Natalie Severn
06-16-2007, 04:59 PM
Given that both The Sun Newspaper in February 1894 and Sir Melville Macnaghten ,Commissioner of Police in his 1894 memorandum refer to letters that Thomas wrote it seems extraordinary that we have no evidence of them.
Macnaghten himself names some of the recipients of these letters.One was Lord Grimthorpe.Another was to the Treasury,- a letter complaining of a Dr Brooks,of Westminster Bridge Road,whom he had threatened to shoot for having supplied him with bad medicines.
The Sun describes one of the letters that they appear to have had sight of.It was written,they state,"in a peculiar sloping backhand writing which its writer sometimes employed".
It reads quite as quite a reasonable and intelligent letter of complaint about having received medicine that he states brought him out in "spots with large red irritant patches on the face and a dreadful burning pain in the left side,.....leaving [Thomas] in a state of great and terrible anxiety and fear". Actually, but for the comment by The Sun that there was in reality nothing at all wrong with him except for his "diseased state of mind" the letter makes fairly good sense in that the medicine the surgeon prescribed could have have caused him a severe allergic reaction such as hives.
Anyway,it is tantalising to get this glimpse of Thomas and this state of panic and yet to be unable to have sight of any of his letters.It would appear that despite the publicity given to him by The Sun and the rebuttal given to the Sun"s claims by Macnaghten there isnt a scrap of a handwritten [or typed] letter left from Thomas for our perusal.
Maybe Macnaghten made a bonfire of them----- as he admitted he did
over papers that came to him over Druitt.
Who knows.What with Warren"s order to erase the Goulston Street graffiti and the destruction of papers alleging evidence of Druitt"s culpability
they seem to have made a right pigs ear of it .
Best
Natalie
Macnaghten himself names some of the recipients of these letters.One was Lord Grimthorpe.Another was to the Treasury,- a letter complaining of a Dr Brooks,of Westminster Bridge Road,whom he had threatened to shoot for having supplied him with bad medicines.
The Sun describes one of the letters that they appear to have had sight of.It was written,they state,"in a peculiar sloping backhand writing which its writer sometimes employed".
It reads quite as quite a reasonable and intelligent letter of complaint about having received medicine that he states brought him out in "spots with large red irritant patches on the face and a dreadful burning pain in the left side,.....leaving [Thomas] in a state of great and terrible anxiety and fear". Actually, but for the comment by The Sun that there was in reality nothing at all wrong with him except for his "diseased state of mind" the letter makes fairly good sense in that the medicine the surgeon prescribed could have have caused him a severe allergic reaction such as hives.
Anyway,it is tantalising to get this glimpse of Thomas and this state of panic and yet to be unable to have sight of any of his letters.It would appear that despite the publicity given to him by The Sun and the rebuttal given to the Sun"s claims by Macnaghten there isnt a scrap of a handwritten [or typed] letter left from Thomas for our perusal.
Maybe Macnaghten made a bonfire of them----- as he admitted he did
over papers that came to him over Druitt.
Who knows.What with Warren"s order to erase the Goulston Street graffiti and the destruction of papers alleging evidence of Druitt"s culpability
they seem to have made a right pigs ear of it .
Best
Natalie