Article by Dr. John Batty Tuke

[Chris Scott]

The following article was written by Dr John Batty Tuke who is listed in the Fife Newspaper Index as "Fife County's Medical Superintendent of the Lunacy Board." What relation if any, he was to the Tukes connected with Druitt's mother, I do not know at present. This is a length article so I will post in parts and a transcription will be put in the Press reports. This article was published on 14 November 1888.

Part 1

[Chris Scott]

Find below Part 2

[Chris Scott]

Find below Part 3

[Chris Scott]

Find below Part 4

[Chris Scott]

Find below Part 5

[Chris Scott]

Below is the 6th and final part

[Chris Scott]

Here are Tuke's details from the 1891 Scotland census

Name: John Batty Tuke
Age: 56
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1835
Relationship: Head
Spouse's name : Lydia Jane
Gender: Male
Where born: England
Registration district: St George Landward
Civil Parish: Edinburgh St Cuthberts
County: Midlothian
Address: Balgreen
Occupation: Physician (Registered)
Household Members:
Christina Bruce 20
Mary Bruce 27
Jessie Fraser 26
Barbara Morrison 19
John Batty Tuke 56
Lydia Jane Tuke 63
George Wardrope 16
Margaret Warren 51

[Chris Scott]

And here is the 1881 entry:
Name: John Batty Tuke
Age: 46
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1835
Relationship: Head
Gender: Male
Where born: England
Registration Number: 685/1
Registration district: St George
Civil Parish: St George
County: Midlothian
Occupation: M D Proprietor Of Asylum
Household Members:
Margaret Adamson 30
Katherine Alexander 39
Jessie C Bowden 23
Susan A W Brodie 41
Henry Brown 44
Arthur Burt 36
Jessie Clapperton 32
Janet Deas 32
Eleonor Dundas 22
Jane Dunlop 73
Robina E Lockhart 41
Elizabeth H Magee 57
Lilias McLeod 72
James Moore 31
Margaret Murray 68
Christina Neilson 47
Jane Reid 37
Alan L S Tuke 15
Emily E Tuke 23
Gordon T Tuke 16
John Batty Tuke 46

[Chris Scott]

The Times
14 October 1913

[bolo]

Very interesting read, thanks for posting.

Some of Dr. Tuke's thoughts are quite remarkable in my opinion. He says that one should not judge the mental state of a murderer by the way he committed the crime, for even the most horrible mutilation could have been the work of a criminal rather than an insane mind.

I have no medical training so this statement may be little more than stating the obvious form a modern perspective but I guess his views weren't very popular among his contemporaries who predominantly accepted the theory of a lone madman Jack.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

This letter was to appear in the From the News Morgue column in the last issue of Ripper Notes but we had to cut the column due to space issues. It will now appear in the next issue.

For those of you who do not subscribe I'll attach the info on Dr. Tuke as it appears in the column:

1) Dr., later Sir (1898), John Batty Tuke MP, MD, D.Sc., FRCPE, FRSE (c.1835-1913).
Member of Parliament for the university constituency of Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities, 1900 – 1910; Medical Superintendent of Fife and Kinross Asylum, 1865-73; Medical Superintendent, Saughton Hall Asylum, Edinburgh; Medical Director, New Saughton Hall Asylum, Edinburgh; President Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh (1891); Member of General Medical Council in Registration and Education; appointed Morisonian Lecturer to the College of Physicians at Edinburgh for 1874-75; President of the Asylum Workers Association; founder of the Edinburgh Pathological Club; author of Morrison Lectures, Insanity and Over-exertion of the Brain; medical contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. There were two separate medical families named Tuke in England who worked with the insane. John Batty Tuke was a member of the York Tukes, a Quaker family who ran the the York Retreat, considered to be one of the first modern insane asylums in Britain. They are not to be confused with the (apparently) unrelated Cheswick Tukes who ran the Manor Farm House Asylum (where Ann Druitt, the mother of Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt was hospitalized and where she died in 1890) and later the Cheswick House Asylum in Cheswick. Dr. Hack Tuke of Cheswick also consulted on the mental state of Ripper suspect J.K. Stephen.

Wolf.

[Dan Norder]

And, for those who prefer to read straight text instead of scans of papers, here's the transcription of the article taken from Wolf's column:

The Scotsman
Wednesday, 14 November, 1888.

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS

Whenever a savage homicide is committed, for the perpetration of which no adequate motive can be suggested, the public mind reverts to the theory of insanity as the only one affording a possible explanation. Doubtless a diagnosis arrived at by a process of exclusion is warrantable when we have the full data of a case before us; but in the absence of full information, such a process is liable to be misleading. Before any theory of madness can be accepted in a given case of crime, however atrocious and revolting the circumstances connected with it may be, it is well in the interests of justice, to weigh the evidence of all the circumstances against the well ascertained facts of the natural history of insanity.

The hideous details of the Whitechapel series of murders have, it might be said, naturally led to the conclusion that they must have been committed by a maniac. I venture to point out that there are many circumstances connected with these crimes which militate against the opinion. I base my remarks on “clinical” observations, personal and otherwise, of cases of what is falsely termed “homicidal mania.” In point of fact, there is no such thing as homicidal mania per se – that is to say, no case has ever been placed on record in which the sole evidence of insanity has been an impulse to kill; the homicidal tendency has never been known to exist apart from other manifestations of brain disease or defect. There are certain acute forms of insanity in which it is known to be a pretty frequent concomitant, and in certain chronic conditions a desire to kill or injure is not uncommonly met with. The public mind should be disabused of the idea of an insanity whose only characteristic is an impulse to kill. The scientific and practical view of the position is that the so-called homicidal impulse is merely an incident in particular cases of aberration. It is manifestly impossible to enter here on a description of the various forms of insanity in which the homicidal tendency occurs; I shall therefore confine myself to enumerating the leading characteristics of murders committed by insane persons, and relate them as far as possible with the reported incidents of the Whitechapel crimes:

(1.) In the very large proportion of cases the act is distinctly impulsive – there is an entire absence of premeditation or forethought, whether as regards the method of commission or the avoidance of detection. The crime may be entirely motiveless, or it may be the result of some accidental irritation acting on the mind of a person whose power of control over his will is partially or wholly in abeyance.

(2.) Many cases are on record in which there cannot be a shadow of doubt that the lunatic has carefully premeditated and deliberately laid his plans for the perpetration of murder, stimulated by delusion, by an insane feeling of revenge, or by a desire to remove from the world relatives who he believes are implicated in the same misery which pervades his own existence. In such cases forethought extends only up to the period of the commission of the crime; his purpose effected, he commits suicide, he gives himself up to the police, or he runs and hides himself, the attempt to escape being of the most feeble kind, possessing none of the characteristics of a prearranged scheme.

(3.) Instances are pretty numerous of persons in the earlier stage of melancholia confessing to their physician a desire to commit suicide or homicide, the latter tendency being much less frequent than the former, in the proportion, roughly speaking, of 1 to 50. In such cases, however, it often happens that the suicidal tendency is concealed, and this may also be the case as regards the homicidal impulse. But in all instances in which the case has culminated in murder, the lunatic either commits suicide or gives himself up to justice.

(4.) There are cases of recurrent insanity in which homicidal tendency may be evinced; but in all such the symptoms of depression or excitement are so manifest as to call for special supervision.

(5.) There are cases of an acute transitory character; but here again general madness is manifest.

(6.) We have lastly a class of cases more difficult to deal with than any of the preceding. Every asylum physician is aware that a considerable number of insane persons discharged from lunatic hospitals because their symptoms are longer so overt as to render their further detention legally warrantable, retain a residuum, so to speak, of insane mental action. To all outward appearance their walk and conversation present no evidence of aberration, or they may be but slightly eccentric. Nevertheless, the taint of delusion, or a moral or an intellectual “twist,” or a certain general slight instability, may be constantly or occasionally manifest to those acquainted with the cases. This is of comparatively small importance when the patient is surrounded by friends, but our criminal records bear evidence that in the friendless, unstable waif the delusional element may gather strength, and be followed by criminal action.

Now I think that there can be no doubt that with the five classes of cases first spoken of the Whitechapel murders have nothing to do. Were I constructing for myself an imaginary case of lunacy, the subject of which might be the perpetrator of the series of crimes under consideration, I should select him from the sixth class, and picture to myself a person partially recovered from insanity, retaining a residual delusion connected with the class of persons who have been the victims, and desirous of satisfying an insane revenge. But my idealisation would not stand the test of relation with the general characteristics of insanity. It is all but impossible for any one who has worked among the insane to imagine a lunatic possessed of steadfast, persistent determination applied to acts committed at long intervals of time, and characterised by forethought applied to their perpetration, and to evasion of their criminal consequences, each individual act calling for a nervous courage without which failure would be certain, a general promptitude and cleverness suited to exigencies as they arise, and a steady reticence. It would not be hard to imagine the commission of an isolated act of this character by an insane person, but the whole circumstances of the commission of these crimes, save one, are outside insanity. If they have been committed by a lunatic, his is a case which in this country is without parallel or precedent. I have said the circumstances of these crimes are outside insanity, save one; that circumstance, of course, is the horrible nature of the act. But are we to deduce insanity from the revolting nature of a crime alone, when all the other circumstances point away from it? Why should we underestimate the power of strong human wickedness and overestimate that of weak human insanity? For my own part, I can more easily conceive these crimes being the result of savage wickedness than of insane mental action. There is a conciseness in the first idea which there is not in the second. Moreover, there is an incentive to wickedness productive of crime analogous to those now under consideration, which only those very intimately acquainted with the dark records of medical jurisprudence know of. This is not the place to speak of it, and I only allude to it in order to indicate that there are incentives to crime unappreciable by the great mass of the community.

JOHN BATTY TUKE.

[bolo]

Thanks for posting the transcript, Dan. Another great addition to my JtR research folder!

I'd be interested to know to what extend Dr. Tuke's medical/scientific statements are still valid today.

Personally I find his comments regarding the inability of a mentally ill person to concot and put into operation a more or less complex plan to kill and later on mutilate a number of women quite plausible, if not convincing.

[Observer]

Hi Bolo

JTR wasn't mentally ill? What is mental illness? Surely all serial killers are mentally ill. What was going through his mind during the months leading up to his killing spree? Surely his thought processes were not normal? Although what is the difference between killing for fun in peacetime and killing when one's Country decides it benefits the good of the Country?

Observer

[bolo]

Observer,

I see what you mean, I should have used the term "raving madman" instead of "mentally ill person".

A mentally ill serial killer Jack could have been stable enough to maintain the discipline and determination needed to commit his crimes but not a raving madman with the IQ of a loaf of bread.