Tory vs. Liberal?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

I have found in Hansard this mention of Edward Hare Pickersgill, the Liberal member for Bethnal Green (East London).

This Opposition backbencher asked the question below about a man, William Wallace Brodie, who confessed to killing Alice McKenzie -- and to being the Ripper -- but whom police discovered could not have been 'Jack', as he had an iron-clad alibi.

Brodie sounds like a pest-groupie: a fantasising, attention-seeking drunk:

06 August 1889

MR. PICKERSGILL I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it is correct that William Wallace Brodie, who was recently charged on his own confession with the Whitechapel murder, was, in May, 1887, sentenced to 14 years' penal servitude, and was, in August, 1888, discharged on license; and, if so, of what offence was he convicted, and why was he discharged?

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPART-MENT (Mr. STUART WORTLEY, Sheffield, Hallam) William Brodie was convicted in May, 1877, not in 1887, of larceny in a dwelling-house and sentenced to 14 years' penal servitude. He was discharged on license in the ordinary course in August, 1888, after serving rather more than 11 years of his sentence.

Edward Hare Pickersgill, as John Ruffels noted on the other site in 2010, was related to the Wimborne Druitts by marriage, via the Hare wing (Pickersgill sat the same law exam as Montague).

It makes you wonder if the reason Conservative Henry Farquarson, who coveted the seat of Bethnal Green before he died in 1895, began blabbing, in 1891, about his 'son of a surgeon' 'doctrine' because he hoped, in some appalling, partisan way to embarrass his future opponent -- that the Liberal was allegedly related to 'Jack the Ripper' (a scurrilous, guilt-by-association tactic worthy of the despicable Tea Party-driven G.O.P. of today).

But that would mean that Farquharson had to be ignorant that the Ripper's family tree had a much more important Dorset end -- literally down the road from the same Tory MP's plush estate. Worse, the late fiend was actually from a Tory family, and had done successful legal work for the Conservatives in the civil courts, just before he killed himself.

That seems very unlikely, surely?

Perhaps it's just a coincidence.

[Roy Corduroy]

Coincidences abound. But didn't Andrew Spallek, in rolling out the Henry Farquarson connection, include the caveat that he, Farquarson had been successfully sued for libel already. By a political opponent.

Roy

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Let's not be too instantly dismissive and reductionist.

The Tory vs Liberal strand shadows the entire Druitt-as-Ripper tale.

It strikes me as just as incredible that Henry Farquharson could be so politically tone-deaf as to be telling 'a good many people' that a local Tory family had produced -- and concealed? -- the Ripper, suggesting he did not know that he was germinating a potential 'Jack the Tory' scandal.

This story was getting so out of hand that it reached the newspapers, though with the full tale very nervously veiled and/or abridged due to libel fears.

The following year I theorise that it was Macnaghten, a Tory with Liberal chums, who leaked the entirely made-up story that the police were watching, 24-7, the real Ripper thus disproving Farquharson's claims -- an article in which the latter was named!

This propaganda piece was produced by James McKenzie McLean in his own newspaper, another Tory backbencher.

See what I mean?

Though McLean, of course, may not have been in on the ruse.

Six years later the story is relaunched as the libel-proof 'drowned doctor', by yet another Tory worthy, Major Arthur Griffiths.

Cunningly this suspiciously Yard-friendly tale was also backed by one of England's most famous Liberal champions (who was several times asked to stand for parliament but declined) Mr. George R. Sims.

The libel suit against Farquharson which he lost -- though with damages reduced -- was in the wake of the 1892 election.

[Roy Corduroy]

Let's not be too instantly dismissive and reductionist.

Hmmm..... well I assumed you wanted some comment. So I made one, based on my meager knowledge of this line of inquiry. I'm actually not dismissing or reducing anything.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this item from the historical record and making an effort to put it in context.

Roy

[Chris G.]

Hi Jonathan

You are kind of losing me on the Tory versus Liberal affiliations of the men that you are mentioning, and I somehow feel that the political distinctions are not as important to this story as you think they are. Possibly more important is not the Toryness of the Druitts but Farquharson's political ambitions in Dorset and (possibly) Bethnal Green and his evident problem with gays and his learning of the possible culpability of Montague John Druitt in the murders.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Chris G

Yes, you might be right.

On the other hand, Druitt wasn't gay -- but he was from a blue-ribbon, Tory family.

The week Montie topped himself, he and his brother, William, had won a not insignificant civil case, a legal triumph for the Conservatives to do with the residential status of voters, and so on.

[Stephen Thomas]

Druitt wasn't gay.

How on earth do you know that?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

I don't know it.

I only know what the meagre sources claim about Druitt: that he was believed to get his sexual kicks from murdering and mutilating East End harlots.

This opinion, I know, is frightening to some of the Old Guard who subscribe to the ahistorical view that he was some poor, lonely gay man who took his own life because he was just mentally unbalanced, and so on.

[Chris G.]

To Chris G

Yes, you might be right.

On the other hand, Druitt wasn't gay -- but he was from a blue-ribbon, Tory family.

The week Montie topped himself, he and his brother, William, had won a not insignificant civil case, a legal triumph for the Conservatives to do with the residential status of voters, and so on.

The conventional wisdom is that Druitt was let go from Mr. Valentine's school at Blackheath for having associations with boys at the school. Of course that might not be the case, but it's what a number of people who have studied the case have thought. I don't know it for certain either, although I have an inkling that Farquharson might have thought that was why Druitt was released from the Blackheath school. The same Farquharson who had been involved in a law case alleging that a political rival, C. T. Gatty, had been involved in homosexual practices at Charterhouse School. The claim by the MP for Dorset being that Gatty "had been expelled from Charterhouse School or compelled to leave for immorality" as recorded in Gatty v Farquharson (http://books.google.com/books?id=MhxHAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA593&lpg=PA593&dq=charterhouse+school+Farquharson&source=bl&ots=P884L6HDSP&sig=dDR2HlrlNMtHXDIQGgW9Lnp7pSM&hl=en&ei=W2_bTvzSEYT30gH7soTwDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=charterhouse%20school%20Farquharson&f=false). In other words, Farquharson seemed to be somewhat of a campaigner or at least had a bugbear about such practices in the public schools. I feel he may have been down on Druitt for that reason, and singled out his fellow Dorset man as being Jack the Ripper because he died at the right time as much as for any evidence that Druitt was the killer.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Chris

Yes, that's all possible but not very likely.

If Macnaghten could have got the dead Druitt off for the murders, because the latter was really a troubled homosexual, or depressed about his mother, or depressed about being dismissed from the lesser of his two vocations, he would have -- but he couldn't.

There is nothing in the meagre extant record to even suggest that Druitt was gay, or that he was sacked for molesting the boys, or that Farquharson zeroed in on him for similar such reasons.

Nothing ...?

It's a modern and modernist myth so wildly at variance with, not only what little we have but with plain common sense, that it obviously springs -- and is perpetuated -- by a long-standing bias that Druitt must be nothing as a suspect, Macnaghten was a callous bumbler, and thus the 'mystery' can go and on even unto the end of the age ...

[Roy Corduroy]

Let's set the Ripper accusation aside for a moment, just for a hypothetical.

I don't discount that Montague John Druitt was homosexual and this was why he was dismissed from his teaching position. It is a possibility.

But another, and in my mind, more likely reason, is that he began to demonstrate evidence of mental instability. Depression. And this was why he was dismissed. In the campus environment he would be under closer scrutiny than if he simply lodged on his own. He may have begun behaving oddly, showing his depressed side. Maybe becoming angry or cross with students or fellow faculty. Or was morose. He may have done disturbing things, such as screaming out during nightmares. Or perhaps he had insomnia, which would accompany depression. Who knows, he could have been a sleepwalker.

I say this because he committed suicide shortly after, and people who do that are generally in a depressed state, and may be unstable.

So have we put the chicken before the egg? Just a thought.

Roy

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Roy

Yes, that's all possible and plausible.

It's just that it does not match the meagre primary sources.

The 1889 obituaries which are aghast that Druitt has killed himself for no explicable reason beyond an unbalanced mind?

Perhaps he had gambling debts?

Perhaps he had asked a girl to marry him and she had said no?

They're all possible too, they are just not backed by the limited sources we have.

We only have glimpses, and yet they say: he killed himself because he was Jack the Ripper and the net was closing.

What net? The police had never heard of him...?

Macnaghten would love to have found such evidence that poor Druitt killed himself for reasons other than being a homicidal sexual maniac.

I would also counter that the way Druitt methodically went about not only killng himself, but trying to make it look as if he had vanished --presumably abroad -- going all the way to Chiswick, weighting hoiw iwn body with rocks to make his corpse sink and never be recovered, show both intelligence, ruthlessness and cunning.

He was just unlucky with the rocks not doing their job.

The MP story and Macnaghten's machinations over twenty-five years, subsequently, never suggest 'depression' as the reason, or that he was losing his mind in front of students.

The MP stource, Mac and the Mac source-by-proxy are unanimous: it was an implosion insie the mind of Druitt, the Ripper, caused by horror, horror leading to revulsion and torment and then a 'confession' in deed, rather than word.

[Roy Corduroy]

Okay, then what do you think the reason was for his dismissal?

Roy

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Roy

Frustratingly only one primary source covers Druitt's dismissal for 'serious trouble', suggesting that since nobody else chose to repeat it, then Druitt might have been sacked because he was AWOL.

This was embarrassing to Valentine, sacking a dead and tragic employee, and was not repeated by other newspapers.

On the other hand, 'serious trouble' could spring from having two jobs and trying to juggle too much (note that Druitt was sacked, rather than be allowed to resign?)

If we take that source and try and link it with Mac's memoir we have this:

'I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people ; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888 ...'

It could be interpreted as what Mac related to Sims over the years; that the reclusive, middle-aged, affluent recluse was noticed to be absent by his pals, who feared the worst -- because they knew the middle-aged doctor had confessed in an asylum to wanting to kill harlots.

And we know that 'friends' really stands in for family, and so it seems Mac wrongly believed that 'Dr Druitt' lived with family, who noticed that he was absent on the nights of the murders.

On the other hand, Mac's memoir specifically denies that the killer had been 'detained' in an asylum.

He also makes no such claim that he was a medical man.

If he was not 'mad' then maybe he did work, and was not a wealthy recluse?

What did he do ...?

Mac does not claim he was so affuent he did not need to work.

Again, what did he do ...?

Mac does not say.

Instead he says, cryptically, that the un-named Druitt lived with 'his own people' and, by implication, they noticed he was absent ('absented') on the relevant nights.

Or at least they noticed that he was absent, not necessarily connecting it with the murders?

It's such a weirdly redundant line because, of course, he had to absent himself from where he lived to go and kill.

It's like saying he had to put on trousers, or he had to breathe oxygen.

Why say it at all?

In my opinion the key word is 'absented'.

That Druitt was out when he was supposed to be in, and it was noticed by his own people.

I think it is a vieled reference not to living with family but to living with the students at the school, and that -- as has been previously theorised -- Druitt had night-warden duties.

This would explain why he got into 'serious trouble' as he was fund to be absent, and had to be publicly sacked because of the potential uproar of parents (eg. clients) but also why there would be no connection made at the school between his 'absences' and the Whitechapel Murders.

Why would there be?

Mac has written elliptically so that 'own people' can be interpreted as family, or friends, without giving the game away that it was actually his work-place; thus Mac did not literally lie and yet also did not expose the deceased's specific details either -- for the Druitt family's sake.

I would also argue that -- at the very least -- Mac combed through every newspaper 1889 obit. about Druitt, and saw what we see.

[Chris G.]

Hi Jonathan

You are correct that Macnaghten saying that Druitt absented himself on various nights could be an indication that Druitt was sacked for not being on night duty, and might be an pointer to the fact that he was neglecting other things at the Blackheath school as well. Although it seems to me that Macnaghten's mention of being absent on certain nights is meant more to indicate that he was absent because he was in the East End on those nights, doing the murders... it's part of his argument that Druitt was a strong suspect. Along with being sexually insane of course, if he was in fact, and not being labeled so by Macnaghten on no real evidence.

It's quite interesting that Macnaghten says nothing about the depression and the family insanity that are part of the story of the inquest verdict, that Druitt was afraid that he was going like mother, if the alleged suicide note is to be believed. The official version of his suicide shows a quite different aspect of Druitt devoid of any indication that he could have been the Whitechapel murderer, and possibly the true one if he was not the murderer.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Chris G

You have it round the wrong way, as a number of people do.

When Macnaghten was told the Druitt tale, in early 1891, he was not informed that Montie was 'sexually insane' therefore he might have been Jack the Ripper.

Instead Mac was told that the long dead Druitt was the Ripper -- rightly or wrongly -- and that the cause of his desire to kill prostitutes was that he was insane, sexually insane.

'Going like mother ... ' if he wrote this, I think refers to being sectioned in an asylum because he was the Ripper, or at least believed he was.

I subscribe to the theory tat Druitt confessed, and that is why he was going to be sectioned. In Sims' we have the veiled version of all this; that the 'friends' were trying to place the 'doctor' under restraint 'again'. If the North Country Vicar is talking about Druitt then it makes sense why he killed himself when he was not under pressure for the constabulary -- he had confessed and the clock was ticking for his being incarcerated in the twilight world of asylums, with the family name ruined, and rather than 'go like mother' he took matters into his own hands.

The theme of Mac's 'awful glut' compression is of a mind which has snapped and his self-murder is a final act of madness, a confession in deed.

[Chris G.]

'Going like mother ... ' if he wrote this, I think refers to being sectioned in an asylum because he was the Ripper, or at least believed he was.



Hi Jonathan

With due respect, if Montie felt he was submitting to the family insanity as his mother had, he didn't have to be the Ripper to believe he may have been losing his marbles. Possibly there's a story here that you and Macnaghten and maybe Farquharson too have each missed?



The theme of Mac's 'awful glut' compression is of a mind which has snapped and his self-murder is a final act of madness, a confession in deed.

I would submit that the idea about the "glut" in Miller's Court causing the killer to do away with himself is old-style thinking that does not comply with what we know today about how serial killers operate. Unfortunately it might come down to Druitt committing suicide at the right time and Farquharson, with his homophobia, putting two and two together incorrectly.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Chris

So, far distant secondary sources know so much more than a primary source such as Macnaghten, the second-in-command at CID at the time Druitt came to attention as a Ripper suspect.

It's possible but is it likely ...?

A future Assistant Commissioner: a hands-on police administrator known for his competence, diligence, compassion, discretion, reticence and formidable memory?

But we know more than him?

He's wrong and doesn't know what he's talking about, whereas contemporary prognosticators do?

I just don't think you realise what shaky gound you're on, because you have lived for so many decades, I presume, with this theory --long ago calcified as fact -- that Druitt is obviously an innocent, troubled [gay] man, and Macnaghten callously incompetent.

What a big, big call it is to say that this is really about discrimination against sexual orientation -- a modernist intrusion -- and Mac, an Old Etonian, being a homophobic Inspector Magoo??

There's no primary source evidence for this modernist, politically correct interpretation, based on the unlikely idea that as a fact Macnaghten clearly did not know much about the real Druitt ever.

It is not that Druitt, necessarily, thought he was insane, in the sense of not being able to function -- he had just won an important case with his brother -- it is that he was remorseful and/or tormented.

That's what the meagre primary sources give us a glimpse of.

If Druitt confessed to a priest who then alerted the family after he vanished (the un-named 'friend') then Druitt knew that he was 'going to be like mother' eg. confined in a madhouse, if not executed for his crimes.

In reading P.C. Moulson's Report, if that is all he did, then Macnaghten would have known that Chiswick is too far for the Ripper to bloodily stagger to his death the same morning -- without anybody noticing.

That's why Sims had the Blackheath detail (1907, 1915) but he never had Chiswick, I'll bet, because it gives the whole game away.

The MP story has a surgeon's son (implying youth), blood-stained clothes, no police knowledge of this suspect, some kind of frightful mania, and the self-murder the same night as the final murder.

In 1898, the story is relaunched with every detail altered:

The surgeon's son becomes a middle-aged doctor, the blood-stained clothes are dropped (though make a cameo re-appearance in Sims in 1907), the generic homicidal mania is retained but the police are now efficiently right onto this madman before he died, and the self-murder is ... still the same night as the last murder (in 1899 Sims will be brutal on this point to debunk the Vicar's Ripper, as the latter's alleged fiend has plenty of time to confess and then expire -- just like the real Montie)

You see ... every detail is changed except the date of the suicide?

If you were trying to hide somebody would you not want to change this date?

Unless ... you quickly discovered the MP story was wrong about this detail, either through conferring with a Druitt or reading up on the story in the 1889 newspapers.

Thus you can, should retain this notion, this wrong date, because it's fiction to begin with!

In his memoirs Mac had a dilemma: keeping the 'awful glut' criteria would mean sticking with the river destination, and the depiction of the 'shrieking, raving fiend' of Sims which was so patently melodramatic and unlikely.

But Mac could not, with a straight face and good conscience, repeat this unlikely tale so he retained the immediate self-murder (though barely as he provides a twenty-four hour gap for the murder and self-murder) but drops the Thames destination -- which we know he knew was accurate and true.

Why not just dump the lot and just say he killed himself, and not commit yourself to when, let alone so soon after -- if you knew it was not true?

I think Mac knew that Druitt had confessed in word, and that it was three weeks later that he, quite calmly and cleanly and discreetly, took his own life at Chiswick.

In his memoirs, Mac wanted to retain the theme of a confession in deed, rather than word.

For one thing it hid the real Druitt.

For another it is far less appalling than admitting that Druitt functioned -- just as the Vicar's Ripper did -- after the Miller's Court slaughterhouse; to go to work, to play cricket, and so on.

That's almost potentially more shocking to the sensibilities of the 'better classes' than the murders themselves.

And, that the real Druitt killed himself because his being nabbed was now inevitable after he confessed to a priest, who may have been his own cousin.

A bit of a bounder's way out, really?

Whereas the self-murder so soon after the 'awful glut' retains a veil of gentlemanly dignitas for this 'remarkable man' from a 'good family'.

[Roy Corduroy]

Yes of course, Jonathan, I understand what you are saying, and how you have put the various sources together.

But I have been thinking about this some more, and again, he doesn't have to be homosexual to be fired from his teaching job. In fact, I'm not sure how homosexuality got into the equation in the first place. Take two facts and find the straight line between A and B:

A. apparently he was in serious trouble at school (his brother said)

B. He committed suicide shortly thereafter

If his deteriorating, depressive mental state was showing, it could cause his firing. The same mental state that causes him to commit suicide. One factor explains both. No extra factors introduced.

This is not mutually exclusive to him being the Ripper. If he were, he might not only exhibit mental instability, but also had been "AWOL" as you say, or had bloody clothes, etc. But it is mutually exclusive of him being gay. He doesn't have to be gay in any scenario in my book. That was the exact point of clarification I was attempting to make.

Roy

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

If people topped themselves every time they lost their job ...

Especially since this was the lesser of his two vocations?

Plus, even the source which mentions the 'serious trouble' does not particularly link it with his suicide.

The other sources, 'Sad Death of a Local Barrister' et al. don't even bother to mention it (it's not 'Sad Death of a Part-time School Master').

I too, have been doing some more thinking about it and what nags at me is that Druitt was not allowed to resign.

That's odd to me. Everybody knows you have been dismissed, but officially you resign. He was sacked, but without sthe suggestion of a criminal offence, or even anything offensive.

Since nobody repeated this detail, and since the article seems to be saying that he was sacked the day before he bobbed up in the Thames -- maybe it was because he was AWOL?

Druitt still, after all, had belongings at the school.

And other news outlets let the school off for this ghastly turn of events.

Macnaghten is not saying -- though he implies it -- that the same ['his own] people' were the ones who noticed that Druitt was 'absented' for the murder nights. That could have been his brother later?

[Roy Corduroy]

If people topped themselves every time they lost their job ...

I didn't say that.

Roy

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Yeah, I know that.

I said it.

You said that he may have been exhibiting mental turmoil and this got him sacked.

Plausible, there is just nothing in the extant record to back it up.

He took his own life, the family believed, because he was the Ripper.

In 1889 everybody else was clueless about why he took his own life.

[Chris G.]

I just don't think you realise what shaky gound you're on, because you have lived for so many decades, I presume, with this theory --long ago calcified as fact -- that Druitt is obviously an innocent, troubled [gay] man, and Macnaghten callously incompetent.

Hi Jonathan

No I haven't "decades" clutched the idea that "Druitt is obviously an innocent, troubled [gay] man, and Macnaghten callously incompetent."

For all I know, Druitt might indeed have been the Ripper.

I'm just bringing up the possibility that Macnaghten and Farquharson might have been wrong, and have taken the circumstances of Druitt's death occurring at the right time to mean that he was the killer.

I do think that there's a case to be made that the Whitechapel murders make people lose their reason. We have seen it with theorist after theorist, author after author. People think they have the answer to the case, get excited about it to the extent that they push their candidate and see no other possibility other than their suspect did the murders. That might be the case here.

Best regards

Chris

[Chris G.]

Yes of course, Jonathan, I understand what you are saying, and how you have put the various sources together.

But I have been thinking about this some more, and again, he doesn't have to be homosexual to be fired from his teaching job. In fact, I'm not sure how homosexuality got into the equation in the first place. Take two facts and find the straight line between A and B:

A. apparently he was in serious trouble at school (his brother said)

B. He committed suicide shortly thereafter

If his deteriorating, depressive mental state was showing, it could cause his firing. The same mental state that causes him to commit suicide. One factor explains both. No extra factors introduced.

This is not mutually exclusive to him being the Ripper. If he were, he might not only exhibit mental instability, but also had been "AWOL" as you say, or had bloody clothes, etc. But it is mutually exclusive of him being gay. He doesn't have to be gay in any scenario in my book. That was the exact point of clarification I was attempting to make.

Roy

Hi Roy

You make some excellent points. However, you write, "In fact, I'm not sure how homosexuality got into the equation in the first place."

Homosexual relationships between boys are long-known in British public schools. "Fagging" in fact was a well known vice in Winchester School, Druitt's prep school, and was the subject of a scandal in the nineteenth century.

Best regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

This is where unconscious, even an hegemonic bias is so pervasive it is not even self-aware.

I mean, think what you are saying:

That Macnaghten (and for that matter Anderson and/or Swanson and/or Littlechild and/or Abberline) are on the same level and of the same value as primary, historical sources as succeeding armchair 'theorists' who were not there (some like Evans and Rumbelow have, obviously, been modern and distinguished members of the British constabulary) and who had access to information and data sadly lost to us.

Another thing...

Druitt's death was not convenient -- at all!

Druitt drowned himself three weeks after the Mary Kelly murder and -- much more inconveniently -- two years before the murder of Frances Coles.

So inconvenient was the timing of Druitt's suicide -- because it meant that Scotland Yard were excruciatingly chasing a dead man, a phantom, a 'ghost', one forever beyond the reach of earthly justice -- that a wily, publicity-conscious Mac, via Sims, cheekily and self-servingly redacted the hunt for 'Dr D' back into 1888, to desperately and successfully plug this gap.

In the same vein Mac, to his cronies, claimed that the whole Sadler business was both a media beat-up and that the dyspeptic sailor was definitely guilty of the murder of Coles, and perhaps even of another harlot too (see: 'Aberconway').

So, Mac told his pals that Sadler was guilty yet concealed this from the Home Office, and from his immediate superiors, in the official version (well ... it was never sent, and never read)?!

It was all to give the false impression that the Yard knew at the time that Kelly was the last murder, and that there would be no more murders by this maniac because the chief suspect, the 'demented doctor', had taken his own life as the efficient net closed around him.

That's why Mac's memoirs are so unexpected in their candour on this point, not that you would know it from most of today's secondary sources.

Mac asserts in a final literary flourish that the Ripper cost [the un-named] Warren his job and nearly [the un-named] Matthews too.

While this is an exaggeration, the point Mac is making -- through hyperbole -- is that the state was totally impotent against the fiend, but luckily he 'glutted' himself and 'confessed' his crime by the deed of a tormented, irresistible self-murder immediately after (eh, well, an entire day and night later ...)

This stale, old chestnut of Druitt as the 'convenient' suicide, and that being the shallow, flawed reason that Macnaghten latched onto this suspect, is long overdue for retirement.

Just read 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' and compare it to the 'shilling shocker' guff Mac was hustling Tatcho with, felt he had to hustle the public with via Sims to preserve the rep. of the Force.

That's not convenient; that's a pain in the ass but what else can you do if this is 'Jack'?

[Chris G.]

This stale, old chestnut of Druitt as the 'convenient' suicide, and that being the shallow, flawed reason that Macnaghten latched onto this suspect, is long overdue for retirement.

Hi Jonathan

No need to retire the "stale, old chestnut of Druitt as the 'convenient' suicide."

In 1888, and for all time, Druitt will be the man who committed suicide at the right time for anyone who believes the Ripper did away with himself after the last murder.

Moreover, he fits the myth that a "doctor" did the murders and then killed himself. Even though we know he wasn't a doctor but the son of a doctor.


Just read 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' and compare it to the 'shilling shocker' guff Mac was hustling Tatcho with, felt he had to hustle the public with via Sims to preserve the rep. of the Force.

That's not convenient; that's a pain in the ass but what else can you do if this is 'Jack'?

I will indeed reread your article, 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper', in the Rip and thanks for mentioning it.

Kind regards

Chris

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Chris

You're confusing my article 'Druitt's Ghost', a secondary source, with a primary source, 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper', Chapter IV of 'Days of My Years' by Macnaghten, 1914.

At the time of the murders, Frances Coles was thought to be the last victim on Feb 13th 1891 (yes, different policemen and medicos had competing opinions about this paradigm, at the time).

But once the dead Druitt was discovered 'some years after' by Macnaghten he believed -- because he had no choice -- that Kelly, not Coles or anybody else, must have been the last victim over two years before!

In 1898, via Griffiths, Macnaghten cemented Kelly as the final victim for the public and he cemented the self-serving lie -- there is no other word for it -- that this was known to police at the time of the Miller's Ct. murder.

It's a self-serving, Yard-friendly myth, which incredibly fools people now, in 2011?!

Mac repudiated his own bit of propaganda in his memoirs, and it made no impact whatsoever, not then and not now ('Scotland Yard Investigates' is a notable exception).

Hence the mistaken idea -- totally erroneous and a misunderstanding of the primary sources -- that Druitt's death fit the Ripper's cessation of his crimes, therefore he must have been the Ripper. He didn't fit, and was a potential tar-baby, yet Mac still believed.

That Druitt's suicide fit the timeline was blarney which Mac first put about in the official version, and which is allowed to dominate today's debates instead of his memoirs -- as the latter fit all the other primary sources between 1888 and 1891, while the slippery 1894 'Report' does not.

[Chris G.]

Hi Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan. Actually I was thinking of your article in Ripperologist 103 which I will reread but I will look up your other article "Druitt's Ghost" as well. Thanks for these interesting discussions, mate.

Best regards

Chris

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