Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson: The Man In Charge
Chief Inspector Donald Swanson
In 1888, the officer at The London Metropolitan Police Headquarters that Inspector Frederick Abberline reported to was Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson.
Inspector Frederick Abberline is often cited as a police officer who saw early promotion and, as a result, was given the responsibility of supervising the investigation of the Whitechapel murders on the ground.
But his boss at Scotland Yard had achieved a more impressive rise through the ranks.
Swanson was five years younger than Abberline and joined the Metropolitan Police five years later than Abberline.
After 25 years in the force, in 1888, Abberline was promoted to First- Class Inspector.
After 19 years in the force, in 1887, Swanson was promoted to Chief Inspector.
Like Abberline, Swanson was not a Londoner.
Abberline was born in Blandford, Dorset, 120 miles southwest of London.
Swanson was born near Thurso in Guise, Scotland, 685 miles north of London, on August the 12th, 1848.
He did well at school and briefly worked as a teacher before joining his two married sisters in London.
He answered an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph and joined the London Metropolitan Police on April the 27th, 1868.
His decision to answer the advertisement may have been partly owing to the fact that Swanson already had a family connection to the Metropolitan Police through his cousin, John Macdonald, who was a Met police officer at the time.
There was also a Donald Swanson from Thurso, who was an inspector with the Met. It seems likely they were related as it was Inspector Donald Swanson who authenticated the signatures on the testimonials for the young Donald Swanson.
Ten years later at 30 years of age Swanson married 24-year-old Julia Ann Nevill on May the 23rd 1878 at All Saints Church, West Ham in the East End of London.
Nine years later, in November 1887 he was made Chief Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard.
Like Inspector Abberline, who had also been seconded to Scotland Yard, he was involved in preventing Fenian terrorist attacks. The brutal attacks on homeless women in Whitechapel changed all of that.
It is perhaps more accurate to say that the newspaper coverage of those attacks forced the changes within the Metropolitan Police Force.
We must remember that the Whitechapel population included many living in the most appalling conditions. A whole family would pack themselves into a rotting, reeking, vermin infested space of just eight feet by eight feet; a tiny single room with no kitchen or bathroom.
Added to which as many as ten thousand had no permanent home of any kind.
This homeless multitude would make for one of the more than 200 common lodging houses commonly called ‘doss houses’ hand over fourpence and in return spend the night in an uncomfortable bed packed in between other uncomfortable beds.
A Victorian Common Lodging House or Doss House
Some eight thousand would end the night with the necessary fourpence. As many as two thousand would end up without the necessary fourpence and they would walk the streets or huddle in doorways.
Consider for a moment the impact such wretchedness would have on families.
Violence, mostly domestic violence was common.
In his book The People of the Abyss, Jack London wrote: “Wife beating is considered the prerogative of the husband.”
How will this shape the personalities of boys and girls growing up in a world where violence against women is considered ‘the prerogative’ of men?
What is surprising is that with violence being a common fact of life murder was not common.
In 1886 not a single murder was reported in Whitechapel. In 1887 not a single murder was reported in Whitechapel.
Now consider the year 1888.
First a new newspaper was launched into a competitive market. The Star newspaper fought for readers by giving them sensational accounts of the world around them.
It was launched on January the 17th, 1888.
On February 25th, a 38-year-old homeless woman called Annie Millwood was attacked in Spitalfields, Whitechapel. She was stabbed multiple times.
Two days after her death was reported and only a 6-minute walk from that attack, a 45-year-old homeless woman, Emma Elizabeth Smith, was brutally attacked and died the next day from her injuries.
Then, a 2-minute walk from that attack, on August the 7th, a 39-year-old homeless woman, Martha Tabram, was discovered on a first-floor landing where she had been stabbed 39 times.
Then, on August the 31st, a 43-year-old homeless woman, Mary Ann or Polly Nichols, walked half a mile east of those three murder sites. The distance didn’t save her.
Polly Nichols was found in Buck’s Row with her throat cut, and the newspapers demanded action.
Eight days later, back in the Spitalfields area of Whitechapel again, a 47-year-old homeless woman, Annie Chapman, was found with her throat cut.
Did sensational and irresponsible newspaper coverage play any part in the attacks on these homeless women?
It’s possible. Annie Chapman was the first victim to be disembowelled, and just the day before her murder, a newspaper described a case that included female victims who were disembowelled.
On September the 7th, 1888, the Pall Mall Gazette included an article titled:
“A PRECEDENT FOR THE WHITECHAPEL MURDER
BY MR WILLIAM WESTALL”
The excellent casebook.org has the article in full.
The article about the attacks in Whitechapel includes a description of the brutal murders of women in Bavaria. Readers of the article were informed that
“It was evident that after killing them, the murderer had disembowelled them and torn out their hearts.”
Five attacks on homeless women within a 20-minute walk of each attack. Five attacks that had resulted in death.
Five when not a single such event had taken place in that area during the previous two years.
The newspapers heavily reported the five attacks, which inevitably whipped up a frenzy of mass hysteria. All of which put the police under pressure.
One week after the murder of Annie Chapman, Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson was placed in charge of the investigation.
He was relieved of all other duties and given his own office at Scotland Yard.
He had access to “every paper, every document, every report, every telegram’.
The following year, when giving evidence before a Department Committee, he described his working day between September and December 1888:
"I had to be at the office at half-past 8 in the morning; then I had to read through all the papers that had come in, which took me till 11 pm., and sometimes 1 and 2 in the morning; then I had to go to Whitechapel and see the officers — generally getting home between 2 and 3 am.”
Such pressure may have shown journalists that the Metropolitan Police took their responsibilities seriously in this case but it is surely not an effective way to manage a major criminal enquiry.
Seven years after the Whitechapel Murders happened the Pall Mall Gazette wrote:
”The theory entitled to most respect, because it was presumably based upon the best knowledge, was that of Chief Inspector Swanson, the officer who was associated with the investigation of all the murders, and Mr. Swanson believed the crimes to have been the work of a man who is now dead.”
A theory that doesn’t really offer us very much.
Donald Swanson didn’t write his memoirs, but his boss did. Robert Anderson, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, wrote two books.
In his copy of The Lighter Side of My Official Life Swanson pencilled in a comment.
Anderson had written that the only person to get a close look at Jack the Ripper identified him "the moment he was confronted with him" but refused to testify.
Swanson commented”
"...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 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.”
Eyewitness evidence today is subject to intense scrutiny. Whether the eyewitness was Israel Schwartz or Joseph Lawende, the evidence is surely worthless.
The fact that the identification took place around two years after they supposedly passed the killer in the early hours of gaslit London is remarkable.
A full accopunt of this can be read in my Journal entry under Aaron Kosminski
Chief Inspector Donald Swanson retired in 1903 and died on November the 25th, 1924, aged 76.