Cutbush and Cutbush?

[rjpalmer]

My point was that Macnaghten may not have been responding to the 1894 reports but perhaps the memo was compiled earlier after the 1891 reports where Cutbush's name was also linked to the Whitechapel murders and his mother was described as a widow. In the 1894 reports the Sun correctly mentions that Thomas's father had deserted the family, as did the 1894 Antipodean press. Only in the 1891 reports and Macnaghten's memo is Cutbush's mother named as a widow. Why?

It's an interesting observation. I wonder if it might be explained by Sir Mel having so little faith in The Sun's accuracy that he repeated the 1891 information about Kate being a widow (which may well have been the general belief back in the day) and ignored the Sun's version which, we now know, was accurate.

It wasn't unheard of for Scotland Yard files to contain newspaper clippings, so if Macnaghten referred to Cutbush's file in 1894 he might have reread these old reports.

As Nick Connell reported in an old issue of Ripperana, The Police Review came to believe that the arrest of Cutbush let an innocent man off the hook. This doesn't appear to be true and I don't think Macnaghten believed it, either, because he goes on to admonish The Sun for blaming Cutbush for six stabbings when he was apparentl only guilty of two in Sir Mel's mind.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thanks, Herlock. My point was that Macnaghten may not have been responding to the 1894 reports but perhaps the memo was compiled earlier after the 1891 reports where Cutbush's name was also linked to the Whitechapel murders and his mother was described as a widow. In the 1894 reports the Sun correctly mentions that Thomas's father had deserted the family, as did the 1894 Antipodean press. Only in the 1891 reports and Macnaghten's memo is Cutbush's mother named as a widow. Why?
I will have to check back about the lower leg cut. I wouldn't have plucked it from thin air so there must be at least one other newspaper that says leg cut!
It's slightly irrelevant where she was injured in the context of what I'm trying to say.

Sorry for being slow Debra, I get what you’re saying now. And I’ve only had 2 beers (honest) Yes you must have seen that quote about the leg cut somewhere and it’s not as if I’ve looked at many reports because I haven’t.

The Press…giving contradictory reports…the very thought

[Debra A]

Thanks, Herlock. My point was that Macnaghten may not have been responding to the 1894 reports but perhaps the memo was compiled earlier after the 1891 reports where Cutbush's name was also linked to the Whitechapel murders and his mother was described as a widow. In the 1894 reports the Sun correctly mentions that Thomas's father had deserted the family, as did the 1894 Antipodean press. Only in the 1891 reports and Macnaghten's memo is Cutbush's mother named as a widow. Why?
I will have to check back about the lower leg cut. I wouldn't have plucked it from thin air so there must be at least one other newspaper that says leg cut!
It's slightly irrelevant where she was injured in the context of what I'm trying to say.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The 1891 articles I mean do name Thomas Cutbush, Herlock. They describe his 1891 crimes, say his mother is a widow and then suggest his crimes may have something to do with the Whitechapel crimes.

Collicott was found guilty of several assaults on girls, he was positively identified at the police station by several of them and then discharged with sureties to his father and uncle (the 'uncle' being the thing I was interested in. Cutbush was branded a copycat. Cutbush was in the workhouse on 5th March the date 'his' first victim was attacked:
1891 Thursday 5 March Admitted to Newington workhouse Westmoreland Road and absconded the same day between dinner and supper time. SoBG/111/28- the same day was certified by magistrate George Leonard Tueney and Dr John Frederick Williams who examined him in the workhouse, to be a person of unsound mind, Ordered to be sent to Peckham House, Licensed House (asylum) due to his violence. In another part of the form he was described as a danger to others and very violent. This was before his supposed attack on Florence Grace Johnson on the evening of his escape from the workhouse on 5th March 1891St Saviour’s Union Copy Lunatic orders 1891

On the evening of Thursday 5th March Florence Grace Johnson was wounded by a man that ran away while in Clapham Road. Her leg had been cut. Cutbush returned home at midnight that night . The next morning he left the house again and did not return until Sunday 8th March Morning Post Tuesday 24 March 1891 Florence Grace Johnson identified Cutbush as the man who stabbed her a few days later in Peckham House Asylum. Cutbush was taken into custody at Peckham House. On 14th? March.

He was charged at Lambeth Police Court with maliciously wounding Florence Grace Johnson and attempting to maliciously wound Isabella Fraser Anderson . The attempt on Anderson was made on 7th March while Cutbush was away from home again.
These girls identified Cutbush at the asylum.

I think both men were guilty. Cutbush was on route to an asylum prior to the attack on 5th March and this is why he was judged as unfit to plead on arraignment for his crimes as he was laready judged to be violent and of unsound mind? Collicott was judged to be of weak intellect and so discharged as guilty to the care of his father and uncle.

Sorry Debra, I meant that his name wasn’t mentioned in The Sun articles of 1894 that Macnaghten was responding to in his memorandum. I agree that both men were guilty though but I hadn’t read of Johnson being stabbed in the leg though.

Florence Grace Johnson: “received a wound in the lower part of her back.”

(Dr. Farr, report of the Police Court proceedings, Brixton Free Press, 21st March 1891)

[Debra A]

Hi Debra,

If the articles had actually named Cutbush then perhaps it might have been suggested that he was trying to shield her from the stigma of being abandoned but of course that would pale next to an accusation of being the mother of Jack the Ripper. A miscommunication perhaps?

On the subject of Collicott, I read an old Ripperana article the other day, I don’t know if you’ve read this? I made a few notes:



Ripperana #19, January 1997, Colocitt by Nick Connell


In 1898 the Police Review, writing about the arrest of Cutbush said:

“…that an innocent young man was indicted at Surrey Sessions but was ultimately discharged.”


Four years earlier Macnaghten had said:

“…a man named Colicott was arrested, but was arrested owing to faulty identification.”


The only person that this could be was Edwin Colocitt who surrendered his bail on four charges of malicious wounding and assault (21.2.91). The crimes took place in Clapham and Brixton at around 9.30pm each night. A man followed a woman and stabbed her in the lower back and then ran away. He was tried at Newington where the police had warned locals to be on their guard.

On 20.2.91 a furniture dealer called Charles Myers had see him outside his shop obstructing women and touching the backs of several of them. He followed him and saw him make three thrusts to the lower back of one woman. Myers grabbed him by the wrist but Colocitt made so much noise that a crowd attacked Myers and forced him to release him. He was caught further on by a Constable though.


Colocitt’s Lawyer said that:

“…several other ladies who had been assaulted in a similar manner had failed to identify him.”

Despite this, and the fact he had a ‘weak intellect’ due to a fall as a baby, the jury found him guilty. By this time Thomas Cutbush had been caught and Colocitt’s Lawyer reminded the jury of this with the possibility being the Cutbush was the real culprit. Sentencing was postponed.

Two days later the Judge:

“…accepted the father’s and uncle’s sureties each in £100, with a proviso that a competent attendant should be engaged, who would be responsible for the prisoner’s safe conduct. The father also engaged to exercise such care and supervision over the prisoner as to protect the public from any possibility of any repetition of the offence.”


The above might explain why the Police Review stated that the suspect had been discharged as innocent.

Edwin Colocitt was the only man indicted at the Surrey Sessions at this time of this type of crime in this area. Colocitt has to be the man that Macnaghten spoke of.

…..

This is according to Nick Connell of course.

The 1891 articles I mean do name Thomas Cutbush, Herlock. They describe his 1891 crimes, say his mother is a widow and then suggest his crimes may have something to do with the Whitechapel crimes.

Collicott was found guilty of several assaults on girls, he was positively identified at the police station by several of them and then discharged with sureties to his father and uncle (the 'uncle' being the thing I was interested in. Cutbush was branded a copycat. Cutbush was in the workhouse on 5th March the date 'his' first victim was attacked:
1891 Thursday 5 March Admitted to Newington workhouse Westmoreland Road and absconded the same day between dinner and supper time. SoBG/111/28- the same day was certified by magistrate George Leonard Tueney and Dr John Frederick Williams who examined him in the workhouse, to be a person of unsound mind, Ordered to be sent to Peckham House, Licensed House (asylum) due to his violence. In another part of the form he was described as a danger to others and very violent. This was before his supposed attack on Florence Grace Johnson on the evening of his escape from the workhouse on 5th March 1891St Saviour’s Union Copy Lunatic orders 1891

On the evening of Thursday 5th March Florence Grace Johnson was wounded by a man that ran away while in Clapham Road. Her leg had been cut. Cutbush returned home at midnight that night . The next morning he left the house again and did not return until Sunday 8th March Morning Post Tuesday 24 March 1891 Florence Grace Johnson identified Cutbush as the man who stabbed her a few days later in Peckham House Asylum. Cutbush was taken into custody at Peckham House. On 14th? March.

He was charged at Lambeth Police Court with maliciously wounding Florence Grace Johnson and attempting to maliciously wound Isabella Fraser Anderson . The attempt on Anderson was made on 7th March while Cutbush was away from home again.
These girls identified Cutbush at the asylum.

I think both men were guilty. Cutbush was on route to an asylum prior to the attack on 5th March and this is why he was judged as unfit to plead on arraignment for his crimes as he was laready judged to be violent and of unsound mind? Collicott was judged to be of weak intellect and so discharged as guilty to the care of his father and uncle.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

No. No relationship between Thomas Hayne Cutbush or the Highgate Cutbush family.

Thomas was first named in connection with the Whitechapel murders in the 1891 reporting of his "South London stabbing" crimes. Interestingly, those 1891 reports described his mother as a widow. We know that in his '1894' memo that Macnaghten also makes that same mistake, saying Thomas's father was dead. Especially odd considering that Antipodean press in 1894 were reporting that the man recently named as JTR was the son of a New Zealand colonist. The memo can't date to 1894. Can it?!

Another thing I noticed in the 1891 reports that I have mentioned before (sometimes I bore myself!) was that Edwin Collicott, a man charged with jabbing women in January 1891, prior to suspicion about Cutbush, was released on the sureties of his father and uncle (both men apparently wealthy and influential)... surely Macnaghten wasn't a bit slap dash and wrote his memo after or using the 1891 newspaper reports?! Or going further, conflating the two cases he warned others not to?

Off topic but another for the "councidences" thread- Charles Stokes Cutbush (son of Supt. Charles Henry) went on in later years to live at Aldebert Terrace, Edwin Collicotts 1891 address.

Hi Debra,

If the articles had actually named Cutbush then perhaps it might have been suggested that he was trying to shield her from the stigma of being abandoned but of course that would pale next to an accusation of being the mother of Jack the Ripper. A miscommunication perhaps?

On the subject of Collicott, I read an old Ripperana article the other day, I don’t know if you’ve read this? I made a few notes:



Ripperana #19, January 1997, Colocitt by Nick Connell


In 1898 the Police Review, writing about the arrest of Cutbush said:

“…that an innocent young man was indicted at Surrey Sessions but was ultimately discharged.”


Four years earlier Macnaghten had said:

“…a man named Colicott was arrested, but was arrested owing to faulty identification.”


The only person that this could be was Edwin Colocitt who surrendered his bail on four charges of malicious wounding and assault (21.2.91). The crimes took place in Clapham and Brixton at around 9.30pm each night. A man followed a woman and stabbed her in the lower back and then ran away. He was tried at Newington where the police had warned locals to be on their guard.

On 20.2.91 a furniture dealer called Charles Myers had see him outside his shop obstructing women and touching the backs of several of them. He followed him and saw him make three thrusts to the lower back of one woman. Myers grabbed him by the wrist but Colocitt made so much noise that a crowd attacked Myers and forced him to release him. He was caught further on by a Constable though.


Colocitt’s Lawyer said that:

“…several other ladies who had been assaulted in a similar manner had failed to identify him.”

Despite this, and the fact he had a ‘weak intellect’ due to a fall as a baby, the jury found him guilty. By this time Thomas Cutbush had been caught and Colocitt’s Lawyer reminded the jury of this with the possibility being the Cutbush was the real culprit. Sentencing was postponed.

Two days later the Judge:

“…accepted the father’s and uncle’s sureties each in £100, with a proviso that a competent attendant should be engaged, who would be responsible for the prisoner’s safe conduct. The father also engaged to exercise such care and supervision over the prisoner as to protect the public from any possibility of any repetition of the offence.”


The above might explain why the Police Review stated that the suspect had been discharged as innocent.

Edwin Colocitt was the only man indicted at the Surrey Sessions at this time of this type of crime in this area. Colocitt has to be the man that Macnaghten spoke of.

…..

This is according to Nick Connell of course.

[Debra A]

Nice to get Jonathan and Christine Hainsworth's perspective on this. Macnaghten's memo is complicated, difficult to make sense of in context and open to many interpretations.

[Debra A]

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.

Hi Herlock,

No. No relationship between Thomas Hayne Cutbush or the Highgate Cutbush family.

Thomas was first named in connection with the Whitechapel murders in the 1891 reporting of his "South London stabbing" crimes. Interestingly, those 1891 reports described his mother as a widow. We know that in his '1894' memo that Macnaghten also makes that same mistake, saying Thomas's father was dead. Especially odd considering that Antipodean press in 1894 were reporting that the man recently named as JTR was the son of a New Zealand colonist. The memo can't date to 1894. Can it?!

Another thing I noticed in the 1891 reports that I have mentioned before (sometimes I bore myself!) was that Edwin Collicott, a man charged with jabbing women in January 1891, prior to suspicion about Cutbush, was released on the sureties of his father and uncle (both men apparently wealthy and influential)... surely Macnaghten wasn't a bit slap dash and wrote his memo after or using the 1891 newspaper reports?! Or going further, conflating the two cases he warned others not to?

Off topic but another for the "councidences" thread- Charles Stokes Cutbush (son of Supt. Charles Henry) went on in later years to live at Aldebert Terrace, Edwin Collicotts 1891 address.

[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?