Did Dagonet resemble the Fiend?

[jason_c]

I generally take the Dagonet story as an amusing but untrusworthy anecdote, or as having been inflated by the author. I assume half of Whitechapel were mistaken for the Ripper at one time or another.

btw was "Christopher Columbus!" a typical phrase when having a moment of surprise or shock? Was it a form of "by jove!"?

[Mayerling]

I generally take the Dagonet story as an amusing but untrusworthy anecdote, or as having been inflated by the author. I assume half of Whitechapel were mistaken for the Ripper at one time or another.

btw was "Christopher Columbus!" a typical phrase when having a moment of surprise or shock? Was it a form of "by jove!"?

If you saw the film "Little Women" (1933) with Katherine Hepburn as "Jo", she is always using that "Christopher Columbus!" exclamation when impressed. I can't recall if it is the Alcott novel, but it may have been. It's a minced oath, like W. C. Fields muttering "Mother of Pearl" instead of "Mother of God" in one of his films (a similar kind of minced oath is at the end of "Little Caesar" when Edward G. Robinson's dying Rico says, "Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?!"). It seems silly to us, but "God's name was not to be used too openly in literary, stage, or movies until the 1960s or so - unless with great respect. "Christopher Columbus" would probably be a minced version of say "For Christ sakes!" or "Christ almighty!!", which in that time (and even now in some quarters) is regarded as blasphemy.

Jeff

[jason_c]

If you saw the film "Little Women" (1933) with Katherine Hepburn as "Jo", she is always using that "Christopher Columbus!" exclamation when impressed. I can't recall if it is the Alcott novel, but it may have been. It's a minced oath, like W. C. Fields muttering "Mother of Pearl" instead of "Mother of God" in one of his films (a similar kind of minced oath is at the end of "Little Caesar" when Edward G. Robinson's dying Rico says, "Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?!"). It seems silly to us, but "God's name was not to be used too openly in literary, stage, or movies until the 1960s or so - unless with great respect. "Christopher Columbus" would probably be a minced version of say "For Christ sakes!" or "Christ almighty!!", which in that time (and even now in some quarters) is regarded as blasphemy.

Jeff

Thanks. It's the first time I've heard the term used in such a way.

[Jonathan H]

I think that if you compare the 1889 original with what the story became in Sims, from March 1891, he has taken a trifle and altered it completely because, by then, he has viewed pictures of Druitt (with Macnaghten) and decided that he looked rather like him when he was younger and/or thinner (the police chief never backed this claim).

The original, for one thing, is about a "crank" who has spoken to the 'suspect' to regularly, and is alive after the MacKenzie murder of July 1889.

By the 1900's Sims has backdated this into a much more incriminating tale: a single encounter of the morning of the murders of Stride and Eddowes.

[Paddy Goose]

I'm not following you. Why would they look at photos of Druitt if the story was from 1889?

[Jonathan H]

To Paddy Goose

I am arguing that Macnaghten met with the loose-lipped MP Henry Farquharson (who wwas telling people the Ripper was the "son of a surgeon") then with the pertinent, distrssed Druitts between Feb 11th and March 1st 1891 (my guess is after the 18th, the day when Lawende said 'no' to Sadler and the MP was quoted as talking directly to a reporter).

Rightly or wrongly, the police chief came away from these secret meetings agreeing 100% with their belief in Druitt's guilt as the Ripper. I also believe that George Sims accompanied Macnaghten on one, or more, of these private encounters and was shown pictures of the deceased murderer.

Sims saw a strong resemblance between himself--in his thinner, "haggard" 1879 picture--and Montie. Fearing the leak could not be plugged, Macnaghten asked the famous writer to announce in his column, somehow, that the cops were on to the correct suspect. Recalling the silly story of the coffee-stall owner from 1889 Sims decided to revise it and use it as the linchpin of his 180-degree about-face (from a clueless constabulary to super-efficient police who do have a slam dunk witness).

As it turned out the truth was successfully contained by Mac and the lookalike tale wasn't needed.

Sims only returned to it eleven years later, with further amplifications. By then the many readers of "The Referee" would inevitably envisage 'Jack' as a fiend who looked like the George Sims they all knew from his ads (like for "Tatcho", the hair restorer) , e.g. middle-aged, rotund and bearded.