Motives for Druitt and Kosminski?

[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.

[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

[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.

[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

[martin wilson]

Hello all
Phil
Well he could throw a cricket ball 92 yards so no wonder he was always in the deep. (sorry Jonathon)
Puzzle, If you are pupils at a school where one of your teachers is accused of being Jack the Ripper would not at least one contact the press for a 'JTR I knew him' type of thing?
Why the silence? or have I not looked properly?
All the best.

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, I understand the consensus is that he was a sexual serial killer. But my point in bringing up the "terrorism" thing was that maybe his satisfaction came from creating terror, the way some sexual arsonists do, and not from the actual act of killing. I mean, he wasn't, apparently a torture-murderer who got pleasure from causing his victims' pain, so maybe in his mind the real victims were the people who were living in fear that summer and fall, and not the five dead women.

I brought up the social reformer theory to say that that was very specifically NOT what I was talking about.

Not all sexual serial killers derive pleasure the same way. Jeffrey Dahmer once said in an interview that he actually disliked killing. He drugged his victims, and them suffocated them, in an attempt not to cause them pain (he tortured one victim with trepanation, but not to cause him pain-- he was trying to find a way of shutting down his forebrain while keeping him alive-- sort of turning him into a zombie), because what he liked was playing with dead bodies. He had tried using animal corpses, or human-like mannikins, but eventually found that only actual humans satisfied him.

I almost felt sorry for him, when I heard him say in an interview that he can never be released from prison, because he was pretty sure he would be tempted to kill again, if he were free, and he didn't really want to.

Just to be clear, I don't think JTR was anything like Jeffrey Dahmer-- just mentioned him to illustrate how many different kinds of psychopathies, or dangerous fetishes, or whatever, serial killers can have, or be pursuing.

[Jonathan H]

To RivkahChaya

It is true that George Bernard Shaw proposed the 'deranged social reformer' idea satirically and not literally.

But in 1965 journalist Tom Cullen revisited Shaw's joke because he knew something that Shaw could not know.

That the likely Ripper was an Oxonian gentleman, and therefore could have been part of the Christian movement of Oxford men who came to the East End to help the poor.

Though it is flawed and dated -- though this is of course exaggerated by the conventional wisdom -- I cannot recommend Cullen's 'Autumn of Terror' highly enough. The obvious bias of this secondary source is that Cullen was an American Marxist.

To Martin Wilson

Druitt's ex-students had no idea that their handsome, sporty, part-time master, Mr. Druitt, was also a serial killer. As far as they knew, he had taken his own life inexplicably and this was traumatising enough one imagines.

What happened was that once Druitt's dual identity became known to Sir Melville Macnaghten, in 1891, he took steps that the grown-up graduates would never know or suspect the truth (Mac himself was a passionate Old Etonian and therefore he would have been unusually sensitive that the mens' memories of their school days not be further blighted).

When these grown men in the Edwardian Era came to read about the identified Ripper in George Sims/Dagonet, or papers repeating Sims' profile, they would have noticed a coincidence.

That the fiend had also taken his life in the Thames a few weeks earlier than their Mr Druitt, and had also lived in a suburb about six miles from the crime scenes -- the same as the Blackheath school where the young barrister had been a live-in master.

But there the coincidences would have stopped as Jack the Ripper was -- unlike tragic Mr Druitt -- middle-aged, a doctor, a recluse, unemployed for years, fabulously wealthy, and about to be arrested by Scotland Yard.

This is how Macnaghten, something of an overgrown schoolboy himself, prankishly tried to protect everybody.

His memoirs slyly mislead the reader into thinking that the fiend lived with his family, eg. not at a school, but are essentially correct in communicating that his family, eg. his brother, believed in his guilt and knew that he was 'absented' because he was culpable.

[Errata]

Something I have always wondered was what England's official policy on the entry of Jews was during the early Renaissance.

England was no longer Catholic in 1555, and was under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I. When Pope Paul IV established the Jewish ghettos for Catholic Europe, England would be a logical place to go, if one could get in. However, any introduction to The Merchant of Venice I have read stated that Shakespeare had probably never met a Jew, and that England have evicted its Jews at some previous time.

Jews were chucked out of England in 1290 under Edward I and weren't welcome back until 1829, I think. Which isn't to say there weren't Jews. But they were not practicing in the open, at least not until after Cromwell. Which was a real problem during the Inquisition. England for the most part ignored the Inquisition and the burnings that Spain, Germany, Italy, and France were just so fond of (Except Joan of Arc, but that was different thing entirely). So it would have made an ideal place for the continental Jews to hang out for a bit. But as it stands, Columbus had a positively ridiculous amount of Jews on his trips to the New World, because Jews were extraordinarily cheap labor as long as you were taking them out of reach of the Inquisition. So they hopped on ships. Or went to Russia, which in the end didn't work out so well.

But I'm pretty sure Shakespeare had met a Jew or two. He just didn't know it.

[Roy Corduroy]

London



The Roques map of 1746 shows two synagogues, Beavis Marks (1690) on the left and what became Great Synagogue (1701) on the right. The Jews were readmitted to England in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell. Although you are correct, Errata, there were Jews living in England previously, but not practicing openly.

This is Aldgate ward, formerly the Holy Trinity Priory until dissolved by Henry VIII. Includes what became Mitre Square. (Dukes Place), corrections welcome.

Roy

[martin wilson]

To Rivkah,
I read a wry comment somewhere that at an early Communist party lecture,police and Special Branch officers actually out numbered the audience.
And the Fenians.
And It seems inconceivable that they didn't keep an eye on Jewish immigrants from The Pale,that Alexander II was murdered in 1881 would probably have rung one or two alarm bells in a country that had a monarchy.
No wonder they never caught Jack, it suggests comically that police officers were keeping an eye on suspicious looking characters lurking about who were themselves keeping an eye on somebody else.
Still, could I suggest you look up Theodore Reuss?,my favourite Golden Dawn member,something of a renaissance man and surely the original and best International Man of Mystery.
To Jonathon,
Thanks, that answered that query nicely, I still wonder though how credible Kosminski and Ostrog were as suspects as it was known to the police at the time?
Macnaghten must have had to make a report on Druitt,otherwise it would be dereliction of duty?
But by getting some facts wrong on Druitt AND naming a couple of other suspects that were generally known to be duff,he discredits his own naming of Druitt?
It all suggests that whatever else he was Macnaghten was no idiot.
All the best.

[RivkahChaya]

I am in no way suggesting that the "social reformer" theory had any merit. I am just bringing it up, because I think it having been suggesting an dismissed may have interfered with interpreting Jack as another kind of terrorist, one who just does it for kicks.

The Axe-man of New Orleans was probably that kind of killer, particularly if the "play jazz" letter was really from him, and so was the Phantom Killer of Texarkana, but I don't think people fully realized that thrill-terrorists existed until the Zodiac (who seems to have borrowed elements from the Texarkana killer, and if too much time hadn't elapsed, there'd be good reason for suspecting they were the same person).

[ChrisGeorge]

Sorry, but I must correct this. While I don't know much specifically about life in London as a Jew at any time, I do know a lot about the immigrant Jewish population of New York around JTR's time, which was similar in background to the London population, and I know a lot about the history of Jews in the US since, and the different divisions in Judaism.

Hasidism is in no way a synonym for Orthodox Judaism. There are many different kinds of Orthodox Judaism, and Hasidism is a movement in Judaism that began in the late 1700s. When there were liberal movements away from Orthodox Judaism about 100 years later, they all came from the main body of Judaism, none from Hasidism, so Hasidism has remained a form of Orthodox Judaism, but regular Orthodox Jews in general consider it a sect, and don't like it when you refer to all of Orthodoxy as Hasidic. . . .

Many thanks for this information, Rivkah.

Chris

[RivkahChaya]

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The Roques map of 1746 shows two synagogues, Beavis Marks (1690) on the left and what became Great Synagogue (1701) on the right. The Jews were readmitted to England in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell. Although you are correct, Errata, there were Jews living in England previously, but not practicing openly.

I can't put this map into any kind of context. I can't find this tiny piece on any map of the East End that I can pull up. It's mostly because every map with clear writing seems to be a tiny patch, which all the larger map have indecipherable writing on them.

Many thanks for this information, Rivkah.

No problem. I have friends and relatives who are Orthodox, and are very sensitive the the distinction. They are NOT Hasidim.

[Roy Corduroy]

I can't put this map into any kind of context.

Okay Rivkah, a wider view. You see London Bridge, the Tower, and in Blue are Bevis Marks, Great Synagogue and Hambro. Whitechapel Road extends right.



In this version of Roque's map (click here) you can move all around, zooming in and out. You don't have to go from square to square.

Roy

[RivkahChaya]

Okay Rivkah, a wider view. You see London Bridge, the Tower, and in Blue are Bevis Marks, Great Synagogue and Hambro. Whitechapel Road extends right.

Thanks. I'm still having a little trouble, though. Where is Goulston St., in relation to the synagogues?

I either need a bigger monitor, or just to suck it up, and print some of this out.

BTW, that's one crazy city. I have less trouble finding the Sea of Tranquility.