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

[Mayerling]

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.

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'.

I think you're close Jonathan, but if I may tweak this, anybody that close to the Druitt family would probably keep mum in the 1894 Cutbush matter. But somebody not quite close who might have an inkling - that would be a different kettle of fish.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

And Whitechapel wouldn't be so crowded.

Perhaps rents might go down?

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Jeff,

You maybe right, for sure.

The Dorset solution leaked in 1891, and was plugged.

In 1894 Macnaghten writes an internal report about this solution, heavily camouflaged, but it does not go anywhere. An alleged police source claims at the end of the same year that the fiend is not locked-up, he's deceased.

In 1898, the story is deliberately leaked by Macnaghten in the second version of the memo, to Major Griffiths.

This is clustered with George Sims return to the case a few days after the Vicar's abortive salvo of early 1899.

Farquharson in 1891 combined fact and fiction, implying that the surgeon's son had taken poison.

Griffiths and Sims combine fact and fiction, though only the latter knew this I think.

The Vicar openly combined fact and fiction to make the identity of the murderer unrecoverable.

In 1905, Guy Logan openly admits that his story has fact plus fiction to protect the killer's respectable relations.

The same year a reporter writes that Sims told him that the whole story of the Drowned Doctor cannot be told, as it would harm the Ripper's super-respectable family.

[Mayerling]

Hi Jonathan,

Maybe my comments the other day were a trifle too harsh on this issue. I just don't see it solved. That does not mean I wouldn't want a good proven case to emerge if it does. As it is, keep the research and reinterpretations going.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

No worries, Jeff.

By the way, re: fact being mixed with fiction, I discovered that both George Sims and Melville Macnaghten make cameo appearances in Marie Belloc Loundes' "The Lodger" (serialized in 1911, book version in 1913) in which the Ripper figure, 'The Avenger', is a young, handsome, Gentile gentleman with plenty of dough who takes his own life--and whose body is never found.

Sound familiar?

The murderer's landlords, the Buntings, are the main characters and become gradually terrified that their lodger is the Avenger. Even more terrifying for them if that is so they will be utterly ruined and destitute (his arrival has already saved them genteel poverty), and this is what gives the novel its lasting nasty kick. The landlady even attends an inquest into one of the victims. In a state of nervous tension and guilt she keeps to herself her excruciating suspicions.

Again ... familiar?

The Avenger (called Mr Sleuth) is also an escapee from an asylum and has a psychotically-driven religious need to kill prostitutes. Why do the Buntings--quite separately from each other--begin to suspect the young gent has a dual life? Because he is always absent on the nights of the murders, otherwise he is a pious recluse.

In his 1914 memoir chapter, LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER, Macnaghten brings up this novel to debunk it as history (Loundes never claimed it was?); specifically denying that the real fiend had ever been sectioned by the state or was a religious enthusiast. Yet Mac in the same breath also appropriates the central plot device about the killer noticed by "his own people" (implying family) to be "absented"; e.g. that his absences coincide with the nights of the murders. In 1915 Sims, in "Pearson's Weekly", made this same lift from Loundes even more explicit:

“With Neil [sic] Cream murder was a pastime. There was no question of the insanity of revenge upon a certain class of women as there was in the case of the mad doctor who lived with his people at Blackheath, and who, during his occasional absences from home committed the crimes which won him worldwide infamy as Jack the Ripper.”

Obviously I agree Jeff, that the key lies with this hall-of-mirrors set up by Macnaghten and Sims, and how to carefully dismantle it.

[Mayerling]

No worries, Jeff.

By the way, re: fact being mixed with fiction, I discovered that both George Sims and Melville Macnaghten make cameo appearances in Marie Belloc Loundes' "The Lodger" (serialized in 1911, book version in 1913) in which the Ripper figure, 'The Avenger', is a young, handsome, Gentile gentleman with plenty of dough who takes his own life--and whose body is never found.

Sound familiar?

The murderer's landlords, the Buntings, are the main characters and become gradually terrified that their lodger is the Avenger. Even more terrifying for them if that is so they will be utterly ruined and destitute (his arrival has already saved them genteel poverty), and this is what gives the novel its lasting nasty kick. The landlady even attends an inquest into one of the victims. In a state of nervous tension and guilt she keeps to herself her excruciating suspicions.

Again ... familiar?

The Avenger (called Mr Sleuth) is also an escapee from an asylum and has a psychotically-driven religious need to kill prostitutes. Why do the Buntings--quite separately from each other--begin to suspect the young gent has a dual life? Because he is always absent on the nights of the murders, otherwise he is a pious recluse.

In his 1914 memoir chapter, LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER, Macnaghten brings up this novel to debunk it as history (Loundes never claimed it was?); specifically denying that the real fiend had ever been sectioned by the state or was a religious enthusiast. Yet Mac in the same breath also appropriates the central plot device about the killer noticed by "his own people" (implying family) to be "absented"; e.g. that his absences coincide with the nights of the murders. In 1915 Sims, in "Pearson's Weekly", made this same lift from Loundes even more explicit:

“With Neil [sic] Cream murder was a pastime. There was no question of the insanity of revenge upon a certain class of women as there was in the case of the mad doctor who lived with his people at Blackheath, and who, during his occasional absences from home committed the crimes which won him worldwide infamy as Jack the Ripper.”

Obviously I agree Jeff, that the key lies with this hall-of-mirrors set up by Macnaghten and Sims, and how to carefully dismantle it.

I have to let the cat out of the bag a little bit here Jonathan. On another thread today or recently I said something to the effect that I am curious about the personal letters, journals and diaries of the writers of importance at the time of the Ripper murders, and what they thought of them, in particular mentioning three (there are others I had in mind). The three I mentioned were Wilkie Collins (who died in 1889), Thomas Hardy (whose fictional "Wessex" is, I believe, near Dorset - but if I'm wrong tell me), and Marie Belloc Lowndes.

It's Mrs Belloc Lowdes that most intrigues me. The reason is that entire story about the "lodger" figure - it still is roaming as a ghost like possibility around here, and even gets grafted (whether or not it should be) to Druitt. But it has a curious kind of "ivy like" growth to it. Sickert told (according to Osbert Sitwell) a story about a "lodger" who was the Ripper. And Sickert apparently mentioned a story about the Ripper (presumably this one) to Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm knew G. K. Chesterton and his close writer/political partner Hillaire Belloc - the brother of Marie Belloc Lowndes.

Mrs. Belloc Lowndes was actually very much interested in real crime. In 1914 she wrote a book (under a pseudonym) about a set of actual cases. So she would clearly be very interested in the Whitechapel Case. But (and you'll appreciate this) like Mac she may have combined features in writing "The Lodger".

Whatever she might have heard of Sickert and his tale of a "lodger" who was the Ripper, she would fully be aware of an earlier 1880s case in London where a killer hid out for nearly two weeks in a lodging house before he was arrested. That is the only real difference in the situations, for the killer in the other London murder case was also a young, pale, sickly fellow, roughly the same age and physical dimensions of Sickert's "lodger". He just did not collapse and subsequently die in a hospital or home where his people took him to. Nor, like Druitt, or Mrs. Lowndes' "Mr. Sleuth" (great name that!) did he drown himself (Sleuth I believe drowns himself in the Serpentine - correct me if I'm wrong).

The person I think may be part of the antecedents of "Mr. Sleuth" and even of Sickert's "lodger" is Percy Lefroy Mapleton, who in late June 1881 murdered Frederick Isaac Gold on a train to Brighton, left the train at Preston Park, but in such a curious state as to attract attention, was taken into custody to report what happened by the police, and before the discovery of Gold's body inside a train tunnel, managed to be escorted by a railway policeman to the house he then lived in with his sister - and left the house by the back door, while the policeman waited out front. Lefroy was hiding in London in a rooming house for several weeks, while the police were seeking him. He would spend hours in his room reading newspapers about the police search, and only leave at night. But he needed cash, and wrote a letter to a cousin that was intercepted, and that (plus the actions of his suspicious landlady - note that) led to the police arresting him in the rooming house. Lefroy would be tried for Gold's murder (the second railway murder trial in England) in November 1881, be convicted, and would be executed before the end of November 1881. Not the same ending at all as "Mr. Sleuth", Druitt, nor the unnamed "lodger" in Sickert's story. But the circumstances of Lefroy and Sickert's "lodger" and "Mr. Sleuth" are interesting in their similarities.

Jeff

[Jonathan H]

Fascinating stuff, Jeff!

My two cents is on John Sanders being behind Walter Sickert's tale.

If you get a chance to peruse my book later this year I think you will be equally fascinated by the previously neglected works of Victorian and Edwardian fiction which are clearly inspired by the Druitt solution, including the barrister's [postulated] confession to a priest.

The lodger tale is also a variation of the suspicious lodger, or laundry client, of a German woman at 22 Batty St.

George Sims had droll fun with this story in 1888, then arguably transformed it into something much more substantial in 1911. He also rendered it Tumbletyesque by remaking the suspect as an American and claiming the man was quite innocent (very similar to his own piece from 1907; in which the drowned English doctor is rivaled by an American medical man who is also declared innocent on dubious grounds).