Aaron Kosminski - Jack The Ripper Suspect

Jack The Ripper Suspect

Between 1888 and 1891, the deaths of eleven women in or around the Whitechapel district of the East End of London were linked together in a single police investigation known as the "Whitechapel murders". Seven of the victims suffered a slash to the throat, and in four cases the bodies were mutilated after death. Five of the cases, between August and November 1888, show such marked similarities that they are generally agreed to be the work of a single serial killer, known as "Jack the Ripper". Despite an extensive police investigation, the Ripper was never identified and the crimes remained unsolved. Years after the end of the murders, documents were discovered that revealed the suspicions of police officials against a man called "Kosminski".

An 1894 memorandum written by Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Assistant Chief Constable of the London Metropolitan Police Service, names one of the suspects as a Polish Jew called "Kosminski" (without a forename). Macnaghten's memo was discovered in the private papers of his daughter, Lady Aberconway, by television journalist Dan Farson in 1959, and an abridged version from the archives of the Metropolitan Police Service was released to the public in the 1970s. Macnaghten stated that there were strong reasons for suspecting "Kosminski" because he "had a great hatred of women ... with strong homicidal tendencies".

In 1910, Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson claimed in his memoirs The Lighter Side of My Official Life that the Ripper was a "low-class Polish Jew". Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who led the Ripper investigation, named the man as "Kosminski" in notes handwritten in the margin of his presentation copy of Anderson's memoirs. He added that "Kosminski" had been watched at his brother's home in Whitechapel by the police, that he was taken with his hands tied behind his back to the workhouse and then to Colney Hatch Asylum, and that he died shortly after. The copy of Anderson's memoirs containing the handwritten notes by Swanson was donated by his descendents to Scotland Yard's Crime Museum in 2006.

In 1987, Ripper author Martin Fido searched asylum records for any inmates called Kosminski, and found only one: Aaron Kosminski. Aaron may have lived close to the sites of the murders. The addresses given in the asylum records are in Whitechapel, and Isaac Kozminski, who may have been Aaron's brother, resided at 76 Goulston Street in 1891. The Ripper's victims were all murdered within walking distance of Goulston Street, and a bloodstained piece of one of the victim's clothing was found there. The description of Aaron's symptoms in the case notes indicates that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, and known paranoid schizophrenics include serial killers such as Peter Sutcliffe. Macnaghten's notes say that "Kosminski" indulged in "solitary vices", and in his memoirs Anderson wrote of his suspect's "unmentionable vices", both of which may match the claim in the case notes that Aaron committed "self-abuse". Swanson's notes match the known details of Aaron's life in that he reported that the suspect went to the workhouse and then to Colney Hatch, but the last detail about his early death does not match Aaron, who lived until 1919.

Anderson claimed that the Ripper had been identified by the "only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer", but that no prosecution was possible because both the witness and the culprit were Jews, and Jews were not willing to offer testimony against fellow Jews. Swanson's notes state that "Kosminski" was identified at "the Seaside Home", which was the Police Convalescent Home in Brighton. Some authors express skepticism that this identification ever happened, while others use it as evidence for their theories. For example, Donald Rumbelow thought the story unlikely, but fellow Ripper authors Martin Fido and Paul Begg thought there was another witness, perhaps Israel Schwartz, Joseph Lawende, or a policeman. In his memorandum, however, Macnaghten stated that "no-one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer", which directly contradicts Anderson's and Swanson's recollection. Sir Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City of London Police at the time of the murders, dismissed Anderson's claim scathingly in his own memoirs written later in the same year, calling it a "reckless accusation" against Jews. Edmund Reid, the inspector in charge of the investigation initially, also challenged Anderson's opinion. There is no record of Aaron Kosminski in any surviving official police documents except Macnaghten's memo.

In Kosminski's defence, he was described as harmless in the asylum. He once brandished a chair at an asylum attendant in January 1892 and he threatened his sister with a knife, but these two incidents are the only known indications of violent behaviour. In the asylum, Kosminski preferred to speak his native language, which indicates that his English may have been poor, and that he was unable to persuade English-speaking victims into dark alleyways, as the Ripper was supposed to do. The five killings that are most frequently blamed on the Ripper ended in 1888 but Kosminski was still at large until 1891, and his slight build does not match the descriptions of men seen with the victims shortly before their demise. In the final analysis, there is no more evidence against Kosminski than against the other hundred or so named Jack the Ripper suspects.