is not known precisely when Aaron left Poland to join his sisters or whether he lived in Germany for any length of time, although he may have left Poland as a result of the April 1881 pogroms following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the impetus for many other Jews to emigrate. The family moved to Britain and settled in London sometime in 1881 or 1882. His mother, who was listed as a widow, apparently did not emigrate with the family immediately, but had joined them by 1894. It is unknown whether his father died or abandoned the family, but he did not emigrate to Britain with the rest of them. It is known that he had likely died before 1901, and an 1887 death certificate indicates that an Abram Kosminski had died in the Polish town of Koło, only five miles from Grzegorzew, the hometown of Kosminski's father. In London, Kosminski embarked on a career as a barber in Whitechapel, an impoverished slum in London's East End that had become home to many Jewish refugees who were fleeing economic hardship in Eastern Europe and pogroms in Tsarist Russia. However, he may have worked only sporadically: it was reported that he had "not attempted any kind of work for years" by 1891. He possibly relied on his sisters' families for financial support, and may have lived with them at 3 Sion Square in 1890 and 16 Greenfield Street in 1891, indicating that his sisters possibly shared responsibility for caring for him and he alternated living between their family homes. On 12 July 1890, Kosminski was placed in Mile End Old Town workhouse due to his worsening mental illness, with his brother Woolf certifying the entry, and was released three days later. On 4 February 1891, he was returned to the workhouse, possibly by the police, and on 7 February, he was transferred to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. A witness to the certification of his entry, recorded as Jacob Cohen, gave some basic background information and stated that Kosminski had threatened his sister with a knife. It is unclear whether this meant Kosminski's sister or Cohen's. Kosminski remained at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum for the next three years until he was admitted on 19 April 1894 to Leavesden Asylum. Case notes indicate that Kosminski had been ill since at least 1885. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a