Hi all
To clarify what was posted above, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson's marginalia notes have been known for some years so the supposed "revelation" with the news reports making out that it was startling new information that the Ripper could have been a Polish Jewish barber, Aaron Kosminski, is not actually new at all. In fact, the apparent belief of police officials Sir Robert Anderson and Donald Swanson that the Ripper was Kosminski is countered by information from other police officers and the likelihood is that Scotland Yard did not definitely know who the killer was.
The following which I wrote for the "I Beg" news section in Ripperologist 69 (July 2006) should add to what was posted above. By the way, I don't think James Maybrick was the Ripper and he is only in the frame because of the supposed hoax Diary that came to light in 1993 and that was apparently put together by local Liverpool forgers. There are though other valid Liverpool connections to the case through other suspects such as William Deeming, James Kelly, and Liverpool-born former prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (a long shot) as well as American quack Dr. Francis Tumblety, who is known to have lived in Liverpool in the 1870's.
Chris
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Chief Inspector Donald S Swanson’s personal copy of Sir Robert Anderson’s 1910 memoirs The Lighter Side of My Official Life containing his handwritten marginalia notes made on the Whitechapel murders, which had been on loan to Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum, has been officially donated to the museum. The notes are significant in naming a man named ‘Kosminski’ – generally thought to mean Polish-born Jewish barber Aaron Kosminski – as the unnamed suspect whom, Anderson claims, the Yard had under scrutiny as the man responsible for the Whitechapel murders.
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The ceremony at the Metropolitan Police’s famed ‘Black Museum’ took place on 13 July. Nevill Swanson, the great-grandson of Chief Inspector Swanson, had loaned the marginalia to the Black Museum and he formally handed it over to the museum in part to help publicise the Met’s newly refurbished museum.
Although Anderson was cautious in his memoirs, the handwritten notes are more explicit. Anderson wrote in his book: 'The only person who ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him, but he refused to give evidence against him.'
Swanson’s granddaughter, Mary Berkin, stated that the case was commonly discussed by the family. ‘It was general knowledge that my grandfather knew the name of the killer, and that there was no evidence except from a Jewish man who would not give evidence for ethical reasons,’ she said. It is thought by some students of the case that witness Joseph Lawende, who saw a man with fourth canonical victim Kate Eddowes on the night of her murder early on 30 September 1888, might have refused to testify that the man was a Jew known to him.
Swanson’s notes apparently clarify the situation: ‘Because the suspect was also a Jew, and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged, which he did not wish to be left on his mind. And after this identification, which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London.’ In clear handwriting, and initialled ‘DSS’ as in his annotations on Yard correspondence, Swanson added: ‘Kosminski was the suspect.’
‘My great-grandfather thought he got his man,’ Nevill Swanson said. ‘He would have thought he conducted his detecting job very well and reached a proper conclusion.’
Partly backing up the story, the name ‘Kosminski’ also appears with those of other suspects in the memorandum written in 1894 by Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten. On hand for the Scotland Yard ceremony was Ripperologist and documents expert Keith Skinner, who said there was no proof implicating any of the suspects that have been suggested. ‘We don't know why these names come into the frame. Swanson’s [notes] produce as many questions as they do answers,’ he said. Adding to the mystery, Skinner said was that although the Jewish suspect is said to have died, Aaron Kosminski died in a mental hospital in 1919.
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