Those who say the Ripper case can never be solved are wrong.

[jason_c]

I dont believe technology will ever solve the case. There is little to no physical evidence to test. I think the most likely way for the case to be "solved" is finding some lost reports on one of the main contemporary suspects. A police file on Kosminski for instance, or a letter from one of Druitt's pupils telling how Druitt used to walk around Whitechapel at night. Some new evidence against a main suspect will push that suspect very much to the fore.

[pinkmoon]

There can be only two conclusions that can been drawn from sir Melville putting pen to paper and naming Druitt .First one is that he knew absolutely nothing about Druitt and decided to pick him above Kosminski who was suspected of being our killer by senior policeman who investigated the ripper murders.Second he had some information from a source which he could never divulge his source might have been so trustworthy that he never bothered to cause a fuss and investigate it .

[Harry D]

Why was Macnaghten so intent on proving that Cutbush wasn't the Ripper that he would put forward a weak suspect like Ostrog? AFAIK, there's nothing actually to rule Cutbush out.

[Michael W Richards]

Hi All
As Anderson thought he knew and my great uncle Henry Cox seemed most were sure, is probably the best we can get with time.

Here is an instance where I should have saved my source, an idiot moment but was a news article. I shall search for it tomorrow !
It says Anderson said that the stains were what found the man he thought was Jack.
So I might go back and wait at Batty Street?

Pat.............

One of the most intriguing stories within the Ripper tales, the Batty Street surveillance and the accompanying story of its importance.

The interesting thing about the story is that it was reported that a suspect named Ludwig was mentioned in connection with this instance, and on Oct 17th the Evening News published this Letter to the editor;

"SIR- The formation of the letters strikes me as resembling in many aspects corresponding letters in German handwriting - e.g., the capitals J. G. I., the small zig-zag w (in "want to get to work"), ff, and g, &c. "I have laughed" and "till I do get buckled" are specimens of very questionable English. "Buckled" is not, I think, English idiom, though it readily conveys the idea of being pinioned. It may be worthy of remark that the first two letters in "Juwes" - so written, it is said, in the writing on the wall - are the first two letters in the same word in German. In the collocation of those words the relative positions in German and English of the negative not may also be matter for careful observation. The writer may not necessarily be a German, but I cannot help thinking that German or some kindred patois must be his mother tongue - that he is not, in other words, to the English manner born. - I am, &c.,

A. B. C.
October 15.

I find it interesting that the writer suggests a link between Dear Boss and The GSG based on Germanic root words.

I believe that it may be possible to eliminate some victims from a High Ripper Probability list, but since also I believe that more than one killer committed the Canonical Group murders, the murders we may be able to exclude may not be ones by the serial mutilator known as Jack. Which, again.. for me, are the murders of Polly, Annie and perhaps Kate.

Cheers

[pinkmoon]

Why was Macnaghten so intent on proving that Cutbush wasn't the Ripper that he would put forward a weak suspect like Ostrog? AFAIK, there's nothing actually to rule Cutbush out.

He could have simply said that we had a very good suspect who died before we could arrest him he then wouldn't have to name anyone.

[Michael W Richards]

Why was Macnaghten so intent on proving that Cutbush wasn't the Ripper that he would put forward a weak suspect like Ostrog? AFAIK, there's nothing actually to rule Cutbush out.

Ostrog wasn't just a "weak" suspect Harry D, he was in jail at the time. One would think that mentioning someone who was in jail at the time might have impact on how seriously anyone might take his Top Three list.

Cheers

[jason_c]

Ostrog wasn't just a "weak" suspect Harry D, he was in jail at the time. One would think that mentioning someone who was in jail at the time might have impact on how seriously anyone might take his Top Three list.

Cheers

I don't agree with this at all. MacNaghten wasn't to know Ostrog was locked up abroad in jail at the time. It's not as if that information was easily accessible in 1888. For major crimes perhaps, for minor crimes, no. Mac did say Ostrog's whereabouts couldn't be ascertained; we now know why.

[Jonathan H]

By the time (1898) that Macnaghten briefed Major Griffiths about his [alleged] 'Home Office Report' he knew that Ostrog had been totally cleared.

Yet he allowed the Russian's identity to go ahead into the public sphere as a minor Ripper suspect. On the other hand, the public profile that Macnaghten helped shape for public consumption was so far removed from the real person that even Ostrog would not have recognized himself in it, e.g. he was used for propagandist purposes.

Macnaghten knew that the real Ostrog was not a Ripper suspect (anymore), that he was not clinically insane, that he was no more a doctor than Druitt, and that he was not "habitually cruel" to women (he was in fact a bit of a charmer of the so-called fair sex).

I think the police chief was carrying out a bit of very indulgent--and very adolescent--revenge on Michael Ostrog for having robbed Mac's beloved Eton (more than once.) In his 1914 memoir chapter, "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper", the sidekick suspects for Druitt, Ostrog and 'Kosminski', are both completely dropped.

[pinkmoon]

I have no doubt that ostrog was put in to make the numbers up.

[Harry D]

What was so wrong with Cutbush as a suspect that Macnaughten would put Ostrog ahead of him, though?

[Wyatt Earp]

(Just as an aside, I've noticed that the number of posts I have has dropped by about 40. Is it just me or have others been affected?)

I noticed that the Van Gogh thread was recently moved from the suspects area to the pub, where the posts don't count against your total. Do you by any chance have about 40 posts in the Van Gogh thread? Dale Larner's post count seems to have gotten a little lower as well.

[Jonathan H]

In my opinion, the problem of [the un-named] Cutbush was that it was a tabloid-drive story, in a Liberal newspaper at that.

From Macnaghten's point of view the danger was that it might dislodge the Dorset solution again, as it had leaked before in 1891 (which he had successfully plugged).

Now in 1894, somebody connected to the Druitts might come forward to exonerate the madman in Broadmoor by outing the surgeon's son, and this could have lead to questions in the House of Commons, an internal inquiry, and so on.

Only Mac knew about Druitt at the Yard and he had committed nothing to paper. It would come out that he knew, yet had not told even his superiors.

I believe he scrambled to take out some kind of insurance both for the police and for himself, if the Druitt story came tumbling out. Therefore he put it on paper (e.g. the official version) that Druitt was a suspect, but Mac was deceitful and misleading about two aspects of the Ripper: 1) that the might-not-be-a-doctor was a suspect in 1888--whilst alive--and, 2) that he was a minor, hearsay figure (though, paradoxically, the "awful glut" phony litmus test fits him best). Ostroag and 'Kosminski' were offered up to also mislead that Druitt was just one of a trio of possibilities. This is what the Home Sec would have said in the Commons, if it had come to it.

The biggest single fib Mac told in both versions of his report was to claim that Cutbush was the nephew--practically the de-facto son--of a retired policeman. Recent research for my book has established why he was so anxious to make this bogus connection.

Of course this report was never sent. The Cutbush scoop withered and died. The report was archived and read by nobody. In 1898 Macnaghten cranked up this public relations campaign once more, with a rather different, e.g. updated, version of his 'Home Office Report'.

[Scott Nelson]

When the Ripper case is solved, as I am sure it will be, it is because of the researchers of today and tomorrow who never said never.

Yes Richard, I think you're correct. When it's discovered that David Cohen's non-anglicized name was "Kosminski," we'll have a case solution that will satisfy most people.

[Batman]

I believe it was Sugden who revealed Ostrog was in a French jail.

Btw, several people where being held on suspicion of being JtR for the murders of Nichols and Chapman. Several had threatened women with a knife and deemed quite unstable. For example, Charles Ludwig.

So apparently brandishing a knife and threatening women, even to threaten cutting their throats, is very common and just not justification enough to warrent them anything other than a person of interest. Kozminski, Ludwig, Pizer, Issenschmidt.... If every person who brandished a knife and threatend a woman in Whitechapel 1888 was locked up, you would need a full sized prison to manage them all.

[GUT]

I believe it was Sugden who revealed Ostrog was in a French jail.

Btw, several people where being held on suspicion of being JtR for the murders of Nichols and Chapman. Several had threatened women with a knife and deemed quite unstable. For example, Charles Ludwig.

So apparently brandishing a knife and threatening women, even to threaten cutting their throats, is very common and just not justification enough to warrent them anything other than a person of interest. Kozminski, Ludwig, Pizer, Issenschmidt.... If every person who brandished a knife and threatend a woman in Whitechapel 1888 was locked up, you would need a full sized prison to manage them all.

And Whitechapel wouldn't be so crowded.