Druitt/Bluitt

[Stephen Thomas]

Are you arguing that Macnaghten disguised or rather disguised and beefed up a non-story about a non-suspect, as I think he did with Aaron Kosminski and Michael Ostrog?

Yes. Like he did with Montague Druitt.

[Caroline Brown]

Not especially, no. I accept that Druitt is a suspect, despite the fact that only one policeman named him as such, and didn't appear to share his private info or "conjections" with other senior policemen, nor in fact with anyone on the force. If he did, it seems they were not similarly convinced.

It does seem strange to me that Mac chose friends and associates from outside the force to confide in. It would have been so much more powerful if only he had brought someone inside the force on board, like Anderson had Swanson, to sing from the same Druitt/Bluitt hymn sheet. I wonder why he wasn't able or willing to trust a fellow cop's nose for strong evidence and discretion in handling it.

Love,

Caz
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[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Are you arguing that Macnaghten disguised or rather disguised and beefed up a non-story about a non-suspect, as I think he did with Aaron Kosminski and Michael Ostrog?

[Caroline Brown]

No, I don't think so.

Since Macnaghten was so careful about the disguise what 'absented' really tells us is that they did not notice him absent several times. It's just a way of muddying the waters of Montie's single absence, his vanishing act, and that did not involve students.

But at least you have given a straight answer to a straight question.

You side with the theory that it was just a fortuitous accident that the Valentine graduates could not recognize their late Mr. Montague Druitt.

Remarkably fortuitous coincidence don't you think?

That a hands-on police administrator renowned for his incredible memory this time totally blew it, but in such a way that the drowned, young barrister could not be recognized by his former pupils or found by the tabloid press or the connection made among within the respectable circles in which the Druitts moved.

I find this extremely unlikely and opt for disguised by design.

You misunderstand me, Jonathan.

I find the whole premise extremely unlikely, therefore I would tend to side with the theory that Monty only did absent himself on the one occasion; that nobody noticed he was absent on the murder nights because he probably wasn't; and the story was only disguised because there was no shadow of proof that any of it was actually true.

That's not to say it couldn't have been true. But everything fits well enough with a tale, based on a strong belief (even with a confession thrown in), that could never be substantiated.

Love,

Caz
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[Jonathan Hainsworth]

No, I don't think so.

Since Macnaghten was so careful about the disguise what 'absented' really tells us is that they did not notice him absent several times. It's just a way of muddying the waters of Montie's single absence, his vanishing act, and that did not involve students.

But at least you have given a straight answer to a straight question.

You side with the theory that it was just a fortuitous accident that the Valentine graduates could not recognize their late Mr. Montague Druitt.

Remarkably fortuitous coincidence don't you think?

That a hands-on police administrator renowned for his incredible memory this time totally blew it, but in such a way that the drowned, young barrister could not be recognized by his former pupils or found by the tabloid press or the connection made among within the respectable circles in which the Druitts moved.

I find this extremely unlikely and opt for disguised by design.

[Caroline Brown]

Nobody has ever engaged me in debate on this point. That Montague Druitt's true identity was hidden from the boys-men of the school.

Was this by accident or by design?

That's exactly what I've been trying to do - engage you in debate on this very point.

Have you thought about how hard anyone could have been trying to hide Druitt's true identity from his former pupils if he had nightwarden duties at the school and must have absented himself to commit the murders? How could anyone have been confident that none of those former pupils had noticed those absences and would recognise the story (however cunningly disguised) because of them?

I'd wager therefore, that if Monty was indeed the ripper, his identity was hidden from the boys more by happy accident than design.

Caz
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[Jonathan Hainsworth]

It is an assumption, and a fair one, that Druitt had nightwarden duties at the school.

Perhaps he did and went out, and nobody noticed. Or Mac and Sims are reflecting the scandal of his 'absences' and this the 'serious trouble' that got him dismissed to his face, if such a thing happened.

Or, perhaps Montie was periodically and legitimately absent, or at least late, due to his commitments to another career and county sport (and presumably a social life for a handsome, sporty bachelor).

The overall point is that from the material produced for the public by Macnaghten and Sims, it is unlikely that a grown-up graduate of the school would recognise their tragic Mr. Druitt in the profile of the drowned Doctor and the mostly opaque 'Simon Pure' of the memoirs (the latter shies away from even mentioning the Thames).

Nobody has ever engaged me in debate on this point. That Montague Druitt's true identity was hidden from the boys-men of the school.

Was this by accident or by design?

[Caroline Brown]

I am not arguing that druitt was noticeably absent multiple times.

That's the fictional overlay Macnaghten created both via Sims and his own memoir.

Druitt was only missing once, and was deceased as his brother searched for him.

A graduate would of course know that poor Mr Druitt was a lodger at the school.

Hi Jonathan,

I have not responded because I am still trying to make sense of the above, in terms of Druitt being the ripper.

Where was he living then, when he is meant to have gone out at nights to commit murder? Blackheath or somewhere else? Because if he was a lodger at the school during this time, he must have gone missing on several occasions, not just the once. Are you saying none of those absences were noticed, and therefore played no part in the later suspicions about him? Did he slip out of bed while off duty? Or were his duties daytime only, in addition to his legal work as a barrister? Or did he manage to slip out at night unnoticed, while he was meant to be awake and in charge of the sleeping boys?

Love,

Caz
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[Jonathan Hainsworth]

No response Caz ...?

I'm not surprised.

A new source from 1897 has been discovered (a poor choice of words because it is has been in the public domain since publication) that for the first time ever gives us a potential insight into Montague Druitt's adult personality.

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

I'm sorry I can';t follow what you are arguing here?

I am not arguing that druitt was noticeably absent multiple times.

That's the fictional overlay Macnaghten created both via Sims and his own memoir.

Druitt was only missing once, and was deceased as his brother searched for him.

A graduate would of course know that poor Mr Druitt was a lodger at the school.

Macanghten is anxious to dispose of the novel, 'The Lodger' ,accidentally getting that half-right. eg. Mac asserts that Jack was not a lodger and never 'detained' in an asylum (take that Anderson!)

Instead, Jack lived at home with his own people, by implication his own family.

But ...

Again we can see how Mac and Sims reshape the data according to the spcific audience.

Are the 'his own people' the same 'friends' who are terrified that their pal, the mad doctor, is the fiend because he confessed to his doctors he wanted to rip up East End harlots?

What, so, the reclusive, une,mployed medico lives with his friends?

This kind of tangle exposes the pair somehwat, but nobody was looking hard at the sources then (why should they have?) and so they got away with it.

Unfortunately it creates a legacy of confusion today, where it is seriously argued that Macnaghten was unbelievably incompetent (though not by Evans or Begg, though they came to different provisional conclusions as to why)

[Caroline Brown]

'Pearson's Weekly' , July 24th 1915

From an article by George Sims

'I was able...

...There was no question of the insanity of revenge upon a certain class of women as there was in the case of the mad doctor who lived with his people at Blackheath and who, during his occasional absences from home, committed the crimes which won him world-wide infamy as 'Jack the Ripper'...'

Any mature graduate of the Valentine school who read this article could think, well, what a coincidence--Jack the Ripper lived in Blackheath where I went to school. He was a bit of a recluse, being judged 'mad', but was noticeably absent on the nights of the murders by the people he lived with, presumably his family.

You know, I had a sporty, young teacher at that school in 1888 and he went AWOL and it turned out he had killed himself--and he was judged insane too.

Of course that's where the coincidence ends, as Mr. Druitt lived with us at the school and was a barrister who 'absented' himself only once, poor man...

...And finally 'Blackheath' the only time known in the extant record that Sims so baldly wrote the actual suburb in which the fiend resided (he had alluded to a 'suburb six miles' from Whitechapel in his 1907 article).

If you were a Valentine graduate and you were familiar with several of Sims/Dagonet's writings on the Ripper you would have been struck by yet another coincidence: the fiend lived in the same suburb and, of course, drowned himself in the Thames.

But the differences would have outweighed the similarities to Mr. Druitt and his inexplicable and untimely death in 1888.

Apart from having a different vocation, and age, Mr Druitt lived at the school as a lodger and he killed himself in early Dec. not early Nov. 1888.

It baffles me that so many people actually believe that this obvious shielding of, for example, the grown-up graduates of the Blackheath school must be ... just a happy and convenient side-effect for all concerned due to a police chief's terrible memory, a memory otherwise lauded for its voluminous accuracy (and a police chief who regarded his own school days as the happiest of his entire life).

Just a coincidence ...?

Hi Jonathan,

You seem to be saying here that Druitt's former pupils would have remembered only the one absence, when he left the school for good, and would therefore not have associated their master with anyone who had 'occasional absences from home' which coincided with, or at least included the murder nights. This of course assumes that none of his pupils were ever aware of any such absences, otherwise the similarities would surely have outweighed the differences to the tune of one rather large Indian elephant in the room.

You are only giving us two possibilities here: either Druitt's absences to commit murder in Whitechapel went completely unnoticed and unremarked upon by his former pupils (luckily for whoever did make the awful connection and wanted the boys shielded both from discovering the truth and blabbing it abroad); or there were no such absences, and Sims et al were barking up the wrong Blackheath tree.

So let's assume Sims was fed sound information and Druitt really did absent himself from the school on the murder nights, fortunately without his pupils being any the wiser. Which member(s) of staff do you think knew about these absences and later not only put two and two together, but passed on this incriminating evidence to whoever was charged with cunningly disguising the suicidal Blackheath schoolmaster as a mad Blackheath doctor, to protect the guilty man's family and friends from the shame of it all?

I'm not being funny - clearly if anyone at the school did realise that Druitt had been absent each time a victim was being murdered, that would surely beat the hell out of Farqhi's gossip, the supposed family suspicions, the circular arguments about Druitt being a sexual maniac because that's what the ripper was, and especially the alleged confession to a loose-lipped member of the clergy.

Love,

Caz
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[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Dear Nemo

It's not electronic, so give me a chance to scan it.

[Paul Kearney A.K.A. NEMO]

What is the 1897 article please Jonathon?

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

Based on the discovery of a new primary source from 1897 I believe that I was wrong to think that Sims was excluded by Macnaghten from the truth about 'Dr. Druitt'.

In fact Sims did know it was a deliberate disguise, and was likely in on the ruse.

It had always bothered me that Sims seemed particularly gullible in the 1900's when he was so sharp about the clueless constabulary in 1888 and 1891.

It also seemed impossible that he could miss that Macnaghten, in his memoirs, had pulled the rug out from under his pal about the police close to arresting the 'Mad English Doctor'.

The new source recently discovered by Chris Phillips, 'Anderson's Fairy Tales' by Sims, 1910, also shows cognition on the writer's part that there was more than one version of the so-called 'Home Office Report' and that. in the 'final' one for file, the trio of suspects are in equipoise as to their likelihood of being Jack.

[Edward Stow]

Most disappointing Jonathan.
Where was your prediction?
You're not sulking over your crushed gonads I hope?
Luckily I kept my Nelson Eddies in my Sky Rocket.
Opinion didn't get a good start and never made up the ground.