Proof of Innocence?

[R. J. Palmer]

PS. In a sense, the defense for Druitt is doing what it always does, accepts that he could have been an exception to the rule. In this case, as we will both acknowledge, people who travel long distances to visit an area for three days are less likely than not to yo-yo back to the starting point on day two. But yes, there are exceptions.

You're starting from a false assumption. Your comment makes this clear.

Druitt is NOT "yo-yoing" back and forth between London and Dorst for three days at a time to play cricket. If he was, your objection would be reasonable.

In reality, he is living down in Dorset for the summer. A careful study of his movements from 1880-1888 shows this was his summer habit. He does it every year. He's there for six or eight weeks at a time.

Either people haven't studied this adequately for themselves, or they don't believe me.

So the idea that he may be drawn back to London during a long stay in Dorset is not an implausible one. As I stated earlier, 6-8 weeks is a long time to put your regular life on ice.

London was where he lived nearly 11 months of the year for the past 8 years. That's where his friends, his complications, his jobs, etc. are. Why do you find it bizarre that he might return home while temporarily living in Dorset?

If we can give Druitt an alibi, so be it. Great. But if you've studied enough 'cold cases,' and I assume you've done your share, you'll know that bogus alibis happen. People are wrongly eliminated based on assumptions.

Let's not do it here.

[Michael Banks]

You're starting from a false assumption. Your comment makes this clear.

Druitt is NOT "yo-yoing" back and forth between London and Dorst for three days at a time to play cricket. If he was, your objection would be reasonable.

In reality, he is living down in Dorset for the summer. A careful study of his movements from 1880-1888 shows this was his summer habit. He does it every year. He's there for six or eight weeks at a time.

Either people haven't studied this adequately for themselves, or they don't believe me.

So the idea that he may be drawn back to London during a long stay in Dorset is not an implausible one. As I stated earlier, 6-8 weeks is a long time to put your regular life on ice.

London was where he lived nearly 11 months of the year for the past 8 years. That's where his friends, his complications, his jobs, etc. are. Why do you find it bizarre that he might return home while temporarily living in Dorset?

If we can give Druitt an alibi, so be it. Great. But if you've studied enough 'cold cases,' and I assume you've done your share, you'll know that bogus alibis happen. People are wrongly eliminated based on assumptions.

Let's not do it here.

So my suggestion that Druitt might have been down there for 3-4 days was entirely unreasonable considering the long periods he was known to have spent down there during summers? Cheers Roger, I wasn’t ‘pushing it’ after all.

[Christer Holmgren]

You're starting from a false assumption. Your comment makes this clear.

Druitt is NOT "yo-yoing" back and forth between London and Dorst for three days at a time to play cricket. If he was, your objection would be reasonable.

In reality, he is living down in Dorset for the summer. A careful study of his movements from 1880-1888 shows this was his summer habit. He does it every year. He's there for six or eight weeks at a time.

Either people haven't studied this adequately for themselves, or they don't believe me.

So the idea that he may be drawn back to London during a long stay in Dorset is not an implausible one. As I stated earlier, 6-8 weeks is a long time to put your regular life on ice.

London was where he lived nearly 11 months of the year for the past 8 years. That's where his friends, his complications, his jobs, etc. are. Why do you find it bizarre that he might return home while temporarily living in Dorset?

If we can give Druitt an alibi, so be it. Great. But if you've studied enough 'cold cases,' and I assume you've done your share, you'll know that bogus alibis happen. People are wrongly eliminated based on assumptions.

Let's not do it here.

You really should not speak of false assumptions of my behalf if you are going to claim that I find it "bizarre" if Druitt made a return journey to London from Dorset. What I said was that I find the suggestion that he did less LIKELY than not. Not that the suggestion is bizarre.

Ergo, my saying that I find the suggestion that he went to London overnight the less likely alternative does in no way whatsoever entail me ruling it out. That is built into the phrasing "less likely". It means possible, but not as possible as the alternative/s, nothing else.

On the geographical scale, I can amend my earlier, seven hour based scenario. The five hour timing instead has me fishing for salmon in the Tyne, having driven from London to Newcastle. And the flight London - New York is replaced by the London - Jerusalem option. These are example of where five hours of travelling takes us with todays travelling means.

Lets hope it was an important meeting Druitt was called to. And let´s hope that he was able before hand to establish that a game of cricket would not get in the way of his aspirations to reach the last train.

[Gary Barnett]

wow thats quite a photo! now im intrigued what you posted before lol!

It’s dated to 1890 and was taken in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. It’s possible the 1915 trip I referenced was in a motorised charabanc.

[R. J. Palmer]

You really should not speak of false assumptions of my behalf if you are going to claim that I find it "bizarre" if Druitt made a return journey to London from Dorset..

This is tedious, Christer. Let's skip it. Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Your assumption was that MJD was stationed in London in August and visited Dorset for three days. That's what you wrote.

I assume you can now appreciate that is less unusual for a man who is living in Dorset for several weeks to make a day trip on any given day compared to a man on a three-day vacation to return home on day two?

That's the point, and it is an important distinction if we are going to look at this rationally.

I find it interesting that Philip was arguing the unlikeliness of Druitt taking a whirlwind trip to London on the assumption Druitt was living down there and you are arguing the unlikeliness of it on the assumption that he wasn't.

[Michael Banks]

You really should not speak of false assumptions of my behalf if you are going to claim that I find it "bizarre" if Druitt made a return journey to London from Dorset. What I said was that I find the suggestion that he did less LIKELY than not. Not that the suggestion is bizarre.

Ergo, my saying that I find the suggestion that he went to London overnight the less likely alternative does in no way whatsoever entail me ruling it out. That is built into the phrasing "less likely". It means possible, but not as possible as the alternative/s, nothing else.

On the geographical scale, I can amend my earlier, seven hour based scenario. The five hour timing instead has me fishing for salmon in the Tyne, having driven from London to Newcastle. And the flight London - New York is replaced by the London - Jerusalem option. These are example of where five hours of travelling takes us with todays travelling means.

Lets hope it was an important meeting Druitt was called to. And let´s hope that he was able before hand to establish that a game of cricket would not get in the way of his aspirations to reach the last train.

Why would he need to reach the last train to arrive at a meeting? The meeting is only a suggestion of course and so as a suggestion why couldn’t the meeting have been at such a time that would have allowed him to catch the early morning train? So if the game finished early he could have decided to catch the 4.45 knowing that if it finished too late for that he could have travelled the next morning.

[R. J. Palmer]

Here you go, Christer. I am surprised that no one else has bothered to post it yet.

The following is from the famous Acton, Chiswick, and Turnham Green Gazette account of Druitt's inquest (January 5, 1889).


“William H. Druitt said he lived at Bournemouth, and that he was a solicitor. The deceased was his brother, who was 31 last birthday. He was a barrister-at-law, and an assistant master in a school at Blackheath. He had stayed with witness at Bournemouth for a night towards the end of October."

'For a night.'

So there you have it. Druitt was willing to go from London to Bournemouth and back, staying only one night. (I suspect this trip was in relation to the electoral rolls case).

So we do indeed have precedent for believing MJD would have been willing to take this supposedly excruciating trip for one day only. The express would have made it relatively painless, though not inconvenient.

If he was willing do it in October going north to south, he could have been willing to do it in August going south to north.

What we have yet to find is any conclusive evidence whether it would have been possible or not, and that depends on a couple of factors not yet proven.

[Caroline Brown]

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.

Hi Michael,

It also appears that the band was there to keep the crowd entertained and to attract more people after the other events had finished for the evening, and this was hoped to become a regular feature over the summer. That would suggest the band's arrival time - 7pm - was planned with the full expectation that the cricket would be over for the day by then.

Love,

Caz
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[Gary Barnett]

Hi Michael,

It also appears that the band was there to keep the crowd entertained and to attract more people after the other events had finished for the evening, and this was hoped to become a regular feature over the summer. That would suggest the band's arrival time - 7pm - was planned with the full expectation that the cricket would be over for the day by then.

Love,

Caz
X

And you wouldn’t expect the cricket crowd to hang about for too long after the match finished, so maybe we have evidence that suggests the match was scheduled to finish shortly before 7.00?

[Christer Holmgren]

This is tedious, Christer. Let's skip it. Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Your assumption was that MJD was stationed in London in August and visited Dorset for three days. That's what you wrote.

I assume you can now appreciate that is less unusual for a man who is living in Dorset for several weeks to make a day trip on any given day compared to a man on a three-day vacation to return home on day two?

That's the point, and it is an important distinction if we are going to look at this rationally.

I find it interesting that Philip was arguing the unlikeliness of Druitt taking a whirlwind trip to London on the assumption Druitt was living down there and you are arguing the unlikeliness of it on the assumption that he wasn't.

No, I am not arguing for the sake of arguing. I make my own decisions about what I find important to bring up, I never leave that choice to others and for good reasons.

I was not aware that Druitt spent many weeks in a row in Dorset on a reoccuring basis, that is true. Does it make it likelier that he would go off to London on any given day than it would be if he had only been in Dorset for a few days? Perhaps so - to a degree.

Then again, it would require that he left for London every second day in those weeks for it to become a case of it being just as likely that he did as it is that he did not on the 30:th.

Every summer, I visit the small island of Hallands Väderö, off the coast some fifteen miles to the north of where I live. I stay with my brother in law on these occasions; he is a member of a 100+ year old club owning one of the very few houses out there, a house that can sleep twenty or so guests. There are guest books out there, covering the century of that club, starting out in 1913.

In that era, the members of the club, all of them important men from the mainland nearby, made the boat trip out to the island and the club house in the summer and then they stayed on for many weeks out there. The families were left behind at their respective homes; women were not allowed in the club. There was a chambermaid and a cook out on the island, providing service and sharing a room.

The books make it very clear that the club members did not go home once they had arrived. As a rule, they stayed put, some for perhaps three or four weeks, others for eight or nine. The boat trip to the mainland took half an hour, and all of the members had their homes in nearby Ängelholm or Helsingborg, a one or two hour trip or so from the ferry. Every now and then, the Swedish king payed them a visit, with the intent to hunt for rabbits. There is a large oak under which the king was seated while young boys from the mainland spent a day trying to get the rabbits to pass by the oak so that the king could shoot them.

These were lawyers, business men, medicos and so on. Many of them would have been important figures in their respective lines of business.

I think this was the way of life back then, much more than today, when transport has increased a lot, facilitating for people to get to their offices for a meeting or something such. In 1888, I believe that was much less common, although I am perfectly sure it was not unheard of.

I am trying, as best as I can, to make sense of all this, and my conclusion remains that I find it unlikely that Druitt would have left Dorset for London on the 30:th. To me, that makes a lot more sense than the opposite - which I at any rate do not regard as "bizarre". The cricket games, fenceposting that suggested London trip, makes my call a lot easier to make, since I think it would be odd if Druitt would take part in a cricket game on a day when he knew he had to get to London. Reasonably, he could not predict how long that game would be.

[Christer Holmgren]

Here you go, Christer. I am surprised that no one else has bothered to post it yet.

The following is from the famous Acton, Chiswick, and Turnham Green Gazette account of Druitt's inquest (January 5, 1889).


“William H. Druitt said he lived at Bournemouth, and that he was a solicitor. The deceased was his brother, who was 31 last birthday. He was a barrister-at-law, and an assistant master in a school at Blackheath. He had stayed with witness at Bournemouth for a night towards the end of October."

'For a night.'

So there you have it. Druitt was willing to go from London to Bournemouth and back, staying only one night. (I suspect this trip was in relation to the electoral rolls case).

So we do indeed have precedent for believing MJD would have been willing to take this supposedly excruciating trip for one day only. The express would have made it relatively painless, though not inconvenient.

If he was willing do it in October going north to south, he could have been willing to do it in August going south to north.

What we have yet to find is any conclusive evidence whether it would have been possible or not, and that depends on a couple of factors not yet proven.

You will probably say that I am arguing for arguments sake again, but the quote does actually not say that he went to Bournemouth for a day only. It says that he "stayed with witness at Bournemouth for a night". What it does not say is where he stayed the adjoining nights. There is nothing to preclude that he stayed somewhere else in Bournemouth on those days. Or he could have been travelling through Bournemouth on his way to some other meeting.

That is not to say that I do not think that he DID go down for a day only. I sounds perfectly feasible.

But how does that change that it would not have been the norm that such endeavours were undertaken? Why would I change my take that I find it less likely that Monty went to London on the 30:th? Between cricket games he could not predict the length of?

[Christer Holmgren]

Why would he need to reach the last train to arrive at a meeting? The meeting is only a suggestion of course and so as a suggestion why couldn’t the meeting have been at such a time that would have allowed him to catch the early morning train? So if the game finished early he could have decided to catch the 4.45 knowing that if it finished too late for that he could have travelled the next morning.

That is another possibility, admittedly. Do we know at which time he would have arrived in London in such a case?

[Caroline Brown]

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.

Yes, it's a simpler explanation, and in any other circumstances most likely the correct one.

I'd say the same if I was arguing from the position of presuming Druitt wasn't addicted to the murder and mutilation of vulnerable women.

Now turn this round and imagine a scenario in which an innocent young Monty has been invited up to the West End by a woman he is infatuated with - or a man if you prefer. Actually, a man might work better, as his opportunities in 1888 for such a liaison will be more limited.

Would Occam's Razor dictate that your flesh and blood Monty, on a promise like this, would be far likelier to stay at home with his family between cricket matches, because of the faff involved in taking up the invitation and sorting out the travel arrangements?

The argument either way is going to be circular, because if Monty was JtR, then the urge to take advantage of the anonymity of Whitechapel was obviously more powerful on the murder nights than anything else he could have chosen to do instead. And if he wasn't JtR, then all his urges were of a different nature - but still unknowable and potentially just as strong.

Love,

Caz
X

[Gary Barnett]

Bloody Occam - what a spoilsport he is!

If you follow his advice, no one could have committed the WM.

[Caroline Brown]

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 had not read this, RJ, when I posted my last one, but this makes sense to me as an argument for not totally dismissing Druitt. Someone, somewhere, once had reason to suspect he had been living a secret life of vice, whether they were right or wrong about the vice, or only imagined he had one.

JtR was a man with the worst secrets anyone could imagine, and he succeeded in taking them to the grave with him, because nobody has ever produced convincing evidence against any individual, named or not.

Love,

Caz
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