Home office report

[Jeff Leahy]

To Phil

Every single point you have made is mistaken, but reflects the received wisdom about Druitt and Macnaghten for the past 30 years or so, based on a narrow and stale reading of the official version of his report (it's not a memo).

It is also based on not taking into account his memoirs (as usual), nor what he must have told Sims with his extra, fictional material about 'Dr D', and nor that he and Griffiths had already begun fictionalizing the suspect in 1898.

No secondary source that I know of covers any of the above, even to refute it.

Some do not include the memoirs, or the Sims material is incomplete, and so on.

By taking my post apart point by point those particular elements are never addressed.

Don't worry, I'm used to it.

On another thread I put up ten examples of Macnaghten being deceitful.

Nobody touched it.

Yardie Yardie Yardie

And the fact that No serious Ripperologist takes you seriously on any level what so ever doesnt deter you from that statement?

When you start providing new research to support your claims? then they have an obligation to take your McNaughten claims seriously.

Until then we'll wait , just in case , you come up with something serious.

Almost twelve months of hot air becomes tedious.

Pirate

[Jonathan H]

To Phil

Every single point you have made is mistaken, but reflects the received wisdom about Druitt and Macnaghten for the past 30 years or so, based on a narrow and stale reading of the official version of his report (it's not a memo).

It is also based on not taking into account his memoirs (as usual), nor what he must have told Sims with his extra, fictional material about 'Dr D', and nor that he and Griffiths had already begun fictionalizing the suspect in 1898.

No secondary source that I know of covers any of the above, even to refute it.

Some do not include the memoirs, or the Sims material is incomplete, and so on.

By taking my post apart point by point those particular elements are never addressed.

Don't worry, I'm used to it.

On another thread I put up ten examples of Macnaghten being deceitful.

Nobody touched it.


Phil, the article on the inquest has the date that Druitt was sacked as the day before his body bobbed up in the Thames.

It maybe wrong by a month. Or, being AWOL, the school sacked him and then he turned up dead for a month. The other primary sources which refer to the other accounts of his death do not mention that he was fired from the lesser of his two vocations. This might mean that this was hugely embarrassing to the school -- sacking a dead person -- and it was left out.

I subscribe to the theory, based on the Mac Memoirs, that Druitt was sacked for being absent at night when he had a duty of care to be in.

Of course Macnaghten thoroughly investigated the MP story as that was his hands-on managerial style and he was obsessed with Eton and obsessed with the Ripper. Farquharson is the perfect trifecta.

Mac leaves his fellow Old Etonian's name out of the Report to protect a fellow Tory from the Liberal govt of 1894.

That a fellow Anglican gentleman chose one of his own as the fiend goes against the expected bias of class, religion and race, and is thus a potentially reliable source.

That is historical methodology.

We know Mac lied in 1913, for example, because not only was Druitt's name still on file, but he preserved his own alternate version of that report. That's a fact.

[Phil H]

There is also the possibility that MM never really knew much about the three "suspects better than Cutbush" he named - Ostrog is just an odd nominee (for the reasons I gave above); Kosminski was Anderson and Swanson's candidate and MM may just have picked up information from them. MJD he appears to have had private information about - direct from family or through mutual acquaintances - but of a limited kind. While we might speculate we cannot assume MM deliberately aimed to mislead, not least because he himself admitted to relying on memory.

All the connections alleged between the MP and the family and MM and what he might have done as a result, is pure surmise. It is a house built on sand, not on a rock.

Jonathan, to take your points from a previous post:

The one detailed account we have of the 1889 inquest is very flawed;

Bad journalism - a local paper and a trainee reporter.

It is unclear if Druitt was sacked whilst alive

You cannot sack someone who is dead! I thought the assumption,a sound one in my mind, was that he had been given notice and the cheques on his person were his final settlement.

-- no other primary source mentions it --

Do we HAVE any other relevant primary sources on MJD?

and the brother, William, seems to be lying about being the only living relative of the dead man.

Again, it has always been assumed, in my mind consistently with the period, that the brother took all the publicity and focus on himself. As a gentlemen he took the humiliation of a suicide on his own shoulders and spared his mother, sisters etc.

Or, he means in the room at that moment (if Montie confessed to a family member before he topped himself, then it would be understandable if William Druitt wanted that member kept well away from such proceedings.)

Utter speculation - the evidence suggests (with some doubt on dates) that William found MJD missing and had not seen him immediately beforehand.

Quite the opposite. Druitt was long dead when he came to the attention of two Tory, establishment worthies, M.P. Farquharson and then I think Chief Constable Macnaghten, both officers of the state.

And their interet proves nothing about MJD as JtR in 1888/89, only that there may have been speculation about him. Neither can it be assumed that the MP and MM's interest was in any way related - they might have found out from a common third party source.

The key to understanding Mac as a source is that he knew the fiend's identity.

Do you mean THOUGHT he knew? After all Anderson and Swanson thought THEY knew. Both MM and his two colleagues cannot be right.

[B]That was no longer the mystery -- at least for him. What he wanted to conceal, up until his own memoirs, was the timing of when the fiend's identity became known to 'police', or should I say to this senior police administrator./B]

Pure speculation - there is no basis for his in the memeroanda IMHO.

I think that Mac simply lied in 1913 about destroying documents naming the fiend.

I do not perceive MM as a liar, but as a man who might well destroy papers he had kept privately and that were not produced by him (i.e. as were the memoranda).

I think he said this, as a practiced dissembler,

He may have been, but that is different from being a liar. Many civil servants of the period - and much letter - were skilled in the use of words to mislead, divert attention, create ambiguity - but would not have lied. To be caught out publicly in a lie would have been instant professional suicide - and have led to social banishment.

Phil

[Jonathan H]

Once you realize that Druitt was not a suspect until two years after he killed himself -- and among police only by Mac -- then everything which does not seem to make sense, does.

The idea that Druitt killed himself for reasons other than being a serial killer misses the point that if Macnaghten knew everything about the deceased barrister than he would have considered, at the time, alternate options for his sad demise -- and yet he found them all wanting.

The character of Macnaghten is not somebody to be so indiscreet as to tell Sims so much extra information about the 'doctor', unless he knew it was not true and therefore the Druitt family were not put in danger, in terms of their reputation.

I do not accept that Mac 'garbled' anything; it's all deliberate mythologizing. His austere yet revealing memoirs shows this in my opinion.

For example, we can actually see in the extant record where Mac has, via Griffiths, changed 'family' into 'friends' -- and, vis Sims, Mac knows those 'friends' were searching for the missing 'doctor'.

To know that, about William searching for Montie, you would have to at least know about the details of the inquest from a press account -- and thus you would know that Druitt was a young barrister.

By the way, glyn, most of what you read about Druitt by me comes from me. Unless I am mistaken, the central idea that Sims' entire writings on this subject shows us that Mac was manipulating information to hide Druitt starts with myself in the secondary-extant record.

The idea of Druitt as a posthumous suspect -- and therefore Abberline does not what he is talking about -- I learned from Paul Begg's 2006 book 'Jack the Ripper--The Facts', not that he agrees with my central thesis as he most does not, period.

[Phil H]

glyn - I entirely take your point.

I was simply seeking to make the point that it is not "reputable" or in accord with the "historical method" simply to dissmiss contemporary evidence.

The usual assumption is that the person concerned had a purpose in mind in writing what they did - though they may have been boased, misled, mistaken, or have had some illicit purpose.

Thus Swanson's marginalia is under question because he appears to say things that do not appear to square with law, police procedure and commonsense. People are now trying to work out why that might be the case.

If I misinterpreted what you intended to say, you have my apologies.

Phil

[curious4]

Druitt

Hello all,

Why would he wait so long after the murder of MJK to commit suicide? If his mind "gave way" afterwards, wouldn´t he have jumped into the river at once, not a fortnight or so later?

And can we be sure (really sticking my neck out here) that the body fished out really was Druitt`s? It was only identified by the papers found on it and was very decomposed. Could another body have been fished out, dressed in Druitt´s clothes and a waterman bribed to bring it in?

Leading the way to some interesting conspiracy theories. Perhaps he sacrificed himself for Queen and country (possibly disappearing to Australia)to give the Home Office, police etc etc the opportunity to say that the Whitechapel Murders had been solved after all.

I know, far-fetched!

Anyway, the mental problems in his family do seem to have been on the female side (mother, aunt) and at what the french call "a certain age" - and Druitt was a little young for the male menopause.

Just supposing,
C4

"Theories, theories - we were drowning in theories!" Abberline

[glyn]

glyn hi,
- Maybe Abberline, MM ,Sims And Griffiths werent totally reliable

You would have to present a logical reason for saying that. We have no authority as historians to discmiss, rationalise away, inconvenient period evidence.


Phil

Hi Phil,
Thanks for your reply,Im a little pressed for time right now,so will just remark on last of your points right now.
My statement "maybe abberline etc werent totally reliable" The reason for wondering about that is mostly the comments made on several threads regarding the Memoirs ,memos of the various Police authorities etc.
It has been suggested that Sims,G friffiths were mere mouthpieces of Macnaughton with nothing other than hearsay as evidence for their conclusions.In fact its been suggested that Sims was guilty of a certain amount of "creative writing "in his version of events.That Macnaughton had a convoluted agenda,someone even suggested that Macnaughtons memo was an attempt to cover up for Cutbush.
On one thread Abberlines sanity was even questioned because he favoured Chapman as a candidate.
It seems Swansons marginalia is doubted by some,and That Anderson didnt really know what he was talking about,likewise Major Smith.
Now I emphasise those arent necessarilly my conclusions,but it tends to make one wonder just what to believe....hence my statement " Maybe Abberline ,MM,werent totally reliable "
tks for your time

[Phil H]

glyn hi,

Let's take your points one by one:

* Abberline words "Soon after the last murder the body of a young doctor was found in the Thames,but there is nothing beyond the fact that he was found at that time to incriminate him.A report was made to the Home office about the mater etc".

It is clear that this was not based on first hand information and it can be deduced that MM was Abberline's ultimate source (perhaps through others) since the mistake about a "doctor" is included. Has Abberline had first-hand information - and he was on the case at the time of the suicide - he would have known MJD was a lawyer.

* So it seems plain that it was Druitt he was referring to,in the abscence of any other body found in the thames at that particular time.

Almost certainly, but see my remark immediately above.

Its why I asked earlier how many suicides were found in the Thames in that time period. To say "there is nothing beyond that fact to incriminate him" would surely indicate that enquiries /investigations WERE made,otherwise how else could it be said "nothing else found to incriminate him"

Because there was nothing else to incriminate MJD - apart from the fact that his suicide was at a convenient moment to explain what the police PERCEIVED to be a cessation of JtR-type killings. There is, at least to my mind, no legitimate inference here that investigations were undertaken - it is a simple statement of fact!

Sims "After the murder in millers court,the Doctor dissapeared .....caused inquiries to be made.....friends had their own suspicions about him....these inquiries were made through the proper aurthorities"

Sims was clearly drawing on MM so this is hearsay and nothing more. I suspect that the garbled mention of inquiries relates to the Druitt family's (in particular MJD's brrother) who found MJD missing and then went to the school.

- Griffith s or Sims "in search of the murderer alive ,when they found him dead"

This has no more credence, at least on current evidence, than Anderson's assertion that the killer's identity was definitely ascertained. NOTHING - I repeat - NOTHING has emerged that even remotely indicates that the police had any interest in MJD at the time of or after the death of MJK.

- Theres nothing in Macnaughtons memo that states Druitt wasnt a contemporary suspect

Remember you cannot prove a negative. There are many things not in MM's memoranda - but much to indicate that MJD was NOT a suspect at the time of the murders. Further, all the internal evidence of the memoranda is that MM was relying on evidence/material that we know - inquest testimony and his memory. If there had been an inquiry and a file he would have got the details more accurate than he did and could have said more. All his evidence seems to focus on what the family thought - but at what period is vague at best.

- If Kosminski and Ostrog and Druitt were bracketed together in MMs report,whos to say they werent all suspected to various degrees in 1888

Ostrog we now know was either a mistake (he could not have been a real suspact as he was in prisonin France and his style was not a killer) or a muddle (with Le Grand?); or a deliberate red-herring perhaps. Kosminski was actually preferred by Anderson and DSS as a suspect over MJD - so MM may just have been reflecting a corporate view on that. But we have no evidence that they were ever being actively pursued in 1888 - though some general inquiries may have been made about Ostrog's whereabouts. That would. was, have been true about many individuals.

- Maybe Abberline, MM ,Sims And Griffiths werent totally reliable

You would have to present a logical reason for saying that. We have no authority as historians to discmiss, rationalise away, inconvenient period evidence.

I can conceive of MM deliberately "salting" the file with a list of actually non-suspects to mislead posterity - perhaps because the real culprit was a "hot potato" politically or for other reasons - i.e. Fenians, or police (Cutbush) but NOT royalty.

Happy to discuss the pros and cons further if that would help you.

Phil

[glyn]

I am puzzled, Glyn, as to why you think that 'the police' had to have investigated Druitt as a Ripper suspect?

.

Jonathan,
Ill try to explain as best I can,first by returning to the original question on this thread.
Abberline words "Soon after the last murder the body of a young doctor was found in the Thames,but there is nothing beyond the fact that he was found at that time to incriminate him.A report was made to the Home office about the mater etc".
So it seems plain that it was Druitt he was referring to,in the abscence of any other body found in the thames at that particular time.Its why I asked earlier how many suicides were found in the Thames in that time period. To say "there is nothing beyond that fact to incriminate him" would surely indicate that enquiries /investigations WERE made,otherwise how else could it be said "nothing else found to incriminate him" The report to the Home office again indicates inquiries,maybe fruitless,but thats not the point.
Sims "After the murder in millers court,the Doctor dissapeared .....caused inquiries to be made.....friends had their own suspicions about him....these inquiries were made through the proper aurthorities"
Griffith s or Sims "in search of the murderer alive ,when they found him dead"

Theres nothing in Macnaughtons memo that states Druitt wasnt a contemporary suspect,only that the private information which "pointed to the conclusion" came into his or Police hands some years after.
If Kosminski and Ostrog and Druitt were bracketed together in MMs report,whos to say they werent all suspected to various degrees in 1888
Maybe Abberline, MM ,Sims And Griffiths werent totally reliable,maybe my thinking is awry but anyway those are the reasons .
take care

[Phil H]

I was a Druittist for many years - I thought him the best candidate in a poor field. I don't rule old Montague out entirely, but the case is entirely subjective and circumstantial.

There is no evidence that the authorities were interested in MJD at the time.

Macnaghten's (MM's) references in his memorandum are riddled with inaccuracies (wrong profession, age etc - which hardly breed confidence)

We do not know MM's sources - the MP is only a supposition - nor what the family based their conjectures on.

There could be many reasons for how/why and when MJD left the school, and that may or may not have been linked to his suicide.

Suicide can be linked to family traits - various other relations of MJD (including mother) were depressive and did not a cousin(?) also commit suicide? So no reason necessarily - and without supporting evidence - to deduce guilt, remorse or anything else. The alleged suicide not - "I have felt I becoming like mother" (inaccurate quote) is perfectly compatible with what we know and fits the circumstances.

I am sure that the sorry state of the records we have of the inquest are entirely down to the fact that the death was seen an uncontroversial at the time, the passage of years etc. Frankly, and perhaps depressingly, no one thought MJD's suicide of any importance or significance - it was simply a private tragedy.

While there has been much research seeking to link MJD to the circle of HRH The Duke of Clarence - and there are interesting associations (for instance, university, the Inner Temple, social contacts in Dorset) - but no demonstrable connection has ever been found, I think. Indeed, what would a connection imply when I think most students of this case are now convinced that there is absolutely NO BASIS for a "royal" (or other) conspiracy?

Finally, MJD is mentioned by MM as one of thre possible candidates for JtR: and MJD is MM's preferred choice. But we now know that Ostrog was either a mistake or a non-runner, or alternativelym, a make-weight. H e COULD NOT HAVE BEEN Jtr as he was in prison in France. Further, Anderson and Swanson (on the case when MM was not yet in the Yard) mention Kosminski as their suspect - and that is challenged despite their endorsement. So why should we weigh MM's preference over Anderson's and DSS's? Littlechild mention's Tumblety (?) but says he had never heard of Dr D (which one assumes is MM's mistaken MJD).

So I would ask:

what remains to keep MJD in the frame at all now?

Phil

[Jonathan H]

The one detailed account we have of the 1889 inquest is very flawed; for example it does not mention the deceased's name?! It is unclear if Druitt was sacked whilst alive -- no other primary source mentions it -- and the brother, William, seems to be lying about being the only living relative of the dead man. Or, he means in the room at that moment (if Montie confessed to a family member before he topped himself, then it would be understandable if William Druitt wanted that member kept well away from such proceedings.)

I am puzzled, Glyn, as to why you think that 'the police' had to have investigated Druitt as a Ripper suspect?

Nothing in the primary sources between 1888 and 1891 supports such an idea, in my opinion. Quite the opposite. Druitt was long dead when he came to the attention of two Tory, establishment worthies, M.P. Farquharson and then I think Chief Constable Macnaghten, both officers of the state.

The key to understanding Mac as a source is that he knew the fiend's identity. That was no longer the mystery -- at least for him. What he wanted to conceal, up until his own memoirs, was the timing of when the fiend's identity became known to 'police', or should I say to this senior police administrator. He thus redacted Druitt into the 1888 investigation and, quite inadvertently, sowed the seeds for what would grow, decades later, into 'Ripperology' -- with his own suspect debunked.

I think that Mac simply lied in 1913 about destroying documents naming the fiend. His own daughter thought so in 1959, though she provided a different motive. After all, her father did not even destroy the draft or rewrite of his own internal report. I think he said this, as a practiced dissembler, because he wanted to reassure the Druitts that nothing would be left behind to identify their tragic member.

[glyn]

Jonathan,
Broadly speaking,I have to say I agree with your argument.Though I do feel,that somewhere along the line there was some kind of Police investigation of Druitt,over and above Macnaughtons private chats.I feel there may have been some manipulation at the inquest from the Druitt family,particularly concerning the suicide note......or partial disclosure of it.I have no evidence to support that line of thought,just a feeling that it occurred.
take care

[Jonathan H]

To glyn

Now be warned, for what I am about to tell you is essentially, if not wholly, rejected not only by everybody on these boards, but by some of the most significant, knowledgeable, and distinguished secondary sources published on this topic, eg. Stewart Evans, Paul Begg, R. J. Palmer, et. al. who would counter that it is making 'castles in the air' out of very, very ambiguous scraps.

OK, that should take care of being 'fair and balanced'.

Of course Montague Druitt was Jack the Ripper! Of course! Why else would he be suspected by anybody if the evidence of his guilt, even after he was long deceased, wasn't overwhelming?

In a nutshell, I argue that Druitt committed the murders but after Kelly he suffered some kind of collapse, and he confessed to an Anglican priest -- which may have been his first cousin the Reverend Charles -- and that meant the clock was ticking as to when he would be sectioned like his mother, with his family name disgraced. Instead he took his own life, shortly after being sacked from a school at which he had been found absent at night (to kill of course) but he was mainly a promising and successful barrister. Blood-stained clothes were also found by family or a family member amongst his effects.

Druitt's anguished family kept the whole ghastly business to themselves, understandably, and so from Dec 31st 1888 the police were unknowingly hunting for a murderer who had killed himself; who was a 'ghost' (Mac, 1914).

That is until in Feb 1891 the tale leaked in Dorset, perhaps along the Tory/consituency grapevine as it was a Conservative MP, Henry Farquharson, an upper class, backbench member of the incumbent government, who began to indiscreetly blab to people what he had learned about a respectable Tory family. This story was so devastating, about a 'son of a surgeon', that you only had to hear the MP's 'doctrine' to be impressed. This then, inevitably, leaked to the press who treated the tale warily. It then vanished in the wake of the Frances Coles murder a few days later, with the police haplessly chasing a sailor suspect.

Under the radar, Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten met with his fellow Old Etonian and Tory, Farquharson, and learned the story about Druitt. He then met with the family, or a family member, quite unofficially, was completely convinced, and assured them that, as much as he could, he would protect their name as their Montie could never be arrested. Knowing that the story could leak at any time, Macnaghten covered himself with an official report to show that the police did know something about this suspect, but only hearsay information eg. nothing conclusive -- not even if he was a doctor or not? A repory so obscure it was never metnioned, not even by its author.

Therefore Druitt was never the subject of an official police investigation, alive or dead, a completely false and self-servingly false impression Macnaghten gave to the Edwardian public via Griffiths and Sims being shown an alternate version of this report, and why detectives from 1888, such as Littlechild, Abberline, and Reid, were left scratching their heads?

[glyn]

What should we make of Macnaughton supposedly destroying evidence implicating Druitt? Bearing in mind he conjectures that the evidence damning Druitt, at one time lay at the bottom of the Thames.What evidence could he be talking about? Why was he so convinced of Druitts guilt? They are all rhetorical questions of course.
Apparently from what Ive read ,the modern day Druitt family know nothing about it all.Ifind that hard to believe,even if Druitt was innocent it seems plain to me that there was some kind of police investigationIm equally sure that memories regarding this would have filtered down through the generations of Druitts. Exactly how much clout the Druitt family woyuld have had with the Police I have no way of knowing,but suspect they might have had considerable influence.
Sims and co ,to me anyway,have muddied the waters considerabley.I believe Druitt is /was a suspect for a very good reason,not just simply because he committed suicide or because of family gossip. He stands out in the suspect list,mainly because there appears,on the face of it,no reason for him to be on it.

[Jonathan H]

It's just my opinion, but the short answer to your question is no, a suicide 'whilst of unsound mind' did not not go to the Home Office and, no, there were no doctors who drowned themselves in the Thames at that time.

On the other hand, the 'shilling shocker' tale told by Macnaghten via Sims in the 1900's it contains elements -- middle-aged, affluent, under-employed, a doctor, pursued by police as a Ripper suspect whilst alive -- which match the Irish-American confidence man, Dr Frances Tumblety. This is arguably the essential point that the retired Jack Littlechild was getting at when he wrote to Sims in 1913 -- 'Dr T' not 'Dr D'.

Obviously, other elements of the 'Drowned Doctor' do match Druitt: English, drowned himself in the Thames, being searched for by frantic friends after the final murder (actually a brother as 'friends' stands in for 'family'; a switch begun by Macnaghten-Griffiths in 1898).

Therefore the question is: did Mac fuse these suspects, one contemporaneous and one posthumous, deliberately, or, did he do it unconsciously due to a fading and over-rated memory?

I believe that Mac told Sims (in 1907) that there were 'two theories' at the Yard about the Ripper. One was the mad, middle-aged Englishman, who took his own life, and the other was about a young, American medical student.

This sounds like a scrambled egg of Druitt and Tumblety?

I believe the the tale is a conscious, self-serving confection, not for Mac personally, but to improve the Yard's rep, and it protects the Druitts' privacy -- and it renders both suspects, or at least the English one, unrecoverable to tabloid vultures. Plus, in his 1914 memoirs Macnaghten dropped the Tumbletyesque elements from [the un-named] Druitt's profile.