Cutbush and Cutbush?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I've had chance to check back through my old research and the Charles Cutbush who died at Cane Hill asylum in 1909 was Charles Allsworth Cutbush, a Metropolitan police Chief Inspector. He was related to Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush (their father's were first cousins). These two men were also cousins of another prominent Cutbush family- the Highgate Cutbush family who were famous seedsmen and nurserymen.

Thanks for that Debra, that’s an interesting piece of information. Two related, Met Police Cutbush’s both committing suicide, the first of them was for years assumed to have been related to an asylum inmate believed by some to have been the ripper. I’m assuming that there could be no connection of any kind between Thomas and the seedsmen/nurserymen Cutbush’s? Cutbush being a fitting name of course.

[Debra A]

I’ve just been told that another Charles Cutbush, who its believed was the son of Supt Cutbush, was incarcerated in Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum in 1908.

I've had chance to check back through my old research and the Charles Cutbush who died at Cane Hill asylum in 1909 was Charles Allsworth Cutbush, a Metropolitan police Chief Inspector. He was related to Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush (their father's were first cousins). These two men were also cousins of another prominent Cutbush family- the Highgate Cutbush family who were famous seedsmen and nurserymen.

[mklhawley]

Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth are co-authors of 2.5 revisionist books on this subject; in which they argue that the case was posthumously solved at the time and then broadly and persistently shared with the public. They have asked me to post their rebuttal to this thread. To be up-front, the married couple are friends of mine and I recommend giving their books a read by asking your local library to order in one or more of their challenging works.

"Cutbush and Cutbush"

If you examine the Macnaghten memos against other contemporaneous sources then it all makes sense - if you grasp that "Mac" is obsessed with public relations

Of course Macnaghten knew that Cutbush the lunatic was not related to Cutbush the cop. But in the 'draft' version - which WAS created for public consumption as glimpses of its suspect contents appear in 1894 even before Major Griffiths published a semi-fictionalised version of the three suspects in 1898 adapted from this document and which caused a minor sensation - Macnaghten is trying to debunk "The Sun".

The tabloid's 1894 scoop, published over several issues is the damaging allegation that there was a senior police cover-up of Thomas Cutbush being "Jack the Ripper". In his Home Office report - never sent - Mac experimented with trying to provide a benign reason for the lack of attention given by Scotland Yard to Cutbush:1) "The Jobber" wasn't "The Ripper" because it was almost certainly M. J. Druitt, which Macnaghten believed to be true, and 2) Cutbush is the nephew of a police officer, and in fact with his father deceased the uncle is the poor deranged man's de-facto father, and thus Scotland Yard was trying only to be sensitive and discreet towards one of their own, that's all - no cover-up (Mac knew both of these assertions were bald-faced lies).

One can appreciation Macnaghten's agitation, evn panic in creating this document full of lies and misdirections - followed up by a formal and different version for the Yard's file - because "The Sun" was both right and wrong. There had been a cover-up of the true identity of the murderer who had been a young gentile from a respectable family, but it was Macnaghten's alone, and the maniac in question was M. J. Druitt not Thomas Cutbush. The Assistant Chief knew this since being informed personally and privately by members of the Druitt family in 1891. Since Montague was safely deceased, Macnaghten, an upper class softie, kept the truth to himself. But this 1894 scoop might dislodge the truth if a certain Druitt wearing a clerical collar felt he had no choice to step forward and exonerate Cutbush of these heinous crimes.

Professionally speaking this Old Etonian charmer, Melville Leslie Macnaghgten, was hanging on by his fingernails due to an office war he faced on two fronts. On the one hand, he was detested by his immediate superior, Dr Robert Anderson, and on the other he was a Tory holdover with a new Liberal administration happy to embarass the previous Conservative one, especially over a headline topic like the Whitechapel Murders - officially and embarrassingly still unsolved. It could hardly have helped steady his nerves that he had already been sacked from the Met before he even started by ex-Commissioner Warren (who may have correctly feared that "Good Old Mac" would feel he outranked everybody else on the force due to class and would do as he pleased. If so, he was correct.)

Taking a calculated gamble that if he sent a briefing document over Anderson's and the Commissioner's heads straight to the Home Sec. it could be read out in the Commons; that the tragic figure of "The Jobber" was a policeman's nephew and they were just trying to be compassionate and discreet about the connection. Especially as C.I.D. had three much better suspects: a mad, masturbating Pole who is still alive in an asylum (true); a mad Russian surgeon of atrocious character (well, to other Etonians maybe. An overgrown adolescent, Mac had been at his beloved alma mater the very day when Ostrog tried to steal some expensive prizes); but far more probable is that "The Ripper" was an English, gentile, middle-aged doctor who had immediately drowned himself in the Thames - by implication a confession in deed.

Mac implied he had not spoken directly with the Druitt family (a lie) but that his assessment was that this maniac was the likeliest solution, e.g. the police chief was certain about his culpability, in contrast to the deceased's only "fairly good family" which merely had a "suspicion" due to an "allegation" that their member had gained erotic fulfilment from violence (all lies. Montague was from a "good family", in fact a famous one thanks to the late Dr Robert Druitt whose name was jused to advertise light wines, but Mac was trying to deflect the Home Sec. away from this connection. Just as at Montague's inquest in Chiswick, his brother William lied about his prestigious name, and thus no newspaper reported the obvious headline: the inexpicable suicide of a talented professional and anephew of no less than the famous and celebrated Dr. Druitt). Mac knew that the names could not be revealed in the Commons and so none of the suspects would now be recogniseable to their friends and neighbours. Then, if a certain Druitt came forward to exonerate Cutbush and the whole truth spilled out everybody would hopefully weather the tabloid firestorm (and Macnaghten could keep his job).

But Macnaghten either changed his mind or the Liberal Cabinet showed limited interest in the subject. Consequently Mac rewrote the document and dated it and filed it with the Yard's archive. With this version he was careful to be more truthful: M. J. Druitt is not referred to as middle-aged and his medical credentials are fuzzy - whereas it is the family who are certain their member was "sexually insane" and so they "believed" him to be the killer. Macnaghten was careful to try and appear agnostic about the three suspects who are better than Cutbush, claiming that there was no hard evidence against anybody.

In the filed version, Mac retained the false, familial connction between Cutbush and Cutbush presuming he could wiggle out of that 'mistake' if it came to it. By doing so he cemented the misleading impression that Druitt was a major Ripper suspect before he killed himself, which in his 1914 memoir and from the saftety of retirement - and suffering from Parkinson's - he admitted this was not true. Whereas from early 1894, Macnaghten felt more secure having placed on file M. J. Druitt's name as a major Whitechapel suspect in 1888 but one who lacked enough evidence to arrest (his memoir admitted that the conclusive evidence against him did not arrive until "some years after").

The 'draft' version he retained at home, to be used in a propaganda campaign for when that unreliable Druitt finally tried to reveal the truth - which all did happen in 1898 and 1899. Then for the first time the public learned of the 'drowned doctor' super-suspect. Although this profile was semi-fictional, and deliberately cast the Yard in a better light, that the killer had been a product of the English, gentile establishment - not poor, not uneducated, not Jewish, not an immigrant and not a foreigner (not even at least Irish!) - really was the truth albeit an unpalatable one for the so-called "better classes" to digest.

Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth

[Fiver]

Hi Debra,

Thinks for that information. Even after your excellent research I still couldn’t help wondering if there was some kind of difficult to trace familial link between the two that hadn’t been picked up on (you can tell that I’m not a genealogist) because I found it difficult to see how Mac could have made such an assumption. On reflection though perhaps it’s not so surprising - someone makes the error, Mac hears of it and it’s then assumed true and no big deal is made of it so it’s never questioned. We all know how something that isn’t true can become accepted until someone like you decides to check.

As an amateur genealogist, I wouldn't 100% rule out a very distant connection, but it's quite possible surnames have completely different origins. To use a more common example, people named Smith are descended from someone who worked as a smith, but they aren't descended from the same smith. That's before we get to immigrant names like Schmidt getting anglicized.

[GBinOz]

Hi George,

One issue though George is that no appears to g]have corrected him? So is it the case that others believed it too?

Hi Herlock,

Good point, although would such corrections have been made public, or done in private? And how many people would have been sufficiently acquainted with the facts as to be able to make such corrections.

Cheers, George

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,
Sorry for the late reply. I was reminded of an old JTR Forums thread where I discovered an early fictional treatment, a story named "The Vampire" where the murders were attributed to a medical student in a book titled "The Devil's derelicts". The author had the surname Harcourt, reportedly a bit of a bounder, and for some reason the papers, when reporting on his past exploits, described him as a nephew of Sir William Harcourt, a prominent figure of the time. Both men denied the relationship because there was no such relationship. Perhaps when rare names cropped up there was an assumed relationship? It's a common occurrence.
Anyway... Fasham Venables, Cutbush's cousin had a woolen wa[rehouse] at 34 Aldgate High Street. Interesting considering Catherine Eddowes claimed she knew who JTR was and was arrested a few doors away from these premises!

Hi Debra,

No need to apologise, it’s easily done, especially as you don’t post on here every day. I do…and I still miss the occasional post. I think that someone should write a paper on ripper coincidences (the only problem with these though is they’re fuel for conspiracies). Or, someone should start a thread on here. I think I’ll do it and add your example.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Given the number of other errors that he made, might the reason just be that he was incompetent?

Cheers, George

Hi George,

One issue though George is that no appears to g]have corrected him? So is it the case that others believed it too?

[GBinOz]

I can’t think of any reason why he would have knowingly made this incorrect link so how did he come to make this error?

Hi Herlock,

Given the number of other errors that he made, might the reason just be that he was incompetent?

Cheers, George

[Debra A]

Hi Debra,

Thinks for that information. Even after your excellent research I still couldn’t help wondering if there was some kind of difficult to trace familial link between the two that hadn’t been picked up on (you can tell that I’m not a genealogist) because I found it difficult to see how Mac could have made such an assumption. On reflection though perhaps it’s not so surprising - someone makes the error, Mac hears of it and it’s then assumed true and no big deal is made of it so it’s never questioned. We all know how something that isn’t true can become accepted until someone like you decides to check. No doubt next week I’ll be doubting this possible explanation.

Do you know what type of business his cousin had on Aldgate High Street? We know of two jobs that Thomas had but I’m assuming that there was no possible connection?

Hi Herlock,
Sorry for the late reply. I was reminded of an old JTR Forums thread where I discovered an early fictional treatment, a story named "The Vampire" where the murders were attributed to a medical student in a book titled "The Devil's derelicts". The author had the surname Harcourt, reportedly a bit of a bounder, and for some reason the papers, when reporting on his past exploits, described him as a nephew of Sir William Harcourt, a prominent figure of the time. Both men denied the relationship because there was no such relationship. Perhaps when rare names cropped up there was an assumed relationship? It's a common occurrence.
Anyway... Fasham Venables, Cutbush's cousin had a woolen wa[rehouse] at 34 Aldgate High Street. Interesting considering Catherine Eddowes claimed she knew who JTR was and was arrested a few doors away from these premises!

[Lewis C]

Hi Debra,

Thinks for that information. Even after your excellent research I still couldn’t help wondering if there was some kind of difficult to trace familial link between the two that hadn’t been picked up on (you can tell that I’m not a genealogist) because I found it difficult to see how Mac could have made such an assumption. On reflection though perhaps it’s not so surprising - someone makes the error, Mac hears of it and it’s then assumed true and no big deal is made of it so it’s never questioned. We all know how something that isn’t true can become accepted until someone like you decides to check. No doubt next week I’ll be doubting this possible explanation.

Hi Herlock,

I have researched my own genealogy, and there are some places in my family tree where I can't trace it back any further than my 2nd great grandparents. Everyone is related, so if no relationship was found between the Cutbushes, that would indicate incomplete family trees. However, it seems they weren't closely related, as Mac thought they were, so I doubt that Mac's belief was based on a more complete knowledge of their family trees than what we have. I think this is just yet another thing that Mac was mistaken about.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Extensive research showed that Charles Henry Cutbush and Thomas Hayne Cutbush were not related in any way at all. This was confirmed by an extensive family tree featuring generations of Thomas H Cutbush's family, drawn up for a legal inheritance case and preserved at the National Archives. I have a copy of it in my garage somewhere, it's huge in size!

Macnaghten was also mistaken when he wrote that Thomas's father was dead, we know that he had in fact deserted his wife and two sons and sailed to New Zealand where he married bigamously. The British press reported this fact in 1891 and also the Australian and New Zealand press were reporting in 1894 that "Jack the Ripper was thought to be the son of a New Zealand colonist" How could the papers, even the overseas ones get something right that Macnaghten got wrong in his account of Cutbush?

It was AP's belief that Thomas H Cutbush might be the illegitimate child of Charles Henry Cutbush but there is no evidence to support this or any reason to believe the two families even knew each other.

One thing that did come up in later research was that a relative of Cutbush's had business premises on Aldgate High Street, a couple of doors down from where Catherine Eddowes was arrested the night before the morning of her murder.

Just to pick up on something mentioned earlier in the thread that Charles Henry Cutbush's son may be the man in Cane Hill asylum in 1909- The Charles Cutbush in Cane Hill asylum actually died there in 1909 whereas I believe Charles Henry's son, Charles/Charlie Stokes, was alive well in to the mid 1900s.

Hi Debra,

Thinks for that information. Even after your excellent research I still couldn’t help wondering if there was some kind of difficult to trace familial link between the two that hadn’t been picked up on (you can tell that I’m not a genealogist) because I found it difficult to see how Mac could have made such an assumption. On reflection though perhaps it’s not so surprising - someone makes the error, Mac hears of it and it’s then assumed true and no big deal is made of it so it’s never questioned. We all know how something that isn’t true can become accepted until someone like you decides to check. No doubt next week I’ll be doubting this possible explanation.

Do you know what type of business his cousin had on Aldgate High Street? We know of two jobs that Thomas had but I’m assuming that there was no possible connection?

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi Herlock,

Extensive research showed that Charles Henry Cutbush and Thomas Hayne Cutbush were not related in any way at all. This was confirmed by an extensive family tree featuring generations of Thomas H Cutbush's family, drawn up for a legal inheritance case and preserved at the National Archives. I have a copy of it in my garage somewhere, it's huge in size!

Macnaghten was also mistaken when he wrote that Thomas's father was dead, we know that he had in fact deserted his wife and two sons and sailed to New Zealand where he married bigamously. The British press reported this fact in 1891 and also the Australian and New Zealand press were reporting in 1894 that "Jack the Ripper was thought to be the son of a New Zealand colonist" How could the papers, even the overseas ones get something right that Macnaghten got wrong in his account of Cutbush?

It was AP's belief that Thomas H Cutbush might be the illegitimate child of Charles Henry Cutbush but there is no evidence to support this or any reason to believe the two families even knew each other.

One thing that did come up in later research was that a relative of Cutbush's had business premises on Aldgate High Street, a couple of doors down from where Catherine Eddowes was arrested the night before the morning of her murder.

Just to pick up on something mentioned earlier in the thread that Charles Henry Cutbush's son may be the man in Cane Hill asylum in 1909- The Charles Cutbush in Cane Hill asylum actually died there in 1909 whereas I believe Charles Henry's son, Charles/Charlie Stokes, was alive well in to the mid 1900s.

Exquisite, sublime and just another level entirely.

This is how to formulate a post.

Just brilliant!

[Debra A]

According to Debra Arif, Chris Scott, Roger Palmer and Robert Linford (to name but four) they weren’t. That’s good enough for me Chris…I suspect that it will be good enough for you too.

Hi Herlock,

Extensive research showed that Charles Henry Cutbush and Thomas Hayne Cutbush were not related in any way at all. This was confirmed by an extensive family tree featuring generations of Thomas H Cutbush's family, drawn up for a legal inheritance case and preserved at the National Archives. I have a copy of it in my garage somewhere, it's huge in size!

Macnaghten was also mistaken when he wrote that Thomas's father was dead, we know that he had in fact deserted his wife and two sons and sailed to New Zealand where he married bigamously. The British press reported this fact in 1891 and also the Australian and New Zealand press were reporting in 1894 that "Jack the Ripper was thought to be the son of a New Zealand colonist" How could the papers, even the overseas ones get something right that Macnaghten got wrong in his account of Cutbush?

It was AP's belief that Thomas H Cutbush might be the illegitimate child of Charles Henry Cutbush but there is no evidence to support this or any reason to believe the two families even knew each other.

One thing that did come up in later research was that a relative of Cutbush's had business premises on Aldgate High Street, a couple of doors down from where Catherine Eddowes was arrested the night before the morning of her murder.

Just to pick up on something mentioned earlier in the thread that Charles Henry Cutbush's son may be the man in Cane Hill asylum in 1909- The Charles Cutbush in Cane Hill asylum actually died there in 1909 whereas I believe Charles Henry's son, Charles/Charlie Stokes, was alive well in to the mid 1900s.

[Herlock Sholmes]

IIRC correctly, Wolf's book about Cutbush makes that suggestion, that Mac's belief that the Cutbushes were related may have motivated him to defend Thomas.

For anyone interested in this book, its contents are posted in the other Ripper forum, or at least they were at one time.

It is Lewis.

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/ripper-books/ripper-books-aa/ripper-non-fiction/27440-jack-the-myth-a-p-wolf#post27440

Sadly AP Wolf (real name Paul Webb) died in 2024 aged 73.

[Lewis C]

Is there a scenario whereby MacNagthen incorrectly believed that Cutbush was related to Chief Superintendent Cutbush?

Hence the bid to try and push Cutbush out of the limelight, by submitting a random list of (arguably) nonsense suspects?

IIRC correctly, Wolf's book about Cutbush makes that suggestion, that Mac's belief that the Cutbushes were related may have motivated him to defend Thomas.

For anyone interested in this book, its contents are posted in the other Ripper forum, or at least they were at one time.