Aaron Kosminski: Difference between revisions

Aaron Kosminski (born Aron Mordke Koźmiński; 11 September 1865 – 24 March 1919) was an insane Polish Jew who was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. He emigrated to England from Poland in the 1880s and worked as a hairdresser in Whitechapel in the East End of London, where the murders were committed in 1888. From 1891, he was institutionalized in an asylum.

Police officials at the time of the murders named one of their suspects "Kosminski" (without a forename), and described him as a Polish Jew in an insane asylum. Almost a century after the final murder, the suspect "Kosminski" was identified with Aaron Kosminski, but there was little if any evidence to connect him with the murders, and the reasons for his inclusion as a suspect are unclear. Possibly, Kosminski was the victim of antisemitism or confused with another Polish Jew of the same age, such as Aaron Cohen, who was a violent patient at the same asylum.

Kosminski was born in the Polish town of Kłodawa, which was then in the Russian Empire. His parents were Abram Józef Koźmiński, a tailor, and his wife Golda née Lubnowska.^[1] In 1882, at the age of 17, he emigrated to England, and embarked on a career as a barber in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London. Whitechapel was an impoverished slum that had become home to many Jewish refugees who were fleeing pogroms and economic hardship in eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia.^[2] His sisters, brother and widowed mother also left Russia and lived in Whitechapel.^[3]

On two occasions in July 1890 and February 1891, Kosminski was placed in Mile End Old Town workhouse because of his insane behaviour. On the second occasion, he was discharged to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, where he remained for the next three years until he was admitted on 19 April 1894 to Leavesden Asylum.^[4][5] Case notes indicate that Kosminski had been ill since at least 1885. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people that drove him to pick up and eat food dropped as litter, and a refusal to wash or bathe.^[6] The cause of his insanity was recorded as "self-abuse", which is thought to be a euphemism for masturbation.^[5] His poor diet seems to have kept him in an emaciated state for years; his low weight was recorded in the asylum case notes.^[5] By February 1919, he weighed just 96 pounds (44 kg). He died the following month.^[5]

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,^[7] and an abridged version from the archives of the Metropolitan Police Service was released to the public in the 1970s.^[5] Macnaghten stated that there were strong reasons for suspecting "Kosminski" because he "had a great hatred of women ... with strong homicidal tendencies".^[8]

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".^[9] 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.^[10] 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.^[11] 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.^[12][13]

In 1987, Ripper author Martin Fido searched asylum records for any inmates called Kosminski, and found only one: Aaron Kosminski.^[14] Aaron may have lived close to the sites of the murders.^[15] The addresses given in the asylum records are in Whitechapel,^[16] and Isaac Koźmiński, who may have been Aaron's brother, resided at 76 Goulston Street in 1891.^[1] 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.^[15] 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.^[5] Macnaghten's notes say that "Kosminski" indulged in "solitary vices",^[8] and in his memoirs Anderson wrote of his suspect's "unmentionable vices",^[17] both of which may match the claim in the case notes that Aaron committed "self-abuse".^[18] 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,^[19] but the last detail about his early death does not match Aaron, who lived until 1919.^[20]

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.^[9] 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,^[21] but fellow Ripper authors Martin Fido and Paul Begg thought there was another witness, perhaps Israel Schwartz,^[22] Joseph Lawende, or a policeman.^[23] In his memorandum, however, Macnaghten stated that "no-one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer", which directly contradicts Anderson's and Swanson's recollection.^[24] There is no record of Aaron Kosminski in any surviving official police documents except Macnaghten's memo.^[25]

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.^[26] 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.^[27] 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.^[28] In the final analysis, there is no more evidence against Kosminski than against the other hundred or so named Jack the Ripper suspects.^[29]

Another Polish Jew proposed as a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders was Aaron Davis Cohen or David Cohen, whose incarceration at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum roughly coincided with the end of the murders. He was committed on 12 December 1888, about one month after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November. He was described as violently antisocial, exhibited destructive tendencies while at the asylum, and had to be restrained. He was the same age as Kosminski, and died at the asylum in October 1889.^[30] Author Martin Fido suggested in his book The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper (1987) that the name "David Cohen" was used by the asylum as a simple name for an inmate whose true name (Kosminski or Kaminsky) was too difficult to spell or easily misunderstood.^[31] Fido identified Cohen with "Leather Apron", a Polish Jewish bootmaker blamed for the murders in local gossip, and speculated that Cohen's true identity was Nathan Kaminsky, a bootmaker living in Whitechapel who had been treated at one time for syphilis. Fido was unable to trace Kaminsky after May 1888, and records of Cohen begin that December.^[32] Fido suggested that police officials confused the name Kaminsky with Kosminski, resulting in the wrong man coming under suspicion.^[29] As with Kosminski, the asylum case notes say he spoke only Yiddish.^[33]

The implication is that Kaminsky's syphilis was not cured in May 1888 but in remission, and he began to kill prostitutes as an act of revenge because it had affected his brain. However, Cohen's death certificate makes no mention of syphilis but gives the cause of death as "exhaustion of mania" with phthisis, a then prevalent form of pulmonary tuberculosis, as the secondary cause. Kaminsky might have died as an "unknown" as hundreds of people did each year in the late 19th century. That would account for Fido's inability to find a record of his death in England and Wales during the probable period of his life.

Nigel Cawthorne dismissed Cohen as a likely suspect because in the asylum his assaults were undirected, and his behaviour was wild and uncontrolled, whereas the Ripper seemed to attack specifically and quietly.^[34] In contrast, former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas has asserted in his book The Cases That Haunt Us that behavioural clues gathered from the murders all point to a person "known to the police as David Cohen ... or someone very much like him".^[35] Using criminal profiling techniques Douglas and Roy Hazlewood concluded that the Whitechapel murderer would have been someone of Kosminski's or Cohen's age, marital status and social class who exhibited erratic or irrational antisocial behaviour and who lived close to the scenes of the murders.

John Pizer was another Polish Jew who worked as a bootmaker in Whitechapel. Police Sergeant William Thicke arrested him on 10 September 1888 on suspicion of being "Leather Apron". Thicke apparently believed that he had committed a string of minor assaults on prostitutes, and he did have a prior conviction for a stabbing offence.^[36] The investigating inspector, however, reported that "there is no evidence whatsoever against him",^[37] and he was cleared of suspicion when it turned out that he had alibis for two of the murders. He was staying with relatives at the time of the one of the murders, and he was talking with a police officer while watching a spectacular fire on the London Docks at the time of another.^[38] Pizer successfully obtained monetary compensation from at least one newspaper that had named him as the murderer.^[39]

• Joseph Silver
• History of the Jews in 19th-century Poland

• Begg, Paul (2003). Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. London: Pearson Education. ISBN 058250631X
• Cook, Andrew (2009). Jack the Ripper. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 9781848683273
• Evans, Stewart P.; Rumbelow, Donald (2006). Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0750942282
• Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1841192252
• Fido, Martin (1987). The Crimes, Death and Detection of Jack the Ripper. Vermont: Trafalgar Square. ISBN 9780297791362
• Knight, Stephen (1976; rev. 1984; repr. 2000). Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. London: Bounty Books. ISBN 0753703696
• Marriott, Trevor (2005). Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. London: John Blake. ISBN 1844541037
• Rumbelow, Donald (2004). The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated. Penguin Books. ISBN 0140173951
• Werner, Alex (editor) (2008). Jack the Ripper and the East End. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 9780701182472
• Whitehead, Mark; Rivett, Miriam (2006). Jack the Ripper. Harpenden, Hertfordshire: Pocket Essentials. ISBN 9781904048695
• Woods, Paul; Baddeley, Gavin (2009). Saucy Jack: The Elusive Ripper. Hersham, Surrey: Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 9780711034105