A Criminal Romance

[Rob Clack]

I must really terrify you Tom. Is it because I think Le Grand is a crap suspect? And that will damage sales of your upcoming fiction book about him?

Rob

[Tom_Wescott]

If Ostrog really was LeGrand, and Kosminski really was Cohen, then who really was Druitt?

I don't know, but I'm beginning to suspect that this 'Rob Clark' Hainsworth writes about is really Rob Clack. The question is, why would Hainsworth want to throw us off like that?

Someone else who likes to put words in my mouth! Perhaps you can point out where I said Macnaghten was lazy and incompetent?

My source is a newspaper interview with Albert Bachert. Sorry, but I only have the text. Can't remember the paper it was in because my files were stolen from the train...

'Albert Buckshot (sic) told a pressman today that while strolling around London today, he saw a suspicious looking mob armed with what appeared to be weapons disguised as cameras. The men spoke of doing a 'job' and the apparent leader, dubbed 'Bald Man' by other press sources, was heard to say 'That Macnaghten was lazy and incompetent. That Wescott is right on all counts and Hainsworth only 'thought he knew'.'

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Debra

One theory is that the names might be checked by a Liberal Home Office..

I think that Macnaghten lived in fear of the Druitt tale spilling out of Dorset, again, as it had done in 1891 and 1892 -- but had not gained tabloid traction (the second time it was to debunk the tale -- though it named Farquharson).

Mac believed that Druitt was the Ripper, but the tale carried with it great embarrassment for the Yard, and potentially for the Tory Opposition.

Macnaghten thus needed supporting suspects who would be plausible, and real people if checked, but sufficiently altered, eg. fictionalsied, that their own familes and pals would not recognise them if their profiles were described in the Commons.

The official version of Mac's 'Report' is pinched, austere, and contingent ('said to be ...') but it was never sent. It was totally unknown, and had no impact on anyone or anything, until 1966 and Robin Odell's 'JTR in Fact and Fiction'.

Whereas the version the cronies were exposed to ('Aberconway') is effusive, chatty, flamboyant, with delcious scoops (a cop may have seen a suspect with a victim! That sailor really was a harlot killer -- maybe twice!) and spearheaded by the greatest scoop of all: a Henry Jekyll figure was the likely murderer. He confessed in deed by the [alleged] timing of his suicide.

Mac changed every detail of the 1891 M.P. story except that last one -- the self-murder on the night of the last murder -- because, arguably, he knew it was not true and thus he did not need to alter that fact into fiction because it was already fiction.

[Debra Arif]

To Debra

I don't agree.

Here is the semi-fictionalised Ostrog in Griffiths, 1898:

'The second possible criminal was a Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict both in England and Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least, his whereabouts were never exactly known.'

When you measure that against the real Ostrog, and that his 'whereabouts' were eventually known before Griffiths was briefed, the real criminal has been rendered unrecognisable.

For one thing, that Ostrog was -- essentially -- a confidence man and thief has been totally concealed.

Hi Jonathon,
Yes, I agree, Macnaghten has sexed up the details of Ostrog. he has become an actual mad Russian doctor, carrying around surgical knives, rather than the fraudulent doctor he really was.
In reality he was a mad Russian confidence trickster who was in the habit of nicking microscopes (and maybe even carrying them around in his pockets, who knows)
Why Macnaghten did this is strange and I don't quite understand it, but what I'm saying really is that I'm NOT willing to accept that Macnaghten actually wrote these details about Ostrog but meant Charles Le Grand, also a confidence trickster not a doctor.

[Debra Arif]

Why didn't Macnaghten just give his three disguised suspects fictional names I wonder?

[Rob Clack]

An alleged doctor with a mania who disappeared in 1887, who clearly did nothing between then and 1894 to draw suspicion on himself, and you think that's enough to make him a legitimate top 3 suspect in 1894? Seriously? You actually think Macnaghten was being sincere here?

Disappeared in March 1888. And who said he was a top 3 suspect? Macnaghten didn't. And we need to answer why he was considered a dangerous man and those weren't Macnaghten's words.

The question is, was Macnaghten lazy and incompetent, as Debs and Rob state, or were there ulterior motives in the production of the Macnaghten Memoranda? This is the sole significance of Ostrog to our investigations.

Someone else who likes to put words in my mouth! Perhaps you can point out where I said Macnaghten was lazy and incompetent? In my opinion I believe Ostrog was in the Whitechapel Files (other than the Macnaghten Memoranda), probably in the now missing suspect files.

Probably easier if I stopped posting and then people can't make things up as they go along about what I am suppose to have said.

Rob

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

The other thing to consider is that belief in Druitt as the fiend -- rightly or wrongly -- pre-dates the official version of the 1894 'Home Office Report' in the 1891 'West of England' MP titbit, repeated in 1892 by fellow Tory MP James McKenzie MacLean (with the ur-source, Farquharson, actually named).

Ostrog, as a Ripper suspect, has no existence in the surviving extant record independent of Macnaghten, and Mac sources-by-proxy.

Obviously 'Kosminski' does exist in sources independent of Macnaghten but not before the Mac Report(s). This maybe because, inevitably, documents have not survived or that 'Kosminski' originates entirely with Mac, and was passed onto Anderson and/or Swanson. Anderson, and perhaps Swanson, first speak of this suspect -- arguabaly -- in 1895.

[Maria Birbili]

If Ostrog really was LeGrand, and Kosminski really was Cohen, then who really was Druitt?

Frederick Bowley?

Though Jonathan Hainsworth has a point with Dr. T and Dr. D (and Dr. Dre).

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Roy

Druitt stands in for Tumblety; [allegedly] both middle-aged medicos who took their own lives.

A diabolical argument has been put to me that Macnaghten elevated three exonerated people, or at least dodgy fellows who were on the fringes of the Ripper investigation, and remade their profiles to create the more plausible figures -- as Ripper suspects -- who eventually were disseminated to the public via credulous cronies.

In 1913, Jack Littlechild partially saw through this fiction.

[Roy Corduroy]

If Ostrog really was LeGrand, and Kosminski really was Cohen, then who really was Druitt?

Roy

[Maria Birbili]

Is six years considered 'briefly'?

Should have written “temporarily“. Don't know how long Ostrog might have been a suspect between 1888 and 1894. Something very much tells me that after May 1891 (i.e., after communicating with Banstead) Macnaghten might have been on to Ostrog not being a murderer. I'm trying to get my hands on evidence to prove this.

It seems you think that appearing in this gazette makes you a Ripper suspect. You should hunt done the various gazettes within this six year period and chase down each man who is in them.

How many men who were featured in the London Police Gazette got attached a “Special attention is called to this dangerous man“ in their notice?

The question is, was Macnaghten lazy and incompetent, as Debs and Rob state, or were there ulterior motives in the production of the Macnaghten Memoranda? This is the sole significance of Ostrog to our investigations.

Not sure that Rob thinks Macnaghten was lazy and incompetent, but agree with you on the rest. There's no question about ulterior motives in the production of the Macnaghten Memoranda, and what I've been wondering about is this: If Macnaghten didn't simply mix up Ostrog's MO with Le Grand's, but was pushing Ostrog to hide another suspect (Le Grand), isn't it funny that he STILL used an MO pertaining to the other suspect, ending up practically revealing the other suspect (at least to us)?

And Tom, maybe if you stopped with the cranky and looked up what I put you in my email?

[Tom_Wescott]

The question is, was Macnaghten lazy and incompetent, as Debs and Rob state, or were there ulterior motives in the production of the Macnaghten Memoranda? This is the sole significance of Ostrog to our investigations.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Personally I see the London Police Gazette notice as a hint that he might have briefly been a Ripper suspect from 1888 to 1894.

Is six years considered 'briefly'? It seems you think that appearing in this gazette makes you a Ripper suspect. You should hunt done the various gazettes within this six year period and chase down each man who is in them.

He was released from an asylum in 87, where he was described as suffering from 'Mania',and failed to report thereafter, so not the same as run of the mill,boring old Le Grand and his criminal contemporary's and their failing to report.
Ostrog's prison record states plainly that he was a Russian surgeon, so no guess work on the part of Macnaghten there.

An alleged doctor with a mania who disappeared in 1887, who clearly did nothing between then and 1894 to draw suspicion on himself, and you think that's enough to make him a legitimate top 3 suspect in 1894? Seriously? You actually think Macnaghten was being sincere here?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan Hainsworth]

To Debra

I don't agree.

Here is the semi-fictionalised Ostrog in Griffiths, 1898:

'The second possible criminal was a Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict both in England and Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least, his whereabouts were never exactly known.'

When you measure that against the real Ostrog, and that his 'whereabouts' were eventually known before Griffiths was briefed, the real criminal has been rendered unrecognisable.

For one thing, that Ostrog was -- essentially -- a confidence man and thief has been totally concealed.

Here is Ostrog in Sims, 1907:

'The second man was a Russian doctor, a man of vile character, who had been in various prisons in his own country and ours. The Russian doctor who at the time of the murders was in Whitechapel, but in hiding as it afterwards transpired, was in the habit of carrying surgical knives about with him. He suffered from a dangerous form of insanity, and when inquiries were afterwards set on foot he was found to be in a criminal lunatic asylum abroad. He was a vile and terrible person, capable of any atrocity.'

The impression given in these sources is that the un-named Druitt was a middle-aged doctor (he was neither), that the un-named 'Kosminski' (based on Aaron Kosminski) was incarcerated very soon after the Kelly murder (well, no, not really) and that the un-named Ostrog was also a professional and accredited doctor -- though from the wilds of Russia so well below the standards of a trained, English physician -- when there is no evidence that he was a medical man in the sense that Griffiths and Sims have used the appellation.

Ostrog was a thief, who did not carry surgical knives and was not habitually cruel to women, and was not a homicidal maniac. These are all cheap gimmicks added to the profile to make it plausible to the two writer-cronies.

The reason Macnaghten seems to have no up-dated information on Cutbush is because it suited his purposes, so he judged, not to use up-dated information.

That's not odd of a cheeky, ruling class smoothie whose criteria is always the desired effect of information (eg. propaganda) on a particular audience, not its factual accuracy -- until his own memoirs.

[Debra Arif]

Hi all,
I always find it kind of odd that Macnaghten has no up to date knowledge of Cutbush after 1891! The very man he was trying to convince everyone was not JTR. Was Race's suspicion about Cutbush investigated at all?
I can well imagine that Ostrog was somewhere on Macnaghten's list (ahead of the man suspected by a detective but not investigated)
He was released from an asylum in 87, where he was described as suffering from 'Mania',and failed to report thereafter, so not the same as run of the mill,boring old Le Grand and his criminal contemporary's and their failing to report.
Ostrog's prison record states plainly that he was a Russian surgeon, so no guess work on the part of Macnaghten there.