Proof of Innocence?

[Steve Blomer]

That's when the band assembled at the Market Place (see map) - about 7 o'clock. According to some when discussing Crossmere (whoever he might be), 'about' could mean 7.10. And then clocks were very irregular so maybe 7.15 or 6.45 in the other direction. Is it even worth speculating as to time? Given that time keeping was so haphazard in that period...
Or as times were kept quite accurately due to the age of rail and timetables (and there was a station in Blandford), there was a well established process to communicate times across the nation based from Greenwich.
But this is to digress - do you think the band turned up at the Recreation Ground several hours after the close of play - after the crowd had dispersed?

Good points, but of course missing the point of the difference between light in May and end of August..

Good to see about could mean up to 10 minutes.

[R. J. Palmer]

And isn't it telling that Lechmere keeps being introduced here as a point of comparison.

Excuse me, Ed, but by whom? You and Christer and Mark have injected Lechmere into this thread, and somehow it is "telling" that Lechmere's name keeps being brought up? That's rather self-fulfilling, isn't it?

The only thing it tells me is that there is a fair amount of 'confirmation bias' going on. Since you were already convinced that Lechmere is the guilty party, this data confirms your belief that the Metropolitan Police were incompetent and didn't even bother to check whether Druitt had an alibi for the 1888 murders. One assumption confirms the other assumption, and thus Macnaghten was a wind-bag and we can toss his famous memo in the rubbish bin.

As for me, I'm not there yet.

I would humbly suggest that there is another way of looking at it.

It is curious, but I've had the exact opposite reaction to the Blandford game than Chris Phillips has had. I'm less confident now, not more, that Druitt has an iron-clad alibi. For various reasons, this new revelation has me looking at things from a very different angle.

[Chris Phillips]

It is curious, but I've had the exact opposite reaction to the Blandford game than Chris Phillips has had. I'm less confident now, not more, that Druitt has an iron-clad alibi. For some reason, this new revelation has me looking at things from a very different angle.

Not that what Chris Phillips thinks about anything is of any particular importance, but I certainly don't think this is an alibi. I simply think that if Druitt was in Dorset the day before and the day after, he was very likely in Dorset of the day of the murder of Polly Nichols.

[Gary Barnett]

That's when the band assembled at the Market Place (see map) - about 7 o'clock. According to some when discussing Crossmere (whoever he might be), 'about' could mean 7.10. And then clocks were very irregular so maybe 7.15 or 6.45 in the other direction. Is it even worth speculating as to time? Given that time keeping was so haphazard in that period...
Or as times were kept quite accurately due to the age of rail and timetables (and there was a station in Blandford), there was a well established process to communicate times across the nation based from Greenwich.
But this is to digress - do you think the band turned up at the Recreation Ground several hours after the close of play - after the crowd had dispersed?

7.00 was actually when the band left the market place. It sounds as if it was a gala day to celebrate the opening of the recreation ground. Who knows what was on the program to entertain the crowd at the ‘Rec.’

It was you who speculated as to time, claiming that the match had finished a 7.00.

[R. J. Palmer]

Also, the journey from Bournemouth to London Waterloo took a little over four hours. After that, anyone wanting to reach Whitechapel would have an additional 54-minute walk, so this journey would take around 5 hours in total. Of course, by the time the game of cricket wound up, he may not have been able to get to London in time to commit a murder as these games can go on well into the evening!

A couple of small observations about Joanna's initial post--possibly relevant, possibly not.

Druitt had money. There is no reason to think he would need to walk the 54 minutes from Waterloo to the East End. Where there are trains arriving, there are cabs, and one could take a cab to Aldgate at all hours, if they were so inclined. So I think we can shave off most of these 54 minutes.

I suspect that some of the other objections are valid, but more research is needed. In 1888 there was an express from Bournemouth to Waterloo that was advertised as being two-and-a-half hours, not four. I don't know whether this express was available in the evening-- I suspect that it was only a morning train, but it would come into play on the 'return' end of things, and shave off time. It hasn't been easy to find specific details, so again, more research would be needed.

I think this is relevant because it might make the psychological barrier of rushing off to London for a dirty overnighter less daunting.

[Michael Banks]

Blandford Weekly News 5th May 1888

Mention of cold wind but no mention of rain. Other things like lawn-tennis was going on so it appears that it wasn’t just cricket on the agenda. So whatever time the game started there’s no getting away from the fact that a combined score of 87 runs would have constituted an exceedingly short game. No player would have been compelled to hang around after the match until the band arrived at 7.00.

[Phil Kellingley]

It's amazing that nobody seems to have noticed that, in order to get to the South coast railway line e.g. Bournemouth to London, Druitt would have had to taken the train from Blandford to Wimborne. That's Wimborne, the family home. The simple, and blindingly obvious, action for Druitt would be to go from Blandford to Wimborne, get off and go home. He could then spend the following day with the family and on the day after take a short journey to Canford.

The alternative - make a journey to London (by some route or other), across London and to Blackheath, spend the day there, pop out in the wee small hours of the following morning into an area he was not known to be familiar with, kill a passing unfortunate/prostitute, somehow cleanse any blood from hands and/or clothing, retrieve his cricket gear from somewhere, go back to Waterloo station and then journey to Blandford. Just to emphasize - he would not have gone to his chambers as they were offices not residential and he lived at Blackheath. It also means he would have had to dump and retrieve his cricket gear somewhere in London as there wouldn't be time to kill, return to Blackheath, get his gear and return to London to catch a train towards Canford

In the 14th century a chap called Friar William of Ockham created what is known as Occam's Razor: When faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest is likely the correct one. That Druitt stayed at home with family is by far a simpler explanation than any other.

[Phil Kellingley]

In 1888 there was an express from Bournemouth to Waterloo that was advertised as being two-and-a-half hours, not four. I don't know whether this express was available in the evening-- I suspect that it was only a morning train, but it would come into play on the 'return' end of things, and shave off time. It hasn't been easy to find specific details, so again, more research would be needed.

I suspect the train you are refering to was "The Royal Wessex". This left Bournemouth in the morning to London and returned in the late afternoon. It was a pullman train, so the tickets would be more expensive than First Class - unlikely expenditure for Druitt to make even if being paid to play cricket.

[R. J. Palmer]

Not that what Chris Phillips thinks about anything is of any particular importance, but I certainly don't think this is an alibi. I simply think that if Druitt was in Dorset the day before and the day after, he was very likely in Dorset of the day of the murder of Polly Nichols.

It is an entirely reasonable conclusion, and it aligns with what Phil Sugden concluded years ago, and, like many others, I found Sugden's arguments generally persuasive. Druitt had spent his summer down in Dorset and thus was very likely to have had an alibi for the Tabram and Nichols murders.

It is entirely reasonable.

But Sugden's assumption was that Druitt was someone who would have behaved normally. No normal person who is staying down in Dorset and is playing cricket on August 30th and again on September 1st is going to inconveniently rush off to London within the small window available to him. And the idea that he would do it just to murder a woman in Buck's Row is difficult to fathom. All things considered, the odds are very much against it.

And Simon wonders why someone would go from Blandford to Canford via London, especially since he has plenty of local accommodations.

It's a fair question, and the sensible answer is that he wouldn't.

But I'm at a slight advantage, perhaps--or maybe a disadvantage depending on how this turns out---because I knew of a 30-year-old who did such things. Why? Because he was a sex and drug addict and though he tried, he couldn't resist the lure of the Big City and would disappear for a day or two at a time despite the wild inconvenience of it.

He was making late-night roundtrips of 250 miles, crawling back to town as the sun rose and returning to work with no one the wiser. It eventually caught up with him and he died from AIDS and it was only then that we learned of his secret wanderings. And this fellow (a coworker of mine) only had about a 12 hour window to make these extraordinary trips---it looks like Druitt could have had as much as 40 hours.

So I've actually been slightly exposed to this sort of behavior, so it doesn't strike me as implausible as it does most.

If Druitt was up to similar shenanigans, it doesn't even mean that he was the murderer. He could have bopped off to London to indulge in any number of bad habits, having grown bored with Dorset.

[Phil Kellingley]

And I’m sorry Simon but I’d say it’s long past time that you stopped believing in fairy story conspiracies about moustache twiddling Victorian police villains and considered reality.

Im past tired of this nonsense.

YES! You just made it into the morning with your April Fool message! Well done.

[Chris Phillips]

It's amazing that nobody seems to have noticed that, in order to get to the South coast railway line e.g. Bournemouth to London, Druitt would have had to taken the train from Blandford to Wimborne. That's Wimborne, the family home. The simple, and blindingly obvious, action for Druitt would be to go from Blandford to Wimborne, get off and go home. He could then spend the following day with the family and on the day after take a short journey to Canford.

The alternative - make a journey to London (by some route or other), across London and to Blackheath, spend the day there, pop out in the wee small hours of the following morning into an area he was not known to be familiar with, kill a passing unfortunate/prostitute, somehow cleanse any blood from hands and/or clothing, retrieve his cricket gear from somewhere, go back to Waterloo station and then journey to Blandford. Just to emphasize - he would not have gone to his chambers as they were offices not residential and he lived at Blackheath. It also means he would have had to dump and retrieve his cricket gear somewhere in London as there wouldn't be time to kill, return to Blackheath, get his gear and return to London to catch a train towards Canford

In the 14th century a chap called Friar William of Ockham created what is known as Occam's Razor: When faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest is likely the correct one. That Druitt stayed at home with family is by far a simpler explanation than any other.

That's very much my view. Occam's Razor tells us that the most parsimonious - and therefore most likely - interpretation is that if Druitt was in Dorset on 30 August and 1 September, then he was in Dorset on 31 August too. The counter-argument is that it's still possible that he could have been in London. But probability it important as well. That's why this discovery is important. I really don't think it can be dismissed just because it doesn't provide Druitt with an alibi.

[R. J. Palmer]

I suspect the train you are refering to was "The Royal Wessex". This left Bournemouth in the morning to London and returned in the late afternoon. It was a pullman train, so the tickets would be more expensive than First Class - unlikely expenditure for Druitt to make even if being paid to play cricket.

Again, you're assuming he's behaving normally.

But he's not going back and forth from London to play cricket. He's stationed in Dorset for the summer, and he has cash. After four years in Oxford and several more in London, this provincial backwater life might be slowly driving him bonkers. He has bad habits and though he's tried, he's finding these clergymen and gentleman farmers boring beyond belief. He's seeing visions of bare legs and opium pipes and roulette wheels instead of wickets and so he starts to do the math...

(That's my imitation of Robbie Coltrane from Cracker)

The question is whether he was enough of an addict or if he was so psychologically unhinged that he would be willing to go on a dirty overnighter to London.

He's thirty and single--he could be up to all sorts of mischief.

I must have led a wilder life than most Ripperological theorists, because thinking back, doing a 40-hour whirlwind trip to the Big City doesn't strike me as particularly strange. Burning the candle at both ends and in the middle is a vice of many youngish people have, but I've been expose to a lot of weirdos in my life. I suppose this behavior must seem unfathomable to most.

[Chris Phillips]

It is an entirely reasonable conclusion, and it aligns with what Phil Sugden concluded years ago, and, like many others, I found Sugden's arguments generally persuasive. Druitt had spent his summer down in Dorset and thus was very likely to have had an alibi for the Tabram and Nichols murders.

It is entirely reasonable.

But Sugden's assumption was that Druitt was someone who would have behaved normally. No normal person who is staying down in Dorset and is playing cricket on August 30th and again on September 1st is going to inconveniently rush off to London within the small window available to him. And the idea that he would do it just to murder a woman in Buck's Row is difficult to fathom. All things considered, the odds are very much against it.

And Simon wonders why someone would go from Blandford to Canford via London, especially since he has plenty of local accommodations.

It's a fair question, and the sensible answer is that he wouldn't.

But I'm at a slight advantage, perhaps--or maybe a disadvantage depending on how this turns out---because I knew of a 30-year-old who did such things. Why? Because he was a sex and drug addict and though he tried, he couldn't resist the lure of the Big City and would disappear for a day or two at a time despite the wild inconvenience of it.

He was making late-night roundtrips of 250 miles, crawling back to town as the sun rose and returning to work with no one the wiser. It eventually caught up with him and he died from AIDS and it was only then that we learned of his secret wanderings. And this fellow (a coworker of mine) only had about a 12 hour window to make these extraordinary trips---it looks like Druitt could have had as much as 40 hours.

So I've actually been slightly exposed to this sort of behavior, so it doesn't strike me as implausible as it does most.

If Druitt was up to similar shenanigans, it doesn't even mean that he was the murderer. He could have bopped off to London to indulge in any number of bad habits, having grown bored with Dorset.

I don't say it's implausible. I just think it's unlikely. When it comes down to it, we're talking about unusual behaviour, aren't we? Which by definition is unlikely.

[Michael Banks]

The start time for the match is of great significance. Those who favour Druitt want an early time and we see spurious claims that because modern games start in the morning, then surely this match must have had a morning start - whereas all the contemporary evidence seems to point to an afternoon start - but we shall see.

Why is that we fall into this kind of ‘supporters camp’ mentality? I personally favour him of the named suspects, that’s all. Which is about as mild as you can get compared to your massively over-confident belief that Lechmere was the killer. The killer is likeliest to have been an unknown. So why are you we obsessed with trying to put labels on people? Let’s be frank, we all know why. It’s because those who certainly do have suspects to promote and who are quite prepared to go to ridiculous lengths to promote them are keen to deflect from their own blatant bias. By unfairly labelling someone a ‘Druittist’ you give yourself licence to call every opinion or assessment or interpretation ‘spurious’ and to dismiss it as the result of bias. The subject of Jack the Ripper or Montague John Druitt isn’t remotely important enough for me to waste time manipulating false alibis. So I don’t want any evidence to say anything and it might be beneficial if you recallibrate your ‘bias radar’ and perhaps try pointing it back at yourself. I’ve made no ‘spurious’ claims, I’ve just stated what time modern games tend to begin but I didn’t play much cricket in the 1880’s so I’ve made no claim to know anything for a fact. It was a suggestion and no more. My estimation of the length of time that it took to score 87 runs is very reasonable I think. What I do know for a fact is that any evidence we have so far does not eliminate Druitt (as Steve Blomer and others have said) The reality is Ed that it’s yourself and certain others with a real and obvious wish for Druitt to be eliminated who are making the exaggerated claims. I couldn’t care less if Druitt was eliminated but I get the impression that for some it would be the culmination of a lifetime of longing and heartache which would probably result in a some kind of themed ‘Goodbye Monty’ party. I wouldn’t lose a second of sleep over it. But I tend to prefer facts. And the facts don’t eliminate him or even come close to eliminating him. If those facts surface then I guarantee that I’ll be one of the first in line to accept it and to move on. But I rather think that wouldn’t be the case if someone discovered that Lechmere wasn’t in London for one of the murders. Then we’d really see some ‘creative’ interpretations.

This subject isn’t important enough to ignore the facts in favour of blatant wish-thinking.

[Gary Barnett]

It's amazing that nobody seems to have noticed that, in order to get to the South coast railway line e.g. Bournemouth to London, Druitt would have had to taken the train from Blandford to Wimborne. That's Wimborne, the family home. The simple, and blindingly obvious, action for Druitt would be to go from Blandford to Wimborne, get off and go home. He could then spend the following day with the family and on the day after take a short journey to Canford.

The alternative - make a journey to London (by some route or other), across London and to Blackheath, spend the day there, pop out in the wee small hours of the following morning into an area he was not known to be familiar with, kill a passing unfortunate/prostitute, somehow cleanse any blood from hands and/or clothing, retrieve his cricket gear from somewhere, go back to Waterloo station and then journey to Blandford. Just to emphasize - he would not have gone to his chambers as they were offices not residential and he lived at Blackheath. It also means he would have had to dump and retrieve his cricket gear somewhere in London as there wouldn't be time to kill, return to Blackheath, get his gear and return to London to catch a train towards Canford

In the 14th century a chap called Friar William of Ockham created what is known as Occam's Razor: When faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest is likely the correct one. That Druitt stayed at home with family is by far a simpler explanation than any other.

See post 3.