Motives for Druitt and Kosminski?

[ChrisGeorge]

It wasn't until I joined this board a couple of weeks ago, but it occurred to me that a motive for JTR, whoever he was, could be less substitute rape/rage, along the lines of a Ted Bundy, and more terrorism, like a Zodiac.

I realize that the terrorism idea was put forward an dismissed a long time ago, because it was too reminiscent of the idea that floated around at the time, that JTR was using murder as a twisted means of calling attention to the terrible living conditions in the East End.

If he was some kind of terrorist, it would explain several puzzling things: why he never raped the women (at least according to the medical examiner at the time), why the murders were so out-in-the-open, even though that increased his risk of getting caught, and what the point of the mutilations was-- that is, they were simply to make the murders as shocking as possible. It would also explain why he stopped, since terrorist-murders do seem to sometimes stop, since the Zodiac seemed to, and Dennis Rader (BTK) did.

Perhaps JTR realized that he couldn't create a more shocking presentation than Catherine Eddowes without privacy, so he butchered Mary Jane Kelly in the most shocking scene yet, but the murder was less public, and with Miller's Court being off the main road, actually created less commotion. Also, the body wasn't discovered immediately. He may have had some very tense hours, waiting for the body to be discovered. He was faced with a conundrum, because he couldn't see a way to escalate. Maybe he went looking for another location, of decided to lay low, and start again once people let their guard down.

If this is the case, then at least some of the letters are probably from him.

Hello RivkahChaya

As you are aware, your suggestion is not new. In fact, in the Frogg Moody-David Taylor musical "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" the narrator says at one point that the Ripper was a type of "social reformer" -- and the suggestion was made facetiously by none other than playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw who wrote in a letter to the press that the murders helped to focus attention on conditions in the East End. A case might be made that the murders might have been done, say, by Irish or Jewish activists to embarrass the British government. But that is mere speculation and there is no real proof that either of those scenarios might been at play. The consensus of most of us who have studied the murders is that they were most likely carried out by a lone sexual serial killer.

Best regards

Chris George

[RivkahChaya]

It wasn't until I joined this board a couple of weeks ago, but it occurred to me that a motive for JTR, whoever he was, could be less substitute rape/rage, along the lines of a Ted Bundy, and more terrorism, like a Zodiac.

I realize that the terrorism idea was put forward an dismissed a long time ago, because it was too reminiscent of the idea that floated around at the time, that JTR was using murder as a twisted means of calling attention to the terrible living conditions in the East End.

If he was some kind of terrorist, it would explain several puzzling things: why he never raped the women (at least according to the medical examiner at the time), why the murders were so out-in-the-open, even though that increased his risk of getting caught, and what the point of the mutilations was-- that is, they were simply to make the murders as shocking as possible. It would also explain why he stopped, since terrorist-murders do seem to sometimes stop, since the Zodiac seemed to, and Dennis Rader (BTK) did.

Perhaps JTR realized that he couldn't create a more shocking presentation than Catherine Eddowes without privacy, so he butchered Mary Jane Kelly in the most shocking scene yet, but the murder was less public, and with Miller's Court being off the main road, actually created less commotion. Also, the body wasn't discovered immediately. He may have had some very tense hours, waiting for the body to be discovered. He was faced with a conundrum, because he couldn't see a way to escalate. Maybe he went looking for another location, of decided to lay low, and start again once people let their guard down.

If this is the case, then at least some of the letters are probably from him.

[Phil Carter]

Two of Englands lowest ever test scores 52 and 63 came against the Aussies at Lords in 1888.
Maybe Monty just couldn't face the winter tour.
All the best.

Hello Martin,

Shame he wasn't of that quality as a cricketer either then.

best wishes

Phil

[Robert]

Yes, I think it was when Monty cremated Valentine and placed his ashes in a tea urn, that Valentine concluded enough was enough and Monty would have to leave the school under a cloud. It couldn't be covered up - several boys complained about the strange-tasting tea.

[martin wilson]

Two of Englands lowest ever test scores 52 and 63 came against the Aussies at Lords in 1888.
Maybe Monty just couldn't face the winter tour.
All the best.

[Jonathan H]

To Simon Wood

You asked me to explain how Macnaghten could be working in two contradictory directions in the 1890's.

Since you have not replied I presume that you have not seen the reply you requested.

To Stephen Thomas

Since you make no reference to what you asked me to produce, eg. quotes from the primary sources which show that Druitt was not being put forward as a tormented, suicidal, homosexual I take it that you accept that that part of the Old Paradigm is weak.

It always was a modernist imposition on the material and hung from the slender reed that when Sir Melville said in 1913 that he 'knew exactly who' [the un-named Druitt] was -- he didn't.

As for Macnaghten creating not two but three suspect who are really not much at all (Druitt wasn't a doctor and did not kill himself within hours of Kelly; Aaron Kosminski is from maybe an 1888 list; Ostrog from perhaps the 1888 Police Gazette) I think that is a reasonable opinion, and have said so before.

As in: once a source is shown to be deliberately misleading how can anything about it be trusted?

On the other hand, to be frank, this is a little bit naive about human beings let alone the competing pressures which create sources, usually on the run.

The reason Druitt is different from 'Kosminski' and Michael Ostrog as a Ripper suspect is that, in the limited extant record available to us, he does not begin with Macnaghten -- unlike the other two.

Montague Druitt as 'Jack' begins with a wing of his family in Dorset.

Macnaghten in both versions of his Report confirms the 'family' as the origin of the belief and/or suspicion about his dual identity.

Via Sims we can also see that the older brother, William, in Bournemouth, was also privy to this belief and apparently agreed with it.

Here are the two MP sources which arguably ended the old creaky notion of Macnaghten as incompetent and/or forgetful and/or relying on arms-length gossip:

11 February 1891, The Bristol Times and Mirror:

'I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of 'Jack the Ripper.' His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that 'Jack the Ripper' committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.

And:

From 'The York Herald' and 'The Yorkshire Herald', Feb 18th 1891:

'The member of Parliament who recently declared that 'Jack the Ripper' had killed himself on the evening of the last murder, adheres to his opinion. Even assuming that the man Saddler [sic] is able to prove his innocence of the murder of Frances Coles, he maintains that the latest crime cannot be the work of the author of the previous series of atrocities, and this view of the matter is steadily growing among those who do not see that there is any good reason to suppose that 'Jack the Ripper' is dead. So far as Saddler is concerned, there is a strong feeling that the evidence will have to be very much strengthened against him by next Tuesday, if he is to be committed for trial. His manner in the Thames Police-court was consistent with any theory.'

And,

26 February 1892, The Western Mail:

' ... Mr. Farquharson, M.P. for West Dorset, was credited, I believe, some time since with evolving a remarkable theory of his own on the matter. He believed that the author of the outrages destroyed himself. ...'

The last one is in an article in which an unidentified police official is providing ammuniation to show that the MP's theory is 'naturally exploded' because the police have been only lately pursuing a prime suspect -- he claims that it is the fiend -- night and day, but cannot make an arrest without the hardest of hard evidence. Yet their vigilance has at least prevented further murders (I subscribe to the theory that this is an exaggerated reference to Tom Sadler).

Assuming all that slef-serving guff is sincere by the unidentified cop what we have is the MP story semi-officially dismissed at the Yard -- except by Macnaghten. Rightly or wrongly, he absorbed its certainty, Farquharson's 'doctrine', for the rest of his life.

Mac furthermore libel-proofed and reshaped the scoop like this -- in Major Arthur Griffiths' 'Mysteries of Police and Crime' of 1898:

'The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant, "Jack the Ripper," was never revealed. So far as actual knowledge goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder, had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion. Concerning two of them the case was weak, although it was based on certain colourable facts. One was a Polish Jew, a known lunatic, who was at large in the district of Whitechapel at the time of the murder, and who, having afterwards developed homicidal tendencies, was confined to an asylum. This man was said to resemble the murderer by the one person who got a glimpse of him - the police-constable in Mitre Court. The second possible criminal was a Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict both in England and Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least, his whereabouts were never exactly known. The third person was of the same type, but the suspicion in his case was stronger, and there was every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him. He was also a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th November, 1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was found floating in the Thames, and was said to have been in the water a month. The theory in this case was that after his last exploit, which was the most fiendish of all, his brain entirely gave way, and he became furiously insane and committed suicide. It is at least a strong presumption that "Jack the Ripper" died or was put under restraint after the Miller's Court affair, which ended this series of crimes. It would be interesting to know whether in this third case the man was left-handed or ambidextrous, both suggestions having been advanced by medical experts after viewing the victims. Certainly other doctors disagreed this point, which may be said to add another to the many instances in which medical evidence has been conflicting, not to say confusing.'

For the public via the Major (and later Sims) the MP was out and the method and location of suicide was in. The 'family' was out and instead anomic 'friends' were in. Also, other suspects were brought in so that the un-named Druitt was not completely exposed as the only alternative, as he obviously is in the MP's doctrine.

But what is missed by people who have been at this subject for a few deacdes is that Macnaghten in his memoirs pulled back, mostly though by no means completely, from his manipulation of the data:

Sir Melville Macnaghten, 'Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper', 1914:

' ... Although, as I shall endeavour to show in this chapter, the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November i888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer ... '

This matches the MP tale of 1891, in terms of the posthumous timing of when Druitt's dual identity came to be known to Macnaghten.

As for the window-dressing suspects of the Polish Jew and the Russian doctor they are dropped altogether in the memoir. Sir Robert's 'definitely ascertained fact' is to Mac nothing, and so is Ostrog.

Furthermore Mac goes out of his way to make it clear that the likely 'Jack' was a Gentile, who had never been 'detained' in an asylum against his will, and who blamed Jews for interrupting him on the night of the 'double event', which meant Mac transposing the three Jews and the beat cop from one crime scene to the other (and wholly dumping his now redundant fiction about the cop seeing maybe the Polish Jew suspect with a victim).

Macnaghten even cleaned up the spelling of the graffiti, so as to make it more likely to written by an educated gent. He claimed that this was definitely written by the murderer -- yet the 'writing on the wall', this allegedly singular clue, appears in neither version of his Report and nor in the accounts of his proxies:

' ... During this night an apron, on which bloody hands had been wiped, was found in Goulburn [sic] Street (situated, if my memory is correct, about half-way between Berners Street and Mitre Square). Hard by was a writing in chalk on the wall, to the effect that " the Jews are the men who will not be blamed for nothing." The apron gave no clue, and the chalk writing was obliterated by the order of a high police official, who was seemingly afraid that a riot against the Jews might be the outcome of this strange " writing on the wall:' This was the only clue ever left behind by the murderer ...'

Finally Macnaghten distanced himself from the account of Farquharson, and the one he passed on to Sims, about the so-called clincher timing of Jack committing the final murder and then immediately his penitential self-murder on 'the same evening'; a confession in deed.

' ... On the morning of 9th November, Mary Jeanette Kelly... was found murdered in a room in Miller's Court, Dorset Street ... the individual who held up London in terror ... committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888 ...'

To Scott Nelson

I'm sorry but, as is often the case with your posts, I can't follow what you are saying or arguing?

An Old Etonian means an ex-pupil of Eton. It still does.

A Tory means a supporter of the British Conservative Party, either as a voter or a member. It still does.

The Druitts family and Macnaghten were both. Christabel Aberconway desribes her father as an 'enthusiatic' Tory to the point of boring her silly -- yet an affable man with Liberal pals like Sims.

Henry Richard Farquharson was the Tory member for West Dorset in the House of Commons, an aristocratic backbencher and a fellow Old Etonian like Macnaghten (and a fellow Oxonian like Druitt, though from different colleges) and who lived just a few miles from some of the Druitts.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is both an Old Etonian and an Oxonian.

[Stephen Thomas]

What's all this with "perhaps"?

You're quick, Simon. Respect.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Stephen,

What's all this with "perhaps"?

Regards,

Simon

[Stephen Thomas]

the melancholic thief

Mac knew that Ostrog was just a melancholic thief as he stole valuables from Eton on the day he was there as an old scholar. He knew that the Russian con man only pretended to be a doctor. Furtehrmore, he knew, like everybody else, that in late 1894 Ostrog was banged-up in France at the time of the murders. Yet Mac went ahead and showed Griffiths and Sims (or verbally communicated its contents) his 'Home Office Report' which named Ostrog as a dangerous homicidal lunatic and a possible suspect for 'Jack'.

Ah, so MM actually knew that Ostrog was a total no-hoper suspect.

Perhaps Kosminski and your man Druitt were fall guys also.

[martin wilson]

Hi Rivkah
Thanks for your reply,it has really helped me to understand the context of the Kabbalah in Judaism.
I certainly understand the parallel with Catholicism, my mother in law,lovely woman that she is is very devout,and as you say her house is full of religious icons, pictures of the pope,Jesus etc and a child o Prague with its broken head.
She has also gone to all the Marian visitation sites,in fact somewhere around the house I have a souvenier pen from Knock with a plastic light up virgin Mary on the top.
There were all sorts of rumours about Chaim Falk, he was said to have created a Golem for instance,although,dissapointingly it never showed up, he was an alchemist and was said to have practiced all manner of strange rituals.
He was obviously a very colourful figure in the London of the time, and would wear in all weathers a shtreimel hat and bekeshe satin coat.
The Golden Dawn members certainly studied invocative ritual, in fact I need to get back to The Lesser Key of Solomon I was plodding through which was published by one of its members.
Wyn Westcott,one of its founders had to resign as a deputy coroner in 1897 after 'occult' papers were found in a hansom cab, although there are claims the papers were planted as the history of the Golden Dawn is very much one of internicine conflict.
All the best.

[Robert]

Etonians don't grow up - they go up - to Oxbridge.

[Scott Nelson]

Oh wait!!

Do you mean the Etonians grow up to be Tories?

[Scott Nelson]

...the affable, Old Etonian Sir Melville Macnaghten. The latter sort of declassed himself by becoming a Scotland Yard 'Sleuth' (true, they are all three Tories, Gentiles, and cops..

You can't be an Etonian and a Tory at the same time.

[RivkahChaya]

Where I am having problems is establishing a consistent line on the attitudes of Orthodox Judaism to Kabbalah study, one source considers it dangerous and that it should only be studied by married men over 40, another source says this is nonsense.

There are traditional ages at which certain points of study are supposed to begin. Study of Hebrew, beginning with learning the alphabet begins at three, study of Torah begins at five, study of Talmud at 13, and Kabballah at 40. This did not mean that the Talmud was forbidden to people under 13, or the Torah forbidden to people under 5-- that was certainly not true at all, and there was plenty of informal learning about them.

The thing about the Kaballah that makes it different, is that Jews are constantly exposed to Torah, and learning about Torah is inevitable. Formal education in Torah ends when a person becomes bar (or these days, bat) mitzvah, and an adult in the eyes in the Jewish community, is presumed to have mastered the basics, and ready to learn the minutiae, in order to observe all the commandments by himself, and not through parental instruction or proxy. This is why it is essential to know the Talmud.

Talmud and Torah are essential. Kaballah is not.

Inasmuch as it is "dangerous," some people consider it hubris, as though you are saying you have mastered the Talmud (not possible), and are ready to move on. No one who studies the Kaballah thinks that, and clearly, they find it meaningful.

There are lots of extra-Talmudic texts that discuss the content of the Torah, or Jewish practice in general, and they are known as commentary. SOme of them are considered very important, but none as important as Torah and Talmud. There is a lot of Jewish history, and other types of books that people read, which are considered important, but not as important even as commentary.

People who don't like Kaballah usually consider it dangerous, because it distracts from the study of Talmud and Torah.

Now, I don't know that there wasn't a lot of surreptitiousness in 1888. People probably believed in dybbuks and golems back then. But I don't know that Kabballah readers were thought of as magicians who could summon dark spirits, or anything like that. Any cause and effect probably just had to do with the willingness of superstitious/kabballistic types to attribute something like epilepsy, or mania to a demonic or spiritual cause, which to an outsider might have seemed like "Everyone I know who learns about dybbuks eventually is visited by one."

So, then yes, I suppose in that way, it must have come to be seen as dangerous.

[lynn cates]

compare and contrast

Hello Jonathan. Thanks.

I agree that all of these chaps differ in the ways you suggest. Yet, they all seem alike in that they were good Victorian males and practising detectives. I might add to that their take on human sexuality and crime.

Cheers.
LC