Did Anderson Know

[Chris]

Jonathan

Yes, that's precisely it. I'm simply asking what evidence you have for your assertion - which you presented as a fact, not an opinion.

But obviously I'm wasting my time.

[Jonathan H]

To Natalie

Abberline is almost certainly thinking that this 'young medical student [and/or] doctor' is the 3rd missing medical student from 1888.

The figure described by Griffiths and Sims is a middle-aged physician.

The reason the ex-detective knows nothing of the Macnaghten Report, 1894 version, is because he would hardly be saying 'we' if he knew that the Assistant Commissioner had written a Report -- about a Gentile, a Jew and a Slav -- which suggested that these might be significant suspects.

In that Report, Mac writes that the Druitt family 'believed' that he was the fiend. It is not just the timing of his suicide.

Abberline knows nothing of these machinations.

If he knew that about this Report, he could hardly fail to see that Griffiths was quoting from it, or from Macnaghten directly.

He would hardly be dissing the Commissioner's suspect and then talk about saying that he must go see Macnaghten to tell him about Chapman.

The 'Drowned Doctor' is the Commissioner's suspect -- but then who would have known this in 1903?

Similarly, Abberline also does not realize that Anderson is the chief backer of the 'locked-up lunatic' suspect.

It makes perfect sense when you realize that the Mac Memoirs, the Druitt primary sources, and the MP story all dovetail perfectly with Abberline in 1903 -- Druitt was not only not a contemporaneous suspect but knowledge about him was kept close to the CID admin vest.

And why would it not be?

What could the police say? We know who the Ripper is -- now let us trash a man who cannot defend himself, who is a fellow Gentile Gentleman, send his family down the gurgler when nobody can be brought o trial.

Of course, Macnaghten will do exactly that in disguised form starting in 1898, and that is why Abberline thinks that this must be some kind of press invention. That the mighty Sims -- whom he never names -- must be being misled by totally dodgy sources. He is completely and understandably ignorant that the Ur-source is the current Commissioner.

[Natalie Severn]

To Natalie

It's in no sense his fault, but Abberline knew nothing about Druitt, did not know about the 1894 Report, did not know that the current Commissioner he is anxious to contact about Chapman in 1903 is himself the background source for the 'Drowned Doctor' suspect.

I think you may be wrong over this, Jonathan .Abberline was fairly emphatic in 1903 according to the journalist who interviewed him from the PMG.
"you must understand said Abberline that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead ,or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind .
Moreover, as a "hands on " policeman -with over twelve years experience of Whitechapel prior to his lead role in the ripper hunt,he made valued friends of colleagues who remained in the police force long after he had left.Godley and Neil were such detectives who kept a lifelong interest in the Ripper Investigation just like Abberline. So Abberline had a number of contacts in the police force upon whom he could have depended to verify rumours that were circulating. Where you get the idea that Abberline knew nothing of the Macnaghten report I dont know, but I believe its more than likely he knew all about it.It just didnt rock his boat----nor Smith"s who most certainly would have known,given the govt circles he moved in and his rich club pals.

[Jonathan H]

Is that it?

[Chris]

I've made my case and -- no surprise -- you don't agree, and provide no counter-argument, just regurgitate the conventional wisdom as if it is gospel.

It's not so much that I don't agree with your "case" - it's more that (as I've already said) I can't see anything at all in what you've posted that suggests the "Memorandum" heading in the Aberconway version was an addition by Lady Aberconway rather than part of the original document.

You did state that as a fact, not just as your opinion. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect you to provide some kind of coherent reasoning to back up that statement, rather than just wheeling out the usual diatribes against "conventional wisdom".

[Jonathan H]

I've made my case and -- no surprise -- you don't agree, and provide no counter-argument, just regurgitate the conventional wisdom as if it is gospel.

[Chris]

Jonathan

What I'm trying to ascertain is whether you have any evidence for your claim that the title is an addition by Lady Aberconway, rather than part of the original document.

I can't see any evidence to that effect in anything you've written so far. (And of course, in any case, your assertion that "its not a 'memo' in any version" is just plain wrong.)

[Jonathan H]

To Natalie

It's in no sense his fault, but Abberline knew nothing about Druitt, did not know about the 1894 Report, did not know that the current Commissioner he is anxious to contact about Chapman in 1903 is himself the background source for the 'Drowned Doctor' suspect.

[Jonathan H]

To Natalie

We see Macnaghten, and in fact the entire mystery, quite differently, and will have to agree to disagree.

I think Mac met with the family and cut a deal that they told him everything they knew, which was plenty, and he agreed that their name would never be made public. A time-bomb waiting to go off for both the police and the family was that Montie had left instructions with a priest that the truth must come out in exactly ten years.

Macnaghten was an affable yet sharp political operator who was faced with a dead Ripper in the midst of hunting a live one, the wrong one, in terms of the conjunction of the MP revelation and the hunt for Sadler -- plus the impending embarrassment for the Yard in 1898.

This is, in my opinion, the real mystery/story of Jack the Ripper, about which we are left with but the barest of glimpses.

To Chris:

The 'Aberconway Version' of which not only is the original lost but we do not even have a complete copy, was found by Mac's daughter at some point after his death. She never claimed ,to Dan Farson, that it was her father's wish that it be preserved in perpetuity [quite the opposite: he may have wanted it destroyed and just simply forgot due to his severe illness?]

In the 30's Christabel Aberconway had it retyped, though she herself wrote the suspects section [which might be why the date for Druitt's body being recovered is incorrect?] but I don't think she ever understood the character or purpose of this source.

She had no idea that it was meant to be a Report for the Home Office, nor that it was never sent there, nor that it was quite different from the original in its agenda, nor that it was actually a rewrite, not a draft, of the original 1894 document.

Rewritten, I theorise, in 1898.

All of these are understanadble mistakes on her part. After all, if you have a copy of a document surely it must be the draft version, not a rewrite? She had no idea that it is really the Ur-Source for Griffiths, Sims, and the 'Drowned Doctor' Super-suspect which dominated Edwardian beliefs about the Ripper.

All manipulated by her father from bhind the scenes.

Therefore, she called this odd document her 'father's notes' --which they are not. As was only learned in 1974 the official 1894 version is not addressed to anybody either, and completely downplays the suspects, including Druitt.

So, she efficiently gave it a title. She was not going to call it a 'Report' as it did not look like one? It referred to the 1894 'Sun' stories on Cutbush and so she herself designated it a memorandum from that year.

But we know from other sources, Griffiths and Sims -- and the official version -- that it is in fact a Home Office Report, though never sent there and never requested.

In 1959, Christabel openly thought her father was being deceitful in claiming that he had destroyed all his papers relating to the prime suspect. What she could not have realised is that the document itself is also a bit of gentlemanly deceit, as it involved disguising Druitt as a middle-aged doctor whose body was pulled from the Thames on Dec 3rd 1888.

Lady Aberconway thought she was establishing her father's bureaucratic claim to have identified the Ripper. In fact, the primary sources on Druitt turned out to be at odds with what her father wrote. Thus she was, in the long run, destroying his rep on this mystery -- it is a smoking ruin to this day [eg. I am alone as a Macnaghten revisionist].

Mac hoped -- in vain -- that his memoirs would be the final word on the Ripper. But Mac had squared too many circles and finally outsmarted his own legacy.

The greatest irony is that Druitt remains veiled by Mac's machinations to this day.

The history of Ripperology might be quite different if the official version had emerged first, and then the unofficial rewrite?

[Trevor Marriott]

But he did become Chief commissioner after Warren resigned?

and was friends with MacNaughten?

Pirate

"Jobs for the boys" springs to mind

All members of the same "Black hand gang" !

[Jeff Leahy]

Monro was far more involved in CID,like Anderson.None of the three were real policemen with any street cred whatsoever or real experience of the criminal mind -not in the East End - not in England -anyway. They were all ex public schoolboys who either worked in their colonies and used their old school tie or colonial networks to feather their nests.

But he did become Chief commissioner after Warren resigned?

and was friends with MacNaughten?

Pirate

[Natalie Severn]

Er? Monroe?

Monro was far more involved in CID,like Anderson.None of the three were real policemen with any street cred whatsoever or real experience of the criminal mind -not in the East End - not in England -anyway. They were all ex public schoolboys who either worked in their colonies and used their old school tie or colonial networks to feather their nests.

[Chris]

See my previous post, re: Aberconway.

Why do you think Lady Aberconway was responsible for the title?

[Jeff Leahy]

Who could possibly have "briefed" him ? !

Er? Monroe?

[Natalie Severn]

Who could possibly have "briefed" him ? The only man who had real hands on experience of the case, was Inspector Abberline--- who totally rubbished Macnaghten"s "drowned doctor" theory in 1903!