Jack the Ripper ID revealed and lead to anti-semitic pogroms?

[nik2016]

On 7 September 2014, Dr. Jari Louhelainen, an expert in historic DNA analysis, announced that he had been commissioned by British author Russell Edwards to study a shawl supposedly found with victim Catherine Eddowes and that he had extracted mitochondrial DNA that matches female line descendants of Eddowes, and mitochondrial DNA that matches female line descendants of Kosminski's sister from the shawl. Louhelainen stated that "The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 percent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 percent fragment of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect 100 percent match."

In his book Naming Jack The Ripper, Edwards names Aaron Kosminski (a Jewish Polish emigrant) as Jack the Ripper. Edwards was inspired to try to finally solve the case after the release of From Hell, the 2001 Johnny Depp film about the Whitechapel murders. He bought at auction the shawl from which the DNA was extracted and commissioned Louhelainen, with Miller assisting, to analyse it for forensic DNA evidence. Edwards states that Kosminski was on a list of police suspects but there was never enough evidence to bring him to trial at the time. Kosminski died at the age of 53 of gangrene of the leg in a London mental hospital in 1919. He says, however, that the DNA samples can now prove that Kosminski was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the person responsible for the Whitechapel murders committed by Jack the Ripper. "I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case," he told The Independent newspaper. He continued, "I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now we have unmasked him."


Let's say this is true and Aaron Kosminski is Jack the Ripper. How people would reacted back then? Bare in mind we are talking about Victorian Britain, a conservative society, anti-semitic feelings were high and not considered illegal by law.

 

[Ivoshafen]

A single killer being IDed as Jewish is not going to lead to lynchings overnight.

 

[nik2016]

Not a simple killer , a "monster" according to the press back then, the people were already angry some try to take the law into their own hands

 

[Clandango]

Looking it up on Wikipedia, it seems that no on has reviewed those findings in a scientific fashion. Also, the police mixed up the names of suspects and Aaron was probably some other guy with a similar last name to another inmate in the same asylum.

 

[mrmandias]

Pogroms are incredibly unlikely.

 

[Ivoshafen]

Not a simple killer , a "monster" according to the press back then, the people were already angry some try to take the law into their own hands

That wouldn't justify any anti-Jewish laws or programs, he may have been terrible but he wasn't no Jews allowed terrible

 

[James Ricker]

If a relative of his turned him in things wouldn't be as bad.The Jewish population would denounce him very fast and call for his hanging.

 

[PhilippeO]

Not a simple killer , a "monster" according to the press back then, the people were already angry some try to take the law into their own hands

But did people actually care that much about prostitute get killed ? My impression is press is more 'yellow press' who excited people to read about sex and crime, not something that people read seriously or able to instigate something.

 

[desmirelle]

Not to bother you with facts, but she was a hooker. He might have just been the last customer before her murder.

Besides, there's nothing more than family lore that it was her scarf and the ID was made in the 21st century. Hardly enough for a pogrom. Now, in the 19th century, no DNA, you catch the man with the body, he says "I just found this......" and looks shocked - as one would be supposed to be if such a discovery is made - he's going to get a hard time from the coppers, but without an eyewitness......no case, not back then. Not without a witness and/or a confession.

 

[desmirelle]

Isn't this about the third or fourth guy DEFINITELY identified as the Ripper? Personally, I doubt that Liz Stride was a Ripper victim, her killer got away with it because of the Ripper. Setting wrong for her to be a Ripper choice.

 

[Reydan]

It wouldn't have lead to pogroms.

But tensions in the area were running high at that point. The mass influx of Jewish migrants in the East End, from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, put a lot of pressure on an already vulnerable local economy. Incidents such as the introduction of the Greener system of working, that saw Jewish migrants undercut their gentile neighbours, and the uproar surrounding the Lipski murders, meant there was quite a bit of anti-alien feeling [as it was known at the time] in the area.

That said, lets remember the context here. Pogroms took place in Imperial Russia because they were either officially sanctioned or allowed to go on unimpeded by the Czarist authorities. They were complex incidents of culture-clash, anxiety over change to the urban and rural environment, and the relative levels of law enforcement and traditions of justice in Imperial Russia. Late Victorian Britain was quite different. The Police, for instance, were often very sympathetic to Jewish migrants; they had a reputation for being non-violent when criminal [something the Police appreciated in the violent East End]. Indeed, the Police on the Ripper case cleared away some evidence for fear that it would spark a race riot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulston_Street_graffito

If the Police do arrest, try, and convict a Jewish murderer for the crime, a race riot is the obvious first reaction. Something more like the anti-German riots that rocked the area in 1915. Shops smashed, people assaulted, but over very quickly. A bubbling over of tensions. In the longer term it might strengthen the road to the 1905 Aliens Act, but really that was going to pass anyway. Small anti-immigrant groups like the British Brothers League might get a little bump in numbers, but again only for a short while. Really very little would change.

Knowing the identity of the Ripper, or at least having a convicted person [not the same thing given Victorian policing methods], probably has more of a knock on in the modern tourist industry. It would probably mean the horrid little cottage industry of Ripper Tourism was less popular without the mystery and his victims would have a little more dignity through less public interest in the story instead of just being boiled down to the 'whore' victims of Jack the Ripper.

 

[JonasResende]

I might be out of my comfort zone here, but thinking that if Jack the Ripper is revealed to be a Jew is going to lead to a nationwide anti-semitic policy, is sort of like thinking that if he'd been revealed to be Albert Victor, duke of Clarence, means that there's gonna be a revolution and the royal family will be sent packing (not saying that that wouldn't happen, if anti-monarchy feeling was running as high as it had in the late 1860s, it might happen, but it's a stretch to say the least.)

This is a bit off topic, but I always sorta wondered why Arthur Conan Doyle never bothered with writing Jack the Ripper into one of his Sherlock Holmes novels? Or was it because Jack's identity remained unknown that Doyle didn't want to portray Holmes as a fool?

 

[Derek Jackson]

If whoever carried out those evil crimes had been caught the case would not be as remembered as much as it is now

 

[Tripledot]

Pogroms are incredibly unlikely.

Seriously. We're talking Victorian England here, not Tsarist Russia.

 

[Indicus]

A few riots are possible, but not pogroms or anti-Jewish laws.

 

[Ak-84]

There is quite a lot of evidence that the Police either knew or had a very firm belief as to who the killer was and that this information was suppressed since they feared race riots.

 

[James XI]

I'm not sure we should base arguments on the plausibility of pogrom-like activity on the soundness (or lack of same) of the motivation. These things have a long history, and arguing that this cause would be insufficiently reasonable is arguing that other incidents were founded on proper rational grounds. Point being, there doesn't need to be a whole lot of logic behind it.

 

[Ak-84]

The East End of that time was one of the most heavily populated and diverse and volatile places on the planet. Keeping riots from happening was a daily struggle for the Police, Ripper murders or no Ripper murders.

 

[Johnrankins]

Not to bother you with facts, but she was a hooker. He might have just been the last customer before her murder.

Besides, there's nothing more than family lore that it was her scarf and the ID was made in the 21st century. Hardly enough for a pogrom. Now, in the 19th century, no DNA, you catch the man with the body, he says "I just found this......" and looks shocked - as one would be supposed to be if such a discovery is made - he's going to get a hard time from the coppers, but without an eyewitness......no case, not back then. Not without a witness and/or a confession.

He might have bumped up against her walking down the street, a flake of dead skin cells or hair could have blown onto her scarf and any number of other things could have happened. The DNA proves 100% of nothing without other evidence.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Pogroms are incredibly unlikely.

Especially as the word Pogrom implies that it's the Government that's attacking, restricting, expelling or worse the Jewish population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.