Motives for Druitt and Kosminski?

[Jonathan H]

To RivkahChaya

Fair enough.

Actually Montie Druitt was not suspected at the time of the 1888 Whitechapel murders, or for 'some years after', as Macnaghten conceded in his memoirs. This matches most of the other primary sources on Druitt; he was never on police radar alive or dead.

It is not that Druitt was investigated by Macnagten because certain aspects of this man were suggestive or suspicious. He investigated him -- entirely posthumously -- because his own family 'believed' he was Jack as he was a 'sexual maniac'.

[RivkahChaya]

As I understand it the 7th was the second day of the jewish new year

Sundown on the 6th to sundown on the 7th was the second day. Anything after sundown was no longer Rosh Hashanah. However, that was Shabbes.

Jewish days go from sundown to sundown, and it's sometimes hard to know what secular calendars mean when they have a day marked as a Jewish holiday. Usually, in my experience, they mean it began the evening before, and continues until the evening of that date. Otherwise, the calendar will list the holiday on the date it begins with "begins at sundown" in parentheses.

[RivkahChaya]

Actually, the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, but it needs to be readjusted every so often. I will have to look to see when the "Rosh Chodesh," or "head of the month" days were in 1888. There are special Torah readings, so a Jew who went to synagogue on a regular basis would be at least vaguely aware of when the new moons were. Of course, probably everybody was then, since doing things by moonlight was an issue for people.

When I suggested that certain things were religiously prohibited, I was thinking more in terms of somebody being deliberately rebellious, rather than someone being some kind of religious maniac.

In re: sexual mania /= homosexuality; I wasn't basing this on anything I had heard about Druitt specifically, just on the knowledge that for a long time homosexuality was considered an illness, and I'm not talking in the Freudian sense. Like masturbation, homosexual acts were considered both a cause and effect of mental deterioration. In addition to that, for a very long time, and with absolutely no research or even observation to back it up, people thought that gay men were more likely to abuse or rape women. Probably because some people theorized, wrongly, that being gay originated in hatred of women. But at any rate, when a woman was found brutally raped and murdered, gay men in the area were automatically suspect.

My question about Druitt came from the thought that if the police at the time had the same wrong-headed ideas about gay men and the hatred of women, any known gay man in the area, Druitt included, would be a suspect. However, if no one thought Druitt was gay, then nevermind.

[martin wilson]

Hi Jonathon
Thank you for taking the trouble to give a full reply,very kind of you,actually your other replies scotched a thought I had that MM may have meant sexually insane as grand paralysis of the insane i.e, syphilis, given Druitts note mentioned his mother I thought it might explain MM's gallantry in protecting the family from scandal and thus the misdirection and misleading statements your reply indicated.
Hi RC,
The jewish calendar is not easy reading for a hignorant gentile, I have tried to understand it but I think I will go and study something easier,like quantum mechanics.
As I understand it the 7th was the second day of the jewish new year known as the day of judgement,in its religious context it is one of the various ritual days leading up to yom kippur, and it is in its religious context that I referred to it, the jewish new year being very,very different to my secular understanding of new year as just getting blind drunk on new years eve.
It is the pic n' mix approach to which prohibitions a jewish suspect obeyed and which he ignored that makes it difficult to establish consistency.
On one hand a religious maniac may have ignored certain prohibitions for the greater good in his view, on the other the 613 mitsvots makes me think that on a day to day basis some of them are just paid lip service to anyway,again inconsistent with a religious maniac,but perhaps consistent with the daily customs of the man.
Just to confuse matters,there is a fine line between mysticsm and occult,and sometimes the line does not exist, the four cardinal points are suggestive,but the simpler explanation is the killer just went in a different direction.
To add to the confusion, if I can leave Mary Kelly as the enigma, four of the murders ocurred between the 31st August and 30th September, the obvious occult reference being the lunar cycle, but this is based on the Gregorian calendar not the jewish one.
All the best.

[Jonathan H]

To Scott Nelson

Stephen Thomas asked me why I believed that Sir Melville Macnaghten meant by 'sexual mania', in regards to what was actually wrong with Montague Druitt?

It means gaining erotic pleasure from violence.

He wanted quotes.

I provided them.

Relevant excerpts rom Mac, his proxy, a source which is prbably about Druitt, and a Victorian medical definition of [what they perceived to be] a distinct form of furious madness (and which modern medicine might simply call sociopathology?)

It is a desperate, modern myth -- among some people -- that Druitt was sacked for being gay, or for some kind of evil behaviour towards his students.

There is no indication of this notion in any extant primary sources. It is more likely that he was sacked for being AWOL from the school.

[Scott Nelson]

You're all talking past one another.

[RivkahChaya]

Hmmm. I wonder what that last one is actually describing. I wonder if that is bipolar disorder in someone who is also an alcoholic-- someone who maybe tries to stay on an even keel with alcohol, but goes into a highly manic state anyway, and stops drinking, then develops the DTs, or something like that. It also sounds like the sudden outburst you can get from someone with Tourette's, who is using medication effectively, but misses a dose, and the symptoms come back, seemingly worse than before they were suppressed.

Anyway, I wanted to post that the Jewish holidays for the fall of 1888 were as follows:

Erev Rosh Hashanah Wed, September 5, 1888
Rosh Hashanah Thur, September 6, 1888
Erev Yom Kippur Fri, September 14, 1888
Yom Kippur Sat, September 15, 1888
Erev Sukkot Wed, September 19, 1888
Sukkot (lasts 1 week) Thur, September 20, 1888
Simchat Torah Thur, September 27, 1888
First night of Hanukkah Wed, November 28, 1888

So, Annie Chapman, and the "double event" were both on weekends following a major, and somewhat stressful, holiday. Yom Kippur actually occupied the weekend, and someone's absence would have been noticed. Sukkot isn't a synagogue holiday, although there is a service for it, but it doesn't last long. Hanukkah is a very minor festival, albeit, it is pushed by retailers in the US as a lesser Christmas; in 1888, it wouldn't have had much significance.

Something to mention, is that the time from about a week before Rosh Hashanah, until a few days after Simchat Torah, is very stressful. It's happy, if you are a religious person, and get along with your family, but there is a lot to prepare, and you have very little free time, or even time to sleep.

I imagine that for a Jew who, for whatever reason, felt like an outsider within the Jewish community, it is all really difficult.

Someone who is feeling stressed during this time period very well could blow a gasket, but after life normalized again, return to not needing a violent outlet.

The next stressful time would be the next Passover, which began on April 15, 1889. Did anything happen in Whitechapel then?

[Jonathan H]

To Stephen Thomas


Montie Druitt was not gay, at least nobody in the [albeit meagre] primary sources suggests he was.

It is entirely a modernist notion in order to provide a reason for his suicide unconnected to the Ripper crimes -- to get him off the suspect list.


Sir Melville Macnaghten from his 1914 memoirs:

CHAPTER IV.
LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER.

' ... When public excitement then was at white heat, two murders-unquestionably by the same hand-took place on the night of 3oth September. A woman, Elizabeth Stride, was found in Berners Street, with her throat cut, but no attempt at mutilation. In this case there can be little doubt but that the murderer was disturbed at his demoniacal work by some Jews who at that hour drove up to an anarchist club in the street. But the lust for blood was unsatisfied. The madman started off in search of another victim ...

... It will have been noticed that the fury of the murderer, as evinced in his methods of mutilation, increased on every occasion, and his appetite appears to have become sharpened by- indulgence. There can be no doubt that in the room at Miller's Court the madman found ample scope for the opportunities he had all along been seeking, and the probability is that, after his awful glut on this occasion, his brain gave way altogether and he committed suicide ; otherwise the murders would not have ceased. The man, of course, was a sexual maniac, but such madness takes Protean forms, as will be shown later on in other cases. Sexual murders are the most difficult of all for police to bring home to the perpetrators, for motives there are none ; only a lust for blood, and in many cases a hatred of woman as woman. Not infrequently the maniac possesses a diseased body, and this was probably so in the case of the Whitechapel murderer ...

Also from 'Days of My Years':

Chapter X
Motiveless Murders

' ... Both of these murders were committed by sexual maniacs,--by men who killed for the joy of killing,--but their types were wholly different.

As I have said before, when writing of the Whitechapel Murders, such madness takes Protean forms. Very few people, except barristers, doctors, and police officers, realise that such a thing as sexual mania exists ... (p. 100)

... Students of history, however, are aware that an excessive indulgence in vice leads, in certain cases, to a craving for blood. Nero was probably a sexual maniac. Many Eastern potentates in all ages, who loved to see slaves slaughtered or wild beats tearing each other to pieces, have been similarly affected. The disease is not as rare as you imagine. As you walk in the London streets you may, and do, not infrequently jostle against a potential murderer of the so-called Jack the Ripper type. The subject is not a pleasant one, but to those who study the depths of human nature it is intensely interesting.' (p. 101)

'It has been widely published that on the scaffold Neil Cream exclaimed, "I am Jack the---" just as the bolt was drawn.

Apart from the fact that no man in the last stage of furious madness, as the perpetrator of the Dorset Street horror must have been, could have lived to embark on a totally different series of atrocities, there is a perfect alibi.



Here is Sir Melville's proxy: George 'Tatcho' Sims/aka Dagonet

January 22, 1899.

' ... Jack, when he committed that crime, was in the last stage of the peculiar mania from which he suffered. He had become grotesque in his ideas as well as bloodthirsty ...'

February 16, 1902.

'... the large class of lunatics who are liable after their release from asylums to be driven mad again by the stress of daily life ... until a fresh outburst of insanity once more compels their removal.

Frequently this outburst - or, rather, this recurrence - of mania means a murder - sometimes a massacre. The homicidal maniac who

Shocked the World as Jack the Ripper

had been once - I am not sure that it was not twice - in a lunatic asylum ...'

July 13, 1902.

' ... the one and only genuine Jack saved further trouble by being found drowned in the Thames, into which he had flung himself, a raving lunatic, after the last and most appalling mutilation of the whole series ...'


March 29, 1903.

' ... "Jack" was a homicidal maniac. Each crime that he committed was marked with greater ferocity during the progress of his insanity. How could a man in the mental condition of "Jack" have suddenly settled down into a cool, calculating poisoner?

"Jack the Ripper" committed suicide after his last murder - a murder so maniacal that it was accepted at once as the deed of a furious madman.

April 5, 1903.

' ... No one who saw the victim of Miller's-court as she was found ever doubted that the deed was that of a man in the last stage of a terrible form of insanity. ...' A furious madman does not suddenly become a slow poisoner. "Jack the Ripper" was known, was identified, and is dead. Let him rest.'


July 31, 1904

' ... the demented doctor who committed the terrible Jack the Ripper outrages. ... The real Ripper, to whom the crimes were only brought home after he had been found a month old corpse in the Thames, was undoubtedly rather like me.'

1906.

'The series of diabolical crimes in the East End which appalled the world were committed by a homicidal maniac who led the ordinary life of a free citizen. He rode in tramcars and omnibuses. ... He was a man of birth and education, and had sufficient means to keep himself without work. For a whole year at least he was a free man, exercising all the privileges of freedom. And yet he was a homicidal maniac of the most diabolical kind ... This horrible phase of insanity is not, fortunately, a common one ...'

Sept.22, 1907.

Who was Jack the Ripper?

' ... Maniacal as was the fury with which he hacked and ripped his unhappy victims ... To realise the most remarkable feature of these maniacal deeds it must be borne in mind that the murderer, after cutting the throat of his victim and hacking the body about with maniacal fury ... walked home through the public streets.

He had a home somewhere, he slept somewhere, ate somewhere, changed his linen somewhere, sent his linen to the wash somewhere, kept his clothes and lived his life somewhere, yet never during the series of murders did he arouse the suspicions of any person who communicated with the police ...

... The third man was a doctor who lived in a suburb about six miles from Whitechapel, and who suffered from a horrible form of homicidal mania, a mania which leads the victim of it to look upon women of a certain class with frenzied hatred.

The doctor had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum for some time, and had been liberated and regained his complete freedom.

... The horrible nature of the atrocity committed in Miller's-court pointed to the last stage of frenzied mania. Each murder had shown a marked increase in maniacal ferocity. The last was the culminating point. The probability is that immediately after committing this murderous deed the author of it committed suicide. There was nothing else left for him to do except to be found wandering, a shrieking, raving, fiend, fit only for the padded cell.

It would be impossible for the author of the Miller's-court horror to have lived a life of apparent sanity one single day after that maniacal deed. He was a raving madman then and a raving madman when he flung himself in the Thames ...'

Feb.25, 1911.

JACK THE RIPPER

' ... There was ample proof that the real author of the horrors had committed suicide in the last stage of his maniacal frenzy.'


1917.

' ... He was undoubtedly a doctor who had been in a lunatic asylum and had developed homicidal mania of a special kind.

The North Country Vicar of 1899:

Western Mail
19 January 1899

WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
DID "JACK THE RIPPER" MAKE A CONFESSION?

' ... "I received information in professional confidence, with directions to publish the facts after ten years, and then with such alterations as might defeat identification.

The murderer was a man of good position and otherwise unblemished character, who suffered from epileptic mania, and is long since deceased. ...'


And this 1844 definition of 'Epileptic Mania', which matches Mac's physically diseased maniac and Sims' furious madman who 'raves' and 'shrieks' in a terminal, fit-like state:

http://studymore.org.uk/xmad1844.htm

'3. Epileptic Mania. - Some persons subject to severe paroxysms of epilepsy without suffering obliteration of their intellectual faculties, and even without obvious disorder of the mind during the intervals of their paroxysms, are nevertheless subject to occasional fits of a maniacal character. It is an observation frequently made by the attendants of asylums, that when the epileptic fits are coming on, such persons are irritable, morose, malicious, and sometimes exceedingly dangerous. During these periods, epileptics are prone to violence, and sometimes perpetrate the most atrocious acts. Many instances are upon record of such persons, at a time when their disorder had been in abeyance, or even supposed to have ceased altogether, having been seized with a sudden impulse, to commit homicide, infanticide, suicide, or to set fire to houses.*

' ... In other instances, the mental disorder of epileptics has the form of acute mania, or rather of raving delirium. The patient, generally a day or two, after the attack of epilepsy, sometimes immediately after it has ceased, is seized with a sudden fury, during which he sings, roars, shrieks, or resembles a man in a violent fit of intoxication ...'

[Stephen Thomas]

By 'sexually insane' Sir Melville Macnaghten makes clear in his memoirs, and via his proxy Sims, that he means a person who gains erotic pleasure from ultra-violence.

It has nothing to do with homosexuality.

Eh? Quotes please.

[Jonathan H]

To Martin Wilson

My theory is that the reason Jack Littlechild erroneously thinks that Tumblety may have committed suicide -- certainly disappeared without a trace after he hightailed it to France -- is because that is what Sir Melville Macnaghten at some point told him.

And Mac knew it was not true.

For Macnaghten mixed and matched data about Druitt and Tumblety so that Sims only knew about 'Dr D' and Littlechild only knew about 'Dr T' hence the latter's perplexed letter to the famous writer in 1913.

George Sims had written, as Mac's proxy, about this alleged 'drowned doctor' from 1899 (to 1917) a Super-suspect who never literally existed, but which exploited elements of both Druitt and Tumblety -- and I do not think Sims knew that.

DROWNED DOCTOR:
- A prime police suspect of 1888 (Tumblety)
- The subject of a dragnet; about to be arrested but got away (Tumblety, who was arrested and then got away)
- A middle-aged doctor (Tumblety)
- Unemployed yet very affluent (Tumblety)

- Killed himself in the Thames River (Druitt)
- lived in Blackheath (Druitt)
- Was being searched for by frantic 'friends' (Druitt's older brother, tipped off by a friend)
- Did nothing but idle his time away on public transport (Druitt's season rail pass)
- Sexually Insane (Druitt)

Sims in 1907 wrote that the two leading theories among the authorittes was between the drowned, middle-aged English doctor and a young American, medical student who did not kill himself. Again, this is arguably bits and pieces of Druitt and Tumblety scrambled so that neither can be identified.

But Littlechild recognised enough of Sims' profile to think that Sims must have a garbled version of Dr T, which was partly correct (crucially the ex-chief does not challenge the prime Ripper status of Sims' medico suspect).

To RivkahChaya

By 'sexually insane' Sir Melville Macnaghten makes clear in his memoirs, and via his proxy Sims, that he means a person who gains erotic pleasure from ultra-violence.

It has nothing to do with homosexuality.

Rightly or wrongly, Macnaghten accepted the 'belief' of Druitt's family, or certain members of that family, that their deceased Montie was Jack the Ripper and therefore, ipso factor, had to have been sexually insane. That the illness he suffered from also inveitably meant that he was mentally deteriorating and thus he killed himself after the awful glut' of Miller's Ct.

In his memoirs Mac conceded that this penitential self-murder was not the same night as the final murder of Mary Kelly.

That [the un-named] Druitt, by implication, had time to compose himself and contemplate what he had done and then, twenty-four hours later -- perhaps longer -- he took his own life as he was in a state of unbearable mental torment.

[Jenni Shelden]

Surely killing someone is against Jewish laws, so I think we can be pretty sure JtR was not THAT bothered about keeping to the law?

Jenni

[RivkahChaya]

Since we're already going with the theory that he is deliberately going against Jewish law, saying that he is breaking the law by using a knife is a little silly. At any rate, though, touching a knife is not forbidden. You can use a knife to cut food on Shabbes. You can't use a knife to do work, so a knife that is specifically designed for work, I suppose, might be considered forbidden, but it might be permissible to touch it, for example, if you needed to move it for some reason-- if it fell of a shelf, and you didn't want to leave it where a child could get hold of it, for example.

What you can't do is carry a knife outside an eruv, but I have no idea where an eruv might have been in Whitechapel then, or how one might find that out. An eruv is a border around a set or houses, inside which it is permissible to carry things during Shabbes.

When you say "the day of judgement," do you mean Yom Kippur? You know that holidays go from sundown to sundown, right? I should go look the day up myself. If it was the evening following Yom Kippur, there would have been a 25-hour fast. A lot of people feel like doing something a little crazy after the break-the-fast, albeit not that crazy. There are a lot of holidays from late August to early December, including Sukkot and Simchat Torah. I should look them all up for that year.

The "sole witness" is Talmudic, and it has to do with the death penalty. Basically, in order not to ever have to use it, rabbis piled on all sorts of conditions, including needing more than one witness, who agreed to the smallest detail.

[Robert]

Jack would have been breaking the sabbath on September 8th, wouldn't he, since he would have been using a knife (an object fashioned by work)?

[martin wilson]

Hi RC,
Judaism can be an intriguing source when researching the ripper murders, I had noticed some years back that Anne Chapman was killed over the Jewish new year, specifically the day of judgement,however I could not find any other significance in the other dates, Ed Glinerts' fascinating East End Chronicles set me off again as he has some interesting ideas on Jacob the Ripper.
The small peaked cap seen by Schwartz,Marshall and Lawende I speculated could have been a kashket ,indicating our suspect was a lower class Hasidic jew, exactly of the type mentioned by MM et al.
The prohibition on touching kind of spoilt Hutchinsons' evidence, although it may seem contradictory for a man not to touch a woman he intends to have sex with,but this was in public.
What I did find interesting about Hutchinsons evidence was the red handkerchief, it seems an unnecessary detail,if he was just making it up,and I wondered if it had anything to do with the tradition of women covering their heads in Judaism.
The Torah prohibition on sole witnesess might explain Schwartz and Lawende not giving evidence.
Trevor Marriots idea of Catherine Eddowes apron being used for menstrual purposes was objected to on the grounds she had other materials,fair enough,but her killer was not have known that, the prohibition on contact with menstruating women makes me wonder if it was used as a bedikah or testing rag (although it would be far too large)
Speculating in truly outre territory now, given Hasidic interest in the Kabbalah, I found Lilith, night demoness said to be responsible for nocturnal emissions and menstruation, probably too outrageous for most but worth a look given AKs' sexual habits and paranoid schizophrenia.
Finally Dr Houchins medical certificate may indicate grandiose delusion,see Tsedzik or Rebbe, and religious mania, AK's refusal to eat or bathe may have been because he was obeying the herem or rabbinical excommunication even in a mental asylum.
All the best.

[RivkahChaya]

Since you asked for speculations, here goes, but let me say, I don't think either one is a good candidate.

Kosminski: do we know exactly what kind of religious background he came from? I realize that the murders are horrible, and break all kinds of societal taboos, but they break some very specific Jewish laws, which, if the murders were committed by someone from a very strict, Orthodox background, would mean that the murders were a directed against his family and background.

1) Men do not touch women who are not blood relatives or their wives. For a very religious Jew, just tapping a woman on the shoulder to get her attention is forbidden.

2) There are clear sexual overtones to the murders, and gentile women are forbidden. This would be especially true if the killer were a Jew who came from the line of levites or cohanim (actually, if he were a levite or cohen, that might even explain why the killer didn't rape the women, although it appears to have been on his mind). (Odd afterthought: divorcees and widows are also forbidden to cohanim and levites; is it possible that JTR could have known that all the women were in some form of "not married, but not unmarried" state? how common was it to be divorced or legally separated? and MJK claimed to be a widow, but she was very young for a widow, even in 1888.)

3) Corpse desecration is forbidden. I realize it is forbidden in general, but here is a special point: being buried without all your parts is a big problem for a Jew. If your leg is amputated while you are still alive, you must bury it in a Jewish cemetery. Removing part of a corpse so it is buried incompletely is a terrible, terrible thing to do.

4) Leaving a corpse unattended is forbidden. Someone must stay with a body from the time death is noted, until it is buried.

Last note: if JTR was a Jew who immigrated to England as an adult, then none of the letters, particularly the "Dear Boss" letter, are authentic. They are just not written by someone who spoke Yiddish as a first language. I grew up among people who spoke Yiddish first, and learned English as an adult. Even after many years, there were still traces of it in their language structure and word choices.

Druitt: he is referred to as "sexually insane." I always assumed that meant "homosexual," in which case, he would be one of the last people to be JTR, because the murders look pretty sexual. So what does "sexually insane" mean? Does it mean he was into some kind of sadism? I fully understand that BDSM as role-playing is not about really hurting people, but that is not what I am talking about. Is it possible that someone knew him to be guilty of a forcible rape against a woman, but he was not arrested for it?

I am not sure how he would escalate to mutilation killings that didn't involve penetrative rape, but if he were physically ill, he may have become impotent, and physical deterioration, along with the knowledge that his sexual proclivities weren't normal, may have been what led him to conclude his was "becoming like mother."

Does anyone know for certain what "sexually insane" meant?