The 16th Chapter of Major Henry

[How Brown]

Lets look at what Major Henry Smith had to say about Sir Robert Anderson once more, using Smith's words found in From Constable to Commissioner, his bio from 1910.
Link found on Casebook contains the relevant 16th Chapter here:
http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.constable.html

I have provided some comments to accompany Smith's interpretation of Anderson's words in his article in Blackwood's Magazine of the same year.

Smith says:
"Sir Robert does not tell us how many of "his people" sheltered the murderer, but whether they were two dozen in number, or two hundred, or two thousand, he accuses them of being accessories to these crimes before and after their committal.

Anderson does no such thing. Also the first signs of Smith attempting to win over his readership with an attempt at levity at Anderson's expense with the exaggerated numbers he provides.


Smith says :
　
Surely Sir Robert cannot believe that while the Jews, as he asserts, were entering into this conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice, there was no one among them with sufficient knowledge of the criminal law to warn them of the risks they were running.**


Anderson indicates the element of people he is referring to on more than one occasion and does not specify ALL Jews. In Smith's eagerness to counter Anderson , Smith is the one, not Anderson, who uses the phrase "the Jews". Not once does Anderson ever use those two words together in the relevant text in either the Blackwood's Magazine article or The Lighter Side..
　
Smith says:

Sir Robert talks of the "Lighter Side" of his Official Life." There is nothing "light" here ; a heavier indictment could not be framed against a class whose conduct contrasts most favourably with that of the Gentile population of the Metropolis.


Smith evidently considers gambling a less egregious offense than the Crown did. How many low class Germans or Christian Poles, Christian Hungarians, Christian French, etc... were arrested time and time again for illegal gambling as were Jews ? The number of cases for rowdiness and drunkeness and street prostitution are disproportionately "Gentile", while gambling raids in the area time and time again find an inordinate number of Jewish names in newspaper searchs. .


Smith says:

Sir Robert says "the Ripper could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret." The criminal, no doubt, was valeted by his co-religionists -warned not to run too great risks, to come home as soon as he could after business, and always to give notice when he meant to cut up another lady ! On three occasions - the only three of which I can give reliable details - there was no need to provide the murderer with hot water and Sunlight soap.

Its fairly obvious to the objective reader that comments such as the underlined indicate Smith attempts being comical at Anderson's expense.


Its unusual in that Smith describes Lawende ( as if afraid to just say the word Jew...unless of course he had no idea that the witness in his very patch was a landsmann or not)...as a "sort of hybrid German" .

Actually, to me its not unusual.

Witness the following from Smith's text :

At the exit leading direct to Goulston Street, opposite the corner where the murder was committed, there was a club, the members of which were nearly all foreigners. One, a sort of hybrid German, was leaving the club-he was unable to fix the hour-when he noticed a man and woman standing close together. The woman had her hand resting on the man's chest. It was bright moonlight, almost as light as day, and he saw them distinctly. This was, without doubt, the murderer and his victim. The inquiries I made at Berners Street, the evidence of the constable in whose beat the square was, and my own movements, of which I had kept careful notes, proved this conclusively. The description of the man given me by the German was as follows : Young, about the middle height, with a small fair moustache, dressed in something like navy serge, and with a deerstalker's cap - that is, a cap with a peak both fore and aft. I think the German spoke the truth, because I could not "lead" him in any way. "You will easily recognize him, then," I said. "Oh no!" he replied ; "I only had a short look at him." The German was a strange mixture, honest apparently, and intelligent also. He "had heard of some murders," he said, but they didn't seem to concern him.

Thread open for discussion, sie vous plais....

[Natalie Severn]

Now How,with all due respect,this is called "bias".All we actually need here is the chapter where Smith writes about Anderson"s claim to have known who the Ripper was ,and Smith"s rejection that Anderson knew either who the ripper was or where he lived or that anyone else did,come to that then or twenty years later!
It has always surprised me that Henry Smith has been treated so dismissively.I shouldnt be surprised ofcourse since Smith,unlike Macnaghten , was having none of Anderson"s claims.
But he was certainly a very senior Police figure during the Ripper murders.He attended the crime scene of the murder of Catherine Eddowes himself,on the night of her murder.He held the post of acting Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police force,in 1890 becoming its Chief Commissioner.
Of crucial importance too, is the fact that as Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police,he would have been well aware of the 'City Police suspect" of the Sagar and Cox stories ,and yet he seems to have rejected these too.I believe that had there been anything to them at all he would not,for like everybody else he would have been keen to find out the identity of the Ripper.
Had Sir Robert Anderson known who the Ripper was, so, I believe ,would Sir Henry Smith and he did not.

Back to this later.Anyway,thanks Howard for being so kind as to supply the Casebook link which people can use if they want to read Smith for themselves,
Best
Norma

[How Brown]

Dear Nats:

I believe that I'm not the only one who has mentioned that Smith responded to Anderson's comments in a joking manner.

If anyone reads what Smith stated and has another perception, by all means they should feel free to mention them as you have kindly done,Nats.

Anderson, of course, did not mention "the Jews" in his Blackwood's article or his biography. Thats why I pointed that out.

Anderson, of course, did not suggest that anyone assisted the suspect before his crime skein. Its not only stupid on Smith's part to suggest that in print, but insulting to Anderson.

Speaking of mistakes, take the identification of the Mitre Square witness as a "hybrid German". Its on his patch and yet he is fuzzy over the ethnicity of this man, who was Jewish.



On the other hand, I agree with you and always have agreed with you that the Ripper was not identified regardless of what Anderson claimed. We don't know all the particulars of the identification or whether he was simply told what he recites later on some two decades later.

[How Brown]

Nats:

While I agree with you and some others that this Seaside Home ( if in fact it occurred there in the first place ) identification leaves not only a lot to be desired but it was a poor way of SRA or anyone in fact had someone else done so in a similar manner to go public like that. Thats never an issue with me and I have always agreed with those who feel Anderson was out of order.

What I don't agree with is this concept that because he mentions the ethnic affiliation of the man in question that that should give anyone a reason for not considering what he was really trying to get across...again in the wrong venue...and that is that the Ripper had been institutionalized.

One of the most important and yet barely discussed conditions or questions that exist in this whole matter, Nats, is why would Anderson and apparently Swanson not have any other corroboration for what's being suggested by what SRA divulged. Its not really a crucial matter of the suspect being Jewish ( not necessarily surprising since there were a lot of Jewish men in the vicinity ) or that he claims "low class" people will be hesitant from assisting the police. I believe Mike Richards made a very plausible argument that Anderson was really only generalizing and not specifying low class Jews for the sake of criticizing them apart from the whole of "low class' peoples in Whitechapel or East London.

What is important to me at least is people with a wealth of insight on Anderson offer their views on why this identification seems to have been almost on the order of an inside job by a pair of "priveleged" officials. Not only did other officials reject SRA but they stated that no one was any the wiser 10-15 years after the Kelly murder.

This of course is old hat and we've been jockeying this around for years...100 to be exact.

Nats....here's the sort of "line of inquiry" I'd like to see some of the senior Ripperologists tackle, especially those well versed in British criminal history:

Is there a parallel case in Britain where only two authority figures knew or claimed they knew the solution to a case of even half this magnitude before ?

Is there any case where officials came forward and expressed their views on a solution to a case and had as much criticism hurled towards them ( in this case, just Anderson, since DSS said nothing in print-for-circulation as far as we know) ?

My opinion so far Nats is that Anderson, if he attended the identification, applied the same sort of moral certainty he would mention later on in H.L.Adam's book on that late 1890's murder case.

If he didn't and he was absent from this identification, then he's simply parroting what he was told and its therefore second hand knowledge.

Who knows Nats ? What if he wasn't there...was told one thing...and yet, had he been there, deduced the suspect wasn't guilty based on his "moral certainty" ?

[Natalie Severn]

Howard you seem to have avoided my main point here.What I was trying to say was that we need to have a significant and comprehensive discussion about the Chief Commissioner of the City of London Police, Sir Henry Smith,who ,as the most senior policeman present at the Catherine Eddowes crime scene on the night of her murder on 30th September 1888 with his Police surgeon, Dr F G Brown .What I am suggesting is that Smith is entitled, by rank alone as well as his presence at an important crime scene , to have had as unbiased information given about him as Anderson has received.Instead all I have ever seen is him being criticised about his writings on Jack the Ripper.Over the past five years ,I have read through all three of the following :"From Constable to Commissioner", by Smith, Days of My Years by Macnaghten and "The Lighter Side of my Official Life" by Anderson.Each of them contain curious and confusing accounts of various happenings in their respective careers.I am mindful too that in each case they were writing at least twenty years after the" Reign of Terror " of 1888-in Macnaghten"s case it was twenty three years after.So some allowance probably does need to be made for their conflicting accounts,in all fairness.

By the way,the incident about the Dorset Street sink,told so often whenever Smith"s name is mentioned and about which Smith has been castigated each time,could,in actual fact, have easily happened.Dorset Street lay not more than three minutes from Goulston Street where the Ripper dropped the apron piece . And its more than possible Dorset Street did have a sink or a water trough.
All I have ever heard about Smith is him being presented as boastful and unreliable,which given the very unreliable track records of Macnaghten and Anderson on the subject of JtR is a bit rich given also that Macnaghten"s accounts are riddled with muddled information about drowned doctors and the like and Anderson's "memoirs" are not only muddled and confusing but grossly boastful and in the case of his "Jack the Ripper" references it must vie as the most implausible and probably the most confusing account of an identification of a serial murderer in the entire history of crime!
We are presented with a Jewish witness and Jewish resident from the funny farm [who Swanson claims is dead and ,if it was Aaron Kosminski was,in point of fact very much alive ] being "identified" at a "seaside home" ........what on earth is that all about! And we are expected to believe it?

But Howard,here is the rub. Swanson claims in his margin/end note marginalia alia ,that this "suspect" who he names as "Kosminski" was actually watched by THE POLICE [CITY CID]!!!
Now if we think long and hard about it, it has massive implications.
And that Howard,is why,it is of CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE to the TRUTH of THIS MATTER that we are able to have a discussion about SMITH"S words on THIS MATTER.
Because Smith denounces Anderson"s theory lock stock and barrel and in no uncertain terms.
HE WAS THERE and IN CHARGE, he should have known more about a CITY POLICE SUSPECT than any other senior police officer---including Swanson and Anderson.
All I ask is that Smith"s words receive parity of serious Historical research and assessment as Anderson"s have.That is not the case today since serious authors have written at length about Anderson, giving scant or unchallenged information about Smith.

[How Brown]

Dear Nats:

Thanks for the response. Again, if anyone wishes to offer their opinion as you have just done on Smith as his writings relate to the Case or to Anderson, there is nothing preventing them from doing so.

I maintain, after reading the excerpts Smith penned about Anderson, that Smith defeats his purpose and focuses too much on the "ethnic part" of the Anderson declaration.

Again, I also agree with you and always have, that the identification as described by both SRA & DSS leave too much to be desired. Swanson does no service to the issue at hand by declaring the "suspect" was dead when in fact he was not at the time of the TLSOMOL, which you were correct in pointing out in the first place.

I know very well that City police were supposed to have been in control of this identification. It occurred to me that Smith's response to Anderson may have been a payback for Anderson, a Met official,as well as was Swanson, taking the reins and essentially relegating a City official, Smith, to secondary status as an official,a condition that possibly exists with Anderson's revelations on an identification that, again, City personnel were supposedly in charge of. I never avoid your questions or anyone else's Nats, as I consider us all on the same team in trying to make heads and tails out of this issue.

In addition, I believe SPE provided a letter or a Christmas card post-1888 from SRA to Smith or it may have been ( and I should know this without having to fumble around over here for the exact details...) a reply from SRA to a letter from Smith. In any event, the animus that is assumed to have existed throughout these two men's parallel careers is not what it seems, in light of the letter SPE generously shared.

Back to you....and by the way, in tribute to you Nats...I am going to devote Saturday's Search to Major Smith material.

Same team over here,dear.

[Natalie Severn]

Dear Nats:

I believe that I'm not the only one who has mentioned that Smith responded to Anderson's comments in a joking manner.

If anyone reads what Smith stated and has another perception, by all means they should feel free to mention them as you have kindly done,Nats.

Anderson, of course, did not mention "the Jews" in his Blackwood's article or his biography. Thats why I pointed that out.

Anderson, of course, did not suggest that anyone assisted the suspect before his crime skein. Its not only stupid on Smith's part to suggest that in print, but insulting to Anderson.

Speaking of mistakes, take the identification of the Mitre Square witness as a "hybrid German". Its on his patch and yet he is fuzzy over the ethnicity of this man, who was Jewish.



On the other hand, I agree with you and always have agreed with you that the Ripper was not identified regardless of what Anderson claimed. We don't know all the particulars of the identification or whether he was simply told what he recites later on some two decades later.

Thankyou Howard,
I am a bit puzzled still by your comment here that Anderson did not mention "The Jews" in his biography.I havent the Blackwoods article,published just a little earlier in 1910, to check this ,but I would suggest that because Anderson ,in his autobiography of 1910 "The Lighter Years of My Official Life" entitled an entire section of it under a Chapter 1X
sub heading:
"THE CRIMINAL -A POLISH JEW
[where he also added later in that section " my words are meant to specify RACE not religion"]

Then he did make a clear reference to the ethnicity of his suspect surely?
Anderson then went on in that chapter:

"And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low class Polish Jews;for it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile Justice."

So surely it follows,How, that if Smith is saying that Anderson is suggesting Jewish people,in this case The Ripper"s relatives or friends, were not willing to give up one of their number ,even if he were a serial murderer like Jack the Ripper,to Gentile Justice,then it follows that Anderson is accusing "his people" -the low class Polish Jews he speaks of, in this case, of being accessories to the crime of murder,in English law?
Smith is absolutely correct to point that out.

[How Brown]

I am a bit puzzled still by your comment here that Anderson did not mention "The Jews" in his biography--Nats

What I was referring to Nats is that SRA did not say "the Jews" at all in his work as it pertains to the identification. Smith, in what I percieve as a comic dismissal of what Anderson proposed, is the one who states:

Surely Sir Robert cannot believe that while the Jews, as he asserts, were entering into this conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice, there was no one among them with sufficient knowledge of the criminal law to warn them of the risks they were running.** -Major Smith


He delineated who he, SRA, meant and how he meant his statement,regardless of what else is found in what he stated. If he had said "the Jews", it would suggest he, SRA, was lumping ALL those who happened to be Jewish in with his remarks on sheltering said suspect.

Thanks for asking for clarification.

[Natalie Severn]

I see.But actually How,thats how it can come across.A picture can and does come to mind from Anderson"s writings that is a bit conspiratorial to say the least,of a community from that of the "low class Polish Jew suspect" [as per Anderson ],all nodding and winking to one another with lips sealed about Jack the Ripper ,whose people are busy" hiding his blood stained clothing" in their midst.

[How Brown]

I see.But actually How,thats how it can come across.A picture can and does come to mind from Anderson"s writings that is a bit conspiratorial to say the least,of a community from that of the "low class Polish Jew suspect" [as per Anderson ],all nodding and winking to one another with lips sealed about Jack the Ripper ,whose people are busy" hiding his blood stained clothing" in their midst. -Nats

Nats:

Thats why I placed that on the thread and pointed it out Nats...because Anderson had already explained who he was referring to with Mentor...yet Smith, unless he had not seen all of the exchange between the two men, makes a false assumption that Anderson was referring to all Jewish people. He clearly didn't.

SRA also included Gentile low class within the strata of society he was referring to...

[Natalie Severn]

No Howard,you are quite right that Smith is ,ofcourse, partly,taking the p out of Anderson and his oddball theory.But what I am saying is that on reading Anderson"s "theory' anyone might be forgiven for having a joke about it.A more half-baked theory on the supposed trickery of "low class Polish Jews" with their "remarkable" penchant for outwitting " Gentile justice" would be hard find.When this is pitched alongside a vision of a couple of slightly inept policemen trying to conduct a very difficult identification with the inmate of an asylum,it could almost give rise to a comic strip with speech bubbles of slapstick comedy---were the subject matter not so tragic if you know what I mean!:tape2:

[How Brown]

Nats:

Oddball theory or not Nats, the seminal question is whether a man was institutionalized and fingered for the crimes in the way Anderson claimed that it transpired. Smith makes sport of what Anderson stated for his own personal reasons and didn't take the time to address the issues about the identification. If he could have tackled that area of what Anderson brought up, we'd be a more well informed lot today. Instead, he does, as you mentioned, take the piss out of Anderson in his critique of SRA.

In fact, a cursory glance at Smith's 16th Chapter reveals nothing on the identification itself...which involved, according to Swanson, City personnel.

Granted, Swanson mentions the City personnel in his annotations or, to steer clear of that argument, its on the endpaper of his copy of SRA's book.
That mention is only found there ( between what SRA wrote and what DSS "confirms" ), tells me that Smith was out of the proverbial loop on an identification if it indeed did happen, with City personnel.