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Thanks for that, Stewart.
A thoughtful reply.
But we are slightly at cross-purposes because my argument was with Natalie, who I think somewhat misunderstands that history is a moving debate often with no final and absolute conclusions.
I have never thought that your work is 'counter-productive'? [unlike say Cornwall whose historical fumbling deprived us of a superb Ripper novel with a painter as the fiend!]
Years ago I used to carry 'The Lodger' everywhere I went as I was so attached to it, and enjoyed reading, and re-reading it to the point of obsession. This amused my friends who nicknamed me 'Dr T'.
Crucially that book introduced me to Sims' writings about the 'Drowned Doctor' and from that my own beliefs about the Ripper began evolving in a fresh direction towards, perhaps ironically, a 'stale' suspect.
Stewart, you [and a couple of others] have written, and co-written, books which I think elevated the Ripper subject to the level of academic study.
Your own chapter 'Did Anderson Know' is a model of historical argument because yourself and Don Rumbelow so lucidly and elegantly weigh the pros and cons of the surviving sources. Yet the pair of you also make provisional judgments based on an informed opinion.
That is why I use it with students -- right next to A J P Taylor and Niall Ferguson.
As you know I adore Tom Cullen because of his leftist-driven, novelistic style. He made mistakes -- lots of them -- but he also made a case for Druitt that is essentially unsurpassed in its power [Odell called it 'bedazzling' though he did not really mean it as a compliment].
Using a Marxist dialectic, Cullen gave thematic unity to a messy mystery.
That it was practically inevitable that a deranged gentleman of the 'better classes' would kill the neglected dregs of Whitechapel and thus expose this criminal poverty beneath imperial splendor.
Who gives a stuff if Macnaghten thought Druitt was a doctor when he was really a lawyer ..?
Actually, I do -- and so do you.
The creative approach -- which should not be done in isolation to the authenticity/veracity of a source -- is to ask what is the theme of a source; its meaning under the surface? The context which created it at all?
For example, the surface claim of the Macnaghten Report, official version, is that Druitt is not a major suspect. You have made this point before, and it is a very strong one as it is an official Scotland Yard document.
On the other hand, in this politically-driven document Macnaghten never concedes what we know from other sources; that the problem with Druitt was not a lack of proof -- or even the lack of its 'shadow'.
Rather that Druitt had been dead for years BEFORE police ever knew about him in connection with the Whitechapel murders. This was an embarrassment Mac discreetly buries in that document.
Once I realized what Macnaghten was doing, the other sources began to fall into place too.
Therefore, for me the Ripper mystery is not the identity of the fiend. Macnaghten solved that, or else he would never in a million years have accused a fellow Gentile gentleman.
The mystery inside the mystery was why knowledge of the chief suspect's identity was so limited, fragmentary, and fictitious?
In a nutshell, it is because the suicided Druitt was a too-late suspect who came to Macnaghten's attention outside normal police channels. Furthermore he was a from a Tory family, learned about by a Tory MP, whilst the Liberals were in power.
It was a potential debacle which needed not a cop, or any kind of investigator, but a smooth operator from the upper bourgoisie to avoid ridicule and ruination. Macnaghten was the right man to be at the epicenter of all this, and later to pull the strings behind crony-puppets Griffiths and Sims -- and to quash the vain, stubborn, exaggerated notions of Anderson the insufferable.
We see only the tiniest tip of this much larger iceberg, the real Jack the Ripper story, forever veiled from us.
Macnaghten's memoirs mostly concede the truth; that the police were never chasing the un-named Druitt in 1888, that he was years dead before they learned of his existence. Nor was he the subject of a definitive Home Office Report, nor was he sighted by any witness, he had never been in an asylum, and that he was the only serious 'suspect'.
That's one, always provisional, interpretation anyhow ...
A thoughtful reply.
But we are slightly at cross-purposes because my argument was with Natalie, who I think somewhat misunderstands that history is a moving debate often with no final and absolute conclusions.
I have never thought that your work is 'counter-productive'? [unlike say Cornwall whose historical fumbling deprived us of a superb Ripper novel with a painter as the fiend!]
Years ago I used to carry 'The Lodger' everywhere I went as I was so attached to it, and enjoyed reading, and re-reading it to the point of obsession. This amused my friends who nicknamed me 'Dr T'.
Crucially that book introduced me to Sims' writings about the 'Drowned Doctor' and from that my own beliefs about the Ripper began evolving in a fresh direction towards, perhaps ironically, a 'stale' suspect.
Stewart, you [and a couple of others] have written, and co-written, books which I think elevated the Ripper subject to the level of academic study.
Your own chapter 'Did Anderson Know' is a model of historical argument because yourself and Don Rumbelow so lucidly and elegantly weigh the pros and cons of the surviving sources. Yet the pair of you also make provisional judgments based on an informed opinion.
That is why I use it with students -- right next to A J P Taylor and Niall Ferguson.
As you know I adore Tom Cullen because of his leftist-driven, novelistic style. He made mistakes -- lots of them -- but he also made a case for Druitt that is essentially unsurpassed in its power [Odell called it 'bedazzling' though he did not really mean it as a compliment].
Using a Marxist dialectic, Cullen gave thematic unity to a messy mystery.
That it was practically inevitable that a deranged gentleman of the 'better classes' would kill the neglected dregs of Whitechapel and thus expose this criminal poverty beneath imperial splendor.
Who gives a stuff if Macnaghten thought Druitt was a doctor when he was really a lawyer ..?
Actually, I do -- and so do you.
The creative approach -- which should not be done in isolation to the authenticity/veracity of a source -- is to ask what is the theme of a source; its meaning under the surface? The context which created it at all?
For example, the surface claim of the Macnaghten Report, official version, is that Druitt is not a major suspect. You have made this point before, and it is a very strong one as it is an official Scotland Yard document.
On the other hand, in this politically-driven document Macnaghten never concedes what we know from other sources; that the problem with Druitt was not a lack of proof -- or even the lack of its 'shadow'.
Rather that Druitt had been dead for years BEFORE police ever knew about him in connection with the Whitechapel murders. This was an embarrassment Mac discreetly buries in that document.
Once I realized what Macnaghten was doing, the other sources began to fall into place too.
Therefore, for me the Ripper mystery is not the identity of the fiend. Macnaghten solved that, or else he would never in a million years have accused a fellow Gentile gentleman.
The mystery inside the mystery was why knowledge of the chief suspect's identity was so limited, fragmentary, and fictitious?
In a nutshell, it is because the suicided Druitt was a too-late suspect who came to Macnaghten's attention outside normal police channels. Furthermore he was a from a Tory family, learned about by a Tory MP, whilst the Liberals were in power.
It was a potential debacle which needed not a cop, or any kind of investigator, but a smooth operator from the upper bourgoisie to avoid ridicule and ruination. Macnaghten was the right man to be at the epicenter of all this, and later to pull the strings behind crony-puppets Griffiths and Sims -- and to quash the vain, stubborn, exaggerated notions of Anderson the insufferable.
We see only the tiniest tip of this much larger iceberg, the real Jack the Ripper story, forever veiled from us.
Macnaghten's memoirs mostly concede the truth; that the police were never chasing the un-named Druitt in 1888, that he was years dead before they learned of his existence. Nor was he the subject of a definitive Home Office Report, nor was he sighted by any witness, he had never been in an asylum, and that he was the only serious 'suspect'.
That's one, always provisional, interpretation anyhow ...
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