The story continues…

Phone call #5: I call the Stirling number giving to me during my fourth call and am told they can’t answer my question but give me a Falkirk number to call – it’s the number of place who referred me to Stirling. They insist the Falkirk number is the right one.

Phone call #6: I try the old number again. No answer.

Phone call #7: I try again and am quickly given an 0844 number to call.

Phone call #8: Success, of sorts. The answering message tells me that I’m through to the Dental Action Line (Google tells me I would have found the number in this document). I leave a message.

Phone call #9: They promptly call me back to tell me that there are no dentists locally taking on NHS patients. However, they add me to the waiting list and give me a number to call over the weekend (or I can call the Action Line again on Monday) to get an appointment with a dentist to look at my possible infection. Possible result…

The Times ventures as close as it can to closing the case with the headline Official: Jack the Ripper identified:

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson kept quiet for years but in retirement, frustrated that the murderer had escaped justice, could not resist scribbling notes in the margin of his boss’s memoirs, naming the man that they both believed had become the world’s most famous serial killer.

The suspect in question turns out to be Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who lived in Whitechapel, and this isn’t the great revelation portrayed in some of the papers today. Kosminski has been a suspect amongst Ripperologists for many years – the excellent Casebook website says he was first suggested as the killer in 1894 – and there is little new information in Swanson’s notes to prove Kosminski’s guilt. As the BBC says:

Polish-born Aaron Kosminski is not a new name among the countless suspects identified by police, journalists and historians down the years.

He became a suspect after he was allegedly spotted at the scene of the murder of Elizabeth Stride, believed to be the Ripper’s third victim.
[…]
Historical researcher Keith Skinner, an expert on the Ripper murders, says there are inconsistencies in Mr Swanson’s notes, such as his claim that Kosminski died at Colney Hatch in the 1890s.

In fact, he died at Leavesden Asylum, in north London, in 1919.

Kosmiski may have been guilty of the Ripper crimes (or of another attack to which he has been linked), but then, as now, it was all to easy to jump to the conclusion, in an area of high immigration, that the Ripper was One of Them rather than One of Us. This was aided by a notorious piece of graffito that accompanied the murder of Catherine Eddowes. It read:

The Juwes are
The men That
                Will
not
be Blamed
      for nothing.

The layout is sourced from this very detailed article evaluating Kosminski, which goes on to say:

The intended meaning of this sentence was the subject of much debate at the time of the murders. Sir Charles Warren admitted that the message was difficult to interpret, and speculated that its author was a foreigner. “The idiom does not appear to be English, French, or German,” he wrote, “but it might possibly be that of an Irishman speaking a foreign language. It seems to be the idiom of Spain or Italy.” In other words, Warren believed that the phrasing indicated the graffito was not written by a native English speaker. The favored interpretation at Scotland Yard, by Abberline and others, was that the graffito was a deliberate attempt by a non-Jew to cast blame on the Jews for the murder: in other words to say, “The Jews never accept blame for anything”.

I tend to the opinion that the identity of the Ripper will not – and cannot – ever be proved, and while the whodunnit element is intriguing and attention-grabbing, it is not all there is to the Ripper murders. Those investigating the case are uncovering the social history of the Victorian East End, the development of forensic policing, and the social attitudes of the people at the time.

Some more good articles about Kosminski: here, here (both on the Casebook site), and here.

Long time readers may recall that a little over a year ago, Cllr Dan and I did a sponsored walk for the HIV/AIDS charity Crusaid. I’m not taking part this year (mainly because I can’t afford a weekend in London) but Dan’s doing it again, on July 30th, and would like your money. He’s aiming to raise £500 and is over than halfway there already. If you’re a UK taxpayer, you can add 28% in gift aid to the value of your contribution at no cost to you.

Please go here to sponsor him, and here to find out more about the charity.

On Tuesday, I awoke to discover one side of my face had swollen up. My first thought was that I might have a dental abscess but felt no pain in my mouth and went to work as usual.

Called NHS24 in the afternoon and their nurse recommended ibuprofen to take down the swelling but suggested that it could be mumps (the inflammation is in the right area). Checked with my parents and confirmed that I had mumps when I was younger which made it less likely. Had a bit of a temperature and was generally under the weather by the afternoon.

Off work yesterday but back today before a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. The doctor checked my ears and mouth and wasn’t certain what was responsible for the swelling but she thought wisdom tooth problems were the most likely cause and prescribed me an antibiotic to control the likely infection. I don’t have a dentist – haven’t been since I had a (free) student dentist in 2002 – and, with the advent of free checkups in Scotland have been thinking about going.

The doctor told me I could call a service which would tell me which practices in the town were accepting new NHS patients to save me needing to ring round all of them. Great, I said – that’s what had been putting me off. She wasn’t too optimistic about my chances though.

So, here we go: blog project.

How easy is it to get a dentist in Scotland?

As directed, I got the phone number for “Practitioner Services” from the medical centre reception.

Phone call #1: Practitioner Services tell me they’re not the right people to find me a dentist and give me another number to call.

Phone call #2: I’m through to Fife’s dental help line – wrong area. They dig out a couple of numbers (one daytime, one evening) to call for my area.

Phone call #3: “This extension is not vaild.” I’m directed to press 0 to get through to a general switchboard; I do so and get no answer.

I google the local NHS health board phone number and call it.

Phone call #4: I ask about dentists and am told that office will be closed now. I ask for the number to call tomorrow.

So, I have a number to call (my fifth) tomorrow. To be continued…