Kosminski Letter

[Phil Carter]

No offense, Tim, but if we have learned anything from the Maybrick Diary, it is that the opinions of forensic examiners and independent scientists need to be given in their entirety and these experts need to be allowed to speak for themselves. An interested or partisan party claiming these tests were "bang on" and a "thumbs up" doesn't inspire confidence. Do you plan on giving the full details of these tests? And considering the strange timing of the letter's appearance (only 6 days after Kosminki, the barber, made worldwide headline news) was the letter subjected to an ink solubility test? Thanks in advance. RP

Hello Roger,

Good points.
The ink has not faded in 130 years.
Now, off the top of your head, can you think of any other 130 year old pieces of inked documentation that has NOT shown signs of ageing? Because I can't!
And the most obvious questions, without offence to Tim, are these..

1. What is the name of this reputable person examining this sheet of paper?

2. Is he/she carrying out a complete set of tests to verify/ debunk the veracity of the document, and if so, will a complete and totally independently neutral and professional report be issued for examination to his or her peers on his results for their independant reviews?
Ink, paper, chemical reactions, and the like.

3. Can we be assured that the person examining the document is infact, unbiased? In other words, what guarantee have we of a totally independant review taking place?

4. When can we expect the results to be published? (hopefully in an appropriate scientific paper in which peer review will be forthcoming)

I'm not asking a lot, am I? After all, if this document, which supposedly, we are told, is kosher, then rigorous testing must be done for historical approval.

Otherwise.. We are back in Diary land, Table Cloth land, Marginalia land or even Memoranda land. (depending on one's views)
In other words.. Anyone spending a large amount of money on the document must have known that it would be subject to the utmost scrutiny, to pass all the tests to validate the meaning of the description in the first place.

No offence Tim. But I'm sure you understand some of us long in the tooth have seen countless claims come and go over the decades, purporting to be kosher, that turned out to just be a not so clever attempt at conning the public and the knowledgeable enthusiast alike.

Once bitten, 100 times fed up with the same old manure producing process.



Phil

[R. J. Palmer]

The letter has been handled by two experts who have given me the thumbs up.

No offense, Tim, but if we have learned anything from the Maybrick Diary, it is that the opinions of forensic examiners and independent scientists need to be given in their entirety and these experts need to be allowed to speak for themselves. An interested or partisan party claiming these tests were "bang on" and a "thumbs up" doesn't inspire confidence. Do you plan on giving the full details of these tests? And considering the strange timing of the letter's appearance (only 6 days after Kosminki, the barber, made worldwide headline news) was the letter subjected to an ink solubility test? Thanks in advance. RP

[Chris G.]

This has become such s tender subject that I want to be very careful in commenting. My point is not to suggest authenticity or not for the letter but if taken at face value I see another story there and IMO that is another branch of investigation.

For one thing, the recipient of the letter seems to be expected to know exactly what is meant by "the fruit barrow" and "those ghastly scissors." That indicates the "Jew Kosminski" has previously acted out in similar manner. Otherwise the fruit barrow and the "ghastly scissors" would be explained if the letter recipient did not know of the general scenario and past acts.

If the occurrence was something new I would expect wording like, "The lunatic Jew Kosminski was by Tilda's fruit barrow and jumped right out with ghastly scissors frightening poor Mary." "Those ghastly scissors" indicated the reader knew all about THOSE scissors. Maybe so.

But if so, considering the police fear of anti-Semitic riots during the Autumn of Terror, how likely would the Jewish community and the civil authorities have been to allow "Jew Kosminski" to frighten women with "ghastly scissors"? With a large Jewish family wouldn't it make more sense that such a lunatic would have been kept at home or if he had to be on the streets, given a harmless object like a rubber knife--if they had those then--or something so he could act out harmlessly. Further, it was hard enough to earn a living at that time so what are the chances Tilda would risk having customers frightened off this way?

Even if the family wanted to keep him at home, there were many ways to restrain him at home, away from public gaze. We would do that today if we had a family member or patient that was so misbehaving.

If "THOSE ghastly scissors" had been used to frighten more than once, then why did not some authority section "Jew Kosminski" or at least section him long enough for observation?

Something doesn't quite add up, given that Aaron Kosminski is today regarded, for better or worse, as a major Jack the Ripper suspect credited with five or more horrendous murders.

The letter under discussion makes "Kosminski" appear fairly innocuous, on a similar order to the 1894 suspect suggested by the Sun newspaper, Thomas Cutbush -- a man accused of minor wounding of women and ruled insane.

If the new letter is authentic and if we are talking about the same suspect as Aaron Kosminski, there would appear to be at least two choices in regard to what we know of the police opinions about Kosminski as expressed by Sir Melville Macnaghten and Sir Robert Anderson:

1) They knew of these stories about Kosminski that would appear to indicate that he was a harmless lunatic, much like Michael Ostrog, but suggested him as the Whitechapel murderer anyway.

2) They were ignorant of this information, which would appear to bring up once more how "in the know" these senior police officials really were.

Best regards

Chris

[Paul Butler]

Thanks for the update Tim. I shall keep watching here for any further developments.

[Tim Atkinson]

Hi Paul,

The letter has been handled by two experts who have given me the thumbs up. It is, at present, with a world renown expert whom I await the result.
Research is on-going with, so far, promising results.
That's about all I can tell you.
Thanks Paul.
Tim.

[Paul Butler]

Its a shame, but "finds" like this always seem to bring out a lot of bad tempers, and the facts of the matter tend to get buried under a load of grumpy posts. Has this been established to be a fake? I can't see that it has, and yet it seems to be being treated as such. It might well be for all I know, but I can't see anything here yet that persuades me that it is of a recent date.


It looks right for a late Victorian document and it sounds right for one too.


Are there any testing results pending? I'm still interested.


Cheers.

[Tim Atkinson]

Good points well put, Anna,.

Tim.

[Anna Morris]

This has become such s tender subject that I want to be very careful in commenting. My point is not to suggest authenticity or not for the letter but if taken at face value I see another story there and IMO that is another branch of investigation.

For one thing, the recipient of the letter seems to be expected to know exactly what is meant by "the fruit barrow" and "those ghastly scissors." That indicates the "Jew Kosminski" has previously acted out in similar manner. Otherwise the fruit barrow and the "ghastly scissors" would be explained if the letter recipient did not know of the general scenario and past acts.

If the occurrence was something new I would expect wording like, "The lunatic Jew Kosminski was by Tilda's fruit barrow and jumped right out with ghastly scissors frightening poor Mary." "Those ghastly scissors" indicated the reader knew all about THOSE scissors. Maybe so.

But if so, considering the police fear of anti-Semitic riots during the Autumn of Terror, how likely would the Jewish community and the civil authorities have been to allow "Jew Kosminski" to frighten women with "ghastly scissors"? With a large Jewish family wouldn't it make more sense that such a lunatic would have been kept at home or if he had to be on the streets, given a harmless object like a rubber knife--if they had those then--or something so he could act out harmlessly. Further, it was hard enough to earn a living at that time so what are the chances Tilda would risk having customers frightened off this way?

Even if the family wanted to keep him at home, there were many ways to restrain him at home, away from public gaze. We would do that today if we had a family member or patient that was so misbehaving.

If "THOSE ghastly scissors" had been used to frighten more than once, then why did not some authority section "Jew Kosminski" or at least section him long enough for observation?

I also wonder what is meant by, "She shares no exceptional news of late other than she took ctd. From the Jew Kosminski Wednesday week past"? "Took" what???? My mind skips ahead and I expect to read, "she took ctd." [fright] From the Jew Kosminski Wednesday week past." It is not uncommon for letter writers to incompletely fill in details from one page to another and maybe that is the case here. Authentic or not, IMO this is an oddity. Perhaps it argues for anthenticity because surely a hoax would fill in all the blanks.

My general point is, if we look at the letter as authentic, IMO there was a story before this written account. "Jew Kosminski" was apparently known for such behaviour with "THOSE ghastly scissors." Therefore there could be other accounts of such acts. That is something to look for.

I even dug into the etymology of "those" and feel I am correct in saying it implies specific scissors known among those writing and reading that letter.

One final point of interest to me is the correct spelling of Kosminski. English speakers might tend to spell it Kozminski or more frequently use the Russian spelling, Kosminsky. The /y/ ending seems to come readily to writers of English and the attitude seems to be one is as good as the other. In the general scope of things, as for readability, the ending /y/ instead of /i/ passes but /i/ more firmly denotes Polish origin. Yet people of Polish decent with Polish names, may have names spelled ending in /y/, Kowalsky being one common example.

Was the writer of this letter close enough to these people or generally knowledgeable enough to know somewhat technical differences between Polish and Russian? There are so many different spellings and alphabet variants across Slavic languages that nothing can be taken for granted. In the wider picture, if something sounds alike, interchanging is OK, perhaps especially if the Latin alphabet is being used. If certain Cyrillic characters are needed spelling can be very creative. The latter does not seem to apply to Kosminski anthough /z/ for /s/ is plausible because there are variants of /s/ specially marked.

How well did the writer know Tilda and "Jew Kosminski" who spewed his "devil tongue"? Could the writer distinguish between Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian or the raving gibberish of a madman?

I am only suggesting these are other avenues for research.

[Phil Carter]

Is this the letter that was sold on eBay earlier this year? If so, you may find the following thread of interest:


http://jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=31330&page=5

Hi Gareth, Howard, Roger,

I really do apologise for starting the ball rolling in the first place.
Experience should have told me this would, like the Diary, the table cloth, the MJK grave, take off like a rocket.
I regret having seen it, to be honest.
I will reiterate these things..

"Tilly" is short for Matilda
"Dott" is short for Dorothy

The shortened and highly commonly spelt version of Dorothy is "Dot" in England.. NOT "Dott" "Dott" is spelled such in Australia.

"Marty" is not commonly used in England as a shortened version of Martin. It is in Australia.

Oh, and another couple of forgotten points.

It was put up for sale following the 100 year anniversary of Aaron Kosminski's death. That isn't even remotely coincidence.

And..

There STILL isn't any ink fade. None at all.

Should tell you all you need to know.

It's a, rubber jelly bean.

End of



Phil

[R. J. Palmer]

It's always good to connect the Dotts.

[Tim Atkinson]

Found Dott.
And maybe Walter. Research on going.
Tim.

[R. J. Palmer]

It could be that Rachel Bell will be difficult to trace. On the day of the census she may have been somewhere warm, oblivious to the needs of the statisticians and the bureaucrats, strolling along the beach, arm in arm with Mrs. Ham(m)ersmith and Hermione Dudley...

Of course, my new Australian friend has already proven me wrong once, so, who knows, there could be more surprises...

[Howard Brown]

Thanks for pointing that out about the spelling, Debs.
Xxxxxxx

[Debra Arif]

Hi Anna.
The name Racheal (with the 'A') is important. Any other spelling is irrelevant.
Tim.

I don't think that can be strictly true, Tim. For example the Rachel (without an 'a' )Hannah Bell whose death was registered in Belfast in August 1889 was registered at birth as Rachael (with an 'a' )Hannah Bell.

[Sam Flynn]

Yes. That makes no sense to me either Sam.
Tim.

Pity. It made perfect sense to me.