“You’re right of course, while you were studying the great thinkers of the ages I was merely looking at the weather, digging the fields and planting crops. Do you know what that gives me the ability to do?”

“No” replied the philosopher, helping himself to a mound of vegetables to add to his plate.

“Feed myself – something you will never be able to do!”

Bob
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Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi

Post Number: 3506
Registered: 7-2003
Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 7:49 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Bob- Good one!!!!

Am put in mind of the wonderful adage-

"Give a man a fish....you feed him for a day

Teach a man to fish....you feed him for life"

Suzi
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 5465
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 10:32 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Ancestry has this one :

Name: KO_MINSKY, Wolf
Record Type: Births
Quarter: March
Year: 1910
District: St George in the East

County: London Surrey
Volume: 1c
Page: 273



The only way to find out would be to get the certificate.

Robert
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2755
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:00 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Bob,

A good story- and true!

I like what Shelley said about philosophers too-[
they] merely "interpret the world- the need is to change it"---!

Robert,this looks interesting...

Natalie
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 5468
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:03 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Natalie

I thought it was Marx who said that (about philosophers, I mean, not Kozminsky).

Robert
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2756
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:13 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I shall have to look that one up then Robert!I sometimes get mixed up with Red Shelley and Marx!
Natalie
Quite right!10 out of 10 Robert.
Well what was it Shelley famously said?Something about poets being the real legislators of the world?!?
Sounds like Shelley or Blake.
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert

Post Number: 5470
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:27 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Nats, I think Shelley said, "Help! This water's taller than I am."

Robert
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2758
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:52 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thats right Robert----wasnt taking his legislative powers too seriously by all accounts!
Natalie
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Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi

Post Number: 3523
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Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 11:14 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Just found a beauty!
Algernon Sidney 1622-1683

'Tis not necessary to light a candle to the sun'

Suzi




John Keats1795-1821
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn

Post Number: 2764
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Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 12:41 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

... or maybe think of Shelley"s line

"if Winter comes can Spring be far behind...."

except- you cant really tell any more whats typical for Winter and whats typical for Spring! -you can have daffodils bathing themselves happily in the warm sunshine in the morning and lying battered by hailstorms and flattened by heaps of snow in the afternoon!
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AAR
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Posted on Monday, December 19, 2005 - 5:40 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Probably the best post ever made by Mr. Radka, well done.
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jason_connachan
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Posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - 5:45 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Scott Nelson

I know you werent the orignal theorist behind kosminski/Cohen, but your post on Wednesday, December 28th on this thread was excellent.

Reading posts such as the one mentioned above, makes me think we can get within touching distance of a solution.
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N. Beresford.
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 9:05 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

so which is better - to feed yourself or be able to think?
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Bob Hinton
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Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 10:46 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Beresford,

Without feeding one quickly loses the ability to think!

Bob
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Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi

Post Number: 3532
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Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 4:26 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

As they said in Proverbs:

"Give me neither poverty nor riches;feed me with food convenient for me"


AND

of course the best one..

Ecclesiastes-

"A man hath no better thing under the sun,than to eat,and to drink,and to be merry"

This is what happens when you pick up the Oxford Book of Quotations!

Suzi
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Jennifer Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
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Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 5:27 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

don't you have to be able to think in order to feed yourself.

its all relative, isnt it?
"The sun'll come out,Tomorrow,So ya gotta hang on Til tomorrow, Come what may"



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Scott Nelson
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Post Number: 172
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Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 12:42 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Possibly anybody in the Kosminski family clan could have been taking care of Aaron and making workhouse arrangements and deliberately giving misinformation on the record books. If Aaron went into the workhouse from 16 Greenfield Street, then, maybe the people who accompanied him at his admission said that he was coming in from 3 Sion Square instead. And if he hadn’t worked for years, why waste time sending him to a Workhouse for rehabilitation? Wasn’t the purpose of a workhouse for production? Was July 1890 actually Aaron Kosminski’s first Workhouse visit?

The family may have tried to care for or rehabilitate Aaron in the Spring of 1890, but then after he was discharged into the care of his brother after the first workhouse stay, it became apparent that it was a useless endeavor. It certainly isn’t out of the question that many unstable people were in fact, admitted to Workhouses. A good many were probably deemed “insane” by Victorian definitions, and sent back out on the streets. I would also note that both the Abrahams and Lubnowskis were raising young children at the time, and that neither family were too keen on having Aaron around their house. The Sims reference to “a Pole of curious habits and strange disposition who was the sole occupant of certain premises in Whitechapel after night-fall” could suggest that his relatives came to visit or check up on him at daytime. But when it came time give information to workhouse/asylum authorities, they preferred to say that he lived alone.

Perhaps Aaron’s relatives had tried to give him a last chance to work - to force him to be productive under coercive conditions. But if true, why didn't they take these steps before he became seriously disturbed? Anderson may have wanted the same authorities who examined Aaron back in July to look at him again to see if there was any discernable change - further mental deterioration, etc. This may have been done to see if the police could legally interrogate Aaron or force some kind of confession. But when it was determined at the workhouse that he was a lunatic, Anderson had no choice but to send him to the asylum. During the brief period of time that he was being watched at his brother’s house, Anderson was likely conferring with the medical authorities and the reluctant witness in a last ditch effort to bring a criminal charges against him. When it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to happen, Kosminski goes to the asylum.

July 1890 was probably Aaron’s first Workhouse visit and it was probably at this time that the Workhouse authorities either A) examined Aaron, found him to be an unsuitable candidate for the Workhouse and relinquished him to his family, or B) Contacted the police, who came to the Workhouse and interviewed the authorities and family relatives, before alerting Anderson. If (B), then Anderson would have quickly arranged for the Hove Identification and Aaron would have been taken away (this does not explain how they were able to contact the witness so quickly and send him to Hove as well.) But would the police return him to his brother’s house and watch him for 6 months, until he was returned to the Workhouse again in February 1891? This doesn’t make sense and a six month surveillance could amount to naught. I favor something along the lines of (A), where his behavior culminates to the point of the knife threat (I would say sometime in January to early February 1891), when the “brother” contacts the Workhouse authorities or police directly and they take him first to the Workhouse, then to the Seaside Home, after which he is returned to the brother’s house (without the brother’s family) and watched “for a very short time”—probably only 2 or 3 days, maybe a week at the most, before he goes into the asylum.
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Lindsey C Hollifield
Chief Inspector
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Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 1:06 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Suz and Jenni,

Umm.. personal discussion of any kind is not allowed on this thread. Sorry.

Go off and do your thinking elsewhere.

Thank you.

Suz & Jenni,

Lyn x



Just keeping the rif-raf out
**Nicotine withdrawls are evil** but being a psychopath is much more exiting.. (Dan is really really scared -- it's cutness^^)
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David Radka
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Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 10:16 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Perhaps Aaron’s family and Levy wanted to fool the police into thinking Aaron was JtR when they knew he wasn’t. This situation would apply if the real JtR were among them (not Aaron) and they thought that if the police would take the bait on Aaron they’d leave the real murderer--and thus the rest of them--alone. The government would not be able to prosecute Aaron, as he’d be judged legally insane. This could shed insight on the puzzling admission to the workhouse. They’d essentially be using the admission to “launder” their showing the police the bait concerning Aaron.

In those days, workhouses served to economically utilize the capacity of thousands of people who were displaced from their traditional occupations by the Industrial Revolution. Many of them were agricultural or similar workers, and would wind up in inner city slums. They had lost everything they had, and could only offer their unskilled labor in return for a place with a roof and enough food to survive. Workhouses were for sane, generally solid, but desperately poor people; they were not for disturbed people. It is difficult to imagine why Aaron’s relatives would attempt to get him admitted to a workhouse, since he was both mentally disturbed and he refused to work. Further, he had a place to live—with them. Additionally, if they had a place they weren’t catastrophically impoverished as were the workhouse class, and thus likely neither would Aaron be. He’d be about the least suited person in the workhouse, I’d think, and could be expected to generate a swift dismissal. His people would perhaps be able to get him cleaned up enough to pass the admission interview with their help, but after that he’d almost immediately be a square peg in a round hole in that environment. The inmates of workhouses didn’t need to be forced to work; that’s not why they were there. The workhouse admission strikes one as an act of desperation on the part of the family, but what could they have been desperate about?

If the family or Levy were to go forward to the police concerning Aaron’s potential candidacy as JtR, it would potentially put the police in the position of making inquiries as to their or his motivations. However if the workhouse gets in touch with the police, there may not be any reason to inquire beyond the workhouse setting. After Aaron began having problems administrators might have called his family back to discuss his dementia, and they might then have then informed them Aaron had threatened his sister and done other disturbed things. So from the presenting perspective, here is a man who won’t work, who is a Polish Jew, who is disturbed, who comes from the heart of the murder district, and who threatened his sister. Since he’s on the responsibility of the workhouse board, they call the Metropolitan police about him. This gets reported to Swanson and then to Anderson, and Anderson sees many of the parts fitting together concerning his prior conviction that the murderer was an insane Polish Jew whose family was protecting him from the police. He then sees a chance to be a hero and solve the case if he can get identifications, hence the Hove episode. Anderson transports Aaron and as many of the witnesses as he can get hold of, Levy, Schwartz, Lawende, Harris, the pipe man if he’s available, Caroline Maxwell, Hutchinson and anyone else who may have seen the Ripper to the Seaside Home. He confronts them with Aaron one at a time, and none but one recognizes the man. Levy immediately says he does, because he’s in the conspiracy. Hence Anderson’s odd conviction that his witness was “the only person to ever have had a clear view of the murderer.”

The problem with this scenario is the family and Levy don’t know going in if the police will handle the matter under the table. If it’s done publicly, i.e., if Aaron is arrested, there will be people speaking up who know that Levy is connected to the Kosminski family. They might have solved this problem, however, by consulting with Anderson immediately after the workhouse reported him to the police, and convinced him that they would help him concerning Aaron if he should be identified, provided the matter be kept private. If it all looks understandable enough from Anderson’s perspective going in, then it works. The successful duping of Anderson is driven by Anderson’s careerist instinct.

The only rationale I can think for the conspirators to risk the farm like this is being desperate. Something must have happened to convince them they had to act quickly and decisively to lead the police away from the truth, and end the matter. The conspirators could have had a falling out among themselves internally. Or perhaps, as Mr. Palmer has suggested, they had gotten wind that the City police had become interested in the real murderer.
David M. Radka
Author: "Alternative Ripperology: Questioning the Whitechapel Murders"
Casebook Dissertations Section
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Scott Nelson
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Post Number: 173
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Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 1:38 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

It would seem the City likely was staking out Aaron's family's house BEFORE the identification. This MAY be what Swanson is referring to when he uses the term "with difficulty." The difficulty would thus have been the spiriting of Aaron away outside the awareness of the watching City policemen. The alternative explanation is that the City didn't begin watching the house until AFTER the identification, having somehow gotten wind of the MET's interest in Aaron because of the identification, perhaps by someone at the Seaside Home leaking the information to them.

Swanson talks of the City CID watching the house after the identification, but he doesn't say that the City was NOT watching it before. When he says Aaron "was sent by us with difficulty," this may mean, as Begg has interpreted, that the Met (Anderson and Swanson) needed a means by which to deceive the City as to the identification.

The Sagar and Cox accounts of the City surveillance on the suspect probably pertained to the time period before he was hauled off to the Seaside Home. The MET had to covertly send him to Hove because Anderson and/or Swanson wanted total control over the transactions. This may have involved them secretly arranging for Aaron to be sent from the workhouse to Hove, as opposed to openly picking him up wherever he was living and taking him to Hove, especially since he may have been wandering in and out of his brother’s house (or shop?) at the time.
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Robert W. House
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Username: Robhouse

Post Number: 304
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 2:34 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

David,

I dont see that there is a shred of proof to document this conspiracy theory you are proposing. Additionally, you dont back up any of the statements you make in your thesis, such as why Levy is the witness, why one of Aaron's inlaws feels threatened by having to take care of Aaron,... nothing is backed up at all. You just throw stuff out there as if it were fact and dont give any support for it at all. I think it is likely that Aaron always lived with his sisters anyways, so I dont see how you are proposing that all of a sudden he is being thrust upon them. This conspiracy theory involving (essentially) a plot with Levy and the Kosminski families is one of the most absurd ideas I have heard in a long time... if this is the idea behind your A?R theory, I think it is just a further indication of how wrong you are. No matter how many times you drop the names of philosophers like Nietche and Cleckley does not change the fact that your theory is fundamentally absurd.
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Scott Nelson
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Username: Snelson

Post Number: 174
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 4:05 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Was the City CID also watching the Abrahams' house and did the Abrahams' think this was troublesome? It is hard to imagine they left Aaron behind-who would have taken care of him? He's been with family for some time, why would family abandon him? Perhaps they were desperately trying to get their distance from him in light of police interest, but one couldn't imagine an inhumane abandonment unless he were decidedly violent, and this characteristic does not appear in asylum records. Besides, wouldn't they want to keep tabs on him, to keep him from further killing? Perhaps Aaron simply rotated back to the Abrahams,' or in fact accompanied the Lubnowski's to New Street. Or, perhaps Aaron left the Lubnowskis to roam the streets of his own accord before they moved. This would be typical of a paranoid schizophrenic. Perhaps he'd dilapidated to the point that the family considered him harmless by then. Aaron may have become too troublesome for the Abrahams, so it was decided to have him live with his eldest sister and her family after he was discharged from the workhouse the first time . Unfortunately, there is no information which sister was threatened with a knife or when.

We shouldn’t forget the testimony of Jacob Cohen. And the suspect's masturbation was confirmed by Macnaghten (who probably got it from police files) and that Anderson in his correspondence to the Jewish Chronicle, was absolutely adamant that he engaged in such behavior and that it was cause of his madness (it probably wasn’t that uncommon a practice of lunatics or imbeciles – Hyam Hyams, a married man, practiced “self abuse” and “painted his walls with filth”. So too, did the cigar maker, Joseph Isaacs, who was briefly suspected by Abberline. It is harder to say what Kosminski’s mental condition was in late 1888, but he could still have been functional enough to engage prostitutes in conversation, then swiftly, calmly and noiselessly, kill them. He might have still been able to manage on his own in a reduced sense during the Terror. Aaron probably did go from household to household in between bouts of wandering the streets. I wouldn't think that any one group would consider it their sole responsibility to care for him in any event. An untreated paranoid schizophrenic is a lot to handle. It is still difficult to envision a 23-year old who had only lived in London for six years accomplishing what he allegedly did – killing that is. Was the murderer someone else? Another family member?
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B.M
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Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 3:45 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the name "Kosminski" pops up three times in connection with this case and each time without the name Aaron attached to it. What's the probability of that happening by coincidence?

So, maybe, just maybe, Aaron wasn't the "suspect"?

Perhaps the name of the suspect was just "Kosminski"? Maybe he was a magician or worked in the circus? :-))
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AIP
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Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 2:39 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

What a wonderful world of fantasy, speculation and 'secret arrangements' these theories inhabit. It's the METS v. the CITY each working in secrecy against the other. What is worrying is that unproven theorising such as 'Aaron (really?) was sent by us with difficulty' 'hauled off to the Seaside Home' 'had to covertly send him to Hove' are stated as fact - this really is too much. What Cox said makes it clear that the suspect wasn't Aaron Kosminski anyway. Wasn't the suspect someone other than Aaron anyway? Still plenty of 'could have,' 'may be', 'would have been', 'perhaps', 'somehow', 'probably' here to show what arrant speculation it all is. But didn't Mr. Nelson say that the case was solved?
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N. Beresford.
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Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 1:15 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sorry Bob,

I wasn't having a go - but 'I think therefore I am' springs to mind, so that if one cannot think one is not. (?)

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