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  • New Vicar/Druitt Source Found

    David Orsom has found a new source that is about both Druitt and the Vicar and, in my opinion, it further vindicates my 'case disguised' theory.

    I have to put it in context and so the source does not appear until further down.

    In the interests of full transparency David thinks my book/theory is rubbish and has written a lengthy, relentlessly negative, semi-review on his website:



    In my defense, David gets one of the central tenets of the theory quite wrong and then, like a crackpot fetishist, focuses on just a single Edwardian source to discredit the entire thesis (no, I don't get it either?)

    Here is a positive review of my book which grasps the entire thesis (whilst kicking me in the pants for a persistent "linguistic atrocity"):



    But all of the above is beside the point compared to what David has found: a source that arguably backs my theory to the hilt, and I thank him for publishing it.

    I had argued in my book that the Chief Constable of C.I.D., Melville Macnaghten, and the famous writer, George R. Sims -- close pals -- had discovered the true identity of the Ripper: a drowned barrister named Montague Druitt.

    This had happened in early 1891 due to a leak in London, though originating in Dorset, via a loose-lipped Tory M.P., Henry Farquharson (I also theorize that he was the first to guardedly mix fact and fiction in order to protect the decencies, e.g. to libel-proof the solution so he could brag about it). To what, I theorize, was the pals' acute consternation the late Mr. Druitt was distantly related to a mutual close chum, Colonel Vivian Majendie (I also postulated that Druitt had confessed to his cousin, the Reverend Charles Druitt, who was married to the daughter of one of Majendie's cousins). From a very prominent family the colonel was a Victorian hero as, among other things, a heroic bomb disposal expert.

    I argue the three VIP friends were anxious for this solution -- after all, there was never going to be a trial -- to be suppressed. When "The Sun" ran with their Ripper scoop in 1894 (albeit Thomas Cutbush, languishing mutely in an asylum, was never named) the newspaper said that they had to be careful not to ruin the respectable relations of the alleged killer -- that even somebody who was distantly related to such ghastliness would be inevitably soiled by such a connection.

    The problem for Macnaghten, Sims and Majendie was that the Reverend to whom I theorized Montague had confessed, Montie's cousin Charles, was anguished over the whole tragic affair; that he felt a moral need to go public with the truth (this anguish is, I think, is dramatized in a Sims' short story from 1892, "The Priest's Secret"). The thee toffs could not convince the middle-class cleric not to go public, but they managed to get him to hold off until the tenth anniversary of Montague's death. Macnaghtem at that stage, would have preferred for the truth never to come out at all. Perhaps the affable chief convinced the Reverend to at least clothe the truth in a bit of fiction to protect his respectable relations (because that is the chief's m.o.)

    I further argued that Macnaghten and Sims decided (Majendie died of natural causes in mid-1898) that since the Anglican priest was going to go ahead with his Ripper revelation the pair would head him off with a pincer movement -- they would get in first to muddy the waters; to make the vicar's tale look like nothing much. But Macnaghten had to be very careful not to leave his fingerprints anywhere on this bit of propaganda and misdirection.

    Hence Mac briefed Major Arthur Griffiths (who seems to have been very skeptical about this from-out-of-nowhere scoop, sidelining it into his book's intro) who first revealed the suspect contents of the [so-called] draft version of the top cop's internal report of 1894; in which M. J. Druitt is definitely a middle-aged doctor and is also definitely the chief's paramount choice as the likeliest Whitechapel suspect.

    The book debuted in December 1898 and the press did take big notice of this unexpected scoop: that the police, supposedly had three prime suspects and one of them, an English physician who drowned himself in the Thames after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, was the best. The Druitt family were disguised as anomic "friends" (that's a fact).

    The press realized -- and some openly scoffed at this -- that Major Griffiths, in little more than a paragraph, had reset the entire story. No longer was it a protracted affair lasting from mid-1888 to early 1891, with about ten possible victims by the same fiend. Instead police supposedly knew at the time that Kelly was the final victim of this now brief 'autumn of terror' (and there were only four other victims). The clueless constabulary of 1888 to 1891 now became an efficient bunch of detectives who were zeroing in on three possible suspects, and one almost definitely the right man. Shockingly for the so-called better classes it was not the Russian doctor or the Jewish immigrant but an English gentile and a professional.

    On January 19th 1899 the Vicar launched his version of the truth, and to some extent it failed to launch. Here is the extraordinary source first placed on these boards in 2008 by the late Chris Scott (who, to my knowledge, never agreed that it was of such importance, let alone a critical jigsaw piece in a definitive solution):

    Western Mail
    19 January 1899

    WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
    DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?


    We have received (says the Daily Mail) from a clergyman of the Church of England, now a North Country vicar, an interesting communication with reference to the great criminal mystery of our times - that enshrouding the perpetration of the series of crimes which have come to be known as the "Jack the Ripper" murders. The identity of the murderer is as unsolved as it was while the blood of the victims was yet wet upon the pavements. Certainly Major Arthur Griffiths, in his new work on "Mysteries of Police and Crime," suggests that the police believe the assassin to have been a doctor, bordering on insanity, whose body was found floating in the Thames soon after the last crime of the series; but as the major also mentions that this man was one of three known homicidal lunatics against whom the police "held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion," that conjectural explanation does not appear to count for much by itself.
    Our correspondent the vicar now writes:-
    "I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.
    The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased.
    I must ask you not to give my name, as it might lead to identification"
    meaning the identification of the perpetrator of the crimes. We thought at first the vicar was at fault in believing that ten years had passed yet since the last murder of the series, for there were other somewhat similar crimes in 1889. But, on referring again to major Griffiths's book, we find he states that the last "Jack the Ripper" murder was that in Miller's Court on November 9, 1888 - a confirmation of the vicar's sources of information. The vicar enclosed a narrative, which he called "The Whitechurch Murders - Solution of a London Mystery." This he described as "substantial truth under fictitious form." "Proof for obvious reasons impossible - under seal of confession," he added in reply to an inquiry from us.
    Failing to see how any good purpose could be served by publishing substantial truth in fictitious form, we sent a representative North to see the vicar, to endeavour to ascertain which parts of the narrative were actual facts. But the vicar was not to be persuaded, and all that our reporter could learn was that the rev. gentleman appears to know with certainty the identity of the most terrible figure in the criminal annals of our times, and that the vicar does not intend to let anyone else into the secret.
    The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made - by whom the vicar would not give even the most guarded hint. The only other item which a lengthy chat with the vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.

    A few days later George Sims (under his Shakespeare-derived pseudonym Dagonet in his regular column for "The Referee") weighed in to quash the Vicar's tale. The element that he is most anxious to discredit is the bit of fiction that had been started by the MP; that the killer suicided the same night as his final victim (which is a confession by action, rather than by word) and therefore had no time to confess verbally anything to anybody. As I argued in my book this was part of what Macnaghten was anxious to suppress; that the police had never heard of this suspect until years after he was in his grave. Whereas Sims implies -- and kept on expanding this element -- that the police were efficiently closing fast upon the "mad doctor".

    So that was my thesis: that Macnaghten, via Griffiths (not in on it) and Sims (in on it) wedged the Vicar into being just some dotty cleric whose opinion could not compare to the major and the famous true crime writer. That this gentlemanly bit of misdirection worked a treat (and fools most researchers to this day).

    By 1902, Sims, with Macnaghten behind him, felt sufficiently safe to begin explaining how the "friends" of the "doctor" had found out that he was the fiend: he had confessed to wanting to savage East End harlots to his own doctors as a private, voluntary patient in an asylum -- twice. In the 1900's Sims added other fictitious details that appear nowhere in Macnaghten's report(s): that the killer was so rich he did not need to work and lived as a semi-recluse. Sims also mentioned that there was a definitive "Home Office Report" written by the "Commissioner" (Warren? Monro?) which laid out the facts that made it a slam dunk that the 'drowned doctor' was the killer.

    In a source just found by my researcher, Sims is asked in 1903 by another reporter as to exactly how he knows all this. He replies that he cannot divulge his source (instead of simply saying that he had read it in Griffiths' book). Surely Sims must be protecting his friend, Macnaghten.

    Now this is what David has found, and I have tried to provide the historical context for it both in terms of other contemporary sources and my own interpretation of them:

    "The Western Times"
    19 January, 1899 (the same day as the vicar's tale was published in the Mail)

    [From a London correspondent]:

    "In police circles there is the most deep distrust of the new version as to who Jack the Ripper really was. The new version is that he had been a surgeon and engaged in rescue work in the East End, and then after confessing his crimes to a clergyman who told the story to another clergyman, the narrator, committed suicide in the Thames. An earlier version made the man a petty officer on board a ship always in dock in the East End who, being suspected, came no more to England but wholly disappeared. A third story, told elaborately, made him out to be a living inmate of one of our suburban asylums. Naturally one story is as good as another."

    At this point David terminates the source without ellipses ("...") but in fact it has a couple of more lines -- and they are arguably very important.

    "... , and the police offer none of their own, but prudently deny all three. But the mystery will be solved one day."

    Apparently a journalist has seen the Vicar's tale coming off the wire and has gone to Scotland Yard, or met with somebody in-the-know about the files on a case that was a decade in the past. To be authoritative it cannot just be anybody. Police are not supposed to unofficially speak or leak to the press, but Macnaghten boasted, at his retirement in 1913, of having cultivated excellent and mutually productive relations with the press.

    If it is Macnaghten he is consciously deceiving the reporter (hey now steady on!) because he has written an internal report in which, in one version -- the one he disseminated to the public via Griffiths and Sims -- he believed, rightly or wrongly, that Druitt, the drowned man, had probably been the Ripper.

    If it is not Macnaghten then it must be somebody not-in-the-know who has been misled by the Chief Constable about the drowned suspect, by omission at least (e.g. there was no "Hey you know that Ripper bit in Griffiths causing all the fuss, well, it's from me, old chap") or they are also lying to the reporter.

    It certainly ends with the characteristic Mac cheer and bounce, about the case being solved some, sunny day.

    In 2015 my book, "Jack the Ripper-Case Solved, 1891" [McFarland] a secondary source, postulated that the Vicar's Ripper is the same man as the drowned doctor, even though the Vicar himself never even hints how his alleged Jack died. He never comes out and says that his "at one time a surgeon" is the same man as the "doctor" who drowned himself in the Thames (nor does he deny it). I argued that they are likely the same man. That behind all these layers of "substantial truth in fictitious form" is Montague Druitt.

    Now here is a primary source from 1899 -- from the very day the Vicar debuts -- which also makes the same connection; the Vicar's Ripper is obviously Griffiths' drowned doctor. Whether it is the reporter making the connection or the policeman (or men) with whom he is conferring is unclear. But the police certainly do not correct the reporter as being in error in connecting the two suspects (because the Vicar does not).

    It is the first primary source found, albeit without naming him and at several removes, that has Druitt being the man who confessed to a priest about being "Jack the Ripper" (primary about the Vicar that is).

    I think this is potential confirmation of the pincer I theorized about: "Good Old Mac" is briefing a journalist against the Vicar having already briefed Griffiths for the same propagandist purpose, and who published first, and then Mac deployed Sims who overtly dismisses the Vicar a few days later. The Vicar was quickly forgotten, but the "mad doctor" of Griffiths and especially Sims became entrenched in Edwardian culture as the likeliest solution.

    By 1914 the retired and ill Macnaghten dropped the doctor element and opened the gap between the final murder and self-murder, allowing time for the killer to have to be compos enough to get away -- and not just stagger "shrieking" and "raving" to the river's edge -- and thus allow space for a confession in word to "his own people".

  • #2
    Jonathan,

    Before you continue on your mission of misrepresenting the nature of my article at every opportunity, let me make clear that I have not said that your book/theory is "rubbish" nor have I written a relentlessly negative review of your book nor have I focused on just a single Edwardian source (by which I assume you mean Logan's 1905 work of fiction) to discredit your entire theory.

    I have not, in fact, addressed myself your entire theory at all. As I clearly stated in the other thread, my article was a response to your forum post in which you listed certain supposed similarities between the fictional Mortemer Slade and the real Montague Druitt. That was all it was.

    My only purpose in writing that article was the deal with the subject of whether Slade is also Druitt. Discussing that point, as I say in my article, required me to put the discussion in the context of large parts of the rest of your theory but it stands wholly independent of your theory and the rest of your book.

    I would have thought that the title of my article "A Bridge Too Far: The Curious Case of Mortemer Slade" would have signalled to you that I was focussed on Logan's story. If not, then the paragraph in the introduction which says "The focus of this article is very much on Mortemer Slade but I first do need to put the 1905 appearance of Slade into the context of Hainsworth's argument about what Macnaghten was up to" should have indicated to you what I was doing.

    My contention is that the character of Mortemer Slade is not based on Montague Druitt. What the consequence of that is to the rest of your theory is entirely for yourself and others to decide. I certainly do not say or suggest that if Logan's story has nothing to do with Druitt it discredits your entire theory as you seem to believe or, perhaps, would like others to believe.

    For you to state therefore, as you do, that I am a "crackpot fetishist" is, apart from being rude and insulting (and surely beneath you?) based on a fundamental misunderstanding of my article.

    Now, as for the subject of this thread, namely the Western Mail article of 19 January 1899 I have some rather bad news for you.

    You have made a small but critical mistake which has led you to drastically overstate the significance of that article.

    The vicar's story was not "launched" on the 19 February 1899 as you have stated and the Western Mail article of 19 January 1899 that I discovered was not published "on very day the Vicar debuts" or "the same day as the vicar's tale was published in the Mail" as you state (unless you strangely mean the Western Mail, but the Western Mail did not break the story, it was the Daily Mail which did). The vicar's tale was published in the Daily Mail of 18 January 1899. The Western Mail of 19 January was thus a full day after the publication of the Daily Mail issue which broke the vicar's story.

    Consequently, your theory that "a journalist has seen the Vicar's tale coming off the wire" is not a good one. The journalist had evidently read the Daily Mail of the previous day.

    And of course the Daily Mail of the previous day included a summary of Major Griffiths' information about a Ripper suspect having drowned in the Thames. As I say in my article, it is pretty clear that the Western Mail journalist, from reading the Daily Mail story, has assumed that the vicar's suspect and Griffiths' suspect is the same person which has evidently caused some confusion in the way he has summarised the vicar's story.

    So your apparent believe that the police were somehow confirming that the vicar's suspect committed suicide by drowning in the Thames is held on a false basis.

    You are, however, correct that I inadvertently omitted ellipses in my quotation. Checking back over the manuscript transcript I made of the article when I was in the newsroom of the British Library I now see that I did write "as good as another..." but I missed this when typing it out for the article. I have now added it in.

    However, I entirely fail to see why you feel that the words you have highlighted from the rest of the sentence (which I evidently did not even feel important enough to transcribe) are at all important or add anything over and above the first sentence of the article in which it is stated that in police circles there is distrust of the vicar's story. How does it help you in any way that in addition to the report saying that the police distrusted the vicar's story that they also denied that story? With respect to the vicar's story (which is the only one we are interested in right?) isn't it just another way of saying the same thing? There can't be any relevance in them also denying the other two stories (which are already said to have been "as good as another") can there?

    As for the significance of the police distrusting or denying the vicar's story, it seems to me you are (once again) trying to have your cake and eat it. If the police deny the truth of the article they must have thought it was true. Had they admitted the truth of it, presumably you would say they must have thought it was true. Tell me how the police could have conveyed to the public that they disbelieved the story in a way that would satisfy you that they really did not believe it?

    The vicar's story in the Daily Mail, without the embellishment of the Western Mail reporter, was simply that a surgeon, who did rescue work in the East End, had died after confessing to the Ripper murders. We know that Druitt was wrongly described by Macnaghten as a doctor but that does not mean he thought he was a surgeon. There is no reason to believe that Druitt did rescue work in the east end. Macnaghten does not say in his report that Druitt made a confession. So might it not simply be that Macnaghten (if he was responsible for briefing the Western Mail reporter) believed that the vicar was referring to someone other than Druitt?

    In this regard, I do not see how your theory that Macnaghten was simultaneously responsible for encouraging the vicar to go public in semi-fictionalized form while, at the same time, rubbishing his story, together with Sims, makes any sense.

    Two other points:

    1. Your constant references to newspapers as "primary sources" rather than newspapers, when they support your point of view, as if this elevates them to the status of high accuracy, is I think, a bit tiresome. All sensible members of this forum know what a primary source is so we don't need to be told what a newspaper is. Just my point of view.

    2. I don't know if you are deliberately and childishly mis-spelling my user name or it's a genuine error but, for your information, it is David Orsam, with an "a". But if you actually want to be childish, feel free to spell it any way you like.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by David Orsam View Post
      We know that Druitt was wrongly described by Macnaghten as a doctor but that does not mean he thought he was a surgeon.
      So...was he just confused on this matter, even though he had a source providing him information supposedly directly from the Druitt family?
      Or was he intentionally misleading?

      Just asking for your opinion, since opinion is all your quote in bold above is.
      Michael Richards

      Comment


      • #4
        Poor David. Everybody is so childish, except you.

        In fact it as incredibly juvenile of you to write a long article about my book and never reveal to readers that you and I had a major falling out a couple of years ago.

        That does not mean an article cannot be objective as humanly possible but it lacks transparency. And that's pathetic in somebody of you age.

        Two things you still get wrong. I never said Macnaghten encouraged the Vicar to publish -- quite the opposite. That you might have misunderstood this from the book, fair enough. But to childishly insist upon it still ...

        A primary source is a source from the time being studied. The newspaper account from 1899. you found. is from the time being studied: the Vicar's strange intervention of 1899. I stand by my interpretation of it as a bombshell and, again, sincerely thank-you for publishing it and helping my theory.

        Of course an uber-tiresome literalist like you finds all of this tiresome; because you cannot handle being disagreed with.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Michael W Richards View Post
          So...was he just confused on this matter, even though he had a source providing him information supposedly directly from the Druitt family?
          Or was he intentionally misleading?

          Just asking for your opinion, since opinion is all your quote in bold above is.
          Well firstly, Michael, me saying "We know that Druitt was wrongly described by Macnaghten as a doctor" is not opinion, it's fact.

          Secondly, me saying "but that does not mean he thought he was a surgeon." is unarguable and thus must be a statement of fact because a doctor can mean a physician or a surgeon.

          So you've got that wrong but never mind let's press on

          Macnaghten says in his memo that "from private information I have little doubt that but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer". That does not, of course, mean that the information came from Druitt's family but hey that's just me reading the sentence, perhaps it's only my opinion.

          As I've said in my article, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that Mac was deliberately intending to lie to or mislead the Chief Commissioner and the Home Secretary and it may even be that Jonathan now agrees with this but you'll have to ask him about that.

          That leaves the only answer as far as I can see that Mac was confused.

          But frankly Michael I don't much care if he was or wasn't. My interest in this subject really begins and ends with Logan's story.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
            Poor David. Everybody is so childish, except you.

            In fact it as incredibly juvenile of you to write a long article about my book and never reveal to readers that you and I had a major falling out a couple of years ago.

            That does not mean an article cannot be objective as humanly possible but it lacks transparency. And that's pathetic in somebody of you age.

            Two things you still get wrong. I never said Macnaghten encouraged the Vicar to publish -- quite the opposite. That you might have misunderstood this from the book, fair enough. But to childishly insist upon it still ...

            A primary source is a source from the time being studied. The newspaper account from 1899. you found. is from the time being studied: the Vicar's strange intervention of 1899. I stand by my interpretation of it as a bombshell and, again, sincerely thank-you for publishing it and helping my theory.

            Of course an uber-tiresome literalist like you finds all of this tiresome; because you cannot handle being disagreed with.
            Everybody is so childish, except you.
            like a crackpot fetishist
            The only thing that's childish and a crackpot fetishist is you and your nutjob theory. your also a hypocrite, obsessed and the only one I see on here who "cannot handle being disagreed with" is you.

            Do your self a favor and get another hobby like water witching or alchemy, they're more rooted in reality than your crazy ideas (I hesitate to call them a "theory", like you do, as it does disservice to the term.)
            Last edited by Abby Normal; 12-01-2016, 01:22 PM.
            "Is all that we see or seem
            but a dream within a dream?"

            -Edgar Allan Poe


            "...the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn
            quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him."

            -Frederick G. Abberline

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
              Poor David. Everybody is so childish, except you.
              Erm, I haven't said that "everybody is so childish" except me. What I said is that to deliberately refer to me as "David Orsom" when you know my user name is "David Orsam" strikes me as childish. I can't see how its really an arguable point. I've certainly never referred to you, or anyone else on here, directly or indirectly, by other than their name or user name.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                In fact it as incredibly juvenile of you to write a long article about my book and never reveal to readers that you and I had a major falling out a couple of years ago.
                I didn't mention that "you and I had a major falling out a couple of years ago" Jonathan because such a statement would have been completely and utterly untrue. I really have no idea what goes on inside your head but a minor disagreement on an internet board is not for me a "falling out" let alone a "major falling out". If you think there is any connection between my article and previous debates between us on this forum you are, I'm afraid, seriously deluded.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                  That does not mean an article cannot be objective as humanly possible but it lacks transparency. And that's pathetic in somebody of you age.
                  My article was both transparent and as objective as humanly possible. If you disagree, please provide examples of where you feel I have been unfair in any way to you.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                    Two things you still get wrong. I never said Macnaghten encouraged the Vicar to publish -- quite the opposite. That you might have misunderstood this from the book, fair enough. But to childishly insist upon it still ...
                    What you said in your book Jonathan, if I may quote you:

                    "I think that Macnaghten may have succeeded in convincing the Anglican minister, if he met with him too, to reveal the truth about the drowned barrister’s confession but with two provisos: not to do it until ten years had passed since Montie was buried and to intermingle the truth with lies."

                    That is surely you saying that Macnaghten encouraged the vicar to publish his story. If it does not mean that, please explain what it does mean.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                      A primary source is a source from the time being studied. The newspaper account from 1899. you found. is from the time being studied: the Vicar's strange intervention of 1899. I stand by my interpretation of it as a bombshell and, again, sincerely thank-you for publishing it and helping my theory.

                      Of course an uber-tiresome literalist like you finds all of this tiresome; because you cannot handle being disagreed with.
                      I know exactly what a primary source is Jonathan. I'm not disagreeing with you that a newspaper can be a primary source. But when I'm reading a book I would expect the author to tell me, for example, "An important piece of information has been discovered in a contemporary newspaper report". I would not expect to read "An important piece of information has been discovered in a primary source" because such a sentence can only really be designed to obscure the nature of the source. So I'm not saying a newspaper cannot be a primary source only that you should not substitute the words "primary source" for "newspaper" in a straightforward narrative account.

                      Anyway, after all that, and passing over the silly insults in your post, you haven't commented on the consequence of your mistake about the date of the Daily Mail report which I would have thought was the most important point to arise from my post.

                      I can only assume that you accept what I say about this.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        To Abby

                        How pathetic that you always have to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting for you.

                        Go back and crawl into your not-deep-enough hole you vile wanker

                        To David

                        No, you don't understand primary and secondary sources, and so you do not understand my argument about the vicar or Logan. The latter is a wonderful Edwardian source confirming my theory -- as a theory -- because its open mixture of fact and fiction contains details about Druitt that could only have been known by people (behind Logan) who also knew Druitt was a barrister and not a doctor.

                        On that, in the official version of his report, the one filed, the one his superiors might have seen, Macnaghten was careful to write "said to be a doctor". He pulled back from his draft (if it was a draft) and carefully claimed that Druitt's vocation was only unconfirmed hearsay (surely inviting a complaint of incompetence). He might have been a doctor, or he might not have been (and he wasn't of course). But in the same section Mac ramps up the evidence against the same man -- he was, no ifs or buts, sexually insane (e.g. he gained erotic pleasure from violence) and his own family "believed", not "suspected" that he was the killer. For he official file the chief pulled back from one element (a doctor?) and yet he amplified his guilt ("He was sexually insane ...".

                        That's your worst nightmare, David: a critical primary source that is deliberately ambiguous for all sorts of reasons and pressures (and was never sent, addling another layer to consider). To understand it needs careful comparison with other ambiguous sources. For you, it is a world of pain unless you ignore it's complexity -- and you show that you do.

                        And that's a fact.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                          To Abby

                          How pathetic that you always have to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting for you.

                          Go back and crawl into your not-deep-enough hole you vile wanker

                          To David

                          No, you don't understand primary and secondary sources, and so you do not understand my argument about the vicar or Logan. The latter is a wonderful Edwardian source confirming my theory -- as a theory -- because its open mixture of fact and fiction contains details about Druitt that could only have been known by people (behind Logan) who also knew Druitt was a barrister and not a doctor.

                          On that, in the official version of his report, the one filed, the one his superiors might have seen, Macnaghten was careful to write "said to be a doctor". He pulled back from his draft (if it was a draft) and carefully claimed that Druitt's vocation was only unconfirmed hearsay (surely inviting a complaint of incompetence). He might have been a doctor, or he might not have been (and he wasn't of course). But in the same section Mac ramps up the evidence against the same man -- he was, no ifs or buts, sexually insane (e.g. he gained erotic pleasure from violence) and his own family "believed", not "suspected" that he was the killer. For he official file the chief pulled back from one element (a doctor?) and yet he amplified his guilt ("He was sexually insane ...".

                          That's your worst nightmare, David: a critical primary source that is deliberately ambiguous for all sorts of reasons and pressures (and was never sent, addling another layer to consider). To understand it needs careful comparison with other ambiguous sources. For you, it is a world of pain unless you ignore it's complexity -- and you show that you do.

                          And that's a fact.
                          Hi Jonathan H

                          To Abby

                          How pathetic that you always have to get somebody else to do the heavy lifting for you.

                          Go back and crawl into your not-deep-enough hole you vile wanker
                          No don't hold back ..Tell me how you really feel. LOL! "vile wanker" That's actually quite good..I like it!

                          but of course you don't dare address a single counterpoint of substance from David because you cant. and you know it.

                          To understand it needs careful comparison with other ambiguous sources. For you, it is a world of pain unless you ignore it's complexity -- and you show that you do.

                          And that's a fact
                          the only thing that's a fact is that your ****en bonkers.
                          "Is all that we see or seem
                          but a dream within a dream?"

                          -Edgar Allan Poe


                          "...the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn
                          quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him."

                          -Frederick G. Abberline

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Let me exit this now soiled thread on a positive note.

                            The source David found was very important for understanding the "Jack the Ripper" story.

                            It is a story in three parts:

                            Two are easier to access than one of them.

                            1. The murders between 1888 and 1891.

                            3. A police chief's later belief in a deceased suspect as the killer, and his dissemination of that belief to the public (albeit semi-veiled).

                            And

                            2. How that suspect came to be known to the chief and why anybody thought he was the killer.

                            Both part I and 2 were derailed for decades by incomplete research and reliance on cliché, but this has been rectified by, for example, works such as "Jack the Ripper-Scotland Yard Investigates" by Evans and Rumbelow, "The Lodger: The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper" by Evans and Gainey, "Jack the Ripepr The Facts" by Paul Begg, "The Ripper's Haunts" by Michael Hawley and "Deconstructing Jack" by Simon Wood. Though they differ in interpretation, and what weight they give to certain sources and certain suspects, nonetheless they enrich our ability to navigate through the fog as individual readers and researchers.

                            But Part 2 is the most difficult of all, fir everybody, because we were never meant to know the nuts and bolts about Druitt, as opposed to his fictional alter ego as a quasi-Jekyll-and-Hyde, in relation to the Ripper. Consequently we have only scraps and glimpses and footprints left behind. Some of these are deliberately deflective.

                            The "North Country Vicar" is, in my opinion, one of those glimpses that inform us about Part 2.

                            What David found (though he does not agree and has every right not to) is a primary source from 1899 that shows that people then -- and not just people now -- equated the Vicar's Ripper with the Drowned Doctor suspect of Major Griffiths' scoop. In fact it is the only source so far found that does this -- many others at the time that comment on the Vicar's tale do not make this connection -- and it involves Scotland Yard.

                            Either it is Macnaghten being deceitful or he is deceitful with some of his underlings by omission. Either way, the result was the same: the Vicar has nothing. Within days the same message came from Sims: the Vicar has nothing. Exactly as I theorized in my book, an attempt to wedge and crush this source which was potentially embarrassing for the Yard and ruinous for the dead killer's relations -- because they are all actually talking about the same suspect.

                            For the reasons I outlined at the beginning of this thread I think it is a major find which supports the 'case disguised' theory, as outlined in my book, "Jack the Ripper-Case Solved, 1891", and will be in the second one (with David Barrett fully credited in the body the text for finding it, plus the disclaimer that he does not agree with my interpretation. His off-track point about the exact date of the Vicar's tale, though it makes no difference whatsoever to its significance for me, will be duly included too so that readers can make up their own minds).

                            Here is a source from 1899 that connects Druitt, albeit un-named and at several removes, with an also deceased English gent who confessed to a priest -- and whose identity is veiled in fiction too. by 1902 Sims would be adding the detail that his Drowned Doctor had also confessed before the murders, as that's how the "friends" know or suspect he is the killer. By 1914, Macnaghten has dropped doctor altogether and concedes that there was time for the killer to tell somebody what he had done, by implication "his own people", which brings us full circle back to the Druitt family. This is my attempt since 2008 -- despite the enmity and derision thrown at me by total tossers, such as the creep who goes by the moniker "Abby Normal" -- to fill in the blank that is Part 2. If I have failed I have fun trying, and I thank those who have been supportive as I hope they feel I have been supportive of their parallel efforts.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Jonathan H View Post
                              Let me exit this now soiled thread on a positive note.

                              The source David found was very important for understanding the "Jack the Ripper" story.

                              It is a story in three parts:

                              Two are easier to access than one of them.

                              1. The murders between 1888 and 1891.

                              3. A police chief's later belief in a deceased suspect as the killer, and his dissemination of that belief to the public (albeit semi-veiled).

                              And

                              2. How that suspect came to be known to the chief and why anybody thought he was the killer.

                              Both part I and 2 were derailed for decades by incomplete research and reliance on cliché, but this has been rectified by, for example, works such as "Jack the Ripper-Scotland Yard Investigates" by Evans and Rumbelow, "The Lodger: The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper" by Evans and Gainey, "Jack the Ripepr The Facts" by Paul Begg, "The Ripper's Haunts" by Michael Hawley and "Deconstructing Jack" by Simon Wood. Though they differ in interpretation, and what weight they give to certain sources and certain suspects, nonetheless they enrich our ability to navigate through the fog as individual readers and researchers.

                              But Part 2 is the most difficult of all, fir everybody, because we were never meant to know the nuts and bolts about Druitt, as opposed to his fictional alter ego as a quasi-Jekyll-and-Hyde, in relation to the Ripper. Consequently we have only scraps and glimpses and footprints left behind. Some of these are deliberately deflective.

                              The "North Country Vicar" is, in my opinion, one of those glimpses that inform us about Part 2.

                              What David found (though he does not agree and has every right not to) is a primary source from 1899 that shows that people then -- and not just people now -- equated the Vicar's Ripper with the Drowned Doctor suspect of Major Griffiths' scoop. In fact it is the only source so far found that does this -- many others at the time that comment on the Vicar's tale do not make this connection -- and it involves Scotland Yard.

                              Either it is Macnaghten being deceitful or he is deceitful with some of his underlings by omission. Either way, the result was the same: the Vicar has nothing. Within days the same message came from Sims: the Vicar has nothing. Exactly as I theorized in my book, an attempt to wedge and crush this source which was potentially embarrassing for the Yard and ruinous for the dead killer's relations -- because they are all actually talking about the same suspect.

                              For the reasons I outlined at the beginning of this thread I think it is a major find which supports the 'case disguised' theory, as outlined in my book, "Jack the Ripper-Case Solved, 1891", and will be in the second one (with David Barrett fully credited in the body the text for finding it, plus the disclaimer that he does not agree with my interpretation. His off-track point about the exact date of the Vicar's tale, though it makes no difference whatsoever to its significance for me, will be duly included too so that readers can make up their own minds).

                              Here is a source from 1899 that connects Druitt, albeit un-named and at several removes, with an also deceased English gent who confessed to a priest -- and whose identity is veiled in fiction too. by 1902 Sims would be adding the detail that his Drowned Doctor had also confessed before the murders, as that's how the "friends" know or suspect he is the killer. By 1914, Macnaghten has dropped doctor altogether and concedes that there was time for the killer to tell somebody what he had done, by implication "his own people", which brings us full circle back to the Druitt family. This is my attempt since 2008 -- despite the enmity and derision thrown at me by total tossers, such as the creep who goes by the moniker "Abby Normal" -- to fill in the blank that is Part 2. If I have failed I have fun trying, and I thank those who have been supportive as I hope they feel I have been supportive of their parallel efforts.
                              Go take your pill you silly twat
                              "Is all that we see or seem
                              but a dream within a dream?"

                              -Edgar Allan Poe


                              "...the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn
                              quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him."

                              -Frederick G. Abberline

                              Comment

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