BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty - Six

 

I suppose the greatest problem with the real Jack the Ripper story is that the ending is 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 Aaron Kominski never stood  trial and was never even publicly identified as the Ripper.

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 all those who loved the victim and their friends and family, also 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 dark and dirty Whitechapel.  Part of the reason for the longevity of his horror is the photo (above) taken in the tiny sad little 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 through November of 1888. 

And part of the reason is that the 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 in his memoir what the police knew by middle of October, 1888.. “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 publicly identifying and arresting 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 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 from the Goulston Street entryway (above) where 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  – the only murder to take place indoors - and the only murder to have begun 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 enough evidence to arrest Aaron Kosminski, in much the same way the police were never able to arrest Arthur Leigh Allen of killing at least five victims between December 1967 and October 1969 in California, under the moniker of "Zodiac".   But if, back in 1888, 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. Even his method of killing was designed to protect himself.

 

And third, accepting Special Agent Douglas' modern 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. To such an individual, being constantly followed by detectives would have fueled a raging  paranoia, as would have his arrest on a Saturday in December of 1889 for walking an unmuzzled dog in Cheapside. 

Cheapside was not in Whitechapel.  Charles Dickens called Cheapside (above)  “...the busiest thoroughfare in the world..." 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. What had he been doing to inspire the police to arrest their prime Ripper suspect for such a petty crime?  We will never know.

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 and passive enough image that he was allowed to go free, returning on Monday to pay the fine. 

So this was the man who convinced Mary Jane Kelly to open her door to him, convinced Annie Chapman to go to the back yard with him, and convinced Martha Tabram to lead him up the unlighted stairs in George Yard. Martha's trip to her own death may have been the longest of all the victims, requiring the greatest confidence that the man who was about to murder her, posed no threat whatsoever.

Seven months later after this arrest, on Saturday, 12 July, 1890,  Aaron Kosminski 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. However 3 days later, either because the doctors suspected he was malingering, or because he fooled them, his brother Abraham had to take him home again.

It was not to last. On 4 February of 1891 the police brought  Aaron Kosminski back to the Workhouse. The same issues were mentioned – not working, not washing and eating from the gutter – but this time the police added he had threatened his sister Martha with a knife. Three days later, on 7 February, 1891 Aaron Kominski  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 regimentation - 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 Colony 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 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  Kosminski'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. Toward the end 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 (above).  At the time of his death he weighed just 96 pounds. But he lived longer than any of  his victims, and even his nemesis.

Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (above) retired 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 worked at becoming 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 - sold 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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BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty - Four

 

I believe, and the Whitechapel detectives believed,  the nightmare was born sometime between 1865 and 1881, in the little village of Kłodawa, in Russian Occupied Poland. This particular village, 100 miles west of Warsaw, was small and unremarkable. 

But the antisemitism preached and practiced by the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches left the 4,000 gentile citizens fearing, despising, and envious of the less than 1,000 Jews in their midst. The Yiddish speakers were residents but not citizens of Klodawa – their existence perhaps best described as schizophrenic.

Abram Jozef Kosminski was a “ petty bourgeois” Jewish tailor in Klodawa. While he and his wife Golda were financially successful enough to raise 4 children,  every spring saw more beatings, more rapes and the burning of more Jewish property, and every year the Jews of Klodawa found the laws less protective and more restrictive. 

The Czar, Alexander II,  freed the serfs in Russia, but when the Jews “beyond the Pale” appealed for fairness, the Czar's Premier responded, “The western frontier is open to you.” And in the late 1860's the Kosminski eldest son, Abraham – born about 1847 - took that advice and made the 700 mile journey to London. We do not know why he left by himself, but it seems likely family dynamics and not money was the deciding factor.

Limited by religious travel restrictions within Poland, the eldest Kominski daughter, Matilda, born in 1856, married a cousin on her mother's side, Morris Lubnowski.   The youngest daughter, Betsy, born in 1857, married another cousin - 4 years older than her - a tailor named Woolf Abrahams  This left the youngest child, Aaron Mordke Kosminski, born in 1865, alone in the home. 

It was in 1873 the 8 year old Aaron Kosminski, suffered what Doctor Eric Hickey has called a "destabilizing event(s)".  His father, Abram, died, or was killed. In the child's mind he abandoned Aaron. And violence over the next 8 years produced a nightmare which took over his life. We know none of the details. But we do know something about the horrors of his childhood, based on the work of John E. Douglas, employed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a “Profiler” of serial killers.

Special Agent Douglas described the man who murdered at least 5 women in Whitechapel during the “Autumn of Terror” in 1888 as having been "raised by a domineering mother and (an)...absent father. " Aaron Kominski's  family bonds were violated, under the double pressure of internal personalities and external violence. 

Agent Douglas believed the mother "drank heavily and enjoyed the company of many men"  Humiliated by his mother, his sisters and the gentile gangs from Klodawa.  Aaron Kominski  continued wetting the bed into his adolescence and felt a deep hatred for sexually active middle aged women, and came to believe that his family could not or would not defend him, or even themselves.

Neither would the village Aaron was raised in. The community at best passively endorsed antisemitic violence, which seemed designed to produce serial killers on both sides. As Aaron grew the anarchy and violence around him disguised the fires he set,  and hid the small animals he tortured and killed. 

 We also know that Aaron began to have trouble sleeping. His became withdrawn, lethargic and disaffected. None of these latter behaviors was odd for a teenager, except Aaron suffered from one other affect, which he shared with very few others. He began hearing and then seeing people and things which were not real.  Aaron Kominski experienced the nightmare violence haunting his life through the prism of his developing schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is rare – about 1% of the total population – and the precipitate cause is unknown at present. But we do know that a fetus born to older parents, exposed to a viral infection, fetal malnutrition, childhood abuse or trauma, and repeated exposure to alcohol, are at greater risk of developing the condition. But an even greater predictor of adult onset schizophrenia is genetics. Children of schizophrenics have a 10% higher risk of developing schizophrenia. And children of a schizophrenic mother may combine all her risk factors because of her illness while they were still in her womb. But even then, violent schizophrenics are rare, and serial killer schizophrenics rarer still – about 0.0000001% of the general population.

Then in March of 1881 Czar Alexander II was murdered in St. Petersburg, and like a string of firecrackers, more and more violent pogroms ignited across The Pale, setting off the greatest Jewish diaspora since the destruction of the Second Temple.

The Russian government endorsed lynchings, rapes and beatings (above). These forced both Kominski daughters and their husbands to leave Poland in late 1881 or early 1882. 

They took 16 year old Aaron with them, leaving the mother Golda behind to fend for herself. Was that a sacrifice or an abandonment? Whichever, Whitechapel now made its contribution to the making of “Jack the Ripper”.

One contemporary described the first contact between refugees from a small village with the cannibalistic capitalism that was the East End of London, as “indescribable confusion...cries and counter cries, the horse laughter of the dock loungers at the strange garb and broken accents of the poverty stricken foreigners: the rough swearing of the boatmen at passengers unable to pay the fee for landing. 

"In another ten minutes 80 of the 100 newcomers are dispersed in the back of the slums of Whitechapel: In another few days the majority of these are robbed of what little they possessed and are...destitute and friendless.”  Yiddish actor Jacob Adler described his first view of the city,   "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank...Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s." 

Abraham Kominski had prepared the way, as best he could. He was living north of Whitechapel Road, at 76 Goulston Street,  and smoothed the transition of Matilda and Morris Lubnowski to a room at 16 Greenfield Street,  less than half a mile to the south, just north of Commercial Road. Morris found work as a boot riveter. Betsy and Wolf Abrahamson found a room in between,  in a building at 3 Sion Square, 1 block south of Whitechapel Road , just east of St. Mary Matfin Church. Woolf worked as a tailor making women's clothes.

Back in Poland  Aaron Kominski had been apprenticed as a woman's hairdresser. But at an age when most London residents had ten years work experience behind them, 16 year old Aaron Kominski  found no job, because he did not look.

Over the next six years Aaron moved between the three addresses – Goulston Street,  Sion Square and Greenfield Street, living with one sibling, then another, and occasionally when he had the money, taking a coffin bed in a doss house.  He picked up the barest sprinkling of English, a mixture of Cockney slang and Yiddish. But he never held down a steady job. 

Some time before 1888, Golda Kominski, Aaron's mother, also emigrated to London. Her arrival may have been the precipitation event that sparked the final act of a Greek Tragedy which had began in Poland but was played out in the black, back alleys of Whitechaple.

What came of that tragedy were five brutal murders, which became more violent and erratic over time. As Special Agent Douglas noted, “In each homicide, the victim was a prostitute with a reputation of drinking quite heavily...(and) were targeted because they were readily accessible. Jack the Ripper did not have to initiate the contact. This was done for him by the prostitute.” The "profiler" suggests the killer did not have the courage to draw the knife until after the victim was incapacitated and silenced. He then used the knife to mutilate, after he had used his hands to kill.

Douglas suggested the killer “...would spend time drinking...in the pub...(which) lowered (his) inhibitions....” This explained why most of the Ripper's murders took place in the early morning hours, after the pubs had closed. Agent Douglas also hypothesized “'He would not be visibly shaken or upset if directly accused of the homicides....'Jack the Ripper believed the homicides were justified and he was only removing perishable items - who were like garbage.” Who were, in other words, like his mother and sisters.

Doctor Scott Bonn of Drew University, writing in the January 2014 edition of “Psychology Today” noted that, “ Disorganized (serial) killers will often “blitz” their victims—that is, use sudden and overwhelming force to capture and kill them. The victim’s body is usually left where the attack took place and the killer makes no attempt to hide it. In all of these regards, Jack the Ripper is a classic example of the disorganized serial killer.” 

What stopped 23 year old Aron Kominski after the butchery of Mary Kelly was not remorse, or even the  fulfillment of a sick fantasy, but the mental disorder which was consuming his twisted mind and left him unable to function at even a basic level.

Was Aaron Kominski  Jack the Ripper? According to Paul Begg, author of the 2004 book “Jack the Ripper, The Facts”,  Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Robert Anderson (above) - who ran the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) after Munro resigned in August...

...And Scotsman Chief Inspector Donald S, Swanson - directly in charge of running the investigation in Whitechapel - “...believed (that) he was. They were there and they were in a position to know.” Swanson even noted that Aron Kominski had been watched at his brother's home on Goulston Street - half a block from where the bloody apron was found after the Mitre Square murder. Yet no details of that surveillance have been found in the MET files. Where are the detective's reports and observations? It appears there are none. 

Clearly some of the most important investigative work was being done “off the books”. What Anderson and Swanson knew from the infamous bloodhound incident and a dozen other fiascoes less well publicized, was that the upper management of Matthews and Warren (above)  and Munro and their underlings - was treating the Ripper investigation as a political “football”, kicking it back and forth to score points against each other, not to find the killer. 

But the detectives (above) and constables of Whitechapel, having found the man they believed was responsible for terrorizing their district, were preserving the integrity of their investigation by hiding Aron Kominski from the press and from their own bosses. And, unfortunately,  from history.

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