Donald Swanson

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson

Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson (1848 - 1924) was born in Thurso in Scotland, and was a senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police in London during the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.

Early life

The son of John Swanson, a brewer, Swanson was a good scholar and on leaving school he worked for a period as a teacher, but realising that that career offered him few prospects, he decided instead to join the Police.

Police career

Swanson joined the Metropolitan Police on 27 April 1868, and was given the warrant number 50282. By November 1887 Swanson was Chief Inspector of the CID in the Commissioner's Office at Scotland Yard. He was promoted to Superintendent in 1896. Swanson was involved in preventing Fenian terrorist attacks in London during the 1870s and 1880s. Other cases he was involved in include recovering the stolen jewels of Lady Dysart and a stolen Gainsborough painting, as well as acting against 'rent boys', blackmailing homosexual prostitutes in 1897, and in preventing the Jameson Raid from starting a war in South Africa. He arrested Percy Lefroy Mapleton, the railway murderer, in 1881. He retired in 1903.

Swanson died on 24 November 1924 at 3 Presburg Road, New Malden, Surrey. He was buried at Kingston Cemetery.

Jack the Ripper

Dr. Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), placed Swanson in overall charge of the investigation into the Whitechapel Murders from 1 September to 6 October 1888. Swanson was freed from all other duties and given his own office at Scotland Yard from which to co-ordinate inquiries. He was given permission to see "every paper, every document, every report [and] every telegram" concerning the investigation. In this way Swanson gained a mass of knowledge and information about the killings.

The 'Swanson Marginalia'

Swanson was a close friend of Dr. Robert Anderson, and in his copy of Anderson's book of reminiscences, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, published in 1910, Swanson wrote pencilled notes, or annotations, which were disclosed by his descendant, James Swanson, in 1987. In these notes Swanson names a "Kosminski" (widely thought to be Aaron Kosminski) as the Polish Jew that Anderson had hinted at in his book as being a suspect. Swanson wrote that the only person to get a close look at Jack the Ripper (possibly he is referring to either Joseph Lawende or Israel Schwartz, both supposed witnesses) identified Kosminski at a "Seaside Home".

"...because the suspect was also a Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind...And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London...after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with great 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 & 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 - DSS"

While it is true that Kosminski lived with his brother in Whitechapel, and that he was an inmate at Colney Hatch, he in fact did not die shortly after being transferred there, as Swanson states; in fact, Kosminski died in 1919, and therefore was still alive when Swanson wrote his annotations. Nor is it likely that an identified and homicidal criminal would have been simply and quietly released into his brother's care. Also, by stating that after Kosminski's identification as the Whitechapel Murderer "no other murder of this kind took place in London" Swanson overlooks the series of Ripper-like killings that took place after Kosminski's incarceration, including that of Frances Coles in February 1891, only six days after Kosminski had been admitted to Colney Hatch.

"Kosminski" is also mentioned in Sir Melville Macnaghten's Memoranda in a list of three individuals who were suspected of being the Ripper. Macnaghten, however, thought that Montague Druitt was more likely to be the killer, and he did not mention anything about any alleged identification of Kosminski that was withdrawn by a witness.

External references

• Swanson on the Casebook:Jack the Ripper website
• Swanson and Kosminski on the Metropolitan Police website
• Swanson in The National Archives
• Handwriting analysis of the Swanson Marginalia
• The Swanson Marginalia in 'The Times'
• The Swanson Marginalia in 'The Independent'