Well as I stated in a previous post Jonathan,I cant see Macnaghten having gathered the necessary information from any "hands on " detective work in the East End that would have provided him with a basic framework from which to understand how the Ripper made his escapes.For example ,while Polly Nichols was being murdered in Bucks Row ,two policemen were patrolling either end of the street ,one passing the crime scene every 15 minutes.Yet nobody saw him.What would Macnaghten have been likely to know about the night light in these streets,the frequency of women taking men there after two in the morning, how he might have escaped and by using which routes, a concrete understanding of feasibility and management and of how the ripper on each occasion managed to escape detection -? What skills he may have needed, how "street wise" he needed to be to do what he did,how skilled he needed to be as a man who was able to allay fear in the women he chose to kill? The Mitre Square murder was even more hair raising in terms of its speed,darkness, the dodging by the ripper of numerous police -the two re Mitre Square,+ Morris with his door often open, and several in plain clothes around Aldgate= the night watchman Blenkinsop in St James Square which was one of the three Mitre Squares exits? Then there was the question of how he would have gained insight into the minds of murderers -experience Inspector Abberline would no doubt have gathered,like Walter Dew,during the course of his many years experience of Police Work.
So in my view,Macnaghten was ill equipped to assess the evidence he had ,which was only ,at best , circumstantial ,as it would not have been based on adequate ,acquired and appropriate experience .If he therefore reached his conclusions about Druitt based on the absence of properly informed opinion ,then his theory , was reached only from what he had "read" about Druitt from letters or "heard" about Druitt from gossip mongers or from concerned relatives ,and that wasnt really going to cut the mustard .
So in my view,Macnaghten was ill equipped to assess the evidence he had ,which was only ,at best , circumstantial ,as it would not have been based on adequate ,acquired and appropriate experience .If he therefore reached his conclusions about Druitt based on the absence of properly informed opinion ,then his theory , was reached only from what he had "read" about Druitt from letters or "heard" about Druitt from gossip mongers or from concerned relatives ,and that wasnt really going to cut the mustard .
Comment