I
suppose the greatest problem with the real Jack the Ripper story is
that the ending is so unsatisfying.
A
poet of the age predicted, "They've captured Leather Apron now,
if guilty you'll agree; he'll have to meet a murderer's doom, and
hang upon a tree" But the murderer was never identified, never tried, never publicly punished, never danced at the
end of a rope. But then, that is the horror of real murder. The
victim cannot be recovered, nor can the victim's loved-ones be made
whole. The horror of a real murder usually dies only when the
killer, and those who loved the victim, die.
Not
so with Jack the Ripper.
His horror has so far survived 130 years after his last victim bled
out in a dark and dirty corner of the dark and dirty Whitechapel. Part of
the reason for the longevity of his horror is the photo (above) taken in
the tiny sad room at 13 Miller's Court, Dorset Street.
Part of the
reason is that the newspapers sold 1 million additional papers a day
during the “Autumn of Terror”: - August, September, October and
November of 1888.
And part of the reason is that the
historical-fictional Jack the Ripper has proved too profitable to let
him die. But the police in 1888 were dealing with a real killer.
Detective
Inspector Edmund Reid (above, front center), one the smartest officers in Whitechapel, reminded readers of his memoir what the police knew by middle of
September. “The perpetrator,” he wrote, “...was in the habit
of using a certain public-house, and of remaining there until closing
time...all of the victims were all of the same class... and living
within a quarter of a mile of each other; all were murdered within
half a mile area; all were killed in the same manner...he (the
killer) lived in the district.” So the police - well at least
those below the management level - were not fools. They knew who they
were looking for. But finding him was not their top priority.
After
the Hanbury Street murder of Annie Chapman on 8 September,
Whitechapel and Spitafield were flooded with uniformed Constables and
plain clothes Detectives, even employing the Whitechapel Vigilantes.
As Commissioner Sir Charles Warren had said in his petulant self
defense written in September and
published in the November Murray’s Magazine, “...the primary
object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime...” And
that was what the police concentrated on – preventing the killer
from killing again. And they did.
For
14 days – Friday, 15 September, to Friday, 28 September –
Kosminski found the police foiling his searches for another victim,
until he was forced outside his hunting grounds to Aldegate, where
the public/police net was thinner.
There, in the early hours of
Sunday, 30 September, he murdered Catherine Eddowes in Mitre
Square. But even then Warren's plan worked.
The police were able to
focus on Aaron
Kosminski, living with his brother just down the block on Goulston
Street (above) from where the Eddowes bloody apron was found. Then, during
all of October, the “tails” which Chief
Inspector Donald Swanson
pinned on Kosminski kept him from claiming another victim -
...at least until 8
November when Kosminski was able to isolate Mary Kelly in her room –
earlier in the evening, before the pubs had closed. And even then he
did not kill until closer to dawn, when Kelly's singing, as reported
by a neighbor, finally stopped.
The
police never had solid evidence to arrest Aaron Kosminski. But Aaron
Kosminski was still alive and no longer killing. Why? First
there was Abraham, Aaron's
older brother. Living with the first paternal role model Aaron had
known since his father's death in 1874 would have been a stabilizing
influence.
And second, whoever the Ripper was, he was insane but he
wasn't nuts. He did not want to get caught. He had always retained
enough control to avoid witnesses and the police, to delay his
gratification until the he was certain of his own safety. And by
January or February of 1889, with no further killings, the police
tails of Aaron Kosminski must have been superseded by more pressing
matters.
And
third, accepting Special Agent Douglas' profile, the Ripper was
extremely passive until the assault. He needed the prostitute to
initiate contact. He needed alcohol to lower his own inhibitions. And
he needed the victim to be unconscious or dead before he could show
the knife and penetrate her with it. This speaks of a man so
repressed he might stand in the rain rather than asking to come
inside. He was a paranoid schizophrenic but a high functioning one,
as was proven by his arrest on a Saturday in December of 1889 for
walking an
unmuzzled dog in Cheapside.
Charles
Dickens called Cheapside (above) “...the
busiest thoroughfare in the world...Here the two great arteries of
Oxford Street...the Strand and Fleet Street from the
west...Bishopsgate and Leadenhall from the east....Moorgate on the
north and King William Street on the south, are all united...” The
Cheapside Street market had been in existence for hundreds of years,
but during Victorian times, says Dickens, it was “...almost
monopolized by men's shops: hosiers and shirt makers, tailors and
tobacconists, and above all by jewelers.”
In fact, says Dickens,
“The stranger will be particularly struck with the absence of
women...in Cheapside (above)...there is scarcely a woman to be seen to every
hundred men.” It would appear an odd place for a homicidal maniac
with a particular hatred for women to be walking his dog, muzzled or
unmuzzled.
Having
been arrested, the 23 year old Aaron Kosminski made a competent
presentation in court. He argued that since he did not own the dog he
was not responsible for muzzling it. Like arguing a parking ticket in
court, logic was of course no help But when the magistrate found him guilty and
assessed a 10 shilling fine, Aaron was quick enough to argue that it
was the Jewish sabbath, and his faith forbid him from handling money.
He presented a normal enough image that he was allowed to go free,
returning on Monday to pay the fine. As Scientific American pointed
out in September 2014, “...very few serial killers suffer from any
mental illness to such a debilitating extent that they are considered
to be insane by the criminal justice system.”
Seven
months later, on Saturday,
12 July, 1890,
this same man was meekly led by his brother-in-law to the Mile End
Workhouse (above),
where he was described as having been “insane for the last two
years.” It
must have been hard for a Jew to turn their own blood relative over
to the charity of Christians, but Arron was hearing voices, had
stopped washing and refused food from any person's hand because he
feared being poisoned, preferring to eat discards from the gutter.
Aaron was granted admission. However 3 days later, either because
the doctors suspected he was malingering, or because he fooled them,
his brother Abraham took him home again.
It
was not to last. On 4 February of 1891 the police brought him back
to the Workhouse. The same issues were mentioned – not working, not
washing and eating from the gutter – but this time the police said
he had threatened his sister Martha with a knife. His family did not
challenge his admission, and 3 days later, on 7 February, 1891 he
was transferred to the Jewish wing of the infamous long corridors of
the Colony Hatch Asylum for the “pauper insane” in Barnet, North
London (above). The paperwork justification for transfer has not survived
the century, but we do know Aaron Kosminski arrived with both hands
tied behind his back.
Colony
Hatch adhered to the Victorian belief that all problems are better
with organization – from morning calisthenics to regimented meals.
The 2,000 patients were also expected to work, in the tailor shop,
the garden or just washing floors. Since most of the patients came
from the East End the asylum had a kosher kitchen and a Yiddish
interpreter. The records at Coolny Hatch have survived and they detail
Aaron's 3 year transgression from “apathetic” to "Incoherent,
at times excited and violent." The staff noted, “He declares
that he is guided and...controlled by an instinct that informs his
mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses
food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the
gutter for the same reason”
Eventually
the violence became predominant, and Aaron's last stop was the
complex of buildings at the Levesden Asylum For Imbeciles in Abbots
Langley, 20 miles northwest of London (above).
Aaron survived here for a
quarter of a century, having spent most of his life
institutionalized. The staff noted, "Patient does not know his
age or how long he has been here."
Aaron Kosminski died of a
gangrene infection at the age of 54 years, on Monday, 24 March, 1919.
At the time of his death he weighed just 96 pounds. But he lived longer than any of his victims.
Kosminski
even out-lived his would-be nemesis, Detective
Inspector Edmund Reid (above). After retiring from the Metropolitan Police in
1896, with over 50 awards and commendations, including being named a
Druid of Distinction,
Reid moved to Hampton-on-Sea, atop the chalk cliffs of England's east
coast. Here he became an English eccentric.
He renamed his home
“Reid's Ranch”, and painted the outside walls with castle
battlements and cannon aimed at the ocean. He opened a stand in his
garden shed (above), from which he sold postcards – mostly featuring
himself - and lemon-aide and wrote crank letters to the local
newspaper. He died at the age of 61, on 5 December, 1917, the same
year he finally married.
Thus
I end my version of the story of Jack the Ripper – just another
human being, more unhappy and violent than most, but just another
human being.
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