Free Jack the Ripper by The Whitechapel Society Page A

‘unknown’ had originally been put, but then the words ‘self abuse’ were added, again in red ink.
    Both corrections are of major importance. The length of time Kosminski had been ill in 1891, is crucial in assessing the case against him as Jack the Ripper; while the term ‘self abuse’ dovetails with the ‘solitary vices’ noted in the Macnaghten Memorandum. Both are euphemisms for masturbation – then thought to be a cause of insanity – and appear to pinpoint Aaron Kosminski as Macnaghten, Anderson and Swanson’s Kosminski.
    The Colney Hatch records also disclose the statements of the physician who certified Kosminski insane, and a lay witness. The physician, Dr E.H. Houchin, testified that Kosminski claimed to know the movements of all mankind and was guided by an instinct which controlled him. The instinct told him to refuse food and drink from others and eat out of the gutter.
    The lay witness, a Jacob Cohen, endorsed this, adding that Kosminski had not worked for years and spent his days rambling around the streets, refusing to wash. He had threatened to kill his sister with a knife.
    The illness Dr Houchin was disclosing is known today as paranoid schizophrenia; a condition in which the sufferer believes he or she can hear voices instructing them on how to behave. These aural hallucinations can also progress to becoming visual as well. Such, indeed, was to be Aaron Kosminski’s fate, as noted in the records of the Leavesden home for imbeciles, to which he was transferred in 1894.
    Contrary to popular misconception, paranoid schizophrenics are not necessarily violent. Only a minority are likely to be so. Most are simply the sad victims of mental illness, and that is what the statements of Dr Houchin, and Jacob Cohen, indicate. The written records of his stays both at Colney Hatch and Leavesden tend to confirm this. He was not violent, simply pathetic. The only instance of aggression attributed to him came during his stay at Colney Hatch, when he picked up a chair and threatened an attendant with it; but, given the sometimes brutal nature of nineteenth-century asylums, this might have been a gesture of self-defence.
    Similarly, the only potentially violent act noted by the witnesses against him was his threatening his sister with a knife. A single instance of waving a knife around, during a heated domestic row, is hardly evidence of a violent persona. The asylum itself was plainly unimpressed, because the admission book notes that Kosminski was not considered dangerous to others.
    These facts are all that we know about Aaron Kosminski. The Macnaghten Memorandum says that ‘he had a great hatred of women with strong homicidal tendencies’ (Aberconway draft), that these hatreds were specifically directed at prostitutes, and that ‘there were many circumstances which made him a strong suspect’ (final draft).
    So, where is the evidence for this hatred of prostitutes, these homicidal tendencies? In this context, the crimes themselves cannot be used as substitutes to explain his motive. Instead, his motivation is supposed to explain why he committed the crimes. But there is nothing about Kosminski, that we know of, to suggest that he had homicidal inclinations towards anybody.
    What are the ‘circumstances’ Macnaghten refers to? Presumably he is talking about the identification, but as we shall see this is fraught with difficulty and did not result in Kosminski’s arrest anyway. The more one looks at Macnaghten’s comments, the more one is reminded of the infamous 1980’s political advert ‘where’s the beef?’ Essentially, the problem is that there are large gaps in our knowledge, because around half the Scotland Yard files are missing today.
    We move on to Anderson and Swanson’s recollections – the ‘Swanson Marginalia’ as they have come to be known. What we find is a whole ‘Pandora’s Box’ of questions.
    We are told that Kosminski’s family would not surrender him to gentile justice.