Why a Cover-Up could be possible...

[caz]

I have little doubt that if and when those in authority felt it necessary or even just desirable to suppress, deny or withhold certain politically sensitive information from the public, they'd have done so.

What I struggle with is what precisely they'd have been covering up concerning the Whitechapel murders. They tried and publicly failed to solve a single one of these crimes, which is perfectly understandable given the time and place. The killer in each case had only to put a street or two between himself and his victim and there was very little that could have been done to stop him. If he wasn't caught in the act, or didn't offer a credible confession, these cases were bound to go cold.

Yet people in 2021 continue to exploit the fact that these murders resisted a solution as evidence of some kind of sinister 'interference' by the authorities, when the reality is that they simply didn't have the means in 1888 to interfere - more's the pity - with this type of killer's monomania.

Love,

Caz
X

[Michael W Richards]

The world the senior Ripper investigators lived in was full of secrets, dangerous people and questionable alliances. Is it so impossible that the management of information on the Ripper cases followed similar, clandestine operations rules? Could the senior men know things that they never told other authorities about? Monroe and his "hot potato" remark suggest that is possible.

No, not impossible at all. But just because something is possible doesn't necessarily mean that it actually occurred. You seem to have trouble understanding that distinction.

c.d.

I have no such problem cd, its the summary discounting of the possibility and the distaste for exploring those possibilities that creates the need for my reminders. We already have evidence the men I speak of did Conspire to keep secrets unrelated to Ripper crimes, why should we imagine they would change when assigned to the Ripper investigations. Perhaps the owness has been on the ones discounting that possibility.....in that, what evidence is there that any of these men would act differently when also working on Ripper cases? And what if what they normally did overlapped with the Ripper crimes, might that alone be enough reason to supress, deny, or withold information?

[c.d.]

The world the senior Ripper investigators lived in was full of secrets, dangerous people and questionable alliances. Is it so impossible that the management of information on the Ripper cases followed similar, clandestine operations rules? Could the senior men know things that they never told other authorities about? Monroe and his "hot potato" remark suggest that is possible.

No, not impossible at all. But just because something is possible doesn't necessarily mean that it actually occurred. You seem to have trouble understanding that distinction.

c.d.

[Michael W Richards]

At the time of the Ripper actions and investigations certain information was being protected by the same senior ripper investigation individuals with respect to the Parnell Commission. For example, did these investigators disclose all information they had from informants to that Commission? Was the commission told of HMG payrolls with respect to agents who in the past had plotted against the government? Why would certain information from people identified with Terrorist agencies be paid extravagantly for? Who gave the authority to Monroe to withhold a credible bomb threat on the Royal Family at the previous years Jubilee celebration? Under what authority could he not tell the intended Royal targets that they were being credibly threatened?

The world the senior Ripper investigators lived in was full of secrets, dangerous people and questionable alliances. Is it so impossible that the management of information on the Ripper cases followed similar, clandestine operations rules? Could the senior men know things that they never told other authorities about? Monroe and his "hot potato" remark suggest that is possible.

[Michael W Richards]

It's just kinda annoying most of the documents which served as the basis for the origin of the royal conspiracy and many others ended up 'missing' or destroyed. If we still had them we could disprove almost all the conspiracies once and for all.

Also I want to know what happened to Dutton's Chronicles of Crime which were supposedly taken away by detectives. I assume they probably got destroyed in WW2.

Your presumption that if we had all the documents that were used or created in support of any kind of conspiratorial endeavor we could use them to dismiss said information reveals your distaste for that line of questioning or theorizing. In fact some of those documents might validate some positions involving said speculations.

[Michael W Richards]

"The special branch, spies and espionage were all at its very infancy. Monro's department which he was so precious to protect, was in its very nature clandestine, keeping vital information limited to a select group of people. We know even kept his own copies of files, if not the originals too."

Since people get their knickers all knotted up when others mention the dreaded..."conspiracy"...perhaps they should familiarize themselves with National Security and Counter Espionage general practices. As indicated above, the government then....and any government today.....has secrets, and they protect them daily. The agencies Conspired to keep volatile information private.

Maybe when someone says someone lied to prevent the truth coming out these conspiracy-phobic people might consider that ALL the major players in the Ripper Investigations lived in that world in their regular duties.

[mpriestnall]

Melville
Matters

Leonard Matters.

[Paddy Goose]

It's usually argued that Macnaghten must have had very good reason [via that private information] to suspect Druitt, because it would have been counter-intuitive to finger an Englishman of his class and profession for the murders. While I'm not doubting that Mac saw Druitt as a likely suspect, because of the timing of his suicide and the family suspicions about his 'sexual insanity', I'm just wondering if he elevated him to the top of his list because he wasn't the usual foreign/Jewish/dirt poor criminal type suspected by others in authority, and wanted to show his judgement wasn't affected by the kind of blind prejudice that could have led others down the garden path. Was he in fact trying to be 'woke'?

Was he in fact trying to be 'woke'?

Melville
Matters

[Damaso Marte]

Generally speaking, my low faith in human competence precludes me from believing in most conspiracy theories. However, given how the GSG was erased for fear of inciting a pogrom, it is not altogether implausible to me if the police had concluded that the Ripper was a Jew or an Irish Republican, they might have not announced so publicly...especially if the suspect was already dead, in an asylum, or imprisoned for some other offense.

It's still a simpler explanation to say that they simply didn't know who the Ripper was at all.

[packers stem]

There has always been a theory, which some researchers have advanced for many years. They suggest that Irish terrorist group the Fenians, who in addition to causing major disruptions in London by bombing buildings in 1888, was also behind some or all of the Whitechapel murders, in an attempt to force a major breakdown in the forces of law and order in London. I was later able to advance this theory following the examination of another Metropolitan Police file from The National Archives. This is recorded under MEPO 18/1. The file in question is a crime record book, which contained details of internal police memos and files relating to enquiries and investigations. Some of these entries related to the Whitechapel murders although the dates of the files referred to and the entries are un-dated. One such entry read: “Whitechapel Murders suggested complicity of Irish Party.” This entry related to an original file numbered 93867.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Ties in with the special branch entries on William Magrath, Trevor

You can hardly be "said to be connected" to a serial killer unless a direct accomplice or family / friend.
In either case the name of the killer would have to be known

[Meet Ze Monster]

I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theories in general. The Royal conspiracy, the Masons, the Fenians etc. But I think there is some room for doubt or suspicion in this case which is worth discussing.

It's that small margin of doubt that interests me as a scholar rather than a subscriber.

Firstly, we all know how incredibly slight the time frame was between murder and discovery of body. Despite a growing police presence, in the wee silent hours, the killer had no apparent trouble avoiding capture. If there was any cover-up at all, the possibility of the police actually allowing their target to scarper could be argued. It's not difficult to see how doubt could occur over how much the police might have known and what orders they were given. This is just silly speculation of course. The killer's incredible escapes do leave one scratching their head at times.

But in a non-conspiratorial world, he simple got lucky and evaded capture by wits and fortune alone. End of. But let's not forget too that Jack was a ceremonial slaughterer. There is a question mark over whether his work was intentionally ritualistic or the post-mortem mutilations and organ removal had no significance beyond his maniacal mind. But in response to the cover-up thing, yes the story of the Masonic rites killings has possible echoes in the killers style. And the argument that the poor were being fed inflammatory, anti-semetic rhetoric to deflect attention away from the growing class divisions, certainly sounds plausible - especially given what the media is like now. But in the absence of good, reliable data these speculations should only really be discussed as part of the huge fabric of Ripperology. They exist and they can make for interesting discoveries and, man, they are so much more interesting than the ridiculous Royal conspiracy.

[Mark J D]

... Irish terrorist group the Fenians, who in addition to causing major disruptions in London by bombing buildings in 1888...

-- Could you (or someone else) possibly let me know the dates/places of these 1888 bombings? I can only see references to a campaign that ended years earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_dynamite_campaign

Thanks!

M.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

It's usually argued that Macnaghten must have had very good reason [via that private information] to suspect Druitt, because it would have been counter-intuitive to finger an Englishman of his class and profession for the murders. While I'm not doubting that Mac saw Druitt as a likely suspect, because of the timing of his suicide and the family suspicions about his 'sexual insanity', I'm just wondering if he elevated him to the top of his list because he wasn't the usual foreign/Jewish/dirt poor criminal type suspected by others in authority, and wanted to show his judgement wasn't affected by the kind of blind prejudice that could have led others down the garden path. Was he in fact trying to be 'woke'?

We know that psychopaths can come from all sections of society, and I suspect we only see fewer examples of serial killers from the middle classes and above, because they are in a minority to begin with.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Thats a fair point. Maybe he was trying to show that he wasn’t wedded to ‘the old established theories?’

[caz]

I’ve always thought that it’s worth asking the question: why did a man (Mac) with all the resources that he had at his disposal for naming any dead criminal or any caged lunatic to be added to Ostrog (criminal) and Kosinski (lunatic) on his ‘better suspect than Cutbush’ list, did he select a man who wasn’t a criminal and had no history of violence? Not only that but he was related by marriage to one of his best friends in a society where the upper classes stuck together and we’re keen to have it understood that the killer was from the lower part of society. It’s also worth mentioning that Mac’s good friend Monrovia felt that Mackenzie was a victim so why name a suspect who died before her? It might have been Farson who said something about that Druitt’s apparent unlikeliness as a suspect being what makes him intriguing and what makes me wonder if he might actually have been guilty?

Hi Herlock,

It's usually argued that Macnaghten must have had very good reason [via that private information] to suspect Druitt, because it would have been counter-intuitive to finger an Englishman of his class and profession for the murders. While I'm not doubting that Mac saw Druitt as a likely suspect, because of the timing of his suicide and the family suspicions about his 'sexual insanity', I'm just wondering if he elevated him to the top of his list because he wasn't the usual foreign/Jewish/dirt poor criminal type suspected by others in authority, and wanted to show his judgement wasn't affected by the kind of blind prejudice that could have led others down the garden path. Was he in fact trying to be 'woke'?

We know that psychopaths can come from all sections of society, and I suspect we only see fewer examples of serial killers from the middle classes and above, because they are in a minority to begin with.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

>>Monro just needed the suspect to NOT be a middle class well-respected Englishman.<<

As a Scotsman, I suspect Monroe would have been very happy for it to have been an Englishman!

Maybe. But as the man with overall control of the de-facto intelligent services of the time, he would not want to be the one that did not prevent a socialist revolution of the workers and the poor. That would not be good for the CV.