Accusations of a Ripper "cabal" (Moved from another thread)

[PaulB]

I think that there are going to be some disappointed people when it is published, something of an anti-climax in fact.

Yep. Ideally we Muppets would have liked to have published the AV in full in the New A to Z, ditto the Davies report, but we didn't have space to publish either in full and were not given permission to publish more than what we did in the case of the latter. Keith has done a lot of research into this for a client. One can't always do as one wants. Mind you, you have a copy and I have a copy and other good folk have copies. And Trevor might have got a copy if he'd bothered to ask, but he didn't and hasn't.

Chief Muppet Extraordinary.

[Stewart P Evans]

Somehow...

Well they have enough gobby individuals already I am sure you will be the icing on the cake, and of course when the cake starts to crumble the icing falls off first.

Somehow I can't imagine Ally as icing.

[Stewart P Evans]

The Muppets

Yep. Ideally we Muppets would have liked to have published the AV in full in the New A to Z, ditto the Davies report, but we didn't have space to publish either in full and were not given permission to publish more than what we did in the case of the latter. Keith has done a lot of research into this for a client. One can't always do as one wants. Mind you, you have a copy and I have a copy and other good folk have copies. And Trevor might have got a copy if he'd bothered to ask, but he didn't and hasn't.
Chief Muppet Extraordinary.

Paul, fancy you letting everyone know that our code name is 'The Muppets'. Trevor only guessed at that.

[PaulB]

'muppet'. 'gobby individuals'. cage rattled.

[Ally]

Well they have enough gobby individuals already I am sure you will be the icing on the cake, and of course when the cake starts to crumble the icing falls off first.

So Trevor, managed to come up with a single shred of support yet? No? Didn't think so.

You really don't do well and just holding your tongue so as not to make yourself look more the buffoon do you?

Maybe I should spell it out:

YOu made an accusation. You were asked to back it up. You acted like a dancing monkey.

You keep putting up stupidity, and every time you do, it just points out to any objective person how little support you have for your claims. Every time you post anything other than an objective rationale, it is just one more nail in the coffin of your credibility.

It's like watching a man commit suicide, by slicing his throat, one micromillimeter at a time.

[PaulB]

Paul, fancy you letting everyone know that our code name is 'The Muppets'. Trevor only guessed at that.

Damn.

[Stewart P Evans]

Kermit

Damn.

Whatever you do, don't let him know the identity of 'Kermit'.

[PaulB]

Whatever you do, don't let him know the identity of 'Kermit'.

Martin, you mean? Oh, damn.

[Monty]

Tom,

That is spot on. Excellent summing up.

Trevor,

Where are your co accusers? I can't see them. They deserted the ship?

Again, has you evidence of a cabal/cartel/carwash?

Monty

[Tom_Wescott]

Tom,

That is spot on. Excellent summing up.

No problem. With all the endless speculation about you, I thought it was time you be put in your proper historical perspective.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Keith Skinner stole my lunch money

What's the big deal about the Aberconway version? As Stewart said, we already know the text of it. What I'm more curious about is all the other stuff Keith is holding back. He was on stage a few years ago and said he had info about the Maybrick Diary that was new and viable. What happened to that? I know he's getting a fat check from the A-Z, and his name is still on the cover, and the whole point of hiring him 20 years ago was to research the Ripper and provide his info for the book, so isn't it a conflict of interest that the A-Z only gets his scraps and the good stuff goes to the guy writing the fatter check, who may or may not ever make it public? Doesn't Keith put an 'expiration date' on his finds, such as 'published in 2 years or it's mine to do with as I want'?

I'm not saying he should share EVERYTHING with EVERYBODY, but he could at least have the decency to share it all with me. After all, I'm an American with lots of Yankee Dollars.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. And for the record, I'm not the only one wondering about the 'conflict of interest' thing. Pretty much EVERYONE is, they're just too British to post about it, and I'm just stupid enough to do so.

[Jonathan H]

To Tom

I argue that the 'big deal' of the 'Aberconway' Version is that this is the document whose contents were propagated to the public from 1898. It claimed there was no 'Jack the Ripepr' mystery, it could just never be proved in court as the murderer had taken his own life.

It is a key artifact of the mystery inside the mystery.

I would very much like to see and examine all of it, every single word, but only when Mr Skinner is comfortable with publishing it.

Consider that George Sims was never corrected by pal Macnaghten (by 1903, the Assistant Commissioner) in claiming, over and over again, that the 'Drowned Doctor' was the one and only Ripper.

Because, partly, of 'Aberconway'.

The document's alleged importance helped push aside -- perhaps quite inaccurately -- the competing police claims of the Edwardian Era: that 'Jack' was totally unknown, or that he was a convicted wife-murderer, or that he was a local, lunatic, Slavic Jew, or that he was a violent sailor convicted of nearly killing a harlot in Whitechapel.

Ahh, but all of those 'suspects' lived on beyond the 'awful glut' in Miller's Ct. and thus could not be the fiend because no human mind could remain functional for a single day after that mind-blasting charnel house.

Hence this was the clincher 'evidence' against the so-called Drowned Doctor (and obviously being a medico that takes care of the murderer's undoubted 'anatomical' skill).

It is by a police chief who, arguably, also claimed to have solved the mystery as much as Anderson. That's certainly how a Tory, Major Griffiths, and a Liberal, Sims understood it from Mac, and never pulled back from this opinion up to 1917.

The police chief himself, from the safety of retirement, confirmed this certainty, rightly or wrongly, in 1913 and in his subsequent memoirs of 1914.

Yet Macnaghten seems to have claimed to his cronies that this document was a 'Home Office Report' or a copy of one (Sims, 1903). Whichever, it was the definitive opinion of the state about the Whitechapel murders.

But it's not?

It's not even an accurate reproduction of the alternate version prepared for the Home Office, but never sent, in which nobody ever saw the murderer and there are no prime suspects, just a trio of lunatic nonentities who are, nevertheless, better than Cutbush because they were off the scene after the Kelly murder not off the streets until as late as 1891 (the English might-be-a-doctor-and-then-again-might-not-be maybe killed himself the same morning, the Jewish masturbator was incarcerated within four months, and the Russian medico also institutionalized, though its unclear how long after the Kelly murder).

Of course, 'Kosminksi' is really Aaron Kosminski who was also not off the streets until 1891!

This Thomas Cutbush was the tragic nephew of a retired and respected policeman -- and that's not true either?!

'Aberconway' established, behind-the-scenes, Macnaghten's personal agreement with the state's judgment -- in fact it's just his opinion among officials -- that Druitt was, quite different from the official version, the best bet of a trio of now strong 'police' suspects who were, at the very least, extremely dangerous and suspicious characters -- even the Gentile gent.

Yet each of them has been fictionalized?

eg. Definitely a real life Henry Jekyll, or definitely all women, or definitely carries surgical knives, and maybe seen by a reliable beat cop, and so on.

But Druitt was not a doctor and did not kill himself the same morning as the final atrocity. By Mac's own definition the real Montague Druitt rules himself out as the Ripper by the timing of his topping himself in the Thames?!

What's going on here?

An affable, yet obsessive, wannabe 'Sherlock' who pushed a load of fiction onto the public because he hated his superior, or was it because he knew Druitt was a young Tory barrister and he wanted the family, the Conservative Party and the Yard's battered reputation protected, or was it because he wanted Dr. Francis Tumblety the genuine -- and genuinely embarrassing -- prime suspect of 1888 buried and forgotten (though Jack Littlechild remembered), or was it because, as majority opinion still steadfastly asserts, Mac hopelessly over-rated his memory and just ... goofed? Again and again ...!

Every time a bit more of the whole 'Aberconway' version is made known, publicly or privately, it arguably adds to buttressing a contingent solution to the mystery inside the mystery.

For example, the date for Druitt's body's retrieval is Dec 31st, not 'Dec 3rd' as Cullen and Farson did not notice the faded, second digit. When Sims began moving the date of the body's recovery -- to about Dec 3rd -- is that because Macnaghten also made the same mistake as later writers, or was he choosing to further obscure the real Druitt?

For example, Macnaghten seems to have told at least Sims that this document was a definitive document of state. It actually ends calling itself a 'memo', arguably a much lesser designation, and the reason why his daughter called it a 'memorandum' -- or at other times just: 'my father's notes'. What a huge comedown from what Mac's cronies thought they were privy to, but she had it in her hands and perhaps they, literally, never did?

For example, as in the official version there is no mention, whatsoever, of the Goulston St. graffiti. Yet in his 1914 memoirs this becomes 'the only clue' left behind by the murderer, no ifs or buts. Why did this important claim not appear in the 'Home Office Report', or draft 'memorandum', or in the official version archived in Scotland Yard's files. Is is because both versions admit no errors by the Yard -- eg. that Druitt was an entirely posthumous suspect who became known to Macnaghten alone via 'secret information' originating from within the non-suspect's family -- and therefore he was not going to draw attention to Warren's controversial action in destroying allegedly the only clue left behind by the real murderer? Or, is this another salvo in his gentlemanly cold war with Anderson; to consolidate the claim that the murderer was most certainly not Jewish?

[PaulB]

What's the big deal about the Aberconway version? As Stewart said, we already know the text of it. What I'm more curious about is all the other stuff Keith is holding back. He was on stage a few years ago and said he had info about the Maybrick Diary that was new and viable. What happened to that? I know he's getting a fat check from the A-Z, and his name is still on the cover, and the whole point of hiring him 20 years ago was to research the Ripper and provide his info for the book, so isn't it a conflict of interest that the A-Z only gets his scraps and the good stuff goes to the guy writing the fatter check, who may or may not ever make it public? Doesn't Keith put an 'expiration date' on his finds, such as 'published in 2 years or it's mine to do with as I want'?

I'm not saying he should share EVERYTHING with EVERYBODY, but he could at least have the decency to share it all with me. After all, I'm an American with lots of Yankee Dollars.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. And for the record, I'm not the only one wondering about the 'conflict of interest' thing. Pretty much EVERYONE is, they're just too British to post about it, and I'm just stupid enough to do so.

Keith is the co-author of several books, including the A to Z, and wasn't 'hired' to do the research, but you are certainly right about the fat cheques received from the publisher of the book. We often discuss how to spend it all. I squandered mine on a take-home large cod and chips, a gherkin, and two - two! - bottles of Newcastle Brown. As for the unreleased information Keith's got, between you and me, his spare bedroom is full of bundles of papers tied up with string, piled high from floor to ceiling and covered with dust. It's all carefully card indexed, but the dog knocked it over and Keith hasn't got round to sorting it yet. The police believe Lord Lucan is hiding in there amid the piles, but they're afraid to go in an find out. And whilst you have the Yankee dollar, Martin has the incriminating photos, so the new stuff goes to him first. There isn't any conflict of interest. Keith's interest is in paying his mortgage. No conflict there at all.

[Stewart P Evans]

Jonathan...

...
Yet Macnaghten seems to have claimed to his cronies that this document was a 'Home Office Report' or a copy of one (Sims, 1903). Whichever, it was the definitive opinion of the state about the Whitechapel murders.
But it's not?
...

Jonathan, in my humble opinion, as you know, you attach far too much importance to the exact words of articles published for popular consumption, be they in newspapers, journals or books.

Macnaghten, again in my opinion, was a bit of a sloppy writer and over confident in his own ability to remember correctly. And much of his 'inside information' on cases would be passed on to his chums in casual chats at their gentlemen's clubs.

The official version of his memorandum was filed unused (apart from being submitted for the information of the Commissioner) in 1894, and he was left with his draft notes from which he had written it.

In the intervening years he transmitted the suspect information from his notes to his friend Griffiths for his 1898 book, Mysteries of Police and Crime. It is very likely that Macnaghten had told Griffiths and Sims that the notes were the basis of a report he had submitted to the Commissioner for the information of the Home Office.

There is no evidence that any such report was transmitted to the Home Office and it is most likely that as the excitement over the Sun articles in February 1894 died down without further controversy the memorandum was filed. There is a possibility, but only that, that Bradford gave a verbal briefing to the Home Secretary based on the memorandum.

You are to be congratulated on your well thought out and argued constructs but, as you know, I do not invest Macnaghten's information with the great importance that you do. But when it's about all there is to work with...

[Jonathan H]

Thanks Stewart

Obviously we disagree -- or rather just about everybody agrees with you and almost nobody agrees with me.

That 'Aberconway' is a draft is a theory, not a fact, just as it my theory that it is an 1898 backdated rewrite to suit the needs of popular writer-cronies.

I would argue that what many excellent secondary sources such as yourself do not take into account are the full writings of Sims, a Mac source-by-proxy -- in whiuch fictitious details are added to 'Aberconway' (eg. the un-named 'Kosminski' gets to work in a Polish hospital) -- nor Mac's memoirs which blunt, even reverse the trajectory of a fading, exaggerated memory. In that chapter, Macnaghten zeroed in, however obliquely, on a suspect whose name he had also committed to an official file, and to nobody else.

From my point of view, Stewart, the revelation that Mac via Griffiths (and then Sims) had turned the Druitt family into hovering friends was decisive.

Even I think yourself has speculated that this change was made to provide some cover for the family as the story was made public in 1898, and beyond.

But then why not the doctor detail too, which he pointedly did not commit himself too in the official version of the same document? And his age -- exactly ten years wrong?

And the so-called 'evidence' of the suspect's killing himself within hours of Kelly -- as a sort of tormented 'confession' of guilt.

Yet Mac gets the tiny detail of the season rail ticket correct, but major biog. details wrong?!

I don't buy it.

Mac even knows where that season ticket was from and where it was going, which was not reported in the press, except in the same 1889 article which refers to the suicided man's correct age, and correct date of drowning (though, ironically, doesn't include Montie's Christian name).

On the 'Kosminski' thread I have made a point today which I think is pertinent, devastating even, which will hopefully trigger a rigorous debate between us which I always find polite and fun and good-hearted, and I know some others do too.