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Was Sims the double of Druitt?

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  • Was Sims the double of Druitt?

    Here is a source I noticed a few months ago which to my knowledge has not been posted on this form:


    "DAGONET'S" DOUBLE.

    STARTLING REMINISCENCES OF THE "RIPPER" MURDERS.

    The strange case of Adolph Beck, twice convicted erroneously for the crimes of his "double," has induced Mr. George R. Sims to relate in yesterday's "Referee" an extraordinary story of his own likeness to "the demented doctor who committed the terrible Jack the Ripper outrages."
    "Twice," Mr. Sims writes, "a portrait of me was shown as that of a man who had been seen on several occasions in the neighbourhood on the night of its committal.
    "A man who had seen Jack at a coffee-stall in the small hours on the night that two women were killed, and had noticed that his shirt cuff was bloodstained, took my portrait with him afterwards to Dr. Forbes Winslow, and said, "That is the man; on the night of the murders, long before they were discovered, I spoke to him. In conversation I said, "I wonder if we shall hear of another Jack the Ripper murder?" "You'll very likely hear of two tomorrow," was the reply, and the man walked hurriedly away."
    At another time, Mr. Sims adds, his portrait was shown to one of the detectives engaged in the hunt for the miscreant.
    The danger of being the "double" of such a criminal caused Mr. Sims on one occasion to accidentally run a dangerous risk: -
    "I had borrowed from Paul Meritt, the dramatist, a long Japanese knife of a murderous character for melodramatic purposes, and putting it in a black bag, I had gone to the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel, late at night. I often wonder what would have happened if some one had cried out, "That's the Ripper," and my black bag had been opened."

    WHO WAS THE MAN?

    Seen last night by an "Express" representative, Mr. Sims said he believed the coffee-stall keeper came across his portrait on the cover of the first edition of "The Social Kaleidoscope," in a shop in a side-street in Soutwark.
    "It was a terrible portrait - taken, when I was very ill. My face was drawn and haggard, and surprisingly like the Ripper, whom only the coffee-stall keeper and a policeman ever set eyes upon."
    "Dr. Forbes Winslow was at that time engrossed in the mystery of the murders, and had written a good deal about it. That is why the coffee-stall keeper went to him with my portrait. On the occasion when I carried the black bag and Japanese knife I was in a bowler hat, I remember, and was standing among the people, close to the very spot where one of the worst murders was committed."
    Mr. Sims said that he had not the slightest doubt in his mind as to who the "Ripper" really was.
    "Nor have the police," he continued.
    "In the archives of the Home Office are the name and history of the wretched man. He was a mad physician belonging to a highly respected family. He committed the crimes after having been confined in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac."

    Source: The Daily Express, London, Monday August 1, 1904, Page 5

    Interestingly he refers to a policeman who may have seen Jack.

    This comes from the 'Aberconway' version which Sims calls several times the 'Home Office Report' which proves to the government who Jack was: eg. the mad, English doctor who had been in a lunatic asylum.

    That cop seems to be the Lawende-Sailor(fair featured) story inverted: a the Jewish witness and the Gentile suspect but pulled inside out.

    Actually the story related by Sims, presumably from Mac, goes like this:

    'One man only, a policeman, saw him leaving the place in which he had just accomplished a fiendish deed, but failed, owing to the darkness, to get a good view of him. A little later the policeman stumbled over the lifeless body of the victim.

    One other man believed that he had seen the Ripper soon after the double murders of Sept. 30, and he may have done, but there was no absolute proof that he was correct in his surmise.

    This man was a coffee-stall keeper. In the early hours of the date of these murders, between three and four in the morning, as far as I can remember, a man came to the stall and asked for a cup of coffee ...

    ... Various witnesses who had seen a man conversing with a woman who was soon afterwards found murdered said that he was a well-dressed man with a black moustache. Others described him as a man with a closely-trimmed beard.

    The portrait on the cover of the first edition of "The Social Kaleidoscope," a book which twenty years ago was in most of the newsagents' and small booksellers' windows, was taken about 1879 ...'

    The above is from Sims' long piece for Lloyds weekly Mag, Sept 22nd 1907.

    I think that Mac wanted to push back against the 'Kosminski' theory which Anderson was pushing.

    Now the cop witness did not see anything because it was too dark, and the syuspect is not described as being like the Polish Jew suspect. In the few lines that Sims writes about this suspect he has this alleged policeman witness:

    'The first man was a Polish Jew of curious habits and strange disposition, who was the sole occupant of certain premises in Whitechapel after night-fall. This man was in the district during the whole period covered by the Whitechapel murders, and soon after they ceased certain facts came to light which showed that it was quite possible that he might have been the Ripper. He had at one time been employed in a hospital in Poland. He was known to be a lunatic at the time of the murders, and some-time afterwards he betrayed such undoubted signs of homicidal mania that he was sent to a lunatic asylum.

    The policeman who got a glimpse of Jack in Mitre Court said, when some time afterwards he saw the Pole, that he was the height and build of the man he had seen on the night of the murder.'

    In other words all he saw was an outline -- not much.

    Masturbation is gone, replaced by 'anatomical knowledge' courtesy of a hospital in Poland.

    Then comes the quash (of Ostrog too):

    'Both these men were capable of the Ripper crimes, but there is one thing that makes the case against each of them weak.

    They were both alive long after the horrors had ceased, and though both were in an asylum, there had been a considerable time after the cessation of the Ripper crimes during which they were at liberty and passing about among their fellow men.'

    Mac via Tatcho was way ahead of Fido et al about the length of time between Kelly and incarceration discrediting Aaron as a likely suspect.

  • #2
    Hi Jonathan

    Of course, as you know, there were many contradictory descriptions given of men seen with the murdered women or in the vicinity of the murders. As you quote, one description was of "a well-dressed man with a black moustache" or of "a man with a closely-trimmed beard." That might fit with Sims' description but I don't see it fitting Montague John Druitt. Druitt had a small fair moustache, not a black moustache and he wore no beard. I am not sure, then, that I see the point of your post. Sims was saying that he matched a suspect description, or at least the man seen by the coffee stall keeper. He wasn't saying that he matched Druitt's description.

    Best regards

    Chris
    Christopher T. George, Lyricist & Co-Author, "Jack the Musical"
    https://www.facebook.com/JackTheMusical/ Hear sample song at https://tinyurl.com/y8h4envx.

    Organizer, RipperCon #JacktheRipper-#True Crime Conferences, April 2016 and 2018.
    Hear RipperCon 2016 & 2018 talks at http://www.casebook.org/podcast/.

    Comment


    • #3
      To Chris G

      Druitt generically matches Lawende's Jack the Sailor: about 30, of middle height, slimmish, with a fair moustache.

      Yet Macnaghten never claimed such a connection and neither did Sims with the drowned doctor.

      Pictures of Druitt at high school, the new ones discovered by Spallek a few years ago, are a remarkable match for that picture of Sims from his 1879 book.

      Generally Sims does not look like Montie because he has a rounder face, except for that 1879 pic where the hair is also parted in the dead center. The same hooded eyes, the low forehead, and slit of a mouth.

      Confirmation of my argument about this was found in that 1904 source I posted -- from Sims' own lips.

      Sims remarks to a reporter that the 1879 pic was not a good one because he was ill, and he looked 'haggard', eg. he looked thinner -- like Druitt.

      Of course Sims' readers were told that the Ripper was middle-aged and so inevitably you do not think of the younger Sims but of the older man with the rotund figure and naval beard.

      I don't think Sims knew he resembled -- in that one picture -- Montie, but Macnaghten did. Sims thought he resembled a middle-aged 'Dr. Druitt' in that one pic.

      In 1889, in the first version of the story, the picture is allegedly from the cover of a book of Dagonet poems. Furthermore the witness is described as a 'crank' who claims to have net the suspect several times, and plus he wants to testify.

      By 1891, just after the MP has outed Druitt though not by name, Sims for the first time refers to the 'Social Kaleidoscope' cover and that the witness was a coffee-stall owner who only encountered the suspicious stranger once.

      The serial pest has become a normal witness trying to do the right thing.

      Either this was because the witness really had seen that cover, and Mac later realized it did look like Druitt, or because Mac has altered the tale since he has since seen a picture of Druitt (in early 1891) and knows which one matches Sims -- the one that does not look typically Tatchoish.

      Either way it is primary source evidence that Macnaghten knew what Montie looked like, though only from pictures years after his death.

      Comment


      • #4
        "A man who had seen Jack at a coffee-stall in the small hours on the night that two women were killed, and had noticed that his shirt cuff was bloodstained, took my portrait with him afterwards to Dr. Forbes Winslow, and said, "That is the man; on the night of the murders, long before they were discovered, I spoke to him. In conversation I said, "I wonder if we shall hear of another Jack the Ripper murder?" "You'll very likely hear of two tomorrow," was the reply, and the man walked hurriedly away."


        "This man was a coffee-stall keeper. In the early hours of the date of these murders, between three and four in the morning, as far as I can remember, a man came to the stall and asked for a cup of coffee ..."

        Of course, these two statements don't mesh, because between 3 and 4 was not 'long before they were discovered.'

        Comment


        • #5
          If Macnaghten was in touch with the family, and did think Monty was the killer, then I can well believe he'd have asked them if they could show him an up to date photo of Monty. The question is, would one exist? I don't know whether there were class-and-teacher photographs in those days, or perhaps a photo to do with his legal work.

          Comment


          • #6
            Hi Jonathan

            Could you post a copy of the 1879 portrait of Sims that you are talking about?

            Best regards

            Chris
            Christopher T. George, Lyricist & Co-Author, "Jack the Musical"
            https://www.facebook.com/JackTheMusical/ Hear sample song at https://tinyurl.com/y8h4envx.

            Organizer, RipperCon #JacktheRipper-#True Crime Conferences, April 2016 and 2018.
            Hear RipperCon 2016 & 2018 talks at http://www.casebook.org/podcast/.

            Comment


            • #7
              I didn't know Druitt had a fair moustache

              I am a bit suspicious about Forbes Winslow being involved in this tale, especially as the quote from the Ripper suspect resembles lines from Ripper letters he claimed to have received

              The picture is of Sims bearded isn't it?

              I never could ally it with the more well known Ripper descriptions, except maybe the bearded man who asked for Lusk's address, so I assumed only the man at the coffee stall fitted the description

              Comment


              • #8
                It's on this site ...

                To Chris G

                It's on this site:



                When you see the 1907 article in which Sims refers to it, they have added his name to the picture but the original did not have it.

                To Nemo

                It looks like a fair moustache in his last high school pictures.

                To Robert Linford

                I imagine that the Druitts had plenty of family photos of Montie to show Macnaghten. None have survived -- not a single pic of him as an adult.


                This is the original version of the story, and it is significantly different from what it became by the 1900's:

                'North Eastern Daily Gazette', Sept. 23rd, 1889

                PORTRAIT OF "JACK THE RIPPER" PRODUCED ...

                '... The London edition of the New York Herald further says:--One of those innumerable cranks who have found "Jack the Ripper" called at the Herald office yesterday. He has written a complete history of the case, and intends to offer himself as a witness at the inquest on Tuesday next. "I am quite certain I know the man," he said: "I have talked with him many times, and I can show you his photograph;" whereupon he produced one of Dagonet's poems, and pointing to the portrait of George R. Sims said, "That's the man, sir, as near as possible. There you get the contour, sir. My man's face was bronzed, and not quite deathly pale; but travelling would produce that, sir. That's like the man, sir."

                The article is followed by this facetious dig:

                "JACK THE RIPPER" SEEN BY EVERYONE BUT THE POLICE


                Sims refers to it for the first time in 'The Referee':

                Oct. 6, 1889.

                'I sent Albert Edward over the other day to interview the gentleman who has been taking my portrait to newspaper editors and to Dr. Forbes Winslow, and assuring them that it is like Jack the Ripper, and that is the sort of man the police have to look for. I am pleased to learn that the gentleman does not say that I am Jack - but only that he is very like me. The gentleman in question keeps a coffee-stall, and is certain that one night after committing a murder Jack came and refreshed himself at his establishment. His story is very plausible, and there may be something in it, but I can't say that I feel flattered to learn that the notorious lady-killer is as like me as one Dromio was to the other.

                "Me think it was Dagonet!" exclaimed the coffee-stall keeper to Albert Edward; "not likely. Why, Jack the Ripper had three hot pork sausages at my stall, and a cold meat pie. If I'd thought it was DAGONET by the likeness, I should have known it wasn't by the sausages." Certainly the sausages are strong circumstantial evidence in my favour. My digestion has saved my reputation.'

                Oct.13, 1889.

                'Poor Mr. Monro has come in for a good deal of abuse lately for leaving undone the things certain people think he ought to have done; but the latest complaint against him is certainly the oddest. The gentleman who recently took my portrait to newspaper editors as that of Jack the Ripper took it also to Scotland-yard, and requested the Chief Commissioner to have facsimiles of it at once struck off and posted all over London. Mr. Monro having failed to comply with this request, is accused of having failed in his duty.

                The worthy fellow who has been at so much trouble to hunt up the Whitechapel fiend is, I have no doubt, actuated by the best of motives, but he must have a pretty large bee in his bonnet to imagine that his mild and amiable suggestion would be carried out. If my portrait were stuck about London as the exact counterpart of "Jack the Ripper" - what price me?'


                We see that for the first time the 'crank' is identified as a coffee-stall owner, and that the alleged Ripper appeared there after a single murder.

                There is no mention that the 'suspect' has a beard. In the original version it is the contour of the face, though the [alleged] fiend was tanned.

                That the witness has met him several times, and is writing an account or wants to testify has fallen away.

                Most significantly, Sims treats it as a joke; an amusing nuisance against himself. By 1902, it's a genuine sighting of the genuine Ripper.

                On Feb 11th 1891 the 'West of England' MP story broke in 'The Bristol Times and Mirror'. On Feb 13th Frances Coles was killed and the police and press mobilized as if this was Jack returned after a long hiatus.

                Farquharson remained completely unmoved by Jack supposedly striking again, and that the police had a prime suspect, Sadler the sailor, in custody. We know this because the MP began talking directly to the press about being certain that the killer was the dead Druitt, albeit neither he nor the dead suspect were named.

                The danger to the Druitt family, and the acute anxiety of those members who were in the know as the links inched closer (eg. Dorset; a surgeon son who killed himself years before) can only be imagined.

                Then I think Macnaghten, as he would later claim in his 1913 comments and 1914 memoirs, made a private and thorough investigation.

                Why wouldn't he? A consequence of this was that Farquharson was shut down (a year later, an unidentified police source would tell a reporter that Farquharson's theory was 'exploded' because the police knew the Ripper was a man who was alive and who was under 24-7 surveillance, but who could not be arrested).

                In the wake of Mac's investigation, which 'laid' to rest this 'ghost', Sims revisited the coffee-stall owner tale in 'The Referee':

                March 1, 1891.

                The newspapers which, thanks to the outburst of public indignation, found it advisable to leave off trying to hang Sadler for the crimes of Jack the Ripper, without trial, and on the unsworn and inadmissible evidence of his wife, have fallen back upon mysterious hints as to the real Jack being a well-known man. It has been freely stated in more than one serious journal that the police know perfectly well who Jack is, and that they have been shadowing him for years, but have had great difficulty to keep up with him "owing to his frequent visits to the Continent."

                When I read this startling piece of news, and in a grave and sober daily, I was, as the old ladies say, "quite taken aback. " Was it possible that - I really hardly like even now to put into cold print the thought that flashed across my mind. And yet why should I not? I can prove an alibi, and I want the fullest inquiry. You have guessed it now. The thought that came like a bolt from the blue and nearly stunned me was that I myself, moi-meme, moi qui vous parle, was the person suspected by the police of being Jack L'Eventreur!

                Of course the idea was an absurd one, but it came to me in a very natural way. As a matter of fact, a year or two ago my portrait (the portrait outside the early cheap edition of "The Social Kaleidoscope") was taken to Scotland-yard by a man, and the police were informed that it was an exact likeness of the murderer. The way I got mixed up in the matter was this. An hour or two after the double murder had been committed on the night of September 30, 1888, a man of strange and wild appearance stopped at a coffee-stall. The coffee-stall keeper (knowing nothing then of the night's tragedy) began to talk about the Whitechapel murder. "I dare say we shall soon hear of another," he said. "Very likely," replied the wild-looking stranger; "perhaps you may hear of two to-morrow morning." He finished his coffee, and as he put the cup down the stall-keeper noticed that his cuffs were blood-stained.

                The next morning - or rather, later on that morning - the news of the double murder in Whitechapel fell upon the startled ears of the coffee-stall keeper. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed; "why, that chap last night knew it. He must have been Jack himself!"

                Walking along he came to a bookseller's and newsagent's. He looked at the placards, and then his eye suddenly rested on a book in the newsagent's window. Outside that book was a portrait. "Christopher Columbus!" exclaimed the coffee-stall keeper; "why that's the very image of him!" The book was "The Social Kaleidoscope." The astonished stall-keeper bought it, and, later on, when telling his adventures to the police, he produced the book and showed the portrait. Not only was this portrait of me shown to the police, but it was taken by the purchaser to the editor of the New York Herald (London edition), and afterwards to Dr. Forbes Winslow.

                The matter came to my knowledge through the courtesy of the Herald editor, and Dr. Forbes Winslow also communicated with me, and I investigated the facts. The coffee-stall keeper, who was interviewed, was perfectly candid and straightforward, and at once explained that he didn't for a moment mean to say that I was his blood-stained customer on the night of the murders. All he meant was that his customer's features were very like mine.

                I had forgotten all about the affair until I saw that extraordinary statement in a daily paper this week. Then it all came back to me, and at once the thought suggested itself, "Goodness gracious! is it possible that the police ever had an idea that -" Then I said to myself, "Pshaw!" but that little reference to "his frequent visits to the Continent" set me cogitating again. Fancy if for years the police have been keeping an eye on me, believing that, after all, I am - "O, of course, it is too absurd." But who is this well-known man they do suspect? Who is it that takes frequent trips to the Continent? What if, after all, it should be Lord -- No, that is too ridiculous. Wait a moment. I remember now; it is hinted that he is "a religious enthusiast." I have it. they suspect Mr.--. Does he take trips to the Continent? Yes; you know he went to and to --, and to --. Everybody knows that. But, bless us and save us, it never can be the great Mr. --! It may be Mr. --. He is certainly very fierce on certain matters. But, there, he wouldn't really hurt a fly!

                The more I think it over, the greater the fog into which I find myself wandering. Will the police, please, clear up the mystery? Name, gentlemen, please - name!

                If accounts of the burial of the Whitechapel victim given in the newspapers be true, the affair was a public scandal. One can forgive the floral decorations, but O, the ginger-beer, the nuts, and the ballads! I for one cannot see where the humanity of making a public spectacle of the murdered woman's funeral comes in. Certainly, the moral lesson it teaches is not visible to the naked eye.'


                Sims is quite flustered here behind the comical bombast, and somebody has told him that it is not a copy of Dagonet poems but the 1879 book whose cover called all the fuss.

                Plus it is a better story than the attention-seeking crank. It is now after the double murder by an ordinary citizen, not a fan of the case.

                When Sims returned to the Ripper case in 1899, he was telling a completely different story about the Whitechapel murders: the drowned doctor solution, allegedly a definitive state solution, which was supposedly known to CID in 1888.

                In 1904 the coffee-stall owner story is now definitely a sighting of Jack; Sims really is the Ripper's double. The detail about a 'wild and strange appearance' -- that does not sound like a well-dressed doctor -- has been dropped:

                'The Referee', July 31, 1904

                'The strange case of Mr. Adolf Beck has drawn attention to the peril of having a double. I have had two in my time - one who was useful to me, and one who might have put me in a very serious position. The useful double was a gentleman connected with the theatrical profession, who on two or three occasions took a first-night call for me because I had sought safety in flight. The objectionable double was the demented doctor who committed the terrible Jack the Ripper outrages.

                Twice a portrait of me was shown as that of a man who had been seen on several occasions in the neighbourhood of the crime on the night of its committal.

                A Man Who Had Seen 'Jack"

                at a coffee-stall in the small hours on the night that two women were killed and had noticed that his shirt-cuff was blood-stained took my portrait with him afterwards to Dr. Forbes Winslow and said, "That is the man. On the night of the murders, long before they were discovered, I spoke to him. In conversation I said, 'I wonder if we shall hear of another Jack the Ripper murder?' 'You'll very likely hear of two to-morrow,' was the reply, and the man walked hurriedly away." It was as he was leaving that the blood-stained cuff was noticed.

                The portrait shown to Dr. Forbes Winslow as that of "Jack" was the one on the cover of the first edition of "The Social Kaleidoscope."

                At another time one of the detectives engaged in the hunt for the miscreant was shown my portrait as that of a man who had been seen late at night in Whitechapel and was strongly suspected of being the Ripper. The real Ripper, to whom the crimes were only brought home after he had been found a month old corpse in the Thames, was undoubtedly rather like me.'

                The reporter went to interview Sims and he said that the picture was not a good one of himself, not realizing the implications of such a statement. Then he says for the only time that the 'doctor' came from an important family, had been in a lunatic asylum, and that this was all on file, in detail, at the Home Office.

                Then Sims returned to the story, now in concrete, in his 1907 'Lloyds Weekly' piece:

                ' ... What was the man with the blood-stained cuff like? That was the question. The coffee-stall keeper described him from memory. A day or two later passing by a stationer's shop he saw exhibited in the window a sixpenny book entitled "The Social Kaleidoscope." On the cover was a portrait of the author.

                "That is the living image of the man I saw," he exclaimed. He purchased the book and went off with it to Dr. Forbes-Winslow. "That is the man I saw, or his double," he exclaimed, handing over my little book to the astonished doctor, who knowing me fairly well, assured the coffee-stall keeper that it might be the double of the Ripper, but it certainly was not the fiend himself

                I present the portrait as one put forward by a man who had every reason to believe that he had seen and conversed with Jack the Ripper, as the "double" of the Whitechapel Terror.

                Various witnesses who had seen a man conversing with a woman who was soon afterwards found murdered said that he was a well-dressed man with a black moustache. Others described him as a man with a closely-trimmed beard.

                The portrait on the cover of the first edition of "The Social Kaleidoscope," a book which twenty years ago was in most of the newsagents' and small booksellers' windows, was taken about 1879 ...'

                In his 1917 memoirs he mentioned it again:

                'As a journalist I followed the Jack the Ripper crimes at close quarters. I had a personal interest in the matter, for my portrait, which appeared outside the cover of a sixpenny edition of my "Social Kaleidoscope," was taken to Scotland Yard by a coffee-stall keeper as the likeness of the assassin.

                On the night of the double murder, or rather in the small hours of the morning, a man had drunk a cup of coffee at the stall. The stall-keeper noticed that he had blood on his shirt-cuffs. The coffee merchant said, looking at him keenly, "Jack the Ripper's about perhaps tonight."

                "Yes," replied the man, "he is pretty lively just now, isn't he? You may hear of two murders in the morning." Then he walked away.

                At dawn the bodies of two women murdered by the Ripper were found.

                Passing a newsvendor's shop that afternoon the coffee-stall keeper saw my likeness outside the book.

                "That's the man!" he said, and bought the book. He took it first to Dr. Forbes Winslow, who was writing letters to the papers on the Ripper crimes at the time.

                Forbes Winslow, who knew me, told him it was absurd, but the man went off with the book to the Yard, and Forbes Winslow wrote to me and told me of the interview and the coffee-stall keeper's "mistake."

                But it was a pardonable mistake. The redoubtable Ripper was not unlike me as I was at that time.

                He was undoubtedly a doctor who had been in a lunatic asylum and had developed homicidal mania of a special kind.

                Each of his murders was more maniacal than its predecessors, and the last was worst of all.

                After committing that he drowned himself. His body was found in the Thames after it had been in the river for nearly a month.

                Had he been found alive there would have been no mystery about Jack the Ripper. The man would have been arrested and tried. But you can't try a corpse for a crime, however strong the suspicion may be.

                And the authorities could not say, "This dead man was Jack the Ripper." The dead cannot defend themselves.

                But there were circumstances which left very little doubt in the official mind as to the Ripper's identity.'


                It may just be a coincidence that in the wake of Druitt's first intrusion into he extant record as a Ripper suspect -- albeit un-named -- Sims refers to a picture of himself which does resemble Montie's contour, and which is different from the one in the original tale.

                I have a picture above me on my office wall which is a blow-up of Montie from the new school pics found by Spallek and published in an issue of 'Ripperologist'. Druitt is part of an all-school photo and so it is inevitably blurred due to the the enlargement. Nevertheless, Montie looks much broader and Sims-like (eg. the Sims of that 1879 pic) but I do not have permission to upload it here.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Jon:
                  Yes, you have our permission to post the photo you mentioned, if that was a concern.
                  If it exceeds the parameters we've set...you could send it to me in an email and I will convert it to a decent size attachment.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    How

                    I replied to you privately, with the relevant pic attached. Hope you got it.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Here are the photos...I hope these are satisfactory.
                      Thanks to Jon Hainsworth.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Bump
                        Just so folks know JH sent in another photo of Druitt... now on the previous post.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Good work, Jonathan. One of these looks very familiar.

                          Yours truly,

                          Tom Wescott

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Thanks Tom

                            I want to stress I found nothing myself.

                            The blurry blow-ups are from an article in 'Ripperologist' of a few years ago, in which the new school photos of Druitt were found by Andrew Spallek.

                            I had read about the 1879 pic, but not seen it until I saw it on this site.

                            I had always imagined the middle-aged, heavier built, naval bearded Sims as looking exactly like Jack obviously a deflection from the real Druitt.

                            Which it partly is.

                            But the new school photos were a revelation: a broader Druitt with features similar to that 1879 photo -- the only one of the famous author, to my limited vision, in which his face is considerably thinner and the hair, for the only time, appears parted in the center (and not the usual off-center).

                            I did not find the 1904 source in which Sims, either, in which the writer makes the point I had noticed: it is an atypical pic of him because he says he was ill: 'haggard'.

                            Nor did I find the original 1889 source about this alleged eyewitness incident, which refers to a portrait cover of Dagonet poems -- a different document and picture from the 1879 cover. It is on this site too.

                            What I noticed was that the the first reference to the 1879 cover by Sims is in March 1891, in the immediate aftermath of MP Farquharson and his 'son of a surgeon' tale surfacing and then disappearing.

                            Whatever the shuffle going on here, by the 1900's Sims is trumpeting the 1879 picture as a lookalike for the real Jack, and to me it strongly resembles Montie Druitt -- minus the beard.

                            The beard element by Sims in 190 and the description in the same article of Jack as a 'well dressed' gentleman -- and the fiction that a beat cop saw the silhouette of a man leaving the scene of a murder -- totally neutralised the description from Lawende of a Gentile-featured man with a fair moustache (no beard) about 30, wearing proletarian garb.

                            Lawende as a witness appears in neither Macnaghten nor Sims' writings at all. Yet we know Mac had read about Lawende, at the least, as he disparages Smith's memoirs -- who refers to this witness though not by name -- in his own memoirs of 1914, an uncharacteristically caustic jab by Mac.

                            Funny that.

                            Either the coffee-stall owner really had picked the 1879 picture, or Mac altered the story in 1891 for Sims after he had seen a picture of Montie.

                            Or, it's just another coincidence.

                            As Yogi Berra said it's too coincidental to be a coincidence.

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