Home office report

[glyn]

So if a report WAS sent to the Home office about the "drowned doctor affair," as Abberline was said to have stated,would it have been normal practice to do so?And does anyone know how many people (doctors or otherwise) threw themselves into the Thames during the relevant period?Can it be shown that the drowned doctor referred to must have,in fact,been Druitt, or did he have rivals for the title?
Is there a "mystery within a mystery" as Jonathan asks ? Im begginning to ask myself the same question.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello all,

I have asked this before but here goes anyway. Doesnīt anyone else think it strange that Druittīs valuables were still on his body after being fished out by a waterman? Dickens refers to the pockets of drowned men nearly always being inside out, and to the waterman replying that "it was often so, whether by the action of the tide.....". After the Princess Alice disaster watermen were caught snatching bodies from the beach, where they were laid out, so that they could claim the reward for them again. Altogether, they donīt seem to have been very particular and saw any valuables on the bodies they fished out as perks of the job.

So why was Druitt the exception?

Cheers,
C4

Hi there curious

The explanation might just be that Henry Winslade, the waterman who fished Druitt's body out of the Thames off Thorneycroft's Wharf in Chiswick, was more honest than others who found such drowned bodies and he didn't seek to rob the dead man.

Best regards

Chris

[curious4]

Druitt

Hello all,

I have asked this before but here goes anyway. Doesnīt anyone else think it strange that Druittīs valuables were still on his body after being fished out by a waterman? Dickens refers to the pockets of drowned men nearly always being inside out, and to the waterman replying that "it was often so, whether by the action of the tide.....". After the Princess Alice disaster watermen were caught snatching bodies from the beach, where they were laid out, so that they could claim the reward for them again. Altogether, they donīt seem to have been very particular and saw any valuables on the bodies they fished out as perks of the job.

So why was Druitt the exception?

Cheers,
C4

[Jonathan H]

Hey ... I must have written a word different from 'bigger' in that first line?

[Jonathan H]

Of course the 'Home Office Report' raises a much ****** question which is what on earth is going on?

The mega-famous, widely-read, George Sims is a Macnaghten source-by-proxy, and thus the wily police chief imposed his opinion upon the late Victorian,/Edwardian public though without attribution -- although in 1903 Sims almost gave the game away, momentarily, by saying that Griffiths had seen the 'Home Office Report' by the 'Commissioner' but it was not picked up by anybody then or hardly any secondary sources in the modern era either -- and that hegemonic opinion of Mac's was very definite:

The Ripper was not George Chapman, nor was he the Polish Jew, nor was he the Russian doctor, nor was he the young American medical student (who?) but he was almost certainly the middle-aged, affluent, unemployed, orphaned English physician who staggered to the Thames in the early morning hours little more than a 'shrieking, raving fiend' after his abominable desecration of poor Mary Kelly's remains.

And yet this alleged 'police' suspect, and the melodramatic timeline he allegedly occupied, did not literally exist.

So what is the solution to the mystery inside the mystery?

[Chris]

Has anyone unearthed the report sent to the Home Office regarding Druitts suicide,mentioned by Abberline? And was it standard procedure to send a report to the Home Office on each and every suicide?

I think it was actually Sims who referred to the report first, in response to Abberline's earlier statements about Klosowski:
"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. It is perfectly well know at Scotland Yard who "Jack" was, and the reasons for the police conclusions were given in the report to the Home Office, which was considered by the authorities to be final and conclusive.
How the ex-Inspector can say "We never believed 'Jack' was dead or a lunatic" in face of the report made by the Commissioner of Police is a mystery to me. ...

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/dagonet.html

I don't think there can be any doubt that he was referring to some version of the Macnaghten memorandum (which doesn't in fact seem to have been sent to the Home Office), particularly as he then goes on in the same article to say that "a Russian Pole resident in Whitechapel" was also suspected.

[Jonathan H]

So far as I can ascertain there was no such thing about Druitt.

Abberline is either completely mistaken or he is perhaps confusing a Home Office Report about Sanders, the third mad -- and 'missing' -- medical student, as he keeps referring to the drowned man as a 'young doctor' or 'a medical student'.

He also thinks that this suicide was only a 'suspect' because of the timing of his final act. In fact, Macnaghten's report, the official 1894 version, claims that suspicion began with Druitt's family. In his memoirs he revealed that this information only came to police 'some year after' the man took his own life, not at the time.

Further complicating the issue is that Abberlin's war of words in 1903 is with George Sims. The latter refers to a defintive 'Home Office Report' by the Commissioner, eg. Macnaghten. That this report utterly trumps whatever the retired detective claims.

In fact, this was the other version of the Macnaghten report, nikcnamed 'Aberconway', which was not sent to the Home Office and in which the status of Druitt as alleged chief suspect is quite different from the official one, where he is nothing much.

Abberline talks in 1903 of going to see Commissioner Macnaghten, to let him know about Chapman being the Ripper. He is thus oblivious that the 'Drowned Doctor' is not some press invention or fancy, but originates -- behind the scenes -- from the same high-ranking police chief.

[glyn]

Has anyone unearthed the report sent to the Home Office regarding Druitts suicide,mentioned by Abberline? And was it standard procedure to send a report to the Home Office on each and every suicide?