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whatever you run, even Orcas, go

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to monday.com to dive deeper. Aaron

1:37

Mordkie-Kosminski was born to a Jewish family on

1:40

the 11th of September 1865 in Poland. Between

1:44

1881 and 1882,

1:46

we know that he emigrated to Whitechapel

1:48

with his sisters and their families. Whitechapel,

1:51

at this time, was an overcrowded slum

1:53

in the east end of London. It's

1:56

very easy to imagine damp,

1:58

gaslit, cobbled, streets and

2:00

an atmospheric fog enveloping the neighbourhood.

2:03

You can, when you imagine this area,

2:06

likely hear the jovial sounds of the

2:08

working poor enjoying themselves altogether

2:10

in local taverns after a long

2:12

day's work. But

2:14

as often as the case, the reality

2:17

is very different. And that

2:19

is that nearly two in every ten

2:21

people living here died before they were

2:23

five years old. Its

2:25

inhabitants were made up of

2:27

the transient poor, immigrants, outcasts,

2:29

all vying, and many of

2:31

them failing, to scrape together

2:33

some form of dignity from

2:35

England's capital city. This

2:38

was where many Jewish refugees escaping

2:41

economic turmoil across Europe and the

2:43

pogroms in Russia came to find

2:45

a better life. Aaron

2:49

Kosminski found work intermittently as a barber,

2:51

though it appears likely that he did

2:53

not make enough money to support himself

2:55

in this, and relied on

2:57

financial assistance from his sisters to

2:59

survive. Kosminski could be

3:01

erratic, you see, unpredictable even. He

3:04

suffered with an intersection of various

3:06

mental health conditions and, as

3:08

a result, it very often fell to his

3:10

sisters to take care of him. And

3:13

they did so, dutifully, when

3:15

they were safely capable of providing

3:17

that care. So

3:19

far, then, this is in many ways

3:21

a difficult, but not extraordinary immigrant story.

3:24

How then does Aaron Kosminski go

3:27

from Jewish immigrant living in one

3:29

of the poorest parts of England

3:31

to becoming, some would say, the

3:33

prime suspect in the Whitechapel murders?

3:36

The only suspect linked to

3:38

this case, some experts have

3:40

argued, by peer-reviewed DNA evidence.

3:43

Now, to uncover that, Maddie and I invite

3:45

you to join us for this, the second

3:48

installment in our After Dark special, as

3:50

we try to better understand the men

3:52

who would be Jack the Ripper. From

6:00

a little bit later than this, I think it

6:02

might be the turn of the 20th century instead,

6:05

but with them stood outside in their uniforms. In

6:08

Whitechapel. In Whitechapel, yeah. And I

6:10

also know the women in the family, and I always

6:12

love this, and I want to do more research into

6:14

it. There were three sisters who

6:17

were all singers who

6:19

worked on the stage of the music

6:22

halls, and they toured all around Britain.

6:24

And then they abruptly stopped their careers, and

6:27

we don't know why. So I want

6:29

to look into that. But I'm really interested

6:31

in their experience in the East End, and

6:34

it's kind of something in our family law, you know,

6:36

that they were there during the Whitechapel murders, and what

6:39

would that have been like? And I want to

6:41

know more about the Jewish experience in this part

6:44

of London at this time, in

6:46

the lead up to the murders, as

6:48

well, because it's, as you've set out

6:50

there in the introduction, it's a slum.

6:52

It's an incredibly poor part of the

6:54

city where the life expectancy is incredibly

6:56

low. It's a very dangerous place. It's

6:58

a place riddled with people who

7:00

have problems with addiction, who the sex

7:03

trade is absolutely

7:05

booming there. There's real

7:08

levels of poverty, levels of indignity,

7:10

but also levels of ingenuity

7:13

and hopefulness and striving to make

7:15

something of life, especially with these

7:17

immigrants coming into the community. I

7:19

wonder what that would have felt

7:21

like coming in as a Jewish

7:23

immigrant, having escaped the pogroms and

7:25

the hatred in Europe. And that's

7:27

not to say that it didn't

7:29

exist in England, in Britain, but

7:32

they make it here to

7:35

this incredibly dank, dirty, smelly,

7:37

dangerous place, and they have to

7:39

make a life for themselves. And then we have these

7:41

murders, and the finger is turned,

7:43

at least in part, on the Jewish community,

7:45

and one person in particular. And

7:48

I find that fascinating. It makes

7:50

me feel very uneasy. I can't wait

7:52

to get into it. The

7:55

Jewish experience is, in

7:57

many ways, very similar to other

7:59

immigrant communities. experiences, but at the

8:01

same time has its own tribulations

8:03

actually, and its own triumphs of

8:05

course, but in this case we

8:07

are confronted with some of those

8:09

tribulations. Certainly there were levels of

8:12

suspicion against the

8:15

Jewish community at this time in White

8:17

Chapel, and immigrants in general, again

8:19

not much changes sometimes, but certainly within

8:21

the Jewish community there was suspicion around

8:23

their presence in White Chapel. And there's

8:25

segregation as well, isn't there, thinking about

8:28

the Jews Free School, which I

8:30

think is the building that you can still

8:32

go and see, and it says the

8:34

Jewish Free School above it in letters. I think that's

8:36

still there in White Chapel in the East End, I'm

8:38

pretty sure I've seen that. And there was a

8:41

Jewish soup kitchen as well, so there

8:43

were specific infrastructures,

8:46

institutions for

8:48

the community already in place, but they were all

8:50

separate, and I think that must have created a

8:52

divide. And then the

8:54

Jewish community becomes explicitly linked to these

8:56

murders in a very strange

8:59

way almost. So on the night of

9:01

the 30th of September 1888, what

9:04

people have interpreted as, and we'll talk about whether

9:06

this is true or not, but people have picked

9:09

this up as a clue, appears on a wall

9:11

in White Chapel. Or did it

9:13

appear, certainly it was noted on the night of

9:15

the 30th of September, and again we'll talk about

9:17

this. And the

9:19

ripper that night on the 30th of

9:22

September had claimed two victims. This was the

9:24

night that Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were

9:26

killed, and they were killed within an hour

9:28

of each other. And actually what's happening is

9:31

there is a frenzy, because

9:33

at this point they

9:35

know that there's a killer in White Chapel.

9:37

These are the third and fourth victims at

9:39

this stage. At high police presence, they

9:41

know that Elizabeth Stride is being killed, so

9:44

now let's concentrate maybe a little bit on

9:46

the events that unfold when Catherine Eddowes' body

9:48

is discovered, because this is where this link

9:50

starts to come about. Eddowes,

9:53

it's believed, was last seen at Mitre Square,

9:55

and it's believed that she was seen with

9:57

the man who has reportedly jacked the ripper.

9:59

her. Her body was

10:01

then discovered at 1.44am, so we

10:04

can very much place her in

10:07

a specific area at this time. The

10:09

general area, as I said, is being patrolled by detectives

10:11

anyway, but somehow they missed not just the

10:13

first murder, but the second murder too. So now they're kind

10:15

of scrambling to try and make up for this, and as

10:18

I said, there's a bit of a frenzy going on. And

10:20

just to set the scene a little bit there as well,

10:22

and to think about why the police would have missed this

10:24

murder taking place, you know, this is a part of the

10:26

city where, as we've said, sex work, and

10:29

we acknowledge that potentially not all

10:31

of the victims were sex workers,

10:33

but to the eyes of

10:35

the police they very much were, and would

10:37

have been therefore invisible on the street to

10:39

these men of the law to a certain

10:42

extent. And women going off

10:44

into dark alleyways, into houses with

10:47

strange men, would not have been unusual,

10:49

and it's very possible that Catherine Eddowes

10:51

that night, with whatever man she was

10:54

with, slipped through the net and escaped

10:56

the notice of the police. And crucially,

10:58

let's bear this in mind as we

11:00

go through this particular history, despite

11:03

the big police presence, there's no kind of

11:05

lockdown, there's no clamp down, people are elected,

11:07

there's no curfew, people are moving around, and

11:10

drinking, but also within this case,

11:14

this particular night on the 30th of

11:16

September, lends credence to the idea that

11:19

whoever Jack the Ripper was, was either

11:21

intimately aware of the layout of

11:23

Whitechapel or lived there. We

11:26

know Kuzminski is living in Whitechapel at

11:28

this time because you may know faces,

11:31

so they would just think, well, this person

11:33

lives there, they're going wherever they're going. They

11:35

are interviewing certain men, stopping certain men and

11:37

interviewing them, but Kuzminski is not one of

11:40

those men, he's in

11:42

no way connected at this particular point.

11:45

But at 2.55am things changed

11:47

slightly because a fragment of

11:49

Edo's apron is discovered.

11:52

It's identified as hers because we know

11:54

it was missing from the body, very

11:56

quickly discovered in a

11:58

doorway on Goulston Street. by P.C.

12:00

Alfred Long. Now, it

12:02

was covered in blood

12:05

and feces, so this is a very

12:07

striking discovery. And

12:10

there were other marks on the

12:12

apron which suggested that some

12:15

type of implement, potentially a knife, had been

12:17

cleaned on the fragment of apron. So this

12:19

is what they discovered in a doorway not

12:21

too far from Mitre Square, where the body

12:23

was found. So P.C. Long

12:25

bends down and he picks up the

12:27

apron. And he is then,

12:29

the way it's described in the archives, is

12:31

that he stands up and as he's standing

12:34

up, he sees something written

12:36

on the wall. The writing is on

12:38

the jam of an open archway or doorway visible

12:40

to anybody who's been in the street. And it

12:43

read, the Jews are the men

12:45

who will not be blamed for nothing. So

12:47

the Jews are the men that

12:49

will not be blamed for nothing.

12:52

So this was written essentially over

12:54

the scrap of fabric that P.C.

12:56

Long recovered. This is a

12:58

really famous piece of graffiti. And

13:00

I think there's some really interesting things to say

13:02

about it. Not least that the message doesn't really

13:04

make sense. The Jews are the men who will

13:07

not be blamed for nothing. You

13:09

can almost hear an East End voice in

13:11

that, right? It's a double negative and you

13:13

can hear it in that accent, actually. What

13:15

do you think it means, first of

13:17

all? Well, a lot

13:20

of people at the time, and we'll

13:22

look at this, but a lot of people at the

13:24

time thought that it was an accusation of

13:27

some sort towards members of the Jewish

13:29

community who were potentially getting

13:31

away with something here. Some

13:33

people, I've seen this, it doesn't quite add

13:35

up, I don't think logically, but it's part

13:37

of the lore, so we'll address it. Some

13:40

people think that Jack wrote

13:42

it himself, having dropped the

13:44

piece of the apron there, that it was

13:46

very purposeful. Some people think it

13:48

was a witness that was too afraid and wrote

13:50

something on the wall as a message, but certainly

13:53

very quickly it's being seen as a

13:55

clue. The police don't necessarily think it

13:57

is. Yeah, so I think there's multiple

13:59

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22:52

I have mixed feelings about this. On

22:55

the one hand, Warren actually isn't incorrect.

22:58

Graffiti can incite real

23:01

violence. The city had

23:03

seen this almost a

23:06

century before in 1780

23:08

when the Gordon riots happened and

23:10

when graffiti that was religiously

23:13

and racially relevant

23:16

against the Catholics and the Jews in

23:19

the city spread as a riot spread.

23:21

It directed a mob, it identified houses

23:23

that could be burned down, it identified

23:26

houses where people who are vulnerable were

23:28

living there who could be attacked and

23:30

robbed and awful things done to them.

23:33

And so there's a real understanding that graffiti has this

23:35

power within the city. So you can see his anxiety.

23:38

Having said that, the fact that he

23:40

doesn't photograph it is both incredibly irritating

23:42

for the people looking into this, investigating

23:44

at the time. And also as a

23:46

historian of graffiti, there are not that

23:48

many records of graffiti in

23:50

the 19th century. The way that

23:53

you really find images of graffiti, particularly photographs,

23:55

is if there just happens to be graffiti

23:57

in the background of a photo of a

24:00

building, an alleyway, some people gathered, whatever it

24:02

is. And it's always never the focal point.

24:04

And so I'm so gutted. One of the

24:07

famous things I suppose about the Ripper case

24:09

is the photography. And we all know, and

24:11

we're not going to talk about them in

24:13

detail here, but we all know the crime

24:15

scene photos are so famous and so widely

24:18

available online for better or worse.

24:20

And it's so

24:23

gutting to me. The one photograph I

24:25

want to see from this case, because

24:27

I will not look at the others,

24:29

is the picture of the graffiti and

24:31

it doesn't exist. It really shows that

24:34

he's clued into his community and to

24:36

his beast, right? That he knows that

24:38

this would be inflammatory. He's also, it's

24:40

a real acknowledgement of the anti-Jewish feeling

24:43

and physical violence that can occur at

24:45

this point in London

24:47

history. And it's showing us that

24:49

it has occurred because it says there's been problems and

24:51

it will occur again. And it

24:53

just brings into focus how much of a

24:55

hotbed it is in Whitechapel and what could

24:58

go wrong. I wonder though, as well, whether

25:01

the problem is the graffiti itself. It's the

25:03

fact that the police are now drawing attention

25:05

to it and that the connection has been

25:07

made. The news has gone out, the connection

25:09

between the graffiti, the anti-Jewish sentiment. Well, it

25:12

does, I think, because it's the anti-Jewish sentiment

25:14

being tied to the Ripper case. Yeah,

25:16

no, but that's what I mean. It doesn't matter actually

25:18

what the origin of it

25:21

is, because ultimately the story

25:23

that's going to be told is that this is a

25:25

clue to the identity of Jack the Ripper and Jack

25:27

the Ripper is Jewish. Those

25:29

words being put together, that is going

25:31

to ignite something. That's what everybody

25:34

will interpret that as being. I think he's right

25:36

in that. I think probably should have been photographed,

25:39

but it needed to be curtailed

25:41

to a certain extent, because what are you

25:43

going to be dealing with riots then the

25:45

next morning, if that doesn't happen. But

25:47

how then does this link to Kuzminski specifically?

25:49

There are loads of Jewish people and loads

25:52

of Jewish men living in this area. How

25:54

do we get to him specifically? Why is

25:56

he picked out? Well, I mean, there are

25:58

a few reasons. At the time

26:01

on the streets, he's not being

26:03

mentioned, but let's just rewind it a little

26:05

bit. So we talked about in episode one

26:07

how Prince Albert Victor was

26:10

not in Whitechapel or even

26:12

in London during any of this. And

26:15

Kaczminski is, he's in Whitechapel during all

26:17

of this. So it puts him there

26:19

the entire time. Based

26:21

on the events of particularly that night,

26:24

the 30th of September, it

26:26

is thought by many who researched this

26:28

case that the ripper

26:30

had to live in Whitechapel because

26:33

he would have had to have been known to

26:35

some of the women that he was interacting with

26:37

for them to follow him or whatever it might

26:39

have been, but also that he had to know

26:41

the roots of the city. There

26:43

is a theory that on this night in

26:45

particular, after Elizabeth Stride is being killed, he

26:48

goes home and changes so he's not covered

26:50

in blood, and then comes back out again

26:53

and kills again. I've never thought

26:55

about that actually, that those

26:57

moments in between Elizabeth

26:59

and Catherine being killed, that he must

27:01

have changed his clothes. I mean, he's

27:04

there in Whitechapel the whole time, but

27:06

so are a lot of

27:08

other men, some of them Jewish, some of them

27:10

not Jewish. Why

27:12

is Kaczminski in

27:15

particular picked for this

27:17

and is he actually arrested? Do they make

27:20

those accusations to him or is

27:22

this a suspect that we

27:24

have inherited later on in history? It's

27:26

a suspect that we've inherited later on, but not too much later

27:28

on. Okay. So he is

27:31

arrested, but he is not arrested for

27:33

these particular violent acts. However, they are

27:35

violent acts that one might be able

27:37

to link to these. So bear with

27:39

me. On the 12th of

27:41

July, 1890, he is placed in

27:43

the Myland Old Town Workhouse because

27:45

of his mental illness. It's getting

27:47

worse because you said his sisters

27:49

were looking after him. Yeah. And

27:51

they weren't able to cope at

27:53

this particular moment in time. But

27:56

three days later, this is not the best institution

27:59

in the entire world. released and he's back out.

28:01

A Victorian workhouse, not the best institution ever,

28:03

you surprised me. Then let's fast forward a

28:05

little bit to February 1891 and he has

28:07

returned to the workhouse but this time

28:11

possibly by the police. So he's definitely

28:14

becoming known to the police in the

28:17

two, three years after the Jack

28:19

the Ripper murders. 7th

28:21

of February, so this is three

28:24

days later, he was transferred to

28:26

the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum and

28:28

this time it was for threatening either his

28:30

sister or the sister of his friend, we're

28:33

not quite sure from the archive, with

28:35

a knife. So this

28:37

then will entice people to

28:39

make links with violent disorder

28:42

towards women with knives. I mean,

28:45

not to dismiss the fear that

28:48

must have been palpable in that

28:50

scene. A man with

28:52

mental illness and

28:54

a knife in his hand does not Jack

28:56

the Ripper make. No, what it probably does

28:59

mean is that he is incredibly

29:01

mentally unwell though and he ends up in a

29:03

lunatic asylum in Leaviston Asylum actually on

29:06

the 19th of April 1894. And

29:08

are there medical

29:11

records from his time

29:13

in these institutions? Do we

29:15

know what he was

29:17

suffering from or is it a case of hesitating

29:20

to speculate down the decades since? There's

29:22

a mixture of both. We do have

29:24

records of what he was. So we

29:27

know that he was suffering

29:29

from what we would now term some kind

29:31

of paranoid schizophrenia. He was having auditory hallucinations,

29:33

so he was hearing voices that were telling

29:35

him to do things, although we don't have

29:37

the full details of what they were apparently

29:39

telling him to do. This

29:41

is so specific and it's

29:44

also quite, I can imagine the panic and

29:46

the heartbreak, but he was afraid of being

29:48

fed by other people or receiving food from

29:50

other people. So he just wouldn't take, if

29:52

you made a meal, prepared a meal for him, and this

29:54

is one of the reasons why his sisters couldn't cope, because

29:57

he wouldn't take the food from them. And

29:59

so what he would do was in order to eat, he

30:01

would pick up food that had been dropped as litter on

30:03

the floor, on the ground, on the streets as he wandered

30:05

through them. So he was eating on the streets. So

30:08

tragic. Right? It's incredibly, incredibly sad. He

30:11

dropped to 96 pounds. He was incredibly

30:13

underweight. I mean, that's not going to do

30:15

wonders for your mental health if you already

30:17

suffer from a condition. And this

30:19

contact, he had this problem with contact. He

30:21

wouldn't let anybody wash or bathe him. He had

30:23

that going on as well, thinking about these...

30:25

He's being pushed to the edges of

30:27

society in every way. Yeah.

30:29

And then the

30:31

sexual element comes in and this is also

30:34

linked... Well, I'm not going to say this

30:36

is also linking him. People have suggested that

30:38

this also links him to Jack the Ripper

30:40

in that it's thought that there may have

30:42

been some sexual element to some of those murders, although we

30:44

don't know that for sure. But one

30:47

of the causes, I mean, this would never stand

30:49

up in modern medical terminology, but one of the

30:52

causes that was given at the time for his

30:54

mental distress was excessive self-abuse.

30:58

We're talking about masturbation. Yeah. So...

31:00

Which again, I mean, it's interesting thinking

31:02

about 19th century masculinity, thinking

31:05

about the morals and the standards of the 19th

31:07

century man, and you have to be physically

31:10

powerful, you

31:12

have to be virulent. But

31:14

if that sexuality is not

31:17

directed in the direction of

31:19

the domestic space, heterosexual relationship,

31:21

yes, and within the bounds

31:23

of polite Christianity, then

31:25

there's a problem. And we saw it in

31:28

the last episode with Prince Albert and the

31:30

question mark over his sexuality and maybe

31:33

him being present at a

31:35

male only brothel in the

31:38

year after the Whitechapel killings. And here

31:40

we've got it again, we've got sexuality

31:43

and mental health now being

31:45

tied together in complicated ways

31:47

and quite derogatory ways actually.

31:49

And that someone who behaves

31:53

outside of the norm, for

31:56

whatever medical reason, sexually

31:58

speaking, is then automatically... being

32:00

linked to these murders and

32:02

that's not to detract from

32:04

obviously the terror that his sisters

32:07

would have felt and the suffering that they would

32:09

have gone through trying to deal with him and

32:11

trying to get help and trying to get him

32:14

institutionalized or whatever. I don't want

32:16

to detract from that because obviously he would have been a

32:18

very difficult individual to deal with but that's

32:20

not enough for me to say okay

32:23

well that's obviously he's Jack the

32:25

Ripper. I mean that seems like a ridiculous leap

32:27

and that's a leap of logic that relies on

32:30

the same Victorian codes of

32:32

morality that are

32:34

in play in 1888. Yeah I

32:37

mean in terms of that masculinity one of

32:39

the kind of linking points

32:41

that we can talk about between the two cases

32:43

that we've discussed so far is a failure to

32:45

reach idealized standards and that's

32:47

setting you apart and then that putting

32:50

suspicion on you in whatever aspect and

32:52

both of these men become suspicious in

32:54

terms of the Jack the Ripper case

32:57

but it's all linked to this

32:59

failure in masculinity but again we talked about this

33:01

in the last episode again 20th century has a

33:03

lot to answer for in these cases because there's

33:06

so many unanswered questions. It's actually not until the

33:08

20th century that we think we can link and

33:10

Kuzminsky specifically to the case not until 1910 so

33:12

what we're talking 22 years later after the murders

33:17

are taking place but that of course means that

33:19

the police force that were involved are

33:21

still alive and I'm talking about Sir

33:24

Robert Anderson who was the assistant commissioner

33:26

in the case at the time but

33:28

in 1910 he claimed that the Ripper

33:31

was quote a low-class Polish Jew so

33:33

that is Sir Robert Anderson who was

33:35

involved in investigating the crime at the

33:38

time he's saying that he believes that

33:40

it was again quote low-class Polish Jew.

33:42

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson he actually led

33:44

the Ripper investigation so anybody who's familiar

33:47

with this case will know in 1888

33:50

he named the chief suspect

33:52

as a man called Kuzminsky.

33:55

This is a handwritten note that was written

33:57

in the margins of a copy of Anderson's

34:00

memoir. So Robert Anderson wrote a memoir

34:02

and in that it said a low-class

34:04

Polish Jew was the person

34:06

who did it. In Swanson's copy, he

34:09

wrote Kaczminski. So that's two people involved

34:11

in the case at the time who

34:13

have said, yes, we think it's a

34:15

low-class Polish Jewish person, and now

34:18

Swanson is saying, and his

34:20

name was Kaczminski. But you

34:22

know, these are police working in the same police

34:25

force that when it picked

34:27

up women's supposedly working in sex work, if

34:29

you were any kind of vagrant, you would

34:31

be put down on the police records as

34:34

selling sex, whether you were or not. I

34:37

mean, it's damning on the surface, but can we

34:39

trust the words of these men? They follow

34:41

up by saying this Kaczminski

34:43

had been incarcerated in an asylum.

34:46

That's all the detail that he

34:48

gives. Fast forward. It's

34:50

1959. A memo

34:52

is discovered that had been written

34:54

in 1894. So 1894, we are

34:56

now six years later. Okay. This

34:58

was written by Sir Melville MacNaughton

35:01

and he was the assistant chief constable to

35:03

the London Met at the time. And

35:06

one of the suspects that

35:08

he calls also Polish Jewish and

35:11

also says that he was called Kaczminski.

35:13

He thinks Kaczminski is the prime suspect,

35:15

but there are two other men who

35:17

he would have. So there are two

35:19

other men named. Kaczminski

35:22

being the prime, but he gives two other

35:24

options as well, but the link being the

35:26

Polish Jewish identity. And he

35:28

said that this man, Kaczminski,

35:31

had a great hatred of

35:33

women with strong homicidal tendencies.

35:36

Now, without a first name, so this is interesting, what

35:38

happened without first name, then we fast forward to 1987.

35:40

So all these pieces are

35:42

getting plucked together in the 20th century. 1987, Martin

35:46

Fido searches asylum records for

35:48

anybody named Kaczminski and he

35:50

found only one person and

35:53

that's Herron Kaczminski. But there

35:56

is no record of Kaczminski in

35:58

any surviving official. police documentations, except

36:00

this memo. So at the time they're

36:03

not naming him, within a couple of

36:05

years they're naming him, but not at

36:07

the time. And one final thing on

36:09

that, somebody mentions, I can't

36:11

remember which one of the police officers it was,

36:13

but one of them mentions, oh, and this Kaczminski

36:15

died at this time in this place, and our

36:17

own Kaczminski did not die at that time in

36:19

that place. So it might not be the same. So it

36:21

might not be the same. Also, I will say, so

36:24

Martin Fido, who looks at the asylum records

36:26

in 1987, when we think about

36:30

archival research, today we can go

36:32

to a digital database and

36:35

search keywords, and we can cross-reference

36:37

huge amounts of material. But even

36:39

today, there are records in local

36:42

archives that haven't been digitised and that we don't

36:44

have access to. I'm not saying that Martin Fido

36:47

didn't do the most rigorous research he could have

36:49

done in 1987, but who's to

36:51

say that he simply did not get

36:54

to see all the available records?

36:56

And so the fact that he's

36:59

only found one Kaczminski doesn't necessarily

37:01

register with me as being conclusive

37:03

evidence, but rather maybe an

37:06

inference of how limited archival research could

37:08

be in the 80s. While

37:29

you're talking about the distinction between

37:32

research then and now literally

37:34

today, this story

37:37

pushes right up until our own time,

37:39

and we have some claim,

37:42

DNA evidence, to connect Aaron

37:44

Kaczminski to Catherine

37:46

Eddowes. I

37:54

don't know how I missed this, but

37:56

in 2019 the murders of Mary Ann,

37:58

Annie, Elizabeth, Jane

38:00

were once more in the headlines. Not

38:03

just because the five had just hit the shelves,

38:06

but because supposed DNA evidence

38:08

which claimed to conclusively determine

38:10

the identity of Jack the

38:12

Ripper had been published in

38:14

a peer-reviewed scientific journal. These

38:17

results had been extracted from

38:20

a rather interesting object. In

38:23

2014, British author Russell Edwards

38:25

engaged renowned molecular biologist Dr.

38:27

Yari Luhalainen to carry out

38:29

DNA testing on a shawl

38:31

that reportedly belonged to Catherine

38:33

Eddowes, the second woman who had

38:35

been killed on the night of the 30th of September 1888,

38:39

and whose fragment of apron had

38:41

been found by PC Long near

38:43

some potentially incriminating graffiti. Luhalainen's

38:46

tests revealed that the shawl

38:48

contained genetic material that officially

38:50

linked maternal descendants of Catherine

38:52

Eddowes to the maternal

38:54

descendants of Aaron Kuzminski. This

38:57

surely was the gold standard of

38:59

DNA proof that Ripper researchers had

39:01

been waiting for. Had

39:03

he been identified finally, Luhalainen

39:06

did not formally publish his findings

39:08

in 2014, however, leaving Russell Edwards

39:10

to publish them informally instead without

39:12

peer review. But critics claimed

39:15

that the results were flawed because few

39:17

technical details about the analysis of these

39:19

genetic samples were made available. Others

39:22

questioned the origins of the shawl.

39:25

However, in 2019, Luhalainen, alongside David

39:27

Miller, a reproduction and sperm expert

39:30

at the University of Leeds, published

39:32

their findings formally in the Journal

39:34

of Forensic Sciences. These

39:37

findings were peer reviewed and met

39:39

the standard for authoritative publication. Their

39:42

research states that, quote, the presence

39:44

of mitochondrial DNA on the shawl

39:46

matches the female victim's mitochondrial DNA

39:48

derived from stains on it and

39:51

that the mitochondrial DNA also on

39:53

the shawl matches the suspect candidate's

39:55

mitochondrial DNA. The debate,

39:57

however, rages on. 2019,

40:01

other experts have claimed that

40:03

the collaboration between the University

40:05

of Leeds and Liverpool John

40:07

Moores did not comply with

40:09

SWG DAM 2013 guidelines, and

40:11

therefore do not actually pass

40:13

the credibility threshold. Both

40:15

universities refute these claims. Most

40:18

of this DNA jargon is, of

40:20

course, entirely flabbergasting to us. This

40:23

is a history podcast. It is

40:25

not a science podcast after all.

40:27

So, after talking to

40:29

senior producer Charlotte, we decided to

40:31

bring in an expert of our

40:33

own to help us analyse these

40:35

results and their findings. Professor

40:38

Tory King is a professor of genetics

40:40

at the University of Leicester, and is

40:42

best known for having led the genetic

40:44

analysis in the King Richard III case.

40:47

If there was anyone we felt that we

40:50

could trust to analyse this data, it was

40:52

Professor King. And this is

40:54

what she had to say. Okay.

41:00

So, there's a few issues

41:02

with this DNA sort of

41:04

study that they've done on

41:07

this shawl. So, going back

41:09

to really basics here,

41:11

when you have a shawl that

41:13

you want to test against a

41:15

potential suspect, you have to know

41:17

the provenance of that shawl.

41:20

And my understanding is there's a lot of issues

41:22

with the provenance of this shawl. So, first of

41:24

all, they're not sure it's actually from that murder.

41:26

I mean, that's a very, very serious issue, because

41:28

if you're going to do genetic testing to

41:31

see whether or not something supposedly from a

41:33

crime scene matches a potential suspect, you have

41:35

to be sure that that's actually from the

41:37

crime scene, and there's issues with them.

41:40

There's really big issues when

41:42

you're working on ancient and

41:44

forensic DNA around contamination. So,

41:47

what you want to be sure of

41:49

is that the DNA that you're getting

41:51

from a particular item is actually from

41:53

the individual and not from contamination. Now,

41:55

contamination happens really, really easily. So, my

41:57

understanding is that there's a lot of

41:59

issues with the crime is that this shawl has

42:01

been handled by loads and

42:03

loads of people. And

42:06

really not good for

42:08

this particular thing is that they're taking

42:10

DNA or they want to get

42:12

DNA from this shawl and they want to compare

42:14

it against the relatives, descendants,

42:16

they say, of Kosminski. So

42:18

what you do not do

42:20

ever is have the shawl

42:23

in the presence of these people because

42:25

them just breathing could contaminate it with

42:27

their DNA. And my understanding

42:29

that's what happened. So just

42:31

starting from the very get-go, there's

42:34

all kinds of issues with provenance

42:36

and contamination. The next

42:38

thing they do is they try

42:40

to get DNA out of samples that

42:42

they think are blood-like and semen-like,

42:45

but they don't know for sure. They basically

42:47

say they're semen-like, but they aren't certain

42:50

about this. And a really

42:52

interesting thing around the Jack the Ripper

42:54

murders is that in none of

42:57

the cases was there thought to be sexual activity.

43:00

So is there an issue with that there

43:02

in that they're conflating the semen as being

43:04

from a murderer when it may not be,

43:07

if it is indeed semen to start with. So

43:11

what you do is you take

43:13

DNA from the sample and

43:15

you extract the DNA from the cells.

43:17

And then what you'll do is you'll

43:19

sequence bits of the DNA. So you'll

43:21

try and sequence bits of DNA that

43:23

are fairly specific to individuals because

43:26

of the time gap between sort

43:28

of now and when the crime

43:30

is supposed to have happened. We

43:33

can't do the standard forensic DNA testing, obviously, where

43:35

you take the DNA from the shawl and you

43:37

match it against a living individual using markers

43:39

that are really, really specific. We

43:42

have to use pieces of DNA like

43:44

mitochondrial DNA, which comes down through the

43:46

female line. So this is a small circular

43:49

piece of DNA that's in the egg. So

43:51

us gals, we pass it down to all

43:53

of our children, but only daughters

43:55

can pass it on. So what

43:57

they've done is they've been getting... say,

44:01

female-line relatives of Kosminski

44:04

and of Catherine Eddowes. But

44:06

there's an issue here because

44:08

they say that the people

44:10

who they've had involved are

44:12

descendants of Kosminski. Now he's

44:15

a guy, mitochondrial DNA is in

44:17

the egg, not in the sperm,

44:19

so he can't have passed down

44:21

his mitochondrial DNA. So there's

44:23

a real issue with that one as

44:26

well. Then what they've done is

44:28

they've sequenced just a small part

44:30

of the mitochondrial DNA. So it's

44:32

not entire mitochondrial genome sequencing, which

44:34

is something that I would do

44:37

just immediately. They've done a relatively

44:39

small section of it. And then

44:41

they've tried to match it

44:43

against this potential

44:45

suspect. So given all the problems

44:47

already that we've got, they don't

44:50

do very high resolution mitochondrial DNA

44:52

testing. And the really interesting thing

44:54

is when you read this paper, they don't give

44:56

the results. So ordinarily

44:58

what you would do is you would

45:00

show the sequence that you've got. They

45:02

don't do that. They present it as

45:04

like little, there was the

45:07

best way to explain it, like little

45:09

blocks representing DNA sequence, but they don't

45:11

tell you what the DNA sequence is.

45:13

And the blocks represent more than one

45:15

DNA letter, so they're representing chunks of

45:17

DNA. So you don't know what

45:19

they're doing. So you can't critically access it.

45:22

And the thing is I was actually shown

45:24

this paper before it was published. And I

45:26

said at the time, this is unpublishable. You

45:29

haven't done what is normally done in a

45:31

DNA testing where you present all the results

45:33

that you've got and you weigh everything up

45:36

about, well, we've not managed to get all

45:38

the DNA here. They have some issues in

45:40

that they don't manage to get all of

45:42

the DNA sequence. And so they don't get

45:45

a perfect match against Kosminski relatives, even if

45:47

they are the right ones, which if it's

45:49

actually male line, male come down from him,

45:52

they can't be. So there's

45:54

just one thing after another where there's

45:56

issues with this in

45:59

terms of the way they've been. carried out the genetic

46:01

research and presented it is

46:03

just absolutely riddled with

46:05

holes. And there's

46:08

obviously like a huge fascination around the

46:10

Jack the Ripper case and people are

46:12

just desperate to work out who he was still over

46:15

100 years later. Do you think

46:17

it's something that we'd ever be able

46:19

to solve with DNA evidence? So

46:22

we would have to have a

46:24

pretty amazing piece of

46:26

evidence turn up that

46:28

hasn't been handled to death. My

46:31

guess is if that existed it would have turned up by

46:33

now. So I think

46:35

it's unlikely that unless something

46:37

miraculous turns up, it's unlikely where we're

46:39

going to be able to use DNA

46:42

to solve this particular issue. As

46:44

for the fascination, it's an unsolved mystery

46:47

and people love unsolved mysteries because they want

46:50

to try and solve it themselves. And I

46:52

can completely understand that and you can, you

46:54

know, people go down rabbit holes but sadly

46:56

I think it's going to be one of

46:58

these ones that we probably just don't know

47:00

the answer to. I

47:09

want to reflect a little bit on this

47:12

particular suspect because it's

47:15

an incredibly tragic story alongside

47:18

the already horrifying tragic

47:20

story of the Whitechapel murders

47:22

more broadly. And

47:25

it's a story of an

47:27

individual who obviously suffered incredible

47:29

mental illness at the

47:31

expense of himself, at the expense of

47:33

his family, his sisters who were trying

47:36

to fit into a community where they

47:38

were already on the outside. So he's

47:41

such a peripheral figure and he ends up

47:43

in institution after institution. And

47:46

from the police perspective he's

47:48

described as being quote

47:51

a low-class Polish Jew and it's

47:53

easy to see why the police

47:55

would look to someone like Kaczminski

47:58

to pin this on. I

48:00

suppose you could say on the one hand that

48:02

the evidence is quite damning. His name appears to

48:05

be mentioned by multiple police who did

48:07

work on the case. But

48:09

we also know that the men working

48:11

in the police at this time came

48:14

with their own prejudices and

48:16

very much at an institutional as

48:18

well as personal level that

48:21

the police paperwork from this period,

48:23

their record in terms of

48:25

arrests, in terms of interrogation, in terms of

48:28

policing on the street, had its

48:30

own biases and its own brutalities.

48:33

And I don't know if I buy

48:36

that he was a realistic victim. Do

48:38

we know anything about what happened at the end of

48:41

his life? Yes, he dies in the

48:43

asylum that he was last placed in in 1919 and

48:45

he was 53. And those who looked after

48:49

him at the asylum says, and this is their

48:52

word not mine, but they called him harmless, that

48:54

they hadn't experienced that kind of violent tendency

48:56

that has been associated

48:59

with him afterwards. For me,

49:01

there's not enough evidence here. Listen, if

49:03

you're tuning into these episodes to be like

49:05

Anthony and Maddie are going to find out who

49:07

Jack the Ripper are, you might as well

49:09

skip ahead to another episode now because we will

49:12

never claim to do that. And that's not

49:14

the purpose of these episodes. It's to explore the

49:16

reasons around why some of these men were

49:18

named as suspects in the context of 1888, but

49:21

also in the context of the 20th century when a

49:23

lot of them are named. And in

49:25

Kaczminski's case, we have mental health

49:27

coming into the picture. We have

49:30

these concepts of failed masculinity. We

49:32

have concepts of his Jewishness, his

49:34

immigrant status, and

49:36

the otherness of

49:39

his identity in so many ways brings

49:41

him into focus, but it didn't bring him

49:43

into focus in 1888. It didn't.

49:46

I will say this case for me, it's made

49:49

me think about my own

49:51

ancestral presence in this moment

49:53

and the parallels really with

49:55

Kaczminski and his journey

49:57

from Poland to England and what that looked

49:59

like in coming into that community. But

50:02

it's also allowed us to go out

50:04

onto the street level. Unfortunately, the same

50:06

streets where these women were

50:08

brutally killed, thinking particularly about Elizabeth and

50:10

Catherine on the night of the 30th.

50:13

But we've also been able to stand

50:15

there and hear the police footsteps and

50:17

to see the graffiti that was on

50:19

the walls, to think about how the

50:21

policing in that space was done, how

50:23

they managed the crowds, what

50:25

public opinion and mood was like in that

50:28

moment. And it's also taken us into the

50:31

home of Kosminski and a Jewish family

50:33

with three sisters struggling to care for

50:35

a mentally ill member of their family

50:38

who is violent towards them and other

50:40

women around them potentially. And

50:42

it's taken us into the workhouse,

50:45

into multiple asylums, into

50:47

the police records. It's given us a

50:50

real overview of what

50:52

it would have been like to be an immigrant in

50:54

this moment in Whitechapel, what it felt

50:56

like on the street, and how record

50:59

keeping was done, how people from

51:01

the lower classes, from marginal

51:04

communities were recorded in this period and

51:06

how we can maybe access some of

51:08

their stories today. And I think sadly,

51:10

in a lot of cases, including this

51:12

one, the way to access some of

51:14

these histories is through true

51:16

crime. ALICE W. WILSON Speaking of

51:18

which, as we leave Aaron Kosminski behind

51:21

us, we will turn our attentions in

51:23

the next episode to a painter, an

51:25

artist, who it is

51:27

suspected painted some of

51:29

his experiences as potentially Jack

51:32

the Ripper into his work. Tune in next

51:34

time to find out about his history and

51:36

why he has become involved in this case.

51:38

If you've enjoyed this episode, we have a

51:40

large back catalogue of Jack the Ripper related

51:42

episodes and others that are totally different, but

51:45

equally as interesting. You can find those wherever

51:47

you get your podcasts. If you've enjoyed this,

51:49

please leave us a five star view, it

51:51

helps people find us and it helps to

51:53

promote the episodes wherever people are listening. Thank

51:55

you so much for listening and join us

51:57

again for episode three in the limited series

51:59

on the men who would be Jack the

52:01

Ripper. This

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