How do Suspects compare?

[PaulB]

Don.
We know that Tumblety was not arrested as a Ripper suspect because we have legitimate documentation that he was arrested for "unnatural offences".
The police are not about to arrest him twice and let him out on bail for the lesser charge, that is sheer nonsense. So, he was never arrested in connection with the Whitechapel murders.

Jon,
Littlechild does not say Tumblety was 'arrested as a Ripper suspect', he says he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper, which aredifferent things. and Littlechild specifically states that 'Tumblety was arrested at the time of the murders in connection with unnatural offences'. What is being discussed here is a statement that Tumblety was suspected.

It isn't too far of a stretch to suppose that when arrested on the indecency charges that he would have been questioned about his whereabouts at the time of the murders. In fact, it could even be argued that Tumblety was arrested on the indecency charges so that he could be questioned about the murders. In fact, one might even go so far as to argue that this is what did happen and was what gave rise to the US newspapers and Tumblety's own claim that he was arrested in connection with the Ripper crimes.

Thankyou, and a sceptical eye is not about to allow the use of such material as support in an academic argument. Until the claims can be verified, those claims within the memoirs will be left out from serious scholarly debates.

One example, Josephus is our only source for the siege at Masada.
Does he speak the truth?
1) Josephus was not present.
2) He was a Romanized Jew, not trying to create sympathy for the Jewish cause.
3) Josephus was principally writing for the Roman Emperor, to put the Romans in a favourable light.

Does this mean that when ostraca was found in the ruins painted with Jewish names that the Josephus story of the last survivors drawing lots for the genocide/suicide pact must be fact?

No academic will claim the words of Josephus are proof that lots were drawn.
No scholar would be so rash.

Regards, Jon S.

Briefly turning to your Josephus example, as you are clearly aware, Josephus does not present us with a unique problem, there being a great many instances where our knowledge of events is based on a single source. Lots of questions are asked of the source in our efforts to assess its reliability:
Who was he? Was he giving a first-hand account? What was his purpose in writing? And so on and so on. Understanding the source is one of the very first steps in source analysis and what you write about Josephus emerges from that questioning.

The argument advanced by Trevor Marriott and Phil Carter here is that a document like the Swanson marginalia is 'worthless' because the story it tells is uncorroborated in the official documents. Most of the official documents are missing, including the 'suspect's file', so the absence of corroboration is just a huge red-herring. The fact is that we apply pretty much the same 'tests' and 'controls' to the marginalia or the Littlechild letter as we do to other sources. Josephus, for example, is accepted as a hugely valuable source, particularly valued for its references to Jesus and notably his brother James. Just because we lack corroboration for some of the things we're told, doesn't mean we bin it as 'worthless'. We treat it with care, with responsibility.

The same applies to other sources.

[Jonathan H]

I agree that it is a titbit, but a very appetizing one.

To me Divall, inadvertently no doubt, pulled back the curtain to show the Wizard at the controls of his myth-making disinformation.

This is the earlier quote by the same source, from the latest edition of the A to Z, p. 139:

... 'the way the bodies were dissected showed a very skilfull knowledge of anatomy on the part of the murderer'; voiced his own opinion thast the murderer was killing in a deluded attempt to stop the spread of venereal disease and concluded, 'We have never found any trace of this man, or of any connection of his, not have we been able to ascertain definitely the end of him. the much lamented ...' Then comes the Macnaghten bit.

So, what we see is the general opinion of the police is that he was never identified, plus the empty cliche of Jack-the-Surgeon, and then Macnaghten, somewhat isolated in claiming there was a prime suspect, the timing of whose fate ended the murders -- a backdated notion.

This arguably matches other sources including the new 'West of England' MP source discovered by Paul Begg.

I argue that here is a subordinate colleague to whom Macnaghten -- good ol' Mac -- talked out of one side of his mouth, and who remembered it and recorded it, perhaps ignorant of Mac's own rather opaque 1914 memoirs and even if he had been he would not necessarily have believed that it was a different suspect.

I would argue that this is the second major myth of the case: that Macnaghten was too late for the Ripper investigation.

It was a myth started by Macnaghten once he -- via Griffiths and Sims -- backdated the hunt for the maniacal doctor to 1888 (there was no such hunt or even official investigation of Druitt -- but there was one of Dr. Tumblety).

Of course Mac was too late for the 'canonical five' but nobody knew they were the only 'Jack' murders until he found the deceased Druitt.

By then he had been on the Force for a couple of years (and was also there when Aaron Kosminski was permanently sectioned, yet backdates it to a time before he joined).

My guess is that Mac told this to Divall after he had privately investigated Druitt in 1891 (having inevitably learned of Tumblety the day he started) but was not yet sure how to re-shape the Ripper's deflective profile; eg. at this point America and an asylum stay were in.

It maybe a glimpse of the original profile Mac concocted, with the data still in flux, or maybe Divall has just got it all wrong?

By 1894, if Divall is correct, Mac had decided to split some of these details (asylum, deceased) between Druitt and 'Kosminski' with the fled-to-America element left out -- but replaced by the verbal, gossipy claim that Tumblety may have committed suicide too.

Later Mac had the 'demented doctor' (Sims, 1903) having been in an asylum confessing to wanting to murder harlots. In Sims 1907, the young, American suspect -- allegedly the other major theory of the police -- seems to be a bit of Druitt (age) a bit of Tumblety (American, prime) and a bit of Wynne Baxter's medico (specimen hunter).

No wonder a perplexed Littlechild wrote his letter in 1913 trying to untangle this mutation.

Of course Littlechild had never heard of Druitt, as he was never an official suspect and was unknown to anybody at the Yard. I think that when the middle-aged doctor, affluent, reclusive, deviant, the subject of police agitation in 1888, turned up in Griffiths and Sims people like Anderson thought this must be a garbled version of Tumblety (eg. didn't Mac say he might have taken his own life after France, or something?) and left it alone.

[Wickerman]

Did Macnaghten so tell him, fusing bits of Druitt with Tumblety?

From 'Scoundrels Scallywags and Some Honest Men', 1929, the ex-Chief Inspector of CID Tom Divall wrote the following:

'The much lamented and late Commissioner of the CID, Sir Melville Macnaghten, received some information that the murderer had gone to America and died in a lunatic asylum there. This perhaps maybe correct, for after this news nothing was ever heard of any similar crimes being committed.'

Jonathan.
You have raised some interesting observations in recent posts, can I ask, if there is more detail about that quote from Divall?

The reason I ask is, Macnaghten only came into office as Asst. Chief Constable in June of 1889.
So why would he receive a communication concerning the murders of the year before?

The quote appears to suggest that after Macnaghten received this news, no more murders were committed. This tends to imply he received the news about the time of the murders, not 3-4 years later.
If he was Asst. Commissioner when he received the news, then this was after 1903, so the murders were long done by then.

Maybe Divall's story is another example of confused recollections? (1929). If there was an American suspect who died in an asylum, this must have been months if not years after the murders were done.
As it stands, it is hard to say where the confusion lies, with Divall, or Macnaghten, or someone inbetween?

Regards, Jon S.

[Cogidubnus]

Dr D

I'm tempted to say you're nearly there...despite being on the wrong thread...but are you after all? Nice posting Jonathan!

Dave

[Jonathan H]

'Said to be a Doctor' means might not be ...

That Macnaghten sincerely and thus mistakenly thought Druitt was a doctor is a theory about certain sources, not a fact -- and arguably a redundant one.

In the one document about the un-named Druitt for public consumption, his memoirs, Macnaghten confirms no such claim about the suicided suspect.

Nor does Littlechild say that Tumblety killed himself, just that it was 'believed' that he had done so. This suggests that somebody, who should know, had informed him of this -- and yet it was not quite a definitely, ascertained fact.

Did Macnaghten so tell him, fusing bits of Druitt with Tumblety?

From 'Scoundrels Scallywags and Some Honest Men', 1929, the ex-Chief Inspector of CID Tom Divall wrote the following:

'The much lamented and late Commissioner of the CID, Sir Melville Macnaghten, received some information that the murderer had gone to America and died in a lunatic asylum there. This perhaps maybe correct, for after this news nothing was ever heard of any similar crimes being committed.'

Anderson and Swanson, for some reason, wrongly believed that 'Kosminski' had been sectioned in early 1889, and then subsequently died. And that there were not more murders of the same kind.

That is not how the police initially treated subsequent Whitechapel murders, right up to 1891.

Surely, is it not likely that all these tales originate with Macnaghten? For that comment to Divall is like a fusion of Druitt, Tumblety and 'Kosminski': the mad, the fled, and the dead.

The giveaway Mac element is the redacted notion that the police knew at the time that Kelly was the final 'Jack' murder which he conceded in his memoirs was not true.

[Wickerman]

Jon,

Much of what you wrote above about historical analysis simply does not make sense.

You say that we ought not "lower the bar" by limiting ourselves to historical analysis "when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal." What, pray tell, are those contemporary sources and why are they "reliable"?

Don.
We know that Tumblety was not arrested as a Ripper suspect because we have legitimate documentation that he was arrested for "unnatural offences".
The police are not about to arrest him twice and let him out on bail for the lesser charge, that is sheer nonsense.
So, he was never arrested in connection with the Whitechapel murders.

You also wrote, in another post, I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument. This is sheer nonsense. Memoirs must be looked at with an especially skeptical eye,

Thankyou, and a sceptical eye is not about to allow the use of such material as support in an academic argument. Until the claims can be verified, those claims within the memoirs will be left out from serious scholarly debates.

One example, Josephus is our only source for the siege at Masada.
Does he speak the truth?
1) Josephus was not present.
2) He was a Romanized Jew, not trying to create sympathy for the Jewish cause.
3) Josephus was principally writing for the Roman Emperor, to put the Romans in a favourable light.

Does this mean that when ostraca was found in the ruins painted with Jewish names that the Josephus story of the last survivors drawing lots for the genocide/suicide pact must be fact?

No academic will claim the words of Josephus are proof that lots were drawn.
No scholar would be so rash.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,
Actually, it would be hearsay if it was something of which Littlechild had little or no direct experience, but if he knew that Tumblety was a Ripper suspect and knew that a large file existed on him, then he would be stating fact as he knew and understood it to be. And if he knew the evidence on which the suspicions were based then his conclusion that Tumblety was ‘a very likely’ suspect, whist his assessment and opinion, was informed and therefore reliable.

Paul.
As you know, Littlechilds letter was written 20 years after he left the force.
Therefore, when Littlechild suggests "among the suspects" we might question, if he is talking about contemporary suspects, Aug-Nov, 1888, or near-contemporary suspects, Dec 1888-1893? (the year he resigned).

If Littlechild knew there was a list of suspects, and that Tumblety was among them, it is strange that he did not clue in on Druitt being mistakenly referred to as a doctor (Dr. D).
While it is true that Druitt was not a doctor, it does appear there was a common misunderstanding that the suicide case had been a doctor, even Macnaughten identified Druitt as a doctor.
It was only the next year after Littlechild resigned that Macnaughten, in the memorandum, referred to Druitt as a suspect, so it is difficult to see any high placed police official not being aware of any suspicions about Druitt.

And yet, the very fact that Littlechild confused the suicide story, associated with Druitt, with Tumblety tends to suggest Littlechild was not so well informed about Tumblety even during his time on the force.
It is even possible that Littlechild has mistakenly merged two people. One true police suspect (Druitt), with one true Special Branch suspect (Tumblety), and thought they were the same person, an American 'Doctor' as a Ripper suspect who committed suicide.

I think, like all these after-the-fact writings, the Littlechild letter has too many unexplainable inconsistencies to be regarded as a reliable source in claiming Tumblety was a contemporary police suspect in the Ripper murders.
He may have been Littlechild's private suspect, but this letter does not add support to the claim that he was an official police suspect.

Regards, Jon S.

[Jonathan H]

To Wickerman

You are confusing Tumblety's arrest as a Ripper suspect with what he was eventually charged with; as a sexual 'deviant'.

When a source goes against its expected bias it is deemed potentially more reliable than sources which make claims that are self-aggrandizing, or collectively so.

Hence the arguable reliability of 'Days of My Years' as a primary source, which claim that there was no mystery, and had not been since 'some years after' the Kelly murder -- which turned out to be the last murder but was not known as such at the time.

Anderson, Swanson, Littlechild, and Abberline, as sources, all fall for the 'autumn of terror' trap, though not Reid.

That is an interpretation of surviving sources, and its merits and demerits have to be judged, against the same, of competing interpretations.

[Supe]

Jon,

Much of what you wrote above about historical analysis simply does not make sense.

You say that we ought not "lower the bar" by limiting ourselves to historical analysis "when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal." What, pray tell, are those contemporary sources and why are they "reliable"? Indeed, part of a historian's burden is sifting all contemporary sources for reliability.

You also suggest that any information about suspects possessed by anyone outside the investigation is hearsay. But by your definition any information about a suspect other than that by the person who first says "Here now, I do believe Smith is the guilty cahp." is second-hand or worse. And, not having been there, you have no idea when Littlechild was first apprised (and by whom) of suspicions about Tumblety.

You also wrote, in another post, I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument. This is sheer nonsense. Memoirs must be looked at with an especially skeptical eye, but I daresay even those of Baron Munchausen could well provide incontestable nuggets of fact.

Historians gather all the information they can, make note of what is said (and often what is not said), make judgements about the various sources and then try to theorize based on their findings. It is not an exact science; indeed, most of it is simply interpretation and some fields of historical study are constantly rewritten as new generations of scholars, with new interpretations, come along. One rather amusing example is the many reasons advanced for the Salem witch trials that seem attuned to the cultural problems facing society at the time of the theory's creation. Thus, there was the pyschoanalytical explanation, the hallucinatory drug explanation; the conflict of generations explanation and at the height of the Iraq War, the post-traumatic stress disorder explanation keyed by Indian wars in what is now Maine.

Whether you are happy with it or not, until such time as we have time-travel historical analysis is the best tool we have to investifate those 1888 murders.

Yours,

Don.

[Wickerman]

We have another factor to consider linked in. What amount of historocal personal opinion from an individual do we accept when we know that the individual opining in memoirs expresses known false facts? Do we just put this down to faulty memory? Age? Inflated ego to put the writer in a favourable light perhaps? Into a catagory each piece must be placed by present day enthusiasts. The writer may have bias and agendae which cloud the opinion too. These things must be considered. Anderson is the prime example of this.

Hi Phil.
I quite agree, any number of the flawed statements in Anderson's memoirs could be due to your "all of the above". Which is why I would never use anything from any memoirs to support an argument.

We do know what Anderson truely thought about suspects, in Oct. 1888, "we have no clue".

Done!

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Yes, precisely. The great mistake is in thinking of this as a crime investigation and treating the source materials accordingly and applying the rules and terminology of the detective to it. That was okay several decades ago when the Ripper was an acknowledged game like pin the tail on the donkey, but as it has been taken more seriously it's had to be treated as a historical event, just like any and every other historical event.

Thankyou Paul, & Don.
Historical analysis is in an inferior position precisely due to the fact that researchers & historians are compelled to rely on personal documents, inscriptions, and to some degree, what we might call heresay.

Historians would envy being able to deal with the same class of evidence as might be found in a modern criminal investigation. Which is why they make every effort to use C-14 dating, dendrochronology and stratification dating.
In order to raise the credibility of their theory & the accuracy of their study.

What I am suggesting to you is that we should not "lower the bar" by arguing that a century old murder case should be relegated to purely historical analysis when we have reliable contemporary sources at our disposal.

With respect to Littlechild's opinions, in 1913, that Tumblety was a likely Ripper suspect, in 1888, (25 years previous!). I was meaning that Littlechild had been in Special Branch and not involved in the Whitechapel murder investigation we might be allowed to assume that any information that came his way with respect to suspects was given to him by others, ie; his sources were second-hand or worse. Which is what I meant by heresay. Had Littlechild been in Swanson's position it would be a different matter.

Newspaper articles as we all know are both a blessing and a curse. Some stories are testable, many are not. Some of the most intriguing points in the case are contained in a singular paragraph and not repeated elsewhere. Because some of these comments cannot be tested their acceptance becomes more based on what the article says, and its truthfulness judged on whether it conforms with accepted paradigms, or contests them.
We tend to put our own credibility on the line when we use a little known press report in support of an argument.

If I recall correctly, there was not one mention in any of those wired communications between Britain & America that Tumblety was a murder suspect. Where the American press got their information is not clear, but reliable information does exist on the reason Tumblety was arrested, and it was not as a Ripper suspect.

We know what Tumblety was suspected for, and what he was arrested for.
Reliable information does exist on both the arrest & the charge, we do not need to disregard reliable police documentation in favour of the words of a charlatan or unsourced American newspaper stories.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

…and then comes the discovery of another private letter from Canada. Recovered by Canadian historian Gerard Keith was a private letter from Marine Deputy Minister Smith to a government official named James Barber in St. John dated December 1, 1888, only days after Assistant Commissioner Anderson contacted US law enforcement officials about Francis Tumblety. Smith had worked with Barber in St. John years earlier. In it, it states:

"My dear Barber.... Do you recollect Dr. Tumblety who came to St. John about 1860 and who used to ride on a beautiful white horse with a long tail, and a couple of grey hounds following after him? Do you recollect how he used to canter along like a circus man? And do you recollect that it was asserted that he killed old Portmore, the Carpenter who built the extension to my house and fleeced me to a large extent? Do you recollect how he suddenly left St. John, circus horse, hounds and all, and afterwards turned up at different places in the States and Canada? He was considered by Dr. Bayard and others an adventurer and Quack Doctor. He is the man who was arrested in London three weeks ago as the Whitechapel murderer… He now spells his name Twomblety [suggests that his source originated in England, since Tumblety purposely used ‘Twomblety’ in England] …."

Odd how you have edited out the most important part of this letter Mike. Here’s the part you didn’t want Trevor to see –

“…He had been living in Birmingham and used to come up to London on Saturday nights. The police have always had their eyes on him every place he went, and finally the Birmingham Police telegraphed to the London Police that he had left for London, and on his arrival he was nabbed accordingly…I do not think he could be the Whitechapel fiend….”

This, as has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions, is describing, not Tumblety, but the Euston Station Suspect. The physical description of this suspect did not match Tumblety; the description of his working background did not match Tumblety; this man was in Birmingham and under the constant surveillance of the Birmingham Police while Tumblety was in London and part of the time under remand and in jail; Tumblety didn’t receive bail until Friday, the 16th of November while the Euston Station Suspect didn’t leave Birmingham, according to the Birmingham Police who were watching his every move, until Saturday, the 17th of November.

Smith was obviously dead wrong in what he wrote and he obviously didn’t get his information from a “source in England” or from some Canadian Government official, unless that supposed source was greatly misinformed and confused. As has been pointed out to you, again on numerous occasions, the likely source for Smith’s “information” was the Ottawa newspapers since stores of Tumblety’s arrest and the arrest of the Euston Station Suspect hit the papers in North America at about the same time.

Wolf.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Mike,

Confirmation bias. Yes indeed.

Based upon the information at our disposal all we will ever do is spin our wheels and pile opinion upon contradictory opinion.

Time, perhaps, to put aside our differences and ask ourselves a key question.

Have we been lied to by the cops?

It's a fertile area for research, but one which, unfortunately, appears to have been placed strictly off-limits.

Regards,

Simon

[Phil Carter]

Hi Simon, the problem is confirmation bias. Some of us are slaves to it, while others accept it as our weakness.
Hi Don.

Hello Mike,

I have no favourite suspect, so I honestly say that my reasoning lies NOT with who the source material comes from, nor any title of person within the police- but I have to ask this point..

If Anderson was after Tumbelty's handwriting on suspicion of being the WM, and some place their belief in Anderson's actions as part of the confirmation that Tumbelty was a strong suspect, then how does one explain:-

a) all other comments by Anderson 1888-1896?

b) Anderson not only disregarding Tumbelty in Blackwood's and his memoirs, but telling us as a fact that the killer was a Polish Jew?

you see Mike- if one is a Tumbeltyite or a Druittist or a Kosminskiite, all use THEIR reasons for Andersons comments to fit their favourite theory.

Some, myself included, see all these official comments for what they are alone, and see unreliability and no sure line. How can we call Andersons words reliable when he chopped and changed his mind so often? How can Swanson's annotations be reliable when there are so many holes in his sparse scribble? How can Macnagthen's writings be reliable when that too shows falsities?
And how can we believe any of it when so manx others contradict all of the above?

Simon Wood is bang on. The most deliberate deny and confuse operation was carried out, and s6me even today cant see the real writing on the wall, due to inability to see the wood for the trees, or loss of face having nailed colours to the mast or need to keep the eternal whodunnit going, forever and ever and ever and ever ad nauseum.

Its common sense. X amount of policemen make Y amount of conflicting comment that causes Z Amount of people to ignore the root of the plant. And yes, this list of names have presented us a plant like nothing else- a rose to cover up the weeds.

And people still smell the rose and keep watering it.
The truth lies in the weeds not the root of the rose bush.

Kindly

Phil

[mklhawley]

Hi Simon, the problem is confirmation bias. Some of us are slaves to it, while others accept it as our weakness.
Hi Don.