Tweet
1)
The very question reveals a misconception about the case; that Kelly was seen as the final murder at the time, or that anybody who could do that to a fellow human being must be ga ga and about to kill themselves. These are all mythical amplifications of the tale provided by Macnaghten.
Acually, Frances Coles murdered on Feb 13th 1891, was thought by press and public and police to be the last victim until Macanghten, via Griffiths, locked in the five, ending with Kelly. He did this because of the inconvenient timing of Druitt's death, the embarrassing factor which Mac concealed from the Liberal govt and his own cronies, and thus the public, until his memoirs -- and they were ignored.
No, I do not think that in 1888 Scotland Yard and/or the Home Office made any connection, whatsoever, between the tragic -- but not suspicious -- death of a mentally unbalanced barrister/respectable gentleman from Blackheath with, of all things, the 'Jack the Ripper' murders.
2)
I do not yet have the resources to check everything that Macnaghten wrote in 'Days of My Years' against other sources, which is why I am dissatisfied with my own book/manuscript.
On the other hand, I would say that other researchers, Chris Phillips and Debra Arif for example, have dug up really interesting stuff about the Elizabeth Camp murder of 1897 which Mac mentions in a chapter called 'Railway Murders'.
From my point of view -- and not Arif and Phillips I stress -- it shows that Macnaghten could fuse together suspects in another case in order to hide a [fellow English gentleman] suspect, in this case an innocent one. I have an article coming out, the third in my Macnaghten trilogy, which goes into more detail for those interested.
Furthermore, in Mac's preface -- in which he suggestively juxtaposes cricket-Ripper-errors -- he claims that he is writing from memory alone; a pre-emptive and humble apology from a man known for his extraodinary powers of recall.
The point is, that chapter on the Ripper is not written from memory at all. He used 'Aberconway' right at his elbow. In fact he adapted it as he saw fit (eg. no witness, the sidekick suspects dumped) as this was going to be the only document with his knighted name on it for the public record. In effect it is the defacto 'third' version of the Mac Report, and I would argue the definitive one as the police chief saw it.
For example, unlike the other two versions where Druitt seems to have been a contemporaneous suspect to the 1888 investigation (for that's how both Griffiths and Sims interpreted the hyped-up version they were privy too) the deceased fiend is revealed to have only been discovered from information received 'some years after' he topped himself.
This source, the Mac memoirs from 1914 and the defacto third version of his report, perfectly dovetails with the 'West of England' MP source of Feb 11th 1891 -- eg. some years after.
The very question reveals a misconception about the case; that Kelly was seen as the final murder at the time, or that anybody who could do that to a fellow human being must be ga ga and about to kill themselves. These are all mythical amplifications of the tale provided by Macnaghten.
Acually, Frances Coles murdered on Feb 13th 1891, was thought by press and public and police to be the last victim until Macanghten, via Griffiths, locked in the five, ending with Kelly. He did this because of the inconvenient timing of Druitt's death, the embarrassing factor which Mac concealed from the Liberal govt and his own cronies, and thus the public, until his memoirs -- and they were ignored.
No, I do not think that in 1888 Scotland Yard and/or the Home Office made any connection, whatsoever, between the tragic -- but not suspicious -- death of a mentally unbalanced barrister/respectable gentleman from Blackheath with, of all things, the 'Jack the Ripper' murders.
2)
I do not yet have the resources to check everything that Macnaghten wrote in 'Days of My Years' against other sources, which is why I am dissatisfied with my own book/manuscript.
On the other hand, I would say that other researchers, Chris Phillips and Debra Arif for example, have dug up really interesting stuff about the Elizabeth Camp murder of 1897 which Mac mentions in a chapter called 'Railway Murders'.
From my point of view -- and not Arif and Phillips I stress -- it shows that Macnaghten could fuse together suspects in another case in order to hide a [fellow English gentleman] suspect, in this case an innocent one. I have an article coming out, the third in my Macnaghten trilogy, which goes into more detail for those interested.
Furthermore, in Mac's preface -- in which he suggestively juxtaposes cricket-Ripper-errors -- he claims that he is writing from memory alone; a pre-emptive and humble apology from a man known for his extraodinary powers of recall.
The point is, that chapter on the Ripper is not written from memory at all. He used 'Aberconway' right at his elbow. In fact he adapted it as he saw fit (eg. no witness, the sidekick suspects dumped) as this was going to be the only document with his knighted name on it for the public record. In effect it is the defacto 'third' version of the Mac Report, and I would argue the definitive one as the police chief saw it.
For example, unlike the other two versions where Druitt seems to have been a contemporaneous suspect to the 1888 investigation (for that's how both Griffiths and Sims interpreted the hyped-up version they were privy too) the deceased fiend is revealed to have only been discovered from information received 'some years after' he topped himself.
This source, the Mac memoirs from 1914 and the defacto third version of his report, perfectly dovetails with the 'West of England' MP source of Feb 11th 1891 -- eg. some years after.
Comment