I am Jack
September 7, 2014 9:03 AM   Subscribe

 
It occurs to me that the fact that Catherine Eddowes occasionally worked as a prostitute might explain the presence of Kosminski's semen on the shawl. If it was him Alan Moore is going to have to release a new edition of "From Hell".
posted by MikeMc at 9:20 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Alan Moore posits in his appendix to From Hell, "Dance of the Gull-Catchers," that the identity of Jack the Ripper by now is a superposition, able to be the person that society needs him to be.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:25 AM on September 7, 2014 [22 favorites]


"There were anti-Semitic protests at the time of the Ripper murderers after a disputed message written on a wall in Goulston Street, near where two bodies had been found, believed to be from the killer identifying himself as Jewish."

Sounds legit.
posted by griphus at 9:29 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Physical evidence is more than supposition. Of course nothing is absolute but people have been convicted on lesser evidence. It's the whole picture - the writings on the wall, DNA evidence, motive of the criminal, and whatever else the book has. The jury will likely remain out seeing as how everyone loves a good mystery.
posted by stbalbach at 9:29 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure whether that falls in the category of crackers gonna pot or froots gonna loop, but it seems to be in that general vicinity.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:29 AM on September 7, 2014 [6 favorites]


Apparently there is also DNA evidence suggestion Jack was actually a woman... But really it's all just guesswork at this point.
posted by edgeways at 9:34 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


It'll be interesting to see what comes of the inevitable reexamination of all the other evidence in light of this new discovery.
posted by orange swan at 9:37 AM on September 7, 2014


Did I miss it? What is he comparing against to come to this conclusion (which seems pretty likely, but still)?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:41 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Just ordered my 'Armchair Detective' business cards.

In case you were wondering, the font is comic sans.
posted by Fizz at 9:44 AM on September 7, 2014 [69 favorites]


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

This might provide a hint as to what happened to Catherine Eddowes' kidney, and other missing organs from the bodies *shudder*. Probably not accompanied by fava beans and Chianti.
posted by iotic at 9:45 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Did I miss it? What is he comparing against to come to this conclusion (which seems pretty likely, but still)?

DNA of the descendents of various suspects, or so I gathered from the dailymail link that was deleted. So, grain of salt.
posted by cj_ at 9:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Until independently confirmed, I’ll trust this on the same level as I do the Bigfoot DNA claims.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [6 favorites]


I trust this as much as I would any other thing lacking independent confirmation released to the Daily Mail with the aim of selling a book.
posted by Artw at 9:48 AM on September 7, 2014 [26 favorites]


This is straight-up press-release reporting.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:49 AM on September 7, 2014 [9 favorites]


Susannah L. Bodman lays out some reasons to be skeptical.
posted by Kattullus at 9:52 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Anyone else notice that the linked story was written by one Lizzie Dearden? I wish she had been more critical and taken a few more whacks at the theory.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:53 AM on September 7, 2014 [19 favorites]


How...viable? would the DNA on this shawl be?
posted by pibeandres at 9:53 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


In case you were wondering, the font is comic sans.

Surely you'd need Papyrus to imbue them with the very essence of mystery, no?
posted by poffin boffin at 9:53 AM on September 7, 2014 [17 favorites]


I trust this as much as I would any other thing lacking independent confirmation released to the Daily Mail with the aim of selling a book.

...involving a Polish immigrant.
posted by jaduncan at 9:54 AM on September 7, 2014 [18 favorites]


Casebook forums discussion on Kosminski and the new shawl evidence.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:55 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


I would love for the case to be definitely solved in my lifetime, so I always read purported solutions with a frisson of hope (or, in Patricia Cornwell's case, a frisson of contempt). What's appealing by naming Kosminski is that he's always been on the short list of subjects, and it doesn't require an elaborate conspiracy to explain him as the murderer.

But there are clear problems with this new solution. First, the shawl itself: a family story isn't good enough in terms of indisputable provenance; it's entirely possible that the story of the police officer swiping it for his wife is true, but the chain of evidence has been broken for so long it's really unprovable.

The first thing that raises suspicions is that the shawl appears far too expensive to have been owned by a woman in such desperate circumstances as Catherine Eddowes, who spent the night before she died in a casual ward. If she ever owned that shawl, she would have long since pawned it by the time she died. So, for it to have really been the shawl that was found with her body, that would suggest the killer would have had to bring it with him for some reason. This "solution" doesn't appear to offer a plausible reason/motive for Kosminski to do so.

As to Kosminski: he's long been a suspect, but that doesn't mean he's been an unproblematic one. He wasn't placed in an asylum till 1891, so either that means something caused him to stop killing after the canonical murders ended in late 1888, or he did keep killing, which would suggest that the non-canonical murders would have to be included in the official Ripper death toll. Also, his behavior in the asylum took the form of hallucinations and paranoia (as iotic mentions), but aside from two minor incidents, he doesn't appear to have displayed any aggressive or violent behavior.

My concerns about the DNA evidence are the same as others' above. Also, were samples tested against descendants of other major suspects, just to rule them out?

So yeah, I feel like Alan Moore's statement that all solutions are now merely superpositions is correct. Jack the Ripper turns out to have been an insane, low-class immigrant? Gosh, that's convenient.
posted by scody at 9:58 AM on September 7, 2014 [27 favorites]


So fwiw, the biochemist filtered through local press says it's a perfect 100% match, but it's not clear from that article what was matched against what.
posted by effbot at 9:59 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]




The match is based on mitochondrial DNA to a motherline descendent of Aaron's sister. It belongs to group T1a1. My main objection is that, of the tens of thousands of Jews in East London at the time, how many shared the same DNA and how many might have visited Eddowes?

The DNA match is a good start (assuming the shawl is real), but they need to show how unlikely it would have been to come from anybody else.
posted by Thing at 10:05 AM on September 7, 2014


The statement about 100% DNA matching is really confusing; the only person who could be a 100% match to Kosminski or Eddowes would be an identical twin, no?
posted by poffin boffin at 10:06 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Dr Louhelainen says: "To be honest, I was mostly interested in the science. I wanted to know if something like this possible to do from such a limited amount of genetic material."

If he's actually being honest about his interest being in the science, it seems ill-advised to be doing science by press-release.

They might be onto something, it's always possible. But at this point this seems to fit the pattern of crackpot Ripper theories without any real deviation at all.
posted by howfar at 10:08 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


The match is only mitochondrial DNA, which very near relatives should match 100%, and even distant ones quite well.
posted by Thing at 10:08 AM on September 7, 2014 [6 favorites]


Alan Moore posits in his appendix to From Hell, "Dance of the Gull-Catchers," that the identity of Jack the Ripper by now is a superposition, able to be the person that society needs him to be.

So, Batman then?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:08 AM on September 7, 2014 [6 favorites]


I am of the camp that believes extraordinary claims require extraordinarily clean and robust evidence. A shawl with no provenance record and an association based on a family claim is not what I call extraordinarily robust.

it's not extraordinary robust evidence - but is the DNA matching that of a suspect who was already on the "short list" of suspects extraordinary?
posted by pyramid termite at 10:09 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


So, we're talking how many generations removed at this point? Are we absolutely certain this guy's descendants aren't also descendants of half the other Ripper suspects?

(Also, Jack the Ripper was obviously an underground anatomists' club consisting of J. M. Barrie, R. L. Stevenson, and A. C. Doyle. Because, hey, maybe; also, come on, that is the most fun explanation. Case closed!)
posted by Sys Rq at 10:09 AM on September 7, 2014 [5 favorites]


According to Finnish sources Dr. Jari Louhelainen obtained two samples that matched 99.2 and 100 percent. Another article says the match was with DNA from a descendant of Kosminski's sister. I really don't know what the percentages would mean in this case.

He also mentioned that his focus was on the science and would not comment on whether there is a reasonable legal case against Kosminski (theoretical one). Some interviews with e.g. BBC should be coming up, so we could learn something more about the science behind this. No mention of publications yet, though.

Source in Finnish (links to the other article I mentioned)

[removed decimal point and zero from the other number]
posted by tykky at 10:12 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


I prefer the OTHER theory proposed by Alan Moore in the epilogue to From Hell - there was never any Jack The Ripper, just a series of unusually determined suicides.
posted by The Whelk at 10:17 AM on September 7, 2014 [10 favorites]


The match is based on mitochondrial DNA to a motherline descendent of Aaron's sister.

Wait, does semen even contain mitochondrial DNA? I thought that was supplied only by the female.
posted by hippybear at 10:19 AM on September 7, 2014


They say it's not the semen itself, but epithelial cells from the urethra or something.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:22 AM on September 7, 2014


They never washed the bloody, semen-stained shawl in 125 years? Eeeew.
posted by chavenet at 10:22 AM on September 7, 2014 [9 favorites]


Why is it that for a guy (me) been around a long time this news is not of the interest it might have been many years ago?
posted by Postroad at 10:22 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Why is it that for a guy (me) been around a long time this news is not of the interest it might have been many years ago? posted by Postroad at 1:22 PM on September 7 [+] [!]

MeFi's own Jack the Ripper steps forward...
posted by ennui.bz at 10:34 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Sperm contain mitochondria but they are destroyed after fertilisation and not inherited, except in very rare cases.

The Independent: Has Jack the Ripper's identity really been revealed using DNA evidence? Alec Jeffreys, who knows a bit about DNA evidence, says not really: "An interesting but remarkable claim that needs to be subjected to peer review, with detailed analysis of the provenance of the shawl and the nature of the claimed DNA match with the perpetrator's descendants and its power of discrimination; no actual evidence has yet been provided".
posted by penguinliz at 10:44 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


The match is based on mitochondrial DNA to a motherline descendent of Aaron's sister. It belongs to group T1a1. My main objection is that, of the tens of thousands of Jews in East London at the time, how many shared the same DNA and how many might have visited Eddowes?

Interesting that the article says T1A1 is common in Russian Jews, because if this site and 23andMe are to be believed, then I wouldn't think that is very common at all in Jewish populations (and probably not in Poles, either)).
posted by dilettante at 10:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Some specific comments from the Casebook boards that Thorzdad linked to are useful.

Regarding the shawl:
In examining all the contemporary evidence [...] there is no evidence whatsoever of a shawl, especially an enormous length of material such as this. Add to that the fact that there is no possibility that a Metropolitan police constable was anywhere near this murder scene deep in City Police jurisdiction, on a crime scene, property, clothing, and body removal that is very well documented, let alone the fact that he claimed to have obtained what would have been the largest 'garment' in her possession (he would never have been able to do this) then the alarm bells should be deafening.
More about the shawl/provenance:
Pity it's not a shawl, pity the provenance (such as it is) is merely oral family tradition from a police officer (Amos Simpson) who was in the Metropolitan Police and not the City Police and who has no recorded involvement whatsoever in the Eddowes murder, pity that fairly recent scientific tests on the 'shawl' failed to provide any evidence that what stains were on there were blood at all, pity that the pretty extensive records of Eddowes and her possessions reveal no such item as a shawl at any time, pity that all attempts in the past to 'prove' this was Eddowes 'shawl' failed dismally.

Regarding mtDNA:
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down in the female line. Although it is possible to analyse the mtDNA of a male it will have been acquired from his mother. Therefore for any comparison of the putative mtDNA from the Eddowes shawl with present day relatives to be valid they must be related in an unbroken female line to common ancestors of either Kosminski or Eddowes as the case may be. I don’t know if that is the case with either Karen Miller or the anonymous relative of Aron Kosminski but if there is any descent through the male line it would immediately and irrevocably invalidate the comparisons.

The only way to prove with 95% confidence (the normally accepted level of statistical proof) that the samples on the shawl came from either Kosminski or Eddowes would be by a direct comparison with samples known to be from either of them. As far as I know such samples are not available. Even then, as in the Cornwell comparisons, there is only a between 0.1 and 10% chance that matching samples came from the same individual. Given a gap of at least 4 generations to common ancestors of either Eddowes or Kosminski, the chances of being able to say with certainty that the mtDNA is definitely that of either of them is even smaller. The population of London in 1888 was about 5 million and therefore a ‘perfect’ mtDNA match with someone alive at the time would mean that it could have come from anywhere between 5,000 and 500,000 other Londoners.

Then there is the question of the epithelial cells. Edwards asserts that they came from Kosminski’s urethra. The urethra is lined with squamous epithelium but so is the skin, the nose and the mouth. Anyone touching or even breathing on the shawl could, and most probably would, have left such cells behind.
posted by scody at 10:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [18 favorites]


Armchair sleuths are a dime a dozen, as are armchair sleuths who press release first and peer review never.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [5 favorites]


Compelling article, but this isn't the first time Jack the Ripper's true identity has been declared revealed (1, 2, 3). I loved From Hell, though, so I am really hoping that this is for real this time, though I'm not holding my breath.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:48 AM on September 7, 2014


You're a naughty one, Saucy Jack
You're a haughty one, Saucy Jack

posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:50 AM on September 7, 2014 [7 favorites]


The urethra is lined with squamous epithelium

Ew.
posted by iotic at 10:51 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


squamous
squamous
squamous


real world confirmed for just being a shoddily-run cthulhu by gaslight campaign
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:54 AM on September 7, 2014 [8 favorites]


If the shawl didn't belong to Catherine Eddowes' that's even weirder. What are the chances a random 125 year old shawl happens to contain DNA evidence that closely matches a shortlist of Ripper suspects?
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:54 AM on September 7, 2014 [6 favorites]


Come on mefites......let's get this thing solved......we can do it!! (fist pump)
posted by pearlybob at 11:00 AM on September 7, 2014 [5 favorites]


While I have zero confidence in the entire claim, I can think of one way there might be a (too-expensive) shawl that might have Catherine Eddowes' blood and someone's (not necessarily the murderer's) semen on it, and also not be thought of as a necessary item for the police to keep at the time: a mutilated and exposed dead body lies in the street, and as people mill around and freak out, someone covers the body with something, a shawl? A bystander's shawl?
posted by taz at 11:00 AM on September 7, 2014 [7 favorites]


Not just any shawl. A Michaelmass shawl.
posted by Flashman at 11:03 AM on September 7, 2014


Interesting that the article says T1A1 is common in Russian Jews, because if this site and 23andMe are to be believed, then I wouldn't think that is very common at all in Jewish populations (and probably not in Poles, either)).

That is very interesting. I hope that they address this in whatever they publish in the future. They really need to show that the DNA is unlikely to come from elsewhere.
posted by Thing at 11:05 AM on September 7, 2014


...1888 was about 5 million and therefore a ‘perfect’ mtDNA match with someone alive at the time would mean that it could have come from anywhere between 5,000 and 500,000 other Londoners.

I've also seen estimates of 400,000.
So, here's the logic:

1. Let's assume it is Kosminski.
2. Is Kosminski among the 400,000 people alive in London who match the mtDNA? Yes.
3. Thus, he is Jack the Ripper.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe this is how Science or Justice works. That's even assuming the shawl's provenance is airtight.
posted by vacapinta at 11:06 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just ordered my 'Armchair Detective' business cards.

In case you were wondering, the font is comic sans.


Look at that subtle inkjet coloring. The tasteless thinness of it. My god... It even has a Mountain Dew stain.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:10 AM on September 7, 2014 [32 favorites]


C'mon, Jack is buried in Mount Hope cemetary, everybody knows that. His real name is Dr. Francis Tumeulty. He was pals with H.P. Lovecraft's father and George Eastman. After George started KODAK, he began experimenting with photographing Nth dimensional spaces in hopes of catching a fleeting photograph of an Old One. Something he saw during these experiments resulted in his death by his own hand. The note he left was enigmatic: "my work here is done." But we can easily infer what he meant.

Eastman had purchased Tumeulty's journals at auction, and used his great wealth to advance the building of the Erie canal in hopes of creating a direct waterway to the Atlantic. At one time, all the lockmasters on the Erie were under Eastman's control, in order to facilitate the travels of certain entities from the watery depths to a cyclopian holding tank buried beneath the eldritch soil of Eastman's East Avenue mansion. There's a secret button beneath the faux elephant head in the terrarium. I've seen it. All you have to do to access the tunnel to the garden is....

Wait, someone's at the door. BRB.
posted by valkane at 11:10 AM on September 7, 2014 [46 favorites]


The accuracy of the claim doesn't matter. There's no legal or practical implication either way - except perhaps for shrinking the Ripper industry if a watertight ID is made - and the book will sell heavily anyway. More so if there's prolonged argument, and in cases like this there'll be enough True Believers to keep the fire fanned indefinitely.

So, the important fact is that this claim has been made. DNA analysis suffers more than most by being used to bolster pseudoscientific claims, and I would be more surprised if the analysis here (which may be entirely scientific) is used in a scientific way than not.

(Disclaimer: I don't care who JtR was. People murdering science, 'owever, are another matter...)
posted by Devonian at 11:14 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


All we need now is the author to chime in with an increasingly odd series of comments defending his investigative work and supported by Inspector Teddy of the Yard.
posted by arcticseal at 11:21 AM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Finn claiming he had no idea who he was looking for since he was from Finland is the cutest part of the story.
posted by infini at 11:21 AM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Upthread there's the speculation about "how do we know that this really was The Shawl, it could have been family legend." I thought something similar this morning - I thought I saw in the Daily Mail link that the shawl was in a used clothing store at some point and purchased from there by someone, and who's to say that shopkeeper didn't just use "oh, that was involved in a Jack The Ripper murder" as a standard excuse for stained garments in an effort to try to sell them anyway?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:46 AM on September 7, 2014


Mitochondrial DNA was a valid clue in the Richard III case because: a) definitely tied to the body in question and b) was only part of a whole array of interlocked evidence (body where RIII was supposedly buried, correct period, spinal deformities, violent death suggestive of battle, hasty burial) that as a whole made a convincing case. Unprovenanced shawl has mitochrondrial DNA that matches hundreds of thousands of people? Yeah, somebody should be embarassed putting this out, but oh well, it's the Daily Mail.
posted by tavella at 11:54 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's the Loch Ness monster right?
posted by batfish at 11:56 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Because
posted by infini at 11:58 AM on September 7, 2014


Jack the Ripper turns out to have been an insane, low-class immigrant? Gosh, that's convenient.

Convenient for whom, and how so? It's not as if there haven't been plenty of suspected native upper middle classers, and even a royal. In any event, unless confirmed, this one will be forgotten soon enough when the next True Identification is ready for publication.
posted by IndigoJones at 12:12 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


I hope Ben Goldacre weighs in. In the meantime I'll stick with what I thought was the common knowledge that Sterlng Hayden was Jack.
posted by TedW at 12:57 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Convenient for whom, and how so?

Convenient in terms of Moore's contention that at this point, Ripper "solutions" are primarily reflections of who we (for certain loose definitions of "we" as "wider culture at large") need him to be. In the case of Kosminski, I think it is worth observing that a mentally ill lower-class immigrant emerges as a "solution" in this social/cultural moment of widening economic inequality, renewed anti-immigrant sentiment, and a general willingness to ascribe the potential for homicidal violence to the mentally ill.

Similarly, I think it's interesting and that the Royal family/Masonry conspiracy theory emerged in the political atmosphere of the 1970s (major economic crisis, industrial/class conflict, more open anti-monarchical sentiment, etc.). I also have the sense that the '70s was the beginning of the contemporary British political anti-masonry movement that emerged more openly in the '80s and '90s.

So to say that a particular solution is "convenient" is not to suggest a conscious agenda to smear someone in particular in order to make a sociopolitical point; it's just to think about solutions in the historical context in which they arise. The Ripper case is virtually beyond solving in any meaningful way, so the only thing that's left to do is to select some pieces of evidence (disparate and contradictory and incomplete as they are) and discard others in order to create a narrative. And narratives -- whether personal or political or cultural -- are never created in a vacuum.
posted by scody at 1:00 PM on September 7, 2014 [31 favorites]


The match is only mitochondrial DNA, which very near relatives should match 100%, and even distant ones quite well.--Thing

My poor, unsophisticated understanding of DNA is that the reason police use Y-DNA instead of mitochondrial DNA for matching is that Y-DNA tends to have lots of mutations over the generations. If there were no mutations then we'd all have the exact same Y-DNA traced back to the very first human.

Because it mutates, if there's a match (depending on how much of the DNA they look at), they can calucate the odds of being related to a certain percentage--the closer the match the more closely you are related (because if there are no or few differences then you can only go back a few generations before the DNA lines split).

But my understanding of mitochondrial DNA is that there are few mutations over many generations, so it is more useful for figuring out where your family came from thousands or even 10s of thousands of years ago. So the property 'should match 100%, and even distant ones quite well' is not a good property to have when you are trying to identify a relative.

Again, I'm no expert so take it with a grain of salt.
posted by eye of newt at 1:47 PM on September 7, 2014


I'm sticking with the Time After Time theory.
posted by fairmettle at 2:13 PM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


In the case of Kosminski, I think it is worth observing that a mentally ill lower-class immigrant emerges as a "solution" in this social/cultural moment of widening economic inequality, renewed anti-immigrant sentiment, and a general willingness to ascribe the potential for homicidal violence to the mentally ill.

For what it's worth, the theory of Kosminski as the Ripper has been around for quite some time. I don't know when it first came about but I heard about it about 25 years ago when I did the Jack the Ripper walking tour in London. He seemed to be one of the leading candidates then at least. I'm not especially knowledgable about the case or anything, but it's not too surprising to hear that he's part of this theory.
posted by dhammond at 2:22 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, IIRC, I remember reading about Kosminski in the Book of Lists. I was under the impression that he had been a leading suspect for a good long time.

Doesn't mean I buy this particular press release, but this is not a new theory they're pitching.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:26 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


The killer might have offered the shawl as payment for services. The clothing industry has been a traditional occupation for immigrant Jews.
posted by brujita at 2:37 PM on September 7, 2014


By this point, everyone is a Ripper suspect. We have all been exposed to the meme. The killer is...

one of us!
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:49 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


For what it's worth, the theory of Kosminski as the Ripper has been around for quite some time. I don't know when it first came about but I heard about it about 25 years ago when I did the Jack the Ripper walking tour in London. He seemed to be one of the leading candidates then at least. I'm not especially knowledgable about the case or anything, but it's not too surprising to hear that he's part of this theory.

The name Kosminski first appears on a memorandum drawn up by Macnaghten--a high-ranking police officer--in 1894. I don't know how long it has been public knowledge or the connection with Aaron Kosminski has been made, but clearly he was at least in the frame almost from the very beginning. Of course, back then Kosminski being named would have had the same anti-immigrant feeling but mixed with anti-semitism.

(Ill-feeling toward Eastern European Jews was rife in the mid to late 1800s due to the great numbers of migrants fleeing Russia. It eventually led to the British Brothers' League and the Aliens Act 1905. It also spawned one of the first argument against "they're coming over here taking our jobs", when Charles Booth (he of Life and Labour fame) showed that the impact on employment of so many migrants was actually rather small.)
posted by Thing at 2:51 PM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not suggesting that Kosminski is a new suspect (there are really very few "new" suspects at this point); I'm suggesting that it's worth observing that Russell Edwards (the armchair sleuth who's putting forward this solution) just happened to return to one of the few figures among the classic suspects that just so happens to fit in with a predominant set of contemporary discourses around immigrants, class, and mental illness. If we were still living in a period where casual, overt anti-Semitism was more common in the mainstream cultural/political discourse, a Kosminski "solution" would almost certainly focus more explicitly on his Jewishness, anti-Semitic stereotypes, etc. Same suspect, but a different narrative, depending on the period.

Similarly, there have long been theories that the Ripper was really a woman -- specifically, a midwife/abortionist gone mad. Many of these solutions, especially the older ones from early in the 20th century, rely on outdated, sexist notions about women's psychology. As those stereotypes about women have fallen out of favor, the theories about Jack being a Jill have generally gone by the wayside as well.

Besides, it's clearly Frances Tumblety!
posted by scody at 2:53 PM on September 7, 2014 [8 favorites]


Ill-feeling toward Eastern European Jews was rife in the mid to late 1800s due to the great numbers of migrants fleeing Russia.

Funny enough, my great-n-great forebears were some of those migrants who fled a pogrom, and one of their children (my great-great-great grandfather I think, maybe another great in there) ended up working at Scotland Yard. Not that he exactly covered himself in glory (something involving some horse-betting scam I think), but still!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:17 PM on September 7, 2014


Convenient for whom, and how so?

Daily Mail readers, I'd assume. Or, what scody said.
posted by Sara C. at 3:17 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm dubious. I still think it was James Kelly.
posted by buzzkillington at 4:20 PM on September 7, 2014


Okay, I'm now obsessed with this issue of the shawl.* So on delving further (it's on the Daily Mail site, if you want to find it, but I hate even linking to them), Edwards concedes that the shawl could not possibly have belonged to Eddowes herself. Rather, he contends that Kosminski brought it with him to the scene to leave as a clue for the police as to when the next murder would take place.
Let me stop here and point out that the notion of murderers creating an elaborate puzzle and leaving obscure clues for the police to decipher in order to track them down and catch them -- rather than just turning themselves in, presumably -- is itself a contemporary pop cultural trope. Okay, to resume:
Edwards' reasoning goes like this: 1) The border of the shawl is made up of a small, printed pattern of Michaelmas daisies. 2) Michaelmas is observed on September 29 (in Western churches), and on November 8 (for Eastern orthodox). 3) Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed on September 29 (well, technically, Stride was killed on the 29th, and Eddowes was killed early on the 30th); Mary Kelly was killed on November 8.

Therefore: the shawl was a declaration from the killer as to when he would strike next!

So, this theory requires that we accept that Kosminski -- who is, remember, an impoverished Jewish immigrant who was evidently suffering from paranoid schizophrenia -- meets all of the following criteria: A) he was in possession of an expensive shawl; B) he was aware that its decorative pattern depicted Michaelmas daisies; C) he was further aware of both the Western and Orthodox dates on which Michaelmas was observed; D) he was capable of planning the murders (and controlling his behavior) in such a way as to select the dates on which they would occur; and E) he was able to conceive of the shawl as a clue that would send the police a message.

Yeah, even leaving aside any arguments about how this particular narrative might reflect the cultural moment of 2014, this basically only holds together as a pitch for a new Sherlock Holmes screenplay (Downey, not Cumberbatch.)

*I'm not even fully convinced it's a shawl in the first place; it's 8 feet long, so much longer than a typical shawl, and looks more like a table runner or perhaps an altar cloth. Also, the print seems possibly Edwardian (i.e., post-1900, or at least 12 years after the murders) rather than Victorian. But for purposes here, I'll accept that it was a shawl and was made by 1888.
posted by scody at 4:23 PM on September 7, 2014 [17 favorites]


I'd just like to point out, as the poster, that I don't necessarily believe this is true (as in objective scientific fact), I just thought it was interesting.

Frankly, all y'all have surpassed even my high hopes of how this would be discussed, so many thanks to everyone.

FWIW, I agree with the statement above that we won't ever know, now, who did those horrific things.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:44 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


(not to derail. Just to thank for amazing analysis and links and all those things)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:58 PM on September 7, 2014


By this point, everyone is a Ripper suspect. We have all been exposed to the meme. The killer is...

one of us!


*hides Edwardian day coat in closet.*
posted by The Whelk at 5:11 PM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


But for purposes here, I'll accept that it was a shawl and was made by 1888.

The Daily Mail article did say that the fibres and dyes of the shawl had been tested and found to have originated in the early 1800s in Eastern Europe, and perhaps in Poznan, Poland, a city known for its fine woven shawls, its extravagant annual displays of Michaelmas daisies, and for a string of brutal prostitute murders that abruptly ceased in 1881, which also happened to be Kosminski's home town.
posted by Flashman at 5:46 PM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Kosminski was only sixteen in 1881.
posted by Thing at 6:01 PM on September 7, 2014


scody, that's an elegant summary of the epilogue, and in general the idea of conspiracy theories around a particular event (I'm thinking also of JFK's assassination) turning into a quantum superposition appeals to me. It's worth noting that Alan Moore tells the Ripper story that favors his own hobby horses: the whole thing is a magical working over a huge swath of London that involves a knowledge of deep history (in an early chapter, Gull takes his coachman/accessory on a long expository tour of the city), and it's packed with enough cameos from various people--Oscar Wilde, a very young Aleister Crowley, etc.--to be a sort of prototype real-life-character version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:32 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Daily Mail article did say that the fibres and dyes of the shawl had been tested and found to have originated in the early 1800s in Eastern Europe, and perhaps in Poznan, Poland, a city known for its fine woven shawls, its extravagant annual displays of Michaelmas daisies, and for a string of brutal prostitute murders that abruptly ceased in 1881, which also happened to be Kosminski's home town.

I cannot locate a source that says any of this.
posted by scody at 6:43 PM on September 7, 2014


Kosminski was only sixteen in 1881.

16 in 1881 was very different than 16 in 2014.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:44 PM on September 7, 2014


16 in 1881 was very different than 16 in 2014.

?
posted by scody at 6:45 PM on September 7, 2014


We regard 16 year olds today as children. In 1881, they weren't, is all I'm saying.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:49 PM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Daily Mail article did say that the fibres and dyes of the shawl had been tested and found to have originated in the early 1800s in Eastern Europe, and perhaps in Poznan, Poland, a city known for its fine woven shawls, its extravagant annual displays of Michaelmas daisies, and for a string of brutal prostitute murders that abruptly ceased in 1881, which also happened to be Kosminski's home town.
That all just seems remarkably convenient. There's only one surviving piece of evidence, which was remarkably and coincidentally saved and preserved, and not only does it happen to have traceable DNA from both victim and perpetrator, but it's highly specific to the alleged perpetrator and also ties in with the timing of the murders. If this was a detective novel, it would be an embarrassingly bad one.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:50 PM on September 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


Perhaps because we hold detective novels to a heightened level of scrutiny? We want them to unfold the way we want life to unfold, which isn't always how it actually does.

(Again, I don't necessarily believe that this is true.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:55 PM on September 7, 2014


If it is written as well asThe Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, it will convince me of its premise. Yeah, well, a reader can hope.
posted by theora55 at 7:10 PM on September 7, 2014


I always picture this one armchair detective closing a manilla folder with a sigh of satisfaction, doing a big stretch, pouring a wee dram of Teacher's Highland Cream and then glancing at a calendar, running outside to see the huge pile of newspapers on the stoop and then after rooting around in them, saying "Holy shit, I have to pickup the pace here, where's the Lindbergh baby? Oh, man and JFK too? Lee Harvey Oswald my ass. I better put on some coffee."
posted by Divine_Wino at 7:33 PM on September 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


You're a naughty one, Saucy Jack
You're a haughty one, Saucy Jack


I see another horrible Doctor Who episode coming along where Jack is either the Master, a "cloaked" Dalek, a Movellan with a programming error, or some sort of gothic anti-life force, solved by the Doctor and Sherlock in an ill advised crossover episode that is nonetheless bafflingly popular, like Nickelback or Doctor Who, or Sherlock, or Star Wars.
posted by juiceCake at 11:38 PM on September 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Convenient for whom, and how so? It's not as if there haven't been plenty of suspected native upper middle classers, and even a royal.

From the Daily Mail article:

Kosminski was not a member of the Royal Family, or an eminent surgeon or politician. Serial killers rarely are. Instead, he was a pathetic creature, a lunatic who achieved sexual satisfaction from slashing women to death in the most brutal manner.

The implication is pretty clear: Oh how could we have ever suspected these eminent people?! Of course it is the poor immigrant Polish Jew!
posted by vacapinta at 12:01 AM on September 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


It's worth noting that Alan Moore tells the Ripper story that favors his own hobby horses: the whole thing is a magical working over a huge swath of London that involves a knowledge of deep history (in an early chapter, Gull takes his coachman/accessory on a long expository tour of the city), and it's packed with enough cameos from various people--Oscar Wilde, a very young Aleister Crowley, etc.--to be a sort of prototype real-life-character version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The difference, however, is that Moore made it clear right from the start that From Hell is fiction. He's not making any claim to have found the real killer in the way this book is.

Now that Edwards' book is getting some publicity, I suspect the discussion will move on to just how complicated the issues surrounding DNA evidence really are and much greater scrutiny will be applied to some of the snags mentioned above. You can't blame the author and his publisher for trying to flog the thing by maximising its claims at this stage, but the real test will be how seriously people take the book in a year or two's time.

Patricia Cornwell's 2002 book claiming Walter Sickert was the Ripper (which also relied partly on Mitochondrial DNA) got a lot of publicity when it first came out, sold a lot of copies, and is now dismissed as utter nonsense. Edwards' book may well end up following a very similar trajectory.

I'm with those people who say we'll never know who the Ripper was, and for my money that's a jolly good thing. A single, undeniable, proven answer to that question would kill the whole Ripper saga and all the fascination surrounding it stone dead. And where's the fun in that?
posted by Paul Slade at 1:20 AM on September 8, 2014


I see another horrible Doctor Who episode coming along where Jack is either the Master, a "cloaked" Dalek, a Movellan with a programming error, or some sort of gothic anti-life force....

Nah, it'd be a break in canon. Jack was already eaten by Madame Vastra in a throwaway line (she found him "stringy").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:29 AM on September 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


16 in 1881 was very different than 16 in 2014.

Being a serial killer so young is a seldom thing. And having murdered a string of prostitutes by sixteen is, almost certainly, unknown.

Further, if Kosminski had killed so freely by sixteen, and could manage five murders in two and a half months by twenty-three, where are all those in between? There would be over a hundred missing murders were it true.
posted by Thing at 6:42 AM on September 8, 2014


When I was in high school, I was both an avid Sherlock Holmes fan and a reader of books about Jack the Ripper. I once wrote a story in which Sherlock Holmes, investigating the murders, discovered that he was himself Jack the Ripper.

I didn't even know I was doing fan fiction. This was, like, 1982.

I have found this latest "revelation" very fun to follow, and am enjoying the discussion here.
posted by not that girl at 6:50 AM on September 8, 2014 [1 favorite]



The difference, however, is that Moore made it clear right from the start that From Hell is fiction. He's not making any claim to have found the real killer in the way this book is.

The epilogue to From Hell (which I think is Moore's best long form work) "The Dance Of The Gull Catchers" is a really good essay on the seduction of conspiracy theories, the growth of myth and the danger of trying to turn life into fiction.
posted by The Whelk at 7:59 AM on September 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


When I was in high school, I was both an avid Sherlock Holmes fan and a reader of books about Jack the Ripper. I once wrote a story in which Sherlock Holmes, investigating the murders, discovered that he was himself Jack the Ripper.

A Sherlock Holmes story seemingly inspired by Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde, you say?

Interesting.

Any flying kids in it?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:04 AM on September 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Nah, it'd be a break in canon.

Canon means nothing to the writers of Doctor Who.
posted by juiceCake at 9:25 AM on September 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


"From Hell (which I think is Moore's best long form work)"

Couldn't agree more. This is his other peak work, in my opinion.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:54 AM on September 8, 2014


National Report: "Hillary Clinton a Descendent of Jack the Ripper, DNA Shows"

(National Report is like the Onion, OK?)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:57 AM on September 8, 2014


"So to say that a particular solution is "convenient" is not to suggest a conscious agenda to smear someone in particular in order to make a sociopolitical point; it's just to think about solutions in the historical context in which they arise. "

That was far more politic and deferential to the Daily Fail than I would have been.
posted by klangklangston at 6:19 PM on September 8, 2014


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