The police were actually quite detailed. This was the era where scientific and modern investigations began, and the lack of mentioning of the shawl in the records has been used to as a counter to its genuineness.
The discrepancy in Swanson’s recollection and the actual death date has been used to reject Kominski’s candidature, but I do think that’s a genuine mistake rather than any break in the chain.
Ultimately, we will never know for sure, but if this story is true, then it is very likely that this can be placed in the likely category.
One thing unexplained is why the anonymous ‘special’’ policeman’s wife rejected her husband’s gift of a blood and semen soaked shawl picked out of the gutter having belonged to a butchered prostitute weltering in her gore.
Is it possible to assess the statistical significance of the MtDNA matches ?
I’m basically wondering, if you stopped 2 random English people on the street, what are the chances you’d find an equivalent match ? Or to to put it another way, how many random English people would you have to stop to get an equivalent match ?
See my post #72. A 100% match, which is what is being claimed, implies a common maternal ancestor within the past 5 generations, or about 125 years. Basically the only people who would match would be members of your own extended family.
This dissertation has no date, but it looks to have been written before current events. How did Russel Wilson get hold it? He explains in this article:
If police records are accurate, Simpson found the shawl and Eddowes died in a five-minute window.
Casebook goes on to speculate that Simpson could have found the shawl outside of the crime scene, and made no mention of it since he was technically outside jurisdiction. Since he was not one of the investigating officers, he most likely did not take the shawl from the crime scene. Where and when did he find it? I haven’t found the answer. Maybe the killer dropped it as he fled the scene, and Simpson stumbled across it a few minutes later, and said “Ooh, nice looking shawl. Hmmmm, it’s got blood all over it. I’ll take it home and give it to my wife anyway.”
Granted, police weren’t as polished in their procedures as they are today, but this seems like a really stupid and tasteless thing to do. “Here love, I found this shawl near a crime scene. Happy anniversary.” The wife sees it’s got blood all over it, grimaces her thanks, and stores it in a chest full of other crappy gifts. After they die, their children go through their possessions and decide to keep the bloody shawl. Their surviving descendants do the same thing, and the cycle repeats. Had none of them ever thought of throwing that crap out?
Murder souvenirs were a big thing in Victorian England. The hangman used to sell off his rope by the inch. And the general mentality was a lot less delicate than it is now - twenty years earlier, mobs including children had been turning out to watch public executions. A shawl from a murder scene could have been a lot closer to ‘prestigious souvenir’ than to ‘ewwwww’.
Also, policemen weren’t well paid, and it wasn’t like today where anyone has access to goods from anywhere. This could have been a poor-ish dressmaker’s only chance to see a shawl like this close up.
The whole thing still feels somehow off to me, but the ‘Surprise, honey!’ angle isn’t what feels wrong.
Interesting factoid from that article: ‘Amos Simpson was born in 1847 at Acton, Sudbury, Suffolk’ That is a mile away from where I write.
**Also in Acton in 1847…
**
Actually a month back I came across this other weird case from there. Catherine Foster who was sent to another world with Calcraft performing the office aetat 18. It’s really into 'They Hung My Saintly Kitty’ territory…
With the caveat that most girls in that situation after three weeks just went home to their mummies… Catherine was one of two teenage girls executed in the period from 1840 - 1868. She was just seventeen years old when she poisoned her husband, John, to whom she had been married for only three weeks, at Acton near Sudbury in Suffolk. She passed her eighteenth birthday in Bury Gaol awaiting trial.
*John and Catherine had known each other since she was at the village school and had been having a relationship for two years or so, after Catherine had left school and gone into service. John was seven years Catherine’s senior and it is probable that he was rather more keen on her than she was on him. He also wanted to move out of his mother’s home as his sisters both had small children who got on his nerves. The relationship with Catherine continued and he persuaded her to marry him, which she did on Wednesday the 28th of October 1846 at Acton church. The newly weds went to live with Catherine’s mother, Maria Morley, at her cottage in the village. Catherine stayed with John until the Saturday when she left to visit her aunt in the village of Pakenham for the next ten days.
On Tuesday the 17th of November Catherine decided to cook dumplings for dinner. *
… Mr. Jones and another local surgeon carried out the autopsy and removed John’s stomach for analysis which was sent to Mr. E. W. Image in Bury St. Edmunds. He detected a large amount of arsenic in it and confirmed that this was the cause of death. John was not the only victim, the chickens, who had eaten bits of the dumpling and John’s vomit which Mrs. Morley had thrown into the adjoining ditch, had also died. Their crops were found to contain arsenic and suet, an ingredient of dumplings. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of murder and charged Catherine with the crime. She was therefore arrested and committed to Bury St. Edmunds gaol, charged with poisoning John.
*Catherine was examined by the magistrates whilst in prison in the presence of the gaoler’s wife, Mrs. James. Her mother was also present and took young Thomas with her. Catherine is alleged to have said to him “You good for nothing little boy, why did you tell such stories” and refused a cake he had brought her. * The police made a search of Mrs. Morley’s house on Monday the 24th of November. The constable of Melford, George Green and Sergeant Rogers took samples of flour and also the muslin cloths that were used for cooking dumplings in and sent them to Mr. Image for analysis. The flour did not contain any poison but one the muslin clothes tested positive for it. Catherine was tried at the Suffolk Lent Assizes on the 27th of March 1847 before Baron Pollock on the charge of the wilful murder of John Foster. She appeared calm in court and pleaded not guilty
… The hanging was carried out at 9.00 a.m. on Saturday the 17th of April 1847 by William Calcraft on the New Drop gallows, erected in the meadow outside Bury St. Edmunds Gaol. A crowd of some ten thousand people had turned up to see it, among them many women. Catherine walked firmly and unaided to her doom and on the platform was asked by the governor, Mr. J M’Intyre, if she had any final words and replied “No, I cannot speak.”
*It was recorded by the Era newspaper that when the bolt was drawn she struggled for some two minutes and that a “thrill of horror ran through the crowd”. The execution was described as a deeply moving spectacle by witnesses. Catherine’s body was afterwards buried within the prison as was now the legal requirement and quicklime was added to the coffin, as it was thought to speed decomposition. She was the last female to be hanged in public at Bury St. Edmunds. A broadside was printed of her crime and execution. * Capital Punishment UK site
So Eddowes dress had Michaelmas daisies on it? The shawl is described as having such daisies. The similarity between the shawl and her dress, in color and pattern, could mean that the shawl was Eddowes. Are there any images online of the shawl and the dress?
If the shawl had both the DNA of Kosminski and Eddowes on it, then it would be difficult to not acknowledge him as probably playing some part in at least that murder. (I know there are a dozen reasons he may not have, but on balance of probabilities you’d have to at least admit a strong case).
However, that would also depend on the linkage of the shawl to Eddowes and there seems to be some problems there. Not mentioned in a police report of goods she had, at post #106 there is a timing issue, there is also the dating placing the shawl being made in the early 1900’s. It is just so convenient as well that someone with a Ripper business comes up with this. Of course the argument could be that because of the interest they would be more likely to find it.
And for mine I’d still like to know what happened between the last Ripper murder and the time (some two years) before Kosminski was locked up. Why no murders.
The peer review mentioned earlier on of the methods and results would satisfy a lot of my doubts.
I don’t think it’s a given that murderers just keep on murdering forever. And it’s possible that his insanity was intermittent.
The significance of the gap is not so much in showing that he probably wasn’t the guy, but in lessening the supposed evidence that he was the guy.
AFAICT the only real evidence tying Kosminski to the crime was an alleged witness identification, which may or may not have happened. (Of course, the same is also true of all other suspects.)
“While other “Ripperologists” have dismissed the shawl as a fake, Edwards believed its Michaelmas flowers were an obscure clue left by the killer warning of his next attack, which occurred on November 8, 1888 at the Eastern Orthodox Churches’ Michaelmas festival.”
“According to the author” doesn’t mean much. It’s simply his opinion that she couldn’t have owned such an expensive shawl. He may be right, but I wouldn’t convict someone based on it.
I don’t understand the arguments that “she couldn’t have owned such an expensive shawl.” Couldn’t it have been brought by the killer? Perhaps as a (as it turned out pretend) gift?
If the tests can be replicated, I would consider Jack to be found.
As a member of a jury, I would find it hard to convict someone with if he were to be executed.
