Robert Sagar

[Jonathan H]

To Phil H

Enjoy hibernation, as I don't know what you are talking about?

Maybe because anything I say, eg. the Druitt Pariah, has to be stomped all over or, conversely, ignored.

How about if I quote one of the great writers on this subject, whom I hasten to add does not agree at all with my 'case disguised' theory:

From p. 328 of "Jack the Ripper--The Facts" (Robson Books, 2006):

'Analysis of Macnaghten's writing suggests that his source of information about Montague Druitt was PC Moulson's report about finding the body in the Thames. Macnaghten knew about the season ticket from Blackheath to London, which was found on Druitt's body, and this knowledge shows that Macnaghten had information postdating Druitt's suicide. But inaccurate biographical and other information shows that he had no knowledge of the evidence given at the in inquest. Macnaghten's source must therefore date between the discovery of the body and the inquest, and is likely to be the report submitted by PC Moulson, who pulled Druitt's body from the Thames.'

I disagree with Begg about Macnaghten not knowing about information from the inquest, as his own memoir's use of the word "absented" (albeit multiplied, a lift from "The Lodger") plus Sims' reference to the "friends" trying to locate their missing doctor-pal is clearly a fictionalized version of the older brother trying to find his vanished sibling. That information could not be in Moulson's report.

[Chris]

Actually, I never considered that Sagar's retirement reminiscenses could have been referring to Cutbush, who worked in the Minories very close to Butcher's Row. It's certainly possible. For a long time I thought Sagar's recollections mirrored the Swanson Marginalia too closely for his suspect to be anyone else except Kosminski.

Actually, that Gloucester Citizen article contains only a couple of sentences about Sagar's suspect, and then goes on to contrast what he said with the ideas of Sims and T. P. O'Connor. But I agree the latter of those refers to Cutbush.

[Scott Nelson]

The reference to Liberal T. P. O'Connor and "The Sun" has nothing to do with Aaron Kosminski and the Seaside Home. It is about the paper's big scoop from early 1894; claiming that the police knew that 'Jack' was a lunatic in Broadmoor, eg. Thomas Cutbush.

Actually, I never considered that Sagar's retirement reminiscenses could have been referring to Cutbush, who worked in the Minories very close to Butcher's Row. It's certainly possible. For a long time I thought Sagar's recollections mirrored the Swanson Marginalia too closely for his suspect to be anyone else except Kosminski.

[Phil Carter]

By the way, the 'embankment' referred to in the article, from where the mad doctor supposedly jumped, from is in Central London.

Yet Macnaghten had read, at the very least, P.C. Moulson's report on the recovery of Druitt's corpse. That report would have told him about the season trail pass (which he mentions in 'Aberconway') and the location of the suicide --Chiswick!

Jonathan,

You know as well as I do that there is no proof of MacNagthen reading any such thing!

A return ticket is not a season rail pass.

All this has been said to cover the fact that if the person who jumped into the Thames fron The Embankment WAS Druitt... with stones in pockets and all..and suffering recurrent low tides... he floated a very very very long way to get to Chiswick!

Utter poppycock.



Hope you are well my friend :-)

back to hibernation..again...


Phil


PS Did I hear the word "Australia" mentioned vis a vis Kosminski?... PLEASE don't tell me someone is going to try and weedle DANIEL Kosminski into all this as a replacement for Aaron, because that hair dresser, who DID live just up the road from Mitre Square, DID go to Australia. He didn't go to any asylum though...anywhere. Shame that..eh?

[Chris]

As an Aussie would say B U G G E R off.

In fact, isn't that what the Australian policeman did say, when Daniel Farson put his hand on his knee?

[GUT]

G'day Chris

It is almost spectacular that the killer was able to kill, mutilate and get away without being caught, given the usual numbers of individuals on the streets at all hours of the night,

As an Aussie would say B U G G E R off.

[Chris]

Could Anderson's suspect have been identified in an asylum? Did the police ever visit Ostrog in an asylum in France?

I suppose the other intriguing possibility raised by that report is that when Sagar mentioned a "lunatic asylum", it was just his way of referring to Australia ...

[Jonathan H]

So, on we go even unto the end of the age ...

Aaron Kosminski did not die at that time--in fact was still alive--and never went to Australia. Plus Sagar means in the aftermath of the Coles' murder, not Kelly.

The reference to Liberal T. P. O'Connor and "The Sun" has nothing to do with Aaron Kosminski and the Seaside Home. It is about the paper's big scoop from early 1894; claiming that the police knew that 'Jack' was a lunatic in Broadmoor, eg. Thomas Cutbush.

[lynn cates]

beside the sea side . . .

Hello Scott. That's a good question.

Wonder whether any public asylum had a connotation regarding the sea?

Cheers.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

And here's one more Sagar report, from the Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser of 11 January 1905. It's evidently based on the known report in the Morning Leader of 9 January 1905, though with some rewording:

[ATTACH]15871[/ATTACH]

George Johnson, huh? More like George Jackson.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jonathan H]

By the way, the 'embankment' referred to in the article, from where the mad doctor supposedly jumped, from is in Central London.

Yet Macnaghten had read, at the very least, P.C. Moulson's report on the recovery of Druitt's corpse. That report would have told him about the season trail pass (which he mentions in 'Aberconway') and the location of the suicide --Chiswick!

[Jonathan H]

Vindicated -- again?

What a great, great find!

And a source that, arguably, by a textual analysis alone, backs the theory that Sims is deliberately disguising Druitt to protect the latter's family.

For it says that Sims is with-holding information to prevent the Ripper's family from being destroyed.

The article then mentions Cutbush, albeit not by name, and the Liberal newspaper, 'The Sun', and its flop-scoop of 1894.

We see, yet again, the perplexity of other reporters that a well-regarded field detective from 1888, in this case Robert Sagar, is being shoved aside by the great Dagonet, the source of his information (Macnaghten of course) unrevealed.


'Mr. Sims, from information which came under his notice, has told me on more than one occasion he is convinced that these murders were committed by a medical man who afterwards committed near the Embankment. This man was well-known in London as subject to fits of lunacy and he belonged to one of the best families in town. It is consideration for his relatives which has prevented "Dagonet" [Sims] from making a full disclosure of such evidence as he possesses. ... But the doctor in Sims' theory was never in the asylum.'


Let us just consider this source at face value:

Sims must have known he was running a risk that a famous and noble family, based in London and who had produced a physician--who was also well-known to be crackers and had killed hismelf in the Thames--would be close to being exposed by just by these bits of data, at least among the rarified, superp-respectable circles in which they travelled?

But there was ... no risk of exposure for the Ripper's family.

Either by accident or design, George Sims has lain a false trail by slight, fictitious distortions that render the real identity of the fiend and his family unrecoverable.

The Druitts were not based in London, but Dorset. They were prominent there, not in the metropolis.

Montague was not a medical man, but the son of one, and was not known (as in diagonsed?) to be insane, or suffering from periodic 'fits' (as with epileptic mania?) except when he was posthumously judged to be temporarily deranged (not by a doctor) as the only explanation for his inexplicable suicide.

The last line is quite wrong, about the mad doctor not having been in the asylum, though ironically correct about the real killer.

Sims-Dagonet had been writing in "Mustard and Cress" since 1902, three years before, that the "mad doctor" had been sectioned "twice" in an asylum. He would repeat this in 1903, 1906, 1907, 1910 and 1917.

Again, not true of Montague Druitt and therefore another bit of fictitious data that kept him, and by extension his family, safely hidden.

This was done, I think obviously, by design.

[Scott Nelson]

The bit in the Gloucester Citizen about the third possibility to Sagar's story, "...This was a manaic in one of our public asylums whom the police went to see in order, if possible, to clear the mystery for ever."

..sounds like the attempt to identify a suspect in an asylum (or the seaside home). Could Anderson's suspect have been identified in an asylum? Did the police ever visit Ostrog in an asylum in France?

[Chris]

And here's one more Sagar report, from the Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser of 11 January 1905. It's evidently based on the known report in the Morning Leader of 9 January 1905, though with some rewording:

[Chris]

Here's one more short report of Sagar's retirement, this time from the Sunday Chronicle of 8 January 1905. There's nothing here that's not in the reports we already know about, but the interesting thing is that - as for the little article in the Daily Mail of 9 January - this matches word for word parts of the report that appeared in the Seattle Daily Times on 4 February. So it seems the English original of the Seattle report is still waiting to be found, probably in a newspaper of 7 January or earlier.

Here's another article apparently based on that unidentified original. Unlike those in the Sunday Chronicle and Daily Mail, this one, from the Gloucester Citizen, 9 January 1905, does mention the Aldgate butcher theory, which it claims the City Police "fully believed", but other than that phrase there's no new information in it: