This gonna be kind of quick and dirty but the gist of it is basically that a (deteriorated) shawl that allegedly belonged to one of the victims (Catherine Eddowes) was tested for mitochondrial DNA, and based on those results there’s a historian named Russell Edwards claiming that it’s definitive proof that a man named Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.
There are a lot of problems with this.
- One, this shawl has never been 100% authenticated and its provenance can’t be traced back to the murder scene with zero doubts, so there’s an argument to be made that it never really belonged to Catherine Eddowes/wasn’t at the scene of her murder anyway.
- Even if it is really her shawl, and was found at her murder scene, it’s been passed down through several generations and spent a long time in storage. It’s badly degraded. And it’s likely that several people have come into close contact with it in the last 130 years, which means lots of potential sources of contaminant DNA.
- DNA degrades over time, and given that the garment itself is in pretty bad shape, it’s harder to take the test results at face value.
- The testing done was for mitochondrial DNA. Experts have already commented that mitochondrial DNA cannot/should not be used to determine a positive connection in a case like this; ideally, under these circumstances, and in the context of forensics, it’s more useful for ruling out potential non-matches instead.
- Even if it were somehow possible to fully authenticate the DNA results, they would not, in and of themselves, be evidence of murder. Even if they could be determined without any doubt to belong to Aaron Kosminski, it doesn’t prove he killed Catherine Eddowes; it only proves he had contact with her and her shawl, at some point.
- The genetic material in question is alleged to come from a semen stain. Given that a lot of the suspects interviewed by police at the time had a habit of patronizing local sex workers, it’s not unthinkable that there could be DNA on her shawl from someone who was just a normal paying customer in one of those encounters.
- “Aaron Kosminski” is literally a made up suspect. I’m not joking. There were several, several men police actually interviewed and interrogated during that time, but the only reference to a “Kosminski” is literally just the last name “Kosminski” appearing on a 1894 memorandum written by Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Assistant Chief Constable of the London Metropolitan Police, in a list of possible suspects. This was a. several years after the murders stopped and b. is literally just a Polish last name with no other identifying information.
- A Ripperologist produced the identity of Aaron Kosminski entirely on their own, by tracking down someone who just happened to be named “Kosminski” on asylum admittance records from 1889. This Aaron Kosminski was a Polish Jew from Whitechapel; obviously, a place a lot of Polish Jews lived in London. He was recorded as suffering from psychosis w paranoia, and was likely schizophrenic. There are no records of him ever being violent.
- At the time of the murders and during the initial investigation, antisemitism and xenophobia became absolutely out of control in connection to the case. The extent of this cannot be understated. Jews and other racial and ethnic minorities were harassed in the streets, riots broke out, ridiculous and cartoonish conspiracy theories abounded. At one point during all of this, the newspaper The East London Observer reported a belief that “no Englishman could have perpetrated such a horrible crime, and that it must have been done by a Jew.”
- I mean that’s blood libel. We’ve arrived at blood libel.
- When it came to police, Polish Jews were particularly targeted for investigation and interrogation, regardless of any actual connection to the victims or the circumstances of the murders.
- So. Ripperologists literally pulled a mentally ill Polish Jew who was from Whitechapel out of a hat, based of off someone who was maybe, possibly, at some point a suspect having the same last name. In a specific area of a massive urban city with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Polish Jews living there. And then a man tested DNA from people who are, many generations later, reportedly distantly related to that man. And he tested it against a sample taken from an artifact that’s never been fully authenticated and is significantly degraded.
- And now that man is claiming that the “positive match” is definitive proof that said mentally ill Polish Jew pulled out of a hat was Jack the Ripper. Bc why not continue the legacy of conspiracy thinking and antisemitism at a time like this, right?
It’s just irresponsible. Both of Russell Edwards, and of the news outlets reporting on it without any pushback or criticism.
(I recommend checking out the podcast Historical Blindness’s two part series of Jack the Ripper. That’s where I found a lot of the primary source material referenced here).
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