Druitt/Bluitt

[How Brown]

On "The American Doctor" thread, SPE mentioned the following :

"I feel that Macnaghten did not give Sims Druitt's full name but referred to him as 'Dr D' and that Sims was interested to find out exactly who 'Dr D' (i.e. Druitt) was. Hence Sims query to Littlechild regarding 'Dr D'. I stress, though, that is just my opinion. The Druitt family was a wealthy family of lawyers and doctors and were still prominent in 1913 so I am sure that Macnaghten would still not want the name leaked - and Sims was a journalist after all."

I'm sure several people, not all, people are aware that last year, an article or story was found during a Google search...containing the name "Bluitt" with what appears to be a fairly convincing, thinly veiled reference to Montagu Druitt. I cannot remember the contents of the article at present...but can try (this morning) to find it to illustrate what I'm talking about.

With that in mind and with SPE's underlined suggestion/statement in mind....I'm wondering how Druitt's name was found out...and transformed into "Bluitt"...if that is the case.

I'd like to know what SPE...and anyone else thinks since what SPE suggests may well be true.

However, the question would be, if SPE is correct, how did Druitt's name become known to others ( the individual who wrote the article, which was a light hearted piece if I remember correctly ) if the "Bluitt" reference did refer to Druitt ?

Hope thats not too confusing.

[SPE]

On "The American Doctor" thread, SPE mentioned the following :
"I feel that Macnaghten did not give Sims Druitt's full name but referred to him as 'Dr D' and that Sims was interested to find out exactly who 'Dr D' (i.e. Druitt) was. Hence Sims query to Littlechild regarding 'Dr D'. I stress, though, that is just my opinion. The Druitt family was a wealthy family of lawyers and doctors and were still prominent in 1913 so I am sure that Macnaghten would still not want the name leaked - and Sims was a journalist after all."
I'm sure several people, not all, people are aware that last year, an article or story was found during a Google search...containing the name "Bluitt" with what appears to be a fairly convincing, thinly veiled reference to Montagu Druitt. I cannot remember the contents of the article at present...but can try (this morning) to find it to illustrate what I'm talking about.
With that in mind and with SPE's underlined suggestion/statement in mind....I'm wondering how Druitt's name was found out...and transformed into "Bluitt"...if that is the case.
I'd like to know what SPE...and anyone else thinks since what SPE suggests may well be true.
However, the question would be, if SPE is correct, how did Druitt's name become known to others ( the individual who wrote the article, which was a light hearted piece if I remember correctly ) if the "Bluitt" reference did refer to Druitt ?
Hope thats not too confusing.

The Bluitt reference was discovered by Chris Phillips who started a thread on the Casebook site about it on 20 September 2009.

It was from a comic novel The Worst Man In The World by Frank Richardson published in 1908. The relevant passage, pp. 58-59 read -
"Murder is practised solely by the barbarous or the insane. What art could thrive with such exponents? Doctor Bluitt, whose fantastic ability was so strikingly exhibited in his admirable series of Whitechapel murders, flung himself raving into the Thames. If only he had been sane, he, I fondly fancy, might have founded a school. What the art requires is a sane Doctor Bluitt."

Given that Richardson was also a barrister, and that Druitt was a barrister and teacher who 'flung himself' into the Thames, this appears to indicate that Richardson was privy to the rumours concerning Druitt.

[How Brown]

Thanks for jolting my memory, SPE.

"Given that Richardson was also a barrister, and that Druitt was a barrister and teacher who 'flung himself' into the Thames, this appears to indicate that Richardson was privy to the rumours concerning Druitt."

I wonder how these rumors included Druitt being involved in the Whitechapel Murders...since numerous people committed suicide in London.
Does it sound to you as if the rumors began and were disseminated from someone inside the police heirarchy ?

Or is there some other way it did ( such as the rumor originating from a non-police, but familial source ) ?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

'Dr Bluitt' is another example, I think, of Macnaghten's behind-the-scenes machinations, with clubby insiders, over Druitt's identity as the fiend.

The writer Richardson, minor compared to Sims, even juxtaposes 'Bluitt' with the idea of a 'school'.

Just a coincidence, or a cheeky wink from the in-the-know gentlmen who actually knew that a game was being played?

'Bluitt' also suggests to me that Stewart Evans is perhaps mistaken in thinking that Sims did not know Druitt's name.

If Richardson knew it. then it is hard to ceonceive that the famous and influential Sims, Mac's pal at that, would not know.

I think Sims wrote abiut 'Dr D' to Littlechild, not to gain information, but to show that 1) he had some sense of propriety and 2) that he knew the biggest secret at Scotland Yard, not realising that it was just Mac's pet theory.

Littlechild found this so pompous -- and ludicrous he believed -- that he initiated a reply in which he would debunk 'Dr D' in favour of the genuine, not mythical, middle-aged, under-employed medico investigated as a Ripper suspect in 1888, in fact actually put in a cell briefly: 'Dr T'.

Stewart Evans also writes that Richardson would have to be careful to avoid tangling with the libel laws with the Druitts of the 1900's.

I agree 100%

That's why Druitt's name is noy only changed, but also his vocation and when he drowned in the Thames.

The irony being that this may not have been a big deal to Macnaghten. As in, if you want to brag to cronies, and even have the public learn the essential [and unwanted] core of the Ripper's profile -- an English, Gentile, Gentleman -- you would [I]have to change a few details to avoid a libel trap.

On the Casebook is this famous source on Mac's retirement.

The bold is mine.


Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
4 June 1913

FATE OF JACK THE RIPPER
Retiring British Official Says Once Famous Criminal Committed Suicide
London Cable to the New York Tribune
The fact that "Jack the Ripper", the man who terrorized the East End of London by the murder of seven women during 1888, committed suicide, is now confirmed by Sir Melville Macnaughten, head of the criminal investigation department of Scotland Yard, who retired on Saturday after 24 years' service.
Sir Melville says: "It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that "Jack the Ripper" committed suicide six months before I joined the force.
That remarkable man was one of the most fascinating of criminals. Of course, he was a maniac, but I have a very clear idea as to who he was and how he committed suicide, but that, with other secrets, will never be revealed by me."


And this was posted by Chris Scott, also on the other site.

Pittsburgh Press
6 July 1913

Following out his observation regarding the necessity of the ideal detective "keeping his mouth shut," Macnaughton (sic) carried into retirement with him knowledge of the identity of perhaps the greatest criminal of the age, Jack the Ripper, who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 by the fiendish mutilation and murder of seven women.
"He was a maniac, of course, but not the man whom the world generally suspected," said Sir Melville. "He committed suicide six months before I entered the department, and it is the one great regret of my career that I wasn't on the force when it all happened. My knowledge of his identity and the circumstances of his suicide came to me subsequently. As no good purpose could be served by publicity, I destroyed before I left Scotland Yard every scrap of paper bearing on the case. No one else will ever know who the criminal was - nor my reasons for keeping silent."


Macnaghten is about as austere in what he reveals about Druitt, as he will be in his memoirs -- the ones he assured people he would not write.

So much here to disentangle, assuming they are accurate to Macnaghten's true comments -- and they may not be:

- Macnaghten seems to have said in 1913 that he regretted being too late for the Ripper in 1888.

In his memoirs he makes it sound as if this was made up by some unreliable hack.

- Macnaghten says that the un-named Druitt committed suicide around Dec 1st of 1888.

Actually, this is correct.

Druitt killed himself in early December, not within hours of the Kelly murder, and Macnaghten started at CID on June ist 1889.

Did Macnaghten regret saying this because it was so different from what he had been saying to Sims, showing him a version of his Report which claimed that 'Dr Druitt' killed himself on November 9th or 1oth, and the body fished out on Dec 3rd 1888?

In the memoir chapter on the fiend, the date of his death -- Nov 10th 1888 -- is one of the few details explicity mentioned, and it's wrong [and lazily hedged with '... on or about ...']

Is this why Macnaghten had to undermine what a journliast had correctly written? So he dismissed him as 'enterprizing'?

- Mac claims that he has kept it all to himself, kept his mouth shut, revealed the name to nobody.

How about the 'Drowned Doctor', and 'Dr D', and 'Dr Bluitt'?


The second version of this 1913 story is very tantalizing.

Macnaghten supposedly admits something actually known only to him; that Druitt's identity was only learned about 'subsequently'. He could just mean when he joined the Force, but that's awfully close to 'some years after' which opens the chapter in his book, except here he is close to admitting that the information came to him, not to the police.

Macnaghten also says that the profile the world has believed in is wrong.

Does he mean Anderon's incarcerated Jew, or Forbes Winslow's prognostications?

Or, does he mean the 'Drowned Doctor' of Griffiths and Sims, which we know must come from himself.

Is he clearing the decks for his own memoir in which he will begin to debunk the suspect profile he set in motion -- because this document would be under his own name?

Anyhow, Macnaghten's showing a 'Home Office Report' to Grifths and Sims -- and Richardson? -- puts the lie to his innocent claim of wanting to avoid publicity, as 'nothing good' could come from it.

But he had courted publicity for the un-named Druitt, though not for himself.

Even all this would be essntially true, if he knew full well that 'Dr D' was heavily fictitious.

That would -- mostly -- match keeping secrets and revealing something of his chief suspect, but not too much that something bad could come from it like a libel suit.

[Chris Scott]

"The Worst Man in the World" by Frank Richardson is on Google Books but with very limited previews, not the full copy.
Apart from the "Bluitt" reference on pages 58/9 I found this limited reference on page 146:
"... his masterpiece in Miller's Court had flung himself, raving into the Thames, so Sir Rupert, hopelessly insane, was now seized with homicidal mania."
What the beginning of this sentence is I do not know.
If anyone has the book I'd be very interested to know the missing part...

[Debra Arif]

"The Worst Man in the World" by Frank Richardson is on Google Books but with very limited previews, not the full copy.
Apart from the "Bluitt" reference on pages 58/9 I found this limited reference on page 146:
"... his masterpiece in Miller's Court had flung himself, raving into the Thames, so Sir Rupert, hopelessly insane, was now seized with homicidal mania."
What the beginning of this sentence is I do not know.
If anyone has the book I'd be very interested to know the missing part...


Hi Chris,
Here's the beginning of the sentence:

"Clearly the chords of sanity had snapped. Even as the medical man who will for ever be known as Jack the Ripper after the curious fantasies of his masterpiece in Miller's Court..."

[Chris Scott]

many thanks for that Debs
Very helpful - and very quick:-)

[How Brown]

Thanks to Debs,JH and Chris for kick starting this thread back up.
A lot of people, especially new members, may not be aware of the find by Chris Phillips from one year ago on this matter.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To How

Thanks.

It's a funny old mystery.

On the one hand, we have the name of the suspect, Montague John Druitt.

He certainly existed, and he fits the broad outline supplied by Macnaghten, even by Richardson: an English, Gentile Gentleman.

We have, in Sir Melville Macnaghten, an excellent source for the credibility of this Ripper suspect because he was a distinguished police administrator, he had no public axe to grind about the case , and in his memoirs was prepared to admit that the fiend was unknown to the investigators at the time of his manaical reign of terror [in a stroke arguably rendering all other police memoirs redundant, because they would not necessarily be privy to this belated private information].

On the other hand, far from being 'case closed', Macnaghten seems to have little accurate information about Druitt and therefore this brings into question if he ever did; if he ever knew what, or even whom, he was talking about?

It's [U]the question.

Because, if he did know, then Anderson/Swanson/Kosminski begin to cicrle the plug-hole.

For the 'Anderson's Suspect' theory to work, Macnaghten -- who rejected Kosminski by name -- must remain where conventional wisdom now places him: a significant yet befuddled enthusiast who was never as certain about Druitt as Anderson was about his Polish Jew -- in fact, was it even Druitt he was even fumbling around about?

Macnaghten must remain a minor figure, who in complete, bureaucratic honesty and yet with remarkable incompetence [alas no notebook!] put together a flawed Report in 1894 which seems to have gone nowhere.

Later on, perhaps sick of being pestered by fellow gentlemen like Griffiths and Sims, he granted them access to the so-called 'orginal' draft of that failed Report -- which was riddled with even more errors!

Dear, oh dear.

It's a miracle Mac made it to be Assistant Commissioner, or was he somebody's nephew -- as apparently Cutbush was not?!

Oh dear, another Mac shambles?

Even the obvious enmity between Anderson and Macnaghten must be denied, or downplayed, as it suggests that the competing Ripper suspects might be motivated by personal reasons.

Dangerous idea are afoot, so you who want to keep it nice and clean and simple, when the scraps we are left are anything but.

For example, Macnaghten may have so despised Anderson that he elevated a minor suspect in Druitt to undermine the Polish Jew 'fact' -- to undermine Anderson.

Yet such schoolboyish shenanigans from the eternal Etonian would still secure the primacy of Anderson and Kosminski.

But it would also open a door which might swing the other way too.

You see it might mean that Anderson chose Kosminski -- if it was Aaron Kosminski, to play this parlour game -- not for professional reasons [after all there was never going to be a prosecution] but rather to undermine Macnaghten's finding the fiend -- 'laying the ghost' -- over two years after the Kelly murder, and very soon after the Coles murder.

Macnaghten claims that Kosminski was a minor suspect in the official report, in the unofficial report and in his memoirs he is not even worth mentioning at all even to dismiss him.

What if Macnaghten is right?

What if he is correct about Kosminski being a nothing 'suspect' -- why then did Anderson choose him?

Notice that Macnaghten several times mentions the named and un-named Druitt and Kosminski [via Grittish and Sims too] whereas Anderson never, ever even alludes to the existence of the un-named Druitt. In his 1914 memoirs Macnaghten paid him the reverse compliment of mentiniong neither Anderson nor Kosminski -- they both cease to exist.

Are we seriously to believe that this enmity played no part whatsoever in their conclusions as to the identity of the fiend?

Are we seriously to believe that there was no enmity of any signficiance?

I think that the identification of the 'West of England MP' as Henry Farquharson completely upends the now-calcified conventional wisdom about Macnaghten, and why he chose Druitt -- and it was Druitt of course.

Here was a a source which predated Macnaghten, and was just as certain, and was just as toffy.

Whether Macnaghten, within a few years began to misremember bits of Druitt [his father was a doctor, but was he one too? Damn my lack of a notebook!] or whether he began to fudge, then to openly deceive to shield the Yard from a libel trap, is interesting but almost beside the point.

Druitt's guilt, right or wrong, began with a member or members of his family, the terrible 'belief' leaked to an MP and near-neighbour becoming his 'doctrine', and then fell into the lap of a police chief who was obsessed with the case and who on the first occasion he ever committed his own name to the mystery made no bones about his belief in the un-named druitt's guilt.

The 'son of a surgeon', who will evolve within a generation into the semi-fictional 'Dr Bluitt', was still orginally Montie Druitt, whom initially a police chief was arguably briefed about by a person who did have accurate information about this person.

The detour which Druitt's identity took is not as important as that the 1891 MP's story matches Macnaghten's 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs.

[SPE]

In view of Jonathan's ongoing fascination with Druitt I was reminded of the connection with the subject of this thread, the novelist and barrister Frank Collins Richardson.

Richardson's references to Jack the Ripper in his 1908 novel The Worst Man in the World continue to intrigue me, especially as Richardson was also a barrister and also committed suicide (by throat cutting his chambers). It seems he had some 'inside' information which coincided with Macnaghten's pronouncements.

Below are the references cited in his book.

9928

9929

[SPE]

Here are pages 216-217 of the book.

9930

[SPE]

Pages 220-223 -

9931

9932

[SPE]

The Worst Man In The World by Frank Richardson, London, Eveleigh Nash, 1908. Red cloth, black titles, gilt lettering on spine, 269 pages, + 36 pp publisher's ads.

9933

[SPE]

Frank Collins Richardson was born in 1870 and educated at Marlborough and Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar. He admitted that he was a failure at law and took to writing his King's Counsel, a novel, in 1902. He wrote about a dozen other books and his peculiar subject of humour was the subject of whiskers.

He was found dead (aged 46), his throat cut, in his chambers in Albemarle Street, Piccadilly on August 1, 1917. An inquest was held by the Westminster Coroner, Ingleby Oddie, on August 3, 1917 and evidence was given by his sister and ex-valet which showed he was given to 'alcoholic excess' and of late had been depressed. He had a cataract of one eye and feared that it would affect the other and he would go blind. Besides being a barrister and novelist he was a company director and the two companies he was connected with were stated to be doing well. The jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Thanks Stewart.

My interpratation of the significance of this source is this:

The people who knew the Druitts would recognise their late member who had topped himself in the Thames twenty or so years before, if he was described as a young barrister who killed himself about a month after the most ghastly murder.

But they would not recognise Montie if he was described as a middle-aged doctor who killed himself in early November 1888.

I do not believe that Macnaghten, a discreet, reticent and affable officer, would have told anybody Montague Druitt's actual name if he thought it would leak to the public -- even in this rhyming form.

Unless ... Mac already knew that the authentic name would be cocooned by fictitious details. Mac told Sims even more details about 'Dr D' (super-affluent, an asylum vet, an orphan, concerned pals, the subject of a fast-closing police dragnet) all fictional exaggerations of the real figure, rendering Druitt unrecoverable -- and he was not recovered.

I think that since Richardson, a minor comic writer, knew Druit's name it came from Sims, a much, much more famous and better connected writer (eg. Mac's pal) and self-ordained 'criminologist' -- and somewhat indiscreet.

Mac anticipated this failing in his name-dropping chum.

I think that Sims used the 'Dr D' abbreviation in 1913 not because he did not know the [alleged] Ripper's full name, but because he was being discreet -- though in a very pompous and condescending way towards Littlechild, no less than the ex-head of the forerunner to Special Branch!

The latter's devastating reply, saying that 'Dr T' was the true mad medico suspect of 1888 arrested by police, also pointedly used Tumblety's full surname.

I think that 'Dr Bluitt' also shows that it was common knowledge among the upper bourgeoisie that the fiend was one of their own, like it or lump it, but what they did not know was his true vocation -- in this case a fellow barrister.

Macnaghten's 1914 memoirs tried to 'cut this knot' of his own making, but he did it so opaquely that it was missed then, and is mostly missed now. If only he had asserted clearly that the Ripper was not a doctor, and not just asserted that he had not been sectioned and was not the subject of a super-efficient dragnet ...

[SPE]

Many thanks for that Jonathan, interesting and appreciated.

[How Brown]

Thanks very much for sharing these scans, Stewart :high5:

[Nemo]

It is strange how it is stated like a well known fact that the Ripper was a medical man who committed suicide

Is there any connection with the papers left with Sir Edward Bradford by the vicar who professed to know the Ripper's identity via the confessional and to have given substantial truth in fictitious form?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Nemo

It's not strange.

George Sims was famous and widely read. He said it was a drowned doctor, and with his top contacts, this became the conventional wisdom of his era.

The public even knew what the fiend looked like -- he looked just like Sims, when the latter was younger and thinner (incredibly, this is true).

I think you are conflating two sources, or two alleged sources involving priests and confessions by killers?

Of the two, the 1899 Vicar tale is in my opinion -- and I'm alone here -- the missing piece of the jigsaw as to why the Druitts, M.P. Farquharson, the 'good many people' he blabbed to, and Sir Melville Macnaghten were pretty much convinced of Montie's guilt from just hearing the tale.

Because Montague Druitt was a tormented figure who had confessed to a priest between the Kelly atrocity and his own self-murder.

The unsolicited article by the un-named Vicar was sent to 'The Daily Mail' and was bizarrely called 'The Whitechurch Murders: Solution to a London Mystery' which they declined to publish because the writer would not identify what was fact and what was fiction.

Tantalizingly, Montie's first cousin the Rev. Charles Druitt, later himself a Vicar and deceased by 1900, worked in a parish named 'Whitchurch'. When the Vicar of 1899 said that the article he had sent was 'substantial truth under ficititous form' he may have meant only the title of the piece, not the content which, though meager, matches Druitt.

And if even if that is all correct, they may have all misunderstood a vivid delusion on the part of Druitt which had no basis in reality (I do not think Macnaghten could be so easily fooled).

The 'North Country Vicar' was one of the sources I analysed in my recent essay 'A Pair of Jacks' for 'The New Independent Review' (Thanks
Don).

My essential thesis was that George Sims, a Mac mouthpiece, rudely (and inaccurately) rejects the 1899 Vicar's story because the real fiend had no time to confess anything to anybody, because after what he had done to Kelly he was reduced to a shrieking, imbecilic husk -- with just enough energy to stagger to the Thames (all the way to Chiswick?? Without being noticed by anybody?).

In fact, the Vicar is correct about Druitt -- if that is to whom he is referring-- as Montie had a comfortable three weeks to confess and then commit suicide.

In effect, two Rippers who were both 'substantial truth in fictitious form' were competing with each other, though the public only knew that the cleric was being honest about mixing fact and fiction to hide his deceased suspect.

But that is exactly what Macnaghten-Griffiths-Sims were doing too, and not admitting it (the writers probably did not know).

And of course the version Macnaghten was propagating, via cronies, to the public was much, much better for the Yard's rep: we nearly caught him but he took his own life, the swine.

I also argued that Macnaghten does provide a fictitious version of the slam dunk confession by, from 1902, having Sims write that the 'doctor' had confided to physicians about his maniacal desires, before he was ludicrously released onto the streets by a penny-pinching state to do exactly what he threatened to do: kill and mutilate harlots.

An objection to this theory is that Macnaghten makes no such claim in his memoirs, a source about which I make so much.

Yet the critical evidence, that the un-named Druitt killed himself 'on or about Nov. 10th ...' is arguably the compression of the true story (with the river detail dropped because hitched to this tale of murder-self-murder within hours of each other it was patently silly).

That truth was much messier and potentially much more shocking to Edwardian sensibilities (Druitt was playing cricket and advocating in court in those weeks) which Macnaghten kept veiled, but the thematic meaning of the events of those weeks was retained in the compressed, melodramatic version: a tormented figure who 'confessed' by his subsequent self-destruction.

[Nemo]

Thanks Jonathon

It's gradually sinking in (no pun intended)

Do you think the drowned doctor suspect represented one of, if not the, most controversial theory as to the Ripper's identity - similar to the Royal conspiracy today?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Nemo

no, I don't.

I think neither are controversial.

George Sims' Drowned Doctor solution was accepted in the Edwardian Era because it was propagated by Sims, and he had top police contacts. Though an unwanted solution in that the fiend was 'one of us' and not one of 'them', from the better classes point of view.

Nevertheless, the tale fit snugly -- deliberately so, I argue -- into a culture in which the novella and play 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' was a cautionary classic.

A messier tale had been cleaned up by Macnaghten, with 'Jack' as Jekyll, although in his 1914 memoirs he gave us a partial glimpse of the (from the Yard's point of view) embarrassing truth of a too-late suspect; the police chasing a dead man.

In 1973 and 1976, the Royal Conspiracy 'theory' was immediately rejected by historians and by responsible culture-setters. In that sense it was not 'controversial.' It immediately took up stubborn residence in pop culture, which was appropriate since it was fiction -- and bad fiction at that.

[Nemo]

Thanks again Jonathon

That wouldn't be Whitchurch in Shropshire where Rev Charles Druitt was would it?

I'm intrigued by the apparent cover-up of the Ripper's identity due to considerations of his family, something that may have occurred with William Grant/Grainger, a very much alive suspect at the time, but who was stated to have been imprisoned under an alias and who had died in prison at some point

[Nemo]

Sorry, I should have searched first

I see Rev Druitt was at the Whitchurch Canonicorum looking after the shrine to St Candida in Dorset

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Nemo

Sorry, I did not meant to suggest before that the middle-aged 'Drowned Doctor', revealed finally in 1959 to be a drowned, young barrister and named by Tom Cullen in 1965, was not controversial now.

And is it that controversial when the mainstream are unaware of the drowned not-a-doctor conundrum, and the Ripper 'community' still maintains a nearly unanimous consensus that Druitt is a minor suspect -- as Macnaghten had asserted in an official document of state -- and is only trumpeted as the likely fiend by a single researcher/writer?

I do not believe that Scotland Yard, and Sir Robert Anderson, engaged in any conscious deceit whatsoever, or that there was an institutional conspiracy to hide Druitt's identity, say for the sake of his 'good' family.

I think this is entirely a discreet shell game played by Macnaghten, without the knowledge of his colleagues and cronies.

For example, he could have sent the official version of his 'Report' in 1894, but mothballed it instead. In that document he had taken two entirely innocent figures -- whom he 'exonerates' in the alternate version disseminated to the public -- and manipulated the data to make them look like Ripper suspect according to the 'awful glut' litmus test; incarcerated soon after the Kelly murder.

Fro Mac to insinuate Aaron Kosminski, who was out and about in early 1891 just like Cutbush, and Ostrog, incarcerated at the time of the murders, and redact the hapless pair into a faux investigation, as unlikely but likelier suspects than Cutbush, was a diabolical thing to do -- and in a document of state.

But he did not send it.

We do not know if he would have even sent this version, if such a report had been requested by his political masters.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Nemo

Yes, Reverend Charles Druitt, later a Vicar, of a parish with a name tantalizingly similar to the fictional title of the 1899 Vicar's extraordinary tale.

My provisional theory goes like this:

A tormented Druitt confessed to a priest, parhaps Charles his cousin, after the Millers Ct. horror, and wanted the truth about what he had done to come out in ten years.

But then, knowing that the clock was now ticking for him to be sectioned- just like mother -- he planned his suicide to look like he had absconded abroad. This failed as his body floated back to the surface a month later, whilst his brother William was frantically searching for him.

William Druitt found blood-stained clothes in Montie's digs, and learned that he had been sacked for being 'absent' at night (nights which tallied with the murders). William was briefed either by his cousin, or a non-family priest, about the confession and the Druitts, or some in-the-know members of the family drew the covered wagons around themselves.

But there may have been a split about Montie's dying wish about the truth being told in a decade. Due to this tension the truth leaked out along the Tory grapevine in Feb. 1891, picked up by the breathtakingly indiscreet MP Henry Farquharson. This brought in fellow Old Etonian, Macnaghten who met with the politician, and then the family, or just William, or just Charles. He shut the story down, and kept the whole thing to himself.

In July of that year Druitt's estate became available to the family, a factor perhaps in their reticence as the tabloids could have made much that an affluent Ripper's money should go to the poor, or some other shrill tabloid demagoguery.

Macnaghten knew that in a few years Charles, or a non-family priest, was going to honour Montie's last wish but that the tale would be veiled, or at least incomplete: 'substantial truth under ficitious form'.

No mention would be made of Montie's sucide, for example.

Knowing that the story was going to come out either in late 1898, or early 1899, coinciding with Druitt's burial, Macnaghten concocted a tale which would also be substantial truth in fictitious form, but which would make the Yard look a whole lot better. In 1898 he deployed first Griffiths and then Sims, in Jan 1899, in a literary pincer to neutralise the scoop.

This 1899 tale was not told by the priest himself, but by a fellow clergyman-buffer. When Sims comes to denounce this story he compresses the two clerics into one figure who is hearing the dying lunatic's dying and yet false confession -- because the real killer allegedly had no opportunity, and no mental wherewithall, to confess anything to anybody ('... a shrieking, raving fiend': Sims, 1907).


Except thst of course the mad doctor's self-murder, supposedly within hours of Kelly, is the equivalent of a 'confession'; eg. a confession by deed, not word.


A reporter was sent to interview the Vicar and I think the latter wanted to stick up for the murderer, who was not right in his head as he suffered from 'epileptic mania'. So the stubborn Vicar added that 'Jack' went to the East End initially to help fallen women, who then became his victims. Thus the suspect neither worked nor lived in that part of the city, and it echoes Rev. Barnett's campaign to inspire Oxonians to 'answer the call to the east' to help the poor.

Montague Druitt was an Oxonian.

The Vicar also added that the killer had 'at one time been a surgeon'.

My guess is that this is not an attempt to deflect the truth, like Macnaghten-Grffiths-Sims. Rather that this Vicar knew that his Ripper was the same one as Maor Griffiths: the drowned doctor. But that the Vicar also knew that the deceased had been a barrister? So, from ignorance, he assumed that Montie must have been a doctor too, before he changed professions.

The Vicar was trying to defend the late Druitt by saying, look he went there to help and he had been a healer like Our Lord but he was himself the victim of a terrible, incurable mental and physical illness (in his memoris, Mac alludes to the 'Protean' Druitt having 'a diseased body' as well as mind).

Charles Druitt dies in 1900. The Vicar's tale gained no traction whatsoever the year before, and was forgotten (it plays no part in any secondary sources of which I am familiar).

Thus the coast was now clear for Macnaghten to add more fictional details to Sims' profile, but ones which were inspired by the real figure of Druitt (eg. a confession to priest after Kelly, became a confession, of sorts, to physicians in a madhouse before Kelly).

Most tellingly, Sims adopted the Vicar's theme of the Ripper as ex-physician.

From 1902, the Ripper becomes the drowned unemployed doctor, who has not seen patients, or performed surgery for years and years. He had indeed been at one time a surgeon, as the Vicar had said, but no longer.

Macnaghten was a cricket fanatic, and so he keeps 'Dr D'(in real life a county cricketer) well away from such pastimes by making the killer, via Sims, into a semi-invalid recluse, and so affaluent he does not need to work at all -- like some kind of Bond villain (or like Dr. Henry Jekyll, or like Dr. Tumblety).

[Nemo]

Thanks very much for that clear explanation Jonathon - most interesting

Druitt's father being a surgeon, and an obstetrician at that, plays a large part in Montague being thought of as at least medically inclined if not medically trained in some fashion IMO

I for one think Druitt is still a strong Ripper suspect

Can I ask please, what evidence (circumstantial or otherwise) you base the notion the Druitt wanted to give the impression he had gone abroad?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Nemo

That his cricket club sacked him for being AWOL, allegedly abroad.

Then they reversed themselves with respectful condolences when his body turned up.

That whatever message he left behind did not initially strike anybody as a suicide note, not until he was fished from the Thames. Just that Montie did not want to go like mother, as if agitated that he knew he was about to be sectioned, I argue because he had confessed to priest who have even been a family member, or not

Obviously, I disagree with you about Druitt being a surgeon's son having any significance as to belief in his guilt.

Though once Macnaghten turned him into a doctor, then this was used against the semi-fictitious version of Druitt.

Eg. this is [Mac via] Sims in 1907:

'The mutilations were in all the cases, except one in which probably the murderer was interrupted, ghastly and revolting, and in one case an internal organ had been removed in a manner which showed almost beyond the shadow of a doubt that the miscreant was a person of anatomical knowledge.

Maniacal as was the fury with which he hacked and ripped his unhappy victims, the instance in which he skillfully removed and carried away with him this internal organ must be borne in mind when discussing the identity of the monster.'

Something else to consider is that I think Macnaghten knew that Ostrog, who had rudely stolen from his beloved Eton, was innocent of the Whitechapel crimes -- and of being 'habitually cruel to women' and of 'carrying surgical knives'.

Ostrog was not really a 'mad, Russian doctor' as that phrase suggests, nor was he an homicidal maniac.

I dissent from the conventional wisdom that Macnaghten was 'mistaken'; that this all yet another example of his atrocious memory.

Actually, Mac kept tabs on Ostrog's comings and goings for years. He arguably knew that the Russian thief was in a French prison/asylum at the time of the murders, a fact which he turned into the following for Sims in the same 1907 piece:

'The second man was a Russian doctor, a man of vile character, who had been in various prisons in his own country and ours. The Russian doctor who at the time of the murders was in Whitechapel, but in hiding as it afterwards transpired, was in the habit of carrying surgical knives about with him. He suffered from a dangerous form of insanity, and when inquiries were afterwards set on foot he was found to be in a criminal lunatic asylum abroad. He was a vile and terrible person, capable of any atrocity.'

If you knew that Ostrog was abroad allegedly soon after the murders, how could you not know that he was really in French confinement during the same crimes?

I do not think that an efficient, hands-on administrator and Ripepr obesessive could not know.

Ostrog appears nowhere else in the extant record, albeit an incomplete one, as a Ripper suspect -- because he never was one.

When Mac wrote a few years later to an English asylum about him, he did not warn the relevant medico authorities that they might have a dangerous murderer in their midst.

Because he knew they didn't.

In his memoirs, Mac drops Ostrog (and 'Kosminski') altogether. They are, at least according to this primary source, nothing.

Secondary sources, like Sudgen -- whom I believe found Ostrog's French asylum alibi -- far from exposing Mac's inaccuracy have, arguably, vindicated his 1914 omission/opinion.

[SPE]

...
For example, he could have sent the official version of his 'Report' in 1894, but mothballed it instead. In that document he had taken two entirely innocent figures -- whom he 'exonerates' in the alternate version disseminated to the public -- and manipulated the data to make them look like Ripper suspect according to the 'awful glut' litmus test; incarcerated soon after the Kelly murder.
...
But he did not send it.
We do not know if he would have even sent this version, if such a report had been requested by his political masters.

I really do not understand this reasoning.

How did Macnaghten 'mothball' his 'report'? Who were his 'political masters' who would have requested 'such a report'?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Stewart

I don't understand -- specifically -- what you don't understand, in terms of what you have asked about?

Apart from your specific questions, can I infer that the rest of what I have written is not only comprehensible and plausible, or only the former and not the latter?

[SPE]

To Stewart
I don't understand -- specifically -- what you don't understand, in terms of what you have asked about?
Apart from your specific questions, can I infer that the rest of what I have written is not only comprehensible and plausible, or only the former and not the latter?

You may infer that the rest of what you wrote was comprehensible but I would not go so far as to say it was plausible.

Macnaghten's 1894 report was an internal police memorandum. Macnaghten reported only to Anderson and Bradford (not to any 'political master'). So where do you presume 'he could have sent the official version of his 'Report' in 1894'?

As I have pointed out the past, the evidence suggests that the memo was submitted to Bradford (probably via Anderson) and would have been 'sent' nowhere else by Macnaghten. Bradford did any sending that might be required.

What evidence do you have that the memo was 'mothballed' by Macnaghten and what do you mean by 'mothballed'?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Stewart

Ahh, I see what you are asking.

I meant only that Macnaghtne wrote a document which was his attempt to 'cut the knot' of the various countervailing pressures upon him, and the Yard, over the Ripper case, triggered by the Cutbush so-called scoop.

But he also had to factor in the surgeon's son tale rearing its head again?

By 'political masters' I did not mean that Macnaghten was sending the report, personally, to Asquith as Home Sec. over the heads of his superiors.

I meant that he would be factoring in the political implications, what with a Liberal government now in power with the potential to make trouble for the Tories over this case.

Mac did not send this document, and I do not believe that Bradford or Anderson, or anybody knew of its existence. It was filed, eg. 'mothballed'; it had no impact on anything.

In 1898, an alternate version was shown, or verbally communicated, by Mac to Major Griffiths and, later, George Sims as being the 'Home Office Report', and the definitive document of state regarding this case.

I do not believe that Sims would have written about it so effusively if Macnaghten had not misled him to believe that this was its bureaucratic status.

As we know, it was nothing of the kind.

[SPE]

...
Eg. this is [Mac via] Sims in 1907:
'The mutilations were in all the cases, except one in which probably the murderer was interrupted, ghastly and revolting, and in one case an internal organ had been removed in a manner which showed almost beyond the shadow of a doubt that the miscreant was a person of anatomical knowledge.
Maniacal as was the fury with which he hacked and ripped his unhappy victims, the instance in which he skillfully removed and carried away with him this internal organ must be borne in mind when discussing the identity of the monster.'
...
Actually, Mac kept tabs on Ostrog's comings and goings for years. He arguably knew that the Russian thief was in a French prison/asylum at the time of the murders, a fact which he turned into the following for Sims in the same 1907 piece:
'The second man was a Russian doctor, a man of vile character, who had been in various prisons in his own country and ours. The Russian doctor who at the time of the murders was in Whitechapel, but in hiding as it afterwards transpired, was in the habit of carrying surgical knives about with him. He suffered from a dangerous form of insanity, and when inquiries were afterwards set on foot he was found to be in a criminal lunatic asylum abroad. He was a vile and terrible person, capable of any atrocity.'
If you knew that Ostrog was abroad allegedly soon after the murders, how could you not know that he was really in French confinement during the same crimes?
I do not think that an efficient, hands-on administrator and Ripepr obesessive could not know.
Ostrog appears nowhere else in the extant record, albeit an incomplete one, as a Ripper suspect -- because he never was one.
When Mac wrote a few years later to an English asylum about him, he did not warn the relevant medico authorities that they might have a dangerous murderer in their midst.
Because he knew they didn't.
...


What I don't quite understand his how you can assume that everything written by Sims in his articles about the Ripper were quotes of Macnaghten's and not errors or embellishments by Sims himself.

[SPE]

...
Mac did not send this document, and I do not believe that Bradford or Anderson, or anybody knew of its existence. It was filed, eg. 'mothballed'; it had no impact on anything.
...


But this is patent surmise and nonsensical.

Why write an official memo giving information such as this with no intention of submitting it to your superior officers? That it was submitted is indicated by the fact that it remained on file at New Scotland Yard.

[Chris G.]

But this is patent surmise and nonsensical.

Why write an official memo giving information such as this with no intention of submitting it to your superior officers? That it was submitted is indicated by the fact that it remained on file at New Scotland Yard.

Hi Stewart and Jonathan

I would expect that the memorandum was sent to the Home Office as well. However, if so, why isn't there any trace of it in the Home Office files?

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

You won't find my answers any more plausible, Stewart, sorry.

There is no reference in the extant record to this document.

Anderson never made a comment on Druitt which has survived -- nothing --from which I believe that he knew nothing about him.

Otherwise he would have debunked the preferred suspect of his despised second-in-command.

When Anderson read about the suicided doctor in Sims, if he did, he made the same mistake as Littlechild: that this was a garbled reference to Tumbelty -- the less said about the better.

The reason I do not think that it is Sims who is embellishing the extra 'drowned doctor' material in his writings, that it comes from Macnaghten, is that they were close pals. At any point, Macnaghten could have reigned in 'Tatcho', and asked him not to repeat such 'errors'.

He could have corrected him, and he did not. Because they originate with him. For example the Druitt family becoming 'friends' which began with the Major.

Nothing like that happened, right up to 1917.

The detail about the frantic friends searching for the doctor comes from somebody who knew the full story about Druitt.

We have a 1907 brief letter from Mac to Sims in which he -- to me -- leads his pal well away from digging up 'Ripper' murders after Kelly.

The reason Macnaghten did not submit his 'Report' is that he knew it contained a range of deflections and deceptions, the most dodgy of which was the one about Cutbush and Cutbush being related.

On the other hand, if he did not at least put Druitt on file, and subsequently the entire, embarrassing story spilled out of Dorset ...

[SPE]

You won't find my answers any more plausible, Stewart, sorry.
There is no reference in the extant record to this document.
Anderson never made a comment on Druitt which has survived -- nothing --from which I believe that he knew nothing about him.
Otherwise he would have debunked the preferred suspect of his despised second-in-command.
...


What reference should there be 'in the extant record to this document', a mere internal memo submitted for information?

Anderson would, obviously, have known about the 'drowned doctor' theory, but chose to ignore it. Why should he write about other theories? He was concerned only with his own, which dismissed all other theories anyway - most emphatically.

[SPE]

...
The reason I do not think that it is Sims who is embellishing the extra 'drowned doctor' material in his writings, that it comes from Macnaghten, is that they were close pals. At any point, Macnaghten could have reigned in 'Tatcho', and asked him not to repeat such 'errors'.
He could have corrected him, and he did not. Because they originate with him. For example the Druitt family becoming 'friends' which began with the Major.
Nothing like that happened, right up to 1917.
The detail about the frantic friends searching for the doctor comes from somebody who knew the full story about Druitt.
...


You simply do not know this, you assume too much.

Macnaghten might well have said to Sims that he hadn't quite got it right, and Sims could have replied along the lines that it was only minor and the readers wouldn't know the difference, or that it didn't matter. Macnaghten may well have been cavalier over it anyway.

[SPE]

...
The detail about the frantic friends searching for the doctor comes from somebody who knew the full story about Druitt.
We have a 1907 brief letter from Mac to Sims in which he -- to me -- leads his pal well away from digging up 'Ripper' murders after Kelly.
The reason Macnaghten did not submit his 'Report' is that he knew it contained a range of deflections and deceptions, the most dodgy of which was the one about Cutbush and Cutbush being related.
On the other hand, if he did not at least put Druitt on file, and subsequently the entire, embarrassing story spilled out of Dorset ...

Your reasoning is contrived and implausible. The fact that Druitt's friends had missed him and that his brother searched for him was reported in the newspapers at the time.

Macnaghten's 1894 memo is very obviously written in response to the Sun's allegations concerning Cutbush. His memo was put on file and remained archived at New Scotland Yard from where it was transferred to Kew in the 1970s. And reports that have been filed may be seen by anyone accessing the old files. Whatever reason would Macnaghten have for leaving an erroneous report on file if he was the only one who had seen it? He could, at any time, have modified or replaced it with a different version. Especially after he had replaced Anderson as head of the CID.

The memo was obviously submitted for the information of the Chief Commissioner (Bradford) so that he could respond to the Home Office if the necessity arose. It didn't and the then unrequired memo was simply filed. It would have no stamps or marking as an information only internal memo - which it was.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

So, this is the sudden addition to the Old Paradigm: like a Tyrannosaur, roaring and uncomprehending, as it sinks into the tar-pit.

Sloppy Mac meet Sloppy Tatcho ...

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Now just consider, Stewart, what you wrote for a moment.

That William Druitt was searching for Montie appears in one newspaper article, which we know about, and then is fictionalised by Sims in the 1900's.

If you have access to that article which mentions this detail, then you would know that Druitt -- though he is not named in that article -- was a barrister, and that he killed himself in early December, and that he was 31 (and that his body was found with a season rail ticket between Blackheath and London)

Then how come Macnaghten begins fictionalising Druitt, and the Druitt family by them becoming 'friends' in Griffiths and this is maintained in Sims.

I am guessing that you will say, well, to protect their privacy.

Since the 1889 articles about Druiott's suicide clearly shows that he was a young barrister, how do you know that Macanghtenb was not engaged in a bit of deceit to protect the privacy of the family, and their deceased member by also turning Montie into a middle-aged doctor?

Isn't a poor memory on the part of Macnaghten, a police chief famous for his retentive memory, also a pretty big assumption ...?

[SPE]

Hi Stewart and Jonathan
I would expect that the memorandum was sent to the Home Office as well. However, if so, why isn't there any trace of it in the Home Office files?
Chris

No, it is an internal memorandum, hence the fact that it is usually referred to as that. As such it would be submitted by Macnaghten to Bradford (probably via Anderson) for his information. Macnaghten did not report directly to the Home Office, Bradford did.

[SPE]

Now just consider, Stewart, what you wrote for a moment.
That William Druitt was searching for Montie appears in one newspaper article, which we know about, and then is fictionalised by Sims in the 1900's.
If you have access to that article which mentions this detail, then you would know that Druitt -- though he is not named in that article -- was a barrister, and that he killed himself in early December, and that he was 31 (and that his body was found with a season rail ticket between Blackheath and London)
Then how come Macnaghten begins fictionalising Druitt, and the Druitt family by them becoming 'friends' in Griffiths and this is maintained in Sims.
I am guessing that you will say, well, to protect their privacy.
Since the 1889 articles about Druiott's suicide clearly shows that he was a young barrister, how do you know that Macanghtenb was not engaged in a bit of deceit to protect the privacy of the family, and their deceased member by also turning Montie into a middle-aged doctor?
Isn't a poor memory on the part of Macnaghten, a police chief famous for his retentive memory, also a pretty big assumption ...?

I was indicating the fact that a search for a suicide victim in the Thames was reported and was hardly unlikely or unknown. As a journalist in 1889 Sims might well have remembered reading something about a suicide in the Thames and that the body had been about a month in the water undiscovered.

I do not know that 'Macnaghten was not engaged in a bit of deceit to protect the privacy of the family' any more than you know that he was. But the fact is that the errors in the memorandum exist when there should be no need whatsoever for any deliberate falsification of Druitt's details in that document.

[SPE]

So, this is the sudden addition to the Old Paradigm: like a Tyrannosaur, roaring and uncomprehending, as it sinks into the tar-pit.
Sloppy Mac meet Sloppy Tatcho ...

But press reports and personal memoirs are noted by historians for their unreliability.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

No, I don't think so Stewart.

I think it is you who are making assumptions, ones which fly in the face of the more likely explanation.

That the Druitt story is clearly unknown to Sims, except for what he gets from Macnaghten -- beginning in 1899.

Macnaghten had every reason to fear the Druitt revelation, a Tory Ripper, for the Yard with the Liberal-Radical jackals.

On the other hand, if the story re-emerged out of Dorset it would be better if they had soemthing on file, but with Druitt only as a minor, hearsay suspect who may, or may not have been a medical man.

As for the unreliability of memoirs?

You are right, in general, but wrong about Macnaghten's.

Because he is reliably candid up to a point about the un-named Druitt, and when exactly the 'police' actually learned of the [probable] Ripper's identity.

Eg. some years later ...

That goes against the expected bias of such a source.

[SPE]

No, I don't think so Stewart.
I think it is you who are making assumptions, ones which fly in the face of the more likely explanation.
That the Druitt story is clearly unknown to Sims, except for what he gets from Macnaghten -- beginning in 1899.
Macnaghten had every reason to fear the Druitt revelation, a Tory Ripper, for the Yard with the Liberal-Radical jackals.
On the other hand, if the story re-emerged out of Dorset it would be better if they had soemthing on file, but with Druitt only as a minor, hearsay suspect who may, or may not have been a medical man.
As for the unreliability of memoirs?
You are right, in general, but wrong about Macnaghten's.
Because he is reliably candid up to a point about the un-named Druitt, and when exactly the 'police' actually learned of the [probable] Ripper's identity.
Eg. some years later ...
That goes against the expected bias of such a source.

I am sure that the Druitt as the Ripper theory was unknown to Sims, probably at least until the publication of Griffith's 1898 work. That still wouldn't mean that he didn't recall a suicide of 1889 that had appeared in the newspapers.

You think that Macnaghten had reason to fear 'the Druitt revelation', but why? He continued to espouse, and push, the idea of the 'drowned doctor' in the Thames and it really wouldn't have taken a genius to do a little research and find that the only Thames suicide candidate fitting the essential criteria was Druitt, who was named as the appropriate suicide in the January 1889 press.

Macnaghten made demonstrable errors, but you seem to choose selectively what he said and assign deliberate deceit in order to mislead on his part, rather than admit the most likely explanation.

It has always been obvious that Druitt was a retrospective suspect, and was not suspected in 1888/89.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Apologies, Stewart, but I have been asleep on the other side of the planet.

Let's take your objections, one by one.


I am sure that the Druitt as the Ripper theory was unknown to Sims, probably at least until the publication of Griffith's 1898 work. That still wouldn't mean that he didn't recall a suicide of 1889 that had appeared in the newspapers.

This is a very unconvincing theory because the fictionalising of Druitt begins with Macnaghten, in the official version of his 'Report', through into the backdated 'draft' (or the other way round) and continues into Sims -- obviously from his pal, who also confirmed that the document was a definitive 'Home Office Report', when it was nothing of the kind.

You think that Macnaghten had reason to fear 'the Druitt revelation', but why? He continued to espouse, and push, the idea of the 'drowned doctor' in the Thames and it really wouldn't have taken a genius to do a little research and find that the only Thames suicide candidate fitting the essential criteria was Druitt, who was named as the appropriate suicide in the January 1889 press.

Druitt was a potential tar-baby, politically speaking, because he had been a Tory barrister, from a Tory family, stumbled upon by a Tory MP. Did police really not know about him, or was he tipped off by Tory chiefs that the net was closing. Imagine what Liberal demagogues and Liberal tabloids could do with this humiliating tale -- quite unfairly?

I think you underestimate the partisan-political context and pressures, as do a number of secondary sources.

You write that Druitt could have been easily found.

Yes, but nobody did find Druitt, and in the generation closer to the murders, what would it get you to try and find out?

George Sims had provided the basic profile, or so people thought -- even what 'Jack' looked like: he looked like Sims. You could not publish the murderer's name without heading towards a potential libel suit.

In 1929, Leonard Matters rebooted the entire mystery, as a 'mystery' choosing to dismiss the memoirs of Macnaghten (and Anderson) -- which was his right -- by claiming that no such doctor took his own life by drowning himself in the Thames on Nov 10th 1888. So far as I know this was the first attempt, in the next generation, to try and find the 'drowned doctor' in the public records, and he did not find Druitt.

But then why would you connect a young, barrister-teacher, a working bourgeoisie, from a concerned family, with Sims' affluent, unemployed, middle-aged physician? (in his own memoirs, Macnaghten is so cagey on this point that he drops both 'doctor', which was untrue, and 'drowned', which was true).

Even with the name, Dan Farson and his researchers in 1959 had so much trouble initially finding 'M. J. Druitt' that they wondered if he existed at all?

Macnaghten had set up a shield against Druitt being found and until his own daughter handed the name to a famous TV reporter, this shell game held (as the 1899 'North Country Vicar' puts it so well: 'substantial truth under fictitious form'.)

How can you argue with success?

Macnaghten made demonstrable errors, but you seem to choose selectively what he said and assign deliberate deceit in order to mislead on his part, rather than admit the most likely explanation.

Can you give me an example of where I choose 'selectively'? I'm not saying I don't. Undoubtedly I do, but I cannot think of an example because I am too close to it.

I have tried in my articles, and my unpublished manuscript, to examine every Macnaghten source, and Mac-source-by-proxy, that I can find.

I have argued against my own theory too.

For example, the one element which never alters between the MP article, Mac's Report(s), Griffiths and Sims, one of Mac's 1913 comments, and his 1914 memoirs, is that Druitt killed himself within hours of the Kelly murder.

That this is the 'proof' of his guilt.

If that is what Macnaghten really believed then he was mistaken, seriously so, because Druitt does not qualify for his 'awful glut' criteria, no more than any other suspect.

You are the one who is also selective, and you have every right to be, by excluding Macnaghten's memoirs from several of your books -- brilliant books.

But you make the same choices (eg. this is in and this is out, and this is right and this is wrong) you say I make.

It has always been obvious that Druitt was a retrospective suspect, and was not suspected in 1888/89.

Has it?

That would be news to Cullen, Farson and the early work of Don Rumbelow who all [provisionally] included the McCormick hoax about Albert Backert and therefore claimed that Druitt was a 'police' suspect in 1888 -- because that is what Macnaghten implies in both versions of his 'Report'.

They all downplayed his memoir, the only document by Macnaghten on this matter, under his own knighted name, for publication, where he concedes that this was not true.

That he, Mac, and nobody else, had laid the mad miscreant's ghost to rest.

Macnaghten is such a casually misunderstood figure in some secondary sources that writers think that the preface of his memoirs (unavailable on Casebook) claims that he lamented he was six months too late to hunt the Ripper. Actually he claims -- quite falsely by the way -- that this lament was made up by an 'enterprizing' reporter. That it is up to the readers to make up their own minds.

Then Chapter IV makes his meaning of the preface clear.

I was too late to hunt this 'Protean' killer, who was so omnipotent, until he imploded and 'confessed' in deed by killing himself immediately after his 'awful glut', and who had had nearly sunk the Home Sec.

But Mac asserts that he 'in all probability' -- as the man could not be put on trial -- had posthumously identified the Ripper as [the un-named] Druitt, 'some years after', by information received: 'certain facts' which led to a 'conclusion' -- inclining him to a 'belief', not a suspicion or theory.

Embarrassingly the police had no idea that 'Jack' had been dead for years; they had been pursuing a phantom, whilst arresting innocent members of the proletariat.

This quite an admission, going against the expect bias of such a usually unreliable source, though it has to be said that it was also a way to put his thumb, again, in Anderson's eye and debunk the latter's conceited, self-serving claims to have caught the killer alive, but that they were let down by Slavic trash.

It was this excruciating factor, that Druitt was unknown and long deceased, which guided Macnaghten's machinations over the case for a quarter of a century.

That is my 'case disguised' interpretation.

It is a very brief preface in 'Days of My Years' one in which , nevertheless, championship cricket, Jack the Ripper, and an apology for 'inaccuracies' are suggestively juxtaposed.

Either that is a sly in-joke or just another coincidence, like that sloppy Sims' inaccurate 'drowned doctor' profile luckily protected the Druitt's family privacy ...

[SPE]

Jonathan, much as I may enjoy reading your lengthy posts I really do not have the stamina to respond in full. Indeed, it is the very reason I break lengthy posts into separate 'bites' that I can address individually.

A point which doesn't seem to come into your reckoning on Druitt is that you cannot libel the dead. So you might embarrass the Druitt family but you could not libel anyone by stating that you thought Druitt was the Ripper.

When I said that it has always been obvious that Druitt was a retrospective suspect I should have added 'to me'. But, then, Macnaghten stated that he was.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Then I will keep it short -- for me -- with an observation and a question:

Observation about Libel:

The 'West of England' MP titbit refers 'fearfully' to the libel laws; that the reporter is with-holding the entire story he has come across, via the un-named Farquharson. The writer knows the surgeon's son suspect is dead -- long dead.

Yet, apparently, the libel laws could potentially be triggered. Why?

I think because if the complete tale claims that the family knew of Montie's murderous madness -- let alone that he confessed to a priest, who was also a family member -- then they could sue for libel on that basis.

Because it is they who would have been libelled.

Of course, when the story resurfaces in 1898, and into the Edwardian Era, it is sufficiently altered to shield all concerned from libel: the surgeon's son becomes a surgeon himself, the family become 'friends', a sporty, hard-working barrister-teacher becomes an unemployed, affluent, asylum-vet recluse (the 1891 error, that he took his own life on the same night as the final murder, was retained for that very non-libellous reason: it was not true and thus obscured the real Druitt).

A question about George Sims' profile.

Do you think, Stewart, that it is a coincidence that Sims' Edwardian profile of 'Jack' further obscured the real Montague Druitt?

Look, I believe that coincidences happen too.

I just want to know if your judgement is that this particular aspect of the Druitt/Ripper saga is a happy accident -- for the Druitts, I mean, 'fearfully' reading Sims -- rather than by some design to protect their privacy.