Druitt news reports. [Archive] - JTRForums.com - THE place to be for All Things Ripper

Jonathan Hainsworth

07-03-2010, 10:54 PM

I had never seen this primary source on Druitt's death before.

Once more, it is a source in which the school is mentioned but not his alleged dismissal from that place.

It is about a well regarded lawyer who has, inexplicably, taken his own life.

The famous source, which says he was dismissed, is either accurate -- but nobody else repeats it -- or inaccurate. He was not dismissed from the school at all.

Or, if accurate, it was because Druitt was sacked after vanishing, and Valentine was understandably mortified.

The fact that Druitt had left belongings at the school, in which was found a note, does not suggest relations had been severed yet.

The other newspapers, like this one, discreetly let Valentine off the hook about cashiering a corpse; a gentleman who had tragically taken his own life [Druitt's cicket club 'also' sacked Montie for being AWOL]

The sacking source ['Acton, Chiswick and Turnham, Green Gazette' Jan 5th 1889] provided a theory about Druitt which [supposedly] completely removed him as a Ripper suspect. That a mentally disturbed bachelor ['afraid I was going like mother'] was dismissed for 'serious trouble' and this caused his suicide, despite other primary sources showing no such thing -- and that he had a thriving career as a barrister.

The obits focus on this barrister vocation, not the teaching.

It's not 'Sad Death of a School Master'.

Other people have theorised that the 'serious trouble' was being a child molestor.

The sources do not back up this thin, modernist theory, even the only one which mentions Druitt's alleged sacking.

Macnaghten describes Druitt as 'sexually insane'; that is taking erotic pleasure from violence, in this case towards adult women since Mac believed he was 'Jack'.

Ultimately, if Macnaghten was well informed and sincere -- both arguable points -- then he knew that Druitt had not killed himself because he was sacked from his lesser job, nor because he was 'mentally unbalanced' as the coroner ruled.

Another way of reading that sacking source is to read it straight.

It claims that Druitt was sacked on Dec 30th. This is interprested to be an error. That he must have been sacked on Nov 30th. Or, that the un-named writer is clumsily saying that the brother's inquiries took place on that date, or something like that.

How about, Montie vanished, his frantic brother William searched though his belongings at the school, and found some kind of melancholy note ['alluded'] which might point to suicide, and then again might not? [The Cricket Club thought he had absconded abroad?] Valentine, readying staff and pays for the next semester, could wait no longer for clarification and thus sacked Montie for the 'serious trouble' of being unaccountably missing -- sacked him on the 30th.

The following day his corpse bobbed up in the Thames.

All very embarrassing for the school, and only one paper was indiscreet enough to mention it.

How Brown

07-03-2010, 11:40 PM

Dear JH:

Thanks for bringing this thread that Mike started a while back to our attention.
Permit me to ask where its mentioned in the death notice (Post 1) that Druitt had been sacked on December 30th and where it states that the letter addressed to Mr. Valentine was actually at Valentine's school ?

Thanks again for bringing up interesting Druitt related ideas as well.

Jonathan Hainsworth

07-04-2010, 12:46 AM

To How

I think we are at cross-purposes, if by Post 1 you mean Mike's 'Sad Death of a Barrister'.

I was comparing this source to the famous one found back in the late 60's (though not by Cullen) from the 'Acton, Chiswick and Turnham Green Gazette' of Jan 5th 1889, which is headed: FOUND DROWNED.

... Witness [brother William] went to London to make enquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on December 30th. Witness had deceased's things searched where he resided, and found a paper addressed to him (produced). The coroner read this letter, which was to the effect:- 'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.' Witness said ... He had no other relative ...

It is just my opinion but I think that William made up this lame letter, or exaggerated its meaning, perhaps at the same suppressing the real confession by his brother about being the Ripper. Otherwise, if Druitt's death was so neat and containable, how on earth did the extaordinary idea of him being the Ripper come to the family?

Nemo

07-04-2010, 08:02 AM

It's probably coincidental (there are so many coincidences in this case) but Blackheath was mentioned twice in Ripper missives, perhaps significantly in January and February 1889

8th January 1889

Dear Boss
I write these few lines to you just to inform you that I
shall soon be on the job again very shortly near blackheath.,
I have my eye on a few gay women
You have thought you have had me but I have laughed
ha ha ha
I remain
Yours very truly
Jim the Cutter

and also a short attempt at poetry...

18th February 1889 addressed to Chas. Warren

Perhaps you don't know who I am
My name is Jack the Ripper
From the police I'm a great slipper
My real name is Raffael
And I am to be found in Whitechapel
Augustus Robertson Raffael
Formerly of Goulson (St?) Whitechapel
now of Vanbrugh Park Blackheath

In Letters from Hell this letter seems to have the ends of some of the sentences missing (ie Raffael is rendered as Raff... ) so I took the liberty of completing it with likely words / letters but it could for instance be "Raffle"

Jonathan Hainsworth

07-04-2010, 08:12 AM

I think that is no more than a coincidence by a hoaxer, or hoaxers.

There is, though, a coincidental black/white symmetry to the fact that Druitt, in public a good guy, worked sometimes and lived full-time at BLACKheath, and that Druitt-the-evil, -- so his family, an MP and Mac claimed -- committed the muders in WHITEchapel. You would not use such heavy-handed reverse symbolism if this was fiction.

Mike Covell

07-04-2010, 08:37 AM

Nemo

07-04-2010, 08:53 AM

I think that's a fallacy Mike but I'll give it a go later

In the immortal words of Echo & the Bunnymen, "...spare us the cutter..."

But seriously folks...

Have you ever used an uncommon word on the forums only to see it used in different contexts by other posters shortly thereafter?

It seems to be an unconcious thing rather than coincidence

Similarly, these letter writers have associated Blackheath with the Ripper for some unknown reason

Coming shortly after the finding of Druitt's body, perhaps they read a mention of Blackheath in the press

But why would they associate it with the Ripper?

How Brown

07-04-2010, 09:40 AM

For JH:

Thank you for corrrrecting the matter. Yes, I was referring to Mike's thread starter and not the Acton,Chiswick,et al article.

"how on earth did the extaordinary idea of him being the Ripper come to the family?" -JH

Just for the sake of clarity and since you have a greater grasp of the Druitt saga than I do, you're suggesting that something within the note may have been the source of Macnaghten's comment later on that the suspicions regarding Monty were present in the family .....as opposed to something other than the note, correct ?

Thank you again JH.

Jonathan Hainsworth

07-04-2010, 10:18 AM

To How

The short answer: I don't know?

The longer answer:

Macnaghten, the MP story, Sims' 'shilling shocker' do not refer to a confession.

Even the legit confession mentioned by the Druitt obits. sounds very dodgy and very lame.

The closest glimpse we get of a possibpe confession are Mac's 1913 comments, upon retirement, claiming to have destroyed certain documents on this suspect. That their destruction would forever break the link to the suspect's guilt.

What document could you be so sure there was only one copy? A one-of-its-kind confession?

Thus these burned documents might once have been Druitt's confession sitting in his safe, or Mac's notes on the case, or nothing at all -- since he did not destroy the Aberconway Version of his Report [his aging daughter claimed in 1959 that it was just a smokescreen by her Dad] which contained the suspect's real name. Though everything else is misdirection eg. his vocation, his age, and the date he was fished out of the Thames: Dec 3rd 1888 [Griffiths was not fooled by this last detail, simply counting back seven weeks and came up with Dec 31st 1888, the correct date] which at times Sims used.

Also, the North Country Vicar story of 1899, if it is about the un-named Druitt -- and it may not be -- refers to a confession by the killer but that seems to be purely verbal, not a written and signed statement.

In terms of historical methodology, I think that this points more strongly to Druitt's guilt.

The first thing Mac would have asked, in 1891, of MP Farquharson and/or a member of the Druitt family, like brother William, is why on earth do you think your deceased member was ... Jack the Ripper??

Macncaghten refers to 'sexual insanity' and in his memoirs to the kilelr having a diseased body too. The Vicar story refers to 'epileptic mania'. The MP story refers to 'homicidal mania' -- and to the finding of blood-stained clothes. Since this is the earliest source we have, titchy as it is, this may be the key element as to why the family, rightly or wrongly, 'believed' such a weird idea.

Sims' fictionalised version has friends who are already agitated about their deranged, reclusive pal BEFORE he vanishes into the Thames.

Perhaps it was something like this:

The Druitt family, or just William, knew that Montie was not only peridocially unbalanced but also took erotic pleasure from violence, perhaps with harlots. Then he disappared after the most appalling murder and the brother found not a written confession, but the blood-stained garb of a sailor at missing Montie's school digs. Williiam put two and two together and -- perhaps quite mistakenly -- thought that his brother had been the fiend.

Another theme of Sims' fiction is that the alarmed 'friends' are contacting the authorities, only to discover that super-efficient Scotland Yard are ALREADY preparing to arrest the 'Demented Doctor'.

Again, this might be a mythical, clumsy version of William Druitt being found by Macnaghten in 1891, and telling the police chief the hideous truth -- the gist of which Mac ALREADY KNEW having been briefed about the Dorset leak regarding the 'son of a surgeon' by the loose-lipped Farquharson?

The Ripper mystery is a strange mysery in which the beginnign of the story is known, the murders, the end of the story is known, it's Druitt, and yet the middle is mostly indisticnt shapes glimpsed in a London fog -- which for most people cripples and compromises the case's resolution.

The critical source, Mac's Memoirs, draw a grinning veil over all this. He is just certain that this is the Ripper, and that no other suspect is worth mentioning -- take it or leave it.

How Brown

07-04-2010, 10:31 AM

Thank you very much for elaborating, JH.:high5:
I've got to tell you that these recent elaborations of yours on the Druitt saga and the manner in which you present them have been very,very interesting. I need to take them and get a sequence of events established in my mind so I can at least try and keep up with you. You've really done a lot of homework on this very important issue and its to our benefit that you've shared it. Thanks JH.

Jonathan Hainsworth

09-30-2010, 08:22 AM

In the single source which mentions Druitt being sacked for undefined 'serious trouble' I argue that, if true, it happened because he was AWOL, and for no other reason.

That is why it was left out of the other obits. It was all a ghastly mistake.

That the date, usually considered wrong by a month, is correct: Dec 30th, 1888.

That is the day before the mystery ended with his body surfacing in the Thames.

'Witness then went to London to make inquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on the 30th of December. Witness had deceased's things searched where he resided, and found a paper addressed to him (produced).'

Notice that, if Druitt was dismissed whilst alive, he left his 'things' behind where he still seems to have 'resided'. Why were his things not sent to his legal chambers if he had been dismissed whilst alive, and then untidily and inappropriately left them behind?

The counter-argument is that William appeared around the 11th and would surely have found the suicide note right away, and therefore why would his missing, presumed sucided brother have been sacked on the 30th?

Why indeed?

We only have the brother's word -- at one remove -- that he found the note at that time.

Which could mean that there was no note, at all, until the brother suddenly produced one at the inquest with the lame reason: 'my mother is mad, therefore I will go mad, so bon voyage'.

Who was it addressed to?

His brother or his boss?

Sources differ.

The brother turned up at the school and, sure enough, there was his brother's things -- but he was missing? The head needed to know if Montie was returning so he could begin setting up schedules for classes for the next semester.

William was at a loss. Where on earth was he? His cricket club sacked him, thinking he had gone abroad -- for being AWOL.

Valentine had no choice: he had to dismiss Druitt on the 30th to offer the job to somebody else.

Then his body turned up.

The dismissal was an embarrassing error, by one bloody day.

But an error William used, at the inquest, to imply an unbalanced and melancholy mind?

By then William may have known about his brother's alleged dual identity, perhaps from the same 'friend' who had told him that he had vanished.

Montie bought a season train ticket, he dressed to the nines, and had cheques for a lot of money, and then vanished -- but only for a month.

With rocks in his pockets I'm not sure he wanted his remains to ever be found. Instead to be wanted to be thought to have gone abroad, to the Continent, to live in genteel obscurity, to escape what ...?

Caroline Morris

10-06-2010, 11:23 AM

Hi Jonathan,

I recall an argument made somewhere that the cheques found on Monty were consistent with final salary plus severance pay - which he could obviously not have collected if he had gone AWOL and been sacked in his continued absence.

What do you think those cheques represented and why did he take them with him to his watery doom?

I see them as the last painful straw for a man who had just had his worst fears confirmed by Valentine: he was not even mentally capable of being left in charge of a small group of schoolboys. He had no intention of banking or cashing the physical evidence for it.

Love,

Caz
X

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-07-2010, 12:47 AM

Dear Kaz

Absolutely, that could be the reason for the cheques and the reason for his suicide.

Or he wanted to appear to have gone abroad, and not also to have committed the terrible, Christian sin of self-murder.

That having confessed to a cleric -- as I alone contend -- the clock was ticking over what to do? He wanted to have seemed to have fled [like Tumblety actually did] and to have vansihed on the Continent.

Instead, the rocks did not hold his body down and he surfaced within a month.

The ultimate reason I disagree with your line of argument is because it assumes the sterile, dusty paradigm of Macnaghten as 1) not interested or knowledgeable about the real Druitt, and 2) that Macnaghten was not as certain of his chief suspect, as Anderson was about his.

Since the identification of the MP, I think both positions are untenable.

The reason I do not think the school sacking is of great importance is because if it had been, the family would have seen this as the reason for his suicide and/or Macnaghten would have used this as an excuse to dismiss the family's hyterical grief, and so on.

Consider that the primary sources on Druitt's death make no reference to the school sacking as leading to his drowning himself, even the only one that does mention this detail at all [the gist of that flawed piece is that the mother was mad, and the son feared he was going the same way, and so ...]

Consider that the other main primary source, 'Sad death of a Local Barrister' is exactly that: the death of a 'well known and much respected ... barrister of bright talent ... with a promising future'.

That's not a disgraced figure, nor does his sucidie make any sense?

In other words, who cares if Druitt was a part-time teacher?

Who cares is he was sacked?

Montie Druitt was an effective advocate, as we know from other primary sources, and that's what counts, and that's what makes his premature demise so lamentable and so inexplicable!?

If Druitt was sacked whilst alive, the 'serious trouble' could simply have been the conflict between the two jobs, and he refused to resign.

Or, as has been speculated about before, Druitt had a duty-of-care position at the school, at night. He was absent, perhaps for the murders, the boys or somebody noticed and he was sacked.

But it was not so 'serious' that he had to leave immediately. He finished the semester and was paid off handsomely.

There is a peculiar line in Mac's Memoirs, which echo but do not necessarily support the guff he has been previously feeding Sims.

Mac writes that the Ripper lived with his 'people' and 'absented himself' to kill in Whitechapel. In Sims, though, the mythical pals only notice him missing the very last time; in the wake of the final abomination. By then he is mssing because he has thrown himself in the river, a 'shrieking, raving fiend'.

Thus, for the first and only time, a source, Mac's Memoirs, allude to Druitt being what he must have been if he was 'Jack'; absent from the school at night and that this was noticed. It could hardly have been approved of, being AWOL, and may have led to the 'serious trouble' which got him dismissed, but this had no effect on his professional reputation or career as a lawyer. Why would it?

What it did affect was where he lived.

That is one of the reasons I see Druitt as not having severed his ties with the Blackheath School by being dismissed for something really serious like mental instability or indecent behaviour, whilst he was alive.

When the brother arrives at the school they are not looking for him, unlike his legal chambers. His belongings, or some of them, remain presumably in his bedroom where the brother finds the alleged sucide note [addressed to either William or Valentine -- the sources interestingly disagree].

I think the brother found, at some point, somewhere, 'blood-stained clothes'. This is mentioned in the MP story. The surgeon's son killed himself on the night of the last murder and bloody clothes were found.

To a reader in 1891, this juicy titbit would seem to make sense -- true or not.

Actually it doesn't make sense --once you know it's Druitt.

That is because Druitt could not be found with blood-stained clothes when he died as he was [I]fished out of a river three weeks after the final murder.

In other words, once you insert the Thames detail, this part of the story originating with the MP, ceases to make sense.

Sure enough, the 'blood-stained' clothes never appears again in any surviving source.

I believe that several bits of information have been crunched, either by the reporter, or the reporter's source who presumably is one of the 'good many people' who 'believe' Farquharson's extrordinary tale.

The mistake, whosever it was, allowed Macnaghten to deploy the incriminating Thames detail, for the emerging 'Drowned Doctor' mythos, because so long as you harness it -- 'wrongly' -- to the night of the final murder it is libel-proof.

The peer groups in which the Druitts moved would not suspect, at least not overtly, that the former's late member was the fiend if it was also well known that he did not kill himself the night of the Kelly atrocity -- unlike the affluent, middle-aged, family-less physcian who had himself [not his mother] been in an asylum, and who was ineed 'Jack' according to impeccable sources: Griffiths and Sims, quoting from a 'Home Office Report' by no less than the Assistant Commissioner [which one?].

If they were real, the blood-stained clothes make sense as incriminating physical evidence if they were known, by the brother, to be the very clothes Montie wore on the night of the Kelly murder, a night he may have been 'absent' from the school? Perhaps the reason Druitt was dismissed, if this dismissal happened whilst he was alive?

Later, for the inquest, William produced a dodgy note and also claimed that Montie had no other living relative.

This is my theory based on the scraps, because something sure made the family, or at least the brother, believe in such an outlandish notion!

We know it was not the timing of the suicide because it was three weeks after the Millers Ct. 'awful glut'.

On the other hand perhaps William was madder than a March Hare, even madder than Montie ...?

Caroline Morris

10-07-2010, 08:14 AM

When William said that Monty had no other living relative, isn't it more likely that this is a simple misunderstanding of the context, and he merely meant that he was the only relative of the deceased who was present at the inquest?

I'd still like to know what the cheques were for, if Monty wasn't presented with them in person by a possibly reluctant Valentine, who had little choice but to let him go. I feel the sympathy in that gesture, which makes more sense if Monty was nearing the end of his mental tether at the time, and had been open about it with his boss, than if he had let everyone down by pissing off at night and leaving the boys alone - or worse.

In the 'good' old days you only got paid if you were there. The least trouble and you were out on your ear with sweet fanny adams.

If Monty had given Valentine 'serious' trouble, I doubt he'd have been paid for it - unless it was the kind of trouble that the school could not afford to advertise, but that takes us back to kiddy-diddling territory. Dismissing Monty on the spot without a bean might have dropped too big a hint in that direction.

Love,

Caz
X

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-07-2010, 08:41 AM

Yes, it could be just that William meant there were no other living relations at the inquest.

This is such a dodgy source, as it does not even mention Montague John's name -- and he is the deceased!

Most suicides do not worry about material possessions, except in their disposal after their demise. They don't usually take fat cheques with them to the bottom of a river, unless they want to seem to have absconded.

Kaz, I read it differently, for what this is worth.

I don't subscribe to the tragic Montie scenario.

Not if he was checking out to avoid the hangman, prison or an asylum. If he blitz-killed poor defenceless women, and then mutilated their remains. I do feel some sympathy, if the Mac/Sims' portrait is correct on this point; Druitt killed himself because he was appalled and remorseful at what he had become: a penitential self-murder.

Or, Druitt may have written a letter to Valentine to stick it to him for supposedly driving him to kill himself. Or, he may have set the Head up to sack him, to thus provide a non-Jack reason for the Thames plunge -- for the family's sake.

More competent sources skip this detail altogether, of the dismissal, leaving me wondering if Valentine was embarrassed at having sacked a deceased member of his staff, and other accounts discreetly left it out.

It's very frustrating, as Macnaghten called Druitt 'remarkable' and 'fascinating' -- a 'protean' criminal -- yet what we are left with is the brief 'shilling shocker' aftermath version of his life, his crimes, and his death.

Caroline Morris

10-07-2010, 09:07 AM

But Jonathan, the fattest cheque in the world is not a material possession if you take it with you to the bottom of the Thames, unbanked, uncashed. That's the point - Monty wasn't worried about this large potential sum of money or he could have liquidised it before it literally got a soaking.

And once again, if the cheques had anything to do with Monty's teaching job, Valentine issued them while he was still alive.

It's Caz by the way, but what's in a letter between friends? :)

Love,

Caz
X

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-07-2010, 09:31 AM

Sorry, Caz with a 'C', quite right.

I stand by that I think Druitt was trying to make it look as if he was not dead, and that he had access to funds, which he might be expected to cash -- and might not?

I stand by my view that the school, and his school-life, and even his possible dismissal whilst alive by the school, is as over-rated, and over-determined a factor as the single, dodgy Col. Durham source which alleges that Dr Tumblety had a collection of uteri.

Just not enough.

Macnaghten never even hints at such an element of the story -- unless you think that 'sexual insanity' and 'serious trouble' are related, and I do not -- nor did Mac to Sims in converting the story into a myth, make any reference to this detail [except possibly Druitt's few days, or weeks, with his secondary job gone, is what lies behind the fabulously wealthy doctor who does not work at all for years?].

By the way the primary sources show it was spelt 'Montie', not Monty, though a Pythonesque absurdity does lightly hover over the saga, regarding Macnaghten and his machinations.

Cris Malone

10-07-2010, 10:54 AM

Pardon me for injecting a thought into this interesting discussion, but Mac's not mentioning that 'element of the story' could relate to the possible fact that he didn't know it. After all, he has 'Montie' down as a doctor living with his family; which of course, was not true. I know this is beating a dead horse, but his errors are profound, even as to Cutbush... let alone the other two suspects; where there would be no logical reason to consider such mistakes as some attempt to veil their identity... And we go back to the fact that in both versions of his writings on this subject he gives Druitt's name, which cancels any satisfactory reason to intentionally misdirect the rest.

SirRobertAnderson

10-07-2010, 04:41 PM

But Jonathan, the fattest cheque in the world is not a material possession if you take it with you to the bottom of the Thames, unbanked, uncashed. That's the point - Monty wasn't worried about this large potential sum of money or he could have liquidised it before it literally got a soaking.

OK - warning: whacked out comment of the day.

I see parallels with Judas Iscariot.

Matthew 27:5: And he [Judas Iscariot] cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-07-2010, 08:57 PM

To Cris

Yes, that could be right. That Mac knows next to nothing about the real Druitt.

As you know, I subscribe to the revisionist theory that since Farquharson certainly knew the Druitts-- and knew of Montie the suicided surgeon's son -- the information he would have passed on to his fellow Etonian and Tory would have to have been accurate, in terms of basic biographical details.

From that moment, whether Macnaghten is misremembering details which were never filed, or deliberately beginning to veil Druitt by making him more like the contemporaneous, doctor suspect, Tumblety, is immaterial.

The original source knew that Druitt was a Ripper suspect, rightly or wrongly, amongst his family. Mac investigated in 1891, and he was convinced for the rest of his life.

Plus, Mac's memoir chapter does not claim he was a doctor, and he wasn't, and does that he lived with 'his people', who were not necessarily his family -- and they were not.

That chapter also denies that Druitt has ever been in a madhouse, or that he was suspected by police between 1888 and 1891.

Both claims are correct.

The problem with researchers for the past 40 years is that they have not grasped that Macnaghten must also have been briefing Goerge Sims, and what he told him is demonstrably false -- and that Mac's memoirs show cognisance of this deception.

The bizarre, lazy-sounding line 'Said to be a doctor' is in itself a discreet hedge. It means he might or he might not be a physician.

And he wasn't.

Funnily enough it is Stephen Knight, he of the Royal Watergate balderdash, who realised that the two versions of the Mac Report are miles and miles apart -- he thought for sinister reasons.

As for Mac naming Druitt in documents?

The official version, had it been read out in the Commons, could not have named Druitt, or the others, including Cutbush. But if he had left in 'doctor's son', and thus not made him a might-be-a-doctor, then a respectable family could have been ruined within their own bourgeoisie circles unless you change his vocation and the timing of his death. But not so many changes that you put your own job in danger. You can just say the information received was not quite accurate on this minor suspect -- but better than Cutbush.

Plus it was never sent. It actually is the draft of the document he woudl show his writer pals four years later.

I realised a few years ago, ironically from reading Anderson, that Macnaghten was not the type to brutalise a respectable family, or place the Yard in a sticky position where it might have to fight a libel action by the same family, by pushing a profile onto the public which was entirely accurate.

That's what researchers have missed all along.

That the 'Drowned Doctor' would have to be a semi-fictionalised profile, to get such a public airing via Sims?!

And it is.

The official version was never seen by a researcher until 1966, and was not in fact even known to exist until then. The unofficial version was not publicly disseminated until 1965, the very first time Druitt's name was ever published.

And look where we are now in 2010?

Who believes that Druitt was probably the fiend? Just me. One person. Statistically nobody.

Nobody even believes that Mac knew of whom he wrote about, or that he had the same certainty and conviction as Anderson did about his Polish Jew.

I am proposing a new Msacnaghten who, I think, is really the old one.

Adam Went

10-08-2010, 07:10 AM

If you want to understand Druitt's suicide, you've got to look a lot further back than the loss of his job at Mr. Valentine's in 1888.

The fact that nobody noticed he was even missing for several days should suggest that he had few really close associates, people who he was friendly with and spoke to on a regular basis.

When his father died, he hadn't got much for himself out of the will. Many of his fellow family members were very successful, well known and respected in the academic community. And then there was Monty - just past thirty years old, virtually alone, had failed in his preferred career as a barrister and had been stuck in the same "other option" job for the previous seven years.

And then he got dismissed from that too.

You could almost say that the only thing that had kept him going had then been taken away. He himself said that he didn't want to become like his mother, but I believe that's only part of the reason - more so, he felt like a failure and that he had nothing worth carrying on for.

As for the cheques, I would surmise that he deliberately did that as his way of saying "nobody gave me a go and a fair run during my life, now nobody will profit from me in my death either."

The above circumstances would be very difficult for anybody to deal with, and that is why I feel genuine pity and sympathy for the man, and why i'm about to smash my head against a wall from all the nonsense that's been spouted about him on here recently.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-08-2010, 07:27 AM

Then smash away, Adam, because it is not just 'recently' that Montague John Druitt surfaced as a major, if not the leading Ripper suspect -- it was in 1891, albeit un-named.

Plus, the idea put forward by the brilliant Tom Cullen in 1965 [who nevertheless thought he was the fiend] that Druitt was a failed barrister, with zero cases, was frankly due to a lack of effective research.

Even the original 'Sad Death of a Local Barrister' article describes him as a promising advocate with 'a bright future', whose suicide is inexplicable.

This is backed by other primary sources, regarding various cases, which Druitt argued and won, including a civil case for the Tories just before he killed himself [the same party for which Farquharson was an elected rep.].

And it's Montie, not 'Monty' like Montgomery or Python, according to a posthumous primary source.

Adam Went

10-08-2010, 07:45 AM

Jonathan:

Indeed, I have to agree with you, Druitt is among the older suspects in the case and probably from a statistical view, still ranks in the Top 5, definitely the Top 10 in any case - and for reasons that are completely beyond my comprehension, I just don't see any case against him at all - especially when compared to other suspects - Severin Klosowski, for instance. ;)

As for his time as a barrister, I quote from Martin Howells and Keith Skinner's The Ripper Legacy, p. 121:

"Following his father's death, Montague took chambers at No. 9 King's Bench Walk, but in the three years left to him he didn't receive a single brief."

Make of that what you will.
Whatever he might have achieved earlier, his career as a barrister had obviously stalled, and that is what I was alluding to.

As for Montie/Monty, I wouldn't mind having a tenner on him being happier for me to call him Monty while trying to exonerate him, than have you calling him Montie while trying to implicate him.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-08-2010, 08:38 AM

That secondary source, which I do not have and have not read, seem to be in error?

If you go to Casebook, Suspects, and obviously M J Druitt you will see there a number of cases which MontIE had in the late 1880's, including on the eve of his inexplicable suicide.

Chapman might have been the Riper, for sure, but Anderson, Macnaghten, Sims, and most modern writers did not think so.

Abberline did, in 1903, but he is an unreliable source.

Not an unreliable cop, but an unreliable source because he is inherently biased at wanting to solve a case which was known by the public to be his responsibility, though hardly his alone, and for which he put in long frustrating hours [as Mac had the whole thing handed him to on a silver plate he solved it an comfortable afternoon over Brandy and cigars].

Adam Went

10-08-2010, 06:31 PM

Jonathan:

The fact is that nobody kills themselves unless they have strong motivation to do so. If Druitt's career as a barrister was flying along, then he had somewhere else to turn after being dismissed from Mr. Valentine's - and why was he still even working there in the first place if he was getting enough work in his preferred career?
If there is proof of cases that he worked on close to his death, then I can't argue with that, but I would strongly suggest that anybody with even a passing interest in Druitt's candidacy gets themselves a copy of The Ripper Legacy. I only got my copy not that long ago and while it's a bit outdated now, being from 1987, it's definitely worth the read.

I have to admit that I had a little chuckle when you described Abberline as an "unreliable source", then so steadfastly stick by the side of Macnaghten....Abberline of course headed up the original investigation, therefore he was in a far better position to comment on the likely candidates than Macnaghten. (And Sims! You mentioned G.R. Sims! He was a journalist....are you honestly going to say that you'd take the word of a journalist over the word of a directly involved police officer? Surely my eyes deceive me.) Besides, he wasn't exactly alone in his suspicion of Chapman, both George Godley and Arhur Neil, two more officers involved in the original investigation named him as their suspect as well. And to say he has a lot more going for him than Druitt would be a huge understatement - the fact that he is a known killer, or even a known criminal, for a start....

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-08-2010, 07:19 PM

What do you mean 'if' he was a successful barrister?

Didn't you go and check the primary sources on the other site?

Instead you just stubbornly stick by your out-dated secondary source?

Does my one remaining, functioning optic deceive me ...?

I think that the most likely reason Druitt killed himself was that he was a serial killer who was tormented, and looking for a final exit; the Ripper's last victim was himself.

My point about Sims rejecting Chapman was simply that there were people at the time, cops and reporters, who rejected him as the fiend -- rightly or wrongly. They applied the same logic that most people do now; a serial killer like Jack does not settle down and become a wife-poisoner.

Historical methodology, for what it is worth, teaches us that, when examining competing sources, the more reliable is the one that needs no agenda of self-justification and takes a position against its expected bias.

Therefore, on a sliding scale of reliablity Anderson is the most unreliable because he was so publicly pilloried for his inability to catch the killer, and at the other end is Littlechild who was never associated in the public mind with the case. This is not an exact science. Another source may turn up, today, pointing towards Anderson being right in his choice and others wrong in theirs.

Between those two poles -- Anderson and Littlechild -- is Abberline edging towards the unreliable end, because he had a need to solve the mystery, yet did not over-reach by trying to claim he suspected Chapman all along.

Edging towards the more reliable end is Macnaghten as he joined the Force six months after the Ripper murders were over -- though this was not realised until 1891 -- and who was not publicly associated with the case [eg. had nothing to prove, nothing to be embarrassed about] until his retirement comments of 1913 and then his memoirs the following year.

Macnaghten goes against the expected bias of class, creed and race by championing a suspect who was a fellow Gentile Gentleman -- though he could have chosen Kosminski, or Tumblety, or even a 'known killer' such as Chapman -- and in his memoirs by admitting that the constabulary was clueless when it came to the un-named Druitt, this 'protean' criminal.

Melville Macnaghten is the only police source who mentions all of the Whitechapel murder victims, by name, plus Druitt [plus Kosminski and Ostrog] and Sadler, and Cutbush, and arguably alludes to Tumblety too -- though not by name. Like Reid he also concedes that the Ripper hunt went from 1888 to 1891. Significantly, Mac does not mention Lawende or Grainger, both fragments of the saga which point towards a young Gentile as the chief suspect.

Adam Went

10-08-2010, 07:39 PM

Jonathan:

Er, no, as I said before, if there is proof that Druitt's career (and I will check it out later) as a barrister was still moving along nicely in 1888, then I can't argue with that - however, I was quoting from a published source of Druitt material, which I would argue you should already be in possession of if you take yourself seriously as a Druitt researcher. That's as slight dent to the credibility right there.

I don't wish to derail this thread and turn it into a Chapman VS Druitt debate, but the argument about a killer not being able to change his M.O. is ridiculously outdated, far more outdated then the book you refer to as being outdated - there are numerous examples of serial killers who have changed their M.O., some have even done it deliberately in order to lead the police away from their trail. He also had medical training, fits the witness descriptions of a Jew, met his future wife not long after the murders ended and then left the country for a while.....I mean in comparison purely from a circumstantial evidence point of view, Druitt doesn't even cast a shadow on Chapman.

You say that Littlechild is among the most reliable, but then Littlechild wrote (to Sims, incidentally), that his suspect was Tumblety. Not Druitt. So i'm not sure what you're trying to get at there?

Yes, you're right, Macnaghten joined the force after the murders had ended.....after Sir Charles Warren was gone, after the extra police in the city had been reduced, after Druitt had committed suicide and during the time when the police were no doubt searching for a theory, any theory, that could provide the solution, rather than considering the evidence as it happened. Pinning it on the lonely dead man was the easy way out.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-08-2010, 08:09 PM

Why don't you stop embarrassing yourself and actually just go and read the primary sources on Druitt's career?

Plus, Martin Fido, who thought Druitt an unlikely suspect because of Mac's errors, wrote an excellent piece about all this, some years ago.

I have read Rumbelow, Begg, Beadle, Farson, Cullen, Fido, [and Knight and Cornwall] and of course Evans, but am not made of money. The book you refer to that I should have seen is not in my library. Plus I know from other very reliable researchers what it argues, and reject that theory.

The best eyewitness, at least the one used by the police, was Lawende, and he described a young, sailor-attired Gentile-featured man eg. more like Druitt and not a Jew, and not Chapman either.

Druitt was not a convenient suspect because he was over two years dead, which meant he did not fit with the Coles murder. The suicided suspect made the police look like chumps. That is why Macnaghten in his Report(S), and in his briefings to Sims, gives the quite false impression that Scotland Yard were chasing 'Dr Druitt' whilst he was alive.

Littlechild claimed to Sims in 1913 that Dr. Tumblety was a major suspect, and the one which better fit what Sims was writing about: eg. Dr T not Dr D.

All other primary sources show that Littlechild is correct, in my opinion.

This senior officer is the most reliable police source because he had nothing to prove personally about the case, and was proposing an embarrassing suspect -- though not for him.

The limitations of the Littlechild Letter is that he headed the Secret Dept. not CID, that he knew nothing about Druitt -- how could he? -- and he was writing twenty-five years later, in a private letter in which he can write what he likes and not be held accountable.

I argue that the strengths of this source far, far outweigh its drawbacks. It is one of the greatest primary sources the mystery has ever produced [by Evans] and a much more reliable source than Anderson and/or Swanson -- and Macnaghten.

How Brown

10-08-2010, 08:10 PM

as I said before, if there is proof that Druitt's career (and I will check it out later) as a barrister was still moving along nicely in 1888, then I can't argue with that -Adam

Adam...yes there is proof that his career was progressing. In an article written ( with references and sources ) by Adrian Morris in rebuttal to Andrew Spallek in an issue of Whitechapel Society 1888 Journal, Morris points out the success Druitt had as a barrister in the year of his death.

I'll go look for it later on but trust me AW...he was progressing not digressing.

Adam Went

10-09-2010, 10:46 AM

Jonathan:

Embarrassing myself? Mate, it is not I who pretends to be this fantastic Druitt researcher who then admits that they don't have one of the foremost books on the subject in their library. As for not being made of money, neither am I, but I bought my copy not so long ago while I was researching Lionel Druitt. I bought it off Ebay, from the UK, and the cost including shipping was $8 AUD. If you genuinely care about the matter rather than just the theories that can be gained from it, I suggest you could and should scrape up that money ASAP.

As the accuser, the onus is on YOU to provide the evidence to support your own conclusions.

I disagree that Lawende is the most reliable witness, he's a good one, yes, but it's always struck me as odd that his two companions walking with him saw nothing while he was obviously paying more attention - Joseph Hyam Levy is just plain odd. Mind you, it's very easy to sift the evidence to suit the suspect rather than vice versa, which is the way it should be.

Having said all of that, despite the passage of 25 years, I do agree more with you on what you say about Littlechild. Officers continued to write their memoirs decades after even Littlechild wrote his letter to Sims, but as we know, there is a vast difference between a memoir for public viewing and a letter or memorandum for private viewing.

How:

Thanks for the info.

Cheers,
Adam.

How Brown

10-09-2010, 11:03 AM

Adam:

I tried to email you last night twice, but the mail got kicked back.
Let me know a.s.a.p. if you can accept attachments ( Nothing excessive)...and if your email is functioning...I think it will interest you.

How Brown

10-09-2010, 04:16 PM

Now that we've had a period of time step away from the thread, from now on please avoid personal sniping at one another as the rest of us are interested in Druitt related tales.

Thanks in advance !:nod:

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-09-2010, 10:03 PM

To Adam

I don't see myself as a 'fantastic' anything.

I am just putting a revisionist point of view about Macnaghten and Druitt, which is nevertheless sincere, and the merits and demerits of this line of argument will be decided by readers [and most people here find it totally unconvincing: novelistic conjecture masquerading as objective theory].

I have also put arguments against my own position.

Do you concede that you could be wrong? That Druitt might be guilty after all?

Plus, I am not the 'accuser' of Druitt.

I find this silly and shrill?

The belief in Druitt's culpability was held by certain of his contemporaries -- including his own family, or at least his brother -- two of whom were officers of state, and one of who was a senior police chief. Of course, they could all have made a ghastly mistake.

Adam, you give me no credit and too much.

I think the hardest aspect of this mystery is to convince some people, on this site, that the documents are 'footprints', not the foot itself.

We do not know the whole story. We never do with History. But that does not mean that there was no story not to know!

For what it is worth, I am going to put forward a new wrinkle to my interpretation of the faded, incomplete footprints:

By temperament Macnaghten was a 'man of action' and the idea that he would have lazily and callously settled for mere hearsay evidence, against a fellow gentleman in no position to defend himself, strikes me as unconvincing.

I think he would have, discreetly, left no stone unturned about Druitt, and, moreover, would have acted from a prejudice to get him off.

If you read his memoirs you discover that the Ripper story -- a whole chapter to itself -- is the only recount of a crime, or series of crimes, in that book in which Mac does not share with us any details that would make a coherent story or at least vignette.

For example, Mac avoids telling us even that the suspect drowned himself in the Thames which is the most colourful detail about Druitt.

There is no thus melodramatic over-reach as in, arguably, Anderson and Swanson [the latter's notation is not a public document and thus perhaps not even his own opinion].

Anderson, Littlechild, Swanson, and Abberline all tell, albeit briefly, narratives which do have a structure which make sense, even if, in the Polish Jew's case, unconvincingly melodramatic, regarding their preferred suspects.

Macnaghten does this with Griffiths and Sims and then completely shies away from such a structure in his own memoir.

If, in his memoirs, Mac had written pretty much what his pal Sims had been writing for years, the 'Drowned Doctor' narrative, I would probably agree with the conventional wisdom that Mac was woefully ignorant about Druitt.

Instead Mac goes a long way to debunking the very saga he had set in motion: no juicy Dr Jekyll element, no dramatic Thames plunge, and no claim that the suspect was a certified lunatic released too early, plus the humiliating admission -- though not for him personally -- that the real Ripper was not pursued whilst alive. In fact, the best suspect was unknown for years after he killed himself.

I find that, thematically speaking, this shows Macnaghten's confidence about what he knows, and about what he remembers. That there is plenty more to tell, but he is not telling.

Mac is neither grasping or straining -- or trying to hustle. If he was, he would be impressing upon us that he wrote an important Report on all this -- he does not bother, which shows what the Report(s) were actually worth [though the Aberconway version was at his elbow to write this chapter, though he falsely claims it is memory alone. In effect he is writing from notes despite his preface apologia]

But Mac does leave one implication hanging.

That the fiend's 'people' [eg. family] noticed he was 'absent' for the murders, whatever that actually means [eg. if he was Sims' asylum veteran-unemployed recluse, a hermit, an eccentric, an invalid, how can the suspect be 'protean': a man of many faces?]

Therefore, reading the memoir alone, in effect the third version of his Report, his 'people' eg, family, are surely the source of the 'certain information' which came to police, eg Mac, 'some years after'.

This actually cuts out fellow Etonian and MP Henry Farquharson, undoubtedly the bridging source, the 'private information', between the Druitts, or a Druitt, and the police chief in 1891.

In the memoir, by contrast, the implication is that the vital incriminating information came from the family -- directly. [We know there indeed was a bridging source, from other bits and pieces. Yet Macnaghten here leaves it out.']

Therefore, in 1914, in the one public document under his own name, Macnaghten elevated the source of his 'private information' a step further than just an arms-length go-between, as is implied in both versions of his police Report .

In the memoir, Macnaghten comes as close as he can to admitting that the vital clues came from 'his people' -- that is from his family.

Therefore, in the memoir Mac has dropped the device of the Report(s), especially the official version in which he deploys the hearsay-excuse of a go-between, one who might be right, and who might be wrong about this suspect, a suspect who might be a doctor, and might not be, and who might come from a good family, and who might not be, and who might have been found in the Thames after over a month, and who might not have been.

Notice ac does not overplay this hand in the memoir. He does not scream at us that [I]it must be true because the family told him so! The melodramatic equivalent in the Marginalia when 'Kosminski' gives away his guilt when sighted by the witness -- more than once!

The previous year, on his retirement in 1913, Mac reassured the family, via his deceitful-discreet press comments, that he had 'destroyed' the 'secrets' he had learned, and that there would be no memoir revelations.

Though Mac did, of course, devote a whole chapter to the Ripper in a memoir, he essentially kept his promise that there would be no revelations -- to show his good faith he even withheld the detail about the Thames drowning, as the method and scene of Montie's suicide, though it had already been disseminated by his literary cronies.

My reading of the memoir chapter, rightly or wrongly, is of a mind completely at ease, and serene in its extensive knowledge of his chief suspect -- not half-fumbled scraps -- and a mind carefully leaving things out, not putting them in [for the first and only time Druitt has a 'diseased body', an odd detail yet strongly echoing the Vicar's Ripper who has 'epileptic mania'].

The other police sources I think are telling us just about all they know, or remember, and the strain shows -- Littlechild excepted -- whilst Macnaghten has a lot more to tell [eg. the Thames, Blackheath, the family, the MP] and chooses not to, partly out of fear of a libel action but also because of a smiling serenity.

This serenity, this calm, this lack of needing to prove anything to anybody, comes, I argue, from Mac knowing it all, whilst melodramatic over-reach [not seen in Littlechild either], in literary terms -- as a story-telling device --exposes 'only thinking you know'.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-10-2010, 04:26 AM

A couple of people have written to me, privately, to make the good point that Macnaghten implies that the un-named Druitt lived with family somewhere in London -- which Druitt did not, of course.

They also make the point, an excellent one, that it seems a peculiar way to discreetly hide a respectable family by implying that the fiend ... lived with family ... who seemed to have noticed his 'absences' at the time of the murders and done nothing about it then, or for years after in terms of contacting the police?

Let me say first of all that in the opening of "laying the Ghost ...' Mancaghten writes that 'certain facts, pointing to this conclusion' did not come to the police until 'some years after'.

Strong words: 'facts', 'conclusion' and later 'belief'.

You have to realise that Macnaghten felt he needed to gently quash a popular novel.

The last para of his memoir chapter is this. The highlights are mine.

Only last autumn I was very much interested in a book entitled The Lodger, which set forth in vivid colours what the Whitechapel murderer's life might have been while dwelling in London lodgings. The talented authoress portrayed him as a religious enthusiast, gone crazy over the belief that he was predestined to slaughter a certain number of unfortunate women, and that he had been confined in a criminal lunatic asylum and had escaped therefrom. I do not think that there was anything of religious mania about the real Simon Pure, nor do I believe that he had ever been detained in an asylum, nor lived in lodgings. 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, after he had knocked out a Commissioner of Police and very nearly settled the hash of one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State.

I think that Macnaghten wanted to debunk Sims to some extent and Anderson very much, and the novel with its escaped luantic was the perfect behicle.

But I also think he read it somewhat alarmed at how close the figure in the fiction resembled Druitt, no doubt by accident.

The self-styled 'Avenger' is a young Gentile, like Druitt, with no medical training, also like Druitt.

The aspect which most alarmed Mac was the well spoken but disturbed young man is a a lodger with people, who notice his 'absences' coincide with the nights of the murders.

For Druitt was a lodger of sorts.

Being a resident teacher he did not pay for bed and board, true. Quite the reverse: his needs were taken care of.

Nevertheless, if you are not living in your own house, or with family then you are a lodger, of sorts.

Mac wanted to quash this aspect too, implying that the un-named Druitt did live with 'his own people' -- and therefore implies family .

'His own people' discreetly works in both directions; the Druitts were not in London, so they are in the clear, whilst the Valentine School is also unrecognisable, though nightly absences from there [I]may have gotten Montie sacked whilst alive: 'serious trouble'.

If Druitt is not a lodger, of some kind, how can be 'absent'; are you not just going out for the evening? It sounds like a prison!

I am still arguing that in dismissing the novel -- why, it's only fiction? -- Macnaghten allows us to glimpse his ultimate source for the 'facts' which led to a 'conclusion' and a 'belief' in this suspect's guilt: the Druitts, or a Druitt.

Mac's brevity, 'his own people', crunches several bits of information at once: the school who sacked him, the legal chambers who discovered him missing, the anxious brother searching for him, the unidentified friend who raised the alarm -- and the novel.

Lastly, there is the date of the Ripper's suicide:

'on or about ...'

You mean it might not be Nov 10th?

The early morning hours after his 'awful glut' in that little room.

Or ... not?

Another day then, or another night?

How long was he wandering a husk looking for a river. Plus that is quite a walk for a deranged, blood-covered maniac to the Thames -- at Chiswick!?

Does Mac mean it might have happened ... several days later?

Weeks even?

Adam Went

10-10-2010, 05:53 AM

Jonathan:

Just a quick response.
I try to be objective with everything, no matter what my personal opinion on it might happen to be - for instance, though I am what you could term a Klosowski-ite, I maintain an open mind to evidence of suspicion against other suspects. As I've said before though, a combination of facts, logic and my own research into some of the claims made by Macnaghten make me feel that there is simply no case at all against him, and what there is against him is circumstantial and built out of horribly bad memories and falsehoods.

I seem to recall you yourself stating on the Macnaghten thread that your thoughts had not been well received on Casebook, and while it's always good to see a new take on an old case and you obviously take a strong interest in it, I think it's unfortunate that one or two more gullible members of our community here have come to embrace at least some of the theories - this in turn has led to an individual bandwagon whereas it might normally be laid flat pretty quickly elsewhere. I can only say again that I don't claim to be a Druitt expert, i'm not, but I know what makes sense and what doesn't and I just can't get my head around what you've been theorising and give it any amount of credibility. But that's just my view and everybody else is of course entitled to their own views.

And now I have a question of my own, as stupid as it may seem, i'll ask just the same:
Any possibility that Druitt resigned from Mr. Valentine's as opposed to being dismissed?

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-10-2010, 06:13 AM

I can cope with the insults to me, but why not leave other people out of it.

Adam, could you be wrong about Druitt's innocence?

Adam Went

10-10-2010, 06:47 AM

Jonathan:

What I say certainly shouldn't be taken as an insult, i'm simply calling it as I see it.

Could I be wrong? Of course I could. I've said before that nothing is certain. However, I feel very strongly that Druitt is innocent of any involvement and that he is in fact the victim in all of this - some of the things that have been said about him and his family throughout the journey have been grotesquely unfair, not to mention false, and a lot worse than referring to somebody as "gullible".

I may ask you a few questions in the hope of getting discussion back on track:

1.) What evidence would you deem sufficient to exonerate Druitt once and for all from suspect candidacy?

2.) Do you have any thoughts on the mysterious Dandenong document and the alleged involvement of Lionel Druitt?

3.) Presuming just for a moment that Macnaghten's memorandum be taken at face value, how would you personally suppose that in the space of just six years, his information had become so wildly inaccurate?

4.) Presuming now that your theories on Macnaghten are correct, leaving aside Druitt for a moment, what implication, if any, would this have on the candidacy of his other two suspects, Kosminski and Ostrog?

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-10-2010, 09:20 AM

1] A reliable source which showed that Macnaghten was really writing about Tumblety all along, and that Druitt was thus a minor suspect either being ruthlessly exploited, or fumblingly misremembered.

2] If you mean Dan Farson's red herring, regarding a stolen, 'bombshell' document, I think that Howells and Skinner expertly laid that to rest, though it was obvious all along that it never existed in the form the former claimed.

3] Which version? Plus, neither was written 'six years' from the moment the information was received; one was three and the other may have been as long as seven.

4] Kosminski and Ostrog are, to Mac, nothing suspects, essentially window-dressing to deflect from the embarrassment that Druitt was discovered too late. They stand-in for the contemporaneous suspects: Pizer and Tumblety.

Yet, Aaron Kosminski forever remains a major suspect because he was nominated by both Anderson and Swanson: the head of CID and the operational head of the case in 1888.

Perhaps he was the fiend after all?

How Brown

10-10-2010, 09:57 AM

Adam,JH...

Not sure if this has any bearing or relevance with this particular discussion, but look at post # 87 on this thread.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=117128&posted=1#post117128

Could it be something entirely new or could it be a reference to the mid-February Farquharson-related issue ?

Adam Went

10-10-2010, 05:00 PM

Jonathan:

1.) I've mentioned before that it's interesting and slightly suspicious that Macnaghten's three suspects as they are were all either dead or locked up at the time the memorandum was written (either version). So if it was Tumblety he was really referring to, who was alive and a free man in the US at the time, there may be a reason that he had to be careful to keep the true name hidden for fear of potentially causing something which could eventually reach the ears of Tumblety. Tumblety of course left the country even before Druitt committed suicide, so that in itself is a plausible theory - it just doesn't make sense that Kosminski and Ostrog would have to have the same treatment as well, they certainly were not of the same class as even Druitt.

2.) Good, good.

3.) Well it could be either the draft or the official, I would describe both as "wildly inaccurate"....

4.) Well I certainly think Ostrog was put in there just to make up the numbers. Kosminski doesn't look like such a bad suspect at face value and he's probably rightly in the major group of suspects - i'd even say that there's more of a case against him than Druitt - but when one delves deeper into his story there's not a whole lot that strings his suspect candidacy together either.

It still just seems like Mac took the safe option when he named his suspects, almost like he consciously sat down and thought "who can I name that will be the least likely to backfire on me?".

How:

Interesting piece....really they are suggesting what nobody wanted to believe, that Jack could have been middle or even upper class. That seems to have sort of been the taboo subject of 1888, everybody had this pre-determined image of him belonging to the lowest class and probably sitting in some corner frothing at the mouth, when in fact the opposite was probably true. It's hard to say whether it's a reference or not though.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-10-2010, 11:16 PM

The 'West of England MP' story shows that Macnaghten almost certainly did have an accurate source on Druitt, yet the police chief began to fictionalise his prefered suspect, firstly in an internal report [seen by nobody], then in a version seen by two writers [the un-named Ripper, seen by everyody], and then much less so, yet still somewhat, in his own memoir.

Either because he was forgetful, or it was deliebrate. The overarching point is that, originally, in 1891, Mac did have an accurate source on 'that remarkable man' in whom a bestial madness took 'protean forms'.

Adam Went

10-11-2010, 06:32 AM

Half the trouble is that some of these police officers who later commented on the case mentioned that they had evidence or that they knew who the killer was, etc, but they were very mysterious about it and weren't specific - if Anderson had named his witness or suspect at the Seaside Home, if Macnaghten had named his sources, and so on, things might take a completely different path.

So do we believe the stories of these officers and accept that they were sworn not to reveal the real truth, ever? Or do we put it down to wishful thinking and trying to satisfy themselves that they really did know who the killer was? I tend to agree with the latter, while genuinely hoping that the former was not the truth.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-11-2010, 07:25 AM

In my opinion, Sir Robert Anderson sincerely misremembered the events of 1888 to 1891, redacting those involving Kosiminski's incarceration, Sadler's arrest, and his non-identification by Lawende, back into 1888/9 [a variation on the sublime Evans-Rumbelow theory]; the Sailor's Home becoming the Seaside Home, and so on.

Of course Anderson called this a 'definitely ascertained fact'; he did this with everything, and sometimes was right and sometimes was wrong -- but never in his own mind, in his own telling.

I think that Anderson passed on this mismash to Swanson, in about 1910, who jotted it down, but did not a for a moment agree with it. For example, he never offered any public support for this version of events, nor confided in his family that he knew the Ripper's identity.

J G Littlechild was, in 1913, privately exposing the real middle-aged doctor who was pursued by policein 1888, but did not know know if this was the Fiend. He thought Tumblety a 'very likely' candidate to be Jack, but did not claim to have a certainty [though Littlechild heavily implies that Dr T was never subsequently cleared by finding better evidence, albeit posthumous, against somebody else, eg. 'Dr D'].

Abberline was making a guess, or at the most presenting a very circumstantial theory about Chapman, and to his credit never claimed prior knowledge of this convicted murderer.

To me that takes care of them.

Macnaghten, on the other hand, went to great lengths to get his too-late suspect into the public arena, with the true identity fudged, and the critical aspect of the entire mystery -- being too-late about Druitt -- buried in the 'substantial truth in fictitious form' with which he briefed his literary cronies.

It was a revelation, for me, that Aberconway is much more likelt to have been written second, specifically for Griffiths and Sims -- a Tory and a Liberal. Some have argued that they are different only difference in that the unofficial 'draft' contains more personal observations by Mac, and the official version does not.

But, I urge anybody to look more closely and you will see that the differences are much greater than just dropping personal comments.

I believe it is the official version which, in effect, is the 'draft' and the Aberconway version which is the final, definitive copy -- for propaganda purposes -- to be superseded in 1914 by the memoir chapter, the unofficial third version, but the first version with his name on it, for the public, in Mac's liberated retirement.

In 'Laying the Ghost ...' the un-named Druitt is not described as a medical man and he admits that he was not a prime suspect, about whom 'facts' and a 'conclusion' could be formed, but only until 'some years after' he topped himself.

Therefore, in my opinion the various senior police officers are not in equipoise about the Ripper mystery.

Macnaghten, rightly or wrongly, is light years ahead of the rest, just in terms of the sheer amount of bobbing and weaving he did about 'Jack', entirely behind the scenes until 1913.

The MP provides the bridging source between the sympathetic Druitt obits, and the official version of Mac's Report, eg. the 'private information', decisively upending the view that this police chief must have had no source with accurate information, even of the most basic kind, about Montie.

Adam Went

10-11-2010, 08:11 AM

Jonathan:

Some reasonable points there. I think it's fairly certain that the major police officers did not really have a uniform opinion on who the killer was, in later years they all had time to mull over it, perhaps be influenced by other factors and come to some sort of conclusion for themselves - so that "Person A was definitely the killer" really means "I've decided in my own mind that Person A was definitely the killer."

Even Abberline, who had publicly stated his suspicions of Chapman, stated also that Scotland Yard knew no more than it did at the time of the murders.

As late as the 1930's, you had officers like Walter Dew and Arthur Neil writing their memoirs and mentioning suspects - if there was no concensus among the officers 50 years later, then there was never going to be.

So then you have to go back to 1888. Who was in the best position to provide answers to the case? I would say Abberline. That's with or without his suspicion of Chapman. Macnaghten was an important figure and as such his opinions are going to be of interest, but the fact that he wasn't involved with the case in 1888 is still a red light for me. Officers did, and do, get influenced by outside factors.

Did anybody in the force suspect Druitt prior to his suicide? I've said it before and i'll say it again, I believe that if Druitt had not commited suicide, or at least had not done so for several years afterwards, his name may never have even been mentioned in relation to the case. It's the timing of it which raises eyebrows and then drags back to what he was up to during Autumn 1888.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-11-2010, 09:36 AM

No, Adam, this line of argument is very weak and very sterile.

1. Why was there not a police consensus about a single suspect?

The other police, with the possible exception of Anderson -- who never even alludes to Druitt -- had no knowledge of Druitt.

Why would they?

How could they?

All information about Druitt went straight to Macnaghten from the MP, and I think from the family too. Wary of libel, and since there was obviously nobody to charge, he kept it to himself, or he and Anderson kept it very close to their chests, because the implications were excruciating.

Until, in public, Anderson egocentrically began referring to a Jewish suspect Macnaghten had dismissed, so Mac, in 1898, countered with a daring propaganda offensive about the real best suspect.

2. Druitt was chosen only because his death was convenient.

That old, stale chestnut.

Druitt's death was very inconvenient because it meant the police had nearly railroaded an innocent sailor when the fiend had been deceased for years.

A convenient suicide would have been after the Coles murder, not Kelly!

That is why Macnaghten strains to give the impression, in both versions of his Report, that Druitt was somehow already known, or soon after known, to Scotland Yard and thus was efficiently investigated as a possible suspect partly -- though not wholly -- due to his suicide coinciding with the cessation of the murders.

But Mac is cagily putting the cart before the horse, deliberately, as he admitted in his memoirs.

Cris Malone

10-11-2010, 02:02 PM

2. Druitt was chosen only because his death was convenient.

That old, stale chestnut.

Druitt's death was very inconvenient because it meant the police had nearly railroaded an innocent sailor when the fiend had been deceased for years.

A convenient suicide would have been after the Coles murder, not Kelly!

If one can postulate that Macnaghten came to know who Jack the Ripper was from an unverified source; that he could be so bold as to mention Druitt's name in an official document but explain his errors in such and other writings on this 'suspect' as some coy subterfuge designed to protect a family of equal social status and/or his department from liability and/or embarassment; that the 'fiend' was already dead when such knowledge was aqquired... then it should be understood that there is another rational ( and in my mind more plausable) explaination to the entire post murders episodes with the various police officials.

I would not subscribe to the notion that 'Montie's' death was a matter of convenience; rather I would take Mac's impression (and those of Anderson and even Abberline as well in his earlier prognostications) of the Kelly murder as being the profound factor in theorizing on suspects. From Mac's own words we see his 'logic'... that the murders increased in intensity due to a deteriorating mental capacity of a 'sexually insane' perpetrator. The sight of the Kelly murder scene and the 'awful glut' that murderer entertained convinced these officials that JTR was on his last leg and the murders stopped for that reason.

Anderson came to the belief that the murderer was 'caged in an asylum'. Macnaghten found Druitt - a suicide by a person with a 'sexual mania' - reinforced by proported information from another source. Not only does all of this leave loose ends, but are clouded in vagueness and innacuracies that are inexplicable without complex theories that attempt to rationalize irrational conclusions into an intricate web of guessing that what went on in the minds of these men were for practical and substainable reasons.

The fact, alone, that Mac was incorrect on the time of Druitt's death is inexplicable as there would be no logical reason to do so on purpose - any enterprising journalist could have checked suicide inquest records of that period... let alone the ability of the police to also do the same - except that to admit otherwise would leave this 'tormented soul' racked with guilt over what he had done to roam the streets for another 3 weeks! Macnaghten probably did believe that Druitt's suicide was immediately after the last and most horrendous murder; thus reinforcing his belief in Montie's candidacy. All one has to do is take Sir Melville's writings at face value to understand his reasoning... however misguided and mistaken they may now appear to be.

Ask yourself this my dear readers; if Melville Macnaghten knew that Montague Druitt killed himself 3 weeks after the 'glut in Miller's Court', then, what was the reasoning behind the theory that the murderer's brain 'gave way' after the carnage?... and if he didn't, what reason would we have to believe that his other errors weren't blatant mistakes as well?

Subsequent cases of the past 122 years and expanded knowledge of the people who commit such acts have shed light on the mistaken conclusions of these officials. They knew nothing about psychopaths or the fact that they can maintain a facade of normalcy while perpetrating the most heinous crimes; that they do stop, for various reasons and that suicide is the least likely because they are narcissistic in the extreme.

This was their folly; which had already manifested itself after the Chapman murder with classic lunatics such as Isenschimd, Puckridge and Ludwig; who fit a psychological stereotype that we know was misguided; and was only temporarily thwarted because the murders continued. With the belief that the murders had concluded with Kelly, this same notion manifested itself again - with newer suspects - reinforced by Bond's profile of 'satyriasis' (Krafft-Ebing); a profile that may have been accurate but misunderstood by the psychologically untrained senior police officials who inserted their own preconceived notions of total mental collapse in the killer. After all, who could possibly function after perpetrating such carnage as was witnessed in Miller's Court? Well, we could ask Albert Fish, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and a host of others that question now, couldn't we?... and we could ask the Green River Killer and others as well why they stopped for extended periods?

The benifit of hindsight and historical study of similar cases can teach us lessons... if we are willing to learn them. This is no indictment of the people involved. The men who hunted Jack the Ripper had no such benifit. They were sailing in uncharted waters and did the best they could. Even now it would be an enormous task that still sometimes goes unrewarded.

In my mind, if we are to really 'Lay the Ghost of Jack the Ripper' to rest, we would do well to come to that basic understanding and accept it. I agree with Stewart Evans that this most famous mystery will probably never be solved, but that in no way diminishes its profound significance in the annals of history or the impact that it has had on mankind's journey into the modern world.

Adam Went

10-11-2010, 06:51 PM

Jonathan:

I would disagree that they had no knowledge of Druitt at all, I would have thought they would have heard about his suicide, even if it was only from press reports, and this may even have led to whispers about the possibility of his being the killer - if that's the case, for them, it ultimately came to nothing.

According to The Ripper Legacy, Macnaghten may have got his "private information" from his friend James Monro - Monro had taken up a post at the Home Office for the duration of the Ripper murders, and yet the theory that has been expounded on the forums of late is that Macnaghten was forced to deliberately try and deceive....who? The Home Office! Well, the Home Secretary at least. So he was trying to deceive the very same group of people from where his information had first came? That's of course presuming that there's truth in what the book has to say, but if it is so or even partly so, it becomes a very strange, tangled web....

I still also cannot buy into the libel argument. If one of Druitt's own family had told Macnaghten that he thought he was the killer, then surely there would be no case for libel? After all, he wasn't just making it up....
I can only state again that it's a curious coincidence that all three of Macnaghten's suspects were either dead or locked up by the 1890's.

Cris:

A very good post, excellent stuff.

Cheers,
Adam.

Scott Nelson

10-11-2010, 07:10 PM

Macnaghten probably got his information about Druitt from Superintendent James Butcher in 1891-2.

How Brown

10-11-2010, 07:36 PM

Scott:

Isn't this the same Butcher who had a row with Macnaghten ?:bump2:

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-11-2010, 07:42 PM

To Cris

A thoughtful and interesting post.

Let me explain why it cuts no ice with me.

You write that the police did not understand how a serial killer could appear normal after commiting such terrible crimes.

Macnaghten's memoirs deal with exactly this narcissistic concept:

In the 'Laying the Ghost ...' chapter Mac writes that the un-named Druitt was a 'Simon Pure', that is he appreared to be a virtuous whilst really being a hyporcite. He writes that he was a 'sexual manaic, but such madness takes protean forms ...' meaning that this madman could deploy many faces, which is why 'his own people' did not recognise him as the fiend, at least not immediately. On p. 101 Mac writes: 'As you walk the London streets you may, and do, not infrequently jostle against a potential murderer of the so-called Jack the Ripper type.'

You ask that Mac's writings be taken at face value; as in do not over-complicate things by looking for hidden agendas.

The reason this is a completely ahistorical way of examining these sources is is that it assumes that the three versions of his writings on Druitt -- the official version, the unofficial version, and the memoir -- are all essentially the same.

They are not the same.

It's a fact. It is the role of an historian to try and work out the best explanation as to why.

Also, to not see that they are so different is actually to miss how rich they are in their variety.

In the Report(s) Druitt is a both a minor suspect and the suspect, he is both definitely a doctor and maybe not a doctor, he was believed by Macnaghten to be the fiend but only suspected by the family, or he was believed by the family and barely suspected at all by the police, his body was pulled from the Thames on Dec 31st, or was it Dec 3rd?

Both versions heavily imply that Druitt was suspected whilst alive, or at the very least soon after his self-murder. All the primary sources show this to be untrue.

But let us say we skip the contradictory Mac Report(s) and just use the memoir.

Then we have a source, from 1914, which matches the MP source of 1891: the un-named Druitt was not being pursued by police until long after he had killed himself, his 'own people' are the key source, he may have killed himself the morning after the Kelly murder, but then again may not have [as his clothes would hardly be 'blood-stained' right after the Kelly murder and fished from a river -- and they were not].

If we throw in the North Country Vicar of 1899 -- which may not be about Druitt -- then we can see why the need to hang onto the 'awful glut' triggering the immediate Thames plunge had to happen the morning after. It quashed the idea that, unknown to police, the murderer had confessed to a priest. As Sims writes in 1899, there was no time.

That is the other problem with most of the recent, secondary sources on Macnaghten-the-fumbler.

They do not take into account Mac as the source for George Sims, which shows verifiable deceit on the part of Mac.

And if he can be shown to be a source who was prepared to be economical with the truth, in the way he helped disseminate his preferred suspect to the public, then all bets are off [I concede this might mean he is exploiting the dead Druitt too].

George Sims wrotes in 1902 that the un-named Druitt had been once, maybe twice, in a mental institution. This has to come from Macnaghten [who I think is moving across a detail about Druitt's mother, and that the brother was trying to frantically have Montie committed -- though for the first time]. In 1914, Macnaghten specifically denies that the un-named Druitt had ever been in a madhouse -- which is correct. He debunked an element of the story he had himself set up.

Take that at face value?

You still do not see that, according to primary sources, the police assumed the murderer was inactive, or infrequent, after Kelly but not dead and that the Coles killing was believed, though not monolithically, to be the Ripper's return.

It is finding Druitt which revised the Ripper murders, for Macnaghten, rather than Kelly's death date which determined Druitt's alleged guilt. The 'awful glut' did lead to his suicide, shortly after he had confessed. This suggested some kind of implosion due to guilt, or self-loathing?

This new paradigm, of the relatively brief 'autumn of terror', also swept from view the Sadler debacle of 1891, which was now relegated to a footnote, though bits and pieces of it can be discerned in Anderson's misremembering of these events reagrding Kosminski.

Inspector Reid, for example, never bought that Kelly was the final victim. He could not understand where this ludicrous idea had come from? As with most people from 1888 [eg. Littlechild] he had no idea that Grffiths' and Sims' Supergrass was the Assistant Commisioner himself, though Sims, in 1903, makes direct reference to the definitive 'Home Office Report' [acually all that dept. of state knew about this tale was what they read in Sims] which we know never literally existed.

I think there is a failure of historical imagination to conceive what it must have been like to feel that you know the Ripper's identity but you also know it is all too late, and that the tabloids are throwing up the wrong suspects, and that a respectable family would sue, and that the Tories could be exposed to a Liberal backlash!

That you would have to have the cunning of Odysseus to navigate between the threatening pincers of Scylla the monster and the whirlpool Charybdis, to reach the safe shore of a 'solution' which satisfies everybody.

The 'Drowned Doctor' mythos did exactly this. Everybody was a winner: the Tories, the Druitts, the Yard, Sims, et al.

The gradual exposure of that myth, decades and decades later, also has, inadvertently, denied Macnaghten his place in history as the police officer who identified the fiend.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-11-2010, 08:57 PM

To Adam

It never ceases to amaze me the way Macnaghten's memoir is not taken at 'face value' about the fiend's identity not being known until 'some years after', perfectly matching the 1888 to 1891 primary sources, specifically the 1891 MP story.

Once Macnaghten, in his Report(s) and in his briefings to literary cronies, realeased that Genie, of Druitt as a contemporaneous suspect, it was impossible to put him back in the bottle -- even by Macnaghten himself in 'Days of My Years'.

Yes, Monro might have been the source for the 'private information' about Druitt, but it is far more likely to have been the MP, and fellow gentleman, and fellow Etonian, and fellow Tory, and near neighbour of the Druitts: Henry Farquarson. That is what we have, little as it is, whilst on Monro nothing but a couple of suggestive, yet minor connections.

I see you shy away from the MP option, Adam, never mentioning it, as if you have never een read it.

You should.

It refers fearfully to the libel laws, and some newspapers which repeated this story, in 1891, were so worried about its slanderous implications they dropped the 'son of a surgeon' detail.

The un-named Druittt would never again be correctly referred to as a surgeon's son, rather than a doctor himself, until 1959 -- and still not by name! [until 1965]

William Druitt could easily have briefed Macnaghten on the promise that the story never come out, and that if it did he would deny it under oath in the mother of all libel suits.

Or, Macnaghten was briefed by a single, candid Druitt whilst others vowed to sue.

Or, Macnaghten acted out a sense of conflicting loyalities; to protect an anguished family whom he had sincerely promised would never be identified, and his belobved Yard; who should receive some sort of credit for identifiying the fiend -- albeit posthumously.

Thus 'Said to be a Doctor', Mac knowing the name would not be read out, is the compromise result in a document never actually sent.

From 1899 to 1907, Macnaghten would spin Druitt safely away from the facts towards fiction -- towards a more Tumbletyesque figure -- and then try and 'cut the knot', again, with his memoir: be more accurate, but also make the Ripper safely unrecoverable.

This site shows how incredibly successful he was ...

We will never know this 'middle' of the story, the toing and froing of 1891, as important I think as the murders themselves.

Anderson, in 1910, refuses to identify his madman of choice for the same reason: the threat of a libel action. This time potentially by poor, Polish, East End Jews who knowingly harboured the fiend.

They might sue? In 1910??

Then how much easier for a 'respectable' family which includes lawyers?

But psychologically, Adam, I understand why people act as if the Farquharson breakthrough of 2008 does not exist.

Because it might be game over?

Adam Went

10-12-2010, 07:42 AM

Jonathan:

To be honest, as interesting as all of this discussion is, I think we're getting a little bit hung up on Macnaghten and the who's and what's and when's of his beliefs, when in fact the more important question should be, how do his thoughts translate into forming a solid case for suspecting Druitt of being the killer? How do Druitt researchers sort the wheat from the chaff?

It's not that I shy away from the MP story, it's because now as ever so many different names have been mentioned for where this information could have come from, that the MP theory is really just 'another' one.

The Druitt family was definitely a large one and most of them had followed academic paths. I think it's something of an indictment on the case against Druitt that out of all the family members, especially the ones in the UK, who could have been named as the source for the info, Lionel Druitt has previously been among the prime candidates - despite the fact that he was a cousin rather than a sibling, who didn't necessarily know Montague that well, and who, in any case, was living in Australia and had been for more than two years prior to the murders! It really does reek of clutching at straws.

There's some suggestion that Druitt didn't really have that many close associates - so who out of them would have been in a position to comment on something using facts rather than just hearsay? Who was close enough to him to be able to give an account of his activities in the autumn of 1888? Again, even if there is any semblance of truth in it (which I still doubt), Druitt's family were far from being the only ones who suspected one of their own.

Who knows, it might even have been one of his cricket team-mates!

As for the possibility of sueing as late as 1910, why not? At that stage, Kosminski was still alive (so was Lawende, for that matter), as opposed to Druitt who was long dead. Dead men can't defend themselves, which for me makes this contemporary suspicion against him even worse....

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-12-2010, 09:01 AM

Game Over, Adam

Adam Went

10-12-2010, 07:45 PM

You mean you've nothing to respond with, Jonathan?

(By the way, the suggestion that it was a "friend" rather than a family member is an interesting one....in 1898, Major Arthur Griffiths said it was a "friend".....maybe it was somebody who knew about poor Monty's situation and decided to try and cash in on the reward money....)

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-12-2010, 09:04 PM

No, I mean that your constant shying away from what I argue shows that you fear its Game Over.

Which is isn't! How could it be?

What you do not understand is that history is a set of provisional and competing arguments.

Whereas, you 'know' that Druitt is innocent; you have the 'faith'.

But, for any other, non-doctrinaire readers:

Major Griffiths in his 1898 'Mysteries of Police and Crime' is changing the suspicious Druitt 'family', of the Aberconway Version, somewhat awkwardly, into 'friends' of the mad medico [but how would they know their 'pal' is missing? Surely they don't live with him?].

I argue that Griffiths does this for reasons of legal discretion; to further make the fiend's identity libel-proof -- a process already underway in Mac's official version ['said to be a doctor'] and now enhanced ['a doctor of about 41 years of age ...'] and soon to reach its apotheosis with Sims' writings: the Blackheath Jekyll and the Whitechapel Hyde.

The dead cannot be libelled, no, but the living sure can.

The Druitts, or a Druitt, could have sued on the basis that they were being accused of having knowingly harboured the murderer. Whether a court would have awarded in their favour is quite another matter.

That is why the 'West of England MP' story was so dangerous for the media -- as the titbit itself acknowledges.

It is far less likely that a poor, Jewish family, on their own, could sue an established publishing house, but their cause might have been taken up by similarly affronted patrons who could have pooled their resources.

Lionel Druitt is not the subject of any rumours, or even any knowledge about Montie being the fiend, not in primary sources -- except that he is a member of the family.

Yes, there are secondary sources, starting with Dan Farson, which speculated about what Lionel might have known, or not known, and so on, but that was all very thin, in a very thin book.

The primary and early secondary sources are what counts here, meagre and semi-fictionalised as they are.

The fellow bachelor/solicitor brother, William Druitt, is much more likely to be the family member who 'suspected', or 'believed', as we can see how his frantic pursuit between the legal chambers and the school, to try and find his missing sibling, evolves into Griffiths/Sims' 'friends': who were trying to have the 'doctor' recommitted to an asylum, as they suspected his guilt, and get in touch with the police -- who, incredibly, already know that this real life Henry Jekyll was the Ripper and were preparing to arrest him!

Behind that Macnaghten-driven 'shilling shocker', about a police near-triumph, is the much more embarrassing reality, for everybody.

In early 1891, the Druitts' terrible secret leaked in West Dorset and was picked up by the local, loose-lipped MP, briefly generating the press scoop -- which will have no sequel -- then in all probability Macnaghten meet privatelky with Farquharson [two self-styled, Etonian sleuths] and then, I think, he met privately with William Druitt. And, I think he assured the brother that Montie's identity would never come out, at least whilst it mattered.

And it didn't.

Yet, there is a reference in the flawed primary source about the Druitt inquest to a 'friend' alerting William that his brother was missing from his city office.

We do not know who this was, and probably never will.

It may simply have been an acquaintance/colleague understandably alerting William to the obvious.

On the other hand, the North Country Vicar story of 1899 -- if it is about Druitt? -- provides a working theory: that the 'friend' was a man of the cloth to whom Druitt may have confessed in the wake of the Kelly atrocity.

Because for some extraordinary reason, the Druitts, or a Druitt, became convinced that Montie was Jack the Ripper.

The idea of a verbal confession to a cleric, plus the finding of 'blood-stained clothes', would certainly be enough to convince a family member, rightly or wrongly.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 01:32 AM

An Andendum:

That Macnaghten met with the Druitt family, or at least William -- probably in 1891 -- is based on what the former must have told his crony, Sims, as the latter uses material not in the 'Aberconway' Version -- which he was falsely told was a copy of a 'Home Office Report'.

My point is that Macnaghten is passing on material which was not in PC Moulson's Report. It generically matches the inquest article, the details thinly fictionalised to make Druitt unrecoverable.

In other words, this glimpse of the frantic family -- and we know that 'friends' really means family -- is not in the Official Version or the Aberconway Version either, and thus show that Macnaghten had at the very least read the newspaper reports on Druitt's suicide, the ones which show that he was a barrister and teacher, and have no reference to anybody thinking he was the fiend [Farquharson would have told him that Montie was a barrister, and surgeon's son, anyhow].

The highlights are mine:

Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette
United Kingdom
Saturday, 5 January 1889

'Witness [Willim Druitt] heard from a friend on the 11th of December that deceased had not been heard of at his chambers for more than a week. Witness then went to London to make inquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on the 30th of December.

Within fifteeen years this morphs into:

'A little more than a month later the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames. The body had been in the water about a month.'

George Sims as 'Dagonet' in The Referee, April 5th 1903

'After the maniacal murder in Miller's-court the doctor disappeared from the place in which he had been living, and his disappearance caused inquiries to be made concerning him by his friends who had, there is reason to believe, their own suspicions about him, and these inquiries were made through the proper authorities.

George Sims, Lloyds Weekly, Sept 22nd 1907

SirRobertAnderson

10-13-2010, 02:06 AM

Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette
United Kingdom
Saturday, 5 January 1889

'Witness [Willim Druitt] heard from a friend on the 11th of December that deceased had not been heard of at his chambers for more than a week. Witness then went to London to make inquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on the 30th of December.

Certainly makes it sounds as if Druitt was not dismissed for absence, but went AWOL after dismissal.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 02:33 AM

Good point, except for the date. Which could be wrong, of course.

The 'serious trouble' then being absences from the school on the nights of the murders, connecting the source to the Ripper mystery of the sources from 1891, 1894, 1898, and 1907.

What about my point about Sims having information, via Mac, that had to come originally from the Druitt obits?

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 06:21 AM

To Sir Bob,

Let me be clear on how important I claim this to be:

Paul Begg, argued in 'JTR --The Facts', brilliantly, that the ill-informed Macnaghten seemed to be relying on PC Moulson's Report [which would have mentioned the train ticket from Blackheath] and a newspaper article, prior to the inquest, which implied, wrongly, that the drowned man lived with family.

Put those bits and pieces together and you have the Aberconway Version, plus Macnaghten's mistaken assertion that Druitt was a doctor.

Was he perhaps confusing the drowned Druitt with the third, missing medical student?

It's a neat, provisional theory for sure.

The 2008 identification of the 'West of England MP' renders it much less likely, as Macnaghten probably did have an accurate source in Farquharson.

But something else I am trying to point out here.

Begg quotes from George Sims, but does not go into any depth about his various additions to the 'Drowned Doctor' profile.

This is a fatal omission, in my opinion.

Sims in 1903, and 1907 -- his biggest piece on the mystery in which he also seems to be writing about Tumblety in a jumbled, deflective way -- writes about the 'friends' being frantic trying to find their doctor chum. That he has vanished, and the next time they know of his whereabouts he is a rotting corpse being fished out of the Thames.

Those details, about the brother's investigation, are not in the glimpse we get of PC Moulson's Report.

We can actually follow, in the surviving sources, the evolution of the brother turning into 'friends', between the Druitt obit. about the inquest to Sims nearly twenty years later.

This means we now have a through-line between the obit and Sims, with Mac as the inevitable bridge.

Macnaghten had seen the obit, the piece about the inquest -- if not actually having spoken to the brother in person -- to know this to pass it onto Sims, many years later. Or, he learned it from the MP, who obviously also would have told him that Montie, a surgeon's son, was a barrister.

If Mac saw the piece about the inquest, then he once knew that Druitt was a teacher and a barrister, even without the MP, without speaking to anybody -- by just reading a newspaper.

.

Adam Went

10-13-2010, 07:11 AM

Jonathan:

The point I was trying to get at is that it's all well and good to have these theories about Macnaghten and his memoirs, but in order for it to work against Druitt, it's got to come back to him somehow. It's almost like the case against him is all huff and no puff.

As for Major Griffiths' work, of course they would have known sooner or later that he was missing....even if it did take some time. To shroud the identity in mystery is one thing - for Druitt to go from being a 31 year old teacher who's family had suspicion of him, to being a 41 year old doctor who's friends were suspicious of him - that's a big jump in anybody's language.

As for Druitt's job, I just don't believe he was dismissed because of suspicion of involvement in the murders. In fact, I have doubts over whether it was a dismissal or actually a resignation. NO employer sacks somebody who has worked for them for 7 years over suspicion of being a serial killer and still gives them cheques to go on with.....that sounds to me like more of a reward upon announcing his departure.

You say that the Druitt's could have been done for harbouring a fugitive (unlikely enough in itself since Monty had his own chambers), but then if Mr. Valentine had been aware of his employee's night time activities in the East End and had sacked him rather than reported him, surely that then puts him in exactly the same boat?!

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 08:45 AM

Adam,

No offence, but you are not actually following any of this -- are you?

You keep writing that I have argued this, and that, when I haven't; you just have a series of half-baked notions.

You don't read what I write, or the sources I write about, do you?

Maybe you should choose a different mystery?

I am not for a moment suggesting that Druitt was sacked because he was ... Jack the Ripper??

Are you serious, or this is a bit of dry Aussie wit?

I hope so.

I am subscribing to an old theory that Druitt was sacked because he was supposed to be minding the boys, at night as the resident master, and he was found away. That alone could get him sacked.

The family, not Valentine, would have realised the absences coincided with the Whitechapel murders -- cricket in the morning be damned.

But they would only made this connection because of some other evidence.

You keep saying what is it which made them 'believe'?

From the scraps we have it could be combination of three things: bloody clothes from the Kelly murder; a confession to a cleric; and the nights absent from the school, rightly or wrongly.

You fail to grasp that Griffiths and Sims were claiming that the 'friends', eg. family, had strong suspicions. Why did it take them so long -- why five murders -- to finally alert the police [which actually never happened until two years after his suicide anyhow?]

That's potentially libellous right there, the family not doing enough, except that Griffiths had altered 'family' into 'friends' and Sims kept it that way: libel-proofing the Fiend.

The biggest aspect you miss -- of course -- is that Sims has a detail, in the 1900's, which broadly matches the 1888 Druitt article about the inquest: that the family was searching for Montie at the place where he lived.

Where did that come from?

It is not in the Mac Report(s).

I need to hear from people who understand what I am arguing and to debate it with me, to explain why I am perhaps wrong, you know, maybe forgetting something, or over-rating something?

SirRobertAnderson

10-13-2010, 10:43 AM

Jonathan : Please don't start insulting Adam in turn. Let's keep it to a debate on ideas alone.

Cris Malone

10-13-2010, 01:40 PM

Just a quick mention... then I have to go back to doing what keeps my lights on.

Insults aside, I find the whole discussion on Macnaghten/Druitt to be quite interesting in many aspects...strict interpretation of the facts and/or evidence and 'Historical imagination'... as Jonathan so eloquently called it. The two views have been at odds in this case more than any other because of its high proflie and the fact that it is a mystery; as well as an historical event.

So, there are many theories to connect the disconnected threads of facts together. Their merit can only be judged by the challenges they face. If the author of such a theory feels that a challenge is based on a misinterpretation of that theory, then an effort to remedy that misconception in a concise, compartmentalzed manner would be prudent and keep the debate on course and alleviate misconceptions that would do little to contribute to the discussion; and possibly gain acceptance - in whole or part - to the theory in question.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 04:46 PM

Defending yourself is a basic right, and I stand by everything I wrote.

Now, is the story element in Sims, about the friends [family] searching for the missing Ripper, evidence that Macnaghten must have originally known more than PC Moulson's Report about the water-logged Druitt?

Scott Nelson

10-13-2010, 05:13 PM

I find the whole discussion on Macnaghten/Druitt to be quite interesting in many aspects...

No it hasn't. It's been much ado about nothing.

How Brown

10-13-2010, 05:31 PM

Scott:

Then why not try adding something interesting to the thread,hmmmmm ?

Tracy Ianson

10-13-2010, 06:04 PM

Ok here goes :pray:

I have been following the few threads on Druitt over the last few weeks with growing interest.. two completely different views from the exact same evidence...human nature, you can't beat it!!

From what I have/am learning I have to say I agree with Adam, if Monty had committed suicide a month earlier or a few month later, I don't think any of this would be relevant.

Could he not just have been an overworked barrister, teacher, cricketer, who was struggling to make any meaning from his life?

We know there was a tendency of suicides in his family, his grandmother, mother and sister are all purported to have committed suicide...sometimes a families 'legacy' weighs on you, be it good or bad.

Also I have to say that Mac's quote "I have always had strong opinions regarding him and the more I think the matter over, the stronger these pinions become - sounds to me more like he is convincing himself, not he is convinced from the outset.
The truth however, will never be known, and did at one time lie at the bottom of Thames, if my conjections be correct -conjections = guess.

Also from modern day experience we know it is very rare for a serial killer to commit suicide in this way, it is normally when the Police are trying to apprehend them or when they are in jail.

One thing that I am wondering is the fact that he had 4 stones in his pockets, wouldn't self preservation mean that you would try to take them out???
(I am not suggesting he was murdered by someone else, maybe he just took a little something to help him on his way?)

Tj

Cris Malone

10-13-2010, 06:25 PM

Macnaghten's report and the other ledgers by him and others pertaining to it in the aftermath of the WM are important because it is the singular document written in contemporaneous times, in an official capacity, to detail a police view on suspects. I have an opinion on it that differs from Jonathan's in many respects, but because I think he has presented it rationally, with a connective structure that is at least plausable ( unlike many theories I have come across) it deserves serious consideration and constructive criticism.

There are many topics discussed from time that in my mind are a 'fool's errand'... This is not one of them.

My opnion on suspect and agenda based Ripperology is well known, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge a legitimate effort by an individual who explains the reasoning behind his theory, rather than the 'throw something out there to see if it sticks' procedure that has promulgated many others in the study of this case.

Sorry if I stepped on your post, Tracy. I had just noticed it after writing mine... Let's go back and consider your thoughts and carry on with this discussion in a manner that warrent's our supposed intellect and proper behavioural protocal.

P.S.- Just read your post, Tracy... good thoughts.

Tracy Ianson

10-13-2010, 06:34 PM

Hi Chris

Sorry if I stepped on your post, Tracy. I had just noticed it after writing mine... Let's go back and consider your thoughts and carry on with this discussion in a manner that warrent's our supposed intellect and proper behavioural protocal.

No need to apologise at all, I always find your posts interesting and worth the read.

Tj

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 06:53 PM

To Tracy

Yes, that could be it; a mad act by a mad person, from a mad family.

It is just that this would all have been known at the time, and yet the family, or a family member, 'believed', it was an MP's 'doctrine', and a police chief claimed to have made a 'conclusion' based on 'certain facts'. They were all members of the same class, race and creed, yet they were convinced that one of their own -- literally in the family's case -- had been Jack.

The words by Macnaghten, you quote, have to be put in context. It was a Report witten solely to show two writers, one a conseravtive and the other a liberal. It is awkwardly phrased, but it does give the impression that Macnaghten had to mull it all over to come to his 'conjections' (sic).

But, arguably, it had to be written this way in order to both convince the writers that Scotland Yard knew the probable indentity of the fiend [and they were convined] and yet also not to tip the scale over so that they would then ask: why did the police not arrest this suspect?

Macnaghten is careful not to reveal to them the biggest secret of the Ripper mystery and what he subsequently admitted in his memoir -- the suspect was unknown and long dead. That memoir also shows that Macnaghten's certainty matches the Tory MP from 1891, the probable source of the 'private information'.

A serial killer will kill himself if the jig is up, eg. 'Jack the Stripper' in the mid-1960's in Britain.

Since the police were not aware of Druitt, why would the jig be up?

The 1899 North Country Vicar story provides an explanation, though it has to be said, straight off, it cannot be proven to be about Druitt and nor does it claim the Ripper killed himself. Nevertheless, it does provide an explanation for Montie's sucide; he had confessed to an Anglican cleric [eg. not a Catholic confession with the priest bound to stay silent] and I think, at the very least, feared inevitably being put in an asylum: 'Since Friday I have feared going like Mother ...'

I ask again:

George Sims' detail, about the doctor's pals frantically trying to find him, is not in PC Moulson's Report.

This shows that Macnaghten, Sims' source, must have been aware of the original inquest report, and not just PC Moulson's record of the retrieval of the body - that he knew about William Druitt's frantic efforts to find his missing brother.

Therefore, Mac must have once correctly known that Druitt was a barrister, that he lived at a school at which he got in to 'serious trouble', and that he did not drown himself the night of the Kelly murder?

Cris Malone

10-13-2010, 08:03 PM

George Sims' detail, about the doctor's pals frantically trying to find him, is not in PC Moulson's Report.

This shows that Macnaghten, Sims' source, must have been aware of the original inquest report, and not just PC Moulson's record of the retrieval of the body - that he knew about William Druitt's frantic efforts to find his missing brother.

Therefore, Mac must have once correctly known that Druitt was a barrister, that he lived at a school at which he got in to 'serious trouble', and that he did not drown himself the night of the Kelly murder?

Tracy, I knew that Jonathan would provide you with a thoughtful and provocative answer.

Jonathan... question.

When do you believe that Macnaghten became aware of Druitt's actual time of death?

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-13-2010, 08:39 PM

The Sims' point I think shows that Macnaghten had access to the original inquest records, and therefore knew basic information about Druitt including that he killed himself three weeks after the Kelly murder.

I believe Macnaghten learned all this in Feb or March 1891; out of the ashes of the Sadler debacle came a solution.

He met with the Tory MP, and perhaps the brother too. Or the MP, and then only read about it in official files and newspaper records.

The MP story has the mistake of the surgeon's son killing himself on the night of the last murder -- undoubtedly the origin of this element of the mytbos. But the story also refers to 'Blood-stained clothes' not drowning. tjerefore seprate bits of information are being crunched together. The brother may have found bloody garments from the night fo the final murder, but we know that the corpse was found water-logged and not bloody. Of course not, as he killed himself three weeks after Kelly.

I think that Mac adopted this error because it was useful to him:

1. It was already out there, albeit briefly.
2. It deflected away, by accident, from the real Druitt.
3. It quashed the Vicar's story -- no time for a confession.
4. It helped create a 'shilling shocker' for Sims.

Cris Malone

10-13-2010, 11:17 PM

I agree that it was useful to him. He had a theory that the killer's mind gave way after the Kelly murder... as did Anderson to a lesser extent and Abberline ( who believed that the killer had satisfied his needs). The problem is that if he did know the truth, it would make his theory invalid; as we know that Montie's brain didn't give way and he seemed to function quite normally until the last day or two of his life.

In his Aberconway version he states that Druitt was missing immediately after the Kelly murder; and in his autobiograpy, he still clings to the suicide sometime around the 10th of November. He may have been coy, yet, he mentions the season tickets from Blackheath to London; which were also mentioned in some of the contemporaneous news reports of the suicide.

This is my next question (and forgive me if you have already addressed this)
Do you think that Sims was aware of the 'real story', but willingly participated in the deception; or Macnaghten fed him what he wanted him to know? The reason for asking this is that if it was the former it goes against the grain of what a journalist, such as Sims, would do. He doen't appear to be the type that would accept 'certain strings attached just to 'get the scoop'; and if it was the latter, Mac had given him enough of the story that an enterprising journalist such as Sims could easily follow up and verify. By perusing his other writings I find Sims to have a natural curiosity... which would be an asset for any successful journalist.

SirRobertAnderson

10-14-2010, 12:01 AM

Extremely intriguing if not compelling. I believe you have hit on a major point.

I ask again:

George Sims' detail, about the doctor's pals frantically trying to find him, is not in PC Moulson's Report.

This shows that Macnaghten, Sims' source, must have been aware of the original inquest report, and not just PC Moulson's record of the retrieval of the body - that he knew about William Druitt's frantic efforts to find his missing brother.

Therefore, Mac must have once correctly known that Druitt was a barrister, that he lived at a school at which he got in to 'serious trouble', and that he did not drown himself the night of the Kelly murder?

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-14-2010, 01:09 AM

To Sir Bob,

Thanks, yes I think a real breakthrough, remembering that so many of our most brilliant writers [Rumbleow, Begg, Evans, et al] have not, to my limited knowledge, factored in all of Sims as a source for what Macnaghten knew, or claimed to know, and so on .

But perhaps I am making a mistake of logic or inference -- I do it all the time?

Nonetheless, for what it is worth, I see how Macnaghten, via Sims, is having so much fun exaggerating, and thus fictionalising, the grim facts about Druitt's life and death:

- He was a doctor's son -- so he becomes a doctor.
- He was 31 -- up that by exactly ten years.
- He had two jobs, and a lucrative income -- the doctor is an unemployed but fabuously wealthy recluse.
- He lost his lesser, teaching job -- the doctor is completely unemployed for a year, or more.
- He had a season train ticket -- he does nothing but ride around on buses and the underground.
- His mother was put in a madhouse -- the 'doctor' has been twice so incarcerated and the friends were going for a third innings [how could they have such power over a chum?]
- He killed himself three weeks after the final murder -- the doctor killed himself on the night of the final murder and was left a gibbering husk [then how did he get to Chiswick?].
- He lived with 'his own people' at Blackheath and had no connection to the East End -- actually he was mostly a barrister with chambers withih walking distance of the E E.

- His brother was trying to find Montie at the school in which he resided, having gone missing from his legal chambers -- the 'friends' were frantically trying to locate the Blackheath recluse because they knew he was the fiend!

- His brother came to know, at some point that Montie was the fiend -- the 'friends' already know, or at least strongly suspect.

- His brother conferred privately with Macnaghten in 1891 -- the 'friends' confer with the police in 1888, who [I]already have zeroed in on the mad doctor via an 'exhuastive' inquiry.

- Macnaghten alone spoke with the MP, and maybe the brother, in 1891
-- the police were contacted by the 'friends' in 1888, and all the chiefs were in agreement.

- Mac rewrote his redudant 1894 Cutbush dodge, the one for the Home Office though never sent there -- Griffiths and Sims were privileged to see the 'final' and 'conclusive' 'Home Office Report'.

The motive is to conceal the embarrassment of Druitt as a way-too-late suspect, and to avoid libel trouble.

To Cris

Macnaghten believed that Druitt killed himself because he had some kind of implosion -- leading to a penitential confession I think -- but he exaggerated the timing of it to make it more melodramatically satisfying.

This hid Druitt.

In his memoir Mac even hints at this: about Nov 10th.

You mean, he could have been wandering the streets eh, the next day, or the day after ...??

Anyhow, in his preface -- in which the un-named Druitt is juxtaposed with cricket -- Macnaghten gives himself a blanket, get-out-jail-card: I am relying on memory alone so there maybe errors.

Did Sims Know?

I don't know.

I lean towards: no.

That Mac manipulated him and Griffiths.

I totally disagree with you that Sims would have done some digging and found Montie.

First of all, he was too pompous and lazy to do such menial work anymore.

Secondly, talking to top cop Mac is the 'research', he thinks!

Mac picked Sims just because he knew no real research woiuld be done at all -- and it wasn't.

Nobody attempted to trace the 'Drowned Dcotor' until a generation later when it was discovered no such Thames suicide -- of a doctor -- existed.

The perfect fix, if the name is withheld.

Why didn't Sims publicly react to the Littlechiuld scoop, that Druitt was not being pursued by the police in 1888? -- or Mac's admission about exactly this in his memoir --or that Druitt had not been in an asylum, let alone twice?

I believe Mac did this for two reasons:

1. To decisively debunk Anderson and his Ripper in the madhouse.

2. To debunk 'The Lodger' which had accidentally come close to the truth about Montie; a young man who technically 'lodged' [and who had enough Crhictian religion to confess to a priest].

3. To be at a little more candid and debunk the 'Drowned Doctor' Super-suspect, which had been half-true and half-mythical.

Sims did not react due to pride, or because he was in on the fix.

I think it more likely that Macnaghten charmed him: told him what he claimed was the biggest secret at Scotland Yard: and that the real life Henry Jekyll figure looked just like Sims! This exploitation of the writer's peculiar vanity on this subject locked him in as a propagandist, and locked out his critical faculties, which should have told him that if this Doctor was known in 1888 why were the police making chumps of themselves chasing Sadler as Jack in 1891?

Adam Went

10-14-2010, 07:37 AM

Jonathan:

I've no intention of addressing every single point you raise because if I did, i'd be here until daylight. As I constantly keep repeating, I don't claim to be a Druitt expert, and certainly not when it comes to the memorandum, but what I do try to do is approach things by using logic and sense and "What is the simplest, best fitting solution?" rather than "How much do I need to twist the available evidence to suit my theory?".

Don't be playing dumb, you said:

"The 'serious trouble' then being absences from the school on the nights of the murders, connecting the source to the Ripper mystery of the sources from 1891, 1894, 1898, and 1907."

Now if he was absenting himself on the nights of the murders, then the implication surely has to be that Mr. Valentine got suspicious of this and therefore was the reason, or contributed to the reason for his dismissal! NO boss, at least no boss that i've ever come across, would be paying off somebody they suspected of doing anything remotely bad, let alone murdering. Of course Valentine would have been aware of the when and where's of the murders.

And, that aside, NO boss would sack an employee for being absent without warning, especially if they've been working for you for seven years.....it's not rocket science, the times may have changed but they way people think and feel has not....

As for the friends into family theory, it doesn't make any sense. Again, the Druitt family was a large one and no specific names were mentioned, so how could the family go for libel if no names were mentioned? Again, Druitt was far from being alone in similar suspicion and I don't recall reading of any other families who were threatened with being charged with harbouring a fugitive - especially if the "suspicions" were only that and there was nothing concrete to prove it to the police, a lot of people were suspected at the time.

I'm not sure what more I can add, only that I very much look forward to the day WHEN - that's right, WHEN, not IF - evidence surfaces which sufficiently wipes Druitt from the suspect list forever. I guarantee that day will come, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Tracy:

An excellent post, some very good reasoning there. (Thank you!)

Cheers,
Adam.

Cris Malone

10-14-2010, 09:04 AM

Jonathan,

You make a good point about Sims. He does have a streak of vanity as he continues to repeat his own implication in the murders as some wierd badge of honor.

Another question ( and excuse me if this has been addressed as it has been a subject on these boards recently)

What is your take on the Backart/Bachert (or whatever) story of March 1889 where he is supposed to have been told by police that the muderer was fished out of the THames 2 months prior?

Scott Nelson

10-14-2010, 12:33 PM

Macnaghten probably got his information about Druitt from Superintendent James Butcher in 1891-2.

James Butcher was a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector on the Ripper case and had become a Superintendent in 1891. Eventually, he became the Assistant Chief Constable two years after Macnaghten was promoted to Chief Constable in 1890.

Butcher was also the likely source of information about Druitt and Kosminski known to Abberline when he spoke to reporter(s) in March 1903.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-14-2010, 05:06 PM

To Scott

There is no evidence that Butcher is the source of the 'private information' which being a police officer would not be private, but information received.

There is no evidence that Abberline knew, in 1903, what he was talking about regarding Druitt or Kosminski -- or Chapman for that matter.

Mac's source is muc, much more likely to be Tory MP Farquharson, but I understand how frightening that is to many people here.

To Adam

Tom Sadler successfully sued newspapers which had correctly reported that he had been investigated as the fiend.

The family's name being suppressed was not enough for Griffiths; they altered 'family' into 'friends' just to be sure.

You do not address the understandable breakthrough about the inquest report and Sims via Mac?

I understand.

The implications are terrifiying.

Because you are, according to you, not a Druitt expert -- whatever that is -- and yet you are absolutely certain of his innocence.

To Cris

The Backert story is entirely apocryphal eg. a lie made up by McCormick.

Tragically Cullen used it to bolster Druitt's probable guilt as he lacked the MP bridge, never realising that the real secret to the Jack the Ripper mystery was that the deceased fiend was unknown to police for years -- and that this was admitted in Mac's memoirs.

Long term it did enormous damage to people's understanding of the Ripper mystery because primary sources show that Druitt was not a contemporaneous suspect to the 1888 to (early) 1891 investigation, and that patrols were not stood down after Dec 31st 1888, and the hunt for Sadler showing that Druitt [and Kosminski] were unknown at that late date.

Scott Nelson

10-14-2010, 06:12 PM

I didn't say "private information." I just said "information." And even if you consider that it was "private" information, I hardy think Farquharson was the source.

Abberline worked with Butcher on the Whitechapel Murders investigation.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-14-2010, 07:06 PM

To Scott

I'll bet you don't.

A detective for the case, about whom there is no evidence connecting him to Druitt whatsoever, versus a source who is known to Macnaghten via the Old School Net, and who is a near neighbour of the Druitt family, plus they are fellow gentleman, Gentiles and Tories.

And you go with ... Butcher?!

Because he worked with Abberline, who knew nothing about Druitt?

Well, you have to, don't you ..?

To Cris

I think that the MP provides the bridging source which Cullen lacked, and he went with Backert -- and dislocated the case for his own prime suspect.

But Cullen argues something else that perhaps is the most rational position of all. He thought that Mac's errors were insignificant -- if you could show that the police knew about Druitt, accurately, the first time they encounteted hinm as a Ripper suspect.

Without files and with fading memories, it is still critical that a gentleman cop remember that it was a gentleman suspect and not a poor Jew.

Jack the Oxonan is what counts, not whether he was doctor or a doctor's son.

So long as the police -- or a police chief -- orginally encounetered the Druitt story.

The MP restores that connection and now, I argue, that behind a mythical detail of Sims - the pals frantically trying to find their doctor chum -- is the historical kernel of brother William investigating Montie's disappearance.

This must come from Macnaghten, who also knew that Druitt had never been in an asylum himself. The inquest source of 1889 matches Sims in 1903 and 1907.

Adam Went

10-14-2010, 07:26 PM

Jonathan:

Indeed, Tom Sadler did do that. And I seem to recall that John Pizer did as well, or at least tried to. But they were the suspects themselves - not family or friends. Sadler was accused of the murder of Frances Coles (not in the C5) and Pizer was acquitted of any wrong doing after accusations had already surfaced.....Druitt, on the other hand, was already dead - again, dead men can't defend themselves, and so he, along with two other suspects who were locked up, became easy scapegoats - the "safe" options if you like.

No, I don't give the Sims story any credence, because Sims was a journalist. Are you telling us that you would take the word of a politician and a journalist, two of the occupations in the whole world who are the most likely to embellish or falsify, over other contemporary police officers (other than Macnaghten)!?

And so it now becomes you who is avoiding the important points, like why an employee in "serious trouble" had been dismissed but at the same time, payed off.....

Cheers,
Adam.

How Brown

10-14-2010, 07:51 PM

Adam:

Pizer did make a few bucks from his experience. Someone at The Star successfully convinced Pizer to accept a certain amount from that paper while encouraging Pizer to seek remuneration at another newspaper. I can't remember his name at this moment...but hopefully someone else will. It was an assistant to O'Connor. Me and my damned memory :mmph:

Overlooked,perhaps,as a motive for Valentine to sack Druitt was not necessarily any impropriety Druitt committed, but rather his ongoing success as a barrister,which would have occupied a certain amount of Druitt's time and limited his presence at the school. Apologies if this has already been said.

SirRobertAnderson

10-14-2010, 07:55 PM

And so it now becomes you who is avoiding the important points, like why an employee in "serious trouble" had been dismissed but at the same time, payed off....

That actually is the easiest of all the points to address, unless one were to claim that the school suspected Druitt was the Ripper. Troublesome or difficult employees get paid off to go away quietly all the time in today's litigious environment. It's not right but it's the way of the world. Now factor in the relative prominence of Druitt's family AND the aspect that he was a lawyer...not hard to see someone paying him to leave and shut up about why he was fired. Perhaps he was suspected of diddling one of the kids....Not in the school's interest for that to get out either.

Overlooked,perhaps,as a motive for Valentine to sack Druitt was not necessarily any impropriety Druitt committed, but rather his ongoing success as a barrister,which would have occupied a certain amount of Druitt's time and limited his presence at the school. Apologies if this has already been said.

Also a good point. Perhaps the answer is as prosaic as that.

Adam Went

10-14-2010, 08:08 PM

How:

Thanks for that. Yet more evidence of journalistic integrity in the Pizer case, or the lack of it....

As for his career as a barrister, is it not more likely then that he resigned in order to pursue that career further, rather than was dismissed for not focusing the attention he should have on the school?

SirBob:

Troublesome or difficult employees get paid off to go away quietly all the time in today's litigious environment.

I've not heard of this happening, the truth usually comes out sooner or later anyway - in any case, if Valentine had done this, he would have payed him by cash rather than cheque, so as the cashing of the cheques could never be traced back to him or the school and therefore there was never a risk of any questions getting asked.

As for prominence of the family.....er, his father was dead and his mother was in the loony bin. Not sure how much prominence there was left, in that branch of the family at least, to uphold.

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-14-2010, 09:12 PM

The utter feebleness of a couple of the responses [others are more thoughtful] is a measure, for me, of the strength of this line of reasoning.

Usually I can think of multiple counter-arguments for what I raise, but not this time -- which may turn out ot be a lack of rigor on my part.

Nevetheless, if Sims had knowledge of the inquest into Druitt's death, or just the newspaper account of it -- and I doubt it -- it would still mean that he had read that Druitt was a barrister and teacher, and so on, and so obviously would have Macnaghten.

More likely, is that Sims was totally oblivious until the Littlechild revelation, which I am sure Macnaghten could reassure him about: Jack Littlechild has the wrong suspect, old sport. He is confusing a scoundrel with the 'American medical student' who was strongly suspected, by some at the Yard, of being the fiend -- that's all (Sims, 1907).

Of course, that is all part of the Mac fix too.

With Sims we have a similar bit from two different sources, linked by the police chief source who supposedly knew bugger all, and cared less.

For the first time it is an affirmative element, rather than a negative one [eg. Druitt had not been in a madhouse and Mac writes in 1914 that Druitt was not in a madhouse]; that the brother was searching for his missing sibling at the Blackheath school, becomes the 'friends' who were searching for the missing ex-doctor from his palatial home in Blackheath.

SirRobertAnderson

10-15-2010, 12:34 AM

The utter feebleness of a couple of the responses [others are more thoughtful] is a measure, for me, of the strength of this line of reasoning.

The back and forth insults have got to stop. It's detracting from a great thread, and not doing either of you credit.

SirBob:

Troublesome or difficult employees get paid off to go away quietly all the time in today's litigious environment.

I've not heard of this happening,

Welcome to the modern world, as The Jam would say. I have been cursed with various managerial roles over the past 30 years, and firing someone "for cause" is an expensive proposition. Legal fees, human resource departments, discrimination yada yada yada. A severance package and a few scribbles on a nondisclosure form and the bad egg is on his or her way. It's the way it is, like it or not. Faster and cheaper.

the truth usually comes out sooner or later anyway - in any case, if Valentine had done this, he would have payed him by cash rather than cheque, so as the cashing of the cheques could never be traced back to him or the school and therefore there was never a risk of any questions getting asked.

Severance checks would actually be less messy, so long as proper procedures were followed. Look, firing a lawyer is a nightmare even today. If and it is a big if, he was a pedophile you'd be better off - as a school - following reasonably normal procedures. Valentine wouldn't want Monty telling his side of the story, either.

Maybe the suicide was Monty's side of the story. Perhaps the checks were his suicide note.....

Besides, if you want to build the case against Druitt, the checks IMHO argue against him as the Ripper, because it appears to me anyway that they tell you the school didn't fire him for suspicions of being the Ripper, and I doubt the Ripper was a pedo.

More likely, is that Sims was totally oblivious until the Littlechild revelation, which I am sure Macnaghten could reassure him about: Jack Littlechild has the wrong suspect, old sport. He is confusing a scoundrel with the 'American medical student' who was strongly suspected, by some at the Yard, of being the fiend -- that's all (Sims, 1907).

Of course, that is all part of the Mac fix too.

I hear you, but the difficulty to me is that he "undoes" the fix in his memoirs, where he makes it pretty clear he is referring to Druitt IMHO.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-15-2010, 01:25 AM

We don't know why Druitt was fired, or even if he was fired for sure -- he probably was but no toher source mentions it -- or that this even happened whilst he was alive and not missing, and thus deceased.

If he was fired and not allowed to resign it suggests nothing criminal.

That would have meant the police looking for him and they weren't.

That's almost the whole point of the Ripper mystery in a nutshell.

A difference of opinion which could not be resolved with a compromise -- or even a discreet resignation.

The cheques could have come from his lucrative legal work.

Anyhow, the firing may have nothing to do with the Ripper issue, one way or another.

On the other hand, if we put the inquest source with the Mac Memoirs then what we see is a possible connection, theorised long before me.

The Druitt family, either before or after, the body surfaced 'believed' that Montie was the Ripper.

Macnaghten in 1914 writes something which maybe an echo of the inquest report, especially now that the theory of Macnaghten-knowing-all is strengthened by the brother's pursuit of his missing sibling appearing, in mutated form, in Sims.

Mac writes that the Ripper 'resided with his own people' and 'absented' himself at certain times eg. to commit the murders.

What a weird line?

Of course he 'absented himself'. He did not have the harlots come to him??

You mean he left home to kill his victims. Well, of course.

What Macnaghten is implying is that the people he lived with -- the misleading impilcation being its his family -- noticed that he was out and about at the time of the murders.

It's still a strange line?

Does this man never go out except when the murders happen?

Does he have nobody to visit? Cannot he just go out and see a show, or go to a club? Is that being absent too?

It strongly echoes, as well, Robert Louis Stevenson's reclusive mad doctor.

How can a person, supposedly in their own home, be 'absent' anyhow?

It's a very schoolboyish way of putting it, like absent for roll call, or from Maths.

The Ripper's home is surely not a prison?

Sims' suspect, the semi-mythical unemployed, insane Doctor, the Blkackheath Jekyll version of Montie Druitt, cannot really be 'absent' from his own home if he is off on one of his aimless jaunts on the subway?

Are his pals hiding in his garden or in the attic, frantic the moment he does not return at tea time?

But a person who is lodging in residence with an employer, and perhaps expected to provide a duty-of-care, at night, then their absences are significant and very inappropriate, eg. 'serious trouble'.

If Druitt was the Ripper then he must have been out on those nights. One, or more, of those nights, may have clashed with his night-warden duties, he was complained about, the parents complained to Valentine, and the Head had to make an example of him -- being fired the adult equivalent of being expelled.

People forget that Macnaghten/Griffiths/Sims had to be very careful, not just about the libel laws, but simply about people's sensibilities and sensitivities, regarding Druitt's close relations and those who were accidentally connected to the real 'Jack'.

If Druitt's full identity were in the media -- minus the name -- the family would be shattered, whether they sued or not.

But also people at the school, eg. Valentine, colleagues and so on, not to mention ex-studnts from 'respectable' familes, would inevitably recognise him too. Such a story, eg. the Ripper taught Homer in this very classroom, could have closed the school in a single afternoon.

Factoring that in, how on earth could somebody as discreet and friendly as Melville Macnaghten -- assuming he has misremembered eveything --have been a party to stamping on people's feelings by recklessly disseminating the Ripper's profile to cronies? To the public?

Easy -- he wouldn't and he didn't.

Mac disseminated a profile which was partially hidden in a fictional cocoon.

As the enigmatic Vicar so elegantly puts it in 1899: 'substantial truth in fictitious form'.

Interesting that Sims only used 'Blackheath' once, and that was in 1915 in a passing reference: that the suicided doctor lived with his 'people' in that suburb -- his version brought into alignment with Mac's 1914 memoirs. But then, Sims could not write 'friends' now because it would seem utterly implausible for any gentleman to be living with pals and so, like Grffiths in 1898, he knew by Mac's retirement at least, that 'Dr D' lived with relations -- which he didn't.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-15-2010, 01:38 AM

To Sir Bob

What do you mean that Mac's candour in 1914 upsets the argument of a gentleman's fix?

Can you elaborate?

What about how close Sims is, in 1907, to the subsequent theories about Druitt and Tumblety.

'Two Theories' about the Fiend at the Yard: the Drowned Toff and Yank Medico.

If you throw up the bits and pieces, and let them fall randomly, you get a Druitt and Tumblety mix and match.

Doctor (T)
English (D)
American (T)
middle-aged (T)
young (D)
'Blackheath' (D)
no regular work (T)
very, very affluent (T)
pursued by police in 1888 (T)
frantic friends (really D's family, plus T had helpful friends who bailed him)
committed suicide in Thames (D)
alive long after murders (T)

SirRobertAnderson

10-15-2010, 01:54 AM

The cheques could have come from his lucrative legal work.

Oooh oooh oooh - I just realized I may have been making a big ASSumption over the years and ASSumed the checks were from the school. Was the payer indecipherable after all that time in the water ?

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-15-2010, 02:53 AM

To Sir Bob

Well, I am just making an assumption as I do not believe that PC Moulson's Report, or the inquest source on his death, tells us from whom the cheques originated?

It is just a theory that it was a payout from the school -- a very good one -- but his main source of income, the big money, was from being a barrister.

Anyhow, do you see what I am getting at about Mac not recalling, or ever knowing that Druitt was a teacher, and therefore the profile which Sims put out to his wide readership cannot upset anybody at the school, or any old scholars of the Valentine establishment.

What a bit of luck, hey?

And, what about my point about George Sims, in 1907, 'knowing' about Tumblety, but in completely distorted form eg. Druitt and Tumblety have swapped bits and pieces, including their ages?

If that was the version Sims had been bragging to Jack Littlechild about, in 1913, no wonder the ex-police chief thought he had to 'inflict' one more letter on this subject to his social superior, the great amateur criminologist, Sims the celebrated writer and poet -- and Liberal gadfly --who seems, to Littlechild, to have been fed a whole lot of disinformation by Anderson -- really Macanghten.

Adam Went

10-15-2010, 09:21 AM

Jonathan & Sir Bob:

So in addition to Druitt being called a serial killer, he is now also being called a child molester to boot? Do people have no respect for the dead at all?

Ok, let's go through it. There is no way that Druitt was fired for molesting any of the children - first of all, he had been at the school for at least seven years, why was he suddenly molesting at that point? Secondly, such instances HAVE to be investigated fully....if it came to the attention of the inquest that "serious trouble" was such allegations, it would have to be checked out further and then it would be all over the papers. Thirdly, would the child have not told their parents or family about what had happened, thus causing a notable withdrawal from, or complaint to the school? Finally, is it mere coincidence that this just happened to come up at the very end of the school term?

Remember, Druitt left the school, for whatever reasons, at the very end of the term. There were apparently two cheques, one made out for 50 pounds, the other 16 pounds. So I would theorise, as others have before, that the 50 pound check was payment for the preceding quarter, and the 16 pound check was collection of payment for holidays and benefits which he had accumulated....

So, unless you want to suggest that Druitt was payed a sum total of 66 pounds by Mr. Valentine to keep his mouth closed, when he was already worth more than two and a half thousand pounds not including property/assets and was on a salary of around 200 pounds per year, then that theory just doesn't stack up.

IMO, what happened was this: Druitt gained confidence about his career as a barrister, had grown tired of the school, was troubled by the death of his father and his mother being placed in an asylum - he gave notice of intention to leave when he wasn't exactly in his right mind, regretted it later on, couldn't get his job back, had a "What have I done? Where to from here?" moment, questioned himself and that in turn led to his suicide....it's no coincidence that he did the deed within a couple of days of the end of term at Valentine's.

Furthermore, it's unlikely that Druitt was dismissed for absenting his lodgings as Mr. Valentine had stopped residing at his school as far back as 1886 - so unless another member of staff or a student went all tittle-tattle, in which case Druitt would have surely been warned rather than instantly dismissed, that's not what happened either.

See how much easier it is if things are approached in a simple and logical way rather than the most complex way?

Cheers,
Adam.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-15-2010, 10:28 AM

A previous poster -- guess which one? -- completely missed that I was satirising the modern knee-jerk view that Druitt was sacked for sexual molestation.

I have argued against this lame theory for three years, or so.

I write again, looking for debate on the fact that Mac's 'terrible memory' fitted perfectly with the Valentine school community not being scandalised and/or traumatised at recognising their dead member as the Ripper because he was 'luckily' unrecognisable.

Cris Malone

10-15-2010, 10:40 AM

Serious trouble would not be giving notice and then redacting it only to be finally told to buggar off.

And yes, such matters as molestation - or any sexual offenses - were settled in the way that has been implicated in Druitt's case... and everyone keeps quiet. The victim and his parents would do so as well; such as the stigma it was then and up to very few years ago.

And up to a very few years ago homosexuality was considered a mental illness. It was actually Kraff-Ebing who, near the end of his career, started advocating that it wasn't necessarily so.

Could Montie work there for seven years and then, suddenly get fired for an infraction such as this? Certainly... cases involving teachers, clerics, etc.- have gone back much longer.... quite often because of the stigma and the sad fact that children usually keep these things secret as well. All it takes is one final slip of some kind and the whole thing is dealt with quickly and quietly. The Catholic Church got away with it for years... maybe centuries. Valentine's prestigeous school would be no exception.

Big Jon

10-15-2010, 10:52 AM

Jonathan & Sir Bob:

So in addition to Druitt being called a serial killer, he is now also being called a child molester to boot? Do people have no respect for the dead at all?

Ok, let's go through it. There is no way that Druitt was fired for molesting any of the children - first of all, he had been at the school for at least seven years, why was he suddenly molesting at that point? Secondly, such instances HAVE to be investigated fully....if it came to the attention of the inquest that "serious trouble" was such allegations, it would have to be checked out further and then it would be all over the papers. Thirdly, would the child have not told their parents or family about what had happened, thus causing a notable withdrawal from, or complaint to the school? Finally, is it mere coincidence that this just happened to come up at the very end of the school term?

Just passing through, thought I'd put in my 2 cents as this was one of the areas I focused on for my degree:

1. Child molesters are sometimes active for years or decades before being caught. Seven years is a drop in the ocean compared to the criminal careers of some abusers.

2. Up until last few decades there has been a tradition of cover ups in these sort of cases. Things were sorted out quickly, quietly and without embarrassment. Just look at the recent scandal with the Catholic Church.

3. You of course assume that the child told their families? This is very rare. If a child tells someone they have been abused it is normally a friend or a non relative they trust, perhaps another teacher at the school. In this instance, why would the headmaster tell the parents and risk the reputation of the school? A quick cover up would no doubt be in his best interests.

In "Betrayal of Trust: Sexual abuse by men who work with children in their own words" by Colton and Vanstone page 65 "Harry" recalls an incident from his days at a boarding school where a housemaster who dealt out inappropriate punishments to the kids, which "Harry" describes as being "kinky". The parents complained, and instead of the full public investigation and sacking you would expect, the housemaster was demoted to caretaker! From the descriptions this was probably late 1950's/1960's.

There is also quite a shocking case I remember, I've spent about an hour trying to find the exact details but can't find it anywhere, so you'll just have to take my word for it until I can track it down:

There's a case of a school where the science teacher was abusing young boys for over 20 years. The shocking thing was that some of the parents and other teachers knew, but turned a blind eye as he got good exam results.

SirRobertAnderson

10-15-2010, 11:16 AM

Actually, my fellow mods have pointedly pointed out to me the point that this thread is for Druitt news reports. Kind of hard to argue with that; the thread is called "Druitt new reports." I've been guilty as well.

So.....please be so kind as to keep this discussion to the news reports !

If you want to respond to something someone has said here, just paste in into the main Druitt thread. I'm not going to transfer the posts.

Big Jon

10-15-2010, 11:18 AM

:focus:

Tracy Ianson

10-15-2010, 11:41 AM

Hi Jonathan

Sorry for the delay in answering, I have already wrote 2/3rds out once today and then accidentally pressed the back button on my mouse and lost the lot :doh:

It is just that this would all have been known at the time, and yet the family, or a family member, 'believed', it was an MP's 'doctrine', and a police chief claimed to have made a 'conclusion' based on 'certain facts'. They were all members of the same class, race and creed, yet they were convinced that one of their own -- literally in the family's case -- had been Jack.

I am a little confused here - maybe having a blonde day, but which family member believed that an MP's belief was accepted by a group in authority?
Also which family member was conviced Monty was Jack?

The words by Macnaghten, you quote, have to be put in context. It was a Report witten solely to show two writers, one a conseravtive and the other a liberal. It is awkwardly phrased, but it does give the impression that Macnaghten had to mull it all over to come to his 'conjections' (sic).

I disagree. I think the words have to be taken in the context they were written by Macnaghten in that moment. Is it not a little egotistical of us to think that we know better than Macnaghten as to what he wrote, he was there at the time, we weren't.

A serial killer will kill himself if the jig is up, eg. 'Jack the Stripper' in the mid-1960's in Britain.

The problem with the Jack the Stripper theory is that they don't know who killed the women. Suspects range from Freddie mills, the prize fighter, to an un-named ex poilceman, to a Security Guard.
The only 'evidence' they have against Mungo Ireland, is the fact that once he committed suicide there was no more killings.
In fact there is some evidence that he was not in England when the killing of Bridie O'hara, who all agree was killed by the same hand as most of the others. So the 'jig' wasn't actually up, he wasn't cornered and he hadn't been jailed.

Since the police were not aware of Druitt, why would the jig be up?

I am not sure to what you are asking here?

; he had confessed to an Anglican cleric [eg. not a Catholic confession with the priest bound to stay silent]

I am not saying you are wrong but I am sure that the same standards were kept for the Anglican church, in Medieval times they were anyway, (if I remember rightly from school)

I ask again:

George Sims' detail, about the doctor's pals frantically trying to find him, is not in PC Moulson's Report.

This shows that Macnaghten, Sims' source, must have been aware of the original inquest report, and not just PC Moulson's record of the retrieval of the body - that he knew about William Druitt's frantic efforts to find his missing brother.

Therefore, Mac must have once correctly known that Druitt was a barrister, that he lived at a school at which he got in to 'serious trouble', and that he did not drown himself the night of the Kelly murder?[/QUOTE]

Would it be in the realms of impossibility to believe that Macnaghten got the report because Monty was from an affluent family, and he had gone missing...surely there would be some sort of investigation going on into that?

I realise my answering your post so late is holding back the rest of the discussion, which is probably now on a different topic, so feel free to ignore anything that is now not under discussion.
Just so you know my first post was waaay better than this one!!

tj

Scott Nelson

10-15-2010, 11:44 AM

The only reason Druitt came under suspicion at all is because he committed suicide at the right time coupled with other circumstantial evidence that he was experiencing mental instability.

That's it. It doesn't have to be more complicated.

and never argue with a pirate

SirRobertAnderson

10-15-2010, 11:45 AM

Jonathan, please be so kind as to respond to Tracy in the main Druitt thread. Thanks.

:focus:

Chris G.

10-15-2010, 11:49 AM

Would it be in the realms of impossibility to believe that Macnaghten got the report because Monty was from an affluent family, and he had gone missing...surely there would be some sort of investigation going on into that?

Hello Tracy

The existing evidence seems to show that there was little or no official investigation into the circumstances of Monty's disappearance. He went missing and his body was found floating in the Thames a month later, as simple as that.

Chris

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-15-2010, 01:13 PM

To Tracy

Have a look at the other site in dissertations:

'The West of England MP -- Identified' by Andrew Spallek

Plus, I was looking at Macnaghten's words in the context of when he wrote them and to whom he wrote them for: literary cronies.

I still cannot get any reasonable counter-argument to the inquest detail matching Sims, via Macnaghten, showing that the police chief must have originally, at least, known the correct biog. info. about Druitt?

Big Jon

10-15-2010, 01:54 PM

Chris G.

10-15-2010, 02:34 PM

Chris G.

10-15-2010, 02:37 PM

If m'colleagues requests aren't adhered to we'll have to start moving posts, which is boring and time consuming and shall put us in a bad mood - which I know you lovely people don't want! So...

:focus:

Hello Jon

I appreciate your point, Jon, but, on the other hand, any Druitt thread brings up a raft of ideas about his suicide and what we know about his life and of Macnaghten's writings, etc., so I would submit that the discussion is not as offbase as you seem to be saying.

Chris

Mike Covell

10-15-2010, 03:35 PM

Druitt's brother William's birth announcement, The Morning Chronicle, Friday, May 2nd 1856.

How Brown

10-15-2010, 05:57 PM

As Bob & Jon have already requested, lets take the discussion to this thread

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=117608#post117608

... in order that we can place Druitt related articles on the thread you are viewing now.

Thanks.

Mike Covell

10-16-2010, 06:28 AM

The Pall Mall Gazette, Wednesday, February 11, 1891.
I am not saying this is Druitt, but it's interesting.

Jonathan Hainsworth

10-16-2010, 08:25 AM

To Mike

It's almost certainly Druitt.

You are looking at a slightly maimed version of a story originally different, as it referred to a 'son of a surgeon' and fearfully to the laws of libel.

Another poster claimed that only somebody accused could sue, or would want to. Not so, as the suspect here is clearly deceased and yet the newspapers were worried about this story and it's libellous implications. eg. the associates of this man could sue for the implication that they harboured the fiend rather than alerting the police.

Here is the original with the changed bits highlighted:

11 February 1891 edition of The Bristol Times and Mirror

I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of 'Jack the Ripper.' His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that 'Jack the Ripper' committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.

This and other versions have appeared over the past few weeks on this site, and have been discussed.

I recommend the bombshell essay on Casebook:

The West of England MP -- Identified? by Andrew Spallek

The MP was Henry Farquharson, Tory MP for West Dorset.

A near-neighbour of the Druitts, and a school pal of Macnaghten. All Tories, all toffs, all Gentiles, and the MP and the police chief are both officers of state.

For me it solved the case, provisionally speaking.

As a source it is right up there with the Swanson Marginalia, Kosminski's medical records, the Littlchild Letter, the Tumblety interview and the Mac Report(s) -- and the Mac Memoir: 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper'.

For it showed that Macnaghten originally did have an accurate biog. source on his preferred suspect.