No known suspect pre 1895 was Jack the Ripper

[Heinrich]

Which is why they took over 4 hours to go over his story, and presumably check it out before letting him go. If there had been any misgivings about Barnett's story the press would have been all over it, remember the fiasco over Pizer?
....

I do understand your expectation that the newspapers would have done the job for the police especially given the less regard they had for the professionals but, then, it was not their responsibility to gather evidence nor corroborate alibis, rather to report on the investigations and note police incompetence. In keeping with modern opinion of the current exemplary standards of the Metropolitan Police, Jon, you undoubtedly place far too much confidence in their professionalism at the time of the Whitechapel murders. Your presumption that the police so thoroughly checked Joseph Barnett's flimsy alibi that he was asleep and that they could definitely place him elsewhere (despite Barnett admission that he had been with Mary Kelly on the night of the murder), does not command credence.

[Ally]

To Ally

For me the Green River killer comparison does not apply, because he was a contemporaneous suspect -- eventually caught via DNA.

Er...The premise of this thread is that no pre-95 suspect would be valid. Which includes contemporaneous suspects. So how is the comparison not valid?

The topic of the thread states that no pre-95 suspect could possibly be the Ripper. That is pure poppycock.

[Monty]

"Hello Neil,

Agreed. They were just more likely than Cutbush. As it is, the police were still chasing Jack the Ripper in 1891 and 1895. therefore, any known suspect wasn't JTR in their eyes PRE 1895. They all said so themselves."

I think that is pretty obvious.

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this thread. Are we saying any pre 1895 suspect is null and void? If so then I ensorse Chris's stance, its too sweeping.

As for Heinrichs comments, I'll put them down to ignorance of bothe the investigation and police procedure.

Monty

[Jonathan H]

To Ally

For me the Green River killer comparison does not apply, because he was a contemporaneous suspect -- eventually caught via DNA.

Neither Montague Druitt or Aaron Kosminski were known to the Ripper police hunters until one was long dead and the other was 'safely caged', several years after he had 'got better' -- if this madman was the killer.

In my opinion, anyhow.

To Monty

A person has to make a judgement as to whether the official version of Mac's 'Report', in which Druitt is nothing, trumps the unofficial-alternate version disseminated to the public, wherein Druitt is everything, and his 1913 comments upon retirement in which Druitt is everything ('That remarkable man ... I have very clear idea of who he was ...'), and his memoirs in which Druitt is not only everything he is the thing; the only suspect worth metnioning because 'certain facts' led to a 'conclusion' but only years after this 'protean' maniac had killed himself.

To Phil Carter

Knowledge of Druitt as the Ripper originated not with the police but with his family who 'believed'. This leaked in Dorset in 1891, probably along the Tory grapevine becoming Farquharson's 'doctrine'. Macnaghten investigated and then, I argue, told nobody else at the Yard.

That would explain why Abberline and Reid think they are dismissing some tabloid beat-up, whilst Littlechild thought it was a garbled version of Tumblety -- and perhaps Anderson did too?

[Wickerman]

..... They had plenty of evidence at-hand to make a case against Joseph Barnett in the murder of Mary Kelly but they let him go after one interview.

Which is why they took over 4 hours to go over his story, and presumably check it out before letting him go. If there had been any misgivings about Barnett's story the press would have been all over it, remember the fiasco over Pizer?

Regards, Jon S.

[Trevor Marriott]

Phil

I don't think you're reading what I've actually written.

I'm simply saying that if the police suspected X but were unable to prove he was the murderer, that doesn't tell us that X was not the murderer. It just means the evidence wasn't there.

But there has to be some evidence to suspect X in the first instance.

[Heinrich]

The police botched the job and everybody knew that at the time, not least themselves. Interviewing and clearing a suspect when evidence was neither followed up on nor gathered, compounds their inefficacy. They had plenty of evidence at-hand to make a case against Joseph Barnett in the murder of Mary Kelly but they let him go after one interview. For sure, the Metropolitan Police conducted their investigation with astounding ineptitude.

[Ally]

Two words: Gary Ridgway

[Chris]

Phil

I don't think you're reading what I've actually written.

I'm simply saying that if the police suspected X but were unable to prove he was the murderer, that doesn't tell us that X was not the murderer. It just means the evidence wasn't there.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

Respectfully, that's decifering the actual words of the police wrongly Chris.

They, the police, said, pre 1895, they had no evidence that ANYONE was the murderer. They also said the case was unsolved.

That "ANYONE" must therefore include any known suspect before 1895.

What it means is that any comment made AFTER 1895 goes against what was known PRE 1895.

That means that Swanson DIDN'T KNOW pre 1895, that Kosminsky was Jack the Ripper, (as he apparently said in the marginalia that he was the Ripper) ....Otherwise he would never have tried to bang Grainger to rights for being JTR.
In addition, Francis Coles was murdered 13th feb 1891. Kosminsky was locked up on the 7th February. Swanson and Co were STILL chasing Jack the Ripper then.
That's two examples of Swanson and Co still chasing JTR after Kosminsky was locked up, Druitt was buried, Le Grande was in jail, Cohen was dead, etc etc etc

So do please kindly explain to me how AFTER 1888, anyone PRE 1895 can then subsequently be called Jack the Ripper if the Ripper was still undetected and the murders were still being investigated in reference to still trying to catch the criminal responsible?

The police said it themselves at the time Chris. For at least 7 years they said it. And in that time, Druitt and Cohen had died, Kosminsky was in an asylum, and Le Grande was in prison. Ipso facto, there was no suspicion to name anyone as Jack the Ripper from that time period of 7 years. 1888-1895.. including all those previously named and many many others.

Hello Neil,

Agreed. They were just more likely than Cutbush. As it is, the police were still chasing Jack the Ripper in 1891 and 1895. therefore, any known suspect wasn't JTR in their eyes PRE 1895. They all said so themselves.


Hello Jonathan,

You can quote MM from his book, written many years after 1895 if you wish..but the quotes directly from the police, from their own mouths, at the time, just quash every view PRE 1895 that they knew the identity of the killer. They all said they didn't.


kindly

Phil

[Monty]

Macnaghten did not state that Ostrog, Druitt and Kosminski as the most likely suspects, he stated the men were more likely than Cutbush to have comitted the murders.

These men were picked out because Macnaghten felt the case against Cutbush was poor when compared against other names obviously banded about at Scotland Yard.


Monty

[Jonathan H]

To Phil Carter

Hard as it is when dealing with an entrenched paradigm, leave to one side what hocus pocus Macnaghten wrote for a Liberal goverment -- who never saw it -- and what he bedazzled credulous cronies with for Yard-friendly public consumption -- with himself kept well out of it (eg. Abberline and Littlechild were both totally clueless that the 'Drowned Doctor' alleged scoop originated with Mac) and just absord the following:

Primary Source 1:

The 11 February 1891 edition of 'The Bristol Times and Mirror' which is the linking source in the extant record between the sympathetic obits on Druitt, in 1889, and his unexpected re-emergence in the Macnaghten Report(s) as -- of all things -- a Ripper suspect, in the official version a minor one, and in the draft or rewrite he is the best bet:

'I give a curious story for what it is worth. There is a West of England member who in private declares that he has solved the mystery of 'Jack the Ripper.' His theory - and he repeats it with so much emphasis that it might almost be called his doctrine - is that 'Jack the Ripper' committed suicide on the night of his last murder. I can't give details, for fear of a libel action; but the story is so circumstantial that a good many people believe it. He states that a man with blood-stained clothes committed suicide on the night of the last murder, and he asserts that the man was the son of a surgeon, who suffered from homicidal mania. I do not know what the police think of the story, but I believe that before long a clean breast will be made, and that the accusation will be sifted thoroughly.'

Primary Source 2:

The only document by Macnaghten about the fiend with his knighted name on the line. In effect, the memoir chapter of 1914 is the de-facto third version of his Report. It matches Source One and [provisionally] solves the case.

CHAPTER IV.

LAYING THE GHOST OF JACK THE RIPPER.

I'm not a butcher, I'm not a Yid,
Nor yet a foreign Skipper,
But I'm your own light-hearted friend,
Yours truly, Jack the Ripper."
ANONYMOUS.

THE Above queer verse was one of the first documents which I perused at Scotland Yard, for at that time the police post-bag bulged large with hundreds of anonymous communications on the subject of the East End tragedies. Although, as I shall endeavour to show in this chapter, the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November i888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer.


' ... the man, of course, was a sexual maniac, but such madness takes Protean forms, as will be shown later on in other cases. Sexual murders are the most difficult of all for police to bring home to the perpetrators, for motives there are none ; only a lust for blood, and in many cases a hatred of woman as woman. Not infrequently the maniac possesses a diseased body, and this was probably so in the case of the Whitechapel murderer.'

How would any other police know anything about this posthumous suspect if Macnaghten, known for affability but also for his reticence and discretion, kept his mouth shut?

[Chris]

Phil

Sorry, I think we must be talking at cross purposes somehow. We know no one was charged.

What I'm saying is that none of the considerations you mention can prove that any known suspect was not the murderer - only that the police didn't have evidence to prove he was the murderer.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chris,

The police don't give an indication of "not being in a position to charge" any known suspect pre 1895 either.. unless you know of a statement or nine to that effect.. PRE 1895?

kindly

Phil

[Chris]

I meant exactly as I wrote. They cannot be Jack the Ripper because the Police, whomever they suspected, followed, checked up on etc must have cleared them pre 1895.

But there's a difference between not being able to prove someone guilty and clearing them. Just because they were not in a position to charge anyone it doesn't mean they didn't still have suspicions about people.