Aaron Kosminski - Suspect
22nd August 2018. This page is a work in progress. Come back often as it is being updated daily!
Contents
Early Life
Aaron Kosminski was born as Aron Mordke Kozminski in Klodawa, Poland, on 11th September 1865.
Aron’s father, Abram Josef Kozminski, was a tailor from the village of Grzegorzew. Abram married Golda Lubnowski, a twenty-three-year-old woman from Klodawa, who was the daughter of a butcher named Wolek and his wife, Ruchel.
During the next twenty years, Abram and Golda had a total of seven children:
- Pessa (F) was born in December 1845, but died before reaching three years of age.
- Hinde (F) was born in November 1848
- Iciek (M) (later called Isaac) was born in 1851
- Malke (F) (later called Matilda) was born in 1854
- Blimbe (F) was born in 1857
- Wolek (M) (later called Woolf) was born in 1860
- Aron (M) was the youngest child was born in 1865
Aaron’s oldest brother, Iciek, was believed to be the first Kozminski to arrive in England.
By December 1885, all four Kozminski siblings were living on Greenfield Street, just south of Whitechapel Road.
Both of Aaron’s brothers, Woolf and Isaac, were ladies’ tailors in the business of making jackets and outer garments called mantles. Woolf lived at 4 different addresses on Greenfield Street from 1881 until 1887.
Post Whitechapel Murders
A fair deal is known about Aaron Kosminski in the period following the Whitechapel murders - with a great deal of thanks required for Paul Begg and Martin Fido for their relentless research.
| 12th July 1890 | Kosminski was admitted to the Mile End Workhouse from his brother Wolf’s house at 3, Sion Square. |
| 15th July 1890 | Kosminski was released back into his brother's care |
| 4th February 1891 | Kosminski was readmitted into the Mile End Workhouse - this time from 16, Greenfield Street. |
| 7th February 1891 | After being examined by Dr Edmund King, Kosminski was committed to the Colney Hatch Asylum |
| April 1894 | Kosminski was transferred to the Leavesden Asylum near Watford. He remained there until his death in 1919.
The reasons for his admittance were well documented:
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Sir Robert Anderson
Anderson's piece in Criminals and Crime, 1907
In 1907 Anderson wrote a piece for Criminals and Crime where he said he knew the identity of the author of the letters sent to the Central News Agency. He also went as far as saying he knew the identity of the killer and that the killer was "caged in an asylum."
Anderson's Memoirs: The Lighter Side of My Official Life
In his memoirs Anderson wrote:
Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him. In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.
Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson
In 1987 new evidence came to light. Chief Inspector Swanson had written notes in the margin of his copy of Sir Robert Anderson's book, The Lighter Side of My Official Life. Swanson had written:
"... after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect’s return to his brother’s house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day and night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards—Kosminski was the suspect."
