Motives for Druitt and Kosminski?

[Stephen Thomas]

Yes, that is good point but it is one that Sir Melville Macnaghten, a police chief of the time would also have known, and did know.

Yet he believed in Montague Druitt's probable culpability for the Whitechapel murders (for five of them) to the total exclusiuon of all other suspects from about 1891 to his death in 1921. He propagated a veiled version of this story (and debunked the alternate Polish Jew suspect) for the public from 1898.

Correction, Jonathan.

What Macnaghten said and what he 'believed' need not be the same thing.

[Bridewell]

Indeed

Correction, Jonathan.

What Macnaghten said and what he 'believed' need not be the same thing.

Hi Stephen,

Good point - especially if Sir Melville was as machiavellian as is claimed.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Jonathan H]

To Stephen Thomas

In the one document under his own name for public consumption, his legacy, Sir Melville committed himself to Druitt's culpability ('certain facts ... a conclusion') without any qualifications, except that it was a case in which no arrest, charges, or conviction could happen because, in a sense, the Ripper had taken care of that himself.

No other suspects matter -- by implication Tumblety, 'Kosminski', Chapman, and Ostrog are utterly worthless -- and the killer did not kill himself immediately after his 'awful glut' (and in 1910, through his proxy Sims, he dismissed Anderson's claims as 'fairy tales').

On the other hand, the argument that a source which engages in deceit, which Mac does over and over for intersecting reasons of compassion, propriety, institutional self-interest and political pressure, is therefore hopelessly unreliable -- is fair enough.

I perfectly respect the people who reject Macnaghten as a source, that all bets are off when you grasp that he misled his own superiors about Druitt being a suspect whilst alive -- though in a document never sent -- that he misled Griffiths and Sims into believing that 'Aberconway' was a definitive document of state, that he misled Anderson into believing that 'Kosminski' was sectioned in early 1889 (and was deceased?), and so on.

The counter is that the old notion that Druitt is being mixed up, by forgetful Mac, with somebody else -- we see another desperate, veteran poster trying this on right now -- was ended by the 2008 identification of a source who knew both Druitt and Macnaghten. The now two 'West of England' MP articles confirm what Macnaghten had secretly put on file in 1894: 'belief' in Druitt's guilt, rightly or wrongly, really did originate with his own family.

To Miss Marple

Druitt's words make more sense as a plea to his brother that he feared being sectioned like his mother because he was 'Jack' (or delusionally thought he was) and we can see this echoed in other primary sources. For example Sims, Mac's mouthpiece in 1902, 1903, 1907, and 1917, has the 'mad doctor' having already been in an asylum ('twice'), and asserts that if he had not killed himself ('a shreiking, raving fiend') that is where he would have been hastily and permanently returned to by his 'friends'.

I agree that 'epileptic mania' is dodgy and redundant.

But you miss the subtlety and modernity of Sir Melville describing [the un-named] Montague Druitt as 'remarkable' and 'fascinating' and 'Protean'; eg. that he was a barrister, a teacher, a cricketer and a serial killer -- a gentleman with many faces and a high-functioning maniac. Just like the horrendous serial killers who have committed evil and destruction in modern times but have seemed to be, in their daily lives, perfectly normal and thus impossible to be such a bestial criminal.

A face which we can see, at least in his high school pictures, which does not match the stereotypical Victorian notions of reading criminal behaviour via grotesque or distorted features. Mac told Tatcho Sims that he did resemble the killer, when the latter was younger and thinner, and this is true (minus the naval beard) even down to the centre-parting of the hair.

In his mostly ignored memoirs, Mac writes that you can bump into Jack the Rippers in the streets of London and never be the wiser. Druitt made him realise how much a psycho could seem to be, on the surface, an admirable chappie and yet be a sadistic monster when 'absented' from his 'people'.

[Michael W Richards]

I believe Phil's questions are impossible to answer in a pro-killer argument because hearsay and alleged mental illnesses are not anywhere near enough to accuse anyone of any violent crime.

In a ghetto, which Whitechapel was, you will find any number of mentally ill people, abandoned by their own family or institutions, and we know of quite a few people in that area at that time who had psychological problems.

Few if any of them would have the wherewithal to cut flaps off a midsection in order to gain unfettered access to internal organs, and even fewer would be able to extract any organ with what some medical experts suggested was considerable skill.

Someone told someone about something they suspected about Druitt and that makes him a likely suspect? One of the 3 main suspects? Oh yes...and one other of those 3 "main" suspects was in jail in Europe while the killings took place.

What someone said means very little without corroborating and supporting evidence to substantiate it.

Best regards,

Mike R

[Jonathan H]

To MWR

You could be right.

It's just that another way of looking at it is that Macnaghten agrees with you about Ostrog, and 'Kosminski' by exlcuding them completely from his own account of the case in 1913 and 1914.

He also agrees with you about the 'drowned doctor' too, dumping much of it's fictitious outer shell in his memoirs.

Macnaghten never meant for his opinion to be defined to the official or unofficial versions of his internal report, the former never sent and the latter publicly disseminated through cronies -- but anonymously.

In the modern era Anderson's 1910 memoirs are gone over with a fine-tooth comb, but Mac's are neglected?


Another interpretation of the meagre sources is not that someone told somebody something, but rather that a privately tormented Montague Druitt told an intimate, perhaps a member of his own family, that he was the Ripper.

Before he could be sectioned he killed himself. A family of doctors could not posthumously clear him as merely delusional, instead they diagnosed him as a 'sexual maniac' (and/or an epileptic maniac) and they tried -- and failed -- to keep the ghastly truth a secret.

Nothing which came after, not more Whitechapel murders, more suspects, more arrests, shook the respectable, 'good' family's abhorrent, unwanted, and ruinous 'belief', and when a discreet, well-connected Assistant Chief Constable checked out the leaked story 'some years after' he also 'believed' and also never stopped.

In terms of legal and forensic evidence there is nothing there -- and arguably never was since Druitt was only suspected by the state when he was beyond due process. In terms of historical methodology, on the other hand, it's arguably very strong.

In Sims we have a veiled glimpse of Macnaghten meeting with William Druitt. He may have also interviewed the person Druitt to whom confessed.

[Scott Nelson]

The counter is that the old notion that Druitt is being mixed up, by forgetful Mac, with somebody else -- we see another desperate, veteran poster trying this on right now -- was ended by the 2008 identification of a source who knew both Druitt and Macnaghten.

Please go easy on me. I told you, I'm still a minor and I'm not desperate. You, a teacher, should know better, and wouldn't want to ruin my emerging self-esteem, would you?

[Beowulf]

Excellent post.

Just saw this. Thank you, was extremely complimented by this

[Phil Carter]

I believe Phil's questions are impossible to answer in a pro-killer argument because hearsay and alleged mental illnesses are not anywhere near enough to accuse anyone of any violent crime.

In a ghetto, which Whitechapel was, you will find any number of mentally ill people, abandoned by their own family or institutions, and we know of quite a few people in that area at that time who had psychological problems.

Few if any of them would have the wherewithal to cut flaps off a midsection in order to gain unfettered access to internal organs, and even fewer would be able to extract any organ with what some medical experts suggested was considerable skill.

Someone told someone about something they suspected about Druitt and that makes him a likely suspect? One of the 3 main suspects? Oh yes...and one other of those 3 "main" suspects was in jail in Europe while the killings took place.

What someone said means very little without corroborating and supporting evidence to substantiate it.

Best regards,

Mike R

Hello Mike,

Indeed. That is precisely why I raised said questions in the first place. I simply cannot see (with respect to all) that the MacNagthen 3 can be, on balance, and with pure lack of motive, lack of (non heresay) evidence and sheer lack of evidence of being in attendance in the area on the dates required, as being classed as viable suspects.

best wishes

Phil

[Jonathan H]

To Phil Carter

That's perfectly reasonable.

I would just add that Macnaghten, by implication, agrees with you about two of those suspects -- who begin with him anyway in the exant record -- in his 1913 comments, and his 1914 memoirs.

They are not viable suspects, and one of them, Ostrog, has an iron-clad alibi about which Mac was aware when he misled his literary cronies in 1898.

Also, if a man makes a confession to being a high functioning, homicidal, 'sexual maniac', and the record of his movements checks out, and blood-stained clothes are found, and he knew his way round the East End from Anglican-charity work, and he takes his own life soon after confessing rather than join his ill mother in the asylum system, is that all still merely 'hearsay' evidence?

[Cogidubnus]

Also, if a man makes a confession to being a high functioning, homicidal, 'sexual maniac', and the record of his movements checks out, and blood-stained clothes are found, and he knew his way round the East End from Anglican-charity work, and he takes his own life soon after confessing rather than join his ill mother in the asylum system, is that all still merely 'hearsay' evidence?

No Jonathan...because of it's nature it's actually conjectural evidence...ie based on informed speculation...which doesn't of course make it any less interesting...just slightly less convincing...

All the best

Dave

[Jonathan H]

T Dave

I think that's fair enough, I would just counter that it is not speculation.

It is what a primary source, Macnaghten, claims was the solution. He is backed by two primary sources, about the MP, which predate his involvement -- arguably three if the 1899 Vicar means Druitt.

The standard for historical evidence for a provsional solution is very different from that of a forensic or legal one.

eg. Old Etonians Sir Melville Macnaghten and Henry Farquharson agreed that one of their own, a Tory, a Gentile, a Gentleman, an Oxonian and a cricketer was the fiend -- posthumously!

A too-late suspect who could never receive due process.

How do you know he was not just as mad as a March Hare and saying things which were delusional.

Yet Mac coukd not get Montie off the hook; only disguise him for public consumption to protect a respectable family (who become anomic 'friends').

For such a solution could bring the Conservative Party nothing but trouble so sure enough the story is allegedly debunked in early 1892 in a Tory paper.

The story could bring nothing but trouble for Scotland Yard and so sure enough it is reshaped -- by Mac alone -- as a near success from 1898, in which the police were about to arrest the 'doctor' (Mac conceded that this was not so in 1914).

Druitt's own family 'believed', when usually family members are the last to be convinced -- even after the maniac is convicted.

[DirectorDave]

[QUOTE
It doesn't help me get over the idea that a 23 yr old could look "middle-aged", that being my biggest hurdle with respect to Kosminski being the killer.
[/QUOTE]

First off Beowulf.....tremendous post!

Wickerman.....libations, hail the queen of the May, Hey ho who is there etc.

At the age of 32 I caught pneumonia, I look younger than my age but when I was taken to hospital, by my parents they said "I looked like an old man", friends that visited me said the exact same thing, 60 or 70 year old was the terms used. I was put in a cubicle to wait for a Doctor.....straped up to all kinds of machines that go ping minutes later I was in crash, pretty close to death.

I know this is not quite the same as mental illness but being ill can make you look a lot older than you are.

[martin wilson]

Who was the 'Dr D' referred to in the Littlechild letter? it seems strange that Macnaghten also referred,however erroneously to a Dr D.
Coincidence?
All the best.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Martin,

I am only guessing here- but as the letter was a response to Sims, who was clearly convinced of the drowned doctor idea of MM, I'd say that he knew the Druitt name from MM, and wrote 'Dr D' in reference to what MM had told him.

If MM hadn't told Sims the complete name, then this also explains it.

Conversely however, and as I read your post, it is strange that Littlechild didnt know of this obviously well-known drowned doctnr suspect by 1913. Plenty of others had known about him, and even more strangely, Tumblety is supposed, according to Littlechild, to have disappeared without a trace AND was thought to have drowned as well.

So not only didn't Littlechild know of MM's prime suspect,
known by many others, Dr D, he didnt know what happened to him when others were hunting the man down from his own Dept, (Andrews) and asking after him (Anderson), and to top all that, Littlechild, having said Tumblety disappeared without a trace, THEN states that he believed (falsely) Tumblety to have drowned.

The question is, What does this indicate?

Littlechild gave mistaken information to Sims.
Swanson gave mistaken information in his marginalia.
MacNagthen gave mistaken information in his memoranda.
Anderson gave mistaken information (according to others) in his writings.

And Reid told the world that ALL of the above was rubbish.

All we need in the next few years is further revelations found via other officers (Williamson, Arnold, Froest, Melville, Godley, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all!)
Fear not- there's an anniversary coming up. LOL!

Best wishes

Phil

[Wickerman]

[QUOTE

Wickerman.....libations, hail the queen of the May, Hey ho who is there etc.

At the age of 32 I caught pneumonia, I look younger than my age but when I was taken to hospital, by my parents they said "I looked like an old man", friends that visited me said the exact same thing, 60 or 70 year old was the terms used. I was put in a cubicle to wait for a Doctor.....straped up to all kinds of machines that go ping minutes later I was in crash, pretty close to death.

I know this is not quite the same as mental illness but being ill can make you look a lot older than you are.

Yes Dave, but were you also fit enough to walk the streets for 3 months killing prostitutes?
Apparently, you were not even fit enough to get out of bed....


Regards, Jon S.